Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A PODCAST INVOLVING A LEAGUE OF CINEMA LOVERS WHO SHOULD KEEP THEIR OPINIONS TO THEMSELVES, BUT DEFINITELY WON'T.
https://linktr.ee/Cinematicanarchy
https://www.facebook.com/cinematicanarchy/ Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cinematicanarchy/support
Join us, won't you, for a podcast involving an ever rotating cast of cinema lovers and haters who discuss both films great and from the deepest recesses of your dark and twisted mind. Spoilers ahead. Welcome to another episode of Cinematic Anarchy.
Speaker 2:Because I know you need to go, and we have an hour to talk about this batshit movie.
Speaker 3:I had to actually try to replay some of it this morning, which is why we're we're we had that little bit going in the background that I thank you for reminding me to turn it off so it didn't bleed into the actual podcast itself. But, hey, welcome to Cinematic Anarchy where we are once again with Matt and Rachel from the Strange and Beautiful Book Club podcast. That wasn't where I was supposed to sigh. I was supposed to sigh when I actually introduced the name of the movie. Take a deep breath and go, ugh.
Speaker 2:You can sigh about us. It's fine. Oh, they're back again.
Speaker 3:No. We we are gonna sit down and talk about Flash Gordon today as part of the oiled up Lorne Cloth wearing barbarian portion of this podcast for the next few months. Don't
Speaker 2:Our ongoing series.
Speaker 3:I think there's only one full scene of him really kind of oiled up barely wearing anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it fits the
Speaker 4:bill. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's like a good sci fi variation, I would say.
Speaker 3:Well, it's also part of, Dino De Laurentiis' catalog, which leaned heavily towards barbarian films for a short period of time.
Speaker 2:What a mixed bag he was. Yeah. Dino. Over the place.
Speaker 3:Again, we had another movie where I believe, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of this movie, the cast did not know English. Those are the good portion of the extras in the cast that did not know English, and they recorded their lines in Italian and
Speaker 2:Then dubbed them.
Speaker 3:Then dubbed them. So I I don't know how I feel about this movie. I really don't.
Speaker 2:At no point in this movie did I know what was happening.
Speaker 3:I I've watched
Speaker 5:like a really long queen music video.
Speaker 2:It was a long queen music video, but we only got the queen music at the end where they're like, Flash. Woah. And as Matt pointed out, they drew out the like bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump. Because I
Speaker 4:You'd get the background in.
Speaker 5:Because we like For like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2:We like that song. Like, I play that song a lot for the kids. So I played the Flash song a lot. So I'm ready for it to like
Speaker 3:Break out.
Speaker 2:Play this song and it's like Flash. Woah. And then for like fifteen minutes. And then it's like savior of the universe and then
Speaker 3:I mean, it did open the movie with the introduction to Meng as well, but it really wasn't, like, the full song.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:It was did this thing decide to start playing again?
Speaker 2:It's evil. Bing came back.
Speaker 3:It just flashes
Speaker 2:It was like, oh, oh, I'll tell you what's going on. Here, I'll help. No. It's not Matt even read a plot summary. He was like, I'm gonna read a plot summary and see if I can figure out what just happened.
Speaker 2:And he was like, it didn't help. It didn't help.
Speaker 5:Plot summary did not help.
Speaker 2:I think this is our first comic book movie. Right? Yes. We did did Ulysses.
Speaker 4:We did
Speaker 2:Zardoz.
Speaker 3:Zardoz. Yeah. I was gonna say, I was even okay. Yes. Zardoz.
Speaker 3:How did I forget about that?
Speaker 2:My brain was like, no. No. We don't want it behind.
Speaker 3:No. How did I forget about Sean Connery in in red underwear for an
Speaker 2:entire movie? This this is our first like, a lot of people watching this would come with, background knowledge. Like, because I was looking at Flash Gordon, and it's been adapted a lot. It was adapted in the fifties. It was adapted in the sixties.
Speaker 2:So this is like an ease interpretation. It would be like making another Superman movie for us. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 5:most of of the the superhero movies that we're familiar with, I guess, you know, like, since the nineties, they're always retelling the story in a way that's palatable for new watchers. And so they cover a lot of explaining the world. They cover a lot of backstory, origin story, all that. And this doesn't explain anything about the universe at all. So if you were an established Flash Gordon fan, you might pick up on a lot of things like, oh, okay.
Speaker 5:There this thing is referencing this comic story arc or whatever. But for viewers who are not familiar with Flash, it's just what's going on. I don't understand.
Speaker 3:If I'm not mistaken, there was another director attached to this project before Dino De Laurentiis got ahold of it. And that guy literally locked himself in a room with the comics and a writing pad and just went over everything and crafted this massive, what would have been like a 20,000,000 plus movie back then, translates into quite a quite a bit right now. I want to say you're you're probably talking, what, half a billion at that point. It's it would have been a
Speaker 2:A lot from 1980 to now. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But he was the first guy. The first guy that wanted to write the script for this, the or direct this, really was passionate about the project. And they were like, yeah. You know what? This is gonna cost too much.
Speaker 3:Let's do something else. And here we go. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is what we made. My favorite characters are the bat people or the the bird people that can fly in space.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah. It's those apparently, costumes were rather painful to wear. So, like, once you're in that suit, you couldn't sit down. There was no sitting.
Speaker 2:The wings are rigid. But Voltan, the guy who plays the main the main hawk man or whatever, is having the best day. The best day.
Speaker 5:The whole time.
Speaker 2:Everyone else is like, why am I here? Why is this fucking movie? And he's just like, this is great. I'm having so much fun. Like, everyone He was having
Speaker 3:the time of his life. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He was he was like, you're the only one. Everyone else is like, why am I here? I don't understand.
Speaker 3:I watched a lot of his scenes, and I felt like he was that guy in any D and D campaign, that one guy that while playing his, you know I I I don't know. I I was thinking barbarian self. He Yeah. Basically just picture of ale in hand at all times, both as the player and as the character. Right.
Speaker 2:Just Absolutely. That's exactly what it felt like.
Speaker 3:Enjoying the hell out of himself.
Speaker 2:Just best day. I just like how we start with, like well, he's it's Ming and he goes to Earth and he's like, I'm gonna fuck with Earth. And then he like Lord. He turns his little ring and he's like, sends evil weather to Earth. And then it pans past all of these buttons and it was like hot hail.
Speaker 3:I was with them up to hot hail.
Speaker 2:And then meteor shower. I was like, how is hot hail different from a meteor shower? Which one is which? And then it's Flash getting into a plane, but we never know why. We don't know.
Speaker 2:We only know
Speaker 5:that football star traveling for a reason.
Speaker 2:That Dale, the lady in the plane with him is his travel agent? Maybe. But no, because he didn't know who she was. Because he was like, I asked your name
Speaker 4:at the bar last night.
Speaker 5:Travel agent.
Speaker 2:And she's like, Hey, but they're the only two people in this plane. So this travel agent is taking a private plane to, we don't know where. And then Ming like appears out of the storm and like snatches the pilots for some reason. And Flash is like, it's okay. I've been taking flying lessons.
Speaker 2:And he has to try to land the plane because they're like, no. And then they look out the window in this huge, Did like
Speaker 5:you just see the Chinaman come out of the clouds?
Speaker 4:I was like, what was that?
Speaker 5:And he snatched the pilots.
Speaker 2:China the that's not the appropriate term for it, but there's no other way to describe Ming because it's
Speaker 5:this representation, I think What's
Speaker 2:his name?
Speaker 3:This is a
Speaker 5:very much encapsulates the all the baggage associated with With
Speaker 2:yellow face? With yellow face?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I would say that they definitely looked a lot at Christopher Lee when he played Fu Manchu in those movies, when they did Ming's makeup. Yeah. So there's a not a lot that you can look at when you're looking at that particular costume setup and go, okay. They tried to make a white guy look Chinese.
Speaker 3:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 5:Yeah. He's one of the whitest white guys.
Speaker 2:They're like, hey. How about a goatee? China people like goatees.
Speaker 5:And long mustaches.
Speaker 3:We're we're definitely trying I to
Speaker 5:have I have long mustaches. Could I could I play a Chinaman?
Speaker 2:No. Will you please stop saying Chinaman? It's freaking me out.
Speaker 5:That was good. That's the last time.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Not the most PC thing to say, but no. Okay.
Speaker 2:I don't know why they snatch he snatches the pilot personally. Like, he personally fucks
Speaker 5:with because he's bored.
Speaker 2:With Flash
Speaker 4:for some reason.
Speaker 5:I read. It's just that he's bored.
Speaker 3:He's torturing an entire planet. Why specifically focus on that Why? Oh. But look at that.
Speaker 5:Plane in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll snatch that guy. And then he lands the plane, but he happens to land the plane in the greenhouse of this mad scientist who has a spaceship that can take them into space. All the
Speaker 5:way to a different planet.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But he, he can't do it alone because somebody has to put their foot on a button and hold the button the whole time or they'll die.
Speaker 5:The g forces can kill you. What is the red foot
Speaker 4:you switch do?
Speaker 2:Explain what the red thing does?
Speaker 4:He's just like, put your foot on a rope.
Speaker 5:It forces captive captive to stay in one spot and not fight him.
Speaker 4:And then they fly
Speaker 2:up into space, and there's like, whoop. They go into this vortex.
Speaker 5:Oh, the imperial vortex. In space? Okay. So maybe Hans Zarkov's spaceship doesn't actually have the capacity to go to another planet. But Ming left the Imperial Vortex open close to Earth.
Speaker 2:He left the door open, and that's how Flash gets in there.
Speaker 3:How do we know that Ming just didn't reach out and grab and go, I'm gonna play with this too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's true. He's personally fucking with Flash for some reason. So why not?
Speaker 3:He just wants toys to play with.
Speaker 2:I know. I don't it's and then they end up they land or they get brought in, and then they end up in his
Speaker 3:Think much like Flash's lessons in flying. It's more of a crash than a land.
Speaker 2:Well, that's true.
Speaker 3:Because they were
Speaker 2:just And then they end up in the throne room.
Speaker 5:Yeah. They immediately get captured by the
Speaker 4:thing that
Speaker 2:you say, as batshit as the rest of this is, Dino turned it out for all of the costumes and the sets. Visually, it's there in process. Bedazzled. There's so many seed beads and hand beaded costumes in this whole Look. Section.
Speaker 3:I will say one thing about this film. While the sets were beautiful and the costumes were beautiful, they definitely tromade up this entire film in the script. Because that's that's what trauma is notorious for is that, okay, we've got a batshit crazy script that's gonna make absolutely no sense to pretty much anybody. So what do we do? We have to pull out some serious weirdness on the other end to make them forget that there's no plot here.
Speaker 3:We don't know what's going on.
Speaker 5:Right. Just keep distracting them from
Speaker 4:the fact that there's
Speaker 5:no plot.
Speaker 2:There's no dialogue that makes sense. Sometimes people are having entirely different conversations at each other. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite my favorite section is when the emperor's horny daughter kidnaps.
Speaker 2:Okay. Flash gets killed because they're like, I don't know why. And It doesn't she's like, well, was terrible. So anyway
Speaker 5:them to kill Flash.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's like, so anyway, we can bring him back to life. So she just hasn't brought back to life. And then she's like, I'm gonna take you to a friend of mine, and he's gonna take care of you so that we can fuck later. I don't know.
Speaker 2:There's I don't why.
Speaker 5:That's that's the only real, like, consistent narrative in this movie is Princess Aura wants to hit Flash Gordon.
Speaker 2:Well, then Princess
Speaker 3:Aura wants to hit pretty much any guy that's moving.
Speaker 4:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:But she takes him to Baron, who is Timothy Dalton for some reason.
Speaker 3:Timothy Dalton. And did you did you see that, Timothy Dalton's, like, right hand man?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was riff raff.
Speaker 3:Riff raff. Yes. From from
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, is that Riffraff?
Speaker 3:Okay. Why are we why are we in a cage with Riffraff right now? What happened?
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. I mean, why not? But she takes him to Baron, and she's like, take care of him. I'm gonna need him later for reasons.
Speaker 2:And Baron is like, no, I'm going to kill him. And she's like, cool, cool. And then we cut and all of a sudden flash is being lowered into a swamp in a basket with a bunch of snake people because Baron is like, yeah, I'll keep him alive. By submerging him in the swap. And then the swap doesn't kill Flash because Flash is tall enough to, like, stick his head out of the out of the cage.
Speaker 3:And he's, like, pulling other guys up. You know?
Speaker 4:Just Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll get us out of here. Just keep breathing.
Speaker 2:So they come down, and he's just, like, with his head out of the cage. Like, what what is happening? And then he's, like, climbing he's climbing a rope or a vine. Matt was like, wait. Did he change costumes halfway through?
Speaker 5:There was one person climbing up the vine.
Speaker 2:They do riffraff climbing, and then they cut to him climbing. And it looks like the same character, but, like, he changed costumes while climbing. And then
Speaker 5:Was this his, like, superhero costume reveal? He changed it looked like he changed into his red flash like Yeah. His self branded
Speaker 2:Oh, I know. He has a shirt that says flash across the front.
Speaker 3:Were you looking for any kind of continuity here?
Speaker 5:Quarterback. Why not?
Speaker 2:Wait. Wait. And then he's like Barron's like, oh, you've escaped my swamp trap where I was trying to keep you safe in the swamp. So why don't you stick your hand into this stump that has an evil creature that will drive you mad in it? And he's like, okay.
Speaker 5:And we already know what happens if you get stung by it because we saw someone do that.
Speaker 2:Right. So he gets the the funniest line in this whole section is when Flash looks at Barron and he's like, does anybody ever trust her twice? Meanwhile, she's gone back and is being tortured, horrifically tortured by her father for some reason while Barron
Speaker 4:is just
Speaker 5:her father's, like, second in command, who asked permission to follow this lead wherever it goes, no matter who is implicated. And Ming is like, yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Do your fucking job.
Speaker 5:But he doesn't know his daughter's Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean
Speaker 5:adamant in the investigation.
Speaker 3:Certain point, he does realize that his daughter's part of it. Yeah. Then he was just like, oh, yeah. Keep doing it. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Do do as you wish.
Speaker 3:If she dies, she dies.
Speaker 2:What what I mean, Barron is trying to kill him in increasingly elaborate ways, but then the Hawk people show up and save him. And I'm like, hang on. Why? Why do we care
Speaker 3:about only to try to kill him again.
Speaker 2:Right. Or maybe he can save so he can, like, fight Baron to the death. And you're like, why I don't no. It's never explained why Flash. Like, why, in particular, you're like, he's a threat and when he needs to be taken care of.
Speaker 5:They they see the potential.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think everybody just thinks of him as a human toy
Speaker 5:in the universe.
Speaker 2:I mean, that no one just shoots him. I mean, if anybody at any point had just gone, okay. Anyway, so shot him, he'd be dead. But instead, they're like, I'm gonna stick you into the swamp. Or I want to make you stick your hand in the stump, or I'm going to make you fight to the death on this platform that I have a remote control.
Speaker 2:I can make it move around. I can make spikes come out of it. And then they don't even kill him. Like they take Dale and Zarkov. And they're like, okay.
Speaker 2:We're gonna leave him here to his fate. If they just shot him, he would have died. And instead, they're like, we're gonna leave you on this castle full of spaceships that you can use to escape, and we're gonna blow it up, and you're gonna die. He's like, okay. I'll just get on a spaceship and leave then.
Speaker 2:And they're like, curse you. How could you have done this?
Speaker 3:We do have Timothy Dalton in this film. So I feel like a lot of this is just James Bond supervillain logic.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, that's
Speaker 3:Like, I will leave you in this area where it's definitely not gonna kill you, but I'm gonna hope that this very simple plan kills you. And, no. Okay. We're moving on to the next very simple but overly elaborate plan.
Speaker 2:Mutant sea bass.
Speaker 3:You know?
Speaker 2:Laser beams attached to their heads.
Speaker 3:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:Just, I I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how we ended up with another crazy movie where where o o seven is one of the characters.
Speaker 3:It's well, first of all, it seems to be a pattern for Dino De Laurentiis to make absolutely batshit crazy films.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 3:And Yeah. I looked at our list. It's not gonna be the end of that. Dino does pop up a couple more times in our list. So
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because you think every time I think Dino De Laurentiis, people are like, a Dino De Laurentiis movie, and I'm like, yeah, but he's such a mixed bag. Sometimes he makes it they're always pretty, though. I mean, I'll give him that because this felt very Dune. He's gonna go on in a couple years and make Dune. He's gonna get Ming to come back and be doctor Lee at Kynes.
Speaker 5:This is this feels like yet another movie that was visually inspired by the concept art from Jodorowsky's Dune.
Speaker 2:He loves a big room full of elaborate costumes. Loves it. Like, that's how he starts Dune. That's how he starts this movie. I don't know why we had little people dressed as condoms, but we
Speaker 5:worry about it.
Speaker 2:It's fine. I I feel like if I knew anything about Flash Gordon, it would make more sense. But I know nothing about Flash Gordon, and this tells you nothing about Flash Gordon. But it's also somehow an origin story.
Speaker 3:Just enough about Flash Gordon to know this doesn't make sense. I can't even imagine Flash Gordon fans going, oh my god. That was a great movie. Right. I imagine them coming out going, hey.
Speaker 3:Think this would have worked as three panel comic strips if you broke it all up. Maybe.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Maybe.
Speaker 3:Maybe.
Speaker 5:Right. Because when you're reading the comic, you have to fill in between the frames. Yes. And so you can leave some wiggle room for the reader to figure it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It definitely filled in. I mean
Speaker 5:But this one, in a movie like this, you can't have that expectation of having the viewer filling in headcanon for why everything's happening.
Speaker 2:Is this better if it's filmed like the Ang Lee Incredible Hulk, where the transitions were them them panning out and it was a cartoon panel, and then they would they would zoom in on another cartoon section and it would become real life.
Speaker 5:Leaning into the comic book origin?
Speaker 2:Really making it comic book. Like, if you're gonna make this a comic book movie, you want me to feel like it's a comic book movie where I have to fill in the blanks. Emphasize the fact that it's a comic book movie.
Speaker 3:I mean, it might work a little better. It's not gonna be any less confusing.
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. No.
Speaker 5:When we were talking about this earlier about how this is not made for new viewers, but they did make it an origin story. So they kinda screwed themselves on both ends because they made it an origin story. So established Flash Gordon fans are like, nothing's interesting going to going nothing interesting is going to happen because it's just an origin story. But then they don't explain anything about the broader universe. So new viewers are like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean
Speaker 5:And so it didn't it wasn't palatable for anybody.
Speaker 3:I believe this was originally set up to have three separate films, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And they even left it open at the very end for a sequel. Question mark. I hate that Yeah.
Speaker 3:By the way. I the
Speaker 4:end? No.
Speaker 3:No. No.
Speaker 2:And I guess they had a falling out. Sam and the director, the guy who played the Flash, had a falling out with the director and didn't come back for any, like, second round filming or dubbing or anything. And so he's dubbed for a lot in the movie by somebody, and nobody knew who until, like, 2020. It was like a secret who had done his dubbing.
Speaker 3:I mean, would you fess up? Really?
Speaker 2:I just take my paycheck and go home.
Speaker 3:You see the final product on the screen, and you're just like, no. I'm gonna let them believe that Sam.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm just gonna it's gonna be fine. I just if he had not antagonized Flash, none of this would have happened. And yet Flash isn't instigating anything. He's just being punted around like a hockey puck for the entire movie.
Speaker 3:Hey. You you got you had the right terminology for just a moment there. Punted around because he is a former football player. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know. He's like and he tries to make a couple of football references where he's like, third down, your move or whatever. Like, okay.
Speaker 3:No. No. Don't let them have their move. Just keep going.
Speaker 2:I want a Flash t shirt, though. That cracked me up when he's He had his own brand new first see him, he's like, I am Flash. It just says Flash across
Speaker 4:the front.
Speaker 2:And I want it to be mirrored, so it's like, in case he forgets who he is. Because it
Speaker 5:So you look in the mirror. Every time he looks in the mirror, he gets reminded.
Speaker 3:It's like, who made you a t shirt out here?
Speaker 2:Well, no. He has it when he gets on the plane.
Speaker 3:What was it? I did not even pay it to I was not paying attention anything.
Speaker 2:When he gets on the plane, he's got a t shirt that says flash. And then on the back, it has, like, a lightning bolt.
Speaker 5:Takes off his, like, overshirt.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And on the back, has, a lightning bolt. And then when he takes his overshirt off, he has, like, a red spandex undershirt that has the lightning bolt on it. Like, it's his own personal logo. Like, he made himself a superhero shirt, and he wears it underneath his regular
Speaker 4:t shirt.
Speaker 5:Well, how about when the Hawkman at the end did the aerial spelling out of thanks, Flash?
Speaker 2:Was this movie entertaining? Yes. It was entertaining for, like, ninety minutes. Then the last half hour was like, I don't know. What is happening?
Speaker 2:Am I still watching this movie?
Speaker 3:I feel like there's a a different cut of this film somewhere. Like, they cut some things out for time because it's a two hour movie almost.
Speaker 2:So long. And I feel like you either need to cut out more or cut out less. I can't tell which, but one of those. Yeah. And they're like, you had three storylines because you had Dale, you had Flash, and then you had Zarkov.
Speaker 2:And I feel like each one of those would have made a coherent movie, but trying to put all three together made it just I don't know. Dale does that thing at the beginning where he tries to freeze her with the ring, and she's like, ugh. She has, an orgasm in front of everybody, and then they're all like, oh my god. I've never seen anyone do that before.
Speaker 3:That that is apparently why he wants to marry her. It's like, oh, if that my ring does that. On
Speaker 2:on setting one. Right. And then they're giving her, like, roofie juice for a while, and she's like, okay. Thanks. And then then is it Aura who's like, oh, no.
Speaker 2:Flash tells her to fake him out. Just fake him out. She because she's like, they're telepathically communicating. And she's like, he's gonna come in right now. Like, I'm in his bed chamber.
Speaker 2:This is happening. And he's like, fake them out. Girls have done it to me before. And I was like, Matt goes, what do you mean?
Speaker 4:What do mean?
Speaker 2:Fake it? Or like, what she ends up doing is drugging a slave and being like, Sloppy clothes. It's me now, and then running away. Like like, rape her instead.
Speaker 3:It's like Pretty
Speaker 4:much.
Speaker 2:That's the worst solution to the problem.
Speaker 3:We end up with another movie, by the way, that had an entire room of women just kind of captive to the the main villain of the plot.
Speaker 2:I think this is gonna happen in every I'm gonna make a prediction right here. Every loincloth sort every loincloth fantasy movie is going to have, like, uber desirable main character is going to run into a room full of half naked women who are all like
Speaker 5:The harem.
Speaker 2:I really like your lame cloth. Like, it's it's gonna be just at all. There's that scene where he's doing something. I don't even remember. And there's like a rainbow line of women in the back that are wearing, like, rainbow cloaks and silver bikinis.
Speaker 2:And they're just across the back. And I'm like, did you spend so much on everybody else's costume? You were like, I'm sorry. I can only handle this much fabric for all of these women. Well,
Speaker 3:I did love the costuming in the film. That initial scene where you put all the costumes in the same room, everything clashed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, everything.
Speaker 2:It's very if you watch Dune, that's the opening sequence of Dune too. When they go meet the emperor or when we first meet the emperor in Dune, they're in this room, and it's all these people just milling around in really elaborate costumes. And that's when the big floating testicle guy comes in. I'm not making that up. That's the spacing guild guy.
Speaker 2:He's a giant floating testicle.
Speaker 3:I feel like I have to go walk into him again.
Speaker 2:You're like, wait a minute. I missed that part. He's in, like, a black tank. But I feel like this might be a Dino thing. Like, he might just he loves the big room, a big fancy set room full of people in fancy costumes.
Speaker 3:He does. We saw that with Ulysses. We definitely saw that there. He had something to do with Zardoz too, didn't he?
Speaker 2:Has he been part of everything so far?
Speaker 3:He's
Speaker 2:Are we just is this are we doing a Dino De Laurentiis career perspective without
Speaker 3:doing anything? Of fire and ice, like, I think our opening salvo is mostly Dino De Laurentiis movies. I think because
Speaker 4:we're I
Speaker 2:feel like he was just like, I'm Italian. I do what I want. And that's that was his entire career from the sixties to, like, late eighties.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I guess, initially, he he was the producer for this film, and, he wanted, Federico Fellini to be the director for this film. And the when Federico Fellini turned him down, that is why we have Deep Roy as princess Aura's little, guy on a a leash Yeah. Named Fellini. So As as sort of a jab to Fellini, like, fuck you.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna make you I'm gonna make you one of these guys in my film, and we're gonna drag him around on a leash and call him Fellini.
Speaker 2:I did that. The that's the that's the guy he's in so much stuff in the eighties. He was, like, the go to little guy little person.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Well, him and
Speaker 2:because he's also a never ending story.
Speaker 3:Yep. Who's the other guy that I'm thinking of from Willow?
Speaker 2:Warwick Davis?
Speaker 3:Warwick Davis was was around quite a bit in the eighties as well. He was the go to little guy if you wanted a speaking role. Deep Roy didn't, really talk a lot in his early films.
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. He's in Never Ending Story, but he's dubbed.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:I don't think he really gets a speaking role till, like, Willy Wonka.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of people with thick accents back then that got dubbed, like, badly.
Speaker 2:Because it was whoever would take the pay.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well yeah. I mean Yeah. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Herzli's in New York, his entire film dubbed.
Speaker 3:And you go back and watch it. It's painful to watch because you know that's not his voice.
Speaker 2:Right. At the time, you were okay, but now you're like, no.
Speaker 3:But when you don't know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is, if you had no clue, you could actually semi suspend your belief. Like, somehow the lips don't match up a little bit. This looks like an old kung fu movie. What's going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I feel like dubbing was really common back then. Maybe I think just because of the audio technology.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I bet the microphones and the sound like, sound conditioning wasn't very good.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And still no English dubbed version of Ulysses with Kirk Douglas and Alas.
Speaker 2:Anthony Quinn. Alas.
Speaker 3:We kinda needed that.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of people there were a lot of with accents in this movie, though. Like, there were a lot of Italian actors that have gone on to continue as Italian actors. This wasn't, like, their breakthrough into American cinema or anything.
Speaker 3:Was this anybody's breakthrough into American cinema, really? Outside of maybe Timothy Dalton?
Speaker 2:Well, he was already double o seven?
Speaker 3:That's I think he was double o seven. Wasn't he double o seven after this?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 3:Not that I
Speaker 2:Timothy Dalton is one of those people that when I see him, I'm like, oh, Timothy. And then when he disappears, I'm like, I forget that he exists.
Speaker 3:I am well aware this is definitely before Butition and the Beast.
Speaker 2:And he's not my favorite Bond, so I have not seen a lot of his Bond.
Speaker 3:I can't say that, he is my favorite much anything, to be honest. That's that might be a little bit mean to say, but I
Speaker 2:They had this guy, and then the guy that played Voltan, the head Hawkman, he goes on to be Boss Nass in episode one of Star Wars. He voices Boss Nass. And then he's
Speaker 5:Timothy Dalton was James Bond after this.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:He like, '87. It was, like, '87 to '89. He also starred in another comic book movie, which or I should say a Sunday comic panel movie because, technically, this other thing was not a a real comic book. Brenda Starr, which was like a dramatic comic panel, I think, way back when.
Speaker 2:I never read those. I hated the dramatic comics.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I was like, I'm reading the comic pages because they're supposed to be funny.
Speaker 3:Fuck off. How do you how do you commit an act of soap opera drama in three panels anyway? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Just once a week too. So you're like the the most drawn out of dramatic stuff.
Speaker 3:Three panels a day with, I think, seven panels on the weekend. Because they used to have, like, an entire fold out, like, plenty of cakes on Sundays. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes. So you could tell more of the story, and then you have to bleed it out on three panels during the rest of the week.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They were not my favorite.
Speaker 3:It kept
Speaker 2:It's like Peanuts. Peanuts is like watching paint dry. I've never liked Peanuts. And my daughter loves Peanuts. She's read so many Peanuts books, and she likes Peanuts movies.
Speaker 2:And I'm always like, I hate Peanuts.
Speaker 3:I think Peanuts was like the dad joke of comics.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're not funny. I mean, they're funny in like a if you've if you've read them a lot, and then you you like the recurring characters, but they're just never been my favorite.
Speaker 3:More vanilla punny than funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. He was very kid friendly, I guess, is a good way to put it. Like, he did a he was a good dude, and he did a lot of I like his comic for that reason, but I just never found him funny.
Speaker 3:I think they were supposed to appeal to to much more than the grade school audience. I mean, there was some people that grew up with it and probably enjoyed it on his style set. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think there's a whole lot of movies that you like them if you grew up with them. But you don't or, you know, in comics and whatever. But if you didn't grow up with them, you don't get it. And I think that's that's fair.
Speaker 3:I think that says a lot for this film that we watched, that we have a lot more insight on people that might have loved peanuts.
Speaker 2:That I know what happens in peanuts. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at no point did I know what was happening. I have watched bad movies, and you at least kind of know how the person got where they're going. You don't always know why that person is special. That's not unique to this movie, but at no point did I understand what got us to where we were.
Speaker 2:It was like it was happening in front of me and none of it was and I was sober and awake for the entire movie. There was no Benadryl and alcohol this time. I have no Zarzaur's excuse for this.
Speaker 3:They definitely made better films out of other comic strip comic strips of the era. Like, the Phantom was definitely a better comic book movie. The Shadow was definitely a better comic book movie.
Speaker 2:Well, they're nineties.
Speaker 3:I am saying the word better. I'm I'm stretching the meaning of that word a little bit.
Speaker 2:It's relative. You did pick the other yellow face comic book and the other black face comic. So So, you know, a good comparison, but they're ten years later. They're the nineties.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. I'm just saying that this would have been sort of okay. We saw how they treated Flash Gordon. Let's try not to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I think what we're seeing is a pattern of Dino taking on really big projects that are, like, epic in scope, and then really not not getting the pieces altogether. Because was he related to Zardoz?
Speaker 5:No. I didn't see him
Speaker 2:Okay. On the list. But he was Ulysses.
Speaker 3:He was Ulysses. Yes. Mhmm. Yeah. And he is going to be related to, I think, two or three other projects that we do.
Speaker 2:Right. And do as well. These are all epic stories. And in the end, he just kind of shits the bed. Like, he just he just can't get it together.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is partly producer. This is editing as much as anything else. I don't know who edited this, but they were not sober. I can tell you that much because none of it, the clip, the way it's cut together doesn't make sense. Like Zarkov is supposed to be getting his mind wiped.
Speaker 2:So we have that whole scene where he's like, mama, mama, as you see.
Speaker 5:And we're seeing on the video.
Speaker 2:I did like that his wife falls in a pool and dies. Right. And he's like, no, my wife. And you're like, how do you just fall in a pool and die at a party? Okay.
Speaker 2:Whatever. And then, then you think he's the bad guy now because he was supposed to be trained up to level three, but that evil lady with the weird headdress is like
Speaker 5:Trained him up to level six.
Speaker 2:Go to level six. And that's the plot line that goes nowhere, which just add that to the list.
Speaker 3:It's like And then What is level six? Oh, we're not gonna explain that.
Speaker 2:Then he ends up getting they're like, send him to get Dale. She'll trust him. And so he's like, we're going to leave the castle now, Dale. And you're like, oh, no, he's evil. And then you cut to them just flying through space on some sort of laser sled thing.
Speaker 2:And he's like, oh, I tricked them. I made them think that I'd forgotten everything. But in real reality, I just quoted Shakespeare and the human spirit was my armor and it kept me from losing all of my memories.
Speaker 3:Bullshit. What?
Speaker 2:They're off in the escape that goes nowhere because they're constantly getting recaptured and then escaping again.
Speaker 3:It it makes me wanna go back and actually read the comics a little bit more thoroughly to see if what they put down on paper was as confusing as this. If they provided Yeah. Any explanation to level six or how, Zarkov could have gotten his, mind not wiped?
Speaker 2:Wipe not wiped? Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, maybe I I wanna say that maybe it was something with them being human and not really having the right equipment to wipe the minds of humans. But everybody in this film is a version of human regardless of what planet they might pretend to live on.
Speaker 2:I don't. The the real MVP is the guy in the gold mask. He had to act this whole thing in that articulated gold mask. And his spaceship is him in bed with people flying it. And he's like, wake me up when we get there.
Speaker 2:And then they just
Speaker 5:He's got like a just a little closet in the wall.
Speaker 2:And then they
Speaker 5:leans back in.
Speaker 2:Toss him on a spike. And his face explodes? Like, his eyeballs pop out and his tongue slides out of his mouth. And it, like, zoomed in out. Like, what?
Speaker 2:What?
Speaker 3:Were we did we need the gore at this particular point in the What
Speaker 2:did that have to was do with essentially
Speaker 3:a very, very clean movie.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah. Like, not even blood. Everybody just kind of explodes until this guy's eyes pop out and his tongue slides out of his face. And they're like and then the one lady gets killed and she, like, deflates.
Speaker 2:Like, she was a bag full of black water. Yeah. And then she just like what? I don't
Speaker 5:Mm-mm. I feel like dissolving into black goo feels like it's probably a reference to something that happens in the comics.
Speaker 2:Can we discuss the ending?
Speaker 3:I just caught something out of the corner of my eye, which I I I need a mild explanation for.
Speaker 2:There is none.
Speaker 3:Oh, no. No. Okay. So if you have the the so I have the film going on in the background, which is why Meng popped up at the at the worst time, the very beginning of us recording it. I noticed out of the corner of my eye, so we have the entire clan of bird men here, you know?
Speaker 3:And why is it that all of the bird men are essentially just all in the same uniform, but every single female bird woman all have absolutely separate costumes and makeups for their jewels on their wings, different colored gowns, everything.
Speaker 2:I did not even notice there were women.
Speaker 3:There there were a handful I of think maybe three.
Speaker 2:Okay. For all those men?
Speaker 3:For all those men.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Which is the exact opposite of what Meng's doing. It's one guy and a bunch of women going, let me go.
Speaker 2:There's that whole scene where he's tossing egg. I feel like I keep having acid flashbacks, and it's memories of this movie. Because there's that scene where they're they're tossing around the egg. What is the egg?
Speaker 5:The thing flashes
Speaker 3:That he's pretending it's like a football weapon?
Speaker 2:I like football. He's like I'm a quarterback. I'm a quarterback. That's like
Speaker 3:the opening scene where they're tossing the egg back and forth and trying to keep it away from his guards or whatever. This was his way of
Speaker 5:Yeah. But he uses it as a weapon?
Speaker 3:Basically uses it as a weapon, like a football. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But what is the egg?
Speaker 3:Like, it's like football jujitsu is whatever that
Speaker 2:was. It's like a football. Okay. It's fine. That's not okay.
Speaker 2:No explanation. Can we talk about the ending? Because they have the timer that's counting down to when the moon is gonna crash into the earth with which if the moon is a minute away or twelve seconds away from crashing into the earth, earth is already dead. Okay.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:If the moon is back close
Speaker 5:have already gone wrong.
Speaker 2:There's already no humanity. It's fine. Like, just let it go.
Speaker 3:Like, gravity's fucked at that point anyway. Just
Speaker 2:It counts down to zero. And then they're like, yay, Flash. You saved the world.
Speaker 3:What? Where did we
Speaker 2:reverse It this counted down to zero. What do you mean? I don't understand. And then that thing pops up and it's like, Flash Gordon saves the universe. And he's like, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he just did jump. And then they're like, yeah,
Speaker 4:he saved the what do
Speaker 2:you mean he saved the world? He didn't send the
Speaker 4:moon back. Didn't do anything.
Speaker 3:I think we needed like a end credit sequence.
Speaker 5:Down when you had to push the destroy Earth button by. And so the timer ran out, and so the destroy Earth button won't work.
Speaker 2:Although I have to say, I can't think of another movie where somebody stabs a guy with an entire spaceship.
Speaker 3:No. I can't take it one.
Speaker 2:No. I was gonna say, I bet he feels real dumb about putting that stupid spike on the front of his spaceship now.
Speaker 3:I was gonna say, I think that there's very few films that have the space needle design for the the front end of the ships.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yep. Mhmm. I think we needed an end credit sequence where Flash Gordon saves the universe, you know, and then you have an end credit sequence when he realizes, acceptor, you know, basically travels back on his sled, I guess. Yeah. So we're basically assuming that space out here doesn't require, like, a full on fucking suit.
Speaker 5:Or it or it has an air bubble around it. Possibly.
Speaker 2:I mean
Speaker 5:The sled can maintain its own atmosphere.
Speaker 3:Like, he's basically taken different planets and kinda sucked them into one sort of bubble universe that is got atmosphere no matter where you go?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It must because the guys fly. But they fly without flapping their wings. They're just kind of, like, vaguely moving their wings. And then they board a spaceship.
Speaker 2:They're like, prepare for borders. Flying people board a spaceship?
Speaker 3:I I feel like the
Speaker 2:know. Because they're like, we're all gonna get together and we're gonna defeat Ming. And then only the Hawkmen fight for him. The Arboria people don't fight at all? Only only Baron?
Speaker 3:Like, none of them at all, actually, now that I think about it. Baron is the only one.
Speaker 2:Fuck now.
Speaker 4:It's like Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know what? We realized after that last little show with Russian roulette log or whatever that was that, we we don't really like you all that much. You go with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know what? Actually, you're a petty bitch, and none of us like Aura, and we think it's a bad match. So you're on your own. And then he ends up king of the universe.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:Yeah. Or whatever that little section of the universe was anyway.
Speaker 2:So what made more sense? This movie or Zardoz?
Speaker 3:This movie did not make more sense than Zardoz.
Speaker 2:No. Somehow this made Zardoz look real coherent.
Speaker 4:Like, I mean
Speaker 2:I got done watching this and I was like, Zardoz was trying to say something. I mean, there were animated dicks, but it had a reason. Like, they had a they had a purpose.
Speaker 3:Yeah. At least there was a coherent semi coherent plot throughout most of Zardoz. Whereas here
Speaker 5:points in Zardoz where they kind of summarized. Like, they gave us a little intro, but then at the end, they kind of summarized I think there was a voice over that kind of connected a couple things, like, here's what happened after. No. Not really.
Speaker 4:But
Speaker 2:Kind of. You had a character that would be like, let me break it down for you.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think a vast majority of this film just made absolutely no sense. There were creatures that made no sense. Some stuff out of, like, a Jim Henson nightmare. The fact that we had a bunch of costumed people, but then we also had like snake people and bird people that actually looked like snakes and birds for some reason. Like, the
Speaker 4:Yep. Next
Speaker 3:step back in evolution from the people that they were being captured by.
Speaker 4:Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 3:There wasn't a lot of explanation. I feel like this could have been an early eighties television show rather than a a movie. Like, if they had drawn it out over a season, they would have had enough time to explain whatever this vision was supposed to be.
Speaker 5:The miniseries instead of the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 3:I don't want to watch something that has an extra three hours tacked onto this at all. No. But I think that they would have need an extra needed an extra three hours to sew the bits and pieces of this film together.
Speaker 2:I agree. I think or they could have picked. Pick Flash or pick Dale or pick Zarkov, but don't show
Speaker 5:all the one story.
Speaker 3:I say find the guy that wrote the original script for this that that passionately went over the the script, and he went over all the comics, and he made something epic out of it before they handed it over to this. Mhmm. Because that I wanna see. I don't have any other way to say it.
Speaker 2:Frank Herbert consulted on this script.
Speaker 5:Script revision. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. He helped revise the script.
Speaker 3:This is the edited and revised version? What the hell did it look like beforehand?
Speaker 2:Herbert, writer of Dune. Right. He's like, I I could take a look at it. I I wanna say it came in. It sat in his inbox.
Speaker 2:And then he was like, I just don't have time. So he was like, oh, I looked at it, and it's great. And he sent it back.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Sure. There was something I I I am I am
Speaker 2:What on earth? This really felt like, I don't know if you've watched the miniseries about Jodorowsky's Dune.
Speaker 5:No. I have not. If you need to watch it.
Speaker 3:So I have to watch a little bit more of Dune because I've actually you guys have given me enough background information over several podcasts that I feel like I really, really do need to to see both the original, but then maybe rewatch the two recent films.
Speaker 2:Well, Jodorowsky's Dune is a mini it's a documentary about a guy named Jodorowsky who tried to adapt Dune.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so he wanted to adapt Dune. He'd never read the book. He just got the gist of it. And he was like,
Speaker 5:friends told him it was good.
Speaker 2:He was like, the rights were available. They were really cheap. So I just bought the rights. And then I was like, okay, let me, let me figure out how to make this work. So he puts together Dan O'Bannon.
Speaker 2:He puts together Giger. He gets like this huge crew of people that have gone on
Speaker 5:to be like his team.
Speaker 2:Was like, they were my warriors. He's fun to watch. Like just to watch it for Jodorowsky is worth it because it's this Spanish born guy named Jodorowsky. But he's just, like, very artsy. And so he's like, they were my warriors.
Speaker 2:I put them together as, we were gonna fight this battle together.
Speaker 5:He moved them all, I think, to somewhere in France.
Speaker 2:Well And
Speaker 5:they all lived in one building together for months.
Speaker 2:Because he wanted to put together a show like a bible. He put together a huge book that was literally his movie. He drew up the car the comics of the movie. He had a guy drawing, like, storyboarding it. He had the whole movie together because he knew there was no way he was gonna get anyone to sign off on it if they couldn't see
Speaker 5:his fall. They used and there's these Dune Bibles that are just shot for shot every single like, the whole movie with concept art and all that. And then they had a few of these made, they sent them to the studios as the pitch for the movie. Like, here Yeah. Here's our way to convince you that we have something worth So
Speaker 2:studios were like, no, this is crazy huge. But a lot of his, like, he's a huge inspiration for, like, the sci fi art of this time period. Mhmm. Even though he never made the movie, it ended up in the Bible, ended up in so many people's hands. It was inspiration
Speaker 5:for so many movies.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the weird costuming, like in flash or the way, like the zoom in from way out and then into just a planet that's from him, all these like shots and things that he devised for his book show up in other movies. And it's, it's really interesting because he created this whole aesthetic for this time period of sci fi, but was never able to actually make his movie. And so that's what this felt like. It felt like Dino De Laurentiis got a chance to look at it and was like, hell, yeah. I like the big over the like, the headdresses, the big over the top costumes, all of the the costumes in this were amazing.
Speaker 2:Nothing else nothing else was amazing, but the costumes in this were so beautiful. That's And
Speaker 4:I was
Speaker 3:the big thumbs up for this film. I mean, the costumes were absolutely wonderful. The steps were fantastic.
Speaker 2:There's some technically challenging fabric that they work with. That one, like, pink on one side, blue on one side, night dress thing that Dale wears. It's, like, really flowy. That is so well put together. It's so pretty and nonsense.
Speaker 2:This movie was nonsense, but the costumes were so cool.
Speaker 3:I think that's that showy bit that kinda makes you forget a little bit of the insanity of this film. If you took the costumes away, none of this film would work. I mean,
Speaker 2:it It would have disappeared. You know how movies disappear? Like, there's a survivorship bias for movies where we don't keep movies that are just, like, middle of the road go they go away. We forget about them. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know, copies don't exist. They just disappear. And then you get movies like this where you're like, it's weird and pretty, and it doesn't make any sense. But it's it hits that sweet spot of like weird, pretty where people are like, you gotta see this shit. And so it keeps getting revived.
Speaker 2:Or like Matt was showing me all those clips from Ted where they love
Speaker 3:Why? Why? I feel like I would love to see somebody grab the script from this movie in exactly this form and make a just make a low rent, found a VHS recorder at Goodwill along with all the costumes version of this. Because I think it would be more entertaining than watching something where they spent an extraordinary amount of time on the costumes in the background and didn't think, you know what? Maybe we should spend a little bit more time on the script because I don't I don't understand any of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. How did we get from point a to point b? Movie was such shambles that that scene at the end where he jumps up and says, yeah. And then they go to Flash Gordon saves the universe. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The only reason why they stuck with that is because it was improvised, and they had no idea how to end the movie. That's how bad the script was. They didn't even really know how to end
Speaker 4:it. Yep. It's like It's so
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thanks, Sam.
Speaker 2:We're done. Can you imagine you're in a movie, you're making it, and you're like, I don't know where it's going. We're just this is a day to day thing. We're just we're just going day by day here. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 2:They were like, what do you guys wanna do today? Let's do that. Okay. That sounds great.
Speaker 3:Hey. Our our our friends, that basically do the Spinal Tap movie. They did Spinal Tap. What's the guy's name? Off the top of my head, can't remember his name now.
Speaker 3:Spinal Tap, the movie, they did best in show. They'd had a whole series of films. This troop would get together mockumentaries. And do mockumentaries, and everything in there is improvised with a very loose idea of where they're gonna go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But that kinda that works because you're not asking for a lot. Like, you're not asking me to go from football player getting on a plane to
Speaker 3:This could essentially be seen as a a mockumentary on a space sci fi character that never went anywhere.
Speaker 2:I mean, was reading some reviews on IMDb, and everyone seemed to believe it was deliberately campy and that the campiness was part of the aesthetic and that kinda like how Barbarella isn't really supposed to be a comedy. You can
Speaker 3:make deliberately campy and still not make it confusing and disjointed.
Speaker 2:Right. I'm like, it doesn't really save it though. Like, even if I believe that this is campy on purpose, it still They doesn't make tried to do something epic and they really I think I think that's kind of the theme of the first three movies of our series here. They're trying to do something really epic without really understanding what makes an epic. Like, is it philosophy?
Speaker 2:Is it scope of story? Is it Coherence
Speaker 4:of It is. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a shoebox full of three segment scenes from the comic strip originally. And he just pulled one out. Okay. That's the next scene. Here we go.
Speaker 3:This is the next scene.
Speaker 4:That's what
Speaker 2:it felt like.
Speaker 3:Just randomly.
Speaker 2:If we just have a lot of characters, then it will be an epic story. I think that's what the first three have all landed on is like, if we have a large cast, that's an epic story. If I have a big room at some point with half naked women in it, that's an epic story. And so that's the one thing that's happened in every movie so far is we've had, like, a large arena, lots of cast. And
Speaker 3:One thing that has tied these movies together, unfortunately, just a little bit are also semi rapey bad guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I feel like that's the low hanging fruit of villainy. It's especially for this time period.
Speaker 3:It wasn't always seen not always seen. I wanna say it wasn't villainy in Zardoz, technically. Yeah. That was more of
Speaker 2:because a he's not the villain.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was gonna say. So Yeah. I mean, there it's low hanging fruit for villainy, but, like, Zardoz used it for something else altogether.
Speaker 2:Right. It's because it's supposed to be, like, male virility. It's the, like, male strength, potency or whatever. And so you have to have, like, chicks wanna you you either have to want the chicks or the chicks have to want you. That's how I know you're real masculine.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I guess I should say it's the low hanging fruit of masculinity.
Speaker 3:Sort
Speaker 2:of Masculine a is
Speaker 3:I want, I take kind of thing. It's more of
Speaker 4:a Yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Caveman mentality, really.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna bop you on the head with a a log and drag you home by the hair kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Right. But I think that's your loincloth hero is very caveman. These are not intelligent. Like, except for the Zardoz. Zardoz so far is our outlier for that and kind of Ulysses.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, like, Flash is not a smart man.
Speaker 3:No. He is not.
Speaker 2:No. No. Things just happen to him. And as we progress, I think we end up in the same situation a lot of times, which is the male hero is strong. He is capable of surviving the things that happened to him, but everything just happens to him.
Speaker 2:Nothing is
Speaker 3:I feel like
Speaker 2:Nothing is his agency. It's just him being too dumb to get himself out of all the situations that he gets in.
Speaker 3:Flash is true. Enough to
Speaker 2:get through them.
Speaker 3:A slightly more elevated, less vocal version of, Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah. Basically, he plays the sidekick the entire movie while thinks he's the lead thinking he's the lead character.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He plays the hero in this entire movie while basically, everything just sorta happens and falls in place for him.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. And it's labeled as a superhero movie, but he's not a superhero. He doesn't have any powers.
Speaker 5:He's just a guy.
Speaker 2:He's just a guy. And it's not even like a Batman superhero. He's just like he's just a football player.
Speaker 3:Superheroes in old comic strips were really understated anyway. Like, technically, a lot of these guys didn't have superpowers. They were guys in costumes. I mean, the Phantom
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Really didn't have a lot of I I don't think there was a lot of superpower behind him. He just sorta had gadgets.
Speaker 2:Phantom has superpowers.
Speaker 5:Yeah. He has the magic ring.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. He has a magic ring.
Speaker 3:Did I forget about that part?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. He's okay.
Speaker 3:I was just focused on Billy Zane and had to
Speaker 2:go purple. That's how Billy Zane protects Africa.
Speaker 5:From England.
Speaker 3:Did they did they kinda build the Black Panther Panther off of that character?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think that's an entirely separate discussion that we talked about
Speaker 3:don't need to get into that. I don't I don't have the mental space for it after this movie anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's fine.
Speaker 3:It just sorta happened to to trickle through my what I would call a very tired brain this morning. If if you can tell I'm not as engaged as I normally am.
Speaker 2:No. I think you did fine. I think this movie there's not a lot to talk about because what the fuck? It's just a what it's just a what the fuck movie. I think he was trying for epic, and he didn't make it.
Speaker 3:Look. I have a $35 UK, sorry, ultra high definition Blu ray of this movie. I feel like I kinda wasted the $35.
Speaker 2:Well, we have this as a DVD that's with this, The Last Starfighter, Doom
Speaker 3:Now that's a movie.
Speaker 2:And one other movie.
Speaker 3:Last Starfighter was a
Speaker 2:great But it like
Speaker 4:movie pack.
Speaker 2:And it was a four movie pack. Last Starfighter is good. Kids have watched that quite a bit.
Speaker 3:Flash Gordon is just one of those films that you gotta put on when, I guess, you just have a couple of friends or buddies around if you need something to laugh at. We we've run across a few of those movies lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is a check out that shit movie. This is a check out this shit movie. That's what this is. You watch it once and then you have to inflict it on someone else.
Speaker 2:Zardoz was the same thing. You're like, I could let this die or I could share this with somebody else because check out this shit.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's what this one was. I think the only one we've watched that wasn't was Ulysses. Like, I can't say that I would ever sit down and be like, let's watch Ulysses together. But I'd be like, check out this shit. Or I would do that for Flash, the last two movies we watched.
Speaker 3:Put Ulysses on for five minutes just so that I could see the reaction of somebody realizing that they're watching Kirk Douglas dubbed over in Italian.
Speaker 2:And then subtitled in English.
Speaker 3:And subtitled in English.
Speaker 2:Yes. Correct. Yeah. So what's our next movie?
Speaker 3:Our next movie is going to be Fire and Ice. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:Are we doing Excalibur?
Speaker 3:I think that's where we drew the line the last time. I think we were talking that Excalibur went over the line into the more fantasy and less barbarian esque kind of films.
Speaker 2:Okay. Maybe we'll revisit that because I just realized Helen Mirren and sir Patrick Stewart are all in are in Excalibur.
Speaker 3:We can we can do an entire run of purely fantasy movies.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, we'll we'll put that aside for we'll put that on the table for another day. So Fire and Ice is next.
Speaker 3:Yes. Fire and Ice is next. But before we run away, I did wanna bring up a question, seeing as one of the the things that I enjoy doing, for for some of these podcasts anyway, is trying to figure out how to weave purely fantasy sequels to some of these films that we talk about. And I think we had sat down and discussed for just a very short period of time. How what would it look like if you took some of the three more incomprehensible films that we've talked about in the past and tried to tie them together as one film?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, obviously, Zardoz is the post apocalyptic Earth after the moon got too close and destroyed most of the people.
Speaker 3:Zardoz meets that.
Speaker 5:Zardoz is a far future after.
Speaker 2:Yeah. After Flash Gordon.
Speaker 5:After Flash Gordon. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it really
Speaker 2:Because because the Earth got too close, it killed almost everybody. So those people banded together, figured out how to become immortal using
Speaker 5:They got some of Emperor Ming's technology.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say, using some of Emperor Ming's technology that Flash brought back. They figured out how to become immortal so they could preserve humanity's culture.
Speaker 5:The the floating head is just his the space sled with a head built around it. It's still got the original controls in the back room.
Speaker 3:Now Yep. Zed meets Barbarella. There. I just
Speaker 5:Zardoz meets Barbarella? No. Oh, Zed.
Speaker 3:Well, Zed is character. Yeah. Was gonna say
Speaker 5:I forgot his name was Zed in Zardoz.
Speaker 3:They say Zardoz so much in that fucking film that you just
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't even realize he had a name.
Speaker 3:Yeah. His name's Zed.
Speaker 4:His name is Zed. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And eventually ends up running into Barbarella somehow.
Speaker 2:Well, I think Barbarella is just coexisting with Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3:I'd like to see the dynamic between Zed's kind of well, I guess he's has a very a more elevated mentality by the end of the film. He's not Yeah. He would fall into the category of pretty much every guy. What if what if Zed basically was that yeti man from the very beginning of the Barbarella movie?
Speaker 2:I mean, that would make sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean Well, because of them are hairy enough.
Speaker 2:They're really antith oh god. That guy. He looks like he's wearing a fursuit.
Speaker 3:But After he takes
Speaker 2:off the fursuit. They're kind of antithetical because Barbarella is guns bad, penis good, and Zardaz is guns good, penis bad.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah. But by the end of the film, he isn't guns good, penis bad. He goes the other way. So he is now guns bad, penis good.
Speaker 3:So they have they're basically
Speaker 2:he's guns good, penis good. All good. Everybody good. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Sit in cave until I rot and die at that point is what he was. The entire end of the film
Speaker 2:was be like we start back over as, like, cavemen.
Speaker 3:The son
Speaker 2:of Because we started having sex again.
Speaker 3:The son of Zed meets Barbarella then, possibly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. He goes off.
Speaker 3:Because I can't imagine I can't imagine no. Actually, I could imagine Zed being a little less than faithful. Yeah. I don't I don't see a lot of faithfulness in Zed, even though he he was only shown to have had a child with one woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm not really sure how you fit Barbarella into this.
Speaker 3:I I think I sprung that on you without too much warning, and now we're just trying.
Speaker 2:I think we were pretty good. We linked Sardoz and Flash. I think that one makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 4:but Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Barbarella feels like an alternate reality. Like when Flash entered the vortex, there's like a separate Earth that was created based on, like, the timeline split. So either he saves the earth and it becomes Barbarella's earth.
Speaker 3:He definitely did not save the earth.
Speaker 2:He doesn't save the earth because we don't know. He both saves and doesn't save the earth at the end. It's like Schrodinger's earth.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 3:If
Speaker 2:It could go either way. So he either saves it and it becomes Barbarella's planet because he brings the technology back and we become peaceful and we learn how to travel in the galaxy.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Or it it actually ended and it becomes Zardoz.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think the most incoherent part of that entire plot in Flash is the fact that, like you were saying, it counted down to zero. So technically,
Speaker 2:it was like, you saved the Earth.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I don't think they did. I think they were just like, hey. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You saved the earth. You know, basically, that they know what he's gonna find when he goes home. They're just like, yeah, buddy. Go ahead.
Speaker 5:Go tell him.
Speaker 2:Good job, you.
Speaker 3:This dumbass just building an entire planet.
Speaker 2:Tried so hard. He tried so hard. Mhmm. Well, I think this is probably a good place to leave it. I know you have to
Speaker 3:Oh god. My entire day is gonna be all over the place. So yeah. I, my my entire last two weeks.
Speaker 2:Kinda like this movie.
Speaker 3:I think that this movie might be a little bit more comprehensible than my life situation, but that's that's fine. Okay. Well, go ahead and, tell our listeners where they can find your podcast.
Speaker 2:We are at strangeandbeautiful.network. We have our Babylon five podcast that we're currently doing. We have our book club podcast where he talks about books. And that's pretty much our current, offerings. I would say.
Speaker 5:We're gonna be doing all the Dune books. I guess, the Frank
Speaker 2:Herbert going back and doing the first three Dune books, and then we're gonna do the last three. So we're gonna do the Frank Herbert six.
Speaker 3:Yeah. See, I'm a little behind right now. I'm still listening to the Stephen King series because I stopped at the point that I had read like, I read the first three books, and I hadn't gotten past that. So now I'm at the point
Speaker 2:hear that a lot.
Speaker 3:I wanna read
Speaker 2:get to drawing of the three and then they're like
Speaker 3:There was such a lengthy amount of time between the first three Yeah. And him picking up and doing more of them. Yep. So I had fallen out of that. I read the first three well before I even met my wife.
Speaker 3:So I had the the nice books that had some of the, graphic illustrations
Speaker 2:inside of The drawings? Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 3:So I don't, have anything else to say other than, you can go ahead and find our podcast on, YouTube, on Spotify, pretty much wherever you can find podcasts. And, I I still have nothing to sign off this podcast without outside of, drink some water, you thirsty bitches. I tried twice. I just shook my entire table here. I tried twice, and they came out as incomprehensible mishmash like this movie.
Speaker 3:So, we'll just, end it with, yeah.