0:09

And on

0:12

the Empire

0:14

Podcast this week, once again,

0:16

we send our War Rig

0:19

to Interview Town to interview

0:21

Imperator George Miller, director of

0:23

Furiosa, a Mad Max

0:25

saga. Witness him!

0:28

Plus the usual news and nonsense

0:30

on the movie podcast that, of

0:33

Jurgen Norbert Klopp, I can

0:35

only say this, of

0:37

all the souls I have encountered in my

0:39

travels, his was the most

0:42

human human human

0:45

Jurgen. Hello

0:50

Pod, I'm Chris Stewart, welcome to

0:52

the Empire Podcast, joined once again in the

0:54

studio in the Pod booth this

0:56

week by three colleagues of such lethal

0:59

cunning. Helena Hara, our geek

1:01

queen is here, hello. Hello! How

1:04

are you? I'm very well, I went to

1:06

see Spirited Away last night at the theatre. Aww,

1:08

that's nice. It was very good, except I

1:10

was in the cheap seats and they were unbelievably

1:13

shit. That's what I've

1:15

been saying! I've been saying all along!

1:17

They're not always! This is unusually bad!

1:20

How cheap were the cheap seats? 35 quid. Fuck

1:22

me. I mean,

1:24

our definition of cheap is very, very

1:27

different. I mean, compared to the top

1:29

seats, that's very cheap in this. It

1:31

doesn't sound bad for a theatre scene. It used

1:34

to be £10. When? £10 quid? They

1:36

used to be like the today ticks. And the quality? You

1:38

went to Italy? The other one. To

1:40

watch them throw Christians to the lions? Yes. 10

1:43

pounds is a bargain. Oh, good for you, says Christian,

1:45

as he was thrown to

1:48

the lions. The lions fucking

1:50

distracting! We're

1:56

also joined by our great big fucking nerd, James

1:58

Dyer. Hello. We're also joined by... by

2:00

our resident George Harrison

2:03

lookalike. It's John Nugent. Hello John Nugent.

2:05

Hello. Another auspicious introduction for me. Thank

2:07

you. Yeah. How are we all? We

2:10

all good? Good. We are good.

2:12

Excellent. We are none of us. Is it

2:15

only me who is bereft by the departure

2:17

of Jurgen Norbert Klopp? It

2:19

is. Manager of Liverpool Football Club.

2:21

I mean, like, sympathies to you and all, but

2:23

yes, no one else cares here. Yeah. Well, Helen,

2:26

that is where you were right. But

2:29

it was a hell of a day. A hell of

2:31

a day. And in a totally organic

2:33

move. Well, look at

2:36

that. This week's listener question is about

2:38

great movie farewells. How did that happen,

2:40

both? Wow. Does this question come from

2:42

a C. Hewitt? From a Hugh Crissett.

2:48

My name is Mr Burns. It's

2:51

not far off. So basically I

2:53

asked a whole bunch of people here, I took Twitter

2:56

and said, can someone ask this question,

2:58

please? And so a few

3:00

people did. Duly noted 90 said, what's your

3:02

best farewell to an actor in a film

3:04

specifically within the context of a given franchise?

3:06

No. Shug Hamster, what is

3:09

your Mount Rushmore of movie farewells? They're

3:11

trying to play me like a violin.

3:14

They know I love a Mount Rushmore question. But

3:17

yeah, loads of people asked that question. So your request for

3:19

them to ask that question? Really

3:22

cooperate with my demand. What I

3:24

want this to be is a

3:26

discussion about great movie goodbyes or

3:29

farewells. Now, this is obviously open

3:31

to interpretation, but in my mind, I'm

3:33

kind of keeping for

3:35

the most part, death scenes off the

3:37

table. Okay, so no Spock, no Tony.

3:40

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

3:42

Yes, E.T. Spoilers

3:44

for Rathokan and Avengers Endgame

3:46

there. But I'm thinking

3:48

no death scenes unless you can make a

3:51

really, really good argument for it. This is

3:53

I want a scene in a movie where

3:55

one character says goodbye to one or more

3:57

characters and then never sees that character characters

4:00

again. So it's not like they

4:02

could say goodbye in a film and then they show up

4:04

in the next film. Yeah, goodbye, see you tomorrow, doesn't count.

4:06

Yeah. Well hang on,

4:08

okay, now that's a wrinkle. Because something like

4:10

Stand By Me, right, has

4:13

them all saying goodbye and going their separate ways at the end. And

4:15

it's not a big deal because they know they'll see each other in

4:18

school in a bit. But then the narrator

4:21

over the top tells us about

4:23

River Phoenix dying, which actually still hits

4:25

pretty hard. And that gives

4:27

it a whole other dimension. Another dimension? Another

4:31

dimension. Another dimension. Okay,

4:33

well listen, as I said, if

4:35

you can make a justification for this and you

4:37

can make a good argument for it, then I will accept

4:39

it. So you say Stand By Me. No,

4:42

it's one of my answers. It's one of your

4:44

answers. We're not doing Mount Rushmore or farewells, but

4:46

we're just doing, we're just going to throw some

4:48

farewells. Okay, well I'm not going to be moved

4:50

from the number one spot on this, which is

4:52

a death scene, but I reckon, sorry, but the

4:54

death comes at the end of the goodbye scene.

4:56

So I reckon then even if you carve off

4:58

the death, I can have

5:00

the goodbye. And it is, of course, Terminator 2.

5:02

I thought you were going to say that. I

5:04

was going to say that. But Brad Fiedel's score,

5:07

like playing, you know, you almost lower me into

5:09

this deal. I cannot tell, Tony.

5:12

It's just, like every time I watch it, it gets

5:14

me right there. I can't, and then the thumb,

5:17

oh my God. It's just, I mean, it's extraordinary.

5:19

You could get away on a technicality. It's not

5:21

a death scene. It's a termination. Yes, right. And

5:23

also he was never alive because he's a robot.

5:26

Exactly. Well, that's an interesting, I

5:28

mean, if he has enough self-awareness to be aware

5:30

of self-terminating and what that means. He said

5:33

terminating. He arguably is

5:35

sentient and is alive. This is an interesting

5:37

question addressed in one of this week's films.

5:39

It is indeed, yes. Or maybe he can't

5:41

because... The Garfield movie. It is something I

5:44

could never do. That's right. I know now

5:46

why you cry. It's

5:49

magnificent and I love every second of it. Well,

5:52

for me, I think the most obvious

5:54

and definite number one, at least in

5:57

terms of screen time, is Return of

5:59

the King. Which one? All 15 of

6:01

them. Yeah. It's a full like half an

6:03

hour of goodbye. Are you thinking the Into

6:05

the West in particular or all of them?

6:07

That's when it gets me. But yeah, all

6:09

of them. There's like five solid goodbyes. Oh

6:11

yeah, it's endless. And that's like the long

6:13

goodbye, isn't it? Yeah. Ironically,

6:17

not that long. No, not that

6:19

long at all. But okay, this

6:21

is Frodo in his bed, and

6:24

they all gather around and go... No! No,

6:26

that's a whole other thing. Yeah,

6:30

the killer in Return to the King. I don't

6:32

know if you agree, John, but the killer is

6:34

at the Great Haven. No, it's Sauron, Helen. He's

6:36

the killer. Thank you. Yes, you're very funny. The

6:38

killer all before dawn. He put his goods on.

6:42

Where Frodo announces that he's going

6:44

on the ship too, and Sam is taken

6:46

aback. That is the goodbye scene. Yes,

6:48

that is sad. Although it is

6:50

also at the White City, there's

6:52

just sort of a goodbye where

6:55

Aragorn is like my friends. You've bowed

6:57

to no one. That's

7:00

kind of a goodbye. I'm not saying that's not good,

7:02

I'm just saying the one that gets me. Yeah,

7:04

yeah. But that's a coronation, not a goodbye. But

7:08

I mean, it's a goodbye in the sense of

7:10

that's the last time that the Aragorn... That's the

7:12

Aragorn. That's a weird bit of a... They kind

7:14

of soften the blow of it being the last time

7:16

we see Aragorn by having conditioned his hair first, so

7:18

it doesn't really feel like him. And his beard

7:20

looks really good as well, but his beard

7:22

is really thick and lustrous. Are there any

7:25

shots in the original trilogy that are still

7:27

storytelling, like where they couldn't be arsed? I

7:29

don't think so. I don't think there's any

7:31

shot in that trilogy where they couldn't be

7:33

arsed. I

7:35

think that's one of the things that people love about

7:37

that trilogy. Every single shot, they were arsed. I'm going

7:40

to be able to differentiate it from the other trilogy.

7:43

Which other trilogy? Exactly. Oh,

7:45

I see. I felt your trap. Okay,

7:50

interesting. Any more? You want to throw at me? I

7:52

have a list. The list is live. I'm going to find

7:54

that it's one of them. I'm going to throw out Oscar

7:56

Schindler in Schindler's list. Yeah, I could have done more things.

7:58

I could have done more. Oh boy, I can't

8:01

even. That's a

8:03

rough one. Yeah.

8:06

Truman Show. Truman Show. That's

8:08

a great one. Good

8:11

afternoon, good evening and good night. What a farewell.

8:13

Yeah, that here is hard. And then he gets

8:15

immediately killed. He does. He inhales the

8:17

bullets. He's not Florence Pugh. Florence Pugh and Little Women. How does she say

8:20

goodbye in that movie? She lives to, you know, fight again. She's a little

8:22

bit of a bitch. She's a little bit of a bitch. She's a little

8:24

bit of a bitch. She's a little bit of a bitch. She's a little

8:26

bit of a bitch. She's a little bit of a bitch. She's a little

8:28

bit of a bitch. She doesn't want to, you know, fight again. Does she

8:30

wipe a tear of? Who else is in this film? Sarah

8:34

Sharona. Does she wipe a tear of

8:36

Sarah Sharona's face and go, I know not why

8:38

you cry but it is something

8:40

like an image. Because Amy is the worst, except

8:43

I was the best Amy. Okay,

8:45

strange last line. There you go. And

8:48

then there was the hell of the... The visionary genius of Greta Gerwig. Miles

8:51

ahead of her time. Miles ahead of her time? PB Miles

8:53

ahead of your time? Shut up. Anyway,

8:56

before sunrise, what goodbye before

8:58

sunrise? I'm just qualifying that. Because they meet again.

9:00

Oh, but not in that film. You've

9:04

already, you've already, no, no, you've

9:06

already rode roughshod over my rules

9:08

once before. I'm not accepting a

9:10

second time. Fine. Okay.

9:13

Casablanca. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's

9:16

a good one. What happens in Casablanca for

9:18

loads of us in this room who don't watch films in black and

9:20

white? I've seen it. I've got to show

9:22

it with Ellen. I drag meet her. I

9:24

insisted he see it. Did you like it, James? It's no

9:26

diehard. It's fine. It's just, just really,

9:28

really, he wake up in the morning going, what can I do

9:30

today? I

9:36

know I'm going to, I'm going to be the

9:38

goddamn worst. That's what I'm going to do. I'm

9:41

going to aspire to that mission

9:44

accomplished. What

9:46

happens in the Casablanca? In Casablanca,

9:49

Rick insists that Elsa get on a

9:51

plane with her okay, admittedly, husband. I

9:53

don't know why you cry. It's been hard. Because

10:00

her husband is basically going to win World War Two by personally killing Hitler or

10:07

something. And Rick knows that he

10:09

needs also with him to do

10:11

that. So he insists for like

10:14

the good of everybody that she go with

10:16

Victor Laszlo. And he then goes off to

10:18

join the French Resistance with his police

10:21

chief buddy. And opens a cafe, or

10:23

a trois, just a cafe rene in

10:25

France. What would be amazing if that

10:27

was the twist of a low, low,

10:30

but Renee was

10:32

Rick all along. I have

10:34

a massage from shame. God

10:36

help anybody who doesn't remember

10:38

an obscure 80s. A

10:41

low, low is not obscure. A low,

10:43

low is one of the most popular

10:45

sitcoms of all time, of all time. I

10:48

mean, in this country maybe, but it is also 40 years old

10:50

at this point. Yeah, 40 years old at this point.

10:54

Oh, thank you. Toy

10:58

Story 3. Toy Story 3. It

11:00

explains to her what they mean to him.

11:03

Oh God. And this is Guy in

11:05

the center. And also some childhoods. So

11:07

long partner. Oh God. It's

11:09

all on partner. It's almost like

11:12

that was the perfect ending to that series. And

11:15

that's where they ended it. And that's where they

11:17

ended it. Yeah. And there was never another one.

11:19

I liked Toy Story 4. Get out! Good film.

11:22

You mother forky. Can we talk about the ET now?

11:26

ET. Oh, oh.

11:28

I know now why you

11:31

cry. But

11:33

it is something I can never do.

11:36

It should be hard. Is that

11:38

Bogart as ET? I'm

11:41

very confused. Bogart as ET being

11:43

Terminator 2 by the way. I

11:47

may have lost track. I'm afraid I

11:49

can't self-terminate. Why

11:52

are you holding two fingers up? It's

11:55

very confusing. Alright.

11:58

Now it all makes sense. like

12:00

Jack Black in School of Rock, right between the

12:02

lines. Yeah. Oh, that's

12:04

rude. Yes. Does he have a good

12:07

goodbye? No. No. Okay.

12:10

Mr. Schneebly. Mr. Ned Schneebly. Um,

12:12

okay. Okay. Helen was explaining.

12:14

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No,

12:17

but the goodbyes between E.T. and Elliot,

12:19

who will presumably never meet again unless,

12:21

you know, a new age

12:23

of interstellar peace is ushered in somehow later.

12:26

Hey, I've been on the Universal Studios ride where you go

12:28

back to E.T.'s home planet with Elliot. So,

12:30

yeah, I think so. I'm

12:32

willing to. I think so. I'm

12:35

willing to. Why by Canon? No,

12:37

just by bike. I refuse. But, uh, but yeah,

12:39

that is, it's devastating. I like, I just every

12:41

single time I watch it, even as an adult,

12:43

I'm still in the story. But

12:46

I'll be right here. I'll be

12:48

right here. In terms of

12:50

the Spielberg goodbyes, is that higher

12:53

or lower in the shindlers? Higher, higher, lower in

12:55

the shindlers. Oh, come on. I'm not. No, no,

12:57

no. You have to play the game. I

12:59

will not do it. You must. No. What

13:02

about when Indy says goodbye to the Ark of the Covenant? I

13:05

was thinking about this because, uh, in

13:07

Last Crusade, the Grail Knight, they

13:10

wave goodbye to the Grail Knight, doesn't he? Before

13:12

he gets crushed by hundreds of tons of rubble.

13:16

What a life that man led. Sitting

13:18

alone in that cave for hundreds

13:21

of years and then some Nazis

13:23

turn up and then within hours,

13:26

he's crushed under rubble. That's

13:29

not good. Minutes, really. Minutes,

13:31

yeah. He is immortal as long as he stays

13:33

there. So maybe he just now lives under rubble.

13:35

What do you mean he's immortal as long as

13:37

he stays there? It's not a great existence if

13:39

you are pinned to the grave. Squished, in fact,

13:42

by rot. It's not the best. Look,

13:44

he is like meant to have lived a good life,

13:46

right? He's meant to be this saintly dude. So I

13:49

feel like God's probably like, you know, lifted

13:51

him out of it at that point. I mean, like, up

13:54

to heaven rather than out of a pile

13:56

of rock and back into the wee room beyond it. Yeah.

14:00

Bielburg for Wells, that is sad. I was absolutely

14:02

over the moon when West Side Story finished. Why

14:06

are we getting back to this? He is bad

14:08

for mentioning that. We're pretty bad on the list

14:10

with Molly's game. He's just not like talk about

14:12

it anymore. James was waving at

14:14

the screen. I'm

14:16

out of here. John,

14:21

do you have any more

14:24

farewells? I

14:29

had Dead Poets Society. Oh, yeah. Captain, Captain,

14:31

my captain. By the way, I have

14:33

a list. I have a list here.

14:36

Several of you have QI clacks under the hell out

14:38

of the list. Out of this list already. I

14:41

think only one of you has Toy Story 3,

14:43

but I did consider it. But you said

14:45

that one, didn't you? John? My hell has been that? That's

14:47

not on my list. But so far, you've you've

14:50

ticked off my list very, very nicely. But John,

14:52

please continue. Well, that's mostly

14:54

what I have to say. Great. It's

14:57

it's it's just like, I don't know if it's

14:59

one of those things that feels like it's been

15:02

parodied so much that you forget the

15:04

original. Have you seen that

15:06

Saturday Night Live sketch? Yes, very,

15:08

very funny. Where just everyone stands on the desks

15:11

and then they just hit the fans and just

15:13

like equals

15:15

head start getting decapitated. Yeah. If you want

15:18

to get decapitated, everyone else starts throwing up

15:20

and then other people start dying horribly and

15:22

Fred Armisen as the Robin Williams character. But

15:24

it's disqualified because they do meet each

15:26

other again in the recent Taylor Swift video

15:29

Fortnite. So who's what?

15:32

Josh Charles and Ethan Hawke. But

15:34

he's not in that quote, reprise that their own.

15:36

Oh, no, he is. But it's not about

15:38

them. They're not saying goodbye to each other. They're saying goodbye

15:40

to their teacher. John Keating, played by Robin Williams. That is

15:42

true. And they don't see him again

15:44

unless there's a reunion many years later, which be

15:47

really, really deeply weird. Shall I say some of

15:49

my little list? Sure. Oh,

15:52

James is about to speak. I can tell that intake of

15:54

breath. I reckon I'm going to be

15:56

the worst. I know I'm not going to be the worst. I

15:58

think this is going to think you will all be on board

16:00

with. this furious seven Paul

16:02

Walker Vin Diesel through the car windows.

16:06

QI Clackston that is on my list. That

16:08

is a pretty good one actually. Yeah. It's

16:11

good because of, you know, factors

16:14

off the screen. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking

16:16

of furious, what about fury road, uh, when

16:19

max and, and,

16:21

uh, furious to share that look as she

16:23

rises up on the, on the platform and

16:26

he melts into the crowd and presumably they never

16:28

see each other again. That's a,

16:30

it's not an amazing one, but that sticks in my

16:32

mind because I was trying to think of scenes

16:35

where the camera is moving away from

16:37

a character and one of the stuck

16:39

in my head was the end

16:42

of LA confidential or Bud white

16:44

and, and Lynn drive

16:46

away and they leave edXly behind.

16:49

And that's that whole, the end

16:51

of that film is a goodbye. And the final shot

16:54

is of edXly diminishing in the frame as they

16:56

drive away from him. So I was thinking of that. I was

16:58

taking a fury road as well. It was

17:00

a good, thank you. Lost in translation. Yes.

17:03

But I don't like the film. Not

17:06

sure that's an official objection, which is why I

17:08

did not have it on my list, but I

17:10

knew someone would say it is a good, good,

17:12

right? The criteria you have to like, yeah. Et

17:16

in Terminator two do so. Why

17:19

Armageddon is on your list where lost from lost

17:21

in translation is not. Why would Armageddon be on

17:23

my list? That's a bad scene. We take his

17:25

patch off and he says goodbye. And it's like,

17:27

he's about to die. You're

17:29

obsessed with the death. I'm separating the goodbye from

17:31

the death. So it's fine. But

17:33

the goodbye is because of the impending death. You're

17:35

because of the impending death. It's

17:38

a fair argument. I'm

17:41

subbing in interstellar. She

17:43

actually would be fair. She's also dying. So

17:46

I'm not sure that really helps. Wait, you

17:48

want this? I'm thinking final nerf, the final

17:50

goodbye. Well, when

17:52

she's an old lady, which is, which is

17:54

Alan Burstyn. Yeah. Because the real heart ripper

17:57

there is more of a hello, which is

17:59

the video message. That

18:03

goodbye kind of annoyed me because it's just like

18:05

you've just found your daughter after like years and

18:07

you just like and then he swans

18:09

off to find Anne Hathaway. In fact she does kind

18:11

of tell him to fuck off so because

18:15

she has her own proper family with her at that point.

18:17

Does he not get to Anne Hathaway after like 70

18:19

subjective years have passed for her too? Is he just going

18:22

to be ping ponging back and forth between old

18:24

ladies? I

18:26

really did have the question. Like an healing comedy. Ping

18:30

ponging back and forth between old ladies. Speaking

18:33

of ping pong. Do you allow

18:35

bing bong? No, because that's

18:37

it. Is it a death if it's an imaginary

18:39

character? I wondered

18:42

about that. I don't

18:44

have it on my list for that very reason.

18:46

I thought it was a death scene, but I

18:48

am willing to accept it. Same thing.

18:50

I thought for sure, John, you would say a matter of life

18:52

and death. Although they

18:54

do meet again. Again,

18:58

but that opening scene of that film

19:00

is incredible. Yeah, what

19:02

an amazing goodbye. Yeah, your

19:04

life and I'm leaving you. At

19:08

least prank it callers. So we

19:11

can't have a death. Can it be someone saying goodbye

19:13

to someone who's already dead? Are

19:16

you about to say ghost? No, that's a good shout.

19:18

Actually, that is a good shout. I was actually thinking

19:20

of Logan and just the moving of the cross to

19:23

make it the X, which is an

19:25

incredible scene. Yeah.

19:29

I mean, if you want to go down

19:31

that route, then Tony delivers a message from

19:33

beyond the grave, doesn't he? He loves 3000.

19:35

He loves the 3000. And

19:37

so does Randy in screen three. So

19:40

much the same. Sorry

19:44

for all the spoilers, by the way. We're

19:47

ruining all the films. Hopefully you've seen some films. Okay, I'm

19:49

going to mention some more. I'm going to

19:51

say real quick. Films

19:53

I had written down. Casablanca. Bing.

19:56

Dead Poet Society. Bing. Shane. Now

19:59

Shane. Some. People believe

20:01

the same dies at the end of saying

20:03

that he slumps over in his horse at

20:05

the end and that's that's him. gone. Either

20:08

way, Great goodbye. My.

20:11

Beloved the says go boy how

20:13

boy Sam Raimi is dark man

20:15

in which of a sudden me

20:18

undies and farewell on stream must

20:20

have Paypal Westlake was the sleep

20:22

mrs It's. Los

20:25

Debates mistreated. It's a

20:27

sports what assortment. Of

20:32

a still debating was leads ah he says

20:34

goodbye to friends Have a dormant as as

20:37

your wintery Oscars. Or

20:39

but I will be you at all those feelings. Are

20:42

we have a family wells? A study

20:45

from the ones that. Are

20:47

moving off. Axis,

20:51

a guy uncharted toting under he movie

20:53

turns into Bruce Campbell which is always

20:55

great to buy. Amazing! And

20:57

Bruce Campbell looks back. And

21:00

he looks back of on a wistfully.

21:02

A. Frances Mcdormand and her ulcers

21:04

And still no two incidences had

21:06

one A Wizard of Oz. Ah

21:09

but also Top Secret which parodies

21:11

was divorced when they're thank you

21:13

bye at the end and they

21:16

they get most of the plane

21:18

and them rhythm on goes and

21:20

I'm busy. Motive of extra. Ah

21:23

to comedy times he is perfectly within like

21:26

I know the world is not enough. Can

21:28

you think of the great good bye in

21:30

million Rather know I already took me a

21:32

again help me help you with the john

21:35

Is it the goodbye of que? it is

21:37

to define. Desmond.

21:40

For Wellens Final. Film

21:42

as to he was retiring anyway.

21:44

sadly. Tragically. Was killed

21:46

not too long thereafter. but he

21:48

has a great outline and as

21:50

he says always the the Monday

21:52

morning disappears beneath the for. Am.

21:56

An and the last one I had written down was Midnight

21:58

Run. ah words Walsh

22:00

says goodbye to the Duke. And,

22:02

you know, see you in the next life. In

22:05

the next life. No love. They have

22:07

a lovely, lovely moment together. No love

22:09

for Wilson. The goodbye to Wilsoning type

22:11

boy. Oh, Wilson. Oh, that was heartbreaking.

22:13

Wilson. Is that a

22:15

dead scene? Because... Yes! No.

22:18

I mean, does he drown? I mean, he

22:20

floats. He's quite buoyant. So I'm suggesting that

22:22

Wilson did not die. Buoyant, but like... Also

22:24

on account of being a volleyball. Yeah. That's

22:26

the point. Is it like if Wilson becomes

22:29

waterlogged and sinks to the bottom of the

22:31

Pacific, is he alive? And

22:33

also is he only quote unquote alive

22:35

because Tom Hanks is character who's name

22:38

I definitely remember, but I'm not saying right

22:40

now. Chuck Nolan. The

22:42

cast away. Chuck Nolan. Chuck. Chip.

22:46

Chuck Nolan. Chuck Nolan. Chuck

22:48

Nolan. FedEx man. Really? Yes.

22:53

He doesn't seem like a Chuck. Chuck. That

22:55

is his character's name. You can look it up. I

22:58

trust you implicitly. But my point is,

23:02

you know, is he even alive to begin

23:04

with? So maybe it's a death. Is

23:06

Chuck Nolan alive to begin with? Not

23:08

him. No, it's Wilson's dream. The

23:10

whole film is Wilson's imagining. I

23:13

would explain a lot. And

23:18

last but not least, of course, Roy

23:20

Tin Cup, McAfee. No,

23:23

I think I'm done. I think I'm exhausted.

23:25

As always, there are hundreds and hundreds and

23:27

hundreds and hundreds of options and

23:29

answers. And we have only picked a number. James

23:31

has picked the films he's seen in his life.

23:37

The rest of these guys have had a cheeky

23:39

Google, so it's all good. It's all good. So

23:42

if you're outraged by something we haven't included,

23:44

then please know that we're idiots. If

23:47

you want to have your question read out in the Amber

23:49

podcast, you don't have to wait for the

23:51

greatest liberal manager of my lifetime

23:53

to retire in order to ask

23:55

a question that I have manipulated you into asking. And

23:58

you can ask whatever question you want to ask. I'm

24:00

on Twitter as add Chris Hewitt you can fly to

24:02

my DMS You can reply

24:04

to a pan of shout-out every now and again Or

24:07

you can reply to any of my tweets once

24:09

you've stopped laughing of course All

24:13

right, let's move straight into the movie news this week. We've

24:15

only got one guest We've only got one guest, but what

24:17

a guest it is is George Miller. There's a big old

24:20

chunky chunky George Miller interview

24:24

Chunky George Oh Chunky

24:26

George George George of the

24:28

podcast anyway Make

24:31

him stop. He's moving news. What's been happening in the

24:33

world of movie news John. What's your

24:35

favorite? Our house director up to these days John Well,

24:39

I see what's your favorite artist right I spoke to one of

24:41

them last week I'm not sure I'm allowed to say but uh

24:44

Peter Strickland Peter Strickland you shouldn't be saying that

24:46

John people might be listening Yeah

24:54

You can say anything say your pin number say

24:56

your account numbers don't give a shit begins with

24:58

a five That's

25:01

probably true if Darren Brown has taught me

25:03

anything that's probably true You've probably hidden a

25:06

truth in there and you try to distract us by

25:08

thinking it's a fib Oh, so now I

25:10

have to do is just guess the other seven and

25:12

your sword code and the my access

25:14

to the Nugent millions Will

25:17

be granted is this the Beatles fortune? John

25:21

has been siphoning off George Harrison's royalties for

25:23

years Anyway, John. Well, what was

25:25

Peter Strickland up to? He's

25:28

up to well He's got I was talking to him

25:30

because he's got a new box set out Which is

25:32

very exciting of all of his stuff and all of

25:34

his short films James is raising an interested eyebrow to

25:36

love a short film Yes,

25:39

but he told me as well. I guess this

25:41

is news that he's making a kids film

25:44

That's what terrified I Can't

25:48

wait like a genuine kids film not like

25:51

an ironic kids film like a film for

25:53

kids This is like the Nicklaus winding ref

25:55

in famous five. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah

25:57

in a way. I think with that coming

26:00

out. It's out on Blueracing.

26:03

So it must be showing on the BBC soon enough.

26:06

Which apparently is made without

26:08

irony. They'll just be gallons of

26:10

blood. The

26:12

first one's a famous five, the second

26:15

one's a famous four. The famous three,

26:17

then it's a garroted two, and then

26:20

it's just souls of Fiverr. What do

26:22

you think would survive? I don't

26:24

know the famous five well enough, so I'm going to say...

26:26

George. It's George,

26:28

isn't it? It's George. I couldn't tell you the names of

26:30

the famous five. George

26:32

and... I want

26:35

to say Julian? What's the dog called? Timmy?

26:37

You've made that up. I'm not sure I have.

26:40

Does the dog have a name? The dog might

26:42

have a name. I think the dog can't talk.

26:44

I know that all the other characters who are

26:46

not the famous five have kind of passingly, casually

26:48

racist names, but I don't think the main core

26:51

ones are too offensive. Like Welsh Steve. George

26:54

and Julian and Thomas. So

26:57

who's the dog? I'm pretty sure it's Timmy, but I'm

26:59

looking at it. I don't know if it is. Alright.

27:02

Wilson, I hope it's Wilson. Wilson, the

27:04

dog. I can't see what happened. Wilson, the dog. Characters.

27:08

Julian is the oldest. Dick,

27:11

the lol, has a cheeky sense of humor.

27:13

George is a tomboy. He does. Anne

27:16

is the youngest of the group. And

27:18

Timothy, alias Timmy, is George's face. Look at

27:20

that. Look at that dog knowledge. Anyway, there

27:23

you go. I forgot the dick, but otherwise

27:25

I knew them well. I mean, it happens to

27:27

us all. Helen sets him up and due to legal reasons, I can't knock

27:29

him down. John,

27:32

please to continue. Are

27:34

you done? I think I'm done. Okay, great

27:36

stuff. But we want some actual

27:39

news. Yeah, we do want some actual news. That's probably

27:41

good for a news section. There's an art house franchise

27:43

known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I

27:46

think we've done that. Has some news this week.

27:49

Which is that the X-Men movie

27:51

has a screenwriter. Michael Leslie. who

28:00

wrote the

28:03

ballad of songbirds and snakes,

28:05

which to be fair was

28:07

a pretty good adaptation of

28:10

that. Like that is it's fucking dark.

28:12

And let's be honest, incredibly long, but it does interesting things.

28:14

I went back with some forwards on that film. Like

28:16

I genuinely, when I saw that, I was like, it's two

28:18

stars, it's two stars by the end of the credits, it

28:20

got up to three stars. So I'd actually inflation and I've

28:22

enjoyed it more in the time since I've seen it.

28:24

So it's going to be a five star by the end

28:27

of the year. But yeah,

28:29

I know you did a good job of adapting that

28:31

material and look, it's early days. I could not be

28:33

more excited. This is the thing in the MCU I'm

28:35

most excited about. They are my most beloved Marvel characters.

28:37

Don't fuck it up. And

28:40

they're taking their time over it. They're not rushing it. Feige

28:42

said they're not rushing it. They're doing this deliberately. I think

28:44

the interesting thing, we were talking about this just

28:46

recently, in regards to X-Men 97,

28:49

but I think that was a show that really got

28:51

a lot of the tone right from what we want

28:53

for the X-Men. And it kind of, and that's obviously

28:55

under the banners of modern

28:58

Marvel. Feige's name is on

29:00

there. So that's got to be a good sign. They know

29:03

what the core of this is. They

29:06

know that we need a bit of soapiness.

29:08

They know that we need a bit of

29:10

real world discrimination, parallels, kind

29:13

of real stakes for humans in a way

29:15

that maybe some of the other superheroes

29:17

don't really have. All

29:19

respect to Tony, but he's a billionaire. He

29:21

has different problems from the X-Men,

29:23

for example. And I think that there's a

29:26

lot of dramatic meat there that they can

29:28

get into, as well as some cray-cray powers

29:30

that make very little sense. Yeah. So

29:33

I didn't enjoy X-Men 97 on account of it being a

29:35

cartoon, but I did watch the final episode and there's like

29:37

150,000 mutants in that episode. It

29:40

is absolutely stacked. So I was quite impressed because

29:43

I thought the first episode was pretty poor, but

29:45

all accounts it does pick up dramatically after that.

29:48

But the final episode, I mean, they leave nothing

29:50

on the bench at all. It's

29:52

all out there. Did you just skip to the end? I did, in

29:54

fact, skip to the end. I did do

29:56

that because I wanted to. I was being harassed on the

29:58

pilot TV podcast to talk. about X-Men 97. I couldn't. I

30:01

couldn't face what it was. Was it also because I told

30:03

you to watch the last five minutes because I thought you'd

30:05

enjoy it? No, though you did, except

30:07

I didn't get to the last five minutes, so I still

30:09

haven't seen that. Oh boy. So literally

30:11

you couldn't make it the whole way through an episode of-

30:13

To be fair, it was a double episode. It was 45

30:16

minutes long. I can't watch 45 minutes of Cartoon Hell

30:18

and I just can't. Once

30:22

again, it's dedication to being the worst. It's

30:24

admirable. Anyway, best of luck

30:27

to Michael Leslie. Yes, indeed.

30:29

How would they- Forgive me if you've already

30:31

covered this, but how are they going to-

30:33

The mutants

30:35

just going to show up one

30:37

day. Are they just going to

30:39

be like- My theory is that

30:41

the X-Men and the Fantastic Four

30:43

currently exist in different universes, multiverses

30:46

if you will, and that in

30:49

Avengers Secret Wars, all

30:52

those universes will collide

30:55

and only one universe will be left standing.

30:57

At the end, it will be the universe

30:59

of the MCU and those

31:01

characters will be transplanted into the

31:03

world of the MCU. Tiny

31:05

comment that I'm literally just thinking of. It

31:08

might not be strictly the world of

31:10

the MCU in the sense that you

31:13

could alter people's memories

31:15

or alter people's perception of

31:17

reality or whatever so that certain people

31:19

never existed so you get a do over on people you

31:21

want to do over on. Is

31:24

it going to be like a conjunction of the spheres?

31:27

Like in The Witcher? Yeah, no, but I think it

31:29

is going to be like universes kind of combining

31:32

and interlocking and suddenly

31:35

mutants have always been around and there's always

31:37

been prejudice against them and blah, blah, blah.

31:39

But I think what I'm saying right now

31:42

is what I hadn't thought of before is you

31:44

could actually do it so they're

31:46

kind of never- People don't have

31:48

a memory anymore of like a Tony Stark

31:50

who was Iron Man. That gives

31:53

you the possibility of a do over down

31:55

the line is all I'm saying. That's very

31:57

age of apocalypse. That's very kind of- I'm

32:00

not saying I want this, I'm

32:02

not saying it's inevitable, I'm not saying

32:04

it's what they're planning, I'm just saying that

32:07

is also possible. You could lose as well as gain by

32:09

clashing your nose. But I feel it's like Candyman,

32:11

don't say it aloud Helen, like it might make it real and

32:13

I can't have that be the thing. No,

32:15

Helen, what Helen said has made me think of,

32:18

you could do that thing but

32:20

you could reverse it. It'd be a

32:22

bit of a downer, but whatever was

32:24

the MCU Earth that didn't survive.

32:27

And suddenly it was the Avengers

32:29

and some key characters, like a

32:31

handful of characters who made it

32:33

and suddenly they found themselves in

32:35

this other universe where mutants already

32:37

existed. We were talking on the X-Men

32:39

97 supporters special which is up now. By

32:42

the way folks, if you want to listen to

32:44

that, if you subscribe, if you don't subscribe, you

32:46

should subscribe, empire.supportingcast.fm. But we were

32:48

talking about one

32:51

of the problems with the X-Men is that

32:54

they grew up in a world where they

32:56

are hated and feared because they are different

32:58

because they're super powered. But if they

33:01

come into a world where superpowers

33:03

already exist, even though

33:05

it's the likes of Spider-Man, technically he's now

33:07

a mutant, will

33:09

people really hate and fear them? I mean I

33:12

guess you'd hate and fear Magneto because he's a

33:14

dickhead who might destroy your planet, but would you

33:16

really hate and fear Jubilee? Would you really hate

33:18

and fear Storm? I'm not so sure you would

33:20

because weather's been around since the beginning of time.

33:23

So people would be very used

33:25

to that I think. But

33:27

what if you engineered it so that our

33:29

heroes, our beloved characters found themselves in a

33:31

world without hatred and fear already existed? That's

33:34

interesting. It's a bummer but possible. It gives

33:36

you a kind of a soft reset as

33:38

well which we kind of enjoy doing so

33:40

that you don't have that weight of back

33:42

material that people have to buff up on.

33:45

And also there's a chance that if you

33:47

go into that world then they have a

33:49

Tony Stark who's less expensive. Exactly.

33:51

No, no. I feel very strongly that

33:54

there should never be another Iron Man.

33:57

I really do. I also actually feel that way

33:59

as you know. We have had thrash

34:01

many times. I'm just saying this would

34:03

be a way of doing it

34:05

that would be less objectionable than many. Yeah.

34:08

I just feel like the Marvel Universe

34:10

is full of so many great characters.

34:12

There's no need to go back to

34:14

the same. Well, I would

34:17

I feel like a hundred million lunchboxes

34:19

say otherwise. Well, yeah. Yeah.

34:22

The counter argument that is money. So because

34:25

of capitalism. Yeah. Yeah.

34:27

Shit. It's exciting baby.

34:29

Stabstly say anything else about that. The wind is

34:31

coming out. No, I assume that's

34:34

going to come out after secret wars

34:36

because I think that's when mutants X-Men

34:38

are going to be introduced big time

34:40

into the MCU. But speaking of the

34:42

MCU, you will enjoy this Jimbo. Oh,

34:44

you promise. I will. I do.

34:47

I shall. I am promising you

34:49

will enjoy this news story because this week

34:51

it was confirmed that the Paul

34:53

Bettany led fission TV

34:55

show, which I believe is still called fission quest

34:58

has been dated for 2026 and

35:01

will be show ran by

35:03

Terry metallus. My

35:06

parents in that right. Yeah. Terry

35:09

metallus who Jimbo start at the

35:11

card from. Yes. Oh,

35:13

and he was he improved the

35:15

the quality and fortunes of a

35:18

show immeasurably after patchy. He did.

35:21

I have gone on record many times of being

35:23

a little bit mixed on the final name of

35:25

the card. Famously famous.

35:28

In that I love the beginning of the final season of

35:30

the card. I actually loved it. But I was disappointed with

35:32

the second half of it, partly because of the direction they

35:34

chose to go in, not because it was badly executed. I

35:36

just thought that it was going to a well that

35:38

had been gone too many times. But

35:41

but yeah, what he did was he gave

35:43

that franchise new energy 100%. So

35:46

this is positive. This is exciting. So this is

35:48

gonna be Paul Bettany as the white vision who

35:50

was created at the end of one division and

35:52

was last seen floating off to kind of find

35:55

himself. Yeah, helping Coe Samui

35:57

wearing a wearing a star-tooten-tooth.

36:00

necklace and hanging

36:02

out, experiencing the world. Yeah.

36:04

Whoa, dude. Uh, excited about this other

36:07

people in the room. I mean, 20, 26 is a

36:09

long way away and the AI is going to kill

36:11

us all. Other people. Just

36:14

saying, do you have like a dysfunction where you

36:16

just hear other people's names? And

36:18

it's just, it's like, it's like a

36:21

universal translator. Just transfers, transfers, transfers, translates

36:23

other people's names as James. Yeah. James,

36:25

I have been spoken to. I

36:28

know. I

36:30

generally try to screen out the words that come out of your

36:32

mouth whenever possible. I

36:36

just hit you're like the teacher in Peanuts. Like from,

36:38

wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I've

36:42

never seen that show because I have a peanut allergy. John,

36:45

Helen. Yeah. I,

36:52

Vision Quest is quite a strange name for

36:54

a TV show. It sounds like a later

36:56

quest. Yeah, I enjoy it for that reason.

36:58

Um, but yeah, I mean, uh,

37:00

what has it been? W it will

37:02

be what, six years since WandaVision? It's

37:04

being directed by Peter Strickland. God

37:10

damn it. Well, he

37:12

did say he was making a children's film and the

37:14

MCU is just for children, isn't it? It's not cinema

37:16

in this case. It's a

37:18

children's cinema. I'm, I'm, I'm

37:20

here for this. I'm intrigued, um, interested,

37:22

not a hundred percent sold, but I

37:24

think Vision Quest is quite a witty

37:27

name in the tradition of WandaVision. I

37:30

think that now that white vision has a little

37:32

bit more. You need to change that name. I'm

37:34

sure they do. I'm sure that's not their name for him. But

37:37

anyway, I'm not going to hear the bit more going on

37:39

in terms of a bit more sort of soul to him at the

37:41

end of that show was spoiler. Um, there's

37:44

something there to work with and I think

37:46

Paul Bettany is great. So he is fantastic.

37:48

I'm, I'm optimistic. All right. Uh,

37:51

speaking of our track. Oh my God. We

37:53

were on the same segue page. Where are

37:55

we? We were, we were very much on

37:57

the same segue page. Uh, Helen, I will.

38:00

let you take the Segway wheel. OK, so. But not driving

38:02

off a cliff like the Blue Cairns. Well,

38:04

I might drive it off a cliff, because this does

38:06

involve a prequel. But there is

38:08

the news that Paramount

38:10

is launching a Star Trek

38:14

prequel. And they've got Simon

38:16

Kinberg on board to bring this new Trek back

38:18

to the big screen, because obviously we've got a

38:20

lot of Star Trek right now on the small

38:22

screen. Yes, we do. And some of it is freaking

38:24

incredible. Yes, Stranger New World. Stranger New World. And I'm

38:26

going to add Lower Decks, and you're going to not

38:28

say anything about it. Jesus.

38:31

So this is Trek getting back to

38:33

the big screen. The idea is that this

38:36

would be about the creation of Starfleet.

38:39

So we're talking after

38:41

first contact, the

38:43

Enterprise has come back, and James

38:46

Cromwell has gone on his little flight and

38:48

met the Vulcans for the first time. And

38:50

now they're trying to, not them, but other

38:52

people, are trying to build Starfleet and the

38:54

Federation. Well,

38:56

not actually the Federation trying to build Starfleet, because Starfleet

38:59

comes quite a long way before the Federation. Because this

39:01

is taking place in that, I

39:04

mean, clearly people have been crying out

39:06

to explore the timeline between Enterprise and

39:08

first contact, because Starfleet

39:11

obviously exists in Enterprise. I mean, I

39:14

feel like there are many other things they could have done.

39:17

I mean, we knew that we did know it was going to be a prequel.

39:19

I think they'd already announced that. But it's

39:22

hard to get excited, because when they

39:24

have played in that particular area, Enterprise

39:26

doesn't do it particularly well. Prequel stuff

39:28

can work. So obviously, Discovery started out

39:30

as a prequel, and then went and

39:32

finally, as it possibly could do. Strangely

39:35

World is kind of a prequel as well.

39:37

Obviously spun off of Discovery season two. I

39:41

don't know. You're right. Trek is

39:43

having a good time at the moment. They're having a bit of a

39:45

moment in the film, which is nice. I

39:47

feel like this is perilous. Obviously, they've

39:50

got the Starfleet Academy thing in development

39:52

as well. Holly Hunter is the president

39:55

of the Academy. Yeah. And we've got the

39:57

Michelle Yeoh Section 31 thing as well. So

40:00

yeah, there's lots of things in development, but I don't

40:02

know about this. The good thing about this is when

40:05

the Andors directors, Toby Haines,

40:07

is set to direct, which

40:10

is exciting. And Seth Graham-Smith is

40:12

scripting. I know, I know, right?

40:16

I've seen a lot of discussion this week,

40:18

you know, about Simon Kinberg's involvement as a

40:20

producer, and I'm guessing, you know, he's a

40:22

real... He's been knowing the header keyboard as

40:24

well. He has been knowing the header keyboard

40:26

as well. I'm assuming he was behind the

40:28

pitch. He must have pitched for this, and

40:30

he's, you know, he's been on

40:32

the podcast. I think we've all interviewed him. He's

40:35

a very, very smart guy. He knows what he wants. He's

40:37

great on the story. People

40:39

will point to his patchy record in

40:42

blockbusters. When the X-Men franchise,

40:44

he rose to prominence, a very, very

40:47

high-ranking position in the X-Men franchise, wrote

40:50

the Easy Future past. Brilliant. He

40:52

also produced Apocalypse, and then,

40:55

of course, wrote and directed Dark Phoenix.

40:58

And so people will go, you know... I

41:01

saw a lot of Jesse from Breaking Bad

41:03

Gifts this week. He can't keep getting away

41:05

with this! But I think it's

41:07

in relatively safe hands. And then I saw Seth

41:10

Graham-Smith, who is one of my

41:12

least favorite writers. Having

41:14

said that, another one of my least

41:16

favorite writers, Akiva Goldsman, doesn't he have kind

41:18

of the keys to the kingdom on the Star Trek

41:20

TV side? And that's turning out okay. It is. John,

41:23

you a Star Trek-y person? No.

41:25

Great. So there was also a

41:27

story this week that's the Paramount... Because I am surprised

41:29

to going down this prequel route. I thought they would

41:32

have done something more recognizably in the world of Star

41:34

Trek. But they're still trying

41:36

to make that happen. They're still trying to

41:38

make the fourth film with the Chris Pine,

41:40

Sarcra Quinto cast. They're still trying to make

41:43

that happen, which apparently would be a farewell

41:45

to that cast. I don't know that we should

41:48

wait eight or nine years and then come back with

41:50

a farewell movie. I'll come back and

41:52

do two movies and the next movie should be a

41:54

farewell. If you ask me. The

41:56

more the better. I love those films. Yeah. Even

41:58

in To Darkness, I will. watch. Why?

42:02

It's mine. No.

42:06

Helen, just say

42:08

nothing. I just want silence. Do

42:11

you hear that, James?

42:14

We're quietly judging you. Fair

42:18

enough. There we go. All right,

42:20

let's move on to its franchise, Apollosa at

42:22

the moment. It was announced

42:24

last night that Adam Wingard is not going

42:26

to be returning to direct the next installment

42:28

in the Godzilla slash Kong saga

42:31

because legendary want

42:33

to, I'm not

42:35

saying shit them out, but they want to, they

42:37

certainly want to make the next one fairly

42:39

quickly. And he has already moved

42:42

on to make any smaller, more Adam

42:44

Wingard movie in between the two

42:46

behemoths and his dance cards full.

42:48

You don't want to stand between those two

42:50

behemoths. If those films have taught me anything,

42:52

it's that you should not do that. Well, I don't know

42:55

what they're going to do next. They've had Godzilla first as

42:57

Kong, then if I'd go to the X Kong, you

42:59

know, how can you stack them on

43:01

top of each other? I don't understand

43:04

what you could possibly do next. Mothra

43:06

origins, Mothra ever living. Yeah. Yeah. But

43:08

that's, that's, this could be, there's going to be

43:10

room for new director. I

43:12

was quite intrigued to see that Glenn Powell is going to

43:15

be a, be doing a new adaptation of heaven

43:17

can wait. He is officially now

43:20

the new Warren Beatty, I guess. So

43:22

this is as an actor. Well,

43:25

I don't know. Yeah. I'm not suggesting in

43:27

his personal life. I have no knowledge there.

43:30

But yeah, this is the film. It's

43:32

a long standing story. It was a

43:34

1938 play, but I'm kind

43:36

of talking about the seventies film, which is

43:38

the one that Beatty starred in, but it's

43:40

basically a guy who dies early

43:43

because an angel kind

43:45

of messes up and returns to

43:47

earth in the body of a

43:50

recently murdered millionaire instead and complications

43:52

ensue. So, I think I

43:55

don't know. It's, it's a, it's a decent concept.

43:57

I've seen worse concepts. It's

43:59

already three times those hopefully they have

44:01

something new to add to it but I think

44:03

it's not a bad sort of star

44:05

vehicle for him. Exciting stuff all around. Shall

44:07

we have a guest? Why

44:09

not? Please. We have George Miller. Yes.

44:12

Or we have George Miller. It's Miller

44:14

time. It is Miller time folks. That

44:16

is absolutely right. George

44:19

Miller, one of the

44:21

greatest living directors of course, he is

44:23

the Australian medical doctor turned movie making

44:25

madman behind the Mad Max

44:28

franchise. He had

44:30

made a Mad Max movie in what 30 odd years

44:33

before he made Fury Road in 2015. And

44:39

at the ripe old age of 70 something

44:41

came back and schooled all those

44:43

action making young whippersnappers and

44:46

showed them how to do it with an

44:48

all time chrome

44:50

plated classic. And now he is

44:52

back, back, back, back nine

44:54

years later with the prequel to

44:56

Fury Road. Furiosa, a Mad Max saga

44:59

starring Anya Teter-Joy as Furiosa the character

45:01

played of course by Charlize Theron in

45:04

Fury Road and Chris Hemsworth as

45:06

a rather colorful bad guy called

45:09

Dementous. It also stars Tom Burke

45:12

as a character called the Petorian Jack and

45:14

Locky Hume is an Australian actor who plays

45:16

a couple of roles in this

45:18

but he plays also within

45:20

that the Immortan Joe. He

45:23

was played by the late great Hugh Keesburne in the

45:25

first movie. The reason I'm telling you all of this,

45:27

I'm sure you know a lot of it already, is

45:29

that because this is a lot of the stuff we

45:31

discussed in this interview with George Miller. This

45:34

is a very, this is a longer interview than

45:36

we usually would do on the podcast these days

45:38

but it's George Miller and I was very, very

45:40

delighted and privileged to sit down with him and

45:43

have a good old chat about the movie. We

45:45

do not go into spoiler territory, you will be

45:47

delighted to know and we did not

45:49

go into spoiler territory at all with

45:51

George this time around but we are hoping to be

45:53

able to do a full, full-blown

45:57

sit-down epic sit-down with

45:59

George. at some point over the

46:01

coming weeks and months to talk about Furiosa because there's

46:03

a lot to talk about as you'll find out on

46:05

the other side of this when we

46:07

get to the review section but right now this is me

46:10

talking to the great George Miller

46:12

do please enjoy George

46:15

Miller director of Furiosa a Mad

46:17

Max saga welcome to the Empire

46:19

podcast how are you? Very

46:21

good, nice to talk to you again likewise likewise

46:23

I mean there's so much to talk about in

46:25

this movie in person this

46:28

time in person it's really interesting the

46:30

difference between talking to people

46:32

on zoom and how do you find it?

46:35

Well we got you know through Covid

46:37

we got so used to doing it

46:40

yeah that it's almost a bit strange

46:42

to be with someone I know major

46:44

is healing yeah exactly yeah

46:46

because a year ago this probably wouldn't have happened

46:49

no it would have been on zoom but

46:51

it does make you think because you obviously you

46:54

adjust to new production techniques to

46:56

help make this movie things that didn't exist

46:58

when you made Fury Road that now exist

47:00

to make things a little bit easier in

47:03

terms in terms of shooting and when we

47:06

spoke for the magazine for the Empire magazine you

47:08

were talking about how this was

47:11

essentially ready to go

47:13

around the same time as Fury Road

47:16

and Charlize actually came up to you and said can

47:19

we shoot this can we do Furiosa first

47:21

and then do Fury Road yeah how'd you

47:23

shot Furiosa at that time would it have

47:25

been markedly different would have been a much

47:28

harder film to make? Gee

47:31

I never

47:33

considered that. Look

47:36

there's no question we no

47:39

question we we

47:41

wanted to shoot Fury Road for

47:44

so such a long time it

47:47

was an exercise it started off with

47:49

a simple question

47:52

how can you how much

47:54

story can you tell on the run yeah

47:57

if there was a chase or

47:59

a race ultimately something playing out

48:01

almost in real time. How much

48:04

of all that not only the subtext but

48:06

all the internal

48:08

logic of the world could you pick up?

48:11

So we had to write Furiosa. I

48:17

don't know how different it would be. Probably

48:19

some of the design would have

48:21

been different. It's

48:24

an interesting thing to

48:26

contemplate. I'm kind of

48:28

glad it happened this way

48:31

though because this

48:36

film runs directly into Fury Road.

48:38

They literally butt it

48:41

up against each other and it

48:43

just occurred to me a couple days

48:45

ago that the only film similar

48:48

to that, the only circumstance similar to that

48:50

was Godfather 2 coming after

48:53

Godfather 1. And Godfather

48:55

2 happens to me up there at the top

48:57

of my list of

49:03

the film which basically followed

49:05

me out of the cinema

49:07

for the longest time. It

49:10

basically was such a powerful film.

49:13

And I said yes, even

49:17

though that tells you it

49:19

jumps in time, it gave

49:22

you a sense of who those characters

49:24

were particularly Don

49:27

Collion from

49:29

an early time. This is kind of similar to

49:31

that. Yeah, I imagine on Fury

49:34

Road Charlize, if she came up

49:36

to you and asked you questions about how

49:39

did Furiosa get here? What

49:41

is the origin of this? Where did that come from? You

49:43

already had all the others. We had that. And

49:46

not only Charlize but you

49:49

know War Boys,

49:52

Under and Morton Joe, people like

49:55

with the people leader who's the guardian

49:57

of Gastown at the time, the bullet

49:59

farmer. I was able to show you

50:01

pictures of what we thought the bullet farm looked

50:03

like, not pictures but concept art and so on

50:06

and so on. Every

50:08

designer, we had a

50:11

sense of what... We

50:14

had that for everybody including Max in that

50:16

time. Otherwise, I honestly don't know how we

50:19

could have told the story of Fury Road.

50:22

The design would have been random. It

50:24

wouldn't have been glued together as well.

50:28

All the threads of the tapestry wouldn't have

50:30

been woven together properly. I believe that. That

50:32

process is fascinating to me. As a director,

50:34

you're meant to have all the answers when

50:36

people come up to you on set and

50:38

they ask you a hundred questions a day.

50:41

I imagine, George, you're a meticulous

50:44

man. Do people come up

50:46

to you on set on this or on

50:48

Fury Road and stump you with a

50:50

question? Or do you know everything about

50:52

this world? I

50:54

think it's why I enjoy writing the

50:59

films I make because they come

51:01

from... A

51:06

lot of things arise out of the work.

51:08

You have to... Both

51:11

in what you decide what is necessary

51:13

moment to moment and the

51:15

things you exclude. I

51:20

can't think of... I'm sure there have been moments

51:23

where people stump me, but I can't

51:25

think of it. What is

51:27

interesting to me though is when

51:29

you get with the actors and

51:33

you're working and they

51:35

see more about their

51:37

characters than you see yourself because

51:40

they have to sort of embody the characters

51:42

in some way. And

51:44

they've thought about it. In

51:49

the preparation, you

51:51

basically try to

51:55

have some understanding of every dimension of

51:57

a character. Often

52:00

they come

52:02

up, I mean, when Chris

52:05

Hemsworth first read the screenplay, he

52:08

was picking up things that

52:10

I hadn't even, had never even occurred to me.

52:13

And... Fachas? Well,

52:15

for instance, there

52:18

was a, the teddy bear.

52:21

It was an early concept art. It just

52:24

was randomly part of his costume. And

52:27

then he started to ask questions

52:29

about what the teddy bear meant. And then

52:31

he had an idea that it would, it

52:34

must have had some significance to him. What

52:37

sort of significance? What does it mean

52:39

to him? Was it sentimental? Was what...

52:42

And as he asked those sort of questions,

52:45

the teddy bear became more and more significant

52:48

in the story. That's

52:51

one example. I have to say,

52:53

from Anya, when she kept asking

52:56

questions, indeed, most of the characters,

52:58

most of the actors were there. That's one of

53:01

the exciting things about it. I mean, the thing

53:03

is discovered collaboratively with a

53:05

whole group of people. So,

53:07

yeah. But

53:10

I think to get

53:12

to the point, I think, that in

53:14

terms of a director, I

53:16

think it's your job to

53:18

try to bring all

53:20

those strengths together and make

53:22

sure that everyone, everybody was

53:25

working to the same kind

53:27

of organizing ideas so

53:29

that the world

53:32

seemed integrated and intact. And,

53:35

you know, everything, every

53:37

gesture, every utterance, every bit

53:39

of costume or prop or

53:42

vehicle and so on. So all of that, you

53:45

know, when you're designing vehicles, for instance,

53:48

they have to be an extension of

53:50

the character. And if you plot through

53:52

all of the Mad Max stories, Max's

53:56

vehicle reflected what was happening to

53:58

his character. It's

54:00

interesting because we don't want

54:03

to tread into spoiler territory for

54:05

this interview. We'll hopefully do that

54:07

down the line. But

54:09

I was really struck by the War

54:11

Rig when we see the War Rig for the first

54:13

time in this film and it is shiny and chrome

54:15

in a way that it isn't really

54:18

in Fury Road. And

54:20

I think that really reflects the

54:22

Pretorian Jack's character because he is

54:24

the essentially the only real

54:27

vessel of goodness in this

54:29

world. Yeah, great. Yeah, good.

54:31

Well, I... Look,

54:35

Nick Olutharis and I call it the

54:37

inverted world. The

54:40

world most of us are

54:42

fortunate to live in basically

54:45

goes pretty smoothly for

54:48

us all. To

54:52

have this interview we're relying on technology

54:56

that there's a lot

54:58

of trust in the process. I've got some

55:00

water here from a bottle. Now

55:02

I... In

55:05

other times I'd have

55:07

to question is that water safe to drink? Yeah.

55:10

Somebody was responsible for packaging that.

55:13

So there's by and large the world

55:16

moves smoothly. We all

55:18

got here on airplanes. And

55:21

think about all the things, all the cooperation,

55:25

all the good positive behavior that

55:27

has to happen to land an

55:29

airplane over a city. We

55:32

only hear about the airplanes that crash. We

55:34

only hear about when someone gets poisoned by

55:36

something in this world. That's

55:39

the world by and large. I know there's

55:41

pockets of it where it's

55:44

much darker and much more

55:46

brutal. Now

55:49

the world of the wasteland

55:52

is flipped. Excuse

55:54

me. So that

55:56

the only behaviors... that

56:01

really shine out,

56:04

they're abnormal of those

56:06

in which someone has positive,

56:08

one person has positive regard

56:10

for another. Yeah. I

56:12

think. And that's Pretoria and Jack in

56:14

this case. I mean, he's a road warrior. He's in

56:16

charge of this rig. And

56:22

there's a lot of killing

56:24

going on. He's not without

56:26

love and sound. And

56:31

there's the whole moral injury that comes

56:33

with that. But he

56:35

has to...he sees something

56:37

in Furiosa. Again, without

56:39

giving too much away, he

56:41

sees something in Furiosa. He

56:43

recognises that... But

56:47

initially, it's because of necessity.

56:49

Yeah. He has to recruit her.

56:51

And bit by bit, he basically

56:54

surrenders himself to

56:57

her dream,

57:00

really. When I interviewed

57:02

Tom for the magazine, he told me that he

57:04

had actually auditioned for Fury Road.

57:07

He had been one of the many people

57:09

who had auditioned for Max in

57:11

Fury Road. But do you remember that

57:13

at all? Tom Burke. So,

57:16

that's the next. Yeah. He'd

57:19

been in a room many, many years before

57:21

with other people dressed as Max. And

57:24

he put himself off for the role. I

57:27

don't believe that. Yeah. It's true.

57:29

I didn't... You mean, I

57:32

didn't meet people. I don't think he quite got to you. Oh,

57:36

okay. But yeah. I

57:38

had no idea. You

57:42

know what happened with Tom? Nicky

57:45

Barrett, the casting agent, made

57:48

up a list as they do. And

57:50

she made up a list of

57:52

actors. And I think his name

57:54

was about...this is for Pretorian Jack.

57:57

Yeah. And his name was about third or fourth on the

57:59

list. I

58:02

think there were about 20 names on the list. I

58:05

got to his name and the moment it

58:07

was there, I didn't read the rest of

58:09

the names because I'd seen him in

58:12

Joanna Hogg's movies, The Civilian.

58:16

He just blew me away. Then

58:18

I saw him in Mank. I'd seen

58:20

him in Mank. I said, if

58:23

Tom wants to do it, he's

58:25

got to do it. I had no idea that. He

58:28

never told me that. He's around here somewhere

58:30

joining you. Go

58:32

and have a chat with him. It's

58:35

interesting to me that Chris Hemsworth was never one

58:37

of the people you saw for Max back

58:40

then. No. That's interesting.

58:42

No, no. I knew of him.

58:46

The only Australian actor I saw was

58:49

Keith Ledger. Every time

58:51

he'd come to Sydney, he'd call in

58:53

and we'd talk about it. For a long time, for

58:56

me, it was going to be him. And

59:00

then we lost him. Yeah, of course. Oh, man.

59:03

But Chris is fantastic in this.

59:06

You were talking about

59:08

the way that he locked in and

59:10

assumed on the bear. It's

59:13

interesting to me that, again, without giving

59:15

too much away, that he and the

59:19

Victorian Jack are almost mirror images of each

59:21

other. They're people who've both lost something in

59:23

the wasteland. They both lost people in the

59:25

wasteland and they've chosen to take a particular

59:28

path. No, it's interesting. Yeah. It's

59:30

true. Yeah. And then

59:32

they've impacted Furio, in a different way.

59:34

Yeah, yeah. Well, again,

59:38

you know, Chris... Two

59:41

things with Chris. I mean, his

59:43

man... There's a lot

59:45

of dimensions to him. That's the thing

59:47

I picked up the first time

59:50

I met him and had conversations about

59:52

everything. He's accumulated a

59:54

lot of wisdom for a relatively

59:56

young person. He's understanding

59:59

about... life, work, how

1:00:01

you approach the work, the discipline and

1:00:03

so on. And as I got

1:00:05

to know him, I realized that that came, I mean,

1:00:09

part of it's intrinsic and a lot of

1:00:11

it's from his family. Both his

1:00:14

parents are social workers

1:00:16

and very influential. So when

1:00:19

they're retired now, but

1:00:21

they were very influential in the

1:00:24

city, in

1:00:26

the state where they came from, Victoria,

1:00:28

Australia with child abuse

1:00:31

and they pioneered work in that. Now

1:00:34

that, what they learned from

1:00:36

that obviously affected, got to the kids

1:00:38

and all the brothers. They carry all

1:00:40

that stuff with them. So his understanding

1:00:43

of trauma was

1:00:46

really acute and

1:00:48

he spoke about the character

1:00:50

really, really from

1:00:53

that point of view. And then he wrote

1:00:55

a journal trying to sort of corral all

1:00:58

these feelings

1:01:03

about it. He got up one night and

1:01:07

he started to write and it

1:01:09

was, my memory was about four or

1:01:11

five pages, almost stream of consciousness about

1:01:14

the character. And there was only

1:01:16

one, three words crossed out

1:01:18

and he started the sentence

1:01:20

again. And I read it and I

1:01:22

thought, my God, he's really

1:01:24

deep down into this. He

1:01:26

knows every dimension

1:01:29

of dementors, just

1:01:31

in those five pages. That's

1:01:33

one thing, that's a

1:01:36

cerebral exercise. But then I

1:01:38

started to see that emerge as

1:01:41

we started to shoot the movie, as

1:01:43

we proceeded to shoot the movie. And

1:01:46

I think all that effort and the

1:01:48

preparation is up there on the screen.

1:01:51

So that was it. That

1:01:55

sort of, I don't know, athleticism.

1:02:00

emotional athleticism comes

1:02:03

from somewhere and

1:02:05

he was able to provide there. That

1:02:08

blew me away quite honestly. Yeah,

1:02:10

he's amazing. I want to

1:02:12

talk about Anya as well, of course,

1:02:14

as Furiosa. But before we do, there's

1:02:18

a couple of examples in this

1:02:20

movie of actors playing dual roles.

1:02:22

Yes. Which is, I guess, a

1:02:24

grand Mad Max tradition in a

1:02:26

way. Hugh Keysburn, of course,

1:02:29

played Phil Cutter and, of course, the Immortan

1:02:31

Joe in Fury Road. And

1:02:33

I just want to talk about that, where that

1:02:35

comes from. There's a couple of actors, one whose

1:02:37

name I won't mention in case people don't know,

1:02:40

who plays two roles. But then obviously you've got

1:02:42

Lockie Hume, who plays Rizdell Powell and the Immortan

1:02:44

Joe as well. Is that something that

1:02:47

you're keen on doing? Well, you

1:02:49

know, it happens

1:02:53

partly out of not knowing which

1:02:55

other way to go. I won't

1:02:57

go through all of it.

1:03:00

To give Lockie's

1:03:03

example, he was playing

1:03:05

Rizdell Powell, who's one of Dementia's

1:03:07

bikers. And we were

1:03:09

going to do

1:03:13

Immortan Joe by getting an actor

1:03:16

who could sound like him and

1:03:18

then use deepfake to make

1:03:20

him look like Immortan

1:03:25

Joe. And

1:03:27

we did some tests and it looked promising

1:03:29

and that was going to be our approach.

1:03:33

Lockie came to me and he said, he came to

1:03:35

me and Nico and he said, look,

1:03:37

I think I would like to have a

1:03:40

go at doing Immortan Joe. I said, Lockie,

1:03:42

sorry, Lockie, but we've already got someone else

1:03:44

to do it. And he

1:03:46

said, okay, if it doesn't work for

1:03:49

you, just keep me in mind. And

1:03:51

as we did further tests, it wasn't

1:03:53

working. The actor we had, a very

1:03:55

fine actor, but basically physically we had

1:03:58

to change. He didn't have the height

1:04:01

or the basic shape.

1:04:04

It could have worked but

1:04:06

so I said, Lucky

1:04:09

let's give it a go. So he

1:04:12

did and he nailed it for

1:04:14

me. I was surprised.

1:04:18

Obviously I knew Hugh and his

1:04:21

work intimately but he

1:04:23

persuaded me that

1:04:25

he's the Morton German. Every

1:04:28

time I see him I give him a

1:04:30

big hug and say, Thank you for being

1:04:33

so insistent. It's not

1:04:35

just an actor somehow inserting

1:04:38

himself. He knew that

1:04:40

he could do it when I didn't

1:04:42

know that he could do it. So he did

1:04:45

a brilliant job. This was during production as well.

1:04:47

This was during production. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I

1:04:49

love that. That shows you can roll with the

1:04:51

punches still. Well, that's one of the

1:04:53

things you have to do as a

1:04:56

director. It's never locked

1:04:59

in and fixed.

1:05:01

You have to not so much

1:05:03

roll the punches, be agile enough

1:05:05

to adjust to the circumstances. In

1:05:08

fact, there's some of my favorite stories about

1:05:10

filmmaking, about how people do that. I

1:05:13

think I happen to own this apart from obviously

1:05:16

casting. Well, you know,

1:05:21

I keep

1:05:26

going back to Fury Road where it was

1:05:29

quite striking. I mean,

1:05:32

I'm sure it

1:05:35

happens every day. Small adjustments. Happy

1:05:38

accidents. Not

1:05:40

even happy accidents. Better,

1:05:43

clearer ideas pop

1:05:45

up. It's something that an

1:05:48

actor might feel or an actor does

1:05:50

or it might be a shifted camera.

1:05:52

These little micro adjustments that are happening

1:05:54

all the time to find the right

1:05:57

rhythm. But

1:06:00

in Fury Road, I know we don't have much

1:06:03

time, but there's the scene,

1:06:05

we were shooting the moment

1:06:07

when Furiosa meets

1:06:10

the Vavilini and

1:06:14

she's saying she

1:06:17

meets Valkyrie, she meets them, they're

1:06:20

talking. We were out in Namibia

1:06:22

and it was an incredibly windy

1:06:24

day, such a

1:06:26

windy day that a

1:06:28

couple of the characters who had white

1:06:31

hair or blonde hair, they

1:06:33

just got in the hair and looked orange. We

1:06:36

had to de-color it in post. And

1:06:41

then we suddenly saw the wind

1:06:44

across the dune. And

1:06:47

I think Charlize said, can we shoot that scene?

1:06:52

She basically realizes

1:06:54

that the green place is no longer

1:06:57

there. We

1:07:00

went in there and we

1:07:02

got the camera in position, the sun

1:07:04

was exactly in the right position and

1:07:06

the wind kept blowing in the right

1:07:08

direction, so we put our cameras in

1:07:11

the shot and she started one take

1:07:14

and I said stop, stop because something

1:07:16

happened with her arm and then we

1:07:18

did take two. And the wind

1:07:20

basically was so strong it blew out the

1:07:23

footsteps, we didn't have to adjust the camera,

1:07:25

so it evened out the footsteps and then

1:07:27

she did that take. Now that's an example.

1:07:30

Had it not been windy that

1:07:32

day and had the eye not been cursing

1:07:34

the wind and yet not been

1:07:37

alert to the opportunity, we wouldn't have had

1:07:39

that moment and that shot. That

1:07:42

sort of thing I think happens most of the time and I

1:07:44

think that's part of the job I

1:07:47

recognize. I didn't understand that when I

1:07:49

first started to make films but I

1:07:51

realized that you've got to

1:07:54

be agile enough to take that.

1:08:00

You hear, and that's always

1:08:02

happened with filmmakers, great stories

1:08:04

about John Ford shooting

1:08:08

in storms in Monument Valley

1:08:10

and that

1:08:13

wonderful moment in

1:08:15

Raiders of the Lost Eye. I

1:08:17

was thinking about that. Harrison Ford said, why don't

1:08:19

I just shoot him? He gave us one of

1:08:21

the best moments in the

1:08:24

movie in cinema and

1:08:26

things like that. What is

1:08:28

it about the desert or sand that makes people improvise,

1:08:30

George? But

1:08:34

it's a great place to shoot because

1:08:36

there are figures in the landscape, great

1:08:39

for composition, clarity of the image

1:08:42

and humans look

1:08:44

great in the desert. To

1:08:46

me, in the same way

1:08:49

that I was attracted to Antarctica because

1:08:51

penguins look great in

1:08:53

the desert of Antarctica. You're

1:08:57

working now with Anya and not Charlize.

1:09:02

Do you have to make an adjustment when you have a

1:09:04

different actor in a role? Do you have to make

1:09:06

an adjustment as director? Not

1:09:09

so much. The process is the

1:09:11

same because we're telling

1:09:13

a story of Furiosa

1:09:16

for when she's 10 until she's 28. The

1:09:24

main question was, can

1:09:29

Anya fill the shoes of

1:09:31

Charlize? She's got to

1:09:33

get to where we saw Charlize

1:09:36

as Furiosa. In

1:09:39

the process of casting

1:09:42

it, I had

1:09:45

an intuitive response to her. I

1:09:47

felt she was the ... There's

1:09:51

something about her. There's a certain

1:09:53

mistake to her. There's a wonderful

1:09:55

intensity to her. There's

1:09:57

a sense of great ... both

1:10:02

in her work, she's very disciplined and so on.

1:10:06

You know the story of Edgar Wright and how

1:10:09

he, that's where I first saw her when he

1:10:11

showed me an early cut of his

1:10:13

film, Last Night at

1:10:16

Soho. He was just, without

1:10:18

hesitation, he just said, she's got it all, she's

1:10:20

got it all, do it whatever you want. He

1:10:23

didn't even know it was Furioso. And

1:10:25

then he didn't

1:10:28

know. After

1:10:30

we talked about the film I said, you know, she'd

1:10:33

be right for. I remember I said

1:10:35

she'd be right for and

1:10:38

he just said, do it, do it, do it. Anyway,

1:10:40

so he, and he's someone

1:10:45

who I really trust and

1:10:49

he was true, it was true. And then I got

1:10:51

to know her and I got to know how

1:10:54

she came to acting. I got to

1:10:56

know about her ballet from a young

1:10:58

age and the way she's very, very,

1:11:01

you know, there's

1:11:03

something about her that there's a kind

1:11:05

of a mystique to her. It's almost

1:11:08

sort of regal and

1:11:10

there's something, there's an intensity to her

1:11:13

that you feel she's capable of

1:11:16

a ferocity. And you

1:11:22

know it's all there in the

1:11:25

face and the eyes. She has very

1:11:27

little dialogue. You know,

1:11:29

I'm, you know, as everyone knows by

1:11:31

now, I'm fascinated

1:11:37

by the silent cinema. What

1:11:40

they would do with pure, what I

1:11:42

call visual music. All

1:11:46

the great actors in the silent cinema

1:11:48

had, you

1:11:51

couldn't go past their eyes, you had to

1:11:53

look at their eyes. Even my, you know,

1:11:55

great hero Buster Keaton, that

1:11:57

face and that eyes. all

1:12:00

the other stuff he was doing. So

1:12:02

that was there and then it's

1:12:04

only through the process that you

1:12:06

go through that you can actually sit,

1:12:09

you go through the process and

1:12:11

the actor and the character

1:12:15

somehow merge in some way and

1:12:20

then you go into the cutting room and

1:12:22

there's no question at that moment that they

1:12:24

are definitely, they're only the

1:12:26

character, the

1:12:28

actor completely disappeared. At least when you

1:12:31

see, at least

1:12:33

with the great performances. Well

1:12:36

George, last time I spoke to you

1:12:38

for Fury Road back in 2015, obviously

1:12:40

it was quite a difficult shoot and so you

1:12:42

were talking about this and you were

1:12:44

talking about the Wasteland, the Max-centric

1:12:49

movie but obviously you weren't

1:12:51

quite ready to return to the Wasteland for some time.

1:12:53

Took some time away, made 3,000 years of longing of

1:12:56

course and then came back to

1:12:59

Furiosa. Now this films two and

1:13:01

a half weeks in the can. Yeah. Are you ready

1:13:03

to go back already? No but it's somewhere a

1:13:07

lot. You know

1:13:09

I've got to the age now where there's a

1:13:11

lot of, well several stories

1:13:13

that are quite mature that I

1:13:15

have. Not

1:13:19

Mad Max related but

1:13:22

and they're kind of, there's a

1:13:24

kind of a little Darwinian struggle

1:13:27

you know like you

1:13:30

know some

1:13:32

insist. Make

1:13:34

me. Yeah it's true because you

1:13:37

find yourself in those, you

1:13:39

catch yourself thinking about oh

1:13:41

we can do that or that scene

1:13:44

or so on and that's

1:13:46

what happened you know

1:13:49

with Furiosa. We

1:13:51

were preparing that while I was making,

1:13:54

well we were making 3,000 years of

1:13:57

longing because it's a story.

1:14:00

I wanted to tell. It's the

1:14:02

one that was foremost in my

1:14:04

mind, in those unguarded moments. It's interesting

1:14:08

how that happens. Almost you

1:14:11

feel a sort of gravitational pull towards

1:14:13

them. And I think it's because there's

1:14:15

a richness that's offered up. You can't

1:14:17

stop thinking of all

1:14:20

the possibilities as they're

1:14:22

kind of swirling around the back of your head. Okay,

1:14:25

then with George Miller talking about Furiosa,

1:14:27

a Mad Max saga, and there is

1:14:29

only one place to start with this

1:14:32

week's reviews section. It is, of course,

1:14:34

Furiosa, a Mad Max saga.

1:14:36

John, you wrote the five-star Empire

1:14:38

review of Furiosa. Let's just call

1:14:41

it Furiosa. It dispense the Mad

1:14:43

Max saga. Tell

1:14:45

us why. Well,

1:14:48

that sounds challenging. I agree with it. I agree

1:14:50

with it. I think this film is phenomenal. But

1:14:52

tell the people why you give them five stars.

1:14:54

I mean, I'm the reviews editor, so I commissioned

1:14:56

myself to write this. So what I say goes,

1:14:58

motherfucker. That's right. Can

1:15:00

you take a star off my Attack on the Clones review? Two

1:15:02

stars, why not? Why?

1:15:06

Well, it is, I mean, we all

1:15:08

know what this is, right? This is the

1:15:10

prequel to Mad Max Furio Road. Yeah, explain

1:15:12

that, John. As you so clearly said. It

1:15:15

is several years before the events of Furio Road.

1:15:17

Furio Road, it's

1:15:22

very different films. So Furio Road was set over

1:15:24

the course of, I think, three days,

1:15:26

about 36 hours. This film is set over

1:15:28

the course of 15 years. So

1:15:30

we joined Furiosa. In real time as

1:15:32

well, which is a whole group for

1:15:35

Dr. George. It's only

1:15:37

a mere two and a

1:15:39

bit hours. Two and a half. Two

1:15:41

and a half, yeah. So, yeah, we

1:15:43

joined the young Furiosa played by Aliyah

1:15:46

Brown. I believe I'm pronouncing that name

1:15:48

right. Brown, that's correct. Thank

1:15:50

you. When she's in the Green

1:15:52

Place. So we're seeing these things

1:15:54

that are only mentioned in Furio

1:15:56

Road. The Green Place is this

1:15:58

sort of. lost paradise

1:16:01

in the wastelands that Furiosa,

1:16:04

young Furiosa grows up in,

1:16:06

and she's kidnapped by the

1:16:08

foot soldiers of a

1:16:10

warlord known as Dementus. Good name.

1:16:12

Played by Chris Hemsworth with a

1:16:15

big nose. And

1:16:18

the film is kind of an odyssey,

1:16:20

a journey for Furiosa to try and

1:16:22

find her way back home. She

1:16:25

gets thrown between different warlords. She

1:16:29

eventually ends up at the Citadel

1:16:31

run by Morten Joe, played by

1:16:33

Lucky Hume. It's sort of

1:16:36

about her journey, essentially. It's about her

1:16:38

trying to get back to

1:16:40

the green place, but also, I

1:16:42

guess, an inward journey. It's

1:16:44

her learning to deal with trauma, all

1:16:47

of this sort of thing. But it's

1:16:49

also George Miller Mad Max film.

1:16:51

So there's crazy shit happening. There

1:16:53

is wall rigs, there's action, there

1:16:56

is incredible set

1:16:58

pieces. It's a

1:17:00

lot, it's a lot of film. I mean,

1:17:02

I think it's divided into five chapters, so

1:17:04

it doesn't feel quite as singular

1:17:07

and impulsive. Very pretentious subtitles. I think

1:17:09

the first one is called The Pole

1:17:11

of Inaccessibility. Into the UP the Strickland.

1:17:14

It is. Yeah. You

1:17:18

know, I think if you

1:17:20

were going and expecting Furio'd part two.

1:17:24

There is a section in this movie that gives you that. Furio's

1:17:27

a road. There is a chapter which

1:17:29

is essentially more of Furio road.

1:17:31

There is an assault on a wall rig, and

1:17:33

it feels like it could have been

1:17:36

a deleted scene from that film. But

1:17:39

on the whole structurally, tonally,

1:17:42

it is very different. And I think

1:17:45

you have to be on board with that. If

1:17:47

you do get on board with that, you know,

1:17:49

slight change in direction and

1:17:51

approach, I think you can

1:17:54

have a really good time with this film. I

1:17:56

think it's an incredibly well-mounted film. I

1:17:58

mean, it looks incredible. It has

1:18:00

a different look in some ways. I mean it

1:18:02

was shot in a different place. I think Fury

1:18:05

Road was shot in Namibia, was it? And this

1:18:07

is back in George Miller's native Australia. And it

1:18:09

relies more heavily on CGI, I think. There is

1:18:11

a bit more CGI. More obvious CGI. More obvious

1:18:14

CGI, yeah. But that didn't bother me. I don't

1:18:16

think that bothered me. Just because the level of

1:18:18

stunt work is still like head

1:18:20

and shoulders above most films you will

1:18:23

see in cinemas today. I think it

1:18:25

lacks the propulsive simplicity obviously of

1:18:27

Fury Road, which is a very singular,

1:18:29

relentless experience. Because this is much bittier

1:18:31

by design. And I also think sometimes there

1:18:33

is a less is more thing. We've talked

1:18:36

about Prequels and awful lot. And I think

1:18:38

sometimes when you take away from mythology you

1:18:40

ultimately are detracting from the whole. Like

1:18:43

I didn't need to know more about, you know,

1:18:45

Gastown or the Bullet Farm. Like I said, I

1:18:47

was perfectly happy just knowing that they existed. Almost

1:18:49

just the names are in half. Exactly. It's enough.

1:18:51

You know exactly what I did need in mythology.

1:18:54

And I felt where the first film is all

1:18:56

character no plot. I felt this was a lot

1:18:58

more plot and a lot less character because, you

1:19:00

know, they were trying to spell out so much stuff. I think,

1:19:02

you know, if you guys have come

1:19:04

to you've perfectly fully formed in Fury Road and

1:19:06

I don't need to know her motivation. I don't

1:19:08

need to know where she comes from. I don't

1:19:10

need to know how she loses her arm. You

1:19:12

know, I kind of was almost happy and not

1:19:14

knowing that stuff. All of that said, this

1:19:16

is an extremely, as you say, an extremely well-mounted film. And

1:19:19

it's, I mean, fucking relentless. At the end

1:19:21

of this I came out. I needed to be left alone

1:19:23

for a good 15 minutes. Just to settle down because I

1:19:25

was all of a flutter and I needed some smelling salts.

1:19:28

And I will say, and this is true

1:19:31

of pretty much everything George Miller's done, but in particular, this

1:19:33

is, I think, the most Australian

1:19:35

movie ever made. There is literally a bit

1:19:37

where some of us fire up the Boiny

1:19:39

Knocker. And I was like, this is just

1:19:41

incredible. And I loved every second of it.

1:19:44

Have you seen Crocodile Dundee 3? Even that,

1:19:46

there is no Boiny Knocker in Crocodile Dundee

1:19:48

1, 2 or 3. I

1:19:50

will say that, yeah, I look, I

1:19:52

had a lot of fun with this. I had

1:19:54

a lot of fun with the character names, Scrotus,

1:19:57

Pissboy and the Octoboss. Yeah, I loved it. end

1:20:00

credits when he lists the cast he gives

1:20:02

all the character names they get their own

1:20:04

screen time so you get all of those

1:20:06

brilliant names for these wild sort of like

1:20:09

warboy characters it's just brilliant. Shout out

1:20:11

Richter, Sir Richter, who makes a

1:20:13

spectacular comeback. I agree with a lot

1:20:16

of what James says and you know how much that upsets me. I

1:20:19

think that I have

1:20:21

a long-standing issue with prequels as

1:20:23

frequent listeners will know for all those

1:20:25

reasons. We don't need mythology demythologized,

1:20:28

we don't need backstory and

1:20:31

also it removes a lot of the

1:20:33

stakes like you're pretty sure Dementus isn't going

1:20:35

to survive, you're pretty sure Furiosa will. Other

1:20:38

characters I won't mention but you know you

1:20:40

draw your own conclusions pretty quickly and

1:20:43

I think that's a shame. The action

1:20:45

scenes were for the most part flawless

1:20:48

once again. I did think some

1:20:50

of the CG at the same time, honestly there's one shot

1:20:52

near the start where someone is getting on a horse and

1:20:55

it made me want to throw something at the

1:20:57

screen. Oh there's a shot on top of the

1:21:00

war rig where the compositing I thought was glaringly

1:21:02

over so it felt like a reshoot to be

1:21:04

honest. There were a couple of moments of just

1:21:06

bad CG and given the brilliant

1:21:09

use and a mix of VFX

1:21:12

and SFX in the first one we

1:21:15

maybe had too high expectations. Yeah I mean there's

1:21:17

some chunky stuff in Fury Road as well. Maybe

1:21:20

but nothing left out at me the way some of

1:21:22

the shots in this one did. So

1:21:26

I liked this but I did not

1:21:28

love it. I was not blown away by it

1:21:30

and I certainly don't think it was up

1:21:32

to Fury Road standards. That said I'll watch it

1:21:34

again and hopefully fall more in love.

1:21:37

I mean I would say I don't

1:21:40

think it's better than Fury Road. I don't think it's even quite out

1:21:42

of the net. Yeah but you were up front about that when you

1:21:44

ran out but you were very clear on that. I

1:21:47

still think it is head

1:21:49

and shoulders above the sort of standard

1:21:51

of blockbusters that we're getting these days.

1:21:53

I think it's a remarkable piece of

1:21:55

work. I think it is I agree

1:21:57

with you on the previous. cool

1:22:00

stuff, I think there's a lot

1:22:02

of stuff you don't need to know

1:22:04

and yet the world building in this

1:22:06

film is amazing. Like the sort of

1:22:08

the visual language of places

1:22:10

like Bullettown and Gastown

1:22:13

and the Bullet Farm are

1:22:15

just remarkable. Really I

1:22:18

love the dystopian sprawling mass.

1:22:20

I love that the wastelands feel bigger

1:22:23

and smaller at the same time. You

1:22:25

know this world is like sort of

1:22:27

endlessly fascinating. And I

1:22:29

do think there's a bit more detail being filled in this

1:22:31

time about what happened to conjure

1:22:34

up the wasteland in the first place. I

1:22:36

really do think this is a film that it

1:22:40

will stand the test of time. But it's also

1:22:42

a cinema film, right? Like this is 100% something

1:22:44

you want to see in the cinema. Oh 100%

1:22:46

yeah. Yeah it's interesting.

1:22:49

I don't know, I think this film

1:22:51

is willfully on commercial at times. And

1:22:53

I don't, I really hope it

1:22:55

does well at the box office. But I can see a

1:22:57

world where it has a good opening weekend and then tails

1:23:00

off pretty quickly as audiences

1:23:03

for the most part rejected because

1:23:05

it's a strange movie. We

1:23:08

should also bear in mind of course that Fury Road wasn't

1:23:11

a huge box office success. It did pretty well.

1:23:13

It made just under 400 million if I remember

1:23:15

rightly back in 2015. So

1:23:17

just enough to eventually get Warner Brothers

1:23:19

to go in on this one again

1:23:21

and then to green light the sequel.

1:23:24

But I think the fact that its reputation rose

1:23:27

over the years and obviously it got nominated

1:23:29

and won six Oscars and George Miller

1:23:31

should have won best director that year

1:23:33

and the fact that he didn't is

1:23:35

a disgrace. That film is incredible. But

1:23:38

what that film also is incredibly simple

1:23:40

and it is a chase movie. There's

1:23:43

a lot of complexity to it and the world

1:23:45

is so thought out and fleshed

1:23:47

out. And Nico Lathuras who

1:23:49

is the co-writer in this movie with George

1:23:52

Miller, he's a sort of dramaturg who worked

1:23:54

with him on Fury Road as well and

1:23:56

wrote Furiosa basically as a

1:23:58

way to... When they were preparing Fury Road

1:24:00

as a way for them to really get

1:24:02

to grips with the world and how big

1:24:04

the world was and also to help with

1:24:07

the actors and okay, let's write your backstories.

1:24:10

And they got to the

1:24:12

point where Charlize Theron came up to

1:24:14

George shooting Fury Road. She

1:24:17

had read Furiosa and went, can we make this

1:24:19

first instead? And you can see

1:24:21

why she wanted to do that. But also you

1:24:23

could argue that if they had made Furiosa first,

1:24:25

it wouldn't have done well enough for them to

1:24:27

get to Fury Road. So I'm glad that they

1:24:29

went down that route. Fury Road is

1:24:31

much more simple, it's much more propulsive, it's

1:24:34

much more of a grabber in the action sequence, which is

1:24:36

basically the entire film, is an

1:24:38

all-timer. This is a frankly

1:24:42

weird movie. This is an

1:24:44

uncompromising movie. It's such an

1:24:47

oddball movie. It

1:24:49

doesn't hold your hand at all. It feels like

1:24:51

a silent movie for much of the movie. It's

1:24:54

a 150, 200 million dollar arthouse movie

1:24:56

that George Miller has somehow persuaded Warner Brothers to

1:24:58

dump up the cash for. I hope

1:25:00

people embrace it, I really do. I

1:25:03

don't think it gives you the experience that Fury

1:25:05

Road gave you, but if you want

1:25:07

to see a true visionary of

1:25:10

a director working at the height of his

1:25:12

powers, then I would recommend you go see

1:25:14

this. And go see it again, because it really, really

1:25:16

pays off a second time around as well. Five

1:25:19

stars then for Furiosa. Furiosa!

1:25:24

Next up, it is

1:25:26

Chris Pratt as Garfield in

1:25:28

the Garfield movie, Mad

1:25:31

Max Saga. Hell's Bells.

1:25:35

I mean, I... right. This

1:25:38

is a good start. Every review that starts with... Yeah,

1:25:41

okay, right. Okay, I mean, okay, okay,

1:25:44

okay, okay, okay. I just wonder why. I

1:25:47

wonder why we hold

1:25:49

on to this idea that Garfield

1:25:52

is a kid's character. Garfield

1:25:54

wasn't a kid's character, right? Garfield was a

1:25:56

three panel comic strip that was

1:25:58

kind of aimed at adults. All this

1:26:00

stuff about hating Mondays, that's not really a

1:26:03

kids thing. That's more of an adult thing.

1:26:06

Yeah, I just... Okay, but

1:26:08

here we are and they've made him into a

1:26:10

kids character and we meet... this is a... It's

1:26:13

an origin story. An

1:26:16

origin story cat. How does that work? All

1:26:19

wondered how Garfield first met

1:26:21

John. Garfield obviously voiced by Chris Pratt.

1:26:24

John voiced by Nicholas Holt. No

1:26:26

problems actually with the voice that cast in this

1:26:28

film. I actually think Chris Pratt does a fine

1:26:31

job. Does he sound a lot like Mario? He

1:26:33

just sounds like Chris Pratt, but he sounds fine.

1:26:36

His Garfield energy is kind of a little bit, you know, Andy

1:26:39

from Parks and Rec, but that works for Garfield.

1:26:41

That's okay. I'm not

1:26:43

a Garfield fan. So I always just assumed

1:26:45

Garfield was quite lugubrious and quite, you know,

1:26:47

the Bill Murray cast. But

1:26:50

he has that sort of, you know, like lust for

1:26:52

life kind of things or certainly lust

1:26:54

for food. Oh, he thought he was like, oh,

1:26:57

I'm going to hate Mondays. Okay,

1:26:59

well who doesn't love Lizzan? So

1:27:02

anyway, he does fine. We meet

1:27:04

him as a tiny kitten. He is left in

1:27:06

an alley by his dad who's voiced by Samuel

1:27:08

L. Jackson. Again, doing good work. And

1:27:11

he sees a lit up, you know, restaurant across the

1:27:13

way and he goes and he managed to get in

1:27:15

the window and there's John. And oh my goodness. And

1:27:17

he feeds them and then they're friends for life. And

1:27:21

then some stuff happens later on and it

1:27:23

just becomes, it just turns into a kids movie.

1:27:26

So it just turns into a ridiculous

1:27:28

series of stupid things happening. None

1:27:31

of which have any meaning or

1:27:33

purpose really. But essentially Garfield

1:27:35

has to team up with his now estranged

1:27:37

father to do

1:27:40

a ridiculous heist at

1:27:42

the behest of Hannah Waddingham. Not playing herself. She

1:27:44

has a character name, but I don't care. And

1:27:48

that's the movie. They have to steal

1:27:50

some milk or something. They have to

1:27:52

steal some milk to pay off

1:27:55

his dad's debts for some reason.

1:27:57

And also reunite. Two

1:28:00

cows, one of whom is voiced by

1:28:03

Bing Rhames. Yes, exactly. So

1:28:06

it's just a silly kids movie. And

1:28:08

as a silly kids movie, it will deliver

1:28:11

for little kids because there

1:28:13

are brightly colored people and

1:28:15

there are things happening all the

1:28:17

time. And that's

1:28:19

all there is. There is nothing else. There is

1:28:22

no subtext. There are no

1:28:24

real jokes here. There is no real

1:28:26

content here for growing up people.

1:28:29

There's nothing particularly Garfield apart from not

1:28:31

liking Mondays. Again, for no reason. He

1:28:33

doesn't have a fucking job. But

1:28:37

he doesn't like Mondays and he does like Pizza and

1:28:39

lasagna. So I guess we can identify with that.

1:28:41

But like, it's just a film.

1:28:43

It just exists. That's about all I can

1:28:45

say about it. It's like, there it is.

1:28:47

Who directed this? This was directed

1:28:49

by Mark Dindl. Mark

1:28:51

Dindl who directed The Emperor's New Group. Which

1:28:54

is a good movie. Great movie and really

1:28:56

fun. Trouble production. Great movie. It

1:28:58

turned out really fun. And it's like a big Chuck

1:29:00

Jones cartoon. But this has

1:29:03

none of that film's wit. It has none

1:29:05

of that film's panache or

1:29:07

you know, it's got

1:29:09

nothing. Jeez. It

1:29:12

just exists, right? It just exists. It's

1:29:14

from Sony but it's not

1:29:17

made by Sony Pictures Animation who

1:29:19

did Spiderverse. It

1:29:21

doesn't have that sort of creativity

1:29:23

or that sort of innovation in

1:29:25

animation. It feels more like an illumination

1:29:27

movie. But not

1:29:29

even with the kind of... I

1:29:32

don't love illumination but they have a madcap

1:29:35

kind of zaniness sometimes. You

1:29:37

know, it's something. It's

1:29:39

some kind of trademark. This has nothing

1:29:41

to hold on to is my

1:29:44

feeling about it. Yeah, I can't really disagree. I

1:29:46

can't really disagree. It left no

1:29:48

impression on me. I was a bit bored

1:29:50

by it. There was

1:29:52

like maybe one joke I

1:29:54

raised a smile at. It's not funny. And

1:29:58

fundamentally I think as you're saying Helen... It

1:30:00

just misunderstands the character of Garfield. I

1:30:02

don't know that Garfield should be a

1:30:05

movie. No, I don't think so. At

1:30:08

least not a family friendly kids film. It

1:30:10

just doesn't make any sense. It's

1:30:13

so sentimental and schmaltzy this film.

1:30:16

The whole ending is just going for tear

1:30:18

jerking and you just think, what? Garfield!

1:30:22

Garfield! Scenic! It doesn't make

1:30:24

any sense. Yeah. Two

1:30:27

stars? Two stars. Two stars

1:30:29

then for the Garfield movie.

1:30:31

Jimbo! Hello. Atlas.

1:30:34

Florod. Wow. Ah

1:30:36

yes, Atlas. This

1:30:39

is a new Netflix movie directed

1:30:41

by Brad Payton of Rampage fame.

1:30:44

If you've ever played the video game Titanfall. Hey,

1:30:47

don't come from Rampage. But

1:30:50

anyway, this is if you've ever played the video game

1:30:52

Titanfall. This is like Titanfall the film.

1:30:55

And this stars Jennifer Lopez. And it really stars

1:30:57

Jennifer Lopez because she gives this 100% from the

1:30:59

second she walks on

1:31:02

the screen to the end of it. And she

1:31:04

is the consummate professional. And no matter how absolutely

1:31:06

absurd, the gibberish coming out of

1:31:09

her mouth, she absolutely fucking sells

1:31:11

it. So massive respect to J.Lo for

1:31:13

this. And she plays

1:31:15

the brilliantly named Atlas Shepherd. And

1:31:18

she's a kind of a myth and

1:31:21

thrombic analyst. She's like an expert in

1:31:23

robotics, but she has a deep distrust

1:31:25

of all artificial intelligence and robots

1:31:27

because of quote unquote deep personal

1:31:29

trauma in her past. And

1:31:32

however, she is sent on a mission to go

1:31:34

to a planet to track down the leader of

1:31:36

the AIs who have essentially wiped out half of

1:31:38

humanity. Basically, it's like three people, I think, actually

1:31:40

not half, not half, just a small amount. So

1:31:43

it's fine. I see they've done nothing wrong. It's all

1:31:45

good. It's basically what happens when

1:31:47

Chantilly goes rogue. That's what this film is. So

1:31:49

the AIs decide they want to wipe out all

1:31:51

of humanity as all AIs eventually come to that

1:31:53

particular conclusion. So she goes to a planet to

1:31:56

deal with this guy, Harlan, who's played by

1:31:58

Simu Liu. Who does

1:32:00

Chad GPT play? Uh, no.

1:32:02

And it all goes horribly

1:32:05

wrong. Now, this planet, crucially, is toxic, so

1:32:07

she ends up in a mech suit. Oh,

1:32:09

Disney. Shut up. She

1:32:12

ends up in a mech suit so that she can

1:32:14

survive, and she is essentially stuck in this suit for

1:32:18

the duration of this film, which is really

1:32:20

what worried me about this, because she is,

1:32:22

literally, it's just her on a soundstage in,

1:32:24

like, this suit, and everything outside it is

1:32:26

CGI. So, it's J-Lo in a

1:32:28

mech, surrounded by CGI, for the whole film.

1:32:31

Now, most of the film,

1:32:33

I think. Most of the film. She gets out occasionally, but,

1:32:35

broadly speaking, that's what they said. That did concern me, because

1:32:37

I thought, that's a very, very

1:32:39

limited, you know, playground

1:32:42

for us to exist in. But, nevertheless, I think,

1:32:44

and the whole thing hinges on the fact that

1:32:46

this mech suit, I should say, has an AI

1:32:49

built into it. The AI is called Smith. It

1:32:51

is voiced by Gregory James Cohen, and she obviously

1:32:53

hates the AI. She has a real thing about

1:32:55

robots, but eventually, much like Will Smith and I,

1:32:58

Robot, she has to get over her mistrust of

1:33:00

technology and bond with this AI. Or like Chuck

1:33:02

Noland, when he had to overcome his fear

1:33:04

of volleyball. Indeed. And became friends with Wilson.

1:33:06

Yes, it's exactly the same as that. And

1:33:09

the thing with this film is, and it's

1:33:11

very important that you kind of bear this

1:33:13

in mind, is, it's rubbish. But, the other

1:33:15

thing, the other thing is, it's also brilliant.

1:33:17

Because I enjoyed this so much. I had

1:33:19

the most fun in this film. And yet,

1:33:21

at no point were you to ask me

1:33:24

the core question, is it good? Could I

1:33:26

possibly, with any honesty, have answered? Yes. Because

1:33:28

it really isn't. Because the dialogue is dreadful.

1:33:30

The story is so trite at the end.

1:33:32

And while I think Atsu has a lot

1:33:34

of potential up to a point, the last

1:33:36

bird just descends into the most horrific cliché.

1:33:40

Just let me say, people in Hollywood need to

1:33:42

go to less therapy on the basis of

1:33:44

this. There's a lot of this, and her sifting

1:33:47

through her trauma and eventually opening up and coming

1:33:49

to terms with her part. It's like, nobody cares.

1:33:51

You're in a mech with four arms, guns and

1:33:53

swords, blows some stuff up. Like, it's just, there's

1:33:56

a lot of sci-fi fun to be happy. Like,

1:33:58

I was giggling, clapping and generally enjoying. myself

1:34:00

enormously, but it's still a bit

1:34:02

rubbish. But I do think people should watch it. So, you

1:34:05

know, make about what you will. I don't disagree.

1:34:08

I wrote it right. I wrote the review and

1:34:10

I gave it two stars. I disagree with nothing

1:34:12

that you wrote. I think that's right. But also

1:34:14

I did enjoy it. I mean, I was

1:34:17

just, I mean, it's kind of not quite a

1:34:19

hate watch, but it's a dislike watch. It's

1:34:22

a guilty pleasure. It's like you have so

1:34:24

much. You have not just Jennifer

1:34:26

Lopez and Simu Liu, you also have

1:34:28

Mark Strong and Sterling K. Brown in

1:34:30

this. With nothing to do. With

1:34:32

nothing to do. You have mech suits,

1:34:34

you have flying cars, you have a

1:34:36

future LA that looks exactly like present

1:34:39

day Singapore. You have so much to

1:34:41

work with. And that's what

1:34:44

you do? Are you kidding me? Yeah.

1:34:48

It's really a thing. It's really something to see.

1:34:50

I mean, yeah,

1:34:52

it's not good. I mean, it does look like a

1:34:54

game as well. Well, very much so. You know,

1:34:56

it's not just that the plot recalls Titanfall,

1:34:58

although very much also I wrote about, as

1:35:00

you say, but also like it

1:35:02

literally at times the CG isn't perhaps the

1:35:05

most expensive in the world. They don't have James

1:35:07

Cameron money, I'm assuming. And so

1:35:09

it looks like a video game

1:35:11

a lot of the time. And, you know,

1:35:13

you have J.Lo just stuck in a

1:35:15

box for most of the time acting

1:35:17

her little hard, as you say. But like, why

1:35:20

would you stick J.Lo of all people in

1:35:23

a box? I

1:35:25

think, have they cast anyone else in this

1:35:27

role? This film would have had a very

1:35:29

different energy and actually have been just outright

1:35:32

bad and miserable. I think she rescued, and

1:35:34

to be honest, not just her,

1:35:36

Sterling K. Brown, he elevates it as well.

1:35:38

Just good casting all the way through. Really

1:35:40

elevators of other source material. I didn't really

1:35:42

know Gregory James Cameron. I don't know if

1:35:44

he's done maybe. No, I don't either. Game

1:35:46

voicing or something. He has a great voice.

1:35:48

It's very soothing. Really good voice. And he

1:35:50

did a really good performance. And

1:35:52

you really feel the connection between them and like you

1:35:55

Greg, you're like, yes, yes. Yeah.

1:35:57

But I mean, not good. I know. If

1:36:00

this is two hours or just about... You know

1:36:02

what? She'll say that. And

1:36:04

on paper you are right. But there was a bit where I looked

1:36:06

at the runtime, and I was like, oh, I've got half an hour

1:36:08

to go. And I was like, yes, I've got

1:36:10

another half an hour. I was so excited that there was more of

1:36:12

it. Yeah, really, really had

1:36:15

a good time. Sorry. How

1:36:17

did it compare to This Is Me

1:36:19

colon, a love story? It's

1:36:22

got less CG than that number. So

1:36:24

this is the star of This Is Me and This Is Us

1:36:27

in the same film. That's right. Wow.

1:36:31

Wow. Two stars in, but it

1:36:33

sounds like five or four. Five star, two star film. Can

1:36:36

I just say also, canonically in this film, JLo

1:36:38

is meant to be 38. Anyway.

1:36:41

I can't believe that. I missed that. I can

1:36:43

totally believe that. She was 28 years ago. Oh,

1:36:45

yes, you're right. That the thing happened when she

1:36:47

was 10. You are right. Although, not to be

1:36:49

funny, she 100% pulls it off. I mean, look,

1:36:51

she's... I would not have questioned that. She's stunning.

1:36:53

No question. But, yeah. Yeah.

1:36:56

All right, then. Two stars for Atlas. Last

1:37:00

but not least this week

1:37:02

is Richard Linklater's hitman, which

1:37:04

reunites him with Glenn Powell. They've made a

1:37:07

couple of movies together and it's kind of

1:37:09

where we saw him first. Hollywood,

1:37:11

get your hands off. This

1:37:15

is kind of after anyone but you. This

1:37:17

is further confirmation, right? Helen, that Glenn Powell

1:37:20

is going to be a huge star. This

1:37:22

is in cinemas this weekend, but will be

1:37:24

on Netflix in two weeks' time. We'll kind

1:37:26

of talk about it then as well when we'll

1:37:28

all have seen it. But right now, just

1:37:30

a very, very quick couple

1:37:32

of words about Hitman and how ace it

1:37:35

is. It's really ace. I saw this actually

1:37:37

last year at the London Film Festival. I think I

1:37:39

had just been in... Was it Venice or Toronto? Yes,

1:37:41

I saw it in Venice. Right. So

1:37:44

it did make a buzz there even before anyone but

1:37:46

you came out. But this is a

1:37:48

fantastic film. It is improbably based on

1:37:50

a true life story at first and

1:37:52

then they wildly go off the fact of

1:37:54

the true life story. But it was about

1:37:57

a college professor hired by the police. to

1:38:00

play a hitman. So basically what this

1:38:02

film tells you is there are essentially

1:38:04

no hitmen. If you try and hire

1:38:06

a hitman, you will almost certainly hire

1:38:08

an undercover cop and

1:38:11

be done for a conspiracy to murder. Really bad

1:38:13

news for you. I just got to make a quick phone

1:38:15

call. So

1:38:17

he plays the hitman who then has

1:38:19

to reel these murder suspects

1:38:22

in essentially on behalf of a

1:38:24

police sting team. And

1:38:26

it all gets a bit, he's very good

1:38:28

at it. He does it a lot. He

1:38:30

really enjoys it as a little sort of

1:38:32

Philip in his otherwise boring life. And then

1:38:35

he meets one of his would-be clients who's

1:38:37

played by Adria Arzona and obviously gets in

1:38:39

a little bit over his head. This is

1:38:41

such a fun film. Now it isn't going

1:38:43

to be on in all cinemas this weekend.

1:38:46

I had a look this morning to

1:38:48

see if it was on anywhere in Northern Ireland

1:38:50

because I wanted to recommend it to a bunch

1:38:52

of family and friends and I couldn't find it

1:38:54

there. If it is on in a cinema near

1:38:57

you, this is such a great cinema experience. It

1:38:59

is so frustrating to me that this is going

1:39:01

to be on Netflix because I saw it as

1:39:03

I say at the London Film Festival, it was

1:39:06

a packed morning screening and it played gangbusters. People

1:39:08

were hooting and hollering all over the place. It

1:39:10

is so much fun as a collective experience. There's

1:39:12

so many crazy twists and turns of comic scenes.

1:39:15

So if you can get to a cinema and see

1:39:17

hitman, I really recommend it. It'll still be great

1:39:19

on Netflix in a couple of weeks. It's a

1:39:22

great film. I'm going to see

1:39:24

it this long weekend. I'm going

1:39:26

to go see it and worship

1:39:28

at the altar of Richard Linglater

1:39:30

who is an amazing director. And

1:39:32

Glenn Powell co-wrote this. Yeah, they

1:39:34

wrote it together and the article

1:39:36

on which it is based is online. You

1:39:39

can read it as the Texas Monthly article

1:39:41

and it's really fun and amazing insight into that

1:39:43

world. It's just,

1:39:46

I don't know, it's the most fun

1:39:48

Richard Linglater has had in years. I

1:39:50

mean he's consistent and

1:39:53

good, but this is like

1:39:55

proper blockbuster watch with a

1:39:57

packed crowd as you say. It's just. It's

1:40:00

just joyful, joyful, joyful and

1:40:02

really sexy as well. Really

1:40:05

sexy. Yeah, absolutely. Unusually sexy

1:40:07

for our current sexless time.

1:40:09

Exactly. Did someone say my name? All I heard was

1:40:12

unusually sexy. I just assumed

1:40:14

you were talking about me. Yeah,

1:40:16

we gave it four stars. But like I say, it

1:40:18

will still be four stars on Netflix. But if you

1:40:20

have the opportunity to see this in cinema, take it.

1:40:23

Yes. Take it to yours.

1:40:25

Yeah, I love those guys. Glenn Powell

1:40:27

and Adria Arjona. Yes. Yes, please. Yes,

1:40:29

please. Very, very good stuff.

1:40:32

I should be going to see it this

1:40:34

week. And all right. That's it. Hooray. We're

1:40:36

done. We're done here. We're done here. That

1:40:38

is it for this week's Emperor Podcast. Join

1:40:40

us next week for

1:40:42

more film-related fun when we'll

1:40:45

be joined by Daisy Ridley.

1:40:47

Hooray. Daisy Ridley, star of

1:40:49

the new Jerry Bruckheimer production,

1:40:52

Young Woman and the Sea.

1:40:54

And we'll also be joined

1:40:56

by, I think,

1:41:00

Richard Linklater, director

1:41:02

of Hitman. So that's

1:41:04

exciting. I hope it's a

1:41:06

Hitman. I do. I do indeed hope

1:41:08

that it is a Hitman. All right.

1:41:11

That's it. Until then, until we meet

1:41:13

again, until that auspicious occasion, it

1:41:15

is goodbye from my three colleagues of

1:41:17

such a lethal cunning. James

1:41:19

Dyer is staring at me with what

1:41:21

can only be described as dark intent.

1:41:25

I don't know why you would think that. But

1:41:28

on the Pilot TV podcast this week, we have

1:41:30

Helen O'Hara, who is speaking to Nina Mansour,

1:41:32

the creator of We Are Lady Parts, which we

1:41:34

book on Channel 4, which is very, very exciting.

1:41:36

We're also doing the New Stephen Knight show. That's

1:41:39

right. We're doing the New Stephen Knight show,

1:41:41

The Veil, and also The Walking Dead, the ones

1:41:43

who live finally makes its way to the UK

1:41:46

on Sky. So that's very exciting as well. Yeah.

1:41:49

So yeah, come listen to Helen talking to Nina Mansour about Lady

1:41:51

Parts. Yes,

1:41:53

do that. And hello to her because

1:41:55

she listens to this podcast. Really? Yeah,

1:41:57

she does. God bless her. I thought she was smart too, but apparently not.

1:42:01

Please accept my apologies and backdate

1:42:03

those apologies however long you've been

1:42:05

listening. Goodbye from John Nugent. Goodbye.

1:42:09

Is that it? I have no podcast to plug. I'm

1:42:11

just going to say goodbye. There

1:42:13

you go. Well, it's been fun having you,

1:42:15

John. Thanks. But your new documentary, Let

1:42:17

It Be, is available now on the streaming and Disney

1:42:19

Plus. Right. Yeah. Doesn't

1:42:22

even cover the bit where John walked out on the Beatles

1:42:24

for about three days or something like that. That's

1:42:26

in Get Back, though. It's in Get Back, yeah.

1:42:29

Yeah. You remember it well. Like

1:42:31

it was yesterday. Jynx. Now

1:42:33

James, can I say dammit. It's

1:42:35

goodbye from Helena Hearn. Toodaloo. Toodaloo.

1:42:39

And it's goodbye from me. As

1:42:41

Chuck Nolan once said to his

1:42:43

volleyball Wilson in Robertson Mecus's castaway,

1:42:46

I know now why you'll cry. But

1:42:50

it is something I can never

1:42:52

do, sweetheart. What? I like

1:42:54

the Groucho mocks, haven't you? I'm not sure, Jynx.

1:42:56

It's unclear why, but sure. I think I'm dying.

1:42:58

You sound like James Cagby. I think I nailed

1:43:00

it. I think I absolutely nailed it. Thanks for

1:43:02

listening. See you next time.