A box-office BOMB, confusion between Kevin James and Kevin Smith, and Gerard Butler does what he does best. Join us for a conversation about Gamer (2009), a movie that gets almost everything wrong.
A box-office BOMB, confusion between Kevin James and Kevin Smith, and Gerard Butler does what he does best. Join us for a conversation about Gamer (2009), a movie that gets almost everything wrong.
In this episode, we share our thoughts about Gamer, a science fiction action movie from 2009 starring Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall, and includes a mean-ass-looking Terry Crews. This movie is hard to defend, so we spend most of our time bashing it instead. We chat about the cinematography and actor performances and pay our respects to Ludacris. "I do feel you, my giant brother." Willie breaks down the movie's plot and references a 10,000-word blog post from a guy who thinks Gamer is "as radical as reality itself." Taylor struggles with a character named Gorge and how this movie portrays gamers, and Joseph thought John Leguizamo's performance was one of the highlights. Overall, this movie does a great job of NOT delivering anything beyond surface-level action scenes, but it does have an ethanol-powered vehicle in it—so there's that science, lol. "Let's Boogie Woogie Rock & Roll!"
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Taylor: Towards the beginning, when it's first shows the prison yard and all these guys kind of out there doing what they do. Uh, remember there was a fight and the, the victor of the fight takes off running.
[Joseph laughing]
He just takes off running into the rock fields [Willie laughing] and then, and then, uh, you hear the guards go, shoot him, shoot him, or take him down and instead of anybody firing a shot, it goes [Joseph laughs] boing yoing yoing yoing yoing, and the guy flies into the air and then the camera cuts.
To Gerard sitting there and it never talks about that guy again. And I demand-
Joseph: Dude, he just got beamed the fuck up, dude.
Taylor: Is that what happened? He just got beamed [Willie laughs] into space?
Joseph: Yeah, thats... [laughs]
Taylor: Because I can believe that. There were... no gunshots were fired. The editing was, "Get him! Fire! Fire!" Boing! Yoing! [Joseph laughing] And next scene. What?
Joseph: I didn't understand that either, man. [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: That was the only part of the entire movie that I rewound. And had to see one more time to make sure that I didn't [Willie laughs] miss some important piece of information.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:25
Joseph: What's up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for joining us for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor. And we're just three regular guys wondering what the differences between a film and a movie are. But I digress. So what's up with y'all?
Taylor: Oh, not a lot, man. Just chillin. Um, I believe a film is one of those things that is on the tape and it goes flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, whenever it's done. And a movie doesn't make that sound. So, you're welcome.
Joseph: There you go.
Taylor: Uh, yeah. Just been playing some Yakuza. Um, picked up the new one. Having a good time with that. Hopefully we'll talk about it in the future. It's a lot of ridiculousness packed inside that game, I'm sure.
Joseph: What about you, Willie? Do you, do you use the terms interchangeably, film and movie, or one more than the other?
Willie: Probably just say movie most of the time. Maybe I'm just not watching stuff that people consider artistic enough, because I feel like that's what people would try to say.
Joseph: Yeah, what makes a film a film?
Willie: Yeah, but I don't really care. I mean, if you want to say your, your movie is a film, then, you know, more power to you. If that's, that's your dream, if that's what you're doing, you're doing it, you're making films.
Taylor: That's true. If they're showing it at Sundance, then maybe it's a film.
Willie: I'd go with it, you know, if that helps you feel better about it. But I'm not ever really talking to anybody like that. I usually say movie. I don't think I've ever said, Hey, do you want to watch a film? Or even described to someone, like it's a really interesting film. I would have never said that, I'm pretty sure.
Joseph: I use the word film a lot, but I think I use both. There is, I will definitely use the word movie for something that is like the one we're talking about today. Or, you know, like Grandma's Boy. Fucking love Grandma's Boy. One of my favorites.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: But I'd probably call it Grandma's Boy movie before I use the, the word film.
Taylor: I mean, the monkey coming down the stairs though. With the, with that leaping, the flying kick. You don't think that's film worthy? That's a movie?
Joseph: I mean, that was a great fucking scene.
Taylor: That was a great scene. That was hilarious.
Willie: Probably one of the best in film history, right?
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: Probably. Movie history.
Taylor: Just the whole interaction with that monkey.
Willie: I actually don't even remember that. I know I've watched that movie. I just don't remember that at all.
Taylor: I guess chimpanzee is the correct thing. But just the. How the, the drug dealer was so attached to that thing. He loved that. He loved it.
Joseph: Dante. Yeah. I mean, that's for sure-
Taylor: Yeah, Dante.
Joseph: He considers it a monkey for sure. Because that's what it's literal name is.
Taylor: Yeah. It's monkey. [laughs] That's so stupid.
Joseph: Also, you can't be bringing up shit like this next week, kid. When the lion gets here.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. [Willie laughing] Yep. Yep. And he had a, he had a shaman there to help keep it under control.
Joseph: Do you have a shaman and an interpreter for the shaman amazing or might have been the other way around the shaman was the interpreter for like the kung fu master.
Taylor: It wasn't that far off of a depiction of a good weed dealer, you know? i feel like they really nailed it, they just expanded a little bit on the possibilities but I've definitely seen some intricate setups in my day, but I digress. [chuckles]
Joseph: I can never remember that actor's name, but he's obviously in a ton of fucking Adam Sandler connected-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -films.
Taylor: I just call him Joe Rogan. [Joseph chuckles] They look very similar, similar enough. I don't think I've ever even heard his name.
Willie: His name, actual, his real name is Peter Dante.
Joseph: Oh. Okay, okay.
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Willie: Pretty sure that's what you're talking about.
Taylor: Oh, that's interesting. That's a good name.
Joseph: Needle dick, needle dick.
Taylor: [laughs] That guy has played some amazing roles.
Joseph: He's in a lot of stuff-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -that Adam Sandler's involved with. Which also means that Allen Covert's in a lot of stuff that Adam Sandler's involved with. And Steve Buscemi. And a whole fucking list of people.
Taylor: Crazy Eyes.
Joseph: Crazy Eyes was great.
Taylor: Crazy Eyes was awesome, man.
Joseph: Did you see Oh, man. Name of this movie just slipped away, um
Taylor: One of his newer ones? Like one of the Netflix?
Joseph: No, it's a little bit older. It's got Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, uh, Steve Buscemi. Kevin Smith.
Taylor: Was it their getting older?
Joseph: No, it's not Kevin Smith.
Willie: That's not in Grown Ups, right? Is that what that is?
Joseph: Grown Ups, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His character's in Grown Ups, I love.
Taylor: It's been a while since I've seen them, but I do remember, um, getting a lot of joy out of those movies.
Joseph: Dude, Grown Ups is funny as hell, man. Like that slapstick style, that shit. I will watch that and still fucking die laughing.
00:05:37
Taylor: I tried watching the new, uh, Kevin James stand up [chuckles] on Prime, and I only made it about 10 minutes in. It was funny while he was talking about VR, but then he got to the point of like, talking about the problem with kids is that we don't beat them anymore.
And then- [chuckles]
Joseph: Oh gosh.
Taylor: -I immediately kind of zoned out. I always feel like that's a very per kid discussion right there. [laughs]
Joseph: Kevin. Yeah. I was trying to say Kevin James earlier and accidentally said Kevin Smith, but-
Taylor: How dare you.
Joseph: He's a little bit too much of a goofball for me. Like, I love him in movies-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -but I couldn't watch him try to do like a serious stand up bit or something.
Willie: I don't think I've ever watched his stand up.
Taylor: Neither did I. It was on recommended, so I tried it and it wasn't for me.
Willie: At the beginning of the pandemic, there were all those movies that he made where he inserted himself into famous movies.
Joseph: Oh!
Willie: Those were pretty fucking great.
Joseph: Those were great.
Willie: Him in No Country for Old Men, was it? I think was one of the more ridiculous ones.
Joseph: Those were really good.
Taylor: Interesting. Were those like YouTube series or where?
Willie: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Willie: They're fucking great.
Taylor: I never saw those.
Willie: You have to watch them.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Those are fucking amazing.
Taylor: That sounds awesome.
Joseph: Those are very good. The editing is really good.
Willie: [chuckling] Those are really fucking good.
Joseph: That's perfect for him. Like doing that kind of stuff is like, [Willie chuckling] this is what you should do, man. Cause you're just, this fits your personality, 100%.
Taylor: Yeah, he's such a funny actor.
Willie: He's in there working the fucking, uh, the gas station. Why can't I remember the character's name, the main character's name? Why can't I even remember the actor's name?
Javier what? Uh, what's his name?
Joseph: Oh, are you going back to No Country for Old Men?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: The main guy?
Willie: Mm hmm.
Joseph: Damn, I can't remember his last name either. Javier is right.
Willie: Yeah. It is, right?
Taylor: Javier... Bardem.
Willie: He's in there working the cash register.
Joseph: Bardem.
Willie: That's one of the best ones.
Taylor: Javier Bardem. There you go.
Joseph: Bard...Bardem? Barden? Sisqo? Sisquell?
Taylor: Bardem. [pronounced Bardum]
Willie: I don't remember. It's close.
Taylor: Bardem [pronounced Bardem] [Joseph laughs]
His haircut played its own role in that movie. [Willie chuckles] His haircut-
Joseph: Oh gosh.
Taylor: -was for sure the scariest, the most frightening character.
Joseph: Yeah. It was in the casting for sure.
Willie: You have to go find that scene and watch that with Kevin James working the counter.
Taylor: Dammit-
Willie: When he's asking him...
Taylor: -I pulled up a tab and I pulled up Kevin Smith, pandemic videos, [Willie laughing] and that's a complete different thing. Okay. Out of touch. Okay.
Joseph: Kevin Smith. [laughs]
Taylor: Yeah. I'm going to leave these up for later. I'm definitely going to have to... Yeah. Willie fucked me on that one.
Did I say at that time?
No, no, but you planted the seed in my head and then I couldn't unsee it.
Joseph: Did you really put in Kevin Smith or actually put in Kevin James?
Taylor: Yeah, no, I put in Kevin Smith and it was a lot of way more serious videos that came up.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: Before we leave this topic of movies and go back to Adam Sandler for a second, Adam Sandler films, I heard someone talking about the film Leo the other day and how amazing it was, which is his like newest animated film. I haven't watched it yet, but people are like, it's really fucking good.
Joseph: I haven't either.
Taylor: It was okay.
Willie: It came out at the end of last year.
Joseph: Is that the one where he's like a toad or like a...?
Willie: A lizard of some sort.
Joseph: A lizard, right.
Taylor: Yeah. He's a lizard. And, uh, Bill Burr plays his best friend who's a turtle.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: It was okay. It to me is one of those where they made a two hour movie and they really could have made it a one hour and 20 minute movie. It starts out really cute and funny. And then about halfway through it, it just starts getting so contrived and lost in the writing and all of that stuff where you start to have those thoughts of why is this still going on?
Clearly we're only in the second third of this arc. What is going on? Why are we still doing this? Those kinds of thoughts were going through my head.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: But it's okay, the, the animation on it and everything is beautiful. It's just like any other Pixar esque thing that comes out right now. It's just using that cutting edge tech and looks incredible.
Joseph: Willie, you said you haven't watched it, right?
Willie: No, I haven't. No, I just heard someone talking about it like yesterday.
Joseph: Word. I was torn about watching it. I guess I shouldn't even say that, I almost watch it. I almost watched it like a month ago. I was thinking about it, but didn't.
00:09:30
Joseph: But anyway, today's episode is about a mostly negatively reviewed film, maybe I should say movie there, from 2019, or not 2019, 2009 called Gamer, starring Gerard Butler. It was a box office bomb, grossing 42 million worldwide against a production budget of 50 million. The IMDB user rating is 5.7 out of 10, and it's listed under the action, sci fi, and thriller genres. Here's a description that's given on IMDB. In a future mind controlled game, death row convicts are forced to battle on a doom type environment. Convict Kable, controlled by Simon, a skilled teenage gamer, must survive 30 sessions in order to be set free. I mentioned Gerard Butler plays the main character Kable. That's Kable with a K by the way, because why the fuck not?
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And some other people in the cast are Michael C. Hall. Luda, Terry Crews, Kyra Sedgwick, Amber Valletta, John Leguizamo, somehow John DeLancey, uh, and fucking Keith Jardine.
Do either of you know who Keith Jardine is?
Taylor: Hmm, I'd have to see him. Let me see here.
Willie: No, not without looking him up, though, I mean, I did see, I think I saw his name in the credits.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: Just because it was like just Mean Slayer or some shit like that-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: I think is what he was credited as.
Joseph: Exactly, Mean Slayer.
Taylor: He's a fighter.
Joseph: Yeah, he's an, he's a UFC fighter that was on season 2 Ultimate Fighter, like way back in the day. And that's how I've known him throughout all of this stuff,
Willie: Mm.
Joseph: Which he hasn't had any huge roles and the films that he's been in. But, he's actually had a ton of fucking work and I went through and I just looked at his listing on IMDb of like what he's been in but I was most I was uh, drawn to all the characters he's played like what he's been casted as. Here's... I just put together, put together a list of the names that he's been casted as.
So, in Gamer, he's Agent Keith. Oh no, shit, shit, I'm thinking about Keith David. Oh, wrong person, wrong-
Willie: Yeah, I can't even believe you didn't put Keith David on that fucking list. He's like, probably-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. I left him off.
Willie: -the biggest actor in this entire fucking thing.
Joseph: Oh, shit, yeah. It's such a [Willie chuckles] small role, I fucking, I forgot about him, but, anyway, Keith Jardine, not Keith David, both in, in Gamer, but, Keith Jardine, here are some names he's been casted as in other movies, Crab, Gust, Vern, Puck Beaverton, Moss, Reaver, Ripper, Duke, Goon, Pathfinder, Trooper, White Bill, Mace, [Taylor chuckles] Bulldog, Pike-
Taylor: White Bill.
Joseph: -Chester, Old Scratch, and, uh, Tow Truck Driver.
Taylor: Man, most of his names are only one, one syllable.
Joseph: One word, yeah.
Taylor: One word. Yeah. Like, uh, very, very short.
Joseph: Did you see his face, Willie? Did you look him up? You know who he is?
Willie: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. Cause I remember that character in the movie. The Mean Slayer like it's very obvious when he comes out holding like, it's not even... it's an LMG or something of some sort.
Taylor: i think it's the weapon off of THE FINALS [Joseph chuckles] like the last weapon that the [Willie chuckling] big guy opens up. I think that was the exact same machine gun. His was like silver or white though and the one in THE FINALS is black but i had never seen that gun before in THE FINALS and I thought to myself what a stupid looking gun.
I don't even want to unlock it because it's so stupid looking and this guy comes up on a pile of bodies or something, holding one, blasting people with it.
Joseph: Oh yeah, yeah, he looks mean too. I mean, they got it right. He looked like a mean ass slayer.
Taylor: Yeah, he doesn't look like somebody I'd want to fisty cuff with at all. But this cast! I think it's one of those things where when I look at the whole cast together here, it seems, I don't think I've ever said or felt this about any movie, but it is the most odd couple looking cast I've ever seen in my life.
It's like all, you know, most of them are big names that you would think you would be able to get something done with, but.... I think it's the writing, the content, the movie itself. It just overcame everything and was so awful. So bad. Rick Rape.
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: I'll leave you with those. I'm gonna leave you with, with that name.
Joseph: Yeah. That's...oh gosh.
Taylor: What!?
00:13:42
Willie: This movie, it is, you know, Joey said in the last podcast, it's an interesting concept and I didn't know that that's all it was. [Taylor chuckles] [Joseph laughs]
I didn't know that it was just an interesting concept.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah.
Willie: Because it is, it's an interesting concept and some good themes, but I don't think that they executed it at all on like actually telling us a story and making us feel something about this world that we could be headed to. It makes sense that it's a dystopian future.
So everything's like hyper realistic, like this exaggerated form of like where we could end up in the future if we keep going on the path we're on. Because like we're headed in a pretty bad direction. There are tech billionaires who are doing some weird shit, trying to like control people's minds ultimately, right?
Like just control what you see all the time. So, like, it makes sense that we could end up at a place like this if we're talking about, here's what dystopian future looks like.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But they don't, they don't, like, give us any social commentary on it at all. They just, like, layer in, like, the worst parts of gaming culture to make everything-
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: Racist or sexist or misogynistic or, or homophobic or, you know, like whatever they can-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -to portray gamers as that worst version of themselves.
Taylor: That's exactly what it came off to me as, was like, this was clearly written and or directed by somebody who hates games, who hates gamers, who has like, the only interaction or knowledge they have of gamers is the headlines they've read in Vogue or something, something that has nothing to do with games, but it's like, oh, this gamer has swatted someone or this ga... I thought it was insane how everything was unsalvageable in that, in that vein.
Willie: It's weird because like, I don't know, I was trying to think about this yesterday that like, would I care as much that it's labeled with or that it's like sort of riddled with like homophobic slurs or ableist slurs if it was a better movie, would I even be thinking about that?
Or would I like, just be like, oh, it makes sense because in this film, they were trying to tell a story, you know?
Taylor: Right. And you do really hear those words in some game lobbies. You know, if you go to a public Call of Duty lobby, there is a excellent chance you will hear some of those slurs and you'll mute them very fast, but I don't know, dude.
Joseph: I think it could make a difference.
Willie: Yeah, I think so.
Joseph: In the way that it's used and presented, but also the context surrounding the use of those words. It's not very effective in this film. Like, when I heard it, I was like, it's jarring. Like, oh, fuck.
Taylor: Yeah, it is.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then I was like, damn, I have to rethink about the date of this, like 2009. Okay, that's like Over a fucking decade ago, like, where was the world then? And like, how much more acceptable was this in 2009?
Taylor: It was still pretty unacceptable [laughing] in 2009-
Joseph: It hits pretty hard.
Taylor: -I feel like.
Joseph: It hits, it hits like a brick, and-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I think, going back to the differences between a film and a movie, so like, all this usage, movie.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But, if Quentin Tarantino does it, and it's part of a larger fucking message in one of his films. It's like it feels different right? It is different even though it's the like it could be the same words being used, there is like a different level of effectiveness and the message that's being communicated the bigger message or the emotion trying to be conveyed through the storytelling could be completely different even though you're using the same words.
Taylor: That brings me to a point that it before I don't want to forget this but this movie reminded me of a Luc Besson movie, right? You know, that is like the guy who did, um, Fifth Element.
Willie: Uh-huh.
Taylor: He did a recent one, I think in 2017 or 18.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I can't remember, but it was decent. I, it went completely under my radar, but then out of the blue, Rebecca and I are watching Fifth Element one day and I'm like, has this guy not done anything else?
And then I found out about this other movie and it was really good. But Gamer reminded me of him making a movie, but without any regard for like human feelings or, or like nuance between the humans, and a ton of like sexism and racism and homophobia [chuckles], like sprinkled in, which is he, for the most part, as far as I remember and know, he doesn't really do any of that.
It's all more about the magic of these situations. And this one had zero magic, zero magic at all. It was like somebody tried to make a film like that guy, but wanted to do it in a more rugged and hardcore gamer style world where everybody's awful. And, um, it did not work, but I just wanted to throw that in there.
I, that was what this reminded me of, especially the scene where, oh my God, the Bloodhound Gang [Joseph chuckles] music video kind of scene. [Willie laughs] And I like Bloodhound Gang. So that scene was awful. I mean, just the, I think I pulled it up here, the part where it shows like a wide shot and you get My Balls Hurt riding a scooter-
Willie: Mm. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -across the front. Oh man.
Joseph: Yeah. Society. That's when, that's when you're getting introduced to like the world of Society and Gamer.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Which is like, um, man, I don't know, like a sim. It's just like a, a, a.
Taylor: Second life or something.
00:18:50
Willie: Yeah, it's like a second life sort of situation where you just, so maybe we should real quick recap what's going on here.
Joseph: Yeah, go for it.
Willie: You said it, a lot of it, but from the outset, you meet a guy named Ken Castle, who has created this digital world called Society, where people can, how does he put it? You can pay to be in society, like you can pay to be controlled. Or you can pay to control others-
Joseph: Right, yeah.
Willie: Right? And you're literally controlling a human being in this thing. People get this neural implant that links with their cells and replicates and creates this like control system within them. And then they go to work, they go into work and you control them from the outside. But after Society was made, it also pitched this thing to, you find out more later, but he pitched this thing so that prison inmates could get this implant, and basically, death row inmates could win the opportunity to get out of prison if they survive 30 sessions of something called Slayers, and it's like people paying, there's air quotes around this, like, opt in to be part of the Slayers, and people pay to control them in a death match sort of thing, and the goal is to survive or get to the checkpoint, at the end of the map.
And if you survive 30 of those sessions, you get freed from prison, supposedly, but no one's ever done it. There's also, there's a little catch to that, there's also these people that they call genericons, or something, I think was the, the term.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: That you go, as a prison inmate, you can be a genericon, where you get prepaid, pre programmed script, that you have, that you run. And they just stick you in there. And if you can survive one match, you live. And so there'll be people just in there, just walking around or going about their business, not participating in this death match that's happening around them, just trying to live for one thing-
Taylor: John!
Willie: One session, and then get out.
Taylor: My boy, John! [Willie chuckles]
Willie: But, again, never happens. Ultimately, this guy has made billions of dollars doing this, and has now actually funding prison systems with the amount of money that's made off of every pay per view event. Because also everyone in society, like the actual society, is watching, watching people play this Slayers game. And like, cheering it on and stuff.
And the protagonist of the film is this guy Kable, who has survived 27 of the 30 matches when we first meet him, to like, get out of prison, and everyone's excited that he might do it. And of course, no one has any intention of letting this guy get out, so they like, try to, try to uh, stack the deck against him.
Taylor: They throw a Terry Crews at him.
Joseph: I don't know if I've ever, if I've ever seen something look meaner than Terry Crews and, and the, like when they introduce him in this movie.
Taylor: Oh, that locker room scene? That locker room scene when I think you can see the outline of his D.
[Joseph laughing]
But..It's terrifying is... it's a terrifying moment when he's like, you, you got girls on the outside. They're my girls now, or whatever he says is really terrifying.
Joseph: He's like, I just killed someone. This is the blood.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah. This is the blood, he's just playing with the blood on his hands.
Willie: He's like, do you want to see?
Joseph: He's back here, do you want to see? And then the song.
Willie: The most ridiculous part of that is that he starts singing fucking No Strings On Me from Pinocchio.
Joseph: Yeah-
Taylor: Right exactly.
Joseph: That is fucking twisted.
Taylor: He called Lies of P DLC way back then. Now they have to have a Terry Crews DLC. There's no choice. I won't have it any other way.
Joseph: Terry Crews, he played a character called Hackman, the Hackman. You know, you were talking about magic earlier, Taylor. I actually think John Leguizamo is probably the best acting in this entire fucking movie as Reek, or not Reek, Freak.
Taylor: Well, that's a lot of movies that he's in.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Taylor: That's a lot of movies that Leguizamo is in. Like, that guy is just there's a magic to him, you know, whatever the movie is, he always kills it. Oh, was it The Happening was a bomb that he was in? I think he was in that one. I had, I might be wrong.
Willie: I don't remember.
Taylor: It was one of those, uh, series of awful ones. And that guy was again, the highlight.
Joseph: He's great, man. Everything he fucking does.
Willie: He was, uh, he was pretty good, but he seems like ancillary to the story also.
Joseph: Oh, for sure.
Willie: There's so many people in this movie who get like 10 minutes, maybe 5 minutes of screen time total. And it's just like, yeah, what happened to all those people? And some of it feels like it was cut. I will say you talked about the year, like, oh, what year is this? Like what kind of language is being used? One of the more shocking things was John Leguizamo dropping an N word-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: -in his conversation with Kable and being like, what? [Taylor chuckles]
Obviously he was okay with this, he did it. But it's like, damn, what year did this happen in?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. I was surprised he used that word, just because it's so little dialogue to begin with.
Taylor: Exactly.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And it doesn't seem to even match the rest of his dialogue, so.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: It definitely seems like that was one where they're trying to shoehorn in some sort of Tarantino moment or something. Like, hey, this stuff is hot, man. This is what makes it a film. Say this. And I mean, as an actor, a lot of times you're going to say it just because there's so much pressure and you're in a bubble on the set anyways, especially back then. So I also have a list of things I want to make sure I touch on at least some of these.
00:23:59
Taylor: I just want to touch on one right now and ask you guys. Towards the beginning, when it's first shows the prison yard and all these guys kind of out there doing what they do. Uh, remember there was a fight and the, the victor of the fight takes off running.
[Joseph laughing]
He just takes off running into the rock fields [Willie laughing] and then, and then, uh, you hear the guards go, shoot him, shoot him, or take him down and instead of anybody firing a shot, it goes [Joseph laughs] boing yoing yoing yoing yoing, and the guy flies into the air and then the camera cuts.
To Gerard sitting there and it never talks about that guy again. And I demand-
Joseph: Dude, he just got beamed the fuck up, dude.
Taylor: Is that what happened? He just got beamed [Willie laughs] into space?
Joseph: Yeah, thats... [laughs]
Taylor: Because I can believe that. There were... no gunshots were fired. The editing was, "Get him! Fire! Fire!" Boing! Yoing! Yoing! Yoing! [Joseph laughing] And next scene. What?
Joseph: I didn't understand that either, man. [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: That was the only part of the entire movie that I rewound. And had to see one more time to make sure that I didn't [Willie laughs] miss some important piece of information.
Joseph: Also, that's not a fucking prison yard, man. That's just like White Sands, New Mexico or some shit. Like, that was nothingness out there.
Yeah, it was.
I don't even know if they were doing anything. They just went out there to fight and Kable sit down.
Taylor: I mean, they had some rocks piled up or something-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And a latrine looking thing. I don't know. The whole thing was confusing.
Joseph: I mean, it's trickery, man. Like this whole movie, like the opening four minutes, the opening combat scene, at least the game of Slayers, it's like fast camera movement. There's like a lot of handhold shaky stuff and they're like rotating the camera to get like the super action oriented shot.
They're doing some like speed ramping and speeding up sections and like, it's all just fucking the shit you would find on YouTube if you were looking for like 25 filmmaking tips or something like...
Taylor: Or if you're trying to have a seizure, dude.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: There were some parts of that it was what is in the middle or towards the end where they literally did some like white and black flashing seizure inducing shit. I'm surprised that. I didn't see a warning [Joseph laughs] at the beginning of the movie at all-
Joseph: Right, right. [Willie laughs]
Taylor: -because I mean, it was straight up, like, it was like, if you're a director and you're talking to your editor and you're like, I want this to give people seizures and, and the editors pay, depended on it. [laughing]
[Joseph and Willie laugh]
He said, okay, okay, I will make this give people... because I had like strange feelings when I was watching it. And I mean, I play the fuck out of games and movies and everything. I've never, I'm lucky enough to have never had a seizure or anything, but... There was a moment where I said, okay, I got to like blink extended periods so that I don't [Willie chuckles] get caught up in whatever this is.
Willie: So we should talk about that for a second because when this came up in the last episode, I had looked up Gamer because I was like, I don't know what the fuck that is. And then I was like, Oh, what comes up when you look that up? Is Crank and Crank 2 High Voltage. I didn't know at the time, but that was because it's directed and written by the same two people.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: So like, those films, I don't think I ever saw... I don't think I ever saw Crank 2, I'm pretty sure. Maybe I did.
Taylor: I don't think I did either.
Willie: I know I did watch Crank.
Joseph: Same.
Willie: But it's an action film that does have a bunch of fast cuts that is just like this disjointed thing. It's meant to be that. In a way, right? It's just, it like fits the, the flow of the film. Cause that film, because that movie is ridiculous.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Like it is just straight up supposed to be action, ridiculous shit.
Taylor: Was Crank after this? Was it, was it made?
Willie: Uh, no.
Taylor: Really?
Willie: It was before.
Taylor: Wow. So they were...
Willie: I think Crank 2 might've been after this.
Taylor: So maybe the director was trying to apply the formula from Crank, which was a winner, maybe for whatever different reasons to this, is that what you're thinking? Like...
Willie: What I'm saying is they tried to do that and tell a story, and then forgot to tell the story.
[Taylor laughs]
I... [chuckles] they just I don't know they, they like forgot that they were trying to do something more because it's again the premise seems like it could be good if you explored it and talk about what's going on in this world and see how it's lived in and you just don't...
Taylor: It was good as Ready Player One. It was much better as Ready Player One that's what it... That's what I kept thinking was, okay, 10 years later, somebody nailed this, somebody kind of remade a similar sort of thing, which their prison was a little bit different. It was corporate prison and, um, and you got sentenced to be in VR, but. It was much nicer.
There was more diversity, there was more inclusion, there was more just friendship, things like that, themes of those kinds of things. And, and I think, I mean, that was my thought at the end of the movie really was like, Oh, okay, this, this would lead me to absolutely loving Ready Player One.
Willie: Well, one of my first notes, like before, when you see the first camera, before the first Slayer match that we see, it's just like showing the city and all these billboards everywhere about Slayers and about Kable.Killer and all of this stuff.
Even before we got to anything else, I was like, oh, this is The Running Man.
[Taylor chuckles]
This is straight up The Running Man. And okay, interesting. And then it wasn't even as good as The Running Man, which is a cheesy fucking action flick from the 80s.
Taylor: Yep.
00:29:18
Joseph: Yeah, the signage in that opening sequence looks so fucking bad, like it's so clearly fucking fake and just layered on top of stuff, and I hate it so much.
Willie: Well, people have talked about that too, and here's the part where it's like, I did fucking think about this movie way too much, and I'm not even gonna I'm not even going to go into too much of it, but so I do know that people, some people really like this movie and some people are like, oh, this is like, they did an excellent job of like incorporating all of these elements into it to get us to think about stuff.
And I, I didn't read it. I'm not going to someone wrote almost 10, 000 words on how great this movie is. They were like, they, they love Crank and they, uh,
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: They loved both Crank films and they were this, I'm using their words now, but they were like, this movie like exceeded all of their expectations
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: And they were just talking about how amazing it was and all these things about the like... they don't talk about free market capitalism I guess they're talking about the neoliberalism that's like focused in this movie. They put it in those terms and they talk about just like all kinds of stuff that like this could be where we're headed. You know, in this dystopian future or whatever, but they like spend way too many words trying to talk about how great this movie is.
It's like, okay, well, that's good for you, but the film. There was not a film that did that.
Taylor: No.
Willie: This was just an action movie and they could have done that, but they didn't do any of those things that you're talking about-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -in my opinion.
Joseph: You're, you're trying to manifest this into fucking reality.
Taylor: Exactly. Yeah. And in contrast, you see another headline that says my life has been irrevocably ruined by the 2009 movie Gamer.
[Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Willie: Yeah, no, there was, so this person like address, like they were just like, so many people have shit on this movie, but it is like one of the best. It's like done so much for the genre and all of this thing.
And they're just like, they go on and on and on about it. And I read a little bit and I was just like, I can't, you're just trying to use a lot of big words to explain this thing. That's like, this is not that complicated because if it were, it would be a good movie, but it's not, it's just not a good movie.
Joseph: I think it's a great idea. Great idea.
Willie: I think it's a great idea that was done pretty poorly-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -and they talk about the cinematography too, but so the reason I got on this is because one of the things that they point out and that I saw somewhere else was that the stuff from the beginning is ripped straight from another movie.
Joseph: Baraka dude. Yeah. I've seen that film.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. It is exactly stuff from Baraka and it's just, they overlay some other stuff and they talk about how that's like really, really important to their, like, it makes sense that they did it because of like certain reasons, how that movie was about something like the themes in that movie tied directly to the themes in this movie.
They like flip it on its head when they do that, when they use that other footage. It's so weird.
Joseph: Even thinking about that, like there, there are some good ideas-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -but the entire movie is not good. They... they failed to do just key storytelling things to make this a great movie you know? Like it's good action it's good action and I got some big names on the cast.
Taylor: Ludacris-
Joseph: Luda
Taylor: -as a hacker
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: Luda is a hacker.
Joseph: Humanz with a Z.
Taylor: That led to one of my, the lines I laughed at the most which is the Simon. Is that the gamer kid, is that his name?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And when he... when he's getting off the phone or call with Luda and he's like, I do feel you my giant brother.
[Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah.
[Willie chuckles]
Taylor: I said, wow, man. [Taylor and Willie chuckle] Wow.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Nowadays, if there was a line like that, you would have Luda responding with, what the hell are you talking about or something?
But instead he was just like, Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Mm-hmm, let's do this.
Taylor: I thought that was ridiculous.
00:32:57
Joseph: There's so much about the Humanz group that reminds me of fsociety in Mr. Robot. [Willie chuckles] They help Gerard Butler. Kable get himself out of the game because it's a lose lose scenario for him, like he's not gonna make it through 30 sessions.
So they help break him out with the help of Simon who's the 17 year old that's controlling Kable in Slayers by writing some software that can basically help him. What's that Jim Carrey movie where he, uh, The Truman Show his way out of Slayers and then he shows up, right? He shows up at the compound for Humanz.
And they're just playing arcade games and fucking air hockey. And it's the weirdest thing, like, nonchalantly walks in. And that whole scene reminds me of the very first time in Mr. Robot that Elliot kind of goes to the arcade. I don't know if y'all have seen that series Mr. Robot, but there's some weird little connections there that were happening in my brain.
Uh, they had real arcades in there though. Defender. Galaga-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -Centipede.
Willie: Yeah, I did watch through the credits and I saw all of the like things that were credited at the end and it's like there's a whole laundry list of... of things that were in there because they have like an actual Atari in that room I think as well with like, Missile Command and Asteroids on it, I guess.
Joseph: Mm hmm. There's no payoff in this fucking film, dude. They tried really hard to help the audience form an emotional connection or realize an emotional connection between Freak and Kable.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: And then they tried to do that by giving Freak like five fucking lines in the movie you know.
Taylor: And they expected you to care about him.
Joseph: Yeah. And it just wasn't enough man. Like none of us, no one, no real fucking human is going to care after just that.
Taylor: No.
Joseph: But it's that like mentality of this movie. Like it happens everywhere. Like with all the characters, all the relationships, they're never really formed. So there's no like emotional draw.
Taylor: Even Hackman, even the way that he kind of met his demise was, was almost like, okay, now it's time to move forward in the story. Just kill him very quickly and dispatch him.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: After he was such a big part of it, which, you know, I guess it's just choices. But when all of those choices add up to be such a crummy end result, I think you find yourself forced to, to want to analyze it a little bit and see what, what went wrong. Why did you do this?
How did you do this?
Joseph: I'm coming back to this just in case we, we don't, but two and a half minutes in and there's a teabag.
Taylor: Right.
Willie: Which literally the first, the first dialogue of the movie, the first thing that you hear in the movie is someone saying, he teabagged a man-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: -or some shit like that. Like, He fucking teabagged him [Joseph laughs] is the first line in the movie.
Joseph: Oh man. So is this... where does this rate compared to Street Fighter?
Taylor: Oh, Street Fighter is a film. [Joseph and Willie laugh] Street Fighter is a masterpiece compared to this. Are you kidding me? Like Street Fighter is the opposite where it seemed like they went with way less of a budget. I don't know. I don't even remember what the budget was for Street Fighter.
It could have been more, but. It just seemed like they did a lot more with a lot less on Street Fighter.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Like you said earlier, it had an insane cast. I mean, every single one of the people on the top of the cast, you've probably seen in something and enjoyed, if not multiple things or many, many things.
Willie: Thirty five.
Joseph: How much?
Willie: Thirty five million for Street Fighter.
Joseph: Okay. So, what was that? Five million less?
Taylor: And Street Fighter, I'm sorry, Street Fighter was three times better than this, maybe five times better than this.
Willie: 7 million less than what, what this movie cost. And five years earlier. No, wait, shit. 15 years earlier.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, 94, I think.
Willie: Right? Because this was 2009.
Taylor: I will say the, um, the FX on Gamer was okay. There were definitely plenty of good kind of gory fighting and, uh, death scenes and the guns blasting people's arms off and heads and shit. Like they, they, That was pretty good.
Joseph: It's brutal, man.
Taylor: I can definitely see that's... yeah, it is brutal. Like that's what they were going for.
It's like ultra, ultra violence.
Yeah. Which I'm not even into, but I can at least, uh, respect it in that the FX people did a good job. They made the, the bullets flying out of the guns, like the tracers and all that looked really good and like kind of gave you the feeling of just a really visceral, violent interaction going on.
Joseph: I mean, that's half of that fucking 42 mil right there.
Taylor: Probably.
Willie: It did the action stuff well in a way. I don't like that kind of editing. So-
Taylor: Naw, me neither.
Willie: -I mean there's that part but whatever they did their thing and then they just... and then they just half assed everything else.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Like they were depending on that to carry it all.
Willie: Which is weird because it's like I think that's the part of the movie that actually like it's not upsetting but it's just like makes me not care. Is that it feels like they were trying to tell an important story or like share some important piece of information about here's what dystopia could look like in this new world that we're headed towards, right while like glorifying violence in their own movie, right?
But the only thing that actually like about this movie is the violence and the action.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: So like they tried to say a thing and then made a movie about the thing that they hate Or that they're trying to, like, right.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And they just didn't actually ever tell us anything of value.
Joseph: There was no follow through, man.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think it's kind of what you said earlier. It was them trying to say something much larger. And to paint a bigger picture. But it just got all boiled down to the action stuff. And like, I feel like at some point they're like, Hey, we need to figure out how to turn this project around. Like, this is going down the drain.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah.
Joseph: We're not going to be able to do what we thought we were. So now let's just pivot. Let's pull all those fucking action scenes in. Let's make Terry Crews look as fucking mean and mad as possible. And let's turn this into an action movie that can maybe help us break even, which they clearly did not.
Willie: I just wonder if they care about that at all. You know, because like, those two writers together have done, you know, they did Crank and Crank 2 and this movie, and there's another movie that I've never seen that people talk about called Pathology, and Jonah Hex was the last thing I think that they did together, and maybe they just did the story, they didn't actually direct it, but none of the things they did are reviewed well.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like they're all like seven or below, and most of them sit like around five or six, so it's like, they're just, I don't, I don't...
Obviously, they've made like five or six movies together, whatever it is. So congrats to them. But I don't think that means they're good at it.
Joseph: And you're probably right, they don't care. Like, these are just the kind of movies they make.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And maybe some of the others were profitable, you know, and this is one of the few that wasn't for them but clearly it's not a blockbuster.
00:39:34
Taylor: It was not. Should we talk about some of the performances? Like, I'm thinking specifically Michael C. Hall, was absolutely over the top in the worst way ever.
Joseph: I mean that, that whole fucking like, I forgot the, I don't know if I'm getting the music genre right. Maybe jazz- ish.
Taylor: Oh, the West Side Story style.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That scene I did not understand, man. I don't know if that was just him dancing to give the dance crew, to show control.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: To show that he had control over the people in the room.
Taylor: Yeah, he was a marionette.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Or whatever you would call the puppeteer, I guess, of the marionettes.
Joseph: The puppet master there.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But that... it just seems like such a weird decision.
Taylor: It was so bad, dude. It was so bad.
Joseph: I mean, Gerard Butler's fine. I mean, he seems like Gerard Butler in everything, you know, that 300 and Olympus Has Fallen and all that kind of shit.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: John Leguizamo, I think is. Probably the best performance in the whole fucking thing. Maybe John Delancey, even though he has like two fucking lines.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Ludacris is fine.
Taylor: Yeah. Ludacris did what he always does. He's popped in there and was cool. Like added some flavor to it. None of his parts were bad. It was about what you've come to expect from Ludacris, even on like social media and stuff. He just pops on and says something and looks cool as hell and moves on.
Joseph: I think he's good, man. Like, you know, like between him and like TI, I'm going Ludacris all fucking day.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, or like Common. Common's amazing, you know, like, uh, Common, Ludacris.
Keith David. I thought it was fucking perfect.
Taylor: Yep.
Keith David. Perfect.
Willie: Yep.
He only had a few lines. He also, I don't know if you noticed was the voice of the Slayers, whenever you-
Joseph: [in a quiet announcer voice] Slayers!
Willie: -yeah, whenever the game started up.
Taylor: Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool. That is a great voice for anything, though.
Willie: Yeah, he's one of the fucking best voices in all of it.
Taylor: He really is, man.
Joseph: And connected to gaming, dude. Like, very real connections to gaming voiceovers.
Willie: Right, exactly.
Joseph: I love that.
Willie: Which, by the way, there was that scene where I don't actually remember the scene, but Uh, Sam Witwer is in, in this movie as well, who's another voice actor.
Joseph: Was that dude in Dexter? In Dexter?
Willie: He was in Dexter. Yeah, yeah, he was in Dexter. And I think that might be the reason that he was in this. I feel like I remember someone saying that, reading somewhere that, uh, Michael C. Hall wanted him for this too.
Joseph: Mm. That makes sense.
Willie: But, uh, yeah, he's a voice actor. He's Starkiller in The Force Unleashed.
Joseph: Ah!
Darth Maul in The Clone Wars.
Willie: Aah!
Taylor: Nice!
Willie: He's like in every fucking thing, dude. That guy is literally in everything.
Taylor: He's one of those incredible supporting actors.
Willie: Yeah, in The Force Unleashed, he's like, he's, the character's actually modeled after him as well.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: Like, that's what he looks like.
Taylor: Oh, that's right.
Willie: That was like one of the first, like, big instances of, yeah, them modeling a character after the voice actor, I feel like. But, uh, yeah, that guy's great. He's in all kinds of shit as far as video games go.
Taylor: I feel bad for Milo Ventimiglia, that guy that [Willie chuckles] played Rick Rape. Like that was such a...
Joseph: Such a cringe worthy character.
Taylor: That was such a cringe... yeah, dude, that was so cringe. And it, he's played so many kind of epic and amazing and, um, good guy roles since then.
Willie: Well, see, that's the guy who's in Pathology, their other movie that's very popular or whatever.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Huh. Oh, that makes sense. I mean, that guy is good. He seems to. Seems to be one of those actors that puts himself, his full self into it.
Willie: Is that their, I was gonna say, is that their highest rated film?
Joseph: That, that group?
Willie: No. Crank is. Yeah, out of the, their movies. Crank is the highest at 6.9.
Taylor: Also, we couldn't not talk about the, the gamer. Like, their gamer that they have. The guy, he's played by Ramsey Moore, it looks like. I'm, I'm looking at the IMDB, who is in all kinds of stuff.
But they just made that guy so disgusting. Whenever I started seeing those parts with him, like he was the guy who's controlling Angie or...
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, I think his name is Gorge.
Taylor: Gorge. Of course it is. Of course, that's his name. But just.
Joseph: I couldn't handle the moisture man in that fucking, those scenes. [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah, he was slimy. They made him slimy and shirtless and they kept like zooming in on...
Joseph: His lips. Oh my gosh.
Taylor: That was the point where I think I really got kind of like annoyed by the, the amount of, this is gamers. This is what gamers are that they were just shoving down your throat.
Joseph: Oh gosh, yeah.
Taylor: I felt bad for that dude too, because, uh, you know, he's, he's probably just an actor. That's been in tons of stuff and I don't know, man, I'm sure he got paid.
Joseph: I mean, he knew the fucking role, dude. He read the script. Get the fuck out of here.
Taylor: Well, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I just see that and think somebody who really, really, really hates gamers made all this happen.
Joseph: They overused those close up shots in those scenes, man.
Taylor: Yeah, Ren and Stimpy style, like-
Joseph: Grotesque
Taylor: -zoomed way too far in.
Joseph: You could have done that twice-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -not five times.
00:44:24
Taylor: When the tech support showed up, I'm not gonna lie, I did chuckle a little bit. When suddenly he looks up -
Joseph: Who...who are you?
Taylor: Yeah. [ laughs] Tech support. And their whole team.
Joseph: And now I don't even know what happened. What even happened?
Taylor: No, [Joseph and Taylor laugh] I don't know. They yeah, yeah right, 'cause we never...
Joseph: Like we just jump... we just jump cut to a different scene and that's it.
Taylor: Right, I don't know if they ever got to a point that they said or she seemed like she was under their control or something.
Joseph: I mean cuz they show up after the link is broken.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: But what are you there to do? Are you there to kill Gorge? Are you there to fucking reestablish the link? Like, what are you even doing?
Taylor: Are you really tech support? I don't know. Oh, and then that reminds me the part at the end with the controllers or devs or tech support, whatever you want to call those guys.
Joseph: Oh, on the basketball court, dude, on the fucking basketball court.
Taylor: What happened there?
Willie: I... I guess. Is that the part you're talking about? Like what are...?
Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah. That.... okay. They were in an indoor gym where. He's like, just hit the button. Just hit the button.
Joseph: It's just a mouse click for you.
Taylor: All you got to do is [laughs] it's just a mouse click.
Joseph: And this dudes like, You're right. No... anybody working... [Taylor and Joseph laughing] anybody working with Ken Castle is gonna be all about this fucking game, dude. They're gonna be all about this company, this business, this vision that this fucking genius, Ken Castle has. There's no way you could ever convince me that these people that are helping running the game are just going to simply be like, Hey man, you fucking killed him. Oops.
Taylor: Oops.
Joseph: That's it. Like, damn.
Taylor: That was...that's real dialogue.
Joseph: Our job is over. We're going to go home because we have no fucking connection to anything here and we don't really care about it enough to care.
Taylor: Yeah. Time to go do some other gamer hacker shit.
Joseph: Yeah. You want it turned off? Sure. Okay. Well played.
Taylor: Well played. [Joseph laughs] We never had anybody just ask us.
Joseph: Exactly.
Willie: We were just waiting for somebody [Joseph and Taylor laugh] to ask us to turn it off.
Taylor: You really made me see a different thing.
Joseph: Well played.
Taylor: Yeah, I'm seeing things through a different light now, buddy. Thank you.
Willie: Yeah, let's also talk about the sort of big reveal here. If you're listening to this and you think you should watch this movie, you shouldn't. It doesn't matter.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: So I'm going to spoil it for you. Like, the big reveal here is that this guy that we've been following, Kable, was a soldier prior to all of this. We find out that he was set up to even go to prison in the first place by Ken Castle. The original idea for whatever this weird Nanex thing is that they're doing, implanting nano cells into people, was to make better soldiers.
Ken Castle was trying to sell this to, to the government to make better soldiers, replacing them bit by bit and so that they could just live forever, it sort of seemed like.
Joseph: It's fucking Jason Bourne, dude. It's the Bourne identity.
Willie: Yeah, so he's trying to do that, but the program fails, and they sort of exploit this by having Kable, or whose name is something Tillman, I can't remember-
Joseph: John.
Willie: -what his first name is, John Tillman. They have him kill, is it his captain, his lieutenant, his something else, like a friend?
Joseph: It's just a friend, dude. That's like in the program with him.
Willie: Yeah, who's also in this program. They have him, they make him, we learn through Ken Castle, like controls Gerard Butler, controls Kable, Tillman, and kills his friend in some interrogation room somewhere. And that's what gets him thrown in jail.
Taylor: And they make the friend like the nicest character in the whole, [laughs] in the whole movie.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: The friend uh, Johnny Whitworth. He just seems like-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -such a likable guy whenever-
Joseph: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Taylor: -they finally show that part he's...
Willie: And they just kill him [Taylor laughs] and then yeah, and then later Slayers comes out.
Joseph: A year later, they take the same tech and basically turn it into Society
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: With The Bad Touch and everybody's kissing and making out. [Joseph chuckles] That was the other part... the other trope that they really touched on a bunch was-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -that there was always a fast cut to somebody-
Joseph: Making out.
Taylor: -straight tongue kissing.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, like deep tongue kissing cut to, uh, an ass hanging out of some short shorts.
Joseph: Yeah, a lot of that.
Taylor: Which, might've been one of the only redeemable factors about it was just, okay, well, there's a nice butt all of a sudden. Okay, I guess. I guess. [all laugh]
Willie: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's so fucked up because, so the one thing that the movie is trying to do, one of the things the movie is trying to do is paint the situation where, you know, fucking late stage capitalism has fucking made people desperate. So like people can go be actors in society, right? And they get paid well to go into this place.
And just let other people control all of their actions. So like, you know, all of it literally is the most fucked up debauchery that you can imagine. People getting fucking assaulted constantly. People showing off shit in public spaces everywhere.
Like, doing fucking hard drugs. Whatever. Like, everything that you could possibly do, without any repercussions for the person who's actually like trying to experience it is being put on everybody who's in bad financial position, who's like willing to go into this place. And so they just have to, it's, it's fucked up, especially because like, it's not like these people don't remember.
It's not like they're suddenly out of their brain. It seems like everybody who's in Society as an actor also knows what's going on. They see it and feel everything that's going on at that moment. But the world is just like never explored and it's never like, it's like, Oh, that's real fucked up. Great. And then moves on.
Taylor: That seems like the most interesting part, right? Is the, is the fact that, Hey, yeah, we're really heading towards that shit. Like we are really aimed directly for corpo overlord city and that, yeah, it just kind of glosses over that. And, and instead, it layers on that lens of gamer bad, gamers are bad or shitty.
Even the people are shitty. Like the, the news execs, um, the TV execs at the beginning, they're super sexist. Like everything that comes out of their mouth is incredibly sexist. And I don't know. And like you said, they just don't, there's not enough touching on that world to basically make anything redeemable. Like that's not what they're going for I suppose. Like they're not looking for any redemption for anybody.
Joseph: It needs a little bit more Black Mirror effort. You know, cause it has some of those, it has some of those ideas. Like the whole concept, like even why I brought it up in the last episode was like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: This is a fucking really interesting concept and they do a really poor job of executing on an idea.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:50:46
Joseph: But the idea I think is fascinating. I still do, even though the movie sucks. I think it would be great to turn into a limited series or great to turn into eight to ten episodes and tone down the action a little bit-
Taylor: That's true.
Joseph: -and focus on like the, the bigger picture, right? That message that this film, this movie might be trying to communicate, even though it got, you know, edited down into something that fucking bombed.
Willie: Yeah, I saw a bunch of people talking about this, like, could somebody remake this? Like, I know it's not been that long, but like, literally, if someone could just remake this film.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Into a film or like use... exactly what you said. Same thing. People like it could be a short series-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -that you could do and tell the actual developed story of what's going on in this world-
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: -because it is a dystopian thing that would make people think about your interactions with human beings and like what you're like, what's going on in the world right now. I don't know. One of the articles that I had seen about it was just, like, someone reviewing the movie in 2019, I guess?
And they were like, oh, this is a movie that was just 10 years too early.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: It was 10 years too early, maybe, and it wasn't good. If it was better done, more well executed, then I would agree with that sentiment.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And I think it just has to be somebody else. I just don't think the people who did it, I don't know that they would ever do it justice and that's just based on their other movies, they just care about action more than they care about anything else.
Joseph: I don't think this movie was ahead of its time by any means. I just think they did a poor job of bringing it to life. I don't think it's ahead of its time. I think it could have totally fucking worked in 2009.
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And it would have made twice as much money that it cost them to make if it if they did, you know, if they pulled it off well, which they didn't.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: This kind of just dawned on me a second ago, but there are some parallels with Cyberpunk. The story and the whole situation in the game Cyberpunk where like you're cybernetically altered humans and there's like, there's these things, these things called brain dances in Cyberpunk where you can, like, literally experience this kind of, like, VR world.
And, uh, see memories and stuff like that. That came up in Gamer. Where they somehow had the technology to, like, visualize his thoughts and his memories. Which is how you find out that Ken Castle was controlling Kable and that's how he killed uh, Scott, I think his name is Scott, his friend.
Willie: Scotch, his name was Scotch. [Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: Scotch.
Willie: His name, funnily enough though-
Joseph: Scotch Tape.
Willie: His name was, [Joseph and Willie chuckle] No. Funnily enough, you said Scott, his name was Travis Scotch.
Joseph: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]
That
Willie: was his name, which is maybe why you thought it was Scott, but it's not. It's Travis Scotch.
Joseph: Scotch. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Anyway, there are some interesting kind of parallels to Cyberpunk that, you know, obviously is a better, It's a better take on this kind of world. I don't, I don't even know where I'm going with that anymore. But, but besides just saying that there, that just kind of dawned on me that can kind of see a connection there.
Willie: And the other big reveal that this movie is trying to do that happens towards the end where you find out he was controlling Kable, was that Ken Castle has been getting these same nano things, whatever implanted in him this entire time.
But he, his body is sent to transmit controls to other people, not receive them. So he can control anybody, even if they're not in a gaming environment. So the big showdown at the end is Kable fighting this guy who has control over his body, so he can't stab him.
And ultimately what's funny is, I think that the way that he kills him in the end is good in the sense that he's like, don't think about this knife stabbing right through your head. Like he's trying to like, get him to think about the thing by saying, don't think about this thing.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And like, it makes sense, right? It's a nice little twist on, on that. And it's just like, man, this movie could have done so much better with its material. And it just didn't.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even that ending kill was good.
Willie: And you think about what is the villain's motives in this, just to be like in control of everyone. Again, also dystopian future.
Taylor talked about like, You know, having a media mogul, like be in charge of everything, wanting to control everything that you see all the time and like, yeah, that's what this guy's doing. And he's successful at it. And it is a fucked up dystopian world. It's just so sad that it, it's not good at doing any of the groundwork or storytelling that it needs to do.
00:55:06
Joseph: Does Ken Castle drive a truck that looks like a fucking polygon? [all laugh]
Taylor: Yeah...huh?
Willie: No, but can we talk about that for a second, before we wrap? That Kable at some point says... somebody asks him what he needs and he was like, I need to get drunk-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -and he drinks a fucking full bottle of alcohol that he has in his vest when he like suits up to go to the Slayers match. And in the match when he's trying to Break free he finds a truck he likes looking around in the parking garage sees a truck, and is like that's the one. And goes to the truck and vomits into the gas tank.
[Taylor chuckles]
He opens it up, he looks at it, and you can tell that this car, it says, just to make sure, so you know the science is legit, it says, this one runs on ethanol only. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Just to make sure, if you were going to argue with this film about anything, you kn... understand that this is an ethanol vehicle, which is basically alcohol, right?
[Taylor chuckles]
So he takes all the alcohol he downed and throws it up into the gas tank, and then pees into the fucking gas tank so that he has enough fuel to start the car up and go.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: And it's like, are you fucking kidding me.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Science dude, they wrapped up [Willie chuckles] all the loose ends with that little move right there.
Joseph: That label there was absolutely what they needed-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -to fend off all the scientists of the world.
Willie: Definitely any criticisms of the film can be debunked with that.
Joseph: The fact that he was immediately drunk-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -when he enters the Slayer match after chugging that bottle of vodka.
Willie: I was wondering about that, so there's two things there, right? He hasn't drank in a long time. Suppose, right? Probably. He's in prison.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: So maybe.
Joseph: Sure, sure.
Willie: Maybe. But I also think that there's something about the fact that he's not in control or he's control of his body for the first time in a long time, which doesn't make any sense because when he's not in the game, he's in control of his body already.
But he makes a comment to Simon who can hear him, the controller. He's like, how do you do this all the time? Like, how are you controlling me all the time? Like this is really hard when you have to do all of the stuff. It's like you were a former soldier-
[Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -and suddenly right now you can't walk on your own two feet somehow. I can't tell if you're trying to tell me that he's too drunk to do it or now that he's not being controlled. He doesn't know how to control his own legs moving.
Taylor: I assumed it was that he was drunk and just bad writing.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: There's so much that you literally just have to tell your brain turn off, turn off for this. Stop worrying about that because otherwise, you could pause this movie every 20 or 30 seconds and completely reflect on what you just saw, [Joseph chuckles] and it's going to be a bad time.
Joseph: Right, right. I thought they were trying to communicate that he was too drunk to control his body, but back to the ending.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: When you were talking about the ending and how it was like a little bit of there's some mind games happening right, where I'm going to say the thing that you shouldn't be thinking to get you to think about the thing you don't want to think about, or that you weren't even thinking about thinking about.
What makes that scene work so well is that Simon, the gamer, the kid gamer comes back into the mix and he's really the person that is planting that idea in Ken Castle's head because he's essentially controlling Kable and getting him to say it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Which is cool. Like, that's cool. Like this whole setup is a pretty badass way to end this confrontation between Kable and Castle and overcome the fact that Castle has control over Kable when not realizing that, oh, Simon can still control Kable as well. And now you just got fucking played.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: It's kind of cool. Yeah, I like it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: That's also another sort of tragic thing about this is that, I don't know if it's tragic. It's just that kid is completely also underdeveloped. He's also really easy to hate because he's a piece of shit.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: All the stuff that he's doing in his room.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Which is a cool room, I guess, by the way. Like, if you, if we live in a future where you just have a giant cylinder you can go in that's nothing but TV screens everywhere. Cool, I guess.
Taylor: Yeah. He had like 18 porn tabs open.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Taylor: [chuckles] And he'd have like a whole, whole part dedicated to porn.
00:59:11
Joseph: I did see that this film takes place in 2034-
Willie: Yeah, I saw that somewhere too.
Joseph: -which is a fucking decade from now.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So could that be the future of where Apple Vision Pro is going?
Taylor: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because Vision Pro is already being described as like the holodeck, you know, like it's, it's the holodeck come to life. So I could definitely see the timing on that not being, not being too absurd.
Joseph: We just have to get rid of the device completely.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That's the way it'll go as soon as enough people's necks are-
Joseph: Broke. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Taylor: -you know, getting big lumps on one side and, uh, yeah. And everybody starts like cratering from these headaches that they're causing. Like it's probably, it really is going to be a crazy next frontier with that tech just because it seems like even the people that are using it heavily, are like, ow, this hurts.
My neck hurts. My face hurts. My eyes hurt. I see people posting. What are the best eye drops [Taylor and Willie laugh] because I'm not blinking enough?
Willie: No, it's just exactly where we're headed. We're going to live in a weird simulation. Now we got to find somebody who's well, I mean, also, I don't want to talk about this dude, but we also already have the neuralink thing happening.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: So, uh, who knows, maybe we're close to it already.
Taylor: Yeah. We're probably closer than we think.
Willie: It's such a poorly done movie. Again, good premise, terrible execution in my opinion.
Joseph: Yeah, same. I mean, the whole world, it has a 29%, uh, tomato meter, uh, 39%...
Taylor: I think I agree with that one.
Willie: There are some people who are fucking showing up for this movie and just being like, it's amazing. And I don't even, I don't think I can force myself to read this nearly 10, 000 word thing, but I might at some point.
But I think those people really are just putting on their own lens for this thing. That you could do, you could analyze every second and just be like, this would, this is a really good topic to discuss. And I think that's the point.
It's a really good topic worth discussing, but this film didn't discuss it. It didn't give us anything to talk about other than surface level stuff. And it's like, Okay, great. It's another action film with way too many fast cuts. [chuckles]
Joseph: Yeah. And you know what, like a person that wrote that 10, 000 fucking word essay or whatever it is. They're focused on everything but the execution of it. It seems like, right? You're, you're, you're focused on the concept and the intention. You know, maybe if the intention is correct and the way they see it. But you have to consider the fucking piece itself.
You know, you can't overlook this half assed execution of, uh, an idea that's probably really good and it is connecting some really interesting dots and, you know, it's a really interesting observation, and we can analyze it and break it down conceptually, but you still have to analyze the fucking piece itself and the way that it's presented and delivered.
And I feel like that take is completely ignoring the final works, you know, the final fucking product.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Because we can fucking do that all day about any fucking thing. If we just bypass all the fucking visual stuff or the way that it was edited down from like a unique idea and then fucking washed out to fucking trash.
Willie: Yeah.
01:02:14
Taylor: I think my official review would be a 29 right under a 3 out of 10. So it's technically actually a 2 out of 10. And I agree with one of the top review headlines that is, what a load of rubbish. I definitely [Taylor and Willie laugh] definitely have to. I think that that's simply put, you don't need 10, 000 words to say it. That does it. That sums up my opinion of it.
Willie: Yeah, I'm good with that.
Joseph: No final thoughts. I think I've said everything I thought is good about this and most of the things that are bad.
Willie: Yeah, I will reiterate most of the actors killed it. They were like, doing their thing. It's just, overall, as a movie, it has nothing to say.
Joseph: I would say go watch it, because we've done such a horrible job of fucking explaining this movie. But that's about it. That would be the only reason to watch it, is to make sense of what we just fucking said for the last hour. If you understand what we're trying to say, then don't fucking waste your time on this.
Taylor: Yeah. You're going to have a terrible time unless you're looking for a really bad campy gaming movie.
Willie: But that's the thing is, you could go find one of those that is good.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: You could go watch Street Fighter and that's fine.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: It's bad, but it's also fine. It's good. It's like worth watching again.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And this movie tries to do more and that's the failing of it, is that it tries to do more, but just doesn't. And I don't, again, I don't know what their actual, I don't know if they were trying to say more or they were like Taylor said. They're just trying to paint gamers in like the worst light because that could also just be it too.
Taylor: That's what I got. They never, they never, I mean, maybe a little bit with Simon towards the end, did they, he redeemed himself a tiny bit, but that was all it smacked up to me was that gamers are bad.
Gaming is bad. We're going into a society that's all games and it will be bad as well. And if, if that's your thing, then you might actually get a little joy out of it, but that was not for me. I'm looking forward to, I think the next movie we do one of these on should be either one like Street Fighter that's hilariously bad but still great and rewatchable or just something that's amazing, maybe a contrast to this one.
Joseph: I mean, shit, [Taylor and Willie chuckling] you were talking about Ready Player One earlier, man.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: That, that movie I think is fucking brilliant, dude. I love Ready Player One.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I do too.
Joseph: Willie, I was tempted to fucking reach out to Vic and try to get him on this episode about Gamer.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: But, uh, this is too much of a last minute idea. And I also don't really know if he's really truly interested. It seemed kind of like halfway interested.
Willie: Okay, cool. Yeah. If you listen to all of this fucking nonsense, [Joseph laughs] we really appreciate it. If you managed to get through this one with us.
Joseph: Yeah, thank you.
Willie: Thank you, very much.
Joseph: If you got through this one for sure. Thank you.
Taylor: Yeah. Thanks a lot for listening.
Joseph: Let's boogie, woogie, rock and roll.
Willie: Oh, we didn't even talk. Did we talk about that during this?
Joseph: No. No, no no.
Taylor: Oh yeah. None of the ridiculous lines.
Willie: I think that was before we started actually officially recording. The most ridiculous line. What you meant to say is rickedy-dickedy-doo.
Taylor: Rickedy-dickedy-doo.
Joseph: No, I was using the one he uses at the end.
Willie: Oh, he does say, he does say that at the end.
Joseph: Yeah, it's when he takes his shirt off and like looking kind of ripped on the basketball court. When he's about to-
Willie: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: You know, he's about to handle, he's about to handle Kable while he's controlling him, but he takes his shirt off, he's like, let's boogie woogie rock and roll. I was like, okay, let's fucking do it.
Willie: That guy's so over the top for this and again, he does a good job of it. But yeah-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -Anyway. We need to get out of here. It's too much.
Taylor: I'm going to put this movie far far behind me. Forget all about it now.
Willie: Later y'all.
Taylor: Peace.
Joseph: Rickedy-dickedy-doo.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:05:43
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: The most ridiculous part of that is not that he says rickedy-dickedy-doo. It's that he says, we had that shirt... on shirts back in 2010. [all laughing]
It's like, what the fuck do you mean we had that on shirts?