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Discussion, analysis, and exotic opinions surrounding fandoms like Twilight, Star Wars, Harry Potter, the MCU, and far too many animes.
[00:00] Vinelle: Welcome to the newest episode of Rain Heresy.
[00:03] The Carnivorous Muffin: Can we call it that? We're doing something a little different today. We've done a similar thing before, but we hated Loki so much, we have yet to watch episode three of season one.
[00:15] Vinelle: Yeah. God, it wasn't watchable. Yeah. What we did was we had a pre watch discussion or session and then we watched the thing and then we processed.
[00:26] The Carnivorous Muffin: I don't think we said anything useful. I think we just said some variation of. I hated that for like, ten minutes after watched it.
[00:35] Vinelle: It was a very bad two episodes.
[00:38] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, two episodes. Season one didn't make it past that.
[00:43] Vinelle: But we are wanting to make some more content. And the thing is, I have been wanting for ages now to get the carnivorous muffin to watch the wave.
[00:53] The Carnivorous Muffin: This has been a difficult journey because, you see, this is the height of norwegian cinema, which means english subtitles we thought were hard to find. We have done experiences where Vanelle off the cuff translates what's going on with mixed success.
[01:11] Vinelle: It worked for both troll movies.
[01:15] The Carnivorous Muffin: We watched two.
[01:16] Vinelle: Yeah. But then we tried watching an Ingmar Bergman film and it wasn't quite so successful.
[01:22] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, it turns out he was a little too witty and there were too many lines that were actually important.
[01:30] Vinelle: Yeah. I was getting myself into an utter know. Trying to speak quickly enough and then just pausing and just catching up. Unlike when I watched, I think it was called Askiladen with muffin. And the lines are mostly things like, hey, askilaten, don't lit our house on fire.
[01:49] The Carnivorous Muffin: He lit the house on fire, by the way.
[01:54] Vinelle: And so far, that's the best norwegian film we watched.
[01:58] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, that is true.
[02:02] Vinelle: Yeah. Well, tonight we'll be watching a star studded disaster movie that at the time was a huge hit, the time being 2015. And the marketing campaign was immense. You see, for the first ever time, we are getting a blockbuster disaster movie that set in Norway starring Christopher Yunir. And Yunir, he's someone you really ought to google because his face just looks so deeply weathered. You can tell that he's a scandinavian actor and that he is used to being in wars.
[02:37] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, let me look at the page for. Oh, yeah, I think I'm seeing him. And my first thought was like Mark Wahlberg, but pretending in a movie where he's on math.
[02:49] Vinelle: I didn't want to say it, but yeah, that's the vibe. A bit of useful background here is that Norway has a very big notice me sempai complex. Very big little sister complex. Please notice me when Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008, our prime minister, Jan Stoltenberg, he was showing him Oslo. And among the things he showed Barack Obama was our very tall buildings here in Oslo. I'm sure that's going to blow this american president's mind.
[03:20] The Carnivorous Muffin: Wait, seriously?
[03:21] Vinelle: Yes. We are very much about creating monuments and buildings and movies. Anything that will get us noticed if something is discussed in american media. This is not just Norway. This is other countries too, the less noticed ones. You can bet that if a major actress who makes it, America is slovenian, they'll be talking about it. We are immensely proud of our actors who make it. When a norwegian movie was nominated for a best international film some years back, my God, it was intense. Eurovision for this reason is also a big deal.
[03:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: And yet you keep losing.
[04:00] Vinelle: They want to win, and yet the.
[04:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: Swedes beat you every time. Every time.
[04:06] Vinelle: Yeah. We are sadly in the long line of european countries that want to be noticed. And our movie industry will reflect this in part because we also have the money to put a lot of effort into production while then mimicking american film and hoping will be noticed. But really it's about making us Norwegians feel, oh, yeah, this is just like an american film, only to Norway. Also below this is troll. And Asmafin's about to experience the wave.
[04:36] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, I was about to say the troll, which we are not embarking on today. I have already been on that journey. That was quite evident in that it wasn't as unwatchably bad as a Transformers movie, but it had a similar. You could tell they were going for a similar feel in that we had a lot of CGI troll fight scenes.
[05:00] Vinelle: And of course, the troll turns out to have a tragic backstory near the end.
[05:04] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, the troll had a very tragic backstory and kind of chooses death, I guess.
[05:11] Vinelle: Yeah, I mean, I would too, after they took the skull of his child and drove it through the city of Oslo to enrage him. It's a great movie.
[05:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, that was a great plan and a great movie. And he also smashes Moomin land.
[05:29] Vinelle: Yeah. To give a bit of an idea of what the baby's about. It's about Christopher Yunnir playing a geologist, a brilliant geologist who figures out that the tourist destination. Very beautiful. You should go there. Geirangir is about to get flooded because a part of the mountain is about to fall into the fjord. And when that happens, and it's going to be imminent, a fuck ton of people are going to die.
[05:56] The Carnivorous Muffin: Wait, that's what it is? I thought they had an earthquake.
[05:59] Vinelle: No, that's the next movie. That's the next movie.
[06:04] The Carnivorous Muffin: I guess I'm going to find out. But how much of the mountain fell into the sea?
[06:09] Vinelle: Big pot.
[06:10] The Carnivorous Muffin: What? Wait, no, that's why I thought he was a geologist.
[06:17] Vinelle: No, see, he notices that there's a fish here in the mountain that's getting bigger and bigger, just widening.
[06:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: I'm like, what?
[06:26] Vinelle: I mean, we end the movie with a. This could actually happen. And that would be bad news for Geranger. It really would be. I mean, we also did have, at the time, serious drama about the mountain where a big piece of that mountain, and this was in real life, was going to fall off. I remember there was a live stream of that mountain that just kept going because it wasn't falling.
[06:49] The Carnivorous Muffin: Falling slowly.
[06:50] Vinelle: Yeah, I was quite invested. I think, actually it was a year or two later, or else it was just ongoing for that entire period. I don't remember. Eventually it fell off and there were headlines because fucking finally we had all been waiting for this to happen. Stunt.
[07:08] The Carnivorous Muffin: What am I subjecting myself to? How long is this? Let's look. Oh, thank God. It's only an hour and 45 minutes.
[07:16] Vinelle: Yeah. I watched it in movies and it felt longer. In a good way. I thought it was a great movie at the time.
[07:22] The Carnivorous Muffin: In a good way. All right. I have nothing more to say about this because I know the american films in this genre are kind of terrible. We sort of peaked with Independence Day and then it just got worse. So I expect that level of thing here.
[07:44] Vinelle: The thing is, everyone agreed that the wave was really good. But then the quake, which is the sequel, in which there's an earthquake, it was so bad. And you could tell they really wanted to make it a trilogy because at the end of the quake, they're talking about how a new disaster could happen at any moment.
[08:00] The Carnivorous Muffin: What? Okay, what do you even do outside the quake? All right, would it be a volcano erupts, new quake, another quake, a tsunami after the earthquake, which is kind of what you expect. Or is it like ant people roam out of the fissure in the earth from the quake and the mountain falling to the sea?
[08:25] Vinelle: Maybe he would go to Iceland and predict a volcanic outburst before anybody else.
[08:31] The Carnivorous Muffin: Before anyone else.
[08:32] Vinelle: But then it wouldn't be happening in Norway, you see? So it would be a bit. That's the entire point. The trailer was all about how the trailer for the sequel, that is, both movies, was all about it's happening in Norway, but the sequel trailer was very much about this time it's Oslo. And then it turned out that they blew their entire budget on the shot we see in the trailer of Oslo being blown to pieces or shaken to pieces. And they spent the entire movie inside the Radisson Blue hotel on the barcode park in Oslo.
[09:05] The Carnivorous Muffin: What?
[09:06] Vinelle: Yeah. I wish I was joking, but no, there's just elevator shafts. Which floor is my wife on? And a whole bunch of nonsense.
[09:17] The Carnivorous Muffin: Okay, that's bad. This is going to be bad. All right.
[09:21] Vinelle: There are good norwegian movies in existence.
[09:24] The Carnivorous Muffin: You subjected me to troll. Now the wave ask lad was at least watchable. It was kind of bad, but I could watch it. It was okay.
[09:37] Vinelle: Yeah. I'm giving you the tour of diverse of. Yeah, yeah. Dead Snow is great. Generally, samian movies tend to be very good. That's the best of the best we've got to offer, really. The king Snow also really good. But they were just being. I mean, yes, making historical movies is difficult, but they took serial liberties. They just went off historical events. So more of a. I think it was marketed as semi biographical movie. Well, we have some other historical movies. There's Kantiki about guys on the raft. There's Amundsen guys heading north and Maxmanus guys during the war.
[10:21] The Carnivorous Muffin: Let's just start this movie.
[10:23] Vinelle: Yeah, well, we just watched it.
[10:31] The Carnivorous Muffin: I should preface, I've seen many worse movies than this. I have seen many, many worse movies than the wave. It doesn't even rank in my top ten. Bad.
[10:45] Vinelle: I like to think it has a very particular flavor known as deeply serious scandinavian movie type bad. To give an example, before we get into submersing what was happening in the film, at one point, Christian, our main character, he stayed behind to try and save his friend's wife while his friend ran off with his kid and Christian's daughter. So they did an exchange. I'll protect your family, you protect mine. And when they see each other again, wife dead.
[11:17] The Carnivorous Muffin: And I want to emphasize how scandinavian this is. And in this moment when Christian's hobbling up son's wife and friends looking at him, waiting for some explanation of where wife, they don't say anything. They just stare at each other. And there's a subtle bro nod. Sup, bro? Your wife's dead.
[11:41] Vinelle: It's a very somber moment.
[11:43] The Carnivorous Muffin: And he kind of nods back, little jerkly, because he's showing emotion. And then they never speak of it.
[11:52] Vinelle: Sometimes muffin and I will notice cultural differences between us because I thought, wow, what a sad moment.
[11:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: Wait, seriously? Yeah.
[12:02] Vinelle: It seemed like a perfectly natural.
[12:07] The Carnivorous Muffin: No, he just, like, shakeily nods his head like he's going to break down, but he doesn't and then 2 seconds later we're editing and he's non emoting again, sitting in the car with the kids. We never speak of this.
[12:22] Vinelle: It's. I will say that in american movies, which muffin started explaining how in american movies he would be crying out about, my wife is dead. It's all your fault. You killed her. And I just always viewed that as very melodramatic and just sort of forced.
[12:42] The Carnivorous Muffin: That man is not following Jantalo.
[12:46] Vinelle: Yantelo is something else. But yes, I honestly, this movie I would recommend, if you have absolutely nothing else to do and if you are with someone else, because we have a lot of shots of mountain man looking at mountain man looking upon water running down from mountain. Mentions of how he loves mountains more than wife. Man leaves children in car for several hours because he must go check on mountain. So the movie begins.
[13:33] The Carnivorous Muffin: Wait, I just realized they solved none of their problems.
[13:37] Vinelle: Yeah, they're still going to Stavangir.
[13:40] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah. Man still loves mountain more than wife. Mountain's just a little sad right now.
[13:48] Vinelle: The mountain is very clearly a metaphor for the other woman. Not even a metaphor. He is full on having an affair with mountain.
[13:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: With mountain. Yeah, he didn't talk it out with wife. He didn't really get chewed out for the whole stunt where he left the kids for hours to Cavorton Mountain.
[14:06] Vinelle: We should maybe get to the beginning like what the film is about.
[14:10] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, we should do that.
[14:12] Vinelle: I can try to keep the summary short. So we opened up to Christian, an archaeologist, and his wife, a hotel manager. He has gotten a wonderful new job in an oil rig. So they are moving to oil city, which is tavanger. And son has feelings because he likes living. And they all have feelings because they love garangir so much. Gairangar is the name of the village you're living in. Okay. But it's all going nicely, except Christian checks in on work on his going away party. And mountain has been moving. Funny. This is problem because if there is a rockslide, landslide, which is the correct word.
[14:55] The Carnivorous Muffin: Landslide is correct word.
[14:57] Vinelle: Landslide. If there is landslide, which is what they are monitoring for, that is their entire job. That is the purpose of why the geologists are there. They monitor mountain because that landslide will decimate the village as it will cause a big, big tsunami or a very large wave if you want to tidal drop. Anyway, he notices that there have been funny motions in the mountain, but you can't evacuate the entire village because of that. And yes, we are doing slight jaws here. Even though he is the only competent geologist and therefore says, yes, we must evacuate village.
[15:38] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, you know, except the difference is jaws is a good movie and we had a lot more smarmy politicians who just want to keep it open for tourism.
[15:50] Vinelle: Yeah. No, a general trend in these movies is that we want all our characters to be very nuanced and three dimensionals. So this mommy boss who says we are not sounding the alarm for this, also heroically sacrifices himself.
[16:06] The Carnivorous Muffin: Is that what that was about?
[16:08] Vinelle: Yeah, it made three dimensional. Yes, it gave him character. I don't even remember things seriously enough to walk into the crevice in the first place. And then when mountain did bad thing, he chose to sacrifice himself so his colleague could get out of crevice.
[16:25] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, you see, I thought that was a dumb decision because Mountain was doing.
[16:30] Vinelle: Things going in the first.
[16:33] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, yeah.
[16:35] Vinelle: And the mountain is doing very specific things and they all think, wow, that's strange. Except for Christian, who's sitting at home looking through his books and realizing that, my God, when Mountain does this specific thing.
[16:50] The Carnivorous Muffin: One thing we are worried the mountain will do, the thing we're up here to monitor, and nobody knows what that means.
[16:59] Vinelle: He is the only one to then put together and he doesn't even realize it. He doesn't know it instinctively. He has to look through his archives, old history books to see what happened in the past and then have his my God. Moment, at which point he calls the others and lets them know that they got to get out of there and they got to sound the alarm. And also I think there might be some scratching noises from my cats trying to get out a door. Please ignore.
[17:32] The Carnivorous Muffin: I'm not hearing it, but thank you.
[17:36] Vinelle: Yeah, I hope we don't hear it in the recording either. But if so, then listeners now know what that's about. Blame the cute, cute cats, not me. Yeah, it's not showing up as being input, so hopefully that's fine. But yes, landslide happens and Christian jumps into car with his daughter and they drive out of town, only they get stuck in traffic because everyone is driving out of town at the same time. So they have to run and shenanigans unfold and then his neighbor's wife dies. Anyway, that was all very uneventful for our main character because habitually had nothing else to do but to drive out. So how do we give him something new to do? Oh, yes. His wife did not evacuate from the hotel, which is a very good thing, as it turns out, because the bus they were evacuating on it had four minutes to get from the center of village to up to the top of mountain. It did not succeed to do this. All the people in the bus died. But she was not on the bus because her son had been skateboarding in the basement and had no idea that the alarm was going off like the kids do. He was listening to hip hop.
[18:45] The Carnivorous Muffin: Hip hop skateboarding the basement.
[18:48] Vinelle: Yeah. So she runs down into the. Runs all around the hotel.
[18:55] The Carnivorous Muffin: Danish couple decides to stay with her. I mean, I guess it's fortunate because if they'd gotten on the bus, they would have died.
[19:02] Vinelle: Except they still die.
[19:04] The Carnivorous Muffin: Except they still died in horrible ways.
[19:07] Vinelle: Yeah. One worse than the other. Yeah. Because the wave happens and what they first try to do is let's run out into the village. I know we'll be crushed. Let's go back into bomb shelter. And then wife doesn't make it inside, so she drowns, at which point.
[19:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yes, danish wife makes it in bomb shelter.
[19:26] Vinelle: Yes, the important one makes it. So now we have wife, son and danish man. And danish man is not being very stoic. He's not good at this.
[19:38] The Carnivorous Muffin: He's not taking. He was remarkably stoic, given his wife has just died and they kind of just pushed her out of the bomb shelter.
[19:48] Vinelle: Well, it was her or not closing the door. The female lead.
[19:55] The Carnivorous Muffin: All right. He was scandinavian upset.
[20:02] Vinelle: Anyway, he then proceeds to panic and panicking people in drowning situations. As to bomb shelter is flooding are bad. So the wife just makes a snap decision and drowns him. Just puts her thighs around his neck and drowns him. The sun is just looking a bit traumatized and she just says, don't look, boy, don't look. And it's worth mentioning that casting muffin, I think you are best person to describe the casting decisions made in this movie.
[20:34] The Carnivorous Muffin: Oh, yeah, there's a load. So, first off, and I didn't mention this, but from an outside perspective, I cannot stress enough how norwegian this film is. I know that makes sense, but everyone looks norwegian and it's weird. It's not that everyone's tall and blonde, but everyone's tall and blonde. It's so weird.
[21:02] Vinelle: The thing is, Mafina's pointed this out to me before with previous movies. I genuinely do not know what she's talking about.
[21:12] The Carnivorous Muffin: That's number, but. All right, so first we have Christian, who's in an american film. Well, it wouldn't be Matt Damon because this movie, he wouldn't take it. But it's like. Well, so I could see a mix of people. They probably would want Matt Damon or like Tom Cruise or maybe Wahlberg. But that sort of every man, smart, geologist person who will star in our movie, but you will think nothing about as a person because he has no qualities.
[21:47] Vinelle: Oh, no. But it's very important to think things about him as a person. We spend the first, like, 20 minutes establishing.
[21:52] The Carnivorous Muffin: I know. It's very boring.
[21:54] Vinelle: Yeah.
[21:55] The Carnivorous Muffin: All right. Yeah. Maybe they'd make him Jeff Goldblum. Maybe, but probably not, because that would make him too noticeable. Anyway, what he looks like is he looks like Mark Wahlberg. But if he was cast as a meth head, and I'm sorry, that's just like he has that look to him. Gaunt, paranoid.
[22:20] Vinelle: He looks a bit frail, but also looks like a meth head. The thing is, I want to say he was the right casting, but they wrote the role wrong, because, true, he's.
[22:33] The Carnivorous Muffin: A man in love with mountain.
[22:34] Vinelle: He is a man in love with mountain, who, when he is sleeping in the empty house with his daughter, whole thing. I won't get into that because, believe me, we had a lot of details about his family's current home situation, moving to Stavangir.
[22:47] The Carnivorous Muffin: Somehow I learned nothing about them.
[22:50] Vinelle: Yeah. So they're going to sleep in this empty house. Right. But they threw away all the furniture earlier in the day. So he just jumped into the trash, throws out the trash mattress for his daughter to sleep in, and then a trash chair for himself to sit in by the window as he has a drink and stares at the mountain. And I feel the mistake this movie made was in trying to make him seem too functional and a man who has a very put together beautiful wife, really beautiful children. I'm sorry, but this is a rat. This is a little rat who loves the mountain.
[23:28] The Carnivorous Muffin: I cannot stress enough. We edit so we see the light change, but he's staring at that mountain in that chair, unmoving for several hours, like all night.
[23:41] Vinelle: He also gets his colleagues to fly him out to the mountain at one point so he can creep into the crevice.
[23:46] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, that just sounds like a sex metaphor now.
[23:49] Vinelle: It does. He'll be talking to his wife and then turn his head to look at a mountain. And the wife just disappears from the frame. And we instead just look at huge mountain man's head in lower left corner.
[24:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: She did just disappear from that frame, didn't she? And then the next would see her. She's at work.
[24:07] Vinelle: Yeah. And I would keep calling it like, oh, he's about to look at the mountain again. And then he would turn his head and look longingly at the mountain.
[24:14] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, jokes on him. Mountain kill town, but not him.
[24:18] Vinelle: So maybe it loved him back. He had some serious plot armor going. So this movie had very poor understanding.
[24:24] The Carnivorous Muffin: Of physics, despite all the focus on mountain.
[24:28] Vinelle: At one point, when he realizes that he and the neighbor's wife are not going to make it to the top of the mountain, he goes, okay, well, there are tons of cars here. Let's just get into yours. We'll just sit there and hope for the best. And the neighbor's wife very much does not make it because that was a horrible decision.
[24:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: She gets impaled.
[24:50] Vinelle: He is perfectly uninjured. Not only does he not get crushed by the water. And I'm left with the impression that the Filmmakers either did not know or did not want the audience to remember what happens. And water hits you at a very high velocity.
[25:07] The Carnivorous Muffin: I think they didn't want you to remember that. Or that this man should be so ill, he swam through so much floodwater.
[25:17] Vinelle: Yeah. And then he gets up to the top of the mountain and sees that his daughter is alive. We had the whole exchange with the neighbor where the neighbor finds out, she'silent, nodding, that his wife died. And then this beautiful guy decides to go back into town since the wave has receded now to look for his presumably dead wife and son, leaving his daughter. She's like six or something, really wants.
[25:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: To be with her father.
[25:45] Vinelle: It's a terrifying situation. And he's like, you can be brave, can't you? I guess, yeah, that's my father.
[25:53] The Carnivorous Muffin: Now.
[25:57] Vinelle: Also worth noting that the son was extremely physically weak.
[26:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: And the thing is, they cast him wrong because he doesn't look it at all. Because he's 17, looks very attractive, looks relatively muscular. Except they have these weird scenes where he doesn't really say he's a loner, but it's like he moodily skips rocks and dad goes, hello, son. How is it going?
[26:24] Vinelle: Actually, I would argue that. I would just say that makes him just thinking it wasn't at all. No, muffin, you're coming from american cinema. Remember he was making flirty eye contact with a cute hotel employee. To me, he came across not well to do kid who's doing well, employee dies.
[26:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: So nothing came of that. I think she got two lines.
[26:52] Vinelle: Yeah. We have a very ghoulish scene where Christian finds the overturned hotel bus and the bus is completely structurally intact. Like perfectly fine, specifically so we can get, like two minutes of him walking through the bus and checking out every single corpse to see if his wife and son were in the bus. I'm very impressed with him. For finding that bus in the first place because he had to search the entirety of the village of Kairamir. How did he find the bus?
[27:22] The Carnivorous Muffin: I don't know.
[27:24] Vinelle: We also do not know how he made it from, because he was in a car that got thrown around during the tsunami and crashed down in somewhere in just an apocalyptic hellscape. And then next time we see him, he somehow found his way back to near the top of the road.
[27:41] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, I'm still confused about that.
[27:44] Vinelle: With top of the road leading out of the village.
[27:46] The Carnivorous Muffin: Where did he come? That's very steep.
[27:48] Vinelle: That's going to take you an hour at least to walk up there.
[27:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, that was pretty much the movie, except it also ended on white text on black screen. So it's serious that landslides are absolutely a thing that can happen with this particular mountain, and it could happen at any time, which I can only translate as fear mongering after this movie if I took it in any way seriously.
[28:17] Vinelle: The sequel did it, too. It was taken as being super, super.
[28:20] The Carnivorous Muffin: Cool, by the way. Earthquakes exist. This could happen to you. Everyone could quite die.
[28:28] Vinelle: I think you underestimate a sheer and deep norwegian need for attention. Just things to happen.
[28:34] The Carnivorous Muffin: I mean, what I'll say is this. Like I said, I've seen many worst movies. This is nowhere near the worst movies I've ever seen. It's just unremarkably bad.
[28:44] Vinelle: I'm also fascinated because it's very clear as you react to that you have been watching american movies.
[28:51] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yes, I have primarily seen american films. Yes.
[28:55] Vinelle: Yeah. Also about the son's physical weakness. We'll just have arbitrary thing. His mother is portrayed by a very skinny woman, and yet she will consistently be impossibly, like, superhero level strong, able to overpower a drowning man who weighs like 200 pounds or something.
[29:14] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah. A full grown drowning man easily, easily drowns.
[29:19] Vinelle: This man able to close a door where floodwater is against her steel door.
[29:25] The Carnivorous Muffin: That thing's going to be in a bomb shelter. That thing's going to be heavy and thick.
[29:29] Vinelle: Yeah.
[29:30] The Carnivorous Muffin: And then she's able to open that door multiple times.
[29:34] Vinelle: Yeah. And she is also able to keep swinging, not get tired at all, while her son is near to passing out. And towards the end of the movie, husband comes to rescue them. And then Christian sort of decides, okay, or he loses all his energy or whatever. Suddenly he's drowning and he just loses consciousness and she swims right back in there and pulls him out. A grown man. She's able to swim after all that, she's able to swim with him back out. And this all makes her son look so weak because the entire time he's just sitting very uselessly being helpless.
[30:12] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah. I'm going to ask the blasphemous question. Why was the son a character?
[30:18] Vinelle: She needed a reason to get into the bomb shelter.
[30:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: That's it. That's the only reason.
[30:26] Vinelle: Yeah. And also, well, it was very nuclear family.
[30:30] The Carnivorous Muffin: If they have one son, one daughter, two parents.
[30:34] Vinelle: And nuclear family, subversive in that the mother is closer to the son than the father is.
[30:39] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah. I could really tell that subversion was going on.
[30:43] Vinelle: Yeah.
[30:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, I think this highlights for me that the thing 2011, which we probably should have done one of these episodes for but did not because we were fools.
[30:52] Vinelle: Oh, God. Yeah. We missed out.
[30:53] The Carnivorous Muffin: An opportunity there, was clearly made by Americans, despite starring Norwegians. I forever love them because characters actually emoted.
[31:08] Vinelle: I'm actually slightly tempted now to do a review of something 2011. I will give one fun tidbit about that movie, one that I'm very much in love with. Is that on the wiki you will read that the norwegian actors, as they were allowed to improvise a few things. One of the things they improvised but had clearly practiced beforehand was the performance or just things they were allowed to add into the movie on impulse that made it more norwegian. Was the norwegian folk song. Sami had none. That's a Eurovision song. That's Sami. And I just love them for putting Eurovision. That's even historically correct. This would have been in Eurovision two years before the events of that movie, in this american movie. And I have no idea.
[31:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: I have nothing more to say about the wave, though.
[31:56] Vinelle: Yeah. No, well, it was very strange rewatching it because I remember, I thought, this is great. But I also remember thinking, when does the wave come? And did the wave just come and go? Okay.
[32:13] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, because you have ten minutes for it to get there and then it goes through.
[32:19] Vinelle: Yeah. And it's a beautiful movie about people whose job is to do a specific thing and then they do not do specific thing. Margot, the woman who's supposed to press the red button of evacuate, she needs to have everybody yelling at her to press the red evacuate button or she slowly walks over, presses it.
[32:40] The Carnivorous Muffin: She needed some real handholding in that scene.
[32:44] Vinelle: It was her entire job. And the guy sitting next to her just sort of watches instead of rushing over to press the button already. They could have done that the day before. And then the last movie is when Christian finds out that there's going to be an earthquake.
[33:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: Does his son get stuck in a basement again?
[33:05] Vinelle: No, I think his son is fine, actually. He was at the university the entire time. I think he spent the entire movie not being in the movie.
[33:14] The Carnivorous Muffin: Oh, did we cut him?
[33:16] Vinelle: We didn't cut him. He's there. I think he gets to be the only sane man in some sort of situation. I don't remember. But all the focus is on Radisson Blue Hotel, and I don't think that the sun makes it into the Radisson Blue Hotel. I think it just hangs out at campus the entire time.
[33:33] The Carnivorous Muffin: Oh, my God.
[33:37] Vinelle: Yeah, it was a movie about things.
[33:41] The Carnivorous Muffin: I have nothing else to say.
[33:43] Vinelle: Yeah, I can tell.
[33:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: I do not recommend this movie. I guess if you want a norwegian cinema experience, then if you want long.
[33:52] Vinelle: And loving shots of mountain.
[33:55] The Carnivorous Muffin: No, you see, the thing is, that was easily the best part of this movie, except those shots could have been longer to take away from the rest of the movie's runtime.
[34:05] Vinelle: Oh, I know. You could tell the director of this was not David Lean.
[34:08] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, that's most directors, anyway.
[34:11] Vinelle: Yeah, but, you know, a lot of directors will. I just felt those shots were not being made the most of. Yeah.
[34:17] The Carnivorous Muffin: Considering they did get a helicopter. We deserved a lot more helicopter shots of the mountains and the fjords.
[34:24] Vinelle: And we did not get them.
[34:26] The Carnivorous Muffin: We did not get them, which is very surprising to me.
[34:29] Vinelle: We did, however, get a lot of CGI.
[34:31] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, we got a lot of CGI. Wave.
[34:33] Vinelle: I hope I have not ruined my country's cinematic reputation.
[34:37] The Carnivorous Muffin: I mean, America has plenty of terrible films, so it's fine.
[34:40] Vinelle: But the thing is, we have much fewer.
[34:45] The Carnivorous Muffin: Know.
[34:46] Vinelle: There have been good movies. There have been good movies.
[34:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: And this one did as advertised.
[34:51] Vinelle: Did exactly.
[34:52] The Carnivorous Muffin: It is. I don't know if I would say it's any worse than the day after tomorrow.
[34:57] Vinelle: Oh, God, I can't remember what that one. I'm not sure I watched it.
[35:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: It's bad. It's the one where suddenly things are.
[35:09] Vinelle: Oh, yeah. Because I was thinking about another movie. Then I hope Ben Stiller stars in it.
[35:16] The Carnivorous Muffin: No, he does not. I forget who it is.
[35:20] Vinelle: I'm almost tempted to force Muffin to watch more scandinavian movies because we have had some deeply dramatic films. There's one about divers in North Sea, and it features the other big name in norwegian acting. In fact, the biggest name, possibly Axelhani. And once you see him, you will know why our big actors who make it are characters. They are not the Tom cruises of this world.
[35:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: They're all character actors.
[35:46] Vinelle: Yeah.
[35:47] The Carnivorous Muffin: Except the thing is, this one, they cast the character actor as the Tom Cruise role. And it's very confusing.
[35:55] Vinelle: I don't think it's confusing. I think they could have tried much less hard to make him a wholesome, family type guy. But I did very much enjoy watching this poor put together woman have to try and put up with her husband who will leave their children in a car for hours at an end because he had to go to the mountain.
[36:17] The Carnivorous Muffin: I miss the mountains, Gandalf. All right. I declare us.
[36:25] Vinelle: Very good. Goodbye. Goodbye.