#14. Star Wars Episode IX and Hellboy Redux
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With Vic off in the Caribbean, Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti fills the third chair and immediately complains that his appearance a year earlier was meant as an audition the guild never honored. The main event is the first teaser for Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, and the reactions split sharply: JVL rates his excitement a flat zero, singling out Rey's bullet-time backflip over a ground-skimming TIE fighter as a stupid action beat and objecting to the Palpatine cackle and "no one's ever really gone" as Star Wars adopting comic-book rules about death, the same sin as resurrecting Maul in Solo. Continetti admits he was excited watching it while simultaneously knowing "a corporate behemoth with incredible power was using me," and has cooled in the days since; Sonny cops to going from bored indifference to a four or five, and reads the rebuilt Kylo Ren helmet as J.J. Abrams quietly signaling that some of Rian Johnson's choices will be undone. That leads Continetti to a genuine defense of the prequels — Lucas had artists working for years under the instruction "give me something new," while the sequels only cannibalize — and all three agree the surreptitiously filmed Mandalorian sizzle reel is the more exciting property, with JVL summing it up as "Werner Herzog versus IG-88." They spend a long stretch on Disney+ at $6.99 a month as a gun aimed at Netflix, which JVL has always called a paper tiger; Continetti says the Imagineering documentary and the end of the Disney vault thrill him more than any new show. On the box office, Shazam! holds first with $24 million on a 54% drop, Little takes second with $15 million ("intersectional Big," per Continetti), and Neil Marshall's Hellboy reboot lands third with $12 million. Sonny, the only one who saw it, says he didn't hate it as much as its 15% Rotten Tomatoes score but that David Harbour plays Hellboy like Luke Skywalker whining about power converters, all "Dad, you suck" at Ian McShane's Professor Broom, though the pulpy heavy-metal grotesquerie works. The others turn it into a del Toro appreciation: Continetti, who rewatched Hellboy II, exalts the Angel of Death, the troll market, and Danny Elfman's score, and confesses "I like looking at del Toro's movies more than I like watching them," while Sonny reports the first film hasn't aged as well as he'd hoped. JVL opens with Flash's first win as a starter — three no-hit innings, one run, eight strikeouts — plus a sabermetrics session with his "asset" over a 78% first-pitch-strike strikeout rate and a joke about cream and clear; Continetti counters with taking his four-year-old to his first Nationals game and dreading the day the boy realizes his father is not, in fact, a jock.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- Since Vic is on vacation f0r this episode, sponsored by Quip and Express VPN, JVL and Sonny asked Free Beacon editor...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:01We'll always be with you.
?00:00:07No one's ever really gone.
Sonny00:00:30No one's ever really gone. All right, joining JVL and I this week in place of Mr. Mattis is Matthew Cottonetti, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and longtime friend of the show. Matt, how have you been since we last had you on one year ago?
Guest00:01:23I've been great.
Sonny00:01:25What's new in your life since then? Please fill us in on your whole life.
Guest00:01:27The truth is, though, there's been something missing in my life. Oh, the past year. And that was my appearance on the Sub-Beacon. And I had thought I had viewed that appearance as an audition for a semi-regular role. And little did I know that you the three of you have this guild mentality. Well, have you let anyone in?
JVL00:01:50Canceled. We were we were going to bring you in as a permanent member on the old show. But then it was canceled. And the proprietors of the new place, very, very tight. We've gotten a lot of notes from the big boss here saying you got to keep it to three people.
Guest00:02:05Well, I'm just I'm just excited to be to be back because I've been thinking about the show and everywhere I go. Sonny and JVL everywhere I go and I talk to people and they will say, I listen to you on the Sub-Beacon that one time. Or what is Sonny really like? Or I get a lot of questions like that. Jonathan, a nice person.
JVL00:02:30Oh, what do you say? Tough one. No, no is the answer to that final question. That's true.
Guest00:02:36Sonny is like how he sounds.
JVL00:02:38Do they ask you about your watch ever? What are you wearing there? Give me a quick wrist check.
Guest00:02:42You actually do wear a watch. That's a new watch. This is a Zodiac.
JVL00:02:46Oh, can I see?
Guest00:02:47If you had asked me if you had asked me when I bought it, I would be able to tell you more information about it.
JVL00:02:53Did you buy this or did your wife buy this for you? I picked it out. Because your last watch was a wife's purchase.
Sonny00:02:56We have a hard 20 second cap on watch prices. Let's talk this episode. He's just looking at it. I like Zodiacs.
JVL00:03:02This is a very attractive dial. I like the applied air.
Sonny00:03:05It's not advertised in a middle-aged man's magazine. Good, good. We're done with that. Okay. JVL, how was your weekend? How was your weekend? Big news. Big news. Big news.
JVL00:03:14Flash got his first win as a starter in the Travel League. Look at that. Came out, pitched three innings of no-hit one-run baseball with eight Ks.
Sonny00:03:28No-hit one-run. No-hit one-run. How many walks?
JVL00:03:32I think he walked three.
Sonny00:03:34Where did the run come from?
JVL00:03:37So when you walk at this level, very few catchers can go from home to second. Gotcha. So stealing second is automatic. Yeah, yeah. Stealing third is a high percentage chance, and then all you do is wait for one pass ball. Yeah, yeah. So, but I would say, again, a dominant performance from the mound. He's now hitting, in Travel League, hitting 500. Wow. In Little League, against the Little League competition, the rec competition, he's hitting a gaudy 857. Wow. Pretty good numbers. And we went and we did a classroom session, me and my boy, my asset, as I like to think of him, doing a deep dive through his numbers and looking for, see if we could sabermetric him up. Do a money ball flash a little bit. And the big thing I found is that his first strike, first, first pitch strike strikeout percentage is really high. 78%. When he throws, when his first pitch to a batter is a strike, 78% of the time it ends in a K. And so we really got to bring that number up. So we're going to, we're going to focus for the next few weeks on that. And, you know, I'm convinced that he will be allowed to eat dinner most nights if he works very hard on it. And, I mean, you got to give him goals to strive for. You know, he needs, he needs to win.
Guest00:04:57Question. Yes. Who tabulates? Who tabulates these numbers at this level?
JVL00:05:03So it's all done via app, as you would imagine. And the game scoring is done via app. And the app then takes all of that and gives you detailed statistical analysis of everything.
Sonny00:05:17Who is inputting the information? Is there like a. Is that you? Our scorekeeper. The team scorekeeper. So do you have like a dedicated assistant coach who's just keeping balls and strikes?
JVL00:05:27We have a dedicated mom. Okay. Who does that. A mother who has one child is the official scorekeeper. Okay. Those of us with more than one child spend most of our time during the games running around to keep our other children from killing themselves. Yeah.
Sonny00:05:43You don't want that. No. That would be bad. That would be a bad sabermetric to have. One child lost.
JVL00:05:488.57.
Sonny00:05:49Per game.
JVL00:05:50That's pretty good. That's a pretty good percentage. That's okay. That's okay. He's no one Ryan like. And that there are a lot of walks, a lot of strikeouts. But I. I. I decided that instead of focusing on overall strike percentage, we really got to focus on first strike percentage. It's an easier thing to digest. Don't you think, Sonny?
Sonny00:06:07Yes. That's. You get that one thing that you got to focus on.
JVL00:06:11Yeah.
Sonny00:06:12Just throw it as hard as you can right down the middle. They can't. They're not going to be able to catch up to it.
Guest00:06:15That's true. What's his favorite pitch?
JVL00:06:18He prefers his two seam fastball to his four seam fastball. He has a change up, which I maybe sometimes cane him for if he throws it because he doesn't need. He doesn't need to throw a change up. He just throws gas by people. I mean, there's no there's no reason to try to try to trick batters yet.
Sonny00:06:36Well, I mean, he needs to develop a repertoire.
JVL00:06:39He can develop his repertoire the first year the batters start catching up to him. Well, but then I'll panic. I don't think so. I let him practice. I let him practice the change up, but I don't I don't want to throw it in games. I see the change up in a game.
Sonny00:06:55And, you know, he gets the basement. We get home.
JVL00:06:58You say, cut yourself a switch. Who?
Sonny00:07:01Off the tree. When did you when did you first football player got in trouble for that? Oh, that was Adrian Peterson.
JVL00:07:06Oh, is Adrian Peterson an AP? That's right.
Guest00:07:08When did you first notice his ability with Flash?
JVL00:07:11About age five.
Guest00:07:13Age five.
Sonny00:07:14I went over to the Continentis this weekend and and and I won't name him. We don't name children. The boy. The boy. The boy. The boy was was was just smashing, smashing balls, hitting them all over the front yard.
JVL00:07:28Does he have the pink fat bat? That's what we started Flash with.
Guest00:07:31Well, he has a blue bat. That's like MLB. Yeah, kind of foam. But he started T-ball, too.
JVL00:07:38Well, he's actually doing T-ball already. Oh, yeah.
Guest00:07:40He loves to he loves sports. He loves sports. And I took him to his first Nationals game this past weekend. How did he like it? That was my weekend. Loved it. That's fantastic. We were there. We still were there until the top of the eighth. It was really my decision. He lasted that long. He would have stayed until the end of the game. What time was the game?
Sonny00:07:56What was game time? One at 135. So it was the Sunday game. Yeah. I mean, that's that's where that's the time to take them in the Sunday afternoon games.
Guest00:08:04But my decision because threatening rain, you know, and I didn't want to get caught in the rain. And we were there in the outfield center field. And, you know, so not the best seats. Do you have a doctor for him yet? Yes. Sports medicine.
JVL00:08:25No, I have.
Guest00:08:26I mean, we have a pediatrician. I have an anti-aging physician.
JVL00:08:29Who I found really helpful in the development of Flash.
Sonny00:08:34Do you have a hyperbaric chamber in your home?
JVL00:08:37Some cream and some clear that I find it helpful to rub on the skin alternatingly that will help with some of his physical maturation.
Guest00:08:46I am anyone who knows me understands that it is simply poetic justice that my son loves sports because believe it or not, I'm not the most athletic person. I don't believe it. Well, it's true and not nor am I the most coordinated person. And so I like, you know, stability being sedentary. I like the indoors right as opposed to the outdoors. This is not the boy. Well, the outdoors is where dangerous and cold danger weather, you know, like others.
JVL00:09:23Yes, 20,000 years of evolution have taught us that.
Guest00:09:26Yeah, that's why we came indoors.
JVL00:09:27People are the worst.
Guest00:09:29I am taking a very encouraging and enthusiastic but hands-off approach.
JVL00:09:35Are you assistant coaching the T-ball stuff?
Guest00:09:37I'm there. I'm there. But are you like in the dugout? Well, at this level, at this age of T-ball, you know, they ask the dads to be on the base there and everything. Because the skills are so varying and there's still one four-year-old, you know. So, yeah. No, I'm there. I'm on the field and I'm out there in the yard like when Sonny was with us, you know. But I'm not ready to commit to the full, you know, sports medicine planned diet that you have adopted for Flash. I'm not there yet is what I'm saying.
JVL00:10:12Did you yell at him on the field? Was there a lot of, get on the bag? There was a lot.
Sonny00:10:16I'll tell you. In the front yard, it was very interesting because Matt knows what he's supposed to do when the pitch is coming. You got to get your arm up, you know, get your stance right. I taught him his stance and everything. I'm constantly reminding him of this. And whenever he did what you said, crushed the ball.
Guest00:10:35It is funny because he has his skills in isolation. Can catch, he can throw, he can hit. Combining those skills, just like you're working on the first pitch strike, I'm working on combining the skills. So, for example, in his first game, which was a couple weeks ago, he hit it, smacked it. Ground ball. But he thought he was just doing batting practice. So he didn't move. He did not run. So I was on third base and I said, run, run. And, you know, he did. So it's those types of things. I mean, he's the biggest sports fan in the world. We watch the games and everything. Sports Center at age four was his favorite program. But it's combining those. He only knows the things in isolation. So it's combining those things that we're working on.
JVL00:11:28You know what? What's funny here is that it will be years before he figures out that you're not a King Jock.
Guest00:11:35Yes.
JVL00:11:36Because he will simply assume dad is teaching me all this. I'm dreading. I'm dreading. Dad knows how to when I do what dad tells me to do when I hit. Of course, my dad, basically, I'm sure he's old and retired now, but he was probably like Frank Thomas.
Guest00:11:49Well, you know, his grandpa, my father is a jock and played college football and everything. And so it's his uncle and his uncle, my brother. As well as this other uncle, my brother-in-law are athletic people, you know, and so he has a lot of familial support in that sense. But yeah, I am dreading the day that he realizes who, in fact, his father is. All right.
Sonny00:12:18Sonny, how was your weekend? Oh, it was fine.
JVL00:12:20Did you shine any shoes?
Sonny00:12:21I did not shine any shoes, sadly, this weekend. I need a good shoe shine. I need to get a good, good moisturizing. Oh, leather lotion into some of these shoes. Is that code for something? No, it's just literally just leather lotion needs to be applied to my shoes. I feel like that's a change that I was talking about. I wanted to put the leather lotion in the basket. That was a reference that came to my mind. No, it's silence in the land. It's not leather lotion because it's not leather yet. It's still skin at that point. It's just moisturizing lotion. Sonny would know. Yeah. Well, I mean, you got to be got to keep up on these things. All right. I'm glad that Matt's back, though, for another Star Wars. Centric episode, because the big news in the world of pop culture, of course, since we last convened, is that we have a new teaser trailer and a title for Star Wars Episode 9. That subtitle is The Rise of Skywalker. And the teaser trailer promised to return to the fan service we so love. Kylo Ren's mask back. Wreckage of a Death Star back. Emperor Palpatine himself back. I love it. JVL, how excited are you for this?
JVL00:13:23On a scale of 1 to 10, I am a... Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. That breaks the scale. How about you, Matthew? On a scale of 1 to 10, when you look at this.
Guest00:13:37When I watched that trailer, I have to say last Friday, I was pretty excited.
JVL00:13:45Really?
Guest00:13:45Yes. However, in the days since... However, with this caveat, I knew exactly what was happening. I knew as soon as I was watching that trailer... When the end of the trailer happens and the big reveal, such as it is, occurs, I knew I was being manipulated. I knew a corporate behemoth with incredible power was using me and using my emotional responses, which they understood at a very deep level. Oh, they know. They know how to get you. In order to get me to be enthused, even remotely enthused. At their mass marketed cross brand synergistic cultural event that they have planned for December. So I recognize the cynicism and kind of guile that is represented by the trailer for episode nine, Rise of Skywalker. What is that even? What is the Rise of Skywalker? And it doesn't bother you. You were able to get past that? I was. However, the second caveat, in the days since, I find myself less and less excited.
Sonny00:15:09Santino, you guys were crowded around your computer screen literally 15 minutes ago. That's work. Watching the trailer and squealing with delight. The two of you. That was Londo. You were both very excited. I was sitting over here setting up and I just heard little, ooh, ooh, ooh, all over. So I take all of this with a grain of salt. I will say I went from bored indifference to interest. So like before the trailer came out, I was at like a two probably. I would say I'm at like a four or five now.
JVL00:15:42I went from bored indifference to actual indifference.
Sonny00:15:47What in the trailer did you hate the most?
JVL00:15:53Well, I mean, so superficially, the thing I hated the most was having Mary Sue do bullet time action like she's Carrie-Anne Moss jumping backwards in a flip over a TIE fighter, which is moving at like 75 miles an hour somehow, while flying mere inches above the earth, which is a thing that we had not previously. That's what a land speeder does, not a TIE fighter.
Guest00:16:19Right.
JVL00:16:20Well, we've seen X-Wings very close to the ground.
Guest00:16:22And remember in Rogue One, we learned that the Star Destroyers can enter atmospheres. Yeah, right. So everything that you thought. That you thought you knew is wrong. You must unlearn what you have learned.
JVL00:16:34That to me looks like a really stupid action beat.
Sonny00:16:37Uh-huh.
JVL00:16:39And Star Wars has, it's been a long time since Star Wars has had good action beats, I think, actually. If you take Rogue One out of it, like the big fight at the end of Rogue One where they are trying to get to the button.
Sonny00:16:51The throne room scene in Last Jedi is good. It's a good scene.
JVL00:16:55The throne room scene where Snoke is cut in half. And then they fight.
Sonny00:16:58They fight the red guards. False. That is not good. It is good. It is not good. It is entertainingly choreographed and visually compelling.
Guest00:17:09The fact that it's the only good scene in the movie. Literally the only good scene in the movie. Do you think that might bolster its value in your eyes? Sure, but you like it too. I like it too. But I would say, thinking of JVL's point, I would go back. I think you'd have to go back to Revenge of the Sith for a really good. The end of Revenge of the Sith is a really excellent extended action sequence. Yeah, I would agree with that. And has the drama and music and you're going between two different, toggling between two battles and such. So here's my takeaway from this trailer. I once again have come to appreciate the originality and value of the prequel. The, the, the achievement, I will go so far as to say of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
JVL00:18:05I got to say, so I, uh, I met a millennial last week, very nice guy, very smart guy, kind of nerdtastic. And he said to me, you know, somebody told me that you're a big Star Wars guy. I am too. I said, Oh, great. What, uh, you know, what, what, what sort of Star Wars stuff are you into friend? Oh, and, uh, and he was like, I'm, I'm more of a prequel. Prequel guy. The kids love the prequel. I'm sorry. You're, you're a what? And he's like, yeah, no, I was, you know, I was a kid when the prequels came out and basically they are the three greatest movies ever made. And it was a, for me, a wake up call of that. This really is a generational. I wondered if Star Wars is becoming like Saturday Night Live that your favorite of the Star Wars
Sonny00:18:50is just the, whatever ones were when you're eight years old or something. Right, right, right.
JVL00:18:54Um, the other thing I didn't like was the, the emperor. And the, no one has ever really gone like, so Star Wars is going to now start using, I guess the same logic as comic books when it comes to death, which is the thing I really, really hated about the big reveal at the end of Solo, a Star Wars story with Darth. He was literally cut in half and fell down a shaft that's 30,000 feet long. And like, Hey, hey, how are you doing, man? What's up? Just me. I'm all hanging out. That's insane.
Sonny00:19:31Totally. Who's hanging out with Cheech and Chong? I know.
Guest00:19:35He went to Margaritaville on the way to form Crimson Dawn. Was he at the Beach Bum's house?
JVL00:19:43So you're like this, the, the, the space, Mary Poppins, Princess Leia, all like, so we're going to go to a place where like Uncle Ben comes back to life and Bucky comes back to life.
Guest00:19:54Do you take my point though, that if you look, having said all what you just said, then you look at the prequel trilogy and our problems with the prequel trilogy weren't that he was coming up with interesting things. It was that they were kind of bad movies from a cinema, not even from a cinematic, but kind of just from a, I don't know, they actually storytelling. They do tell, they tell an original story, an original story. They have new locale. Oh, guess what? From this trailer, we're on a desert planet and we're on a jungle planet and well, you know, you had the weird planets, um, you had the water, Uta, Uta pow, where the people live in the whole, like the burrows, right? In the revenge of the Sith, you have to go into these burrows and then you have the volcano. I mean, he was like, yeah. And then, and then in that other great sequence at the end of revenge of the Sith, where he, they're mowing down all of the Jedi, you see in the space of, I think, two minutes, seven different environments that are completely original. And that was because he had, he literally had 30. Artists working 10 hours a day for 15 years with the instruction, give me something new. And now they don't, it's give us, give us something that will rekindle the feeling in the millennial, you know, the kind of early millennial slash Gen X hyphenated person, such as myself, the Xeniel, the Xeniel that can, that will, that will say, oh, let's, oh, I'm old and I was once a child and also troll Rian Johnson.
Sonny00:21:33Well, well, this is, this is my, my, the, the thing that jumped out at me the most from that, that trailer was the reconstruction of Kylo Ren's helmet, which like, I, I, I don't, I don't think that JJ Abrams is specifically going out of his way to mess with Rian Johnson because they are all big part of the same big happy corporate family. But I do, I do think that it was. Uh, it was a signal to people that, look, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna undo some of this. Some of this is going to be undone. And I think it was, I think it was telling that he, he, the, they, they do show the helmet because, uh, Matt, I think you were telling me that in the art of the, uh, the art of the Force Awakens, that there's a whole, they spent months and months developing that mask. They spent months and months developing that mask and like working on tweaking it.
Guest00:22:2515 different iterations that lead up to what was in Force Awakens.
Sonny00:22:28Right. And so like for, for the first thing that Rian Johnson does in, uh, in the movie when we're, when we see Kylo Ren is to smash the helmet. Like it struck me as like kind of an aggressive move on Johnson's part. So this, it feels like some pushback. Um, I loved it.
Guest00:22:45Are they all a big happy family?
Sonny00:22:46Oh, who knows? Who knows? Because they all say the right things.
JVL00:22:49This movie marks the end of Kathleen Kennedy's tenure. Right. I mean, by saying we're going on hiatus. We'll see. Well, she's going to be running all the TV stuff too, right? Because the emphasis switches to television with the real big news for the week.
Sonny00:23:05The trailer for the Mandalorian.
JVL00:23:07The, the, well, not a trailer, a sizzle reel at the Star Wars gathering.
Guest00:23:11The surreptitiously recorded sizzle reel, which we saw it in very low definition, which has not been officially released.
JVL00:23:18Let me say this. I look at the trailer for Rise of the Skywalking or whatever it's called, and I think to myself, huh, I hope these space wizards settle their family dispute. I look at the trailer for the Mandalorian and I see, and I think Werner Herzog versus IG-88.
Guest00:23:41Oh my God, that's amazing.
JVL00:23:44No, it was all of the excitement that I would have hoped to feel for the Star Wars property is really about the Mandalorian.
Sonny00:23:52It feels different and it feels new and it feels, uh, it feels interesting. Right? Yeah.
JVL00:23:59It feels like a grown up Star Wars property in the way it's new. The key is you have to get rid of all the old characters. Stop. This is the success of Rogue One is that it just says, Hey, here's a whole bunch of new characters and we're going to make them into people that you care about that are interesting looking.
Guest00:24:15It's really mind boggling to me. I was complaining about this with to Sonny earlier, which was what is Star Wars? Star Wars is a samurai movie, a world war two movie and a Western put in. A blender and you get this thing. And yet when they come to do these new movies of the, so this will be the fifth, right? So of the five, only one of them says, Oh, that, that kind of mix of genres, let's pick one out and play with it. Right. Right. And that's Rogue One. Otherwise, it's just let, let's cannibalize everything that looks. Lucas did. Oh, but by the way, we're not even doing, again, I'm just going back to prequels. You, there's so much space to run in that whole prequel trilogy. You know, all these whole, they did it on TV. They, why not? The Clone Wars. Right. Or the before, the old Republic, right? I mean, when there were a whole lot more space wizards and there were bad, more bad ones too. And anyway, so instead for these movies, it's, let's try to pick up, you know, and evoke some type of nostalgia among our core audience. And I mean, maybe to his credit, Rian Johnson was trying to rebel against that. But at the same time, the stupid dice show up at the end of his movie and they show up in Force Awakens, they show up in Soul, the stupid, that's not what, Star Wars is not a pair of dice.
Sonny00:25:49Well, and even Rogue One, even Rogue One is not different. It is a movie about the creation of a thing from the first movie. Sure.
Guest00:25:57But it's set, it's, it's totally a World War II type, you know. Yeah, Dirty Dozen, whatever. Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying. In a way that the others aren't, the others are, let's remake, let's remake A New Hope. Let's remake Empire. And I assume what they're doing, going to do with this one is let's remake Return of the Jedi to the point where one might infer from the teaser, there will be a climactic scene in the Emperor's throne room of the Death Star. That's one of the shots, them looking up at it.
Sonny00:26:29That's what I'm excited for.
Guest00:26:30That's what I want. And in fact, in the Art of Force Awakens, they had, this was one of the concepts, I believe, even when Lucas still was interested in doing the final trilogy, is sit, locating something in the Emperor's throne room, which at that point in the art is submerged underwater. So, oh, well, let's just go back to, I wonder what he thinks about, I mean, sitting on top of his mouth. It's a mountain of money, what he actually thinks.
Sonny00:27:00Did they consult with him at all on this one? I had heard rumors that they were, they were talking to him.
Guest00:27:07Kathleen Kennedy gave an interview where she said that they did bring him in at the beginning. Yeah. But.
JVL00:27:13On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you boys about The Mandalorian? Seven. Six. So, for you, double what you are for episode nine.
Sonny00:27:25No. You said you were a three. No, I said four or five. You said four or five. Okay. A little bit more, but I mean, my problem with this is now I'm going to have to get the Disney Channel.
JVL00:27:35Well, so this leads me to the other thing I wanted to talk about about this, which is that, as I've been saying for years, Netflix is a fraud, is a paper tiger, and The Mandalorian is a gun aimed at the heart of Netflix. It is a bid for the Disney Channel to have a sort of all-ages version of Game of Thrones on their, streaming service, which only costs $6 a month. I thought it was $5.99.
Sonny00:28:02$6.99. Pretty sure it's $6.99. Whatever.
JVL00:28:05The point is, half of Netflix. And, man alive, what is Netflix going to do? You saw that, like, Netflix's stock price dropped first on seeing, on the reveal of the price numbers for Disney+.
Sonny00:28:19Yeah, $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year.
JVL00:28:23It's going to be amazing.
Sonny00:28:24My thoughts on this. So, my thought on this is more or less simple, which is that I don't think $7 a month is enough to get people to cancel Netflix because of cost.
JVL00:28:39But they'll start noticing they don't use it as much.
Guest00:28:43It's not. Here's where I differ from Jonathan is, I must confess, The Mandalorian is the thing that excites me the least about Disney+. I am more excited about the Imagineering documentary. That they're producing for Disney+. So, like Disney aficionados like myself are excited because you are going to have the universe of Disney content in one place. And the thing that has tortured me as a Disney fan for my adult life, which is the vaulting, is no more.
Sonny00:29:21So, this is one thing I wasn't 100% clear on in the rollout. Are they going to have all of the films? All of the Disney original films will be available?
Guest00:29:30As soon as the licensing agreements are voided, the content will move to Disney+. And the things that aren't there, my understanding is, with few exceptions like, say, Song of the South. That movie never existed. The things that they, you know, they will be on the site on day one. And so, if you just like the original Disney shorts, like I do, or you have your kids watch the, you know, my kids don't know what year it is, you know, entertainment-wise. It's, let's watch Looney Tunes and let's watch The Three Little Pigs, Disney version.
JVL00:30:11Every Disney Channel show that has ever been on the Disney Channel will be leaving Netflix and going there. Disney will definitely have the best kid selection there is. And as a parent, when you use your streaming box as a babysitter, you only need one thing.
Guest00:30:25Or Vic Matus will be very excited about that, too. But I'll say that, to me, is the Netflix killer aspect. It's not so much the new content they produce. It's that within four years, say, because I think some of the rights that Netflix owns to the Star Wars movies and the Marvel movies go on, they will overlap with Disney+. But within four years, if you want to watch Simpsons, it's on Disney+. If you want to watch... If you want to watch any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's on Disney+. What does Netflix have? They got to hope that they can have new friends again. Narcos. They have Narcos.
JVL00:31:04No, but it's literally true. They have Stranger Things. And Stranger Things. This is literally the one viral show that they have is Stranger Things.
Sonny00:31:12It's very interesting because Netflix, today or maybe yesterday it was, released a bunch of numbers. Like, oh, 45 million people watched The Highwaymen. 53 million people watched Triple Frontier. You know, I think they are starting, I mean, look, they've always been nervous because they should be because they don't actually own very much. But this is why they are producing so many movies and TV shows and stuff. I don't know. I don't think this is a Netflix killer on its own. But I do think in a world in which you have 17 different streaming options, I mean, I'm just running through them. I was running through them in my head the other day. At this point. I am now subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, the Criterion channel, HBO. And I still have like cable. I still have like a cable package.
JVL00:32:06What? You still have cable?
Sonny00:32:08Well, the long version is they offered me essentially every channel for like 40% less than I had been paying before on a monthly basis. And I was like, I will take that. And I like it because it has like all of the on. Encore and stars and HBO and Cinemax Showtime libraries on demand. I can watch like tons and tons of stuff for for free. But anyway, but like I mean, I was just running through and I'm like, do I really need Hulu? No, I guess not. I don't know. Maybe maybe I get rid of that. I don't know.
JVL00:32:42So when I say it's going to kill Netflix, I don't mean that Netflix is going to go out of business. What I mean is that Netflix is current position in which people treat it as if it is Comcast or something. Like it is this giant media company that is going to take over all of entertainment that is finished and it will become just another content streaming service that happens to have had an early mover advantage because they don't own anything special and they never did. And this is this is the big problem of what they whatever I would have moved things very differently for Netflix if I had been them, but they will be like a slightly larger version.
Sonny00:33:24Well, they're just they're going to be HBO. They're going to be a big HBO a bigger HBO unless HBO becomes them.
Guest00:33:31I mean, this is did you see that article that the Netflix DVD business is actually going pretty strong? Is it still in fact, I think Matt the Mattis is are still DVD subscribe. So they'll have that they don't spend any money marketing it. It's like it's it's all just but they might be forced to like ramp down the original production, you know, and try to focus on. One or two three or four different things. I mean, there's there how much money did they spend on content last year?
Sonny00:34:00They can't they can't keep releasing a whole season of television every week plus movie plus plus a movie every week forever. It just doesn't work. It's they don't have the money to do that.
Guest00:34:11Did you see Trimble Frontier, Jonathan?
JVL00:34:13I did not. We like it.
Guest00:34:15Sonny and I recommend it. Yeah, it's a joint joint recommendation.
JVL00:34:19This is the Ben Affleck. Yeah.
Guest00:34:21Yeah.
JVL00:34:22Helmed.
Guest00:34:23No, no. Directed by J.C. Shandor. J.C. Shandor, yeah. Okay. And Oscar Isaac. It's really Oscar Isaac's movie, which is a good a good thing. It's a good thing.
JVL00:34:32We almost did a show on that, didn't we? We almost did.
Sonny00:34:34And we do.
JVL00:34:34I think you suggested we do the Beach Bum instead.
Sonny00:34:37No, no, no, no, no. That was something else. No, that was the week Dumbo was out. And I was like, we should do the Beach Bum instead of Dumbo.
Guest00:34:46Fair enough. Well, there's a problem for Disney. I mean, these I guess they're making money. These live action. Well, this one is not. Dumbo seems like it was a flop. They have done better. They have all their chips on the Lion King, I think.
Sonny00:34:59Well, that'll come home. All right. Transition. This is a transition. Before we get to the box office update, JVL, why don't you fill us in on Quip?
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Sonny00:36:57All right. Let's move on to the box office. We're running long already, guys. This is a great chat. I love it. I love it. Shazam continued to dominate at the box office this weekend, grossing more than $24 million for its first place finish.
JVL00:37:11What percentage drop is that?
Sonny00:37:1254, I think. 53, 54. That's not bad. It's not bad. It was a pretty average drop. Little, a gender and race swapped version of Big, came in second with $15 million and finishing third. It was the movie we're going to talk about today, the Guillermo del Toro free reboot of Hellboy, which grossed just $12 million. Before we get to that, JVL, do you have any box office thoughts? Pass. Pass. Matt, do you have any box office thoughts?
Guest00:37:40I do, because I was a little confused. I thought Shazam was a remake of Big.
Sonny00:37:44Shazam is also-
Guest00:37:46But then you said there's another remake of Big.
Sonny00:37:48So you have the superhero meets Big movie, and then you have the- I don't know, Black Lady meets Big movie.
Guest00:37:58A story of race and gender swapping, but also age. So it's a young person.
Sonny00:38:05Well, but that's Big. Yeah, right. So it's like reverse Big.
Guest00:38:08It's an intersectional Big. Yes. And then there's Shazam, which is just Big, but with- Superman Big. Superman. Superman Big.
Sonny00:38:15Okay.
Guest00:38:16That was my question.
Sonny00:38:17Okay. So I'll just do a quick review here. Wait, dude. So let's all just discuss. I saw the movie. JVL, did you see the movie? No. You told me we didn't have to.
JVL00:38:31That's not at all what I said. You said we're not going to talk about that one. We're going to talk about the other. No. That's literally what you said.
Sonny00:38:38Okay. Good. Well, I'm glad- You said we're going to talk about the other Hellboys because you said Matt wants to really talk about the original two Hellboys. Well, I said that he was going to talk about the original two Hellboys and that we could talk about the new one. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
JVL00:38:50Now we're all going to talk about it. It doesn't matter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought that this was the show.
Sonny00:38:54Okay. Great. Did you see the first two Hellboys? Yes. So you watched the first two Hellboys. You didn't watch the new one that's out in theaters now.
JVL00:39:02Look, I thought it was a little strange. I'm not going to be honest. But when Vic's not here, I just do what I'm told.
Sonny00:39:07Yeah. Okay. Okay.
JVL00:39:09You see what happens when Mattis leaves? Anarchy.
Sonny00:39:12Yeah. This is why I haven't been back on in a year. Yes. Anyway, I didn't hate the new Hellboy as much as the Rotten Tomatoes score of 15%. What? Just that I should have hated it. 15%? 15%. But it's not good. It's not good. The biggest problem with the movie is, in addition to being unnecessary, David Harbour is not very good as Hellboy. He plays Hellboy as kind of like, it's like Luke Skywalker for the first half of Star Wars. I kept expecting him to whine about going to Tosche Station and wanting to get some power converters. It's very like, he's like, dad, all the time to the Ian McShane. Playing Professor Broom in this film.
JVL00:39:58That's not a correct characterization.
Sonny00:40:02Of?
JVL00:40:03Of Hellboy.
Sonny00:40:05That's not how Hellboy is supposed to behave. Correct? It is how he behaves in this movie. I am not disputing your characterization of him. You would know if you had seen it.
JVL00:40:14I am saying that that is not true to the character.
Sonny00:40:19I don't really care about the character of Hellboy, though. Hellboy has never been a particularly interesting. This is my shocked face. You don't care about Hellboy? He's never really been a very interesting character. The movie, the Guillermo del Toro movie.
Guest00:40:33Was he funny at all in this one?
JVL00:40:35Kind of. He's kind of funny.
Sonny00:40:36He's kind of a smart-alecky.
JVL00:40:38Yeah, he's kind of smart-alecky.
Sonny00:40:39Hard-partying guy. What I liked about this, the Neil Marshall-directed one that nobody else in this room saw, is that they play it as a kind of crazy. pulpy-type movie instead of the first Hellboy, which is a little bit more serious in tone, I think. And I do like that. I do like the, you know, the kind of heavy metal soundtrack with the, like, kind of grotesque violence and that sort of thing. That all works. The problem is that just none of the relationships make any sense.
JVL00:41:21Why was this franchise rebooted instead of just continued? Why was this franchise continued after hiatus? Why did it need to be...
Sonny00:41:26Because Guillermo del Toro wanted too much money to make another one.
JVL00:41:29They couldn't have just hired somebody else to make a... No, no.
Sonny00:41:31I mean, he wanted, like, $150 million to make...
JVL00:41:35Right, but they couldn't have just hired another director to make Hellboy 3?
Sonny00:41:38Why would they do that, though? I mean, why would they do that instead of just rebooting it with a new director who's doing it for cheaper?
JVL00:41:44Because we didn't need another... This is what I'm saying. Take the new director who will do it for cheap and just use him to make the third movie. You don't need another origin story. Well, I don't know that...
Sonny00:41:54I don't know that Ron Perlman would want to do that. I don't, you know... Right. There's no Hellboy without Guillermo.
Guest00:42:01And he has to make his fish movie. On the cheap. He has to make his fish movie. But if you see the progression from the first Hellboy to the second, you see how, if he had done a third, how large the canvas would have... Yes, I think that's correct. ...would have to be. Because just the... But like you're saying, Sonny, the first one, Lovecraftian horror. It takes itself slightly more seriously. The second one is basically kind of a Lord of the Rings, Star Wars type fantasy. And it's huge. And the scale is huge. The number of monsters, having just watched it the other night in preparation for the show, the number of monsters he designed for Hellboy 2 is, you know, quantum, factorials larger than what he's done in all of his other movies. Yeah. Usually he's just... One or two. Or like, you know, in Pan's Labyrinth, it's three maybe. But there's dozens upon dozens of them in just one scene in Hellboy 2. So to do Hellboy 3 right, which I imagine he thought would be the culmination of the trilogy and really how does Hellboy destroy humanity, which is always predicted or warned in the first two films, you'd have to visualize hell. I mean, can you imagine Del Toro's hell? I mean, I can't imagine it. That's why I would like him. To do it. Because it'd be a fascinating piece of art just for him to picture it. But I can see why he'd walk away for a budget that was not up to his high artistic standards.
JVL00:43:35Did you guys like it?
Sonny00:43:37Because I really enjoyed the first Hellboy. You know, I rewatched it yesterday and it has not aged as well as I remember. I remember liking it more than I did rewatching it this week.
JVL00:43:52Well, because it was incredibly fresh. When it was first out. Yeah. Because we didn't have a lot of superhero movies. Well, this is the thing. And now it feels like another superhero movie.
Sonny00:43:59This is the thing. I was actually thinking about this. It comes out in 2004. So it's greenlit sometime after X-Men and Spider-Man. It's like that first rush of superhero movies that was kind of between Spider-Man but before the MCU really kicks off, you know. So it's kind of a weird in-betweener. And it looks kind of cheap and it looks kind of small. But what it does really well is it gets at the kind of emotional angst of Hellboy, you know, his relationship with his father, which is like played as a real father-son relationship as opposed to the new one, which, again, David Harbour is just kind of like, Dad, you suck all the time. Like it doesn't work. But also with Selma Blair, I don't know what her code name is, but Liz is very. Is very good. That whole relationship. But the second one, I wish I'd watched that one instead, because it is it does have all of the great things that Guillermo del Toro does very well in spades. I mean, the the the march through the what is it, the marketplace, the troll market, the troll market scene, which is basically his like creature cantina moment is is just fantastic and fascinating. And it continues to play with the theme of, you know, Hellboy as a monster. Is he here to save us? Is he here to destroy us? And which side should he choose, frankly, should he be on the side of the humans who hate him and want to destroy him?
Guest00:45:32Hellboy, too, has, I think, what is my favorite del Toro monster, and that is the Angel of Death. Where they bring right before the climax of the film, where they confront the Golden Army, Hellboy has been mortally wounded by the bad elf prince, and so they go to wherever the Golden Army is, but they meet this kind of troll who, without legs, who says, well, I know a guy who can rescue him, but the price is very heavy, and it turns out to be what is referred to, anyway, in del Toroania as the Angel of Death. This is a beautiful, ghastly monster. Reminiscent of the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth. But different in other ways, but you're right, the eyes are not on the face, which is an interesting kind of... Motif. I just realized, listening to you guys, I think I like looking at del Toro's movies more than I like watching them. For me, going to del Toro, you kind of want to sit there and just study the frame, because there's so much that goes into every aspect of it, from the production design, to the costuming, to the creation of the monsters, to the cinematography. It's just their works of craftsmanship, right? I mean, it's like looking at a Tiffany lamp or a stained glass window. I kind of appreciate all the effort that went into it. Though, I would say the one thing that struck me on this reviewing of Hellboy 2 was the score was pretty good. And I don't remember the score from the first movie, but it had kind of a nice, adventurous score. So that was something that struck me as well.
Sonny00:47:17Underrated MVP of all these movies, Doug Jones, who plays Abe Sapien and plays, I believe, the angel.
Guest00:47:23The angel of death as well is. And whose voice was dubbed in the first Hellboy by David Hyde Pierce, an uncredited David Hyde Pierce. But in the second Hellboy, they gave Doug Jones the right to have his own voice. And funnily enough, he actually sounds rather similar. Sounds very similar, yeah. And if you watch him on the Star Trek Discovery where he plays Saru, he sounds the same. You can kind of tell the David Hyde Pierce type lilt.
JVL00:47:51I was always... Shocked that the property of Hellboy was viable as a piece of cinema. It's not.
Sonny00:48:00Well, it was viable enough to get three movies. Well, I mean, do you mean commercially viable or... Yeah. Because I don't think Hellboy is commercially viable. I mean, this is the problem. Not as a franchise.
JVL00:48:11I don't think... It was a viable enough Hellboy one, made a bunch of money, made more than it cost to make. And it's why they had a second one. I think the second one underperformed. But this is, you know, one of the... One of the earliest, earliest creator-owned indie things. I think Mike Mignola launches him in, like, 93. And it's really a cult, really a cult property within comic book world. I mean, nobody who is a casual comic book reader has any idea who Hellboy is. There was no cultural penetration. Unlike, say, like, The Punisher, right? Like, everybody kind of knows what The Punisher is, even if you're not into comic books. It's like, it's out there. That is not true of Hellboy. In a way, that it was able to make the jump onto the big screen, I always took as a, just kind of an amazing, like, how did this happen?
Sonny00:49:04Well, in a way, that makes him the perfect sort of character to bring to the big screen because you don't have lots of attachments to ideas of what the character should be. So you can adapt him to, for many audiences, many different ways, I think. I mean, look, I'm just looking at the box office numbers now. The first Hellboy. Hellboy grossed $59.6 million domestic. It grossed less than $100 million worldwide. Right. What was its budget? On a $66 million budget, which is not that good.
JVL00:49:35It's not Mortals Engine's bad, though. Well, sure. It's not.
Sonny00:49:38Hellboy 2 cost $85 million to make and grossed $160 million worldwide, which is better, but it's still, it's still, like, you're still in very dicey territory there. As you are with all of Del Toro movies. Right. I mean, this is, this is the thing.
Guest00:49:53I just did a little quick research. I now realize why I like the score. It's a Danny Elfman score. I didn't know why. I didn't know that he had done the score for Hellboy 2, but it is. I'd check it out if I were you.
Sonny00:50:05Elfman.
Guest00:50:07Overrated? Overrated in your view?
Sonny00:50:10I'm not the biggest fan. I like his Batman score. Okay.
Guest00:50:13First Batman score. What about the Simpsons theme? Do you like that?
Sonny00:50:15Yeah, that's okay. The Pee Wee Herman movie. Is that okay, too? That's okay. Yeah, he did, like, tons of great scores.
JVL00:50:22He did some.
Guest00:50:23Beetlejuice? The Beetlejuice score?
Sonny00:50:25Great. Anyway. And you didn't want me to talk about watches? Transition. JVL, tell us about ExpressVPN.
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