#25. Spider-Man, Jony Ive, and WWII Flicks
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Spider-Man: Far From Home opens to a $43 million Tuesday on its way to a monster five-day, and all three hosts are broadly on board. Sonny argues the film's real assignment was making the Blip and a post-Tony Stark universe livable, and it pulls that off partly because it's less an action movie than a teen romantic comedy where five years of vanished classmates is just one more indignity alongside midterms and puberty. He praises Tom Holland, Zendaya's deadpan MJ, the Aunt May and Happy Hogan business, and the pitch-perfect execution of Mysterio's holographic illusions, though he doesn't quite buy Quentin Beck's motivation and still ranks Homecoming higher — the Vulture, a dad whose business got crushed by Stark, remains his best MCU villain. JVL comes in half a tick lower, noting Far From Home is structurally the same movie as Homecoming with the good guy/bad guy reveal flipped, and while he likes the smaller stakes and found real emotional satisfaction in the Peter-and-MJ shipping ("it's more of a Pretty in Pink movie than an Avengers movie"), his verdict is that the story just wasn't very interesting. He pivots into a genuinely good argument about canon: no Uncle Ben, a science-nerd MJ, an Aunt May overhaul, and a Flash who's a rich smart kid rather than a football jock all work because they're satisfying, unlike the Jamie Foxx Electro — which prompts Vic to insist, to groans, that Foxx was the best Spider-Man villain of all time. Vic goes A-plus-plus, loving it largely for personal reasons: the Venice, Prague, Berlin, and Brenner Pass locations he's actually visited, Jacob Batalon representing Filipino Americans, and above all the sequence with the impeccably polite Dutch football hooligans, which he confirms is completely true to life. The showstopper is JVL performing an in-character Jony Ive guest review, freshly liberated from Apple to join the podcast, declaring the film magical but complaining that Mysterio is the real hero because guys like Steve get sainted while the people who thought to make the arc reactor a triangle get nothing. The banter includes Sonny's beach-hating Virginia Beach vacation and refusal to learn anything about the culture of anywhere he visits, Vic screening Tora! Tora! Tora!, Midway, and The Great Escape with his eleven-year-old (with notes on Charles Bronson's Polish accent, Donald Pleasence's blind acting, and the 3,000 men lost on the Yamato), a Spirit of the Week Budweiser Discovery Reserve brewed with space barley, more Grippos from Miss Shark, and Sonny's announcement that he's leaving the Free Beacon for a Dallas studio called Cinestate — with firm assurances the show goes on.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode sponsored by Calm and Lending Club, the Sub-Beacon discusses Spider-Man: Far From Home ...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Every where I go I see his face. I just really miss him. Yeah I miss him too. I don't think Tony would have done what he did if he didn't know that you were gonna be here after he was gone.
Sonny00:00:22You gonna be the next Iron Man now? Well no, I don't have time. I'm too busy doing your jobs.
Guest00:00:26What? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Look, keep up the good work. Because I am going on vacation.
Vic00:00:44Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon sponsored by Calm and Lending Club. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Happy 4th of July to our listeners. Gentlemen, welcome back. Welcome back to... Week off.
Sonny00:01:11Studio 2A. We feel very refreshed.
JVL00:01:13How was the sand?
Sonny00:01:15Ugh, it was terrible. It gets so coarse, it gets everywhere. Yes, Sonny. Did you go on it? Tell us about the beach. Did you touch it? One day. One day. I went on the beach one day. You were there for a week. We were there from Monday through Friday. And I went to the actual beach one time. One time. I walked on the boardwalk next to the beach several times. I went to the pool every day. I went to the pool every day.
JVL00:01:41No sand there.
Sonny00:01:42No sand there.
JVL00:01:43But you do have to be in the filthy water with other people.
Sonny00:01:47Yes. It's not ideal. It's not ideal. It's like a communal bath. It's gross. But no, it was fine. Did your children go to the beach without you? My daughter went to the beach with my wife every day. So basically, we have two kids, right? So we would kind of trade off. I would keep our eight-month-old in the hotel room because all he can really do on the beach is get hot and eat sand. So there wasn't a whole lot for him to do there.
JVL00:02:14Are you projecting, Sonny?
Sonny00:02:17So I would take our daughter to the pool in the morning when the cloud cover or the shade of the building was over the pool. And then we would switch. And in the afternoons, they would go to the beach when the sun was at their back instead of at the front. It was actually a very well thought out and very well planned, except for the first day when we all went to the beach and it was miserable. And I got out of there after like an hour. It sounds to me like you maybe got the better end of the deal when you're like, "Oh, it's
JVL00:02:41all very well planned out for you. You're in the shade of the pool in the morning. And then your wife is at the beach with all the disgusting sand in the heat of the day."
Sonny00:02:50But she likes the beach. So it's a plus for her. She actually grew up on the coast. She likes the coast near the beach. She likes it. I can't stand it. Which beach were you at? Virginia.
?00:03:01What's that like?
Vic00:03:02I don't know. I've never been there. I don't know because, you know, I'm a Jersey Shore person. It's great.
Sonny00:03:06It's great because it's not, because we go during the week. So it's not super crowded. It's not like the weekend dregs are there. And we, and it's not, it's like very calm, very-
JVL00:03:18Fine sand? Coarse sand?
Sonny00:03:20I don't know. Big, wide beaches? I have no idea what any of this, the distinctions here are. Brown? Slow? Rolling waves? Slow, low, little, little waves, I would say. Slow, slow waves.
JVL00:03:31Is it the actual ocean or is it just the Chesapeake Bay? No, it's the ocean. It's the ocean.
Vic00:03:35The Atlantic's right there. That's right. That's right. There's no, there's no barrier for you. And how about the, how about the boardwalk? You mentioned a boardwalk. Is it the same as like our boardwalk?
Sonny00:03:43No, no, it's not.
Vic00:03:44It's not. Ski ball and pizza? Brigantine castle?
Sonny00:03:47Is it a haunted mansion? It's not, it's not like that. It's basically a big path next to the beach that there's like a, there's like a walking path and then there's also like a bike path. And scooters are everywhere. Scooters are everywhere in Virginia Beach. It's crazy.
JVL00:04:01Do you get the urge to clothesline people as they come zipping past you on scooters?
Sonny00:04:06Uh, no.
JVL00:04:07Because I have to fight it every single time one of them comes past me. I just want to reach out like Bret Hart. No.
Sonny00:04:14Just watch physics. I, I never have before, but I might now that you mentioned it, frankly. Right. I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun.
Vic00:04:21Uh, my wife and my son were recently down at, uh, Washington Harbor. Uh, she, uh, my, uh, my wife had to, uh, meet a colleague and while they were there, they were walking along that little path along the Potomac river and they spotted a couple of those scooters in the Potomac river.
JVL00:04:37Where they belong.
Vic00:04:38So like clearly somebody just had had enough, just threw them in there.
JVL00:04:43Yeah. I expect more of that sort of resistance as the scooter menace spreads. Yeah. What, what is the culture of Virginia beach like? Because I have always gotten the sense that there are only two things in Virginia beach. That is the Navy and evangelicals. I have no idea what the, what they call, is that right?
Sonny00:05:02I have no idea what the culture, why would, how, why would I have any idea what the culture, you know what? I also have no idea of the culture of Aruba. I spent a week in Aruba. I got no idea what the culture there is like, because you know what I do is I go to, I go to the tourist traps and I say I stay on the beach and in the pool and I go to the restaurants. I go to the restaurants that are around the beach area. I'm not, I'm not interested in, why would I, why would I want to learn about the culture of the place I go to? This isn't Venice. Speaking of Venice. Speaking of Venice. Okay. No, no, no. Way ahead. We're way ahead of ourselves.
Vic00:05:32We're 25 minutes early on that.
JVL00:05:33Okay. Yeah. 25 is right. JVL or is it Johnny Ivy? What are you doing here? Big, big career news that affects the show that we have to talk about today. Yes. Yes. Johnny Ivy has left Apple Computers Inc and I believe this is going to free him up to do a lot more work. On this show. Oh, no. How excited are you boys? Well, he's not here yet. Is he? I assume he's still in San Francisco.
Sonny00:06:01J-Pod just threw his phone out the window of his moving car. He's just like, "Ah." How about you, Victorino? How are you? I'm doing fine.
Vic00:06:06You know what I've been doing lately is watching classic World War II movies with my son. He's really into military stuff and World War II and so I'm going back and I said, "Well,
JVL00:06:25do you know any English World War II movies?"
Guest00:06:27What's the other one?
Vic00:06:29Lenny Riefenstahl. Yeah. What's the one in German Brothers and Sisters or Fathers and Brothers? I forget the name of that. Not that one. Auf Deutsch. No. This is Triumph of the Will. No. Wait. Just for cinematography purposes, just to appreciate the cinematography.
JVL00:06:43Well, you were teaching him a master class on how George Lucas got his ideas for A New
Sonny00:06:50Hope. Exactly. Exactly. So that last shot in A New Hope, by the way, is literally synonymous. Yeah. Straight out of... Shot for shot. ...Triumph of the Will.
Vic00:06:59I mean, it's actually shocking. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So we recently saw three movies, Tora! Tora! Tora! The Battle of Midway. One of your favorites. Well, The Battle of Midway and The Great Escape. And I will have to admit to you, I have never seen any of these movies from beginning to end. They're long. They're long. Like The Great Escape is two hours and 52 minutes. So I just... Tora! Tora! Tora! It's three plus, isn't it? Yeah. Really slow burn. They're not really... They just did away with it. Like, you know, nowadays you feel compelled to have some other subplot involving a romance or something and then you build out of that. This was just like laying out the run up to December 7, 1941. And I kind of like that aspect. So like, you know, let's just forget about that. Let's not pretend that you need to have this thing and just show me what happened. And that was pretty good. So if I could just briefly talk about the movies here. Sonny, have you seen these movies?
Sonny00:07:57I mean, I've seen The Great Escape a bunch of times, like on cable. I very rarely sat through the whole movie, but it's one of these things that's always on TCM or AMC or whatever. So I always catch like 30 or 40 minutes of it. But it's insanely long. Wait, did you say that you also saw Midway? Yeah. There's a remake of that coming out.
Vic00:08:16I know. I saw it. I saw it. And I don't know what I hate more, the fact that the new one looks like extremely heavy on CGI. Yeah. And like too polished and shiny. You know, like Red Tails. That was one that was like with all that ridiculous CGI. Or in Midway, what they did was they just used actual footage, but they just used the same pictures over and over again. So you would see the same splash, B roll, the same explosion several times for the different carriers and including like a Charlton Heston's plane crashes. It's the famous shot of the plane that splits in two while it lands on a carrier. You know what I mean? So they just use that. In Midway, they also felt compelled to have the subplot with Charlton Heston's son is engaged to a Japanese girl, but her family is about to be interned. This is 1970s. This is like 1976. So, you know, there's a bit a bit of that. And then Charlton Heston saying, don't try that bigot crap on me, you know, and so this whole thing, because you have to get that message out. The Great Escape was weird because spoiler alert here, I didn't realize that most of them died. There's only three people, like 76 people escaped.
Sonny00:09:25Yeah. And like they just gunned them all down.
Vic00:09:27They gunned them all down. Okay. So, okay. There was like a few weird quirks in this movie. One Charles Bronson is the digger, the digging king or whatever his name was. He's supposed to have a tunnel king. The tunnel king. Thank you, Sonny. He's supposed to have this Polish accent and it's kind of weird. Okay. Another weird one. James Coburn with an Australian accent that like, ah, sometimes I'll use it. Sometimes I'm just going to be James Coburn. Right. But I'd say the worst one was and I love Donald Pleasance. Donald Pleasance, who later on, of course, you know, everyone remembers from Halloween and he plays the Brit gentleman who is the forger. And towards the end of the movie, he realizes he's suffering from a myopia, degenerative myopia. Right. And so he's like, I can't see. Wow. I'm just like my vision's blurry. And then by the end of it, he's acting like a blind man and he has this goofy look on his face. Like, you know, like as a blind. You have to act differently if you're blind. And so he has this weird like the eyes and he has a smile. The entire time, like, you know, how blind you're like if you're pretending to be blind in the old days, you would have that look. And it was really kind of distracting. Tora, Tora, Tora. This is interesting. I didn't realize that the similarities between that and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor in Tora, Tora, Tora. They do have the scene with these two like fighter pilot guys who are buddies. And then they got to hurry up and they got to go over to, I think it's the Hinkle Air Bay, the other field and get the planes and then fly them out and shoot down as many zeros as they can. And obviously, they just took that and then turned that into the whole because both were real stories. It's how it really happened with Ben Affleck. Yes, they were in love with the same woman and Ben Affleck and a guy who I think Josh Hartnett. Rest in peace. He's no longer with us. He must have died because he's not in any movies. So that's what I have a question.
JVL00:11:19How did your 11 year old son react to these movies? Was the pacing. Because it's radically different pacing than what he's used to in his film. Yeah. No. Yes, exactly. Could he abide it? Or was he like looking at his watch?
Vic00:11:34I think there were there were times where it was like during Midway where it's just like, OK, yeah, he was getting bored, but he stayed through the whole thing. Every movie. I think he liked Tora Tora Tora the best because he's really into the different planes and so he could spot them and the whole thing and the effects. What did he think of that? Was he OK with this? He was fine with it. He was fine. One of the things that I thought was very odd is there was a certain turning point with blood special effects. And in those movies, the blood is this bright red paint. Yeah, it's like and then suddenly it got real. I don't know if it was after the Wild Bunch, but it just got much better around the time the Godfather maybe. But it was really kind of silly. It's sort of like war paint. It was. But the other interesting thing is in Midway, they do show Admiral Yamamoto aboard his flagship ship, the Yamato. You know what? This reminds me of JVL, the Battleship Far Star Blazers very much, right? That is exactly right. That's the first thing I thought about. And I told Mike, I said, you know, this is a great show. You got to watch one of the great anime series of anime.
JVL00:12:43They did a live action version of it. Oh, yes. I know. I know. I've never seen it.
Vic00:12:49I'm dying to see it. Right. It was only Japan. But so he was certain that there's got to be a movie about the sinking of the Yamato. But. I don't think so. There might be a document. I mean, there might be a thing on it. There's a museum for the Yamato in Japan. I can't imagine nobody has done a document. That would be one of the greatest stories ever told. Yes. The Yamato was supposed to be grounded at Okinawa and used as like a giant gunnery at the end because they didn't have enough fuel. So that but it but it was intercepted on the way to Okinawa and it was like torpedoed like a million times.
JVL00:13:19So it was one of they must have had to shoot it. Yes.
Vic00:13:22And in fact, one of the worst things was a torpedo hit. It was already listing. So one of the torpedoes hits basically the bottom of the hull, creates a vacuum and sucks almost all the sailors back into the ship. So it's like three thousand those who had already abandoned ship. So I got a three thousand three hundred three thousand went down on that one. Oh, yes. But but I was thinking about the show. So it was a happy ending. It was a happy ending.
Sonny00:13:49Because there was the Japanese. Yeah.
Vic00:13:51If you ask if I had a long discussion about this with Mike Goldfarb, I'll just leave it at that. I mean, he has a lot of thoughts on those movies. But he loved Tora Tora Tora also. But I like the you know, even the little bits you see of the Monarchs remind me of Star Blazers and also, you know, the sequel, which was the one with the Comet Empire, equally good. And I thought to myself, now that is a great animated sequel. But speaking of animated sequels over the weekend, Toy Story four maintained the top spot at the box office with fifty eight million dollars, followed by Annabelle Comes Home, with twenty million and in third place yesterday with seventeen million dollars. I haven't seen yesterday, but I'll see almost anything with Lily James. I'm just going to leave it there. You're just going to throw that out there. I'm just going to throw it out there.
Sonny00:14:39So in the I went to go see Spider-Man Far From Home in a movie theater, regular movie theater screening yesterday, and there was a trailer for a movie in which a Indian boy living in Great Britain. Yes. He's obsessed with Bruce Springsteen and it's all about like the trailer is like filled with the songs of Bruce Springsteen and all I could think was, huh, this looks kind of like yesterday in which a bunch of there's like a lot of boomer nostalgia and, you know, which which leads me to then think, oh, wait, we also had Bohemian Rhapsody and Elton John biopic. I like are we are we headed for a like series of films where it's just like the song? Things that you remember? Is it? Is it? Are we hitting that Broadway? That Broadway cycle where they were having the jukebox, the jukebox musicals every like, you know, for everything I like I until they stop working. Yes. I fear that I fear that we are headed for a really terrifyingly terrible period of cinema.
JVL00:15:43Why wouldn't we? I mean, this is a they have found a new genre which works. There is lots of incentive. The copyright holders for these songs would love to get paid. It's a win win for everybody, a win for everybody that when you put out Rocket Man all of a sudden on iTunes, the Elton John songs all go to the greatest hits album. It makes money for the the copyright holders who own the estate of the songs. It makes money for the studios and the old people get to, you know, remember about when
Sonny00:16:17they weren't so close to death. They go to they go to the movies to feel young and alive. Look at these kids. I was like these guys once.
Vic00:16:23But my concern with. I saw the same trailer study. My concern was it's from the director of Bennett, like Beckham, but it's like a male version. Now who'd want to see that?
Sonny00:16:32Yeah, I was. I was a little bit confused. I saw I saw that and I was like, Vic's not going to like this at all.
Vic00:16:37It's not going to care for this.
JVL00:16:38Wait, it's a dude. Did you boo in the theater?
Vic00:16:40Boo. Oh, don't. Oh, dude. As soon as I see the. Oh, Bennett, like Beckham. Oh, no, no. What? You know, so no. Did not interest me at all. That was a great movie. I'm sorry that the sub beacon wasn't around. Do you remember the end? The heads in Variety for Bennett? Yes. We've talked about this before.
JVL00:16:59I mean, like the pictures no longer fly.
Sonny00:17:03What was that? What was the phrase?
JVL00:17:05Like being the sexiest boy, being pulled homeboy, the sexiest beanpole tomboy in like whatever, whatever. Yeah, it's like the Bill Paxton line from True Lies. No kind of ass like a ten year old boy. But the critic being quoted. God, I. But it was some like super. Super woke. For the time critic who was like meaning it, it's like, you know, hey, look, girl power. Yeah. No, there's a very problematic.
Vic00:17:34Do you remember when Paula Zahn was the big star on news on the on television on cable news and she was she went to Fox to CNN or CNN to Fox? I can't remember. And the promo for her introducing Paula Zahn was saying she's this she's smart. She's brilliant. She's great. And I bet you can find it on YouTube and just a little bit sexy. And there's a zipper sound effect. I do remember. That was when she went to Fox. Oh, of course. Of course. I'm sure.
Sonny00:18:05Roger. There's nothing to do with the actual feeling of that through the zipper noise. Is that going to be in the Showtime Roger Ailes movie? I want to see that.
Vic00:18:14I kind of want to see it. I think it's terrible. At first I thought it was Dick Cheney.
JVL00:18:18And then I realized Crow looks indistinguishable in this from when he was Jeff Wagan. Yes.
Sonny00:18:24I agree. Same makeup. Kind of. Same hair. Same weight. Same weight. Yeah. I don't know. I want to see it, but I also hear... Again, I hear it's terrible. I should probably just watch Succession instead, which apparently that's pretty good. What is that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's on HBO? It's a show about a Murdoch-style family of news barons. And the father says he's going to retire, and then he decides not to. And then there's a power struggle amongst the children. With one of the Culkins. Kieran. Kieran Culkin, I believe. Yes.
Vic00:18:54Yes.
Sonny00:18:55Okay. Great. Who has turned out to be the most talented Culkin? By far. Macaulay is fine.
Vic00:19:00There's Kit.
Sonny00:19:01There's Kit Culkin.
Vic00:19:02Okay. We're not actually talking about those movies, instead we're talking about a movie that comes out... Well, it came out last night.
Sonny00:19:10Yeah, it came out last... It came out yesterday. It came out yesterday. Yesterday. Yesterday. It was weird. They actually had midnight screenings for this, which is the first time I've seen those since I think The Dark Knight Rises. They have midnight screenings? They have midnight screenings for movies all the time now. No, they don't. They do the 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. shows the night before, but they don't really do the midnight screenings. Really? They must have done it for Endgame. Endgame didn't... I don't think so. I don't know. They added extra shows. I mean, they may have done shows until midnight, but it wasn't like 12:01, go see it. But they did it for Far From Home, which again, first time I've seen that since The Dark Knight
JVL00:19:49Rises. Is that because it's on a Monday? Are there regulations for when you do it?
Sonny00:19:54When you do it on a Monday versus when you do it on a Thursday night? They stopped doing it, so they used to do it because it provided a little boost to the Friday numbers, right? Correct. And then after the shooting for The Dark Knight Rises, they stopped doing it for safety reasons, and instead they just did 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. showings, which had the added benefit of bringing much, much more money in instead of the midnight showings, so they had couched this thing as kind of a safety measure, but it was actually a way to goose Friday numbers, but this is like the first time in a while.
Vic00:20:26So we're talking about Spider-Man Far From Home. We're recording on a Wednesday morning.
JVL00:20:31I have not seen the numbers from the Tuesday opens, but I'm guessing they're going to be gigantic because in the two theaters near me, where this was playing essentially every 40 minutes, almost every single show on Tuesday was sold out. Wow. It also bears repeated viewing, so it's not like, "Oh, this is a...
Vic00:20:54The three-hour endgame commitment so people can go back again." But my thought... I always feel like with these special weekend box office numbers, that it's kind of cheating because it's, "Oh, it's a five-day weekend." It is. Right. This is a weird...
Sonny00:21:08Give me the three. I want to know what the numbers are for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Right, right. It's a weird weekend. It's hard to use this as a measure against other similar movies. So I mean, it's going to have the biggest Tuesday of all time, I think, or something like that. But the deadline... The estimates are at 43 million right now. That's a lot for a Tuesday. Which is a lot for a Tuesday. I think it's looking at between 150 and 200 million for the five-day, 500 million worldwide for the first 10 days. Something like that. So it's going to make a lot of money.
Vic00:21:39It's going to make big, big, big money. JVL, you saw "Far From Home." I saw "Far From Home." I saw "Far From Home 2." I saw "Far From Home." Good. Did anyone else see "Far From Home?" Three of us saw "Far From Home." The great escape was great. Yeah. He had it. That was from 1970.
JVL00:21:59Whatever.
Vic00:22:00Is that... That was an old movie. Hello.
JVL00:22:03That was a clip from a...
Vic00:22:04What? Hello, boys.
JVL00:22:06Oh. Oh, Johnny Ivey's here. Sonny, you can edit this part out. Go ahead. Go ahead, Johnny. Spider- Far From Home is a magical film. The design choices made throughout show a vision that Marvel brings to every single product. It's a remarkable story about a hero's journey as Peter Parker confronts his new world. And they're haunted by the ghost of his mentor and father figure, the great Tony Stark, whose visage literally hangs over portions of the film. I loved it. It was magical. I was, to be honest, somewhat disappointed in the film's choice to portray Quentin Beck as the villain of the piece. The history of technology is replete with larger-than-life genius figures claiming credit for sweeping innovations that are, in truth... Yes. The roots of an entire organization. Yes, Tony Stark built the arc reactor. Yes, he programmed Jarvis. No one would take that credit from him. But did he have the idea to turn the arc reactor from a circle into a triangle? Did he have the idea to incorporate a seamless aluminum case or offer it in white or space gray or rose gold? Guys like Steve are always sainted because they happen to die young right in the middle of hogging all the credit for their company and then the shop gets turned over to some glorified pencil pushers who care nothing about design and only want to maximize the just-in-time supply chain efficiencies because they couldn't come up with a pencil for a tablet if their bloody lives depended on it. So yes, I enjoyed Spider- Far From Home, except that the movie makes one terrible mistake. Mysterio is the real hero.
Vic00:23:58Thank you, boys.
Sonny00:23:59All right. Good job, Johnny. Thank you for coming in.
Vic00:24:02Thank you, Johnny. That was so good. My mother's going to ask me, "Who was that other man on the pod?" She's going to ask it. Who did you bring in? Was that really Michael Caine? Oh, come on. That bit killed. No, that was good. That was actually good. I wanted to know how long it took because I was going to make a joke about the various regional accents, but yeah, I think you held firm on that particular... I'm not sure where.
JVL00:24:25Johnny himself... Where is he from? ... is a man of mystery. As anybody who spells their name, J-O-N-Y-I-V-E. Yeah, yeah. He's actually from Nebraska.
Vic00:24:34He is a self-made creation.
JVL00:24:37Yes. Okay.
Vic00:24:39Digital.
JVL00:24:40I loved it and I thought the same thing. I thought that was...
Vic00:24:42No, that was very good. That was great. That was very good. It was great. Yes, he is, from a certain standpoint, yes, these long-suffering Stark employees banding together. Johnny is Quentin. Basically.
Sonny00:24:52Yeah. Okay. That's... He renamed my life's work "Barf". Exactly. Sonny, you want to do a big boy review? Yeah, sure. So this will be a spoiler-heavy show. Please don't listen if you haven't watched the movie and want to stay fresh. So Spider- Far From Home has an incredibly difficult thing it has to do. It has to take what happened in Endgame and make it make sense for the rest of the Marvel universe. It basically has to take... What they call the blip, the five years where people disappeared and then were brought back to life and integrate it into a way that makes sense for how people actually live their lives. And they are aided in this by the fact that this is really not an action film. I mean, it is. It's an action comic book film, but it's actually a teen high school comedy. It's a teen romantic comedy. And there's nothing more ridiculous and absurd than high school already. High school is already an absurd, terrible... Terrible place. So just like trying to make these people deal with people disappearing for five years and then coming back and integrating that all into the system is just one more indignity on top of midterms and puberty and the rest. So I think they do a very good job of handling all of that. The second thing they have to do is make sense of a Marvel Cinematic Universe without Tony Stark. And the way they do that is by not actually getting rid of Tony Stark. He is literally looming over everyone in this film in murals in New York and in Venice and in London. His technology, basically a satellite weapon system, is the MacGuffin that drives the film. Tony has left Peter Parker a pair of glasses that gives him access to this huge powerful weapon system. And of course Peter, played by Tom Holland, played excellently by Tom Holland, I'm a big fan of Tom Holland's Spider-Man, messes up with how he handles this newfound power. I don't want to spoil too much. I want to let people get into this movie on their own, but the antagonist in this film is in fact Quentin Beck, who is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, he's Mysterio, and he is very bitter about the way that the world has loved Tony Stark and not admired the work done by the people surrounding Tony Stark. Which drives him a little bit nuts. If I have a complaint about this movie, it is that I don't quite buy Mysterio as a villain, or at least I don't buy what he does, I think it's a bit much. The Vulture, for instance, in Homecoming was I think the best, arguably the best MCU villain that we've had. He's a regular guy, he's just a dad who wants his business to work, and he gets screwed over by Tony Stark, and becomes the Vulture. Stripping off those tech trains, right? So that I thought was better handled than this, which I never quite entirely bought. But the rest of the film is so good that I didn't actually care that much. I loved all the high school stuff, I loved Zendaya who plays MJ in this film with her kind of dark sense of humor, her deadpan stare and wit. I loved the goofy comedy of the teachers, one of whom is the guy from Silicon Valley, one of whom is Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm. I loved the Aunt May, Happy Hogan stuff that makes me smile every time. And the stingers at the end are great. There's more than one? There are two. What was the second one? Oh, this gets complicated. So the first one was... J. Jonah Jameson is back as the Alex Jones-style head of DailyBugle.net, which was fantastic. I thought that was great. I don't know how your audience reacted to it. My audience had this gasp of recognition, like, "Oh, I know who J. Jonah Jameson is." But I barked out laughter when I realized that he was doing Alex Jones. And I'm not entirely... I don't know how many other people in the theater actually got that. There was a second stinger that revealed that Nick Fury in this whole movie was played by the Skrulls. It was Ben Mendelsohn, and Maria Hill was a lady Skrull, I don't know. And the real Nick Fury is on one of the Skrull ships out in space taking a vacation.
JVL00:29:35I gotta say, that makes me so happy, because one of my big complaints was that the Nick Fury character and the Maria Hill character were just wrong.
Sonny00:29:44Didn't... Right, they didn't make sense. No, so... I have this written down in my notes. Wow. Yep, yep. So this actually was also one of my kind of complaints with the film. That the way that Nick Fury was acting throughout the movie didn't make sense for Nick Fury. It was like weirdly... Correct. It was like, it was all just kind of off. And part of me wonders if they realized that toward, like once the whole film had come together, just how different he was from the rest of the movies and added this. Because some of the other... Anyway. Anyway, I liked it a lot. I didn't like it quite as much as Homecoming, but it is a perfectly acceptable, entertaining, funny. I love Tim Holland. I love Jake Gyllenhaal. I think Gyllenhaal, it took me a little while to get into the character because for the first third of the film, for the first act of the film or so, Gyllenhaal is like boring and kind of like standard superhero stuff. But then once he like reveals his plan and he goes into like wicked Mysterio mode, he's fantastic. He's like great and over the top. And also I have to say, I never thought that the movies would be able to do the Mysterio thing right. And I think they nailed it. They nailed it here. The way his powers, the way his holographic illusions and projections mess with Spider-Man and us, the audience are, I think, perfectly done. I guess I never should have doubted it. You can do anything with CGI these days, but like it was amazing, I thought.
Vic00:31:12Thank you, Sonny. I do have one strong disagreement with you and that is the best villain in Spider-Man of all time was Jamie Foxx. Ugh.
Sonny00:31:20God. Maybe. Second place, Thomas Hayden Church. Thank you. The worst, the worst. That incarnation of the Shocker or the Electro is the worst. I mean, the stupid blue skin. Yes. I don't know why they did that.
Vic00:31:32You need that big star. The big star. I love Electro. I love Electro. Electro is your guy. He is my guy. Thank you, JVL. He is my guy. Electro Matus. That's me. Okay. This movie definitely kept my attention throughout. I did not fall asleep. I was thinking there's three ways you could fall asleep these days. One is watch Shazam. That happened to me. I fell asleep in Shazam. Number two was watch Aquaman. I'll sleep at Aquaman.
Sonny00:31:54Oh, boo.
JVL00:31:55And number three, JVL. So we are back with our friends at Calm.com, C-A-L-M.com, who are our ... We love all our
Sonny00:32:06sponsors equally, but it's my favorite sponsor.
JVL00:32:09It is a sleep app for your phone, and it has ... Well, it's not just a sleep app, it has lots of other things. It has guided meditations and breathing exercises, but what we use it for in our family is sleeping. It has sleep stories. It's an ever-growing library of sleep stories. As I do every week, I have a story to share.
Sonny00:32:32I was alone. Why was I alone?
JVL00:32:36I forget why I was alone. I was alone one evening. Because you ran away. No, no. My wife was out with two of the kids and away somewhere. Anyway, I was alone. Two of the other kids were in bed, and I went to bed, and I put on a book on Audible that I have been listening to to help me fall asleep. And I just laid there awake for like 15 minutes and could not fall asleep while I was listening to this audio. I had set the sleep timer on Audible, and at the end, when the sleep timer went off and I was still wide awake, I was wondering why am I not asleep yet, and I was like, "Oh, because I'm not listening to Calm.com." And the truth is it's different. It is not merely the act of listening to somebody speak words like you. This is the genius of the Calm sleep stories. They're different. And so I flipped on, I hope this doesn't mean that I'm cheating on my girlfriend, Tamara, but I flipped on Anna Acton, who is like Veronica to Tamara's Betty, if you were into the sleep story reader universe. Anyway, so this is what I put on to listen to.
Guest00:33:40Hello, my name's Anna, and for tonight's sleep story, we'll be visiting a far away fairytale land, a land of ice and snow.
JVL00:33:57I don't actually know what happens next in this story because I was asleep like 40 seconds later. So all of this is to say...
Vic00:34:03Two sisters, one of whom has special powers.
JVL00:34:04Go ahead. All of which is to say that the stuff really works. It's so good, and it puts you to sleep like chloroform. So anyway, if you're listening to this right now, you can get 25% off of a premium subscription at Calm.com. All you have to do is go to Calm.com. Calm.com/sub-beacon. That's C-A-L-M.com/sub-beacon. Forty million people have downloaded Calm. Find out why at Calm.com/sub-beacon. It's fantastic. Thank you, JVL.
Vic00:34:40So what did you think of Spider- Far From Home? Thoughts?
JVL00:34:45I liked it. There are things I liked about it. There are things I didn't love about it. I would say I liked it probably half a tick less. Victorino, did you love this movie?
Vic00:34:57A plus plus. I loved it. I loved it for very personal reasons, I think. One of which I love the locations, most of which I have very fond memories of, including Venice. Definitely Prague. I spent a week in Prague with my wife and of course Berlin. And so going throughout these areas, I mean, I just I knew they were going to do something very cute and romantic on the Charles Bridge and they did that. When Spider-Man wakes up on the train, he goes into a train that we thought killed him and then he wakes up and he is in the clink. And I immediately realized that he was in the Netherlands because orange because what they're wearing. Yes, the soccer that orange is the color of the Netherlands. And he was wearing one of the other side of the Football League jerseys. And then the other guys there have the flag of Holland on their cheeks and it's clear they're hooligans. And then the nicest hooligans ever, which is such a great bit. It is a great bit and it is completely true.
JVL00:35:59And he makes Dutch hooligans are totally kind.
Vic00:36:01He makes and you know, and they got in trouble during previous either it was for the European or it was the World Cup. And it was the Germany Holland game match, excuse me. And the Dutch fans had come over to taunt the Germans by wearing German Vermont helmets painted orange. And to them off and said, well, there's nothing wrong with this. It's orange. It's our color. It's the way. What are you? What are you talking about? And I totally just freaked them out. Interesting. Interesting. Yes. Just to taunt them. But any event, the Dutch did not cover themselves in glory. Did they? When the Wehrmacht showed up, the, the, the fact that they all speak very good English is very true. And he makes, and it's great because Peter Parker says that he goes, hi, you really speak well. He goes, welcome to the Netherlands. They all speak English. We're very friendly. Here's my phone. So I just really, really enjoyed that. Um, I, I liked the performance. I liked the stuff, even, even without the spec, the, the fighting and that part of it, the teenage stuff, the John Hughes stuff, I thought it was very cute. I could have just sat through that. Uh, I liked Jacob Batalon once again, representing, uh, us making us Filipino Americans, Filipinos,
Sonny00:37:14very proud who he counts for two.
Vic00:37:17He counts for two, basically flash Ned, no Ned, his flashes is Tony Ravalori. He is from Central America. Um, yes, I thought he was Indian too. He's from like Guatemala or Honduras. And he was of course in grand Budapest hotel. Uh, but it's interesting that he's doing this. So, uh, also a little bit, a little bit of poignancy there for flash.
Sonny00:37:36Yeah.
Vic00:37:37He like, he like wants, he just wants to talk to his mom, mom, no interest in him wants to be loved. And the very end, there was that little thing and I thought it was going to end on an up note, but it kind of didn't. Um, so, so that was interesting. Why he's a bully. Yeah.
JVL00:37:50I think they explained no love at home and flash mob.
Vic00:37:53That's right. He's not as the old flash Thompson, but the, uh, uh, but I, but I definitely, uh, liked all the performances. I think Marissa Tomei, strangely, she gets, I don't know why I have these feelings for her cause she's, you know, over 30, but you know, she's or 20 or 20, but she's, but ah, she's amazing. And even in the mom jeans, she's amazing and she's just so cute. Uh, so I did, I enjoyed that stuff with happy, but I really go, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. All right. Uh, no, but, uh, I liked all the performances. I thought it was great. And again, to go back to even there, they even had that bus, the, the, the bus stop in the Austrian Alps. That's essentially the Brenner pass. And I've been through there, uh, by train. Amazing. I loved it. It made me feel good. It made me feel good. And I walked out with a good, I was happy.
JVL00:38:42Your family loved it too. Right? Whole family loved it. All four of us likely take the other side of this and only slightly in a lot of ways, it's the same movie as far from home homecoming. Yeah.
Sonny00:38:53I'm sorry.
JVL00:38:54From homecoming. From homecoming. He reveals his secret identity to somebody close to him. There's a lot of comedy with his awkward attempts to woo a girl. There's a lot of comedy about happy and aunt may, there's a villain using stolen technology. The villain only wants to find his rightful place in the world, not dominate it. No, I'm coming. We learn midway through the bad guy is actually a nice guy and far from home midway through, we learned that the nice guy is actually a bad guy. So it's different. Yes. I know. I really enjoyed the teen. It was fine. There's stuff I liked about it. There's a lot of stuff I liked about a lot of stuff that works, but comedy for the most part works pretty well. The Led Zeppelin joke was funny. It was so great.
Sonny00:39:36The throwaway.
JVL00:39:37It was, it was excellent.
Sonny00:39:38The, my audience, uh, laughed uproariously every time the phrase Peter tingle. Yes.
JVL00:39:44Was mentioned. Yes. Yeah. I think that was used that well, there were a lot of times where I thought the well was gone to once too often. Yeah.
Sonny00:39:54Yeah. I thought it was a great callback. Cause it's like at the beginning and then it's at the end.
JVL00:39:58Cause aunt May and Happy Hogan clearly been clearly been talking about it. I don't know. I, and the other thing is I liked it. It's a small stakes movie. I prefer small stakes. I like that. It's just telling another Spider-Man story. My complaint is that the story just wasn't very interesting. Yeah. Anyway, I agree totally about Mysterio and the effects with Mysterio, I actually thought the water monster just in the beginning in Venice when they were showing it is one of the most beautifully done water effects I've ever seen. Mm-hmm did you, were you sort of struck by that as well?
Sonny00:40:33Uh, yes. Well, it, it looks, I mean, it looks so much better than anything that you could do before because it's not miniatures, it's just created out of, out of pixels, you know? Yeah.
JVL00:40:47But every like, no, of course it was, but, but I mean, even in, by the standards of CGI was really transcendent CGI. I don't know. I, for me though, the most satisfying part of it was all the shipping stuff with him and Mary Jane. And this is just because of the, the pervs. I mean the, the two actors, Tom Holland and Zendaya are both great. Yeah. They have great chemistry together. And I was, I found like enormous emotional satisfaction that like they finally get together at the end. The whole time I'm sort of rooting for it in ways which are stupid and, but it's very, it's more of like a pretty in pink movie than it is like an Avengers movie.
Vic00:41:22It's a very cute three part kiss too. It was like, oh yeah.
Sonny00:41:27I don't know. I mean, I, I loved all the high school stuff. I think that is the best part of these movies by far because it's, it is also just so different from everything else in all of the channel one high school things. Yeah.
JVL00:41:38Channel one. That's what we used to call it. Fan tech. Using that to get your exposition about the blip out of the way was awesome.
Vic00:41:46The basketball court that they reappeared. Right.
JVL00:41:49Wasn't that great? Very funny.
Sonny00:41:51It was really, really good.
JVL00:41:52Yeah. Uh, I don't know. I, I, I would like to use this though as a conversation, a way to have a conversation about Canon, if that is okay with you boys.
Sonny00:42:03I don't know. Maybe you have other things you want to talk about. Uh, okay. No. Do you not have anything else you want to talk about? Hmm.
JVL00:42:09I'm, I'm happy to talk about Canon. So this, I, I think that what they have done with Spider-Man represents very important departures from, from Canon and shows how you can do it. Right. In ways that are entirely satisfying. So this incarnation of Spider-Man is different in so many important ways. Uh, there is no uncle Ben. There is no great power comes great responsibility. Although that actually in a way is what the Edith device is about. And so they find a way to do it without uncle Ben.
Sonny00:42:41Well, that's, that's what the whole arc with Tony Stark is like from Tony Stark's perspective, this is an arc about him finding a like son figure, right? Right. And from Peter's response, from Peter's point of view, it's about him coming to grips with him having this power and what he can do with it. Right.
JVL00:42:56Right. Uh, you've got MJ who is super different, not just because she's not white or a redhead, but because she's a science nerd and not a theater geek. And because she's not a popular girl and she's really sort of dark and acerbic, she's not a model. Uh, well, I mean, Zendaya is, I think actually a model, but no, but I mean, but it works. I mean, this incarnation of MJ, which is a radical departure from Canon totally works. Uh, aunt may. Huge departure from Canon in all the ways it's so much more interesting as a result
Vic00:43:28and it works.
JVL00:43:29You want to watch flash. So flash is not a football jock. That's right. He's actually very smart. He's just sort of a dick. Cause he's a rich kid. He loves Spider-Man, which flash does not love Spider-Man. Uh, and I actually find flash kind of lovable cause he's not a bully. He just kind of a dick. Yeah. You know, and I, you know, nobody ever likes flash Thompson in the old, so all of these are, excuse me, it really important departures from Canon without undermining at all the spirit of Spider-Man. I don't think there is anybody in the fanboy community who is bothered by any of this. And I think that this incarnation of Spider-Man shows how you can do all of that stuff in ways that are pleasing to the audience in a way that for instance, the Jamie Foxx electro yes was not. That's right. Right. That there's when, when fanboys complain. About departures from Canon. Often people who, whose name rhymes with adore it say, oh, you people are just complaining because they spelled the name of the sort of swathrog wrong or something. And it's not like we complain often because the, the changes are done in ways that are for foolish and not satisfying. And this shows that it can. Yeah.
Sonny00:44:46Yeah. Agreed.
JVL00:44:48I totally, I agree with that. I wanted a larger conversation than just, yup.
Sonny00:44:50Yeah. But I don't, I don't. I totally agree with you. I think that all of the changes here have been, uh, really well done and have expanded upon the idea of Peter Parker and his like world of, of, cause I mean, look, the, what, what is interesting about the, the flash thing for instance, is that he is, you're right. He's a bully. Um, but he's not a sports bully, which is like a totally outdated and outmoded, uh, like form of high school bullying. Right. That's right. And I'm sure there are still high school football players who are bullies, but like the idea that kids, you know, care about sports more than anything else feels wrong now. Like they, they care about, they care about school, they care about video games. Like he's, he's a smart kid who's just kind of a dick. But he's only just kind of a dick.
JVL00:45:38I mean, that's the other thing about flash. Like he's not, he's not totally a dick. Like you would have, you know, the old flash Thompson, you would have been happy to see him get killed by the star. Right. Right. Right.
Sonny00:45:50It was, it was one dimensional. It was one dimensional. That's why. There was a flash in the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man who gets the like food tray to the back of the head. Right. I believe so. Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. And he was, again, he was a very traditional high school bully. That's right. Like that's right. Big dude, football player wants to punch Peter Parker in the face, you know?
Vic00:46:08No, but you're right. It's a different time. It sort of reminds me of when, uh, in the movie 21 Jump Street, when they go back to high school and it's not the high school that they recognize and they're looking at the different types and the different clicks and they're trying to identify him. And then there's one entirely different click. They don't, I think they don't know who they are at all. They were the hipsters. You know what I mean? It's just this thing. So it's different. Um, but I liked that. I, I thought it adjusted my, my big concern still is what happens to, again, we saw this at the, in the, in the stinger, uh, of this movie is J Jonah Jameson, the daily bugle. Does that eventually become part of the cannon again? Does Peter Parker become a freelance photographer?
JVL00:46:42I kind of hope not like that's actually where I was going with all this was that I found the J Jonah Jameson bit and the prospect of going back to King. Canon where Spider-Man is an outlaw who's misunderstood and the public hates. I don't want to go there. I like this version of it. And so that was, this is where I really wanted to go with this whole conversation was saying that this is them heading back towards Canon and I don't like it. I find that confining and I would like to continue living in the world that they have built here with this character and this version of it.
Sonny00:47:16Do you disagree? I disagree slightly. I disagree. Disagree in the sense that I thought. I thought, again, this was a way to do J. Jonah Jameson, but out of Canon. I mean, he's like an Alex Jones figure. He's not an old school, you know, publisher chomping on a cigar, like get me the headlines. Get me rewrite.
JVL00:47:35Is there any other actor who has played the same character through different incarnations
Sonny00:47:41of a franchise? I was thinking about this and part of me almost wonders if it's a like weird, sneaky wink to the idea of the multiverse. Like here is this universe's.
JVL00:47:52Oh, J. Jonah Jameson, which like which by using the same actor, you kind of you. But but also like the the whole multiverse thing is a total head fake in this movie.
Sonny00:48:03People thought people thought like this is how they're going to tie it to Spider-Man into the multiverse. But it's not. It's like this is a it's a it's a red herring. But I actually I liked I like the J. Jonah Jameson thing a lot because I like J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. I think he's just he's great in that role. If I ran com.com sleep.
JVL00:48:22Stories, I would 100 percent have J.K. Simmons doing sleep stories.
Vic00:48:26I'd be terrifying after Whiplash. I can't go to sleep to that, although he does great for us.
Sonny00:48:31You can have just have him read just have him read our scripts, showing her break his legs and his arms.
Vic00:48:39I mean, what happens to him in the weight room? Not good. Not good. OK. Other.
JVL00:48:46Did you did you like Victorino? Yes. The the very crafty cast. Casting of Jake Gyllenhaal, who has ties to Spider-Man. If you remember that when Toby McGuire McGuire was getting too big for his britches and demanding more money in the original franchise, Sony brought in Jake Gyllenhaal to read for the part and like plastered this all over Variety for like a week. And Toby McGuire can run, run, run, run, running back and said, Sure, I'll do it. I'll do it. No, no problem.
Sonny00:49:24I don't need more money. Yeah. So I like you. I don't remember that.
JVL00:49:28I don't remember.
Vic00:49:29I don't know. That's great, though. No, I will. I really like Jake Gyllenhaal. I remember him in Citysuckers. He was the kid, but he was he was Billy Crystal's son. God. So yeah.
Sonny00:49:40When was that? Yeah. Late eighties. No, that can't be right because he was in. Look it up. Look it up.
JVL00:49:46So I. And of course, I like them to Southpaw. One other thing that I'd wanted to say, which is that. So. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is comprised of a number of discrete franchises. We have the Thor franchise, the Captain America franchise, the Avengers franchise, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, and then a couple one shots. Yeah. Doctor Strange Ant-Man, which has actually had a sequel, Black Panther, which will get a sequel. But these things are all starting to overlap to such a degree where I think we are fast approaching the point. At where it will be difficult to actually know, well not to actually know, but to actually say which movie is a, like which movie is this thing actually. For instance, Captain America: Civil War. Oh right. Is that really a Captain America movie or an Avengers movie?
Vic00:50:38It's an Iron Man movie.
JVL00:50:39It's Homecoming. It's actually an Iron Man movie. Homecoming. Is Spider-Man Homecoming really a Spider-Man movie or is it an Iron Man movie? Also an Iron Man movie.
Sonny00:50:47Far From Home is also an Iron Man, like this is the problem with taking Tony Stark out of the Marvel universe is that he really is the glue that binds it all together.
JVL00:50:57Is Ragnarok a Thor movie or a Hulk movie? All of which is to say that we are getting close, I think, to the point where you could just call it Marvel Episode 29 because, and you know, we're all just going to show up for whatever it is because they're just moving pieces around on a chess board and they've got like fifth, literally 50 characters that people care enough about to give them their $13. And that this is the true forever franchise.
Sonny00:51:27I would say that Guardians of the Galaxy has been able to maintain a separation. Up until this point. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. And Thor is now part of it.
JVL00:51:41Thor is in it. They have blurred the lines between space, cosmos, opera, Marvel, and Earth Marvel.
Sonny00:51:46Well, there was that funny, there were those funny stories that came out around the time Endgame came out. There was a story that Gwyneth Paltrow did not realize she was in Endgame. I saw that.
JVL00:51:56I saw that video.
Sonny00:51:57She said, "Oh, no, I wasn't in Endgame or Infinity War," one of the two. I can't remember which. She was like, "No, I wasn't in that. I was..." Or Spider-Man. Or no, it was Spider-Man. She was like, "I wasn't in Spider-Man." I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. She was like, "No, I wasn't in Spider-Man. I was in Infinity War." And they were like, "No, you were in Spider-Man." And these guys just go to the sound stage and shoot. They're like, "Okay, we're-
JVL00:52:19It was Jon Favreau telling her that. Yeah. "We're doing essentially Marvel episode 30, Marvel episode 31, and we slap a title on and we pretend that it's part of the Captain America franchise or the Iron Man franchise, but that's not actually what's happening. And I believe that is new in the history of movies, like an actual innovation, and is again a symbol of how the purchase of Marvel by Disney is one of the great bargains in the history- Oh my gosh. of Marvel's commerce. Mm-hmm.
Vic00:52:53Yeah. Yeah. There. Totally. That's all I've got. Any other Spider-Man thoughts, Sonny? No. You know how they get from place to place? They got the upgrade from Venice and they're going to Prague and that was all manipulated, right? Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. is not around. Where does the money come from?
Sonny00:53:05Great question. You know? I don't understand that.
Vic00:53:08I just feel like somebody owes a debt to somebody and I'm just not quite sure who it is. And speaking of debt, if you're carrying revolving debt, that means you're not paying off your card every month and could be paying thousands in interest every year that you don't have to. Right. With LendingClub, you can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment. Since 2007, LendingClub has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed rate personal loans. No trips to a bank, no high interest credit cards. Just go to LendingClub.com, tell them about yourself and how much you want to borrow. Pick the terms that are right for you. And if you're approved, your loan is automatically deposited into your bank account in as little as a few days. LendingClub is the number one peer-to-peer lending platform with over $35 billion in loans issued. Go to LendingClub.com/subbeacon, check your rate in minutes and borrow up to $40,000. That's LendingClub.com/subbeacon, LendingClub.com/subbeacon, all loans made by web bank member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. I've always wanted to say that, Equal Housing Lender. I love that. I want to do the ones-
Sonny00:54:19You've always wanted to read Indesha. Yeah.
Vic00:54:21Isn't that what that's called? That's called that. I believe that's called that. At the end of any of these commercials on the radio where they have to speak, where they speed it up- Some rates may not apply. Right. There's a lot of things. I want to do that. It's the Micro Machines guy.
JVL00:54:34I can do it.
Guest00:54:35I think I can do that.
Vic00:54:36Do you remember the Micro Machines commercial? Oh, yeah. He was, yeah. That's right. He was good. Okay. We have a bunch of extra things going on here.
JVL00:54:43First of all, believe it or not, we have a Spirit of the Week. Yes. But because it's 10 o'clock and I'm on my intermittent fast, I'm not cracking it
Vic00:54:47open quite yet. We'll drink it at noon. At noon? Thanks to our good friend, Molly Drankert at Anheuser-Busch, we will enjoy the new limited series Budweiser Discovery Reserve. It's in the refrigerator. You can take one home, JVL. It's brewed with a strand of barley called Voyager. That was actually sent to Mars. I believe it was sent to Matt Damon. And it also grew on the International Space Station. So it's time for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. So get it while supplies last. I saw Apollo 11, by the way, the documentary on IMAX. It's supposed to be unbelievably awesome. It is unbelievably awesome. It is unbelievable. You have to see it. It's amazing. The other thing is I didn't realize Neil Armstrong was when he landed on them when he was 38.
JVL00:55:29You had done a lot of great things by the time you were 38.
Sonny00:55:31I've still got two years.
Vic00:55:33Has Neil Armstrong written a book on vodka? That's what I want to know. Okay. We also got one other special treat here. What would go well with the Discovery beer? Courtesy of Rogue Left Shark Nation. Kato aka Carmela Nicole and exclusively for you JVL. What?
JVL00:55:53Look at this. Shark sent me something.
Vic00:55:55Oh. Zippo.
Sonny00:55:57Gripos. Not Zippos. That's a different brand. Gripos cheesy popcorn. Oh boy. Is it cheesy enough? Oh my God in heaven.
JVL00:56:04This is so good.
Vic00:56:05Carmela, thank you. You know it has that certain umami Gripos does. I believe you know what umami is Japanese for? MSG. Yes. Salt. Thank you Shark. She's the best. Hey Sonny, what's going on? You had something else for us today?
Sonny00:56:19Oh, I was going to save that for outtakes. Oh, okay. I was going to make it like a stinger. We're going to make it a stinger.
Vic00:56:25Well, is that good? Wonderful. Okay. Post credits. That's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us @VictorinoMatus, @SonnyBunch. I could have sworn I saw you on Twitter today. It's the life model decoy. It was your ghost. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in SubBeacon at our podcasts. We are there. Leave a review. And until next time.
Sonny00:56:53Sonny, go. I am leaving the Washington Free Beacon forever. No, so I am leaving the Beacon to join a film studio in Dallas called Cinestate. I'm going to be starting a movie writing website for them there. We don't have a URL. Just yet. There's some debate over what it should finally be. But once we get that all done, I will make sure to share it. This news only applies to the FreeBeacon.com where I will not be writing movie reviews anymore. We will continue doing the Sub-Beacon. I want to, I need to make sure I don't let everyone down and stop this show. Dead. Cold. It's not going to end.
Vic00:57:42We're going to keep going. So I had the honor of editing the last Sonny Bunch review. You did. Oh my gosh. You did.
Sonny00:57:47It's out there.
Vic00:57:48It's out there in the world now.
JVL00:57:49Wait, what was your final review?
Vic00:57:50Far From Home.
Sonny00:57:51I wrote a Far From Home review. Hosted this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Could you stop eating the popcorn? I can't. It's so good. He can't.
Vic00:58:00The answer is I can't. In the microphone. It's so good. Eat it for me because of my fasting. And take some home. Take the whole bag home.
JVL00:58:06I'm going to. Okay. I'm 100% taking the whole bag home. Sonny, any other thought? Beacon thoughts? So what does that mean?
Sonny00:58:12Does that mean that the show dies? The Sub-Beacon. Right.
JVL00:58:15That I just said is going to keep going. Well, in the long run. It's going to keep going in the short run. I mean...
Sonny00:58:19But in the long run, basically, that means the show is over. Everything dies because of entropy.
JVL00:58:23Oh, but things come to an end. Will the show out... So what is going to kill the show first? You leaving it for good or Vic's gout? I don't think you can die from gout. Can you die from gout? No. No. Sadly.
Sonny00:58:38Sadly, you can't. You're just excruciating pain for the rest of your life. Pain forever. Yeah. No. I would say that the show will continue as long as we can muster up the... Yeah. The ability to be around each other for one hour per week. Oh.
Vic00:58:51So... I just can't believe that... I just can't imagine our office here actually functioning without Sonny because he was always around and talking to all the young writers and...
Sonny00:59:01Yeah. I'm a real door open policy at Sonny Bunch's office.
JVL00:59:05Are you being... Are you kidding about this? Because what I have always heard from Beaconites is that you are a tremendously gifted mentor and sort of beloved leader of the newsroom. I don't know about that. I want... No, I'm not.
Sonny00:59:19I'm... This is no kayfabe. I want their names. Yeah. I would say that I am a gruff but lovable task master. How about that? Is that... Is that closer? He makes you work to earn his love. Yeah. But once you're in, once you're in the circle of trust, you know, I'm sure it's fine.
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