Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What up, everybody? It's week two of Staithum Temper.

SPEAKER_03 0:04

That's right. This week we discuss, well, the truly baffling in the name of the king, colon, a dungeon siege tale. And we'll recover by chatting about the new thriller onslaught.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

For TV, we'll be discussing the season three finale of Silo and Lanterns, season one, episode four.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Anyway, uh, that first movie's gonna be a rough one, so we might as well deal with it sooner than later.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

This is We We Should Watch that episode 2024.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

That's like the keeper's other one go.

STATHAMTEMBER Intro

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Listen, Statham Timber isn't just about celebrating the hits.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, sometimes it's about venturing into unexplored corners of the Statham filmography, staring directly into the abyss and seeing what stares back.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

This week, the abyss is fantasy statham.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Are you ready to stare into the void? I thought I was, but now I'm not so sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

At least we don't ever have to talk about it again, right?

STATHAMTEMBER Featured Movie Review & Discussion: In the Name of the King (w/ spoilers)

SPEAKER_03 2:22

And uh, okay. When we picked this one, we basically just saw the title and we're like, oh hell yeah, Statham with the Sword, Sword and Sorcery, period, Statham, sure, sounds fun. Yeah. We did not clock what we were actually walking into here. Because this is a 2007 fantasy movie directed by Yu Bull. That's right. That you Bull. It is based on the Dungeon Siege video game, which sure, whatever. And somehow the cast is Jason Statham, Ray Leota, Ron Perlman, John Reese Davies, Burt Reynolds, and Matthew Lillard. Okay. Just an absolute insane collection of people to find in the same movie. Datham plays a farmer who is named Holy shit, you're not gonna believe it. Farmer. Yeah. Farmer the farmer. After his village is attacked by these animal warrior or things called Krugs, his wife is kidnapped, son is killed, and he sets off on a quest to save her and avenge his son. So we've got Statham, we've got swords, we've got evil wizards, we've got Burt Reynolds, we've got Matthew Lillard, and we got motherfucking Krugs. So, Sushi, what did you think of uh in the name of the king call in a dungeon siege tale?

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Well, I'd never seen In the Name of a King previously, obviously. Nor did I ever really look into the movie. Where I probably would have had some opinion towards it before it was randomly selected as our next Statham Tember movie. The only details I knew of the movie ahead of time were, like you said, pretty much the name, the fact that it had Statham starring in it, and I assumed it was some medieval fantasy or period film. Even though our randomized picks are off a list of movies, Jason Statham has a credited role in. If I could go back in time and omit this movie from the list somehow, I definitely would have based on these two details I later discovered. Oh god. As you mentioned, first, this is a U-Bull film. I have limited experience with this film, since I basically tried to avoid seeing anything else he made after seeing Blood Rain, the movie that he made before this. Which actually brings me to the second detail I should bring up that this is a video game adaptation. I wasn't even aware of that, though. I have played Dungeon Siege 3 on Xbox 360 in the past. Probably because it was a subtitle of this movie, and I only recall seeing the movie title in the name of the king without the subtitle.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

So I don't know. I feel like that was maybe a conscious decision in the marketing later on.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

It's a bit of a mouthful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't really start looking anything up about this movie until we actually started watching it.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

So I had no idea the emotional roller coaster had been in store for her. Oh god. Right out the gate and dealing with Ray Leota making out with Lily Sobieski.

SPEAKER_05 5:48

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I mean, RIP to dude, but as far as this movie goes, that shit is nasty given that dude is 30 years older than her.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Uh-uh. Don't like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Apparently, is also sucking her life force from her or whatever. Then we cut the John Reese Davies eavesdropping on them from afar somehow.

SPEAKER_05 6:09

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Like, we're given absolutely no context to what we just saw, but hey, we cut the stantham after that, so I thought we were okay. But I couldn't even enjoy that shit. Yeah. Because I'm wondering why the fuck he's farming turnips here in an outfit that looks suspiciously like what you'd expect if they'd had Walmart back in the medieval days, like a banded collar shirt with cutoff sleeves.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

It's giving like Dexter's Kill outfit, but looser.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

It's giving what was the Martin Lawrence film? Black Knight?

SPEAKER_03 6:40

Black Knight.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah. The Black Knight outfits that Martin creates after he establishes himself. But anyway, I could talk about Black Knight even more because it would be a very simple avoidance to continue. But I really should return talking about this movie. Anyway. Statham's got a kid, and he's throwing up his boomerang. Why? I don't fucking know, but the VFX for it looks like shit.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

I forgot about the boomerang.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

My god. Then Ron Pearlman randomly shows up walking a pig on a leash. Hellboy. This cast is just ridiculous because you don't even get a chance to get used to each actor before you realize they got Claire Ferlani as Jason Statham's wife in this movie.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah. Like, what? I know.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

There's so much going on in this movie that you're giving no context for and no time to really process. I didn't even realize that Statham's character. That motherfucker's name is Farmer.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Yeah. Yeah. He is known as Farmer, is what they say.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I think that the movie is very aware of it too. So they address it in the dumbest way, with Ferlani providing the dumbest reasoning to her son for him doing it, which is basically he thinks that people should be named after what they do. What the fuck explanation is that?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

That's what last names were for in the old movie.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Who does that? Who the fuck does that? So all of that said, one of the things I realized early on was there is so much uneven contribution among the cast in this movie.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Okay. Some of the actors, like Burt Reynolds, they do not give the slightest shit about this movie. Oh yeah. Barely bothering to remember lines, clearly looking at a script, or poorly recalling lines from memory, regardless of the material they're given to work with. But I'd say the rest of the cast varies so wildly in their contributions due to everything from lack of effort to weird and unexpected story and character development. It's so hard to tell where the problem is from, you know?

SPEAKER_03 8:50

It's all problems.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

But I think it's probably safest to assume that it's at least indirectly due to Bull. Yeah. Even though it's probably more direct.

SPEAKER_03 9:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all his fault.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

So the next crazy thing that I realized about this movie was it just doesn't care to rein it in with the number of storylines that it has going on.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

It's a smattering of stories.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

I swear, at one point there's like five going on. Yeah. You don't feel anything close to an intersection of them until basically the end of the movie. Not only that, we're jumping between each of them with what seems like zero reasoning, too.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

They just end it whenever and they just jump over to the other one. But it's not like there's any flow to it. I mean, at one point Lily Sobieski's character dons a full suit of armor and heads out because she feels like she fucked up. Oh, yeah. That's the only context that you're given for that. Right. Did she have fight training? Seems like she's just magic. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Yeah, there's yeah, magic is a part of this uh realm.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah. Later on in the movie, literally, after the huge battle against the Krug, we got something going on with Statham being established as Burt Reynolds' character's son. Oh, really? Yeah. And then Matthew Lillard's character, that character's nephew, in a duel with a commander of his uncle's army. Okay. It happens so much that I almost forgot we still got a deal with Claire Frlani and Ron Pearlman being brought to Ray Leota. I thought the movie basically was over. I forgot about that. Oh my god. I checked out after the Handaid Over the Kingdom to Statham. But I was paying just enough attention that I was still able to catch the horrible VFX fights Ray Leota had between John Reese Davies and then later Jason Statham. The latter basically leading to the end of the movie. Given that this movie was such a mess structurally, I also just had a few random notes.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

It's fitting for a movie like this.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Tuck into the discussion. The first one. This movie.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Oh my god, the zipline scene is so corny.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

It's fucking stupid, man. I hated it. Next, I don't think any of the women in this cast were spared the requirement or whatever to show cleavage in this movie.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

So much cleave.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

You don't need Claire Ferlani to show titty. Just let the girl cry and make people feel things.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Next, I love that we not only get tree ninjas, but maybe actual ninjas later on too. Also, while we're on the topic of tree ninjas, did Christanna Loken lose a bet to Yule Bowl? Or did they just equally not give a shit about anything but collecting a paycheck when it comes to movies they worked on? Because I don't get how someone would want to work with this dude more than once otherwise.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Well, I actually looked that up. The reasons are he pays on time and he pays up front.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah, that's what I figured was probably something like that. Last uh random note. I wish I knew what the limitations of the magic in this movie because there's so many moments where I assume either Ray Leota or John Reese Davies could have used their abilities to battle this shit out way earlier in the story. Maybe even before the events of this movie took place, but they just didn't for some reason.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

They waited until they gotta do magic sword fights, bro. That's how they handled it.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, but I don't understand why they waited until then to do them. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

That's very true. I feel like it's so random. Like he had a list of ideas and said, uh, we'll do this scene for seven minutes, we'll do this scene for two minutes, we'll do one from this, one from that.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Which led to my ADHD thinking it was just me.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Aw.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

So I blew so much time trying to like rein myself in, thinking that it was something that wasn't this movie.

SPEAKER_04 13:16

Oh no, it was the movie.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Um but then the more I kept circling back around, it was like, nah, man, it's this movie. It's just crazy. And that's why I have to go straight into my ratings now, because I don't know what else to say. I mean, it was really hard to enjoy this movie.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

But taking into consideration that Statham did seem to deliver the type of action we're used to.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Having to work in the weird constraints of the movie. I was able to avoid giving this a lower score. I gave it a one and a half. Okay. He's basically doing kickboxing with some sword fighting while having to deal with the movie's supremely stupid characters, storylines, and stunts, and wild variation of quality across acting costumes and DFX. I almost felt like half a point of that one and a half is probably just sort of an apology to Statham.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Uh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Aside from Statham, the cast was weirdly stacked, but also made no sense. Very chaotic. I'd be really surprised to find out that there was uh some sort of connection between everyone they casted for this movie, but I honestly think it was just down to whoever they could get.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

I think they just picked names out of a hat.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

I almost feel like that's probably the biggest driver for the lack of uniformity in this movie. Like beyond the structure of it, some of the actors like John Reese Davies have been in genre movies similar to this. Others really haven't, but depending on the degree of involvement in the plot, they either deliver something that makes sense in relation to something else in this movie, or they just completely wing it. Yeah. So even though I know this movie angers some people for me, it was just tiring because I got frustrated so early on that I just I couldn't find it in myself to care anymore at one point.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

You know what it weirdly reminds me of? They're those podcasts that help you fall asleep by telling boring, weird stories. It's like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Baffled. Just baffled, irritated and frustrated at how something like this happens.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

My brain worked so hard to make it make sense, and that is impossible.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah. But anyway, I probably should move on to my Stathan standout moment.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Which would be the moment that Statham runs on top of Dude's heads.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

When he's going after Matthew Lillard, after Dude calls Burt Reynolds. That is a thing that happens in this movie. Yeah. I mean, that whole sentence happens. That's really all I was trying to illustrate with that. Because it's technically not even a favorite moment of the movie. Because that means that I have more than one moment that I enjoy. I don't even really know if I enjoyed this one that much. I just think it was the funniest, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yeah, it seemed the most intentional of things that happened in the movie.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, what'd you think about it?

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Well, okay. My notes that I took during the movie, the very first thing I wrote, minute in, was holy shit, this is not what I was expecting. And it fuck you, randomizer, for giving us this movie.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Oh man. Looking the movie up, the top names associated with this work. Whoever that would be, you know? Yeah. Even if I don't know who the director is, but hey, it's not U Bull.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

That would have been enough.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

You know? I could have at least chanced it on that. But U-Bull is too much. I would have passed on it if I knew ahead of time.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Well, you know what? I don't regret seeing this weirdly, because I have always wondered about this U-Bull. People talk about him being a terrible director, and I thought, well, I like terrible directors sometimes. You know, sometimes I like where someone has a weird vision, even if it's not one I understand, if they're really out there, sometimes it can be fun. Now I know it's not that.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

No, it's not.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

It is just very confusing. Literally, if Germany didn't have the tax laws they have, which incentivize investors to give money to failing movies, this man would have movies on Tubi. Okay. This is very weird stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

And if that, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

If that. And on my notes, it's so funny. Again, are just in line with your experience. Ooh, randomizer. I'll give it a shot. Stafe them. It could be fun. Then immediately I was like, Ray Leota, why is he making out with her? Why is he sucking your life force? What is this? Why is there an orc key?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Like I wanted it to be so bad it was good, but I couldn't because it immediately starts doing so much that it just pisses you off, too.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

The scenes again, they do not proceed in any order that makes sense. And they don't take the amount of time that you need to understand literally where you are in the story. And somehow, okay, for how insane this movie is, it cost around 60 million. Where did that money go? What's in the cast, yo? Yeah, guaranteed. I mean, the movie looks like absolute dog shit. Sometimes, literally, the orch guys who are called the Krug, they look like someone took hand rolls of manure and just sort of patted it on their shapeless bodies. There are tree people swinging around on vines, like way off brand cirque de soleil. And the music gets so goofy. You mentioned the zip line scene. Oh boy, okay. You have got two men hanging from a zip line bouncing into each other, and the music's like it's insane. And the plot, it's truly not there. This basically feels like a 12-year-old tried to write Lord of the Rings. It's completely incomprehensible. I I was thinking of this while I was watching it. It's almost like watching a movie in another language, but you don't have subtitles. I do it sometimes to fall asleep. And it's a weird experience because you can sort of follow, but then you realize, oh no, I'm totally off. I could only intuit what was happening based on tropes I already knew. By the end, I understood. Okay, Statham's the guy named Farmer because he's a farmer, he's secretly Burt Reynolds' son, which okay, I don't think that's possible.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Let me give you some context about his name.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

And I only found this on my research. So the whole idea behind him having the name Farmer is based on the Dungeon Siege game. In the game, the character is a farmer. Farmer is what it has in the entry field. The default the default character. You're supposed to just put a name in there.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

So like you bull could have put a name in there. Oh my god. But he didn't. So instead of just coming up with a fucking name, he had to put in a whole explanation in fucking Claire Filani's dialogue explaining why somebody would be so fucking ridiculous to name themselves Farmer.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

You know what's nice about hating you Bulls films is you can also hate him as a man. You gotta Google this guy. I have learned more than I ever wanted to know. But yeah, the it This movie, it is so far away from good bad. I wanted good bad, even if it was bad, bad, just to know literally what was happening. It's confusing.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

This was just some nonsense that some guy fucking mishmashed together and don't even fucking give a shit about. Because of that, everybody else's attitude in this movie flows from there, you know? Whole fucking range of everything from not giving a shit to just not knowing what the fuck is going on, but trying your best.

SPEAKER_03 22:33

Yeah, it's wild. It's really nuts. I think the cast is what sometimes saves it from being unwatchable. Not all of the time, but sometimes. Like I love Ron Perlman. I think he's very fun here. He's gruff and funny. And he actually plays off Statham pretty well. His character reminded me of that weird, weird movie, Season of the Witch with Nick Cage. It's funny seeing this guy who seems so tough guy from 30 years ago, but in olden times. It's very weird. And oh my god, Matthew fucking Lillard. Oh I'll say this for him. He was having the time of his life. His eyes are bulging out of his head the whole time. The way his face moves, it's like rubber. He is making expressions that I don't understand. They're so weird. They're just out there. And he's taunting people and throwing tantrums like a child. He is almost foaming at the mouth. At one point, this didn't make my statum stand out because obviously he's not a statum. But if I had to pick a second standout from this movie, it's when this man is lying dead. Well, not dead, almost dead on the ground. He's about to be killed. His eyes are so gigantic. And he just goes, I am your king in the craziest. I have a screenshot of this face, and I'm gonna be sending it to you all.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

It's so funny that this character is supposed to be part of the same family as Burt Reynolds. So you get a lot of these moments where they're playing off of each other, but it's just so fucking opposite spectrum. Like one guy's barely even phoning it in, and the other guy's just like pouring everything into the shit.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Yes. I was just realizing something about Burt Reynolds' performance here. It reminds me of something you see in wrestling. Characters are very good or bad. They're a face, they're good, they're a heel, they're bad. You know the drill. Burt Reynolds here, I thought he was a heel the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

You know what this is? What Burt Reynolds is John Cena during his retirement.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

He might be doing the greatest job in the world. He might also be doing the worst job in the world. But whose fault is it really? Is it the person who's writing this shit for him? Or is it him playing it? You can understand somebody like him being incredibly frustrated at being given something that's ass.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

Yeah, yeah. In his performance is like it's nearly motionless.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Oh my god. He either has to look at a script that's clearly somewhere else nearby, or he's just trying to remember.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Well, we know from some interviews with Jay Tandra Shekhar that he used cue cards taped on his cast members when he was shooting a movie with him. But in this movie, I was almost mesmerized by how still his face was. His eyes were barely open. And when he dies, literally he just closes his eyes like he's going to bed. Okay, close, like nothing. It looks like he's taking a nap. And I have to say, this is maybe on the same level as Morgan Freeman's death. And now you see me, now you don't, in terms of casual uh death.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

I think Morgan Freeman's was more epic because he had way more dialogue than they probably should have.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

He was far less sedated at the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

I guess that's true.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Yeah, I don't think these were Burt Reynolds' best times here. And I have a question for you, Bull. Did anyone tell him he's supposed to direct the actors? Because, okay, Matthew Lillard, he's in a cartoon. Ray Leota, he's doing wizard camp. Burt Reynolds, he's taking a nap. And Jason Statham is somehow just in a Jason Statham movie. End of sentence.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

And I think that was maybe the weirdest thing about this movie. Going into Statham Temper, this was exactly the kind of role I wanted to see him in. Statham in medieval fantasy? Surely we're gonna get a different version of him. But hell no. We get one version. We get the Jason Statham version. It's like somebody teleported regular Jason Statham into a fucked up, busted ass version of Lord of the Rings, and he just went with it. It's like he's reading the script from another movie. And honestly, he's pretty good in this thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

As he can be. Given what he has to work with.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Consistent. He's playing the whole thing completely straight. You can tell he put work into the sword fighting. It really looks good. And I I actually liked the style because you see some of the roughness you get with him when he's doing like hand-to-hand. Also the smoother movements for martial arts, but this time with a sword. And occasionally the movie lets him do something a little fun, which is my Statham standout. Never gonna guess it. It's the same one as yours because it's the only good thing in the movie.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

The fights in this, if you've listened to this more than once, you probably know how much I love the stunt art, how much I'm into the craft of making action movies. And I swear to fucking god, he just told 20 extras, I don't know, fight each other. It is such a mess of people. It looks more like a bar fight than a sword fight. They're just sort of slamming into each other. It's so chaotic, but that's that's where we're at here for enjoyment. I'm gonna give this 0.75. Because on a very basic level, it tells you a kind of a story. It's somewhat understandable compared to something written by a child, maybe. You've got an idea that could have been fun if someone else did it. Okay, you get a little bit more of a score there. And then you've got good actors, maybe not doing their favorite movie, but some of them are really putting effort in there. And Statham, I think there's a reason he hasn't made another movie like this, but I think that he did well in it. I thought he was good. So lastly, I just have to tell you about the dumb shit this movie ends with. Statham finally reunites with his wife, the woman he's dealt an entire life with. The woman who bore his son who was murdered by shit-covered Krugs. He looks at her and says, There's something I've always wanted to tell you. She looks at him like, oh, and he goes, I love you. What the fuck do you mean? You had an entire human being together. Wow, you bull. Way to set me off in the very last minute of a film I already hated.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I just love how we couldn't even keep it together. Like, we couldn't even stay organized in our thoughts on this movie. You could tell that how all over the place we were like, we're pretty structured with these things most of the time. But it's like impossible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

And you know, here's the thing I was just thinking. One of the many things about U-Bull that make him unpleasant is that he was very threatened by people not liking his movie. So he set up literal boxing matches with critics. And you know what I just realized? I would have a more enjoyable time getting beaten up by U Bull and having that story to tell watching this movie.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I know I would definitely have more fun fighting you Bull.

SPEAKER_03 31:19

No, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

I would have somewhere proper to channel this anger because I don't want it to affect the rest of my state in timber.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Then again, you know, one of my skills is yelling so much that people get confused when I'm in harm's way. So maybe I could really come at him and just have him be like, oh I gotta be somewhere by.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

So you could probably confuse him.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

As much as he confused us. All right, let's move on to something else.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

All right.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

It doesn't even matter what it is.

NEW Movie Review: Onslaught

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Friends. I am happy to say that we survived in the name of the king, and we have made it to the Onslaught portion of our podcast. Onslaught is the brand new movie from Adam Wingard, who made The Guest and the Godzilla versus Kong movies. And this movie is fucking nuts. Adria Arjona plays Celeste, an ex-army sniper who's running a trailer park out in the desert and sharing custody of her daughter with her ex. Then uh some very weird shit starts happening. We had super soldiers involved, and honestly, I don't know how much more I even want to tell you because basically Onslaught is about an onslaught. So, Sushi, what did you think of the onslaught in Onslaught?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

I wasn't aware of this movie prior to seeing the trailer, and actually regarding the trailers, as I was researching uh for my review, I was surprised to find out that the one that we saw wasn't even the first or main trailer released for the movie. Oh yeah, it was a bit confusing because certain trailers that were considered promos by A24 were being labeled as teasers elsewhere online. But after looking at the timing as far as when the different videos were released, the first trailer released about three months ago. The second of the one that we saw was about a month ago, and then the promo video that erroneously has been labeled as teaser on some sites was released about two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

But the trailer we saw, that one sets this movie up as an action horror film from Adam Wingard, which we probably know best from Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla X Kong, the New Empire. There's some super soldiers uh attacking a trailer park in the middle of the desert in this trailer, and the soldiers seem to have some sort of military and potentially also Nazi association. Even though the story didn't seem that deep, the atmosphere of the movie, as far as the settings and the action, all seemed to align with my tastes. So I figured I'd probably consider this movie as one of our non-Statham movies reviewed during Statham Tember. If there weren't any trending films, I felt more obliged to see in the same week. Weirdly, the first trailer actually laid out most of the lead's backstory and shit, pretty much the entire plot, uh, up to the point where most of the movie takes place through the end. Also, going back to the second trailer for a second, a weird detail I caught on a rewatch of it was that there's no mention, I mean, like no text or anything on the screen of the cast.

SPEAKER_05 35:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

So I have no insight on what the plan was to promote this movie. But based on the trailers and promo video release for it, it's almost like A24 intended to just sell this movie on its style, which I'll get more into during my main discussion. Uh, but would that really be enough? I guess. Seeing the movie, what I theorized was was the plan, I think made a lot of sense. While this movie definitely wasn't original nor such a well-made genre film that it stands out among others similar to it, it becomes pretty clear, I'd say about a third into the runtime that it's essentially a patchwork incorporating and at times almost celebrating different elements borrowed from movies that it's paying homage to. I mean, from the first trailer, you already got a divorced ex-military mom that can't seem to acclimate to civilian life, living in a trailer park in the middle of the desert, a secret base where it seems like there's super soldiers being created and tested nearby. The aforementioned super soldiers apparently escaping the base and soon after murdering a bunch of people just because they happen to be in a place where normal people happen to congregate. In this case, since it's in the middle of nowhere in the desert, basically happening at a truck stop where there's a huge convenience store and gas station, a clandestine government agency that, if not directly involved, is at least responsible for covering up the existence of what happened at the base. Residents of a trailer park needing to defend themselves from this threat that escaped the nearby base. One of those residents, coincidentally, some overachieving ex-military specialist. Also, for this movie, we got the bonus characters, which include other wacky or badass trailer park residents, one or more ex or current military or law enforcement. Beyond that, we got some child that needs to be protected because unfortunately it was just mom's week to look after her.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

That at the end, a little bit more serious, definitely more characteristic of older films. You got imposing silhouettes, glowing eyes, and huge, unstoppable antagonists that are unable to be reasoned with. I started making a list of all the elements and movies I knew off the top of my head that they could be borrowing from, but I ended that effort pretty soon since there were just too many possibilities to list. The upside, though, being that this movie seems to do a pretty solid job recreating all these elements. So it's rare that you're met with a moment that really makes you feel like any part of this movie is necessarily bad. So with this movie borrowing so much from action and action horror movies of the past, I think a lot of the weight of this movie was obviously down to the design. One of the early stand-on elements was the music. The score and the soundtrack seemed to mimic a lot of the movies it paid tribute to, with orchestral composition setting the tone for over-the-top villains and slow, synth-heavy beats rounding out the more action-driven moments. Overall, along with the sound effect, the sound design was really great.

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Visually, while some people might argue about the cinematography and set design kind of being a mess. I really think it's a part of paying tribute since as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s and due to parents that seemed pretty unbothered about action movie violence at the time. I had a lot of exposure to action movies from around that era. Sure. In the 90s, we started getting what I call more visually polished action films. Uh-huh. The design elements weren't anywhere near as professional as what you'd see in the genre even a decade later. Also, being a movie that pays homage to action movies from a time where there was considerably less use of VFX, often forcing the movie to rely more on practical effects, makeup, and sometimes even costume to really emphasize the level of action when it comes to things like gunfire and weaponry and the perception of how intense the effects of that is. Even though you can't see it through the same type of clarity in detail that's more common to other modern action movies, you can see the damage that it causes to those within the environment and the environment itself through the use of practical effects and makeup. Especially given that I was bought in on this movie, seeing only the second trailer, which as a reminder didn't have the cast listed on the screen. But even with that being the case, I have a few names to highlight. Adria Arjona, who played Celeste. I only recalled seeing her in Morbius. But I later realized I also saw her in Triple Frontier. Even though I don't remember whether she had weapons training in the latter movie, she definitely got it for this movie.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Yeah, she's pretty believable as someone with a military background. So I thought she did a good job. Alex Pereira, who played the Butcher, one of the super soldiers, definitely think the size work really well for the character he played. Beyond that, I also think he was good at simply using his presence to intimidate others.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Even though he obviously had help with that due to lots of guns. Dan Stevens. I don't really want to get into detail regarding his character, but I will say it was probably the most amusing character I've seen him play since he was in the Eurovision Sun Contest movie.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Then uh fucking Eric from Tim and Eric is in this.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Oh yeah. That was so funny.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

I think his inclusion in this cast made me realize this movie was less concerned with seriousness and more concerned with playing homage. Last but not least, just wanted to highlight that both Reginald Vell Johnson and Michael Bean were both in this movie. Just glad to see the both of them due to how much they meant to 80s and 90s movies and television. Obviously, Reginald Vell Johnson playing a cop in countless movies, hell yeah. So yeah, I don't think it was any mistake that they were included in this movie. So moving on to my ratings, I give this a three and a half for enjoyment. Okay. Uh two and a half for quality. Uh-huh. Well, I really enjoyed this movie based on what I expected to see from the trailer I saw. I will admit that being a homage to other movies rather than an original film likely limited both of the scores for me. As a big fan of 80s and 90s action movies, it was definitely easier for me to give this a high enjoyment rating because of that personal preference. I totally admit that had this been an homage to any other type of movie I was less interested in, I probably wouldn't have. But beyond enjoying those types of movies, uh just having the experience of watching a lot of them and being able to connect a lot of what I saw in this movie to them, seeing how accurately they adapted those elements, this movie did justify the score for me.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

As far as quality goes, even though I do think it recreated a lot of what I've seen before really well, it again just wasn't an original work. Some characters or scenes I feel this movie could have done without or could have been rewritten to better strengthen the film. Specifically, I think we could have presented her uh partner or her ex-husband differently and still had the same effect. And I don't really think the characterization of the daughter really worked for the mom. It didn't make sense for the parents. She seemed a lot more affected, I guess. I would say. I know that part of that's obviously not being faced with any of that previously, but I just thought they would have characterized her daughter a little differently. That would have helped a bit. But beyond that, some characteristics that seem to be common among antagonists in this movie that I really don't get, aside from just adding some edginess or peculiarities, I guess, to the characters.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Some quirks.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Yeah, I honestly feel this movie could have been a solid hit as a streaming movie release on one of the major subscription services, but as a theatrical release, I think it's pretty mid quality wise. As for related recommendations, I'm gonna go with the Terminator, the original core. Even though I absolutely Love T2, and I think it's undoubtedly the superior Terminator film. The sci-fi elements in the original Terminator definitely had more of a lean towards horror, and I really felt a lot of the references made in this movie either uh directly or indirectly tied to uh this one. So what did you think of Onslaught?

SPEAKER_03 44:26

I had a pretty good time with this movie. You know, it feels like an 80s cult action horror movie that somehow came out this year. It's violent and weird and funny, and it's so aggressively stylized that I spend a lot of it thinking, that looks cool, but why? Who came up with this? What does this mean? You know, a lot of the time, I mean that as a compliment. You know what kind of movie you're getting almost immediately here. The opening credits are this incredibly over-stimulating barrage of news footage, newspaper clippings, music, flashes, and all kinds of shit going on. And there's the score, which I loved. Adam Wingard's talked about John Carpenter being a really big influence here. And yeah, you can hear it. The score is so aggressively 80s Carpenter synth stuff that I kind of giggled a couple times at how stylized and fun it was. I also like seeing this in IMAX, which was kind of great because the whole movie is basically just well, I guess an onslaught for the senses. And then, of course, you've got Reginald Vell Johnson here, which I mean, if you're making an insane 80s action throwback, why not go get Reginald Vel Johnson? I loved seeing him. I think he's genuinely really fun here. Those opening credits were so nuts, and I thought it was a really good intro to my experience with the movie because you can tell okay, Onslaught has things like war and the military-industrial complex on its mind, but there was so much literally coming at you visually that I just stopped trying to follow the message and was just okay, I'm here for the vibe, you know. It really was an onslaught of sounds and action. And honestly, that was my experience with the whole thing. So I gotta talk about something great in the structure of this movie. It features a literal countdown to when the onslaught begins, like 24 hours before. I found it really fun because I'm like, oh, I know when the action starts. Why don't they do this in more movies? What if John Wick had a countdown? You know, you're watching his sad backstory. Okay, 10 minutes till the onslaught or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

You do have that one John Wick where they do the countdown.

SPEAKER_03 46:58

Yeah. Exactly. I love it. I want to see more of that in action movies. It's so fun. You're like, all right, I got 10 more minutes of backstory. Then we get to see some ass kicking. I really liked the pre-onslot stuff. Our lead character here, Celeste, former soldier running this little trailer park. I thought she was great in that role. Really tough and funny. I totally bought her as someone who's been through some shit and is more comfortable on a battlefield than dealing with normal life. And, you know, normal life might not be your strong suit, but you put three terrifying super soldiers outside her trailer and suddenly like, okay, she knows what to do. Uh now I actually like the relationship with the daughter. First of all, I thought, God, that's a cute kid. She's very cute, adorable, but not in an overly sacrine way. She's one of those old person kids who seems to know everything that's going on around her. In therapy, you would say she is parentified, sort of picking up the slack for her mom. And that's kind of fun because once things hit the fan, she gets to see her mother where she's very capable. And the daughter's scared. So I think it's showing how their relationship dynamics shift. But okay, so the onslaught. Let's get into it. When these soldiers show up and you know things are about to get violent, they live up to the buildup. They're pretty scary. They're these weird, formidable things you don't really understand. And I don't think you always need to understand the villains' motivations. I mean, Jaws is an example you always see. But to me, this just immediately made me think of the Universal Soldier movies. And I gotta say, I think I like some of them better than this one. Uh especially Day of Reckoning, which is just a really overall great movie that gets into what repurposing soldiers, genetically modifying them and fucking with their memories would really do to people. But Onslaught likes the premise and the look of the premise, but it doesn't really care as much about that level of detail. It's just like these guys are scary, they're coming to get you.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Yeah, it just wants to deliver the same vibe, but it doesn't want to like have to get details correct or anything.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

Yeah, I understand because I think the focus is on the pastiche, this type of film. You can see how much fun they had making it, you can see the skill that goes into it, but um, I think that it doesn't land as hard because there just isn't that connective tissue.

SPEAKER_05 49:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

And when the onslaught happens, it's like, all right, onslaught, cool, fighting. But then after a while, it's like, okay, we're still onslaughting, still. Like it goes on for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

It's not like you can't make sustained action or action in one location interesting. Like Die Hard with Reginald Feld Johnson. That's one of my favorite movies. It's one building, but that building becomes enormous as a playground for the characters. You're on different floors, the roof, the elevators, the vents. Here it's more like, hey, you're in the trailer home, or you're outside of a trailer home, or you're in the vicinity of a trailer park.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

It's pretty much just like, are they gonna bust into the trailer? Are you gonna have to run out of the trailer?

SPEAKER_04 50:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Or they're just gonna be shooting into the trailer. Are you gonna be shooting out? It's basically just down to who is going to make it in or out of an enclosed area and who is going to be doing the shooting first.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

Yeah, yeah. There's some fantastic weird shit happening throughout all of this, though. Dan Stevens shows up looking so insane that it took me literally 20 minutes to realize it was Dan Stevens.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Oh no, it didn't take me that much time at all. He has this look about him.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Uh frenzied.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

Even though they give him some makeup in this one, they do a good job of making sure that his face isn't too covered or indistinguishable from the actual actor. That's the one thing I noticed.

SPEAKER_03 51:27

It's pretty wild, though. It's hard to get into the details of his look without getting into questions about him. Like his skin looks so young, his hands look so old, his hair is insane, his outfit, his outfits are very swishy.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

But again, I think it is an homage to the villain archetypes that we've seen in the 80s that are definitely more over the top than most of the uh ones that we see in the most popular action films of today, like your mission impossible series, they do not have anywhere near as dramatic of a villain character as this. It's usually just like a regular ass dude. Yeah. At best, it's like a computer system.

SPEAKER_03 52:14

Yeah, and this movie seems to be hinting at so many things that I walked out thinking, are they expecting a sequel? Because there was so much left unresolved that I thought they were setting something up. But I guess that's kind of where I landed on slot. Things sort of pay off, but not entirely. I did like the style. I liked the humor, performances were great. The violence was good, not the most distinct just because of where they put their energy. I think there's a lot of good concepts, but maybe not as much variety as I look for as an action movie junkie here. But yeah, you can't accuse it of false advertising. It's called onslaught. There's a countdown to an onslaught. The countdown hits zero, and then from there on out it's onslaught.

SPEAKER_05 53:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:06

I'm giving it a 3.5 as well for enjoyment, but also for quality. Quality-wise, I give it a little bit higher because I think it succeeds at what it sets out to achieve. I think how much mileage you'll get with that depends on how familiar you are with the movies it's referencing. Because if you're not, this might not hold together for you. But for me, I've seen a lot of these movies. I like them. So I'm able to put the pieces together. Warning, though. Spoiler alert. Warning. This movie features more female genitalia than you'd expect. And we saw it in IMAX.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

Oh, yeah. So in incredible resolution.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

Yeah. Same as scene where there was actually no reason for that to be happening, unrelated to anything in the news.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

Actually, both of the antagonists are pretty alarming, I suppose.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

And sexual in nature. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Well, I didn't wasn't going to describe it that way, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:16

It was just saying alarmingly sexual in nature.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

No way.

SPEAKER_03 54:20

But yeah, an interesting movie. Interesting movie. Oh, and you know what? I have a movie recommendation. You should really see Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning.

SPEAKER_05 54:30

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 54:31

It's a fantastic movie. It is part of this great legacy of young, really great filmmakers taking on sequels to direct-to-video movies.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

Hey, do you want to know something crazy that we can tie this movie back to our state on Tumber pick for the week?

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Oh my god, and what?

SPEAKER_01 54:54

So I'm not sure if you looked into anything about the In the Name of the King sequels. Oh. But funny enough, Dolph Lundgren, star in the Universal Soldier movies, was also one of the main characters in one of the sequels. I think he was in the second one.

SPEAKER_03 55:19

You know what? I guarantee it's better than this one.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

But also, something even funnier than that. In Universal Soldier 3. Yeah. Unfinished business. Guess who happens to be in both that movie and In the Name of the King?

SPEAKER_03 55:40

Oh my god, wait, I should know this. I've seen them. Is it is it Michael Bean?

SPEAKER_01 55:47

No, it's Burt Reynolds.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Oh shit. Maybe I've only seen one four and five.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

Yeah, that could be it, man.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

But crazy, man. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:05

Oh wow. All right. Did-d-ding-ding ding ding ding ding ding. That was my reference to a Burt Reynolds movie. Hey

TV Episode Recap: Silo - Season 3, Episode 10 - "Troy"

SPEAKER_03 56:18

sushi. You know, in lanterns they had a boring machine.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

Mm. Yeah, they did.

SPEAKER_03 56:29

Do you think that Hal and John dug the silo?

SPEAKER_01 56:34

No, I'm pretty sure they didn't, but uh it does look like a smaller version of the digger.

SPEAKER_03 56:40

It does, right? Yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_01 56:43

Cool. Anyway, that's it. We're obviously talking about Silo now. We've made it to episode 10, the season finale for season three, titled Troy. The finale opens with fragmented images of Helen passing through Daniel's mind as he awakens inside Silo 1, emerging from cryogenic suspension after seven years and receiving a thermal flash to restore his alertness, which seems really painful. Though we know him as Daniel, the people around him call him Troy, and he seems to respond to the name without question. Victor briefs him on an emergency at Silo 17 where rebellion has driven thousands of residents outside. Victor plays a recorded conversation between the algorithm and Jimmy and informs Troy that a safeguard was attempted but failed, basically revealing he's been preserved and reawakened whenever his particular skill set is needed. Victor then leads Troy to another room where he's introduced to senior drone commander Susan, who happens to be his sister Charlotte. So at this moment, it's basically confirmed that their memories have been altered, giving their new identities and the fact neither seems to recognize the other. As they watch the rebellion unfold, Troy initially decides to wait before Victor reminds him the longer they're left alone, the greater the potential risk of contacting another silo. However, Troy informs him that they're unable to control the Ford vault doors due to flooding, then proceeds with his plan to monitor the situation, requesting Susan to scramble available pilots, demand drones to help with the task, as he leaves to go eat and asks to be notified if and when the number of fugitives, as he calls them, leaving the bounds of silo 17 hits 9,500. In the cafeteria, Victor seems to be noticeably bothered by Troy's willingness to implement what he sees as an external safeguard, stating that safeguards have always occurred within a silo and questioning whether having the drone pilots witness deaths firsthand can negatively impact those working in silo one. However, Daniel seems dismissive, responding that their top priority is, quote, preventing contamination between silos as they're interrupted by someone stopping by to notify them fugitives have reached the berm.

SPEAKER_02 59:16

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Susan monitors the live drone footage over the outside of silo 17, requesting one of the pilots keep eyes on the sheriff. We see Troy enter the room requesting a count of fugitives, which is apparently 9,832. Troy gives orders to prepare all the drones to basically take everyone out and prevent re-entry into silo 17. But Susan feels a sudden rush of emotion as she spots families and couples embracing after making it out of the silo. She pauses before following through with Troy's orders, requesting he consider a more limited response, eliminate the sheriff and his family, then allow the remaining residents to return underground. Unfortunately, for the residents of 17, Troy rejects the proposal. When Susan refuses to carry out his order, Troy removes her from command and personally directs the operation, clarifying to the pilots that the residents of Silo 17 are, quote, beyond the pact, but not outside the directive, before having them commence with a drone attack on the residents, transforming their short-lived freedom into a massacre.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Victor is visibly horrified, but Troy barely shows any emotional reaction. However, we again see proof that the memory-altering drugs may still be unable to prevent all memories from resurfacing, as Troy seems to once again see fragmented images as he cleans up following the attack on 17. Afterward, Troy, Victor, and the director, who we previously knew as Senator Thurman, meet, with the director showering Troy with compliments and awards him on his swift and decisive leadership during the operation. Troy fills the director in on some additional details regarding the status of Silo 17, basically believing anyone left will eventually starve to death, but strangely suggests increasing drone surveillance of the area to five years, when the director initially suggests only three. Also, we're again showing how he's completely unaware Susan was his sister, as he seems willing to have her, quote, neutralized per the directive. However, the director decides instead to have her demoted and returned to cryogenic sleep, claiming Susan must be preserved because she remains important to the project's eventual completion as well as personally to her daughter. Leaving their meeting with the director, Victor sees that Troy seems troubled and assuming it was due to the disagreement, reminds him that he needs to return to Cryo. This doesn't seem to be the case, though, as Troy requests to meet with Victor in his office, where he then raises a more personal problem, his recurring visions of an unknown woman. Victor denies any knowledge or existence of any records that can help him identify the woman, eventually getting Troy back on track, returning him to suspended animation. As Victor reviews Troy's records, it becomes clear that the same question about the woman is resurfaced repeatedly despite the efforts to erase her from his memories. The episode then returns to the present crisis in silo 18 as Knox and Shirley continue breaking through the lower levels toward the filtration system, hoping to close the safeguard pipe. Elsewhere, we see Camille being summoned by the algorithm as Juliet and Robert are being held in the cafeteria guarded by raiders. Robert tries pleading with them to go see his son, believing it might be his last chance to do so, one of them eventually leaving to communicate the request for review. At her meeting with the algo, Camille pleads for additional time. It's then revealed as we cut to a command room in Silo 1 that the supposed AI is just the team of specialists led by Victor using a filtered voice to conceal his identity. Grants Camille five more minutes before activating the safeguard, but she already knows it won't be enough time. Meanwhile, Nox and Shirley reach the filtration pipe and begin clamping it shut. Camille appears to be assisting the effort to suppress the rebellion, but as the team in Silo One monitor the activity in 18, her real allegiance becomes clear. The canisters sent into the mines contain oxygen rather than poison, and she has manipulated the raiders to give the rebels the time they need. Okay. As soon as Victor realizes the deception, he has a team increase pressure to the safeguard pipe, the countdown expires and the safeguard is activated, but nothing enters silo 18, since Knox and Shirley have successfully sealed the pipe. Camille receives a call over uh radio updating her on the successful outcome as she finally allows herself a moment of relief. Realizing that he has lost control of silo 18, Victor has his team clear the room, leaving him to communicate privately with Camille, where she asks the same question Juliet posed to her regarding the algo. Why? Yeah. While Victor initially is resistant, giving the same speech about ensuring the survival of humanity. In the end, it seems like he's even grown tired of trying to defend it as he ends communication with Camille. As Knox and Truly try to force themselves through the Raiders, guarding Juliet and Robert, Camille arrives, revealing to Juliet and the others that her actions were designed to deceive the algorithm and protect the rebellion. Everyone in silo 18 can finally be at ease, knowing that the water is no longer contaminated and no one will be sent outside to clean. Back in silo one, overcome by the accumulated guilt of maintaining the silo system and participating in mass killings, Richard looks at a photograph of his deceased daughter and breaks down. He leaves instructions for Troy to be awakened, then takes his own life. Meanwhile, Juliet contacts Lucas by radio. Since they're separated and an armed drone now guards the surface, their chances of reuniting remain uncertain. A technician brings Troy out of cryogenic suspension once again, this time telling him that 35 years have passed. Jeez. As he's being escorted by the tech through the halls of Silo 1, he's met by Joel, a shift boss, who walks him to the command room and updates him on everything that's happened in silo 18 within the past five months. Following Juliet being sent out to clean. Troy then leaves after getting a request from Victor to meet in his quarters. Cutting back to silo 18, Juliet and her allies use the elevator to descend and investigate the enormous sealed door at the bottom of the silo. Jumping back to silo one, Troy seems surprised as he's greeted by Henry, says he was also rapid sequenced like him, which Troy immediately finds strange. Henry leads him into Victor's office, his dead body's still seated at his desk, and lets him know that his final instruction was to have Troy reawakened. Though Henry seems to believe that Troy might know why Victor took his own life, and that they seem to be close, given how often they work together. Troy seems unsure. Though he seemed to know Troy before, but obviously couldn't say, and believed he was a good man, he didn't know whether he ever really knew him. Julia and her friends reach the bottom of silo 18 and approach the sealed door as Troy returns to command to begin working on a way to safeguard silo 18. However, as he's about to leave the room, he's called back regarding activity near the forward fault, which happens to be the proper name apparently for the sealed door that Team Julia is currently at. When she touches it, Troy speaks to her as the algorithm, ordering her to stop, but she refuses to comply, believing that they have nothing to lose given that Silo 1's failure to control even the situation that just occurred in 18. In the end, Troy offers Julia the truce. Juliet outwardly accepts, but once the communication ends, she tells her companions that she has no intention of remaining passive. Rather than waiting for another attack, she plans to locate Silo 1 and take the fight directly to the people controlling the entire network.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:55

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

In the closing scene, Shori discovers a final recorded message left by Victor, where he finally identifies the woman who has haunted his suppressed dreams as Helen Drew. Yes. Hearing her name produces an immediate emotional reaction as pieces of Daniel's buried identity begin returning.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:16

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

And that's the end of that episode. Wow. Yeah, what'd you think?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:22

Well, Sush, uh, you know the classic Tupac song Hit Hem Up?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

That was basically what was running through my head this whole episode because I was so fucking mad at everybody. First off, fuck Silo One, right? But I was so mad. But did I love the episode? Yeah. Did I also want to personally start beef with Silo One? Absolutely. I was there for the drama. I was furious. I had a great time. Because holy fucking shit. I feel like all season I've been sitting here going, okay, just tell me what happened. Tell me how we got from Daniel and Helen and all these people in the before times to the silos. I knew there was some strange shit going on, but I thought eventually we'd find out that, okay, these people they created the silos, they live their life, they die, whatever. But no, they're still fucking here. The creation of the silo isn't history, it is still happening. These people are actively maintaining this world hundreds of years later, except now they're this weird, watered-down version to themselves, and they don't even know their own love.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:40

We don't even know if it's hundreds of years later at this point, actually, because oh shit, that's true. Led to believe that you know, only like 42 years has passed, uh, based on the two times Daniel has revived. Um, I mean, it could be more than that, they could have skipped a few revivals, but the way that the progression of the episode goes, it almost seems like it really is true, considerably less than the 300 years they've been told they've been around.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:10

Yeah, whatever the case, it's in 50 years of torturing people. If we can take the years at their face value, I mean it it's so fucked up that they don't recognize each other, Daniel and Charlotte. They're standing right next to each other, they have no idea they're related, which is very grim. Also, if you think about it in terms of a broader population, would lead to some issues, you know, if people didn't know who their relatives are. Oh, yeah. Different kind of issues.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:42

I'm pretty sure they would have that taken care of through the schedule of reviving people and everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:49

Wait a minute, you've got everything figured out, Sush. Are you one of the founders?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

No, but I do understand organization and I could kind of see why they thought they could run with it, but um, there's things called feelings that seem to affect people. They do, they do seem to even when they try to wipe their memories. So yeah, I don't know what it's going to work.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

And that leads to Daniel because Jesus Christ, dude. He wakes up after seven years, gets horrifically defrosted, and has what looks like hey, you remember those things we had as a kid where you had magnets and there was like shaved aluminum underneath and you made it into a mustache on a man?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:31

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:32

They have shit like that coming out of them as they're unfrozen. This is insane. He just walks into this futuristic silo that looks almost like the TVA from Loki, but if the TVA was much less fun, I almost thought that Daniel, because of the things that they had attached to his body, it was like a matrix situation. Ooh, it was matrix-y, I like that. But yeah, Daniel, he has become Troy, and Troy is horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:07

That's like an understatement.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:09

I know he is think of every war criminal in history and multiply that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

But it's almost like most of the war criminals are still doing it because they're crazy or they're so evil that it makes some kind of sense. Yeah. Troy just seems to be doing it because that's what the that's the job, man. That's what the directive calls for.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:35

Yeah, I guess it's so separated from normal human behavior. Yeah, and the whole silo 17 sequence is just horrible. It's horrible. These people come outside, and we've seen the the aftermath, but here we see them celebrating, they're hugging, they're swinging their kids around. Daniel's completely unfazed while drones just start mowing them down. Then he's just a thermal turns off their screams, and it's like, oh, they're not people anymore. I think that's when we get to see how he's thinking of the situation. It's just so weird memory technology. They've changed Daniel so profoundly that it's almost like they changed his whole personality, obviously. He doesn't recognize his own sister, but he does keep remembering Helen. And then we find out he has been doing this over and over and over again. So, hey, you can fuck with someone's brain enough to turn Daniel into uh the worst killer of all time, but you can't completely erase the fact that he loved somebody. That's very sad and kind of beautiful. And I think it's interesting with Charlotte maybe she's retained more of herself because she does seem to have some behavior that we recognize from her. Or I thought maybe she's getting different treatment because of her connection with Thurman's daughter. I don't know. Thurman also says that Charlotte's skills are going to be important at the end of the project during their little conversation. That freaked me out because my immediate thought was, oh, cool, you're saving her so she can massacre tens of thousands of people later, right? Because she's in the military. What else would her role be at the end of the project? And then Thurman, oh my God, she was so much more callous than I realized. Daniel just murdered 10,000 people, and she's sitting there in her beautiful study talking about how she needs her tea every day. Like, fuck you, dude. I do not give a fuck about your tea. People are dying. And Victor, yeah, fuck him too. Silo 18 beats the safeguard, and Victor realizes that his actual emotional response is relief. Okay, yeah, you want an award, you idiot. That's what any normal human being would feel. That's finally the thing that makes him confront what he's helped to do, and he kills himself. Like, okay, but before he does, he sends Daniel that message, that gift of Helen Drew's name. But does that redeem Victor for me? No. No, God, no. He fucked up thousands and thousands of people for decades minimum. I also thought it was interesting that when Victor died, they called him the founder. And that sort of got me thinking, gosh, I would have expected Stenson to be the founder. Where is he? Why has no one talked about him? Did Victor take over the project or is Stenson off somewhere else on some other silo? I don't know. This show constantly gives me more questions than answers every time. But you know what? I like it. I like both the way they're going through the story this season, and I like certain all the questions I end up having. And then, oh my God, Juliet just like, let's take out silo one. I loved that part because her reasoning is so smart. They think in silo one that of course silo 18 is going to try to defend themselves. So they're not going to think about protecting their own silo. So they do the unexpected thing. She is just so smart and God, she's so cool. I think Juliet's one of the coolest characters on TV, just genuinely so fascinating and so good, but not in a goody two shoes way. So I had a lot of thoughts about this episode. It was just so much. I was very angry, but I'm very excited to see what happens next. What do you think, Sush?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:58

Even though I was hoping for a time jump for the before time storyline following the events in the previous episode, we ended up jumping way further into the future than I expected. Since I think I specified previously that I was hoping for maybe a few to several months at most.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:17

Oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:20

Also, I wonder if we'll ever revisit anything that took place between the end of the last episode and the start of this one in the final season. Uh, I'm not really interested in what I'm sure was an incredibly difficult initial transition, but more along the lines of how they determine the schedules for suspending and reviving all the different people working on silo one. Yeah, the logistics. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Victor is one of the few who aren't on memory altering drugs, but I'm just curious how he managed to age the same rate as Daniel has.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

Suggesting that he's at least been in cryo close to the same amount of time. Uh-huh. Also, who was doing his and Daniel's jobs while they're in cryo? Yeah, dude. There's just so much I'd assume is at least somewhat relevant since we're talking at least uh by my calculations, 42 years. Assuming Daniel wasn't revived at any point between the first and second time we see him revived in this episode. It sure didn't seem like it from how the episode played out, but who knows. As far as silo 18 stuff, I'm not sure I can buy Camille playing the long game. Yeah. And I was intending to double cross the algorithm, even though I honestly don't even understand why she believed it was all powerful to begin with, especially after succeeding Bernard as the head of IT, Bernard having a feeling that it wasn't AI, and Camille even telling him about the experience she had with it seeming human. Like, why wait until the last episode in the last possible moment to decide to help the rest of the residents of the silo over what the algorithm is demanding?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:05

I think she's just all about self-service at a certain point.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

I don't know. I just think that as smart and as sneaky as we're supposed to believe that both Robert and Camille are. Yeah, I don't understand how they couldn't have had a private conversation where the alga couldn't have listened in and planned differently to protect their child and whole family unit. Like, why let Robert feel the need to be the good guy just long enough for you to come to the realization that you both are hoping for the exact same results?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:36

Like, just because you're jealous of Julia, I don't think that's a convincing enough argument for that motivation. Uh, I will admit that looking back, the show does occasionally dip off course from steady progression of the plot. I can at least think of a few times side plots took longer than I felt was necessary. Uh-huh. But at least they made up with some great actors on the show. Yes, I don't mind seeing do their thing. I think on the first watch of any given episode, things are fine. But sometimes, especially when re-watching episodes in the course of writing recaps and discussion notes, it can be really annoying, especially when I have to skip around all the drama to stay focused on the actual plot. Yeah. Beyond the actual events that took place during the episode. I just had one, I guess, concept that I really wondered a lot about, which is why are Victor and Henry the only ones that seem to be able to keep their before times names?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:39

I mean, maybe Senator Thurman also uses a real name, but we only learn of her new title in this episode, really. I get that Victor helped create the program and Henry was close to Thurman, but I don't get how they thought they'd be less susceptible to backtracking on the whole silo plan. Right. If simply the mention of Helen's name reignites Daniel's memories from the before times, how the hell would that be reassuring to anyone? Yeah. Especially Victor, that their plan would be anywhere close to foolproof. There's just no way there's so much wrong with that reasoning. But overall, I feel like the season finale did a good job wrapping things up for both storylines this season. Uh, I definitely don't think it's the best episode of the season, nor am I completely satisfied with the limited story we actually covered over the course of the runtime of the episode. Since I really feel like this is one of the episodes this season where certain things could have been trimmed to leave time for more interesting events or reveals.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:42

Yeah. I didn't need that much of Knox's father just to get an elevator.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:47

Right. Exactly. But hey, I'm just happy that we don't have some crazy cliffhanger leading into the fourth and what's reported to be final season of the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:57

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:59

I just hope that our heroes, I guess we could call them, finally achieve the level of freedom they'd always hope for in the end, since it at least seems like more and more people, both in Silo One and the others, seem to be dealing with growing difficulties continuing the sort of lifestyle, regardless of which side they started the journey on and where they're at now.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

So and I forgot to mention it earlier, but the people who got out of 17 seem to be out in the atmosphere for quite a long time before the massacre took place. So it might be safer out there than we realize.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:34

Well, we basically have established within the last few episodes that there's nothing wrong with the outside aside from them releasing a safeguard. Somebody actually has to take action. It's not something that's automated.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:48

I got the impression that the nano technology or whatever almost like contaminants. Oh, okay. So the compound isn't something that saturated the outdoors, it's just something they depend on.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:02

I think it is just like a mass of the nanos. They just call it a compound because it's essentially just a bunch of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

Swarm a little nanos.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:11

Yeah. Bat in a combination of just shooting them to death.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:15

Yeah, lots of shooting, dude. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:18

I didn't realize, especially with what we were shown earlier, the people who got outside in Silo 17. It just did not seem like they were getting gunned down. So yeah, that was surprising. Then again, we didn't really see what happened. We just saw them leaving. But yeah. Silo. Just looking forward to the final season. I don't know how the hell they're gonna wrap this up.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:43

I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:44

Uh hopefully it ends with them blowing up all 50 silos or something.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:49

And you know, no matter what happens, the actors are so good. Honestly, it could be a lot worse than this, and I'd still enjoy it. Oh man. Well, farewell, Silo. We'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:01

Later, Silo. Bye. We'll dig you later.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:05

Oh, that's digging. I dig it.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:08

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:11

Actually, that does die into lanterns, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:15

Oh, yeah, it kind of does. So let's move on.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:17

Let's do it.

TV Episode Recap: Lanterns - Season 1, Episode 4 - "The Weenie"

SPEAKER_01 1:24:21

Alright, moving on to episode four of season one of lanterns. Titled The Weenie. We open with a replay of the final moments of episode two, with Hal secretly visiting his imprisoned former mentor, Sinestro, hoping to learn how to identify the manhunter hiding in Rushville. But Sinestro seems to be more interested in Hal's uneasy partnership with Jon Stewart. After pressing him, Sinestro gets Hal to acknowledge that John may not only be his backup, but the person intended to replace him.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:55

Sinestro posits that Hal may eventually have to kill John, an idea that Hal rejects. Before Hal leaves, however, Sinestro supplies a crucial clue. Although a manhunter can imitate a human body, it cannot reproduce every aspect of human physiology. While Hal is away, John purchases a rifle scope and uses it to survey William Macon's heavily guarded property from a water tower. He notices a helicopter repeatedly landing near a structure concealed within the compound. When Hal shows up, right in John's view, John fills him in on his findings and explains the idea of a weenie, an architectural focal point around which a larger space is organized. He believes the hidden building is Macon's weenie and the most likely place to find the Manhunter.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:51

Ah, I can't help but giggle.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:53

Yeah, a lot of weenie jokes in this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:56

I mean, more than just verbally.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:58

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We'll get to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:01

Oh man. Hal and John meet with Sheriff Kane privately at her husband's bar and update her on the investigation. They warn her that the aliens searching for the manhunter could destroy Rushville if it doesn't surrender. Carrie is understandably disturbed that almost anyone could be the shape-shifting machine, but Hal mentions that the Manhunter couldn't take her form, clarifying that it would have only been able to take form of someone who was in Rushville prior to its arrival, which was long before she moved there.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:34

She agrees to help them uncover the identity of Macon's mysterious benefactor, reasoning that she really doesn't have a choice given that aliens are threatening to blow her town up.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:45

Afterward, the lanterns return to the motel, where John's met by the guardian Liana, who suddenly appears in his room. She reveals that Hal violated his oath by visiting Sinestro and tells John that the Guardians are ready to remove him. She instructs John that the next time Hal gives him the ring, he recite the Green Lantern oath to claim it permanently, then further provokes him by revealing Hal's dismissive assessments of his abilities. Although John angrily insists that he deserves the ring, he's clearly frustrated by the underhanded way the guardians expect him to obtain it. Following the meeting, John subsequently appears at Hal's door, seemingly about to argue over their different approaches, finding and entering the hidden building. However, to Hale's surprise, John instead provides a detailed drawing of a tunneling machine that could get them beneath Macon's defenses. Impressed by the design, Hale hands him the ring so he can create the machine. This provides John with the perfect opportunity Liana described, but he doesn't follow through with reciting the oath. Instead, he constructs the drill and takes Hale underground. During the journey, their conversation turns personal. And it's revealed Hal lost both of his parents. Once Hal notifies John that they've reached their destination, the two surface near a guard tower on Macon's ranch, then crawl across the field sneaking into a hidden facility filled with sophisticated weapons, but no Manhunter. When Hal accidentally triggers a pressure alarm, John attempts to counter it with a ring construct, but the compound's defenses activate anyway. Macon's med flood the room with black smoke, disrupting the lantern's concentration and neutralizing their abilities, leading to their capture. The men bring Hale and John to meet with Macon at his home, where he ends up subjecting the pair to a bizarre display of power by undressing and ordering John, whose artistic background he had discovered, to sketch him as Hal is forced to sit and watch.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:52

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

Zoe Macon enters, providing John with charcoal and a sketchbook. And during the encounter, William admits that his success comes from an identified benefactor who brought prosperity to Rushville, improved the surrounding land, and even cured his cancer.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:12

Ooh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:14

Zoe confirms that William had once been gravely ill, but Hal nevertheless refuses to accept William's idealized description of the manhunter. Macon once again asks him to leave, but Hal refuses, arguing that the murder of a Green Lantern would certainly attract unwanted attention.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:35

William then follows up, suggesting that Sean isn't a lantern and could be killed without the same consequences. But quickly, before the confrontation escalates, Sheriff Kane arrives claiming to take them in. Instead, we see her drop them off at the motel. Furious at them, squandering their opportunity, she demands they stay put until they hear from her, refusing to let them leave the vehicle until both John and Hal agree verbally. Once they do, she returns Hal's ring to him and provides John with a shotgun, as she says she's currently unable to provide him with protective custody. Later that night, Zoe visits John in secret and they sleep together yet again. Afterward, she warns him that he needs to leave Rushville or be killed, but John apologizes for being unable to, saying he can no longer tolerate the secrets surrounding him. Zoe concedes to his suggestion, admitting that she has been lying, but says the truth would change everything. She also makes it clear that she is not protecting William out of loyalty, rather, he owes his life to her. Before heading out, she asks John one final time to leave town, but he refuses. As Zoe drives away, a beam from the sky obliterates her vehicle right in front of John. Cal immediately takes to the sky, returning and throwing a satellite at John's feet. Sheriff Kane arrives as we see a dome construct protecting the area surrounding the motel. Carrie traces the machinery to Atlas Inc., a company controlled by Hector Hammond, whose organization operates a technologically advanced slaughterhouse outside Rushville. John suspects that the trail may have been deliberately planted, but he and Hal decide to investigate it anyway. Hal and John enter the slaughterhouse, asking the employees passing by where they could find Hector, but everyone seems to ignore them. The pair wanders the halls, eventually entering a room used to butcher cows almost instantly. Oh my god. They eventually make their way to an office where man identifying himself as Hector Hammond claims he is the manhunter, immediately threatening to airstrike John's parents' home from orbit unless he summons the aliens pursuing him. Hal threatens Hammond in return, which, unfortunately for John, leads to him playing a recording of John's private conversation with Liana, exposing John's belief that Hal is old, exhausted, and destined to lose the ring. Rather than react to the personal betrayal, Hal tests Hammond, asking him questions about Ab and Sur that a genuine Manhunter would be able to answer, then threatens to kill him on the basis that Sinestro revealed to him that Manhunter's hearts crystallize upon death. Hammond reminds Hal that he'll kill John's parents if that happens, but Hal seems unconcerned about the potential attack on John's parents.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:41

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:42

Hammond panics and admits that he's an ordinary human and immediately calls out the strike. John, understandably angry, berates Hal, who was apparently only bluffing, and Hammond ends up revealing he's actually somebody named Hector Gutierrez, and that he received advanced technology from the real Manhunter when he was an engineering student, who he claims is will make. On the drive back to Rushville, John confesses to Hal that he had the opportunity to steal his ring but refused. Hal accepts his explanation and surprisingly admits that John may become a better Green Lanter than he is. The two finally begin discussing their respective secrets. John reveals the Guardian's plan while Hal admits that he visited Sinestral and explains what he learned about the Manhunter's methods. Hal asks John to contact Anton's group and arrange a meeting outside towns, supposedly because they have identified the Manhunter. Once John makes the call, however, Hal reveals the conclusion that he has reached, given John's panicked state when Hammond threatens his parents, yet remaining unnaturally controlled after her apparent death earlier. Zoe is the manhunter. Yes. John insists that he only had a suspicion and did not want to accuse her without proof, and also points to his refusal to take the ring as evidence that Hal can trust him. However, Hal remains unconvinced, repeating the dangerous maneuver he used during John's earlier training. Hal accelerates the rental car, jumps out, and leaves John inside it as it crashes, a metaphor for the shattering of their fragile partnership, just as the true Manhunter's identity finally comes into focus.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:32

Ooh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:35

Ashley, what'd you think of this episode?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:38

Oh, I loved it. I think this is the episode where Hal and John are finally realizing they like each other. They've spent so much time, these preconceived notions about who the other person is. And now they're discovering, oh, we kind of make a good team. Weirdly, I think you see that in this episode with a lot of humor. Hal is usually the one who's throwing dumb jokes out there, and John is the straight man, but now John's playing along. There's that stupid Disneyland joke. There's Hal being a dick and landing directly in front of John's scope, obstructing his view. You've got when Hal steps on a pressure alarm and John tells him if you move, it'll set it off. Hal goes, good movie. Jam goes, great movie. I was, oh my God, I loved that. Especially since, you know, everything we were exploring in the last episode with Hal and microaggressions. And here we find out Hal just casually is a fan of set it off. So maybe this guy's a little more culturally aware than John or we have given him credit for. And that's kind of the whole episode. Both of them think they had figured each other out and now they're discovering something else. At the beginning, Sinestra forces Hal to admit John isn't his backup. He's his replacement. And you can tell that really fucking bothers him. Meanwhile, the Guardians are telling John, just take the ring. And John absolutely thinks he deserves it. But I wonder if it secretly just conflicts with his whole entire idea of himself. This is someone who's worked his ass off for everything in his life and wants to earn what he has. He believes he deserves the ring, but stealing it, that's something else. So when the man, I guess I'll say formerly known as Hammond, place how that recording of John basically saying, I deserve the ring more than you do, and really calling him out on his shit. I was waiting for it to be this big misunderstanding between the two, but that's not what happens at all. John apologizes, says he wanted to give the ring back. Hal believes him. And Hal basically admits, yeah, you might end up being better than me. That's pretty huge. I didn't start this season thinking Hal would ever say something like that. It's pretty cool to see how the two have grown. I love that John designs this crazy underground boring machine for them to get into the compound. And in doing that, Hal learns that John had gone to art school after he left the military. You can just see him going, okay, who are you? Then they're talking about their parents. I just really loved all this. And it felt like such a nice way to transition from that standalone episode last week back into the narrative, but bringing with it a lot of what we learned. So I thought it was really great. But also there's all that character development, all this humor. But then there is Megan getting completely naked and demanding John draw him. That is some wild shit. I love that the Hal's basically like, I've seen some weird shit in space, but this seems off. And John, you know, he has an assignment. He wants to be the best at it. So he just starts drawing. Like that is so wild. I just love seeing that they're really going with the grounded, I would say, storytelling tropes, but the actual things happening are just insane. So really liking how things are progressing. Really interested to see what happens next. Uh yeah. What do you think of the episode?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:28

Well, nothing else. I think I just appreciated how weird and or goofy the show can be at times. Oh, yeah. Especially this episode with Will Macon forcing John to sketch him in the nude.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:40

That was nuts. Ooh, literally.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:43

I think the one feeling I kept revisiting during this episode was how John seemed to follow what others felt was right or expected of him.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:53

Even though I've had the same feeling through previous episodes, this one has really felt like everyone, Hal, the Guardians, his parents, Will Macon, and even Zoe just seemed to subject John to whatever they felt they needed to. Example, even when it doesn't make any sense for John to act, the Guardians seem upset that he didn't confront Hal and take the ring.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:18

Like he's wasting time or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:20

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:21

And his parents aren't any better either. Later on, when you hear him talking to his mom on the phone, she's just like, what's going on? Why don't you just take it from him already? Everybody just feels the need to tell them what to do whenever they feel to give him the advice. We get that when we first hear from his dad trying to give him advice what not to do when dealing with Hal. So this one definitely is being pushed around a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:43

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:44

I don't know if I got as much out of the story progression of this episode compared to the others, given that I've been pretty convinced that the Manhunter was likely someone in Macon's family. Yeah. Or someone we've probably met already.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:59

I just think even with as big a deal as Manhunters are supposed to be, I couldn't see the showrunners delaying the reveal of who the one hiding out in Rushville was for, you know, longer than a few episodes.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:12

With that being the case, I'm just glad we had a lot of great, often amusing moments throughout the episode that really helped to build and strengthen characterization for uh most that are regularly involved in the story.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:26

Like we see how dedicated John is, multiple examples of this, see how Hal might actually care about his job, given how hell-bent he is on finding out who the manhunter is, even underneath everything else that's happening, apparently. Uh how much Sheriff Kane cares about the people of the town, even beyond the making family that she's married into. You get a better sense of how uninformed the guardians seem to be. Yeah. Like they really don't seem to understand how people think or like work, I guess. We get a better idea of how much Hal and Sinestro trust or don't trust each other and how that plays into how Hal reacts to revelations that John isn't as by the book as he tries to appear. Right. Even though Hal's already known that from the first time John slept with Zoe. So yeah. It's so weird because I think in most cases I'd be frustrated to blow so much time on finally getting John and Hal to a place where they seem to be able to work together, only to have that all get thrown out the window by the end of the episode, and the trust to end up basically where they were at at the end of the pilot.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:40

It is him more just teasing him than anything. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:45

Even with everything that John did tell him, I think it's a big deal that he didn't bother to just outright tell him what he thought of Zoe, like what he suspected. But I think given all the character development in the episode combined with the big reveal of Zoe being the manhunter, we're supposed to believe. Yeah. Especially given that we still haven't revisited what happened in 2026.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:11

Oh my god, I know. I'm dying for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:14

I'm just hoping that it won't be until the end of the season when we finally revisit it. Overall, though, not the type of episode I'd normally find to be enjoyable. But I think with the reveals getting bigger and more of the story involving characters and other stuff from the comics across each episode that's released, I'm just glad the show continues. They have so many smart and different ways to keep your viewers interested that it's quickly become one of my favorite TV series, I think, within the past few years, even among the other popular shows on HBO Max. So just really uh enjoying what type of show this has become because it's definitely leaned more into the comics than I was expecting. I really was expecting something a little more grounded, but I think they're really being pretty liberal with the space stuff. It's not like they're having them fly all over the place like they do in the comics sometimes. But you see it every once in a while when it seems to make the most sense in this episode with Hal just like taking off to put the satellite out of the sky and find out what the hell they're dealing with. So yeah, I I look forward to seeing how much further things are taken, especially if they're going to have any interesting design for Zoe as a man. I'm really curious inside of the human forms. Yeah. Really looking forward to the hell yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:43

You know what I realized is now that I've seen one really cool construct, I want to see a really cool one every episode. So I'm just hoping next episode we get something big and intricate.

What We're Watching Next

SPEAKER_02 1:44:01

Yes. What are we watching next?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:04

Next week, Statham Temper rolls on. And after In the Name of the King, I think we've earned ourselves a Statham movie that doesn't feel like punishment. So randomizer, I'm trusting you, don't make me regret it. And for new releases, we're either checking out Hope, the new Korean alien movie, or Runner, which is apparently some kind of Alan Richson, Owen Wilson buddy thriller. Honestly, I'm down for either.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:32

Man, that guy has been everywhere this year. He is and uh for TV, which he is also on.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:41

We'll see if John and Hale can ever truly get along in episode five of Lanterns. Given any trust between them, it seems like it might have possibly ended, much like the ability of John's rental car to continue operating.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:56

Oh my god.

Outro

SPEAKER_03 1:44:59

Thank you so much for listening, guys. We really appreciate it, and we hope you're having a lovely day.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:06

Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review positively, like how we are positively certain that you bull's greatest villain is coherent storytelling.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:19

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:21

Aside from that, follow us on social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:31

Bye guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:32

See you lots of movies.