Listen now | Today’s movie is The Thin Red Line directed by Terrance Malick. It should be unsurprising to longtime listeners of Molly Movie Club that Anna likes this movie and Casey doesn’t. For Anna, the filmmaking was immersive and the contrast between natural beauty and the horrors of war was very effective. Casey hated the philosophical voiceovers and thought the story didn’t make much of an effort to support its own premise. We both agree that there’s a bit of confusion in some of the action directing (in a way that is very Nolan-esque).
Just got to this episode and want to say: I’m in team Anna 100%. This movie storytelling is entirely traditional, in the sense not everything is a sequence of events. It rather has a consistent mood and a feeling, and what you get out of it is in composition of everything rather that in storylines. But that’s why we love Terrence Malick, right?
I *feel* like these last few episodes after Christmas have been a lot more confrontational. Past disagreements were like more like "I see what you mean, but I saw it this other way instead" or "you care more about this and I care more about that (and that's okay)"; whereas it's been more like "I guess if you don't need the middle of the movie if you see it this way" or "you might be a sociopath if you see that way" and generally more confrontational vibes.
It's okay with me if it's okay with you, and I will totally get down to more 'heated' discussions if I think you're having fun instead of fighting, but I mention it just to check, and because I might also be totally mis-vibe-checking your vibes, so I want to check my vibe-check against your checked vibes.
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I wanted Casey to give a small example of what showing a motivation for the change of heart could've looked like. I haven't seen the movie, but I can see how the scene Anna describes can seem to satisfy the criteria Casey was complaining about.
There's a soldier dude who initially likes to pry people's teeth out, and later doesn't.
A pre-change-of-heart scene might show him gleefully prying people's teeth out like "mwahaha so good 😈". I can imagine a post-change-of-heart scene could be something like: someone asks "hey, where's all the teeth you had?" and he's like "I got rid of them long ago because that was so evil 😔". Then, if you describe a scene where he just got done prying some teeth out, and then is suddenly conscious of the evil of his action and regrets it, that seems like it would fit in the middle of the previous two and 'explain' the later scene.
But, his actions were just as evil the first time as the second time. What's missing is the motivation; what happened that caused him to change his perspective. A change of heart is an internal process, yes, but most often they are a result of our experiences; and even if you could change your mind like this by just sitting down and thinking about it, well, that doesn't make a good movie; you can't see this internal process. A good movie would show us the series of events that would elicit this change of heart on that character, so that we understand and follow this internal process on that character, empathize with it and even feel it ourselves.
For example, maybe these soldiers are trained to see these people as the Enemy, and implicitly therefore as sub-human or undeserving of sympathy, and that's why they're fine with doing this evil to them. But later (shown) this soldier has a conversation with one of them , or sees one of their children which remind him of his, or anything else that we understand as a humanizing moment; and then we understand what had changed when we see him regret his actions.
And it is not sufficient that I understand how *I* would regret prying somebody's teeth out myself, because while it is obvious to _me_ that taking someone's teeth is wrong, it was obviously not to them; we have started out with a different worldview. It would be unexpected for him to *spontaneously* change his mind, as it would be for myself.
Why did he change his mind? Why didn't he go on pulling teeth like some of the rest? Why him? Why then? That is what is missing*.
* According to Casey. I didn't watch the movie.
_____
I really want you to ever do an episode on any of the really popular Marvel movies. Casey has mentioned them as examples of the worst so many times that I really want to listen to him go to town on them. Or, if there's at least one you really like that would be really interesting too!
-I want to say Avengers: Endgame because of how popular it was, but that was kind of a "part two" to Infinity War which might make it inconvenient.
- Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is
a recent, popular one you can surely find lots to say about.
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a less recent one that I really liked and thought was unusually good for Marvel movies, but it's not part of the "MCU".
My preference would be Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, unless by some miracle you are ever willing to endure *two* Marvel movies in a row, in which case I would prefer Avengers: Infinity War + Endgame for the MCU magnum opus.
So, do you mean "Spider-Man: INTO the Spider-Verse"? Because "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" isn't out yet - release date says June. I can understand the confusion, since I am also confused as to why they would name two movies the exact same title except for a preposition. Until I searched for it just now, I didn't even realize there were two movies :(
Assuming you meant Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I would be happy to do that one, so long as "happy" is taken in the colloquial sense. Obviously I am not "happy" to have to watch these bargain-basement screenplays a second time, but for the sake of bagging on modern terrible screenwriting, I'd be up for it :) It's a textbook example of the modern trend where the writers know what a movie roughly is, because they've seen them when they were kids; and they know that movies are supposed to have a theme, because someone told them that in school or on the internet; so they set out to make both of those things but don't really know how it works, so they end up writing a plot that is the opposite of what they later state the theme to be (out loud, of course, with a voiceover, because they have no idea how else a theme would work).
This is a really common trend now with these animated movies. The movie is clearly about X, but the writing team thought the theme should be Y, so they just have someone say Y out loud and call it a day. It's almost always a voiceover, too, because they clearly have _no_ idea how they would ever have a _scene_ that evinced a theme.
In the case of Spider-Verse, it's particularly amusing because the movie is actually about the exact opposite thing that it claims to be about, which would be interesting if it were a dark comedy. Of course, it isn't.
Avengers: End Game, on the other hand, is just a general mess. I'd be fine doing that - it's a mess regardless of whether you've seen the previous movies, IMO, so they don't really even need to go together. It shares recent honors with "Lightyear", a recent utter turd of a film, in that both explicitly state and demonstrate rules of their universes that completely negate 100% of the actions of the characters. It's rare to see a movie like that - "self-contained irrelevance" might be a new term for it?
Anyway, garbage, all of it. Maybe someday we can just do Rant Month and I'll just complain about these garbage scripts four times in a row. They are truly just rubbish.
Oops. Yes, "Into". I had no idea there was to be another movie. 😬
I'm extra curious now to know everything you have to say about Into the Spider-Verse. I particularly like that one relative to most Marvel movies; it might've been the animation.
It's almost surprising how often stories display almost precisely the opposite of what they're ostensibly about and explicitly say throughout. Especially in (shōnen) anime, I think, where the infinite-magic-power chose one is all about bravery, perseverance, and hard work. (Having mentioned anime: Studio Ghibli makes some gorgeous anime movies.)
A Rant Month is something a definitely need in my life.
Lightyear and Spider-verse would both be good in a rant month. Dune we already did. Maybe the better thing than "rant month" would be to pick a movie that evinces its theme well to contrast with Spider-verse, and a movie with solid universe rules (to contrast with Lightyear), etc.
Hahaha, sorry if we came across as too confrontational! It’s all in good fun, we weren’t actually fighting. We can tone it down in the future, we definitely don’t want to make listeners uncomfortable!
And I agree, we really should do an episode on a Marvel movie sometime...
Just got to this episode and want to say: I’m in team Anna 100%. This movie storytelling is entirely traditional, in the sense not everything is a sequence of events. It rather has a consistent mood and a feeling, and what you get out of it is in composition of everything rather that in storylines. But that’s why we love Terrence Malick, right?
I love your podcast! ❤
I wish you had a TV Show Club podcast as well. 😅
_____
I *feel* like these last few episodes after Christmas have been a lot more confrontational. Past disagreements were like more like "I see what you mean, but I saw it this other way instead" or "you care more about this and I care more about that (and that's okay)"; whereas it's been more like "I guess if you don't need the middle of the movie if you see it this way" or "you might be a sociopath if you see that way" and generally more confrontational vibes.
It's okay with me if it's okay with you, and I will totally get down to more 'heated' discussions if I think you're having fun instead of fighting, but I mention it just to check, and because I might also be totally mis-vibe-checking your vibes, so I want to check my vibe-check against your checked vibes.
_____
I wanted Casey to give a small example of what showing a motivation for the change of heart could've looked like. I haven't seen the movie, but I can see how the scene Anna describes can seem to satisfy the criteria Casey was complaining about.
There's a soldier dude who initially likes to pry people's teeth out, and later doesn't.
A pre-change-of-heart scene might show him gleefully prying people's teeth out like "mwahaha so good 😈". I can imagine a post-change-of-heart scene could be something like: someone asks "hey, where's all the teeth you had?" and he's like "I got rid of them long ago because that was so evil 😔". Then, if you describe a scene where he just got done prying some teeth out, and then is suddenly conscious of the evil of his action and regrets it, that seems like it would fit in the middle of the previous two and 'explain' the later scene.
But, his actions were just as evil the first time as the second time. What's missing is the motivation; what happened that caused him to change his perspective. A change of heart is an internal process, yes, but most often they are a result of our experiences; and even if you could change your mind like this by just sitting down and thinking about it, well, that doesn't make a good movie; you can't see this internal process. A good movie would show us the series of events that would elicit this change of heart on that character, so that we understand and follow this internal process on that character, empathize with it and even feel it ourselves.
For example, maybe these soldiers are trained to see these people as the Enemy, and implicitly therefore as sub-human or undeserving of sympathy, and that's why they're fine with doing this evil to them. But later (shown) this soldier has a conversation with one of them , or sees one of their children which remind him of his, or anything else that we understand as a humanizing moment; and then we understand what had changed when we see him regret his actions.
And it is not sufficient that I understand how *I* would regret prying somebody's teeth out myself, because while it is obvious to _me_ that taking someone's teeth is wrong, it was obviously not to them; we have started out with a different worldview. It would be unexpected for him to *spontaneously* change his mind, as it would be for myself.
Why did he change his mind? Why didn't he go on pulling teeth like some of the rest? Why him? Why then? That is what is missing*.
* According to Casey. I didn't watch the movie.
_____
I really want you to ever do an episode on any of the really popular Marvel movies. Casey has mentioned them as examples of the worst so many times that I really want to listen to him go to town on them. Or, if there's at least one you really like that would be really interesting too!
_____
Cheers!
Which Marvel movie would you prefer?
-I want to say Avengers: Endgame because of how popular it was, but that was kind of a "part two" to Infinity War which might make it inconvenient.
- Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is
a recent, popular one you can surely find lots to say about.
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a less recent one that I really liked and thought was unusually good for Marvel movies, but it's not part of the "MCU".
My preference would be Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, unless by some miracle you are ever willing to endure *two* Marvel movies in a row, in which case I would prefer Avengers: Infinity War + Endgame for the MCU magnum opus.
So, do you mean "Spider-Man: INTO the Spider-Verse"? Because "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" isn't out yet - release date says June. I can understand the confusion, since I am also confused as to why they would name two movies the exact same title except for a preposition. Until I searched for it just now, I didn't even realize there were two movies :(
Assuming you meant Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I would be happy to do that one, so long as "happy" is taken in the colloquial sense. Obviously I am not "happy" to have to watch these bargain-basement screenplays a second time, but for the sake of bagging on modern terrible screenwriting, I'd be up for it :) It's a textbook example of the modern trend where the writers know what a movie roughly is, because they've seen them when they were kids; and they know that movies are supposed to have a theme, because someone told them that in school or on the internet; so they set out to make both of those things but don't really know how it works, so they end up writing a plot that is the opposite of what they later state the theme to be (out loud, of course, with a voiceover, because they have no idea how else a theme would work).
This is a really common trend now with these animated movies. The movie is clearly about X, but the writing team thought the theme should be Y, so they just have someone say Y out loud and call it a day. It's almost always a voiceover, too, because they clearly have _no_ idea how they would ever have a _scene_ that evinced a theme.
In the case of Spider-Verse, it's particularly amusing because the movie is actually about the exact opposite thing that it claims to be about, which would be interesting if it were a dark comedy. Of course, it isn't.
Avengers: End Game, on the other hand, is just a general mess. I'd be fine doing that - it's a mess regardless of whether you've seen the previous movies, IMO, so they don't really even need to go together. It shares recent honors with "Lightyear", a recent utter turd of a film, in that both explicitly state and demonstrate rules of their universes that completely negate 100% of the actions of the characters. It's rare to see a movie like that - "self-contained irrelevance" might be a new term for it?
Anyway, garbage, all of it. Maybe someday we can just do Rant Month and I'll just complain about these garbage scripts four times in a row. They are truly just rubbish.
- Casey
Oops. Yes, "Into". I had no idea there was to be another movie. 😬
I'm extra curious now to know everything you have to say about Into the Spider-Verse. I particularly like that one relative to most Marvel movies; it might've been the animation.
It's almost surprising how often stories display almost precisely the opposite of what they're ostensibly about and explicitly say throughout. Especially in (shōnen) anime, I think, where the infinite-magic-power chose one is all about bravery, perseverance, and hard work. (Having mentioned anime: Studio Ghibli makes some gorgeous anime movies.)
A Rant Month is something a definitely need in my life.
Lightyear and Spider-verse would both be good in a rant month. Dune we already did. Maybe the better thing than "rant month" would be to pick a movie that evinces its theme well to contrast with Spider-verse, and a movie with solid universe rules (to contrast with Lightyear), etc.
\- Casey
Hahaha, sorry if we came across as too confrontational! It’s all in good fun, we weren’t actually fighting. We can tone it down in the future, we definitely don’t want to make listeners uncomfortable!
And I agree, we really should do an episode on a Marvel movie sometime...
Ope. I want to clarify that I wasn't uncomfortable. Just being nosey.
I'm enjoying it a lot. I enjoy a lot more heated stuff too if it's in good fun. 👍🏽
Glad you're enjoying yourselves!