#42. Terminator Dark Fate, Star Wars, and Powdered Peanut Butter
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Terminator: Dark Fate opens to a soft $29 million and the hosts spend most of the review explaining why the franchise should be allowed to die. Sonny calls the film "more or less totally competent" and admits he was rarely angry at it, but argues its fatal flaw is thematic: after two films built on "there's no fate but what we make," this one replaces Skynet with Legion and insists every timeline leads to Judgment Day, then undercuts even that by ending on a pleasant tree-lined suburban street instead of the original's storm-darkened mountains. He also notes the movie's odd choice to code an aged, drapery-obsessed, explicitly sexless Arnold Schwarzenegger as gay — "like taking something out of a Douglas Sirk film" — and reads the whole thing as a woke rewrite that spits out the line about not being "the mother of some man." Sonny's bigger takeaway is that "produced by James Cameron" is not a draw, citing this and Alita: Battle Angel. JVL is the most generous, saying he wasn't angry at the screen and that the movie succeeds only to the extent it stays on Mackenzie Davis, whom he calls a total movie star — magnetic, physical, wildly charismatic — and insists should have been Captain Marvel over Brie Larson, and Rey too; he also can't believe they spent $180 million given several ugly CGI shots, and he's bothered in the moment by timeline holes. Vic scores it a B-plus through his quadrant system (two hours eight minutes, great violence, thin plot, a barely-there nudity bonus he claims was Diego Luna) while griping that obsidian-bladed Rev-9 self-cloning gets no explanation. The front half covers JVL's discovery of powdered peanut butter, which he eats by the spoon, prompting a group Amazon order of Hoosier Hill Farm butter powder; the Benioff-and-Weiss Star Wars trilogy collapse and speculation about how long Kathleen Kennedy lasts; the New York magazine Condé Nast piece with its tiered office kitchens and everyone but the New Yorker forced onto Google Docs; Weekly Standard bathroom stories; and Vic's Maggiano's saga and ranking of Italian sit-down chains, with Carmine's at number one.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- We review Terminator: Dark Fate . Sonny goes off on pointless sequels. JVL discovers powdered peanut butter. A...
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:00:45I have made a discovery. Like Marie Curie. Oh. Finding plutonium or radium or something. So, uh... You have cancer now. I have spoken. I may. I have spoken about powdered cheese and my discovery that you can buy just giant vats of powdered cheese to sprinkle all over your... Powdered peanut butter. Yeah, I said that before you put the coffee to your lips. Powdered peanut butter is a thing that they make and Lord Bezos will send you a giant jar of it for like $11.
Vic00:01:19Is it like real but freeze-dried like astronaut style? Do you mix it with water?
JVL00:01:23Is it dehydrated? Like the ice cream? You can mix it with water. I choose to just spoon it straight. Into your mouth.
Vic00:01:31And your mouth will provide the... Lubrication? Lubrication.
Sonny00:01:36I'm imagining that shot in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves' mouth comes together and he can't lift it anymore.
JVL00:01:44It's a little bit like that. It'll dry. It's a little bit like eating silica gel. But what I'm looking forward to doing is sprinkling it on popcorn. Peanut butter popcorn? Are you going to mix it with the cheese? Peanut butter popcorn. No, don't be crazy. And the caramel.
Sonny00:01:59If you're going to do this thing, you might as well do the whole thing. Yeah, do the whole thing up and butter. You sprinkle some butter. And white cheddar. Is there powdered butter? I don't know. I bet there is. I bet there is. I mean, that's basically just what they have at the...
Vic00:02:14That would have other applications.
Sonny00:02:15You're going to effort that? Don't tell me about your weekend while I effort powdered butter.
Vic00:02:21Remember that The Urban Legend? Remember The Urban Legend? No. I have no idea where you're going with this. There's like a story they would tell in college and it involved the girl, the dog, the family surprise party, and the peanut butter and the jar. No, you don't remember this one. I'm just jumping. Remember that one? I'm beginning to think that that wasn't true.
JVL00:02:42It's real.
Vic00:02:43That it wasn't like a friend of a friend.
JVL00:02:46Hoosier Hill Farm real butter powder.
Sonny00:02:50You hop up some plain popcorn, you put some butter.
Vic00:02:54Is it powdered butter or buttered powder?
Sonny00:02:55Put some chocolate. I'm going to order this right now.
JVL00:02:58That can't be. I don't know. All right. It's got 62 ratings with an average of four and a half stars. Well, it must be good. And it comes in a two pound vat for just $21.99.
Vic00:03:09For people who live at bomb shelters, yes.
Sonny00:03:11That's one twelfth the number of ratings we have. We're 12 times better than that thing. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. Sonny, what's happening? Your order has been placed. Did you just order it? Thank God for Amazon. Yeah. There was a story in the New York Times. About how Jeff Bezos' new house has 25 bathrooms. And one of the progressive people on Twitter was like, 25 bathrooms. And all I could think was, you know what? That's 25 bathrooms too few. Jeff Bezos deserves 50 bathrooms in his mansion in Washington, D.C. It's nice having your own office. He should be able to use one bathroom every day for 50 days and never repeat.
JVL00:03:53Right. Pretty cool to have a bathroom. A bathroom that nobody else uses. That belongs to you and you only. No sharing it with wives or kids.
Vic00:04:02No, that's what I try to establish in our renovated basement bathroom. And every now and then, somebody leaves a surprise. Like Shangri-La. Like Shangri-La. Shangri-La, Sonny, you were there for that? You were still there? That was when a former colleague had discovered in the old Weekly Standard building, which is no longer there, obviously. Which is a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground. It's a hole in the ground, okay? Something happened, and I don't know with the lease, I don't know what happened, so it's just an empty lot at what used to be 1150 17th Street. And especially if you were working late night, or, you know, you just had to, if it was an emergency, and you didn't want to use the main floor bathroom because everybody would know who's who, and a former colleague of ours discovered one on, like, lower level. Low Jinsley. And that's what he called Shangri-La. And that you needed the castle key to act. Oh, no, you're right. It was still an old-fashioned key.
JVL00:05:03You had to have a key to the garage level to get into this bathroom. It was a single-stall bathroom.
Vic00:05:09It was in the same level as, like, where, like, the garage is, I think, or something.
JVL00:05:13Nobody ever used it.
Vic00:05:13And it was a winding hallway. I came out of, I had to use it once. I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me. I must have eaten something that didn't agree. Anyway, I was on my way out, and there was a stranger standing out there, and we just looked, no eye contact, and we just passed each other. And then I went back in. Oh, I didn't realize it was that place.
JVL00:05:35And they found that man dead the next morning.
Sonny00:05:38It's like coming out of a peep show stall.
JVL00:05:39It's like you'd been gassed.
Vic00:05:41That, I'm not, we're not gonna, I was gonna tell a story, but I'm not gonna tell that story. Okay, Sonny.
Sonny00:05:46You've probably already told the story.
Vic00:05:47I've told, no, this one I have never. Come on. I've never told a single story. Come on, do it. No, no, no, no. Do it. I wanna hear it. All right. I wasn't, I wasn't, no, I'm not telling a story. Come on.
JVL00:05:59Sonny can beep it out. No, it's too much. Bad Sonny can beep it out. No, no, no, no. It's Tuesday, you can always censor it.
Sonny00:06:05I'm not putting that effort into this. Come on. You tell this story, it's going out there.
Vic00:06:09All right, so.
Sonny00:06:10Think about that.
Vic00:06:11I wasn't, I wasn't, I was, you know, I was in the elevator alone. So you think, oh, I'm alone. So if I need to let something out, it's gonna, you know, release something. And so I wasn't feeling well. So I just, you know, it was one of those. It was silent. No, it's not like anyone. But deadly. Perhaps. And so just as I do that, the elevator arrives on the fifth floor, the door opens and the FedEx guy is standing there going into the elevator as I leave the elevator. So I immediately just hurry right out of that elevator. And as I'm on my way out, he walks in, the door's about to close and I hear him go, **** damn.
Sonny00:06:50Oh boy. You were afraid of beeping that? I was, I was.
Vic00:06:54Because I was, you know, I was just there. I feel like you, I feel like you called an audible. I don't want people to think I'm an animal. I don't want people to think I'm an animal.
Sonny00:07:00I think you called an audible and went to a different story. That's what I think happened. Oh, there's another one. I think that's what happened here. I think you, you got, you got scared of people hearing your dark secrets.
Vic00:07:09Well, the other, the other one was when I was a late night. Oh, there was one time I murdered a hobo in that bathroom.
Sonny00:07:14Drowned him, drowned him in the toilet. Just held his head down until he stopped kicking.
Vic00:07:18Should I tell that one? Should I tell that one?
Sonny00:07:19You know, you know, you know, he's dead when he, when he flops.
Vic00:07:23No, so it was that this is also the fifth floor bathroom and it was late night clothes, late night clothes. So there's only a handful of us and I had gone to the bathroom to use it and one of our bosses, not going to say his name, uh, was using it and it was, um, it was pretty serious stuff, but I didn't say anything. Just hold my breath and I go into, you know, use the urinal and as I'm washing up, David
JVL00:07:45say that, say the name and Sonny will bleep it. No, David Skinner walks in rhymes with stop and David
Vic00:07:53Skinner walks in, he thinks it's me cause I'm just washing up and he goes, he looks at me, he goes, Whoa, Vic. Oh my gosh. And then I just gesture and I point to the stall and he sees the shoes. Yeah. Him. And then we just ran out. It was very bad. Yeah. That's happens. Bathroom humor. Okay. Thank you, Sonny. You what? What? Nothing. That was it.
Sonny00:08:13We had teased a couple of stories last week. I feel like we should talk about them. Otherwise the people will, the people will be angry about the cliffhangers pulling a JJ Abrams. So two things, there were two things. One was star Wars, star Wars dropping the Benioff and Weiss trilogy. Here's, here's the question.
JVL00:08:33Just a small thing.
Sonny00:08:34The question, well, here's here, there, there are two separate ways to look at this. One is that Benioff and Weiss signed that enormous deal with Netflix and we're like, I, we don't want to do this anymore. Possible. That's how everybody is spinning this. The second question is, or the second option I guess, is that Kevin Feige has gone in and he is just clearing house. He is getting rid of every project that is not. That is not suitable for the MCU-ified version of Disney's Star Wars that is coming. So what do you think of this?
JVL00:09:01Has Feige been put in charge of all this?
Sonny00:09:04Formally? I think so, yeah.
JVL00:09:05Or is this all just because he's riding high because he's got the nuts and he can just like do whatever he wants at Disney?
Sonny00:09:11How, how many, how many months or quarters is it going to be until Kathleen Kennedy is promoted to like head of parks or something?
JVL00:09:22We're going to give her her own production shingle and so she can make whatever she wants. It's a promotion and we are.
Sonny00:09:30We're going to hold on to Lucasfilm, but you know, she can create Kennedy film.
JVL00:09:33She is just such a tremendous creative force in this industry and we're so blessed to be able to continue to work with her on her own projects.
Vic00:09:43She could partner with Mimi Leder, the two of them together.
JVL00:09:47I'm going to say one month after the opening of, no, it won't be one month. It'll be after the final Star Wars movie is out of theaters, right? Because, you know. After the Rise of Skywalker. After the Rise of Skywalker has left theaters before the theatrical, before the DVD window or the streaming window closes. It is crazy.
Sonny00:10:08It is crazy. After all the hype, all the Star Wars hype and compared to the way they rolled out Marvel, that there is not a single Star Wars project filming right now. Like, there's no release dates. There are no, there's nothing. There's the Mandalorian. That's a good thing. There's the Mandalorian. And that's going to be over before the Rise of Skywalker comes out, right? It's, you know, it's going to be, or maybe, I guess it, I guess it won't be over, but it'll be, it'll be running kind of concurrent. But by the time that the Rise of Skywalker is out of theaters, the Mandalorian will be done. I think they're shooting season two of that. Well, that's probably what Disney wanted to happen, right? Was to just have a, just have a big Star Wars gap.
JVL00:10:49They wanted to have things go so well. With Star Wars that they couldn't line up the talent to take on the greatest franchise and most storied franchise in the history of film. And they wanted to have a serious situation where a bunch of producers and filmmakers had left Star Wars projects and Star Wars projects had been put on hold and into turnaround. That's what they imagined when they handed this whole ship to Kathy Kennedy, right? Yeah, that's what I, that's what I imagined. What do you think, Vic? How long does, does she get?
Vic00:11:22Probably find something for her, like you were saying, like director of food and beverage operations. You know, I mean, it's, people get, yeah, people get moved around because of, you know, she wants a safe face and she's been there from the early, early days. I was going to say, but this, this is all because of Solo, right? The movie. I mean, people, no, it's all because of Last Jedi.
Sonny00:11:45I mean, it's all the, well, I, Solo, Solo is the result of the Last Jedi.
Vic00:11:50Yeah. I mean, but you, because of all of it.
Sonny00:11:52You, but yes, you said Solo was a disaster in production. They had the, they fired the directors, you know, halfway through the shooting. Ron Howard had to come in and it cost another hundred million dollars to reshoot everything,
JVL00:12:02blah, blah, blah. And Infus Ness. I really blame Infus Ness. They, they, they have just opened a giant Star Wars theme park. Yeah. Those, I hear those are expensive. The one in Disney World. Yeah, I hear those are expensive. So they are on the hook. I mean, to, here's the question. Do you believe that the overall value of the Star Wars installation, the intellectual property, has been heightened over the last decade? Or diminished. Or, well, probably not diminished, but probably stayed flat, right? Because they've, the overall value has, just in absolute terms, it must have increased because they made more things. Yeah. But, I don't know.
Sonny00:12:42Like, do you think this is the way they wanted? Those movies made so much money. I mean, I, even, even as underwhelming as they were, and even as, you know, as, disappointing as certain of them were, like The Last Jedi, and even, even given the fact that none of them have managed to break through in China, the Disney, or the Star Wars curse continues in China, those movies have still made so much money that even if Solo lost $100 million, which it probably lost at least $100 million, if not $200 million, that, that, you know, Disney is still, you know, profited, probably, at least a billion dollars in the last five years.
JVL00:13:18Except for the, but there's always opportunity cost, right? And the opportunity cost of, of what the franchise would have done under competent management. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Right? I, it just seems to me like a, a big disaster.
Vic00:13:31At a, at a, at a basic level for me, I think a lot of it is everybody can do the technology that Star Wars is doing now. The special effects that Star Wars does is no longer unique to Star Wars. So that when we first saw episode four or five and six, it's like, wow, how do they do that? That's really cool. Not a lot of other places are making movies that look this good in terms of special effects. Now everybody can do it. And you get the sense, I get the sense that, you know, a lot of these, a lot of those movies we were watching, episodes one, two, three, and then later, you know, it relies heavily on special effects. Look at this stuff. And the plot and the story was like, ah, you know what I mean? So they have to have, it just has to have better stories. And if they don't, they don't make it. As you were saying, it's gotten, it had gotten to the point where we were expecting a Star Wars movie every year. So that's what we thought.
JVL00:14:18Benioff and Weiss were supposed to handle the next trilogy, right? Yeah. So which would be, we think, the first post-Skywalker.
Vic00:14:2710, 11, 12 or whatever. Right.
JVL00:14:29Story of Star Wars, which finally gets us out into open water where they can start doing whatever stories they want. And also, Rian Johnson was supposed to be doing this, too. Right. He's still working on it. That's still in development. And these guys are now cast aside, which says that they don't even have a theoretical idea of what the projects are and what the stories are. And there's going to have to be a giant lab. A giant lag between, right?
Sonny00:14:54I mean, you've got to come up with, how does this happen? If they don't have anything, there's no, if they have nothing, if they have nothing ready to start shooting now, you're looking at no Star Wars movies until 2022, probably.
Vic00:15:08Yeah. I'm sure it's fine. We went through, thanks for watching. That's all that. I mean, think about the end of Return of the Jedi and then when you and I went to see Phantom Menace. And that was a long stretch. And the anticipation, there was the excitement over. This next, that next movie was.
Sonny00:15:25But the whole point is that that wasn't supposed to happen ever again. Right. This is going to be a forever franchise. And now there's sequels. Every Christmas, there's a Star Wars. I mean, I think we have to, I think we also have to consider the fact that this once again shows just how sui generis Marvel is. Even in comparison to like DC, which hasn't been able to do the same thing. The Harry Potter, you know, spinoffs haven't been able to do the same thing. Oh, by the way. And did you see.
JVL00:15:53Star Wars hasn't been able to do the same thing. There's just a, like. But there's intrinsic value of the Marvel IP because there are so many rich characters. Right, right, right. No, totally. It is because the Marvel IP is different and better.
Sonny00:16:04But DC, DC, DC should have had the same thing in theory. DC, DC should have. DC's character style has always been weaker. DC, DC, I agree. As somebody who read almost entirely Marvel except for Batman and the only successful, you know, DC property really is Batman. The, I tend to agree with you except for the fact. That, I mean, it is an 80-year comic book company. They have a lot of stuff there that they could do and do interesting things with.
Vic00:16:29I was, I just saw in the news that Fantastic Beasts new movie is back on schedule for filming. Because we all said, please.
JVL00:16:37Does anybody care about this Harry Potter? Please, I want more. Do people go to those?
Sonny00:16:41The numbers are very soft. Right.
JVL00:16:44Is there any cultural footprint to it?
Sonny00:16:47I mean, I assume that this is just an effort to continue interest in the Harry Potter. The Harry Potter land at Universal Studios.
Vic00:16:54Which is a great land, by the way.
Sonny00:16:56Have you been there? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.
Vic00:16:58Two years ago?
JVL00:16:59Yeah.
Vic00:16:59Three years? Gosh, time flies. This is Hermione's cottage. I left, that's where I went and I didn't go anywhere else. I didn't go anywhere else. I'm just going to hang out here. This is Hermione's dressing room. It's Hermione. The butter beer, by the way, like, oh, this is an amazing butter beer. I figured out what it is. I mean, not that I looked it up on the internet. The powdered butter. Are you ready for this? I think it is vanilla. Powdered butter put in beer. It's cream soda with marshmallows. It's a whipped marshmallow topping, like a whipped marshmallow.
Sonny00:17:24Cream soda's garbage.
Vic00:17:26I love cream soda. What? How dare you?
Sonny00:17:29Okay, so Star Wars, Star Wars giant disaster. The other thing we wanted to talk about was that big Conde Nast piece in New York Magazine on the fate of Conde Nast.
Vic00:17:39And glossies in general.
JVL00:17:40JVL, could you explain to us what Conde Nast is? Conde Nast is a giant medium conglomerate owned by the Newhouse family. They have been in the media business for over 100 years. They have owned such important titles as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired, Brides, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were the General Motors of Magazine World, right? I think it's safe to say, right? I'd say them and Time. If Hearst was- Time Inc. I would say Time Inc. was the Chrysler of the Magazine World. Hearst was the Ford. And Conde Nast was the General Motors, maybe. I don't know. Imperfect analogy. Who owns Cadillac? Is that General Motors? Yes. So that would probably be Conde Nast. Conde, right. And they have finally hit upon hard times like everybody else. In the media business. This was a long, long piece with- So Conde is not only hitting the problems now, but has all sorts of problems coming down the pike in the future because Anna Wintour is going to die. Probably. Someday. Maybe. I am not totally closing off the possibility that she is already undead. Are you up on your double law? Has her pact with Satan worn out yet? It's possible, no. And this was a piece looking at what Conde is going to do. Because over the last few years, they've gone from something like posting $60 million in profit to three years later losing $20 million. Wild swing and reversal for all the normal reasons that everybody in media has problems.
Sonny00:19:28Which include the death of print advertising, the death of print subscriptions, and the...
Vic00:19:34Everybody's reading for free online.
Sonny00:19:35The shift to online, not only readership, but also online advertising, which is a giant, giant money suck where Google and Facebook suck all the cash out of the room and the people who actually produce the content are left with the scraps.
JVL00:19:52Nothing, nothing. Which is a classic supply and demand problem because the supply of internet pages to advertise on grows every single day. Infinite. They just make more of them. Infinite gaping mob.
Vic00:20:04It's like the universe expanding.
JVL00:20:06The cost of advertising on those pages has to go down. So anyway, Vanity Fair and Vogue, they've got all sorts of problems. They've now brought in the guy who did Pandora to be the overall director of Pandora the X. The Avatar world? No, Pandora the streaming music service. Oh, okay. Because he seems like a perfectly reasonable fellow to come in and-
Sonny00:20:31Run a giant magazine brand.
JVL00:20:33And figure out the digital future of media. That's a print media. Pandora.
Vic00:20:37That sounds like a conference out in Denver or out there in Aspen. The future of digital media. I've got to attend that conference.
JVL00:20:48This piece had Anna Wintour complaining about the view from her new office. Which was amazing. And how she preferred Times Square, which I thought was interesting.
Vic00:20:58It's close.
Sonny00:20:59She preferred the Times Square address to the new one, which is she thinks the new one is kind of soulless and dead.
Vic00:21:04You could see the shows. Right. Well, because downtown is all Wall Street. Right. And Midtown is where it's at. But Midtown, Times Square, I mean, anyone who lives in New York goes out of their way not to go through Times Square, obviously. Right. Right.
Sonny00:21:15That's why I was like, that's weird. She's being chauffeured. Yeah. She's not experiencing Times Square in the way most people do.
JVL00:21:22She's looking at the colorful ants on the ground. So this piece in New York Magazine had all sorts of fantastic details for people like us who care about magazines. My favorite of which was that when one of the cost-cutting measures was moving everybody off of Microsoft Word and onto Google Docs. Microsoft Word wins again, except for the New Yorker. Except for the New Yorker and the New Yorker people were allowed to keep Microsoft Word. And there are other things like the economizing. Because that saves so much money.
Vic00:21:52How much money? What does that save?
JVL00:21:53The economizing of food in the office. And so you knew where you were in the hierarchy of the Condé Nast. What the corporate masters thought of you by what food was in your version of your kitchen. Do they have the cafeteria still? Do they still have the cafeteria? The cafeteria is gone. Wow. And so every workspace has their own kitchen, but all the kitchens are not the same. And as you rise within the Condé. Uh, hierarchy, you get better food. And when things are not going bad, you realize, wait, they took away our crackers. Why don't we have crackers here anymore?
Vic00:22:31That's amazing. Do you remember the big parties, the Vanity Fair parties where they'd fly in the silverware? Remember that? I mean, they would do like 14 to Brown. They'd ship in the silverware.
Sonny00:22:39Uh, I thought that the most interesting thing to me was what they are trying to do to maintain their revenue base, which I think is a glimpse into the terrible future of, or not even the terrible future, but just the future of these print. Uh, and, and publication entities where it is all about the events. Now the, the magazine is essentially a loss leader. Uh, so they can get people to pay. Like there was the, the, the group of women who pay a hundred thousand dollars a year to have breakfast with Anna Wintour once a month or once every two months or whatever.
JVL00:23:08That might work. Um, but again, what happens when she dies? Right, right. Who's your next Anna Wintour?
Vic00:23:13Right, right, right, right. Well, this is the same thing. I, you know, when I read, uh, Ruth Reichel's, um, save me the plums, uh, it's great insight to when she left the New York times as a food critic to go to work for, uh, become the editor in chief of gourmet, which she did for about 10 years until it died. I mean, she just happened to have the unfortunate luck of taking over in the late nineties, early aughts. When, as we know, this is when it was the end of that world. And so, uh, and then she had, you know, she had gotten wine and dined and then, uh, I think, and then she had had the big lunch with, uh, sign new house. Who is just a weird person. And one of his weird things is no garlic anywhere. I mean, I went to an Italian restaurant and it was extremely difficult, no garlic in the restaurant.
JVL00:23:57I, one of the things which is touched upon briefly in this piece, but that I, I thought was under explained was the extent to which Instagram does to a, a property like Vogue, essentially what Craigslist does to a newspaper, which is to say that Vogue's entire business model is built around brands coming in and paying tons and tons of money and big picture spreads as advertising dressed up, dressed up, put on, put on like the skin of celebrities, right? And, and arranged nicely. And that's essentially what Instagram is, right? And so all of this ad money is now flowing to Instagram in the form of influencers and Vogue manages to not have gotten any of that. They just missed Instagram in an important way, which I, I think is under explored. They mentioned it briefly in this, you know, Anna Wintour has a, we are the original influencers and we're like, okay, well, that's great. What do you think now?
Vic00:24:58Right.
JVL00:24:58You know, exactly. I don't know. Do you have any, any other thoughts on it? Do you hope they succeed or die?
Vic00:25:05Well, it depends. If I ever, if they, when they call me, hey, we'd like you to work there. I hope they succeed. Otherwise, it's a shame though, because I mean, to go back to like it's other properties like Gourmet, for example, that was a great magazine. They decided to keep Bon Appetit instead. And one of the big mistakes was of course, they decided to put all of the rest of the recipes for free dating back from the, you know, the issues dating back to like the 1940s or whatever, you know, onto Epicurious, you know, and, and that was free content. You can now get for free how to make this food.
Sonny00:25:34Vic read one book in the last two years and he just, he keeps bringing it up. Oh my gosh. He keeps bringing it up on the show.
Vic00:25:39Actually, Sonny, three books, all Ruth Reichel books. Her first one, the second one, and then the third one.
Sonny00:25:46Sonny, what are you rooting for? My, I, I hope, look, as a, as a big fan of the New Yorker, I think the New Yorker, is the flagship American magazine, because I'm a filthy squish.
JVL00:25:57I mean, second to the Washington Free Beacon. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, sure, sure.
Vic00:26:01We don't use the diuresis. That's the only difference in the quality of writing. No diuresis.
Sonny00:26:05They serve different niches. They serve different niches. Slightly, slightly. But the, but, so I, I hope the New Yorker succeeds and I hope, I, I have no particular ill will against Vogue, but I don't read it, so I don't really care. I, I want them to succeed in the sense that it is good when publications succeed. But at the same time, you know, I, I, I have no, I have no real stake in this either way. Do you want them all to die?
JVL00:26:31No, I want them to succeed for all the reasons you said, but also for one other big reason, because if these places fail, what failure really means is that they will be bought up at a fire sale by somebody like Jim Spanfeller and Go Media, the people who just destroyed Deadspin. Yeah. And those guys deserve to be killed. They're going to die in a fire. The Deadspin guys? No, no. Go Media. No, the Deadspin guys too.
Vic00:26:59No, I do not love Deadspin.
Sonny00:27:01I do not, I do not, I do not mourn Deadspin. I do not mourn any part of the Gawker Empire. They, they brought them, they are classic. If you were to, if you were to pen a modern Greek tragedy, their hubris has brought everything down upon them and they deserve every single bad thing that's happened to them.
JVL00:27:17Yeah, but on the other hand, I hate seeing guys like Spanfeller and the Go Media guys thinking. That they're winning. Oh, they'll get theirs too. No, they won't. That's the funny thing about guys like that. Guys like that, they're capital holders. Capital holders almost never get what they have coming. They die before all the bad things happen.
Vic00:27:36I was thinking about what you were saying about the kitchens and the different kitchen levels. I once worked at a place where we got free soda and then one day they got switched with a vending machine, but it turns out that the free soda was still coming in, but it was going just to the other side. Oh, to a kitchen on the other place? Yeah. That's so weird. And one of our colleagues tried to get it. They weren't allowed to. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so I went to Maggiano's over the weekend by myself. Do you have any carbs?
JVL00:28:02Do I have any carbs? Did you have any garlic?
Vic00:28:05Just a little bit and just a little bit and just a little bit. So here's what happened because I had gone to meet up with my family. My son and I went to see Jojo Rabbit, which we're not talking about on this episode. We have to do that. But I'm happy to talk about it very soon. Maybe we'll do it next week. Very soon.
JVL00:28:20Maybe we do it next week. Can I take Flash to Jojo Rabbit? Absolutely.
Sonny00:28:23I guess we should do it next week because you're not going to want to see Dr. Sleep, right?
JVL00:28:28Well, on the one hand, it's got the girl from Mission Impossible.
Sonny00:28:34Yeah. She's great.
JVL00:28:35Emanuel Beards?
Sonny00:28:37No. No. Wrong mission.
Vic00:28:40Okay. Yes. So I went there. So we said, let's meet up at Tyson's. But of course, it's the fancy Tyson's. Tyson's 2? Yeah. Tyson's 2, the Galleria. That Maggiano's is right next to the Amiga store. Oh, yeah. And Rolex. So we went to, in fact, we were strolling down and I said, it reminded me in the hotel when we were at Grand Cayman, there's like the watch store at the hotel. You know, they always like for fancy, like, I don't know who's going there to buy the watches, but I was like, you passed it by and like, nice to look at. And I said to my son, I said, what, what is this? What does this look like? And, and then instead of saying the hotel, he said, it reminds me of my mother's house. So I said, really? That many? Okay. So we go in and they seat us and we're sitting there. And for the first time, we're sitting there. The next 15 to 20 minutes, nobody comes to take a drink order. He says, hi, I'm your waiter.
Sonny00:29:27That's the worst.
Vic00:29:28That is the worst. Okay. So some, you know, bus boy pump comes in with a basket of bread, no butter, but there's olive oil on the table and then they fill water, but there's no waiters for anything else. Like, hi, welcome. Nothing for 20 minutes. So even for me, and I like people, it was bustling with people coming in. I'll talk about that in a second too, because I keep on forgetting that in Maggiano's, it's like the average size. The average size of a table is like 12, I think. It's like parties of 12. They just come in droves. But finally, even for me, I had enough. And I went up and I told the manager, I said, we've been here for 15, 20 minutes and nobody's even taken a drink order. Okay, whatever. And then I said, I bet you we're not, we're going to have to leave and go to the Cheesecake Factory, you know, which kids wouldn't mind that either. But, you know, here we are. And then shortly after that, I see other waiters looking at our table and pointing, like we might've been in a dead zone.
JVL00:30:22You know how there's like, I was going to ask if that, you're on the borderlands.
Vic00:30:25Yeah, on the borderlands. And we're right in the middle between two sections.
JVL00:30:28I thought you was here.
Vic00:30:29Right, right, right. So finally, this waiter comes over, Sebastian, who's very apologetic. And I said, fine. And he sees our waiter, our menus are stacked, we're ready to order, you know, so he takes the, he takes the orders and he was very friendly. And then I think I asked for a beer. Instead, he gave me a Coke and then don't worry, he gave me the beer, but only charged me for the Coke, which was nice. My daughter's order was late, but then they made it up and they had. And then I'm like, ah, you know what? It was okay. And then the waiter at the very end says, listen, sorry about everything. Compliments of the chef. We have these Maggiano's to go things like packages. You get to choose each dinner to bring with you home. Like, so it's not doggy bags. It's like, it's a whole, it's a whole second meal.
Sonny00:31:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vic00:31:09I've never, I didn't know they do this.
Sonny00:31:10Maggiano's does that. Yeah, yeah.
Vic00:31:11Yeah. So, so we each had, it was like lasagna, rigatoni.
Sonny00:31:15And they come with like instructions on the top of the box. It's like, put it in the oven for, you know, 450 degrees.
Vic00:31:20And go online to find out how you want to cook it. So it was crazy. And so now I've just been carb loading crazy. I brought some food for the kids here at the office. But I am past it out. But I was going to say, I was, I was ready to rant about this sitting there. Two things I thought about doing and I didn't do. The first one was, oh, I'm going to go on Twitter. Oh, you know, hey, this Maggiano's terrible. But you know what I said? I'm just going to ask and do it that way, you know? And then, do you know who I am? No, I didn't do that. You know, so I just asked. Because they would have said, No, they would have said no. And so that worked out. And I was happy that I did it the old fashioned way. And everybody's happy, including our waiter. And then the second thing was Sebastian. And the second thing was, I was going to just go on this show and go on a rant against Maggiano's and see how terrible it was. Instead, what am I going to say? I'll be back.
JVL00:32:12Thank you. That's the longest, longest transition story. What did you say?
Sonny00:32:18What's the drummer from Rush? Ever. What's that?
JVL00:32:20The drummer from Rush.
Vic00:32:21The long drum solo. The long drum solo. Okay. So speaking of the Terminator over the weekend, Terminator Dark Fate annihilated the box office with a whopping $29 million, followed by Joker with $13.5 million. And in third place was Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, with $13 million. Box office thoughts. What the hell happened?
Sonny00:32:49Well. You could, you could, there are all sorts of ways to look at this, but the most important, I think, is that this is basically what Terminator Genesis made a few years back, a few years back. It's actually less if you adjust for inflation and adjust by ticket sales and all that. So that suggests to me that the Terminator franchise is totally dead. Nobody cares about it. Nobody cares that they're bringing back Murphy Brown. Nobody cares that, you know.
Vic00:33:19Murphy.
Sonny00:33:20Yeah. Candice Bergen? Are you saying Linda Hamilton looks like Candice Bergen? She looks like Murphy Brown.
Vic00:33:28I choose Murphy Brown.
Sonny00:33:30And I actually, I actually, I like Linda Hamilton fine in this. We'll get to that in a minute. But I mean, the simple fact of the matter is nobody cares about this franchise anymore. It's dead. Let it die. Let it go away. The second thing that I think we can say pretty, pretty decisively is that produced by James Cameron is not a draw for the average person Here are the last two films that have been advertised primarily as movies that were produced by James Cameron. Terminator Dark Fate and Alita Battle Angel. And both of those movies, both of those movies. And I like, look, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, it was, it was, you like the first half of Alita. I like Alita. You like the top half of Alita. Before she, before she, before she grew up. You know, I like Alita. I like Alita. Her face, no. I like Alita. The body of an adult. Terminator Dark Fate, I did not, I did not particularly care for. But the, the, the simple fact of the matter, either way, is that produced by James Cameron is not a thing people care about. Now, this is not to say that the Avatar films will not be successful. I know every, I mentioned this on Twitter and people are like, oh, look out Avatar. Well, I mean, that's directed by James Cameron. It's also, you know, it is also its own different thing. We'll see how that goes. I'm, I'm not 100% sure it's going to be a huge box. Office hit either, but we'll see. But we, we, we have to let this franchise die. The franchise has to stop. They have to stop trying to make a third movie in this series because that's what this is. It is a direct sequel to Terminator 2.
Vic00:35:05That's right. Which, you know.
Sonny00:35:07A long break and we find out.
Vic00:35:08But, but here's what I want. You know, every time I see these trailers for sequels, I keep on thinking who asked for, was there really a palpable demand? Like people have been wondering what happens next. I want a sequel. And no, it's. It's just because everyone's doing a sequel and it's, it's, it's killing it. So I don't know. JVL, did you have any box office thoughts on this? No, no, not really. You want, you want to just explain to our listeners, Sonny, what is.
Sonny00:35:32JVL, did you, were you able to look up the, the franchise data for Terminator at our, at our favorite website, Box Office Mojo?
JVL00:35:38I, so I, can we take a, just a brief aside here? Yes. Over the weekend, Box Office Mojo, which we about last week, had a pop-up on. The site, when you went on the, on mobile and the pop-up says, welcome to Box Office Mojo. We've updated Box Office Mojo to showcase our most popular features, provide you with a more intuitive interface and optimize it for mobile devices. We invite you to explore. Can't find what you're looking for? Click the help link at the bottom of the page. Help. This is called surrender. Well, no, surrender would be just reverting it back to what it was. This is, this is worse than surrender, I guess, right? This is, this is, we're going to. We're going to die to the last man. And so what the developers have done is they have now admitted in public that their redesign is so terrible that they're going to tell you, the user, you probably can't find what you're looking for. So we put this help button over here.
Sonny00:36:35And the help button just says it's the thing you're looking for is on a different website now. Right. And it may still not even be there. Like, like I said last week when I tried to find the Scorsese stuff, I was just like, what, why, why can't I find what I want?
JVL00:36:47And while that has happened, their main competitor, The Numbers. The Numbers. The-numbers.com. When you go to The Numbers, their very first post on the front page, hand to God, is welcome new readers. We've noticed quite a few new users coming to the site over the last few days.
Sonny00:37:08So I guess this means that the Amazon people have killed Box Office.
JVL00:37:14It's not Amazon. It's IMDB. So it's a separate part within Amazon. But they've actually killed Box Office Mojo.
Sonny00:37:20I think it is, with the exception of, like, the current weekend chart. It's the only thing that's usable and readable on the site.
Vic00:37:27Well, as you know, that's all I go to there for.
Sonny00:37:29That is really something.
JVL00:37:30Okay. That's all I had about that. So depressing. So depressing.
Sonny00:37:35Meanwhile, Joker is almost $300 million domestic. It's almost $950 million worldwide. It's going to cross a billion dollars. Biggest R-rated ever. That's crazy.
JVL00:37:42Are you going to give us a big boy review? Wait, did it? I'm sorry. Did anybody else see it? There's nothing to that. No, he's not going to do that.
Sonny00:37:49No, no. Sorry. Sorry. No. Sonny, please. Terminator Dark Fate is the third movie in the Terminator series. That's what they want you to think. Anyway, it is essentially a direct sequel to Terminator 2, eliminating what happened in Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation, and Terminator Genesis. The movie takes place in modern-day Mexico, where a Terminator that is basically a combination of the T-800 and the T-1000. He shows up and tries to kill a woman who we are taken to believe is the new Sarah Connor, the mother of the future, blah, blah, blah. She is protected by Mackenzie Davis, an augmented human who has, I don't know, a power pack in her or something. She's part cyborg. She is more machine than man at this point.
Vic00:38:46She gets hot fast, though.
Sonny00:38:47She gets very hot. And Mackenzie Davis's character is unable to protect her, and then Linda Hamilton shows up, and she saves the day, blah, blah, blah. So I have a handful of thoughts about this movie, the first of which is that it is more or less totally competent. It is more or less a competently made film. The story is not difficult to follow. The performances are all above average. I was rarely bored. I was rarely angry at what was happening on the screen. I can't say that. I was rarely angry at the movie. I was rarely angry at it.
Vic00:39:27Because sometimes he's fuming. But I was certainly... The smoke, people behind him can't see because the smoke's coming out of his ears.
Sonny00:39:32I was certainly bored from time to time, because this is not a particularly interesting or exciting film. A friend of ours described it as the Terminator Awakens, saying it's basically The Force Awakens, but for the Terminator movies, in that it's a soft reboot that kind of sets things back to the end of the first film. So, but that is, look, here is, and spoilers, as always, spoilers, but here is the perfect example of what is wrong with this film. The last shot of the Terminator is Linda Hamilton driving toward the mountains, and there's a thunderstorm in the distance, and there are like storms coming. It's the darkness of the future, right? And the last shot of this film echoes that. It's very explicitly an echo of that with Linda Hamilton and the new... Like Mexican Linda Hamilton getting into... She has a name. Getting into the Jeep and driving off into the distance, except it's on this like tree-lined... It's beautiful. Suburban street that just looks pleasant and nice. And it is literally counter to the whole message of the film. The whole message of the film being that there is no way to escape our future. You know, the whole point... Maybe now there finally is. The whole point of the Terminator films, right, is that there's... There's no fate but what we make, right? The whole idea of Terminator 2 is that we can change the future by getting rid of Skynet and by... But in this film, Skynet has been replaced by Legion, which is the most generic AI name that you could think of. And guess what? It is an AI that wants to wipe out humanity because it sees humanity as a threat to the AI. And what the movie is saying is that there is no... There is a fate. We cannot escape it. We cannot make our own.
JVL00:41:16It's a dark fate.
Sonny00:41:16And it's a dark fate and we're all screwed. This driving off into the happy sunset is totally contrary to that. It is a violation of the theme of the film pictorially. And that is kind of what is wrong with this whole film. Now, the other thing that is interesting about this movie, I would say, is that they have turned... I want to be very careful with how I phrase this. Oh, boy. But they have turned the Terminator, who appears about midway through the movie... He played again by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is playing an aged version of a Terminator who has become an interior decorator, is explicitly labeled as sexless. Like he says, you know, my relationship with my wife is not physical or whatever. And there's a funny scene later on where he's kind of dispensing interior decorating tips. It is interesting to me that they have... essentially made him gay for the purpose of this film. Like it is like taking something out of a Douglas Sirk film. Like not explicitly gay, but like coded as gay. And it was just very weird. I thought it was very kind of amusing and interesting and a choice. It's a choice.
Vic00:42:43Did you think that?
Sonny00:42:46We should be very careful. Should we delete that? No, look. You're not wrong. Go ahead and you can delete that.
Vic00:42:55All I'm going to say is you're not wrong. You can delete that along with my bathroom jokes.
Sonny00:43:01But here's the point, though, is that it's not done offensively. I didn't think.
Vic00:43:09I just thought asexual. He's a robot.
JVL00:43:12Who happens to have strong thoughts about draperies.
Vic00:43:16Yes. Okay. But the. Does she know? Does the wife know that he's a robot?
Sonny00:43:22No. No. They explicitly say in the film that she has no idea.
Vic00:43:25So she's like, I wonder why we sleep together and we don't do it. I mean, what is that then? Yeah. It's. Okay.
Sonny00:43:31It's.
Vic00:43:31Yeah.
Sonny00:43:33As I said, it's very much like something out of a Douglas Sons thing.
Vic00:43:37Okay. JVL.
Sonny00:43:40Again, this is not. I am not saying this in a negative way. I'm just saying that is like what is that is what's happening in the film. It didn't cross my mind. And it's kind of interesting. It's interesting to think of the Terminator as an avatar of masculinity through these three films to get rid of the other ones. So in the first one, he is kind of a mute, laconic, murderous badass. In the second one, it's a it's a it's a mute, laconic, murderous badass who has to get in touch with his feelings. That's that is, you know, that is the new ideal man is the the man who is getting in touch with his feelings and he gets a sense of humor. And then careful. And again, in this and where, where, where, where, where, where they're going in this one. It's just interesting is all. I'm not I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Just asking questions.
JVL00:44:19Just throwing that out there to ask him questions. Victorino, what did you think?
Vic00:44:23I gave it a B plus. I like the snort. OK, let me just say this. Here we go. Duration a little on the long side. The quadrant quadrant. Thank you, Sonny. Two hours, two hours and eight minutes. Violence is great, although I had I had questions about the violence. So this guy, I mean, the new Terminator is from Legion is so advanced that he can clone himself basically as robot. Right. Can he make more than one or is it just the one? And then he's then there's two of them. And then there's the one act on his own will. And then the other thing is, if he could do all these things, why can't he do like missile attack, a missile projectile thing where he can throw blades at you like deadly shurikens JVL made of what it looks like. The material looks like. Oh, what is that? Oh, no, I was going to say. Yeah, but I was going to say a hot as that that black lava rock that that kills that is that. It's like the sharpest blade made of some people are yelling at him. Thank you, Sonny. I was saying that from like Apocalypto Obsidian. It looks like that Obsidian is what it looks like. And, you know, why can't he just launch that and throw it at you? Because pieces come off him all the time, obviously. All right. So that's the violence plot. Plot was easy to understand because I didn't think there was much of a plot. I would have written the backstory better. But there is a nudity bonus. Barely. Yeah.
JVL00:45:44In the beginning from the side, kind of. Yeah.
Vic00:45:46Yeah. That's fine. I'll take that. So B plus. But.
JVL00:45:49You've been a long time at Sea Sailor because that doesn't count.
Vic00:45:52I was talking about Diego Luna. I was talking about Diego Luna. So I just found the story to be insufficient because I had all these questions about like I just really feel like it was lazy just to say, oh, Skynet's gone and now it's just Legion. Well, what is that? Oh, it's just this new thing.
Sonny00:46:06It's just Skynet. It's just new Skynet.
JVL00:46:08You know, so that just didn't do it for me. When Legion goes and invents its Terminators, the Terminators Legion invents in that parallel are the exact same design, the same metal teeth.
Sonny00:46:18Because there's no. There's no future except the fate that we have coming to us, which is the we are going to we're going to kill ourselves. We're all going to kill ourselves.
Vic00:46:25They were all designed. The AI. I think they were all still designed by Joe Morton. Was it Joe Morton? Who is from Terminator 2?
Sonny00:46:33And also, that's who I thought the I thought the the Air Force, like intelligence captain or whatever, who they have to they talk to in this movie was going to be the kid from
JVL00:46:44Terminator 2. I thought that was going to be like the way.
Sonny00:46:46But it's it's it's different. I think it's a different last name. I think. I don't think it's the same. I was I thought it was going to be a nice little Easter egg.
Vic00:46:52No, the one I think there is an Easter egg, which is the older senior sort of looking ice officer. I'm going to guess that he was one of the twin cops in Terminator 2 in the you remember there's two guys. They play each other, but they're actually twins. This is so that made it convenient that they would face each other. The overweight cops in right in Terminator 2 security guards security guards. Thank you. I think he plays an ice officer. I could be wrong, but that's the only other Easter egg I saw. No.
JVL00:47:19There's the movie is packed full of them. Okay. The one that jumped out at me. My brother-in-law leaned over to me and said pointed this out when he when bad Terminator the Rev 9 falls out of the sky into the backyard barbecue. There's music playing and it's the same music that's playing at the roadhouse in. Oh, wow. That's impressive. He walks in. Yeah. No, the movie is full of some of which are very explicit like Arnold Schwarzenegger picking up the sunglasses and looking at them and then deciding to put them. Was that?
Vic00:47:49George Thurgood. That was later on when he gets out of my mother's side, right? The sunglasses and he doesn't put them on. Okay. And I have questions about the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So the robot ages the skin and the hair. Everything gets old. Also, was he at all CGI'd Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Sonny00:48:07Well, there's that there's that scene in the beginning where they de-age Linda Hamilton
JVL00:48:12and Arnold Schwarzenegger and I guess Edward Furlong. That was that was kind of weird. I thought the de-aging on that. It was so good. I thought it was saying that it almost looked like extra footage from the original movie.
Sonny00:48:25It just I thought it looked soft. I thought it looked soft and like it was kind of slightly out of focus. Like it was a memory.
JVL00:48:32But that's because it was a memory.
Sonny00:48:33Because it was. I thought it really well. Yeah.
Vic00:48:36So I just had a lot of questions about the Terminator and having that sense. And he becomes funny sort of. Are we supposed to find it? I mean, is it I feel like we were it was supposed to be kind of comedy, but not. I don't know if we were we all laughing. Did they want us to laugh at these moments? Or were we just laughing because it just seemed awkward? No, I think I think they were very strange. OK. And then I. And did you like the line about because you're made to think that she's going to give birth to another John Connor, a boy.
JVL00:49:03So I was I was really annoyed by that because it was clear the whole time that because we see glimpses in the flashbacks, we see glimpses of the commander, the commander who they refer
Sonny00:49:16to as a woman and they never kind of looks like her. Well, they don't. I don't think they show her, though.
JVL00:49:19Well, you get like part of the face and bandages. No, it was obvious that it was obvious that she heard the whole time. The idea that like making that a big reveal when you've already tipped your hand that you either have tipped it too much or you need to throw that reveal away.
Sonny00:49:34I will say my my complaint is specifically just about the tone of it. The the whole you you're not here to give birth to some man. You are the savior. It felt like it felt like an explicit slap at the first. Two films in that I am no man.
JVL00:49:52There is a there is a woke reading of this, which is like three women on the run against from this terrible man who's always dressed as a law enforcement officer, often from immigration and naturalization services and women in the robot to a gay robot.
Sonny00:50:10And then two of them, then two of them drive off into the sunset together down there. Suburban. This is a street. It's a. Look, again, I am not I don't think my read on this is a reach.
JVL00:50:21No, I don't think so.
Sonny00:50:23Here's a here's a question and something I was thinking about. I feel like there's there's a whole piece to be written about this. But the treatment of ice and the border in this film versus Rambo Rambo Last Blood and the fact that these are both like the continuation of series that should be dead using this as kind of the border, the the the border, the border as the as a pressure point.
Vic00:50:47I think it's interesting. No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely. I'm surprised they did they use when they when they were able to cross the border. Did they use the same tunnel that the drug dealers use? No, they didn't come up in the warehouse.
JVL00:50:59I mean, I OK, JVL. So I mean, they were there. I did not mind it. Honestly, if you forced you weren't angry at the screen, I wasn't angry at the screen. I thought it was not especially competently made. I cannot believe they spent one hundred eighty million dollars on this thing because several
Sonny00:51:16of the CGI shots. Look. Very bad. Yeah. Yes. You can see a lot of scenes. Yeah.
JVL00:51:21But my my problems with it were that there are a bunch of logical holes, which I found confusing in the moment. So not I'm not they don't bother me because after the fact I was nitpicking them, but they're bothering me in the theater because I thought, well, why is this happening? Like, for instance, do we really learn time travel in thirty five years? Right. What what year they they tell us what year they're from. I think they said twenty forty. Five or something like that. It's just around the corner now. Now it's just around the forty nine or something. But but then the age of Danny doesn't actually make any sense. Yeah, because she's got to be like an old woman come and she's not at the end of the
Vic00:52:01movie and they visit her as a little girl. Is that just after the movie? Is that after the action?
JVL00:52:06It seems it. And but that suggests the Judgment Day is like five minutes from now. Yes. Right. Right. Because they're visiting her roughly the age that grace is when Judgment Day hits. So that means we're. We're right around the corner of Judgment Day happening. Again, these things were were troublesome to me in the moment while we were watching the movie because I just thought I don't I don't fully understand this. But it had a bunch of very interesting ideas.
Sonny00:52:33But it didn't do anything with them. What are some of the interesting ideas?
JVL00:52:37Well, the big one is the one exactly what you said was the idea that they are turning the entire idea of the Terminator franchise, that the future is what you choose on its head. By saying that all timelines lead to Judgment Day. That's a very big idea. And it's a total shift in this. And you know what? But they also have a whole new trilogy based around that idea. But they did. They did this with Terminator 3. Did they?
Sonny00:53:01This is the end of Terminator 3. The end of Terminator 3 is John Connor and Claire Danes going off to the mountain and hiding while the bombs start falling. And he announces himself as the leader of the human resistance at the end of that film. And then that is Terminator Salvation. Terminator Salvation takes place. In that post-apocalyptic wasteland. I mean, you could have done a continuation. They've done this before. This is the problem with it. And also, they've done the whole renaming Skynet thing. That was what Genesis was. Remember? In Terminator Genesis, like, Genesis is just the Skynet. This is, like, ripped from pieces of different Terminator films. Okay.
JVL00:53:39The other thing I found interesting was the idea that the only way to beat the machines is to turn into the machines with the augmentation. I thought, again, they did not play enough with that.
Sonny00:53:51They didn't do anything with that.
JVL00:53:51But here's the thing, which I can't believe we've not talked about. Because for me, the extent to which this succeeds as a movie is entirely based on the performance of Mackenzie Davis, who I think in this movie is just a total movie star. She is totally magnetic and electric, wildly charismatic. Her physical performance and physical presence is so good in all this. I just thought. Every time, every moment she was on screen, I was rooting for her. And the minute the credits rolled, I leaned over to my brother-in-law and I said, why was she not Captain Marvel?
Sonny00:54:26Oh, she would have been a much better Captain Marvel. Because she is funny. She's smart.
JVL00:54:30Everything about.
Sonny00:54:31She's actually. She's physical in a way that Brie Larson isn't as well. Everything about her. She's very physical.
JVL00:54:37She should be Captain Marvel. Anyway, I thought Mackenzie Davis was so good, despite the fact that she gets third billing behind Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, that she carries the movie. And the movie is only interesting to the extent that it focuses on her.
Sonny00:54:50I think that's a fair point. I like Mackenzie Davis. She was very good. She had a very small role in Blade Runner 2049. But an important role. She was good. But an important role. And she was very good in it. I forget.
Vic00:55:00What was she in Blade Runner 2049?
Sonny00:55:01She was the.
JVL00:55:03Replica prostitute. Replica. Who says to the other, the holographic presence, there's less to you than you think. Oh, right. Which is a very important line. And she, you know, she's so good, actually, as an actress, that I remember seeing her seeing The Martian. She has a very small part in The Martian, where she is the photo analyst who finds that Matt Damon, and she's got like four lines in the movie. But she was so good and so memorable that actually after seeing The Martian, I went and looked her up. And I was like, who is that actress? Because she's just interesting. And that was one of those performances where, you know, the line about there are no small parts, only small actors. You just tell. Like, she has the goods.
Vic00:55:41I definitely. I mean, I don't. Huge star. I didn't remember having seen her before, but I definitely found myself drawn to her. Just like, you know. So, staring at her.
JVL00:55:49Why?
Vic00:55:49You guys just said the same thing, and then I say it, and then it's like a joke.
Sonny00:55:53Once again, it's the tone. What do you mean the tone?
JVL00:55:55You could have.
Sonny00:55:56I was drawn to her. It's like the line. It's like the line in the movie where, you know, you're not the mother of some man. You know, they kind of spit that out in a very weird way. And the way that you read. The way that you said that, you said it in a very lascivious. I liked looking at her. How much for the girl. How much for the girl. You said it in a way that I would imagine Harvey Weinstein might say. I would say it, frankly. It was disconcerting. It was off-putting.
JVL00:56:21But do you disagree, Sonny, that she just carries the movie with her presence?
Sonny00:56:25I can't believe they killed her.
JVL00:56:26She's the most interesting thing in the movie.
Sonny00:56:28She's the only interesting thing in the movie. Maybe she doesn't though. She's the only interesting thing. I thought Linda Hamilton was fine. I thought she was fine, but nothing more than that.
Vic00:56:37I don't know. But it did strike me as technically the new Terminator is indestructible because anytime it blows up, it just reforms. So I was surprised. Even though it goes through the ringer in this one at the very end of that giant generator thing and it comes out in different pieces and explodes, it does make you wonder, how are we ever supposed to beat the machines?
JVL00:56:57If you keep amping up the Terminator with each movie, then at some point you say, okay, well, you know what? We just got to wave the white flag because we're never going to be able to beat it. They can roll out millions of these things. Yeah, millions, millions. Then how are we going to work it out?
Sonny00:57:09And the future battle scene looks kind of like Edge of Tomorrow. It did.
Vic00:57:14It did. Yes. Again.
Sonny00:57:17Did I get it right that time? Edge of Tomorrow. Somebody said before, somebody corrected you about something. Live, die, repeat. You know, whatever. Whatever they're calling it. That's right.
Vic00:57:24You go through that. But you say millions, but it's double that because they can multiply themselves. They clone. How does that work?
JVL00:57:32So when the Terminator splits.
Vic00:57:34Yes.
JVL00:57:34Which neural processes? So they're operating independently. Which neural processes? Are there two of them actually? JVL, how would I know? But it's one of these things where I would have liked one line. One line of explanation. Because it's interesting. We're all interested in the Terminators, right?
Sonny00:57:51So if you're giving us a new Terminator that can do new stuff, I don't know.
JVL00:57:54Tell us how.
Sonny00:57:55This movie is very dismissive of any such explanations. There's that line where she's like hacking into the phone and she's like, what are you doing?
JVL00:58:02And she's like, well, okay. But see, I like that. I thought that was a good plot, good use of not bothering to get bogged down in detail. That's right. Okay. So I look at it. Because we don't care.
Vic00:58:13But this is because we don't care about the hacking of the phone.
JVL00:58:16We do all care. We kind of care about the Terminators. How did they do that?
Vic00:58:18Because the Terminators are interesting. How did they? Yes. Now there's two of them. Tell us about that. Right. Tell us a little bit about that. Right? Okay.
JVL00:58:26Why do the metal Terminator skeletons have teeth? Oh, I don't know. You ever wonder that? It's black. That's a weird design choice by the Skynet.
Sonny00:58:35Well, they're endoskeletons, right? So they need to be able to mimic human blood. Yes. No.
JVL00:58:42But once it's all the liquid metal that's doing the mimicry, I don't know. There's no reason for them. There'd be teeth there. I don't know. All right.
Vic00:58:49Do we have any other Terminator thoughts? No. That's everything. Okay. Great. Corrections, shout outs, anything? No corrections?
JVL00:58:57You know, I would have liked Mackenzie Davis to play Rey. An interesting actress who has some light behind the eyes.
Vic00:59:05Yeah, that would be great. Sorry. Go ahead. Okay. That's all the time we're going to give to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at SonnyBunch at VictorinoMattis. Again, be sure to subscribe. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. Just type in Sub-Beacon on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:59:31Did you have an outtake? Do you guys?
Vic00:59:36I do, but just only if you don't. Bring it. All right. I forgot to give my ranking of Italian fast food chains. Oh! Right? Sorry about this. Okay. So here we go. Is it fast food or sit down? Oh, sit down. Sit down. Not fast food. I should say. So it's not Sonny's favorite Sbarro's, but like these family chain restaurants. Okay. Are you going from top to bottom?
JVL00:59:58Bottom to top. Bottom to top.
Vic00:59:59So number five, Olive Garden. Okay. Totally non-offensive. Old people love it. It's like you go on a cruise ship, Toledo deck. You're going to get the Ziti. You know what you're getting. You know what you're getting. Okay. And then free salad and breadsticks. That's fine. Okay. What do you have? You're raising your hand. Okay. Number four. Number four, Carrabba's. My friend was there. Get the pasta wheezy. It's still a dump and store place, but nah. Buca di Beppo. Remember from the standard? I love Buca. How is Buca only at three? Number two is Maggiano's. Okay. Which great service, obviously. And number one is Carmine's. And that's in New York. It's only a handful of locations. There's one in DC. Sonny's been there. I thought it was great. I didn't say macaroni and grill because I've never been to one, but you love it. But I will say this. While sitting there, all the guests are coming in, and I would say 60 percent of the guests were asian huh i'm sure
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