Ninjas don't hug. BO55man69 is one of the worst passwords ever, and how do people sit down in the OASIS? Join us for a conversation about Ready Player One, a Sci-Fi Action film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Ernest Cline's best-selling novel.
Ninjas don't hug. BO55man69 is one of the worst passwords ever, and how do people sit down in the OASIS? Join us for a conversation about Ready Player One, a Sci-Fi Action film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Ernest Cline's best-selling novel.
In this episode, we explore some of the pop culture references and nostalgia of Ready Player One. They crammed a lot of fan favorites into this film—everything from Battletoads, Mortal Kombat, and Halo—to Back to the Future, The Iron Giant, and The Shining. In 2045, the world is harsh, and most of humanity spends their days in an immersive virtual universe. In short, there's a competition to find three keys that lead to a golden egg. Find the egg and win complete control of the OASIS. Naturally, we got a little side-tracked by some of the details, like the omnidirectional treadmill Wade uses as a part of his gaming rig. Taylor treads a little too close to our reality with the thought of "big corpo" enslaving us to pay off our debts, and Willie thinks this film gets lost somewhere in the middle of the pack. Joseph thinks—is it more enjoyable than GAMER? Yes. Is it more fun than the original Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? Nope, lol. (Enter 80s rock music)
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Taylor: My biggest digs on it were like things like nobody going backwards on that race track, you know what I mean? Like, as a gamer, if you've been playing games long enough you understand that the numbers are fucking overwhelming. Like once... like imagine there's this game you could play and you could get rich beyond your wildest dreams and fucking... there would be billions of people playing that game, and to tell me that nobody has gone backwards on that race that they've been playing for however long and hasn't tried it.
You must not know how stupid gamers [laughs] can be sometimes. Like motherfuckers are going to be trying to do it on a fucking Rock Band drum kit, kick the fucking car sideways, cartwheel all the way over fucking like, okay, nobody ever decided to just go in reverse.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:11
Joseph: What's up everyone, welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in 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 guys, realizing that Post Malone is only 29 years old? I don't even know how old I thought he is, but I digress.
What's up, y'all?
Taylor: I just assumed he was my exact age because I wanted to be best friends with him after hearing his songs and his music. Thought for sure he had to be 70.
Joseph: Yeah. 45?
Taylor: Yeah, the tats definitely put him in that high 30s range. It's like, you gotta go through some life to get that kind of thing going on.
Joseph: You're right. He kind of does look, looks older to me than he is for sure. How old would you have guessed he is, Willie?
Willie: I don't know. I, I would have said early thirties or late twenties, but I don't, I don't really know. I have a hard time with that, like, just in general, but I think that that's... I don't know. I feel like a lot of people are in that age range from like 28 to 32. Like, there's just like a looking at all the like content creators or Twitch streamers that, you know, I keep up with I feel like they're all around that age and some of them who have been doing it longer, those are the people who are like mid to late 30s, but everybody else is just younger.
I don't know when I think about somebody like that in the music industry. It's like oh, yeah, of course they're they're right around 30. That's just the age that everyone is for some reason.
Joseph: Especially like just a bunch of like superstars.
Willie: Yeah, and the people who have been around for a few years now, you know-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -if you've been around for more than five years, I assume you're getting to... close to 30, something like that.
Joseph: Well, this probably sounds really fucking... a weird thing to bring up, but it made sense when I thought about this prompt because I was watching Roadhouse and he has a cameo at the beginning of Roadhouse and I was [Willie chuckles] like, I didn't know he did until I was watching it. I was like, this motherfucker kind of looks like Post Malone [Taylor and Willie laughing] and then I kept watching and I was like, it is.
So then I had to, of course, look up credits and then I saw that it was Post Malone. [Taylor laughs] Also, this is sort of a spoiler alert. His performance is way better than Conor McGregor's.
Taylor: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. I would have preferred to just have Post through the whole thing.
Joseph: That probably would have worked out better.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Interesting.
Joseph: And you watched the whole movie, Taylor?
Taylor: Yeah, oh yeah, I watched it.
Joseph: But Willie, you haven't.
Willie: No, I haven't.
Joseph: You should watch it, dude.
Willie: I thought about it and I was like, nah, I don't need that. [Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: I don't need that.
Willie: I don't remember what it was that I was like, no, I don't need a remake of Roadhouse, that I was like, it's not, it's not worth it.
Taylor: And I definitely didn't like it enough to try to talk you out of that either so.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: There was just something that like, I had heard about it, I guess. It might've been listening to someone else on a podcast talk about it, who normally is very enthusiastic about movies. Who was just like... like, they don't care, it's just like, whatever movie is... that's on they'll watch it and they'll enjoy it.
And I feel like they said something that was just like, uh, I don't know, like they weren't as their normal, like enthusiastic self. And I was like, oh, maybe it's not, maybe it's not worth watching.
Joseph: Right. You're like, oh shit, this is a bad sign.
Willie: Yeah.
00:04:07
Joseph: Alright, well, it's been a while since we dedicated an episode to a gaming movie, so today we're going to share our thoughts about Ready Player One, which was released in 2018, directed by Steven Spielberg, and is an adaptation of a 2011 novel by Ernest Cline.
I haven't read the book, but I bet some of you out there have, or you've at least watched the movie like me. But if you haven't done either, and don't want to know anything about it before you watch the movie, then now's a good time to hit pause if you're worried about spoilers. All right, if you're still here with us, I'm going to kick things off by reading the plot summary by Warner Brothers, which I found on IMDB.
In the year 2045, the real world is a harsh place. The only time Wade Watts, who's played by Ty Sheridan, truly feels alive is when he escapes to the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spends their days. In the OASIS, you can go anywhere, do anything, or be anyone. The only limits are your own imagination.
The OASIS was created by a brilliant and eccentric James Halliday, who's played by Mark Rylance, who left his immense fortune and total control of the OASIS to the winner of a three part contest he designed to find a worthy heir. When Wade conquers the first challenge of the reality bending treasure hunt, he and his friends, the High Five, are hurled into a fantastical universe of discovery and danger to save the OASIS.
Okay, Taylor, what's the first gaming or pop culture reference you can remember from the movie? First thing that jumps, jumps in your mind.
Taylor: Ooh, um, the DeLorean probably was the, it was tough because the whole intro is, um, in the future of Ohio, if I'm not mistaken.
Joseph: Yeah, Columbus.
Taylor: So there was a lot of futuristic stuff. I don't know, maybe, maybe the campers that everyone was living in, um, If you could consider campers kind of a pop culture reference, um, even.
Joseph: Sounds like a stretch, but I like where you're going with it.
Taylor: Yeah, I'd say that's uh, DeLorean is probably the first thing that, that I remember anyways, like thinking back to it.
Joseph: DeLorean's good. I mean, it doesn't have to be at the beginning of the movie. I was just curious of what was strong enough of a reference to like stick in your head.
Willie: For me, it was, I think it was just music-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -because I thought it was so weird that the, uh, movie started so silently, the credits and stuff didn't have any of their usual, like the-
Joseph: Oh right!
Willie: -title screens, logo screens didn't have any of their usual sounds or effects on them. It was completely silent. And then it sort of just jumped straight into [chuckles] what the captions call 80s rock music. It doesn't even say [Taylor laughs] that it's Jump by Van Halen. It's like, oh, that's weird. I was like, why don't they, and it never does throughout the entire movie. It's always like 80s synth or 80s rock music, or like, it's always a descriptor and not the, uh, titles of songs.
Joseph: I thought it was kind of cool that they were playing Jump as he was jumping down the stacks-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -like in that opening sequence.
Willie: Sure.
Joseph: I was like, okay, okay. I see where y'all are going with that.
Taylor: Yeah. And they did the classic, uh, talking about the, the line and talking about punching and the guys like punching in the air, playing a VR set.
Joseph: Oh, right, right. The kind of B roll scenes.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. It's classic.
Willie: All the stuff that we're passing by as we like move through the city. In that, I think the first thing that I saw was the Pizza Hut drone, I think, was the-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -other, like, the next reference that I caught.
Joseph: Yeah, that's right, because it delivers a pizza, and then homeboy's like, pizza's here.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Pizza's ready.
Taylor: He doesn't even ask for a slice.
Joseph: Oh, yeah, Wade as he's, as he's going down.
Taylor: Yeah, he just acknowledges it.
Joseph: He was on a mission, dude.
Taylor: Yeah, he was ready to go get in some games.
Joseph: You know, the biggest thing I thought about in that whole sequence, or I couldn't help but think about how the fuck do you even get up the stacks?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because he's jumping down and sliding down poles like a fucking fireman and doing all this cool shit and fucking jumping over gaps and stuff. And I was like, dude, like, I get it, this is probably like a cool shortcut way to get down. But how is it that you actually get up?
Willie: Well, that's the weird part. At the very end, he like, he jumps on a weighted rope. He like jumps onto a rope and there's... it's counterweighted with a bag of sand or something-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -and when he gets to the bottom and says hi to Miss Gilmore or whatever, he ties it off to something as if when he comes back he's going to grab-
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -onto the rope and [Taylor laughs] untie it and go up but like-
Joseph: Yeah, to use the weight.
Willie: To use the counterweight but that shit has to be pretty precise in that moment for just a bag of sand tied to that thing if he's going to like grab onto it and like lift himself up with it.
Joseph: You'd have to do like one hell of a vertical jump to like get the momentum going, or else it just wouldn't lift you.
Willie: Yeah, I'm not sure. I guess I don't know how it would work, you know, like, yeah, because if it was enough for him to like fall slowly, I don't know, there's some science there that I should know that I don't.
If it was enough to slow his fall to like reasonable amount, then I guess, yeah, if he grabs onto it and jumps hard enough-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -it should-
Joseph: It can like cross that center of balance.
Willie: Yeah, I guess. I did wonder the same. I, like, watched part of the movie and then went back and restarted it. So, I think only on my second watch was I even thinking about, how the hell do you get down?
Joseph: I didn't watch it a second time. I wanted to, but I didn't. I have seen it more than once.
Willie: I did not watch it a second time.
Joseph: But, uh, I really like Goro. I think that's one of the things that stands out to me most was-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -Goro in the scene where, you know, he's found the first clue and, you know, got the first key. And then he shows back up to, I forget the name of it, the place where they're doing all the research on Halliday's life. It's like the Halliday Museum where you can go and just find out, you know, search for clues.
Willie: It wasn't just called the archives, was it? I don't remember.
Joseph: It was something like that.
Taylor: Something like that. The Halliday archives or...
Joseph: Yeah. But then Artemis grabs him as Goro and like pushes him into that secret room. And was like, hey, you just can't walk around here without a disguise because you're famous now. But showing up as Goro, the voice, I thought they nailed the voice acting for Goro because it sounded just like Goro from the nineties.
I mean, not the games, but the movie Mortal Kombat. It sounded just like that.
Willie: I definitely have Goro in my notes. I was just looking. I don't, and I can't tell where that was in the movie.
00:10:00
Joseph: Had either of you read the book before-
Willie: No.
Joseph: -watching the movie?
Taylor: Yeah, I read it. Or I-
Joseph: You did?
Taylor: -audio booked it. Yeah.
Joseph: Oh, nice. Was it very different? It kind of seems like quite a bit of the challenge stuff and all that stuff is different.
Taylor: Yeah, I think there were a lot of differences. I don't remember what they are now, but I definitely remember that, like, most, uh, movie adaptations of, or book adaptations into movies, whichever way that works, they had to sacrifice a ton of stuff, a ton of plot, and, um, there was a lot more having to do with the games, like, inside the games in the book, I think, than what took place in the movie.
Like there was a lot more IRL stuff happening. Ehh, they were both good though.
Joseph: Yeah. Okay.
Willie: Yeah. I will say just to sort of piggyback off that I did not read the book, but I know lots of people who did. And so I had heard like quite a bit about it, but never like to the level of being able to know what the differences were.
And I also, I had never watched this movie all the way through. I had seen parts of it, but I had never actually watched, sat down and watched the whole thing.
Taylor: Really!?
Willie: I just never really been that inclined to.
Joseph: Wow. Yeah.
Willie: And in doing so now, I like, I think it's fine, but I don't think it's like as good as people say. And I don't know if people who generally read the book and watch the movie think one is better than the other. And I feel like I've heard the same sort of complaint about both.
Particularly the book though, that the dialogue is just poorly written. Like, it's just like very straightforward. In matter of fact, I think someone described it as like, no, it's not this like show don't tell sort of thing, but it's like, instead of like sort of describing a situation and how it happens, he just tells you how it happens.
So it's like, he walked to the store. He got a glass of juice or whatever like and it's just like very like straightforward just telling you exactly what's happening versus like describing a scene of this person going to the store and getting you know getting something to drink.
Joseph: Weird.
Willie: It's more of just a like very straightforward this is the steps these things happen in.
Joseph: It's like a caption-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. I could see that.
Willie: I don't know how true that is, but, uh, I, I've heard people say that the audio book is actually kind of okay for that. Like it's better for that. And I don't know if which version you heard Taylor, but I think the most popular one is the one that Wil Wheaton is do...
Taylor: The Wil Wheaton. Yeah.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, that was...
Joseph: Oh yeah! Yeah.
Taylor: So it was a, a very good, um, narration too when you listen to it.
Willie: Yeah. And I think people say his style fits really well with the way that it's written.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And the performance alone of the audio book can change-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -the way you perceive the dialogue and how well it's written just because it's a good performance.
Taylor: Totally. Yeah. I do remember now that, that was a highlight. Oh, rewind is paused. Oh, that's not us. What the fuck is that? I like when things-
Joseph: [laughing] Yeah.
Taylor: -pop up on my computer, it's like [chuckles] something I don't even remember what it is.
Joseph: Yeah. Hopefully... it looks okay on my end.
Taylor: Yeah. We're good.
Willie: It seems good.
00:12:54
Joseph: You know, one thing I noticed, I forget, well, it's in the beginning. It's sort of in the beginning when Wade is kind of narrating that, you know, he's 18 years old. It's after the corn syrup drought and the bandwidth-
Taylor: [chuckles] Yeah.
Joseph: -riots and people have stopped trying to fix their problems and they're just busy trying to outlive them. But it shows him on a treadmill and they're basically establishing this like virtual reality world where you wear a headset that looks like Apple Vision Pro and then you're on a omnidirectional treadmill, which made me think, well, they talk about the technology that the treadmill uses and I'm going to see if I can actually say this it's quadraphonic pressure sensitive underlay.
And I was wondering, do y'all think that's what HoloTile uses or anything close to it?
Taylor: No, you... definitely not what he was doing cause that was like, uh, some super fucking high pressure, lightweight material where like was just the way that he was running with his feet. It was just like automatically scooting that direction.
Whereas I think the hollow tiles more like you have to be more deliberate with where you're putting your feet and drag your feet so that you are walking with it and that kind of thing where it looks like he was like powering the shit out of that thing. You know what I mean?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Like he was probably running the power of his game rig from his actual fucking running. If he was truly able to run that fast through a game constantly, he would-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -be one in an amazing shape and two, he would never need a fucking generator.
Joseph: Yeah. Just power your own shit.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he gets on there and runs hard.
Joseph: It looked a lot more like a regular treadmill than the HoloTile, which had all the different tiny little pieces, which makes a lot more sense and how you could be omnidirectional.
But I thought it was interesting that the quadraphonic pressure sensitive underlay, and if that's anything anywhere close to how Disney would describe the HoloTile or that project in general. I don't really know. And don't actually don't really care that much, [Taylor laughs] but I liked that. I liked that they showed it in the movie because it kind of relies on the ability to do that because you are using so much motion to like actually control your avatar in the OASIS.
But it did make me think of, what in the hell do you do, what is the person in reality wearing the headset on the treadmill, what are they doing when they're not walking and running when you need to sit in the OASIS on something like what do you sit on in the real world?
Taylor: Times are too hard for sitting. You just had to stand. Everyone's-
Joseph: Yeah, always stand.
Taylor: -fucking quads are just like stone.
Willie: Yeah, they're just always standing or walking around, so it doesn't matter. Now, I'm thinking, is there a scene where they go and they sit somewhere?
Taylor: [chuckles] Ever.
Willie: Actually sit down.
Joseph: In the OASIS?
Willie: In the OASIS. Where do they sit?
Joseph: Can't remember.
Taylor: People are sitting, but yeah, I don't know.
Willie: There are people sitting like in the club and stuff, but like, do the main characters, I don't know if they ever do.
Joseph: Like driving, dude, when they're in the race.
Willie: I guess when they're in the race, they are sitting. Yeah, that makes sense.
Joseph: And maybe they're just in that little kind of like infant bouncer thing, you know, like you-
Willie: Sure.
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: -strap yourself up in that harness [Willie chuckles] that they show a lot in at the, like, kind of later scenes in the movie where they're like swimming around in the van and these like bouncy harnesses. Maybe you're in that and you can kind of like mostly sit down. I don't know, it was kind of weird to me.
Taylor: When did this happen? That was 2017 or seems-
Joseph: Uhh.
Taylor: -like it's been a lifetime ago that that shit came out.
Willie: 2018.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: 2018.
Taylor: Yeah, it's, it doesn't, it definitely doesn't carry the same weight now, especially cause like any of those songs in there, yeah, they were great. The first time I saw it, it was neat. To see those songs paired with all of the nostalgia, but any of those songs are super capable of getting old as fuck if I hear them too many times. If I hear Jump six times in a month, I'm probably going to be done with that song for a long time. I just, to me, it brings back a little less nostalgia each time, especially when it's paired with the movie-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -but I don't know. Yeah. I've seen it quite a bit.
Willie: I started looking at the, um, you said that about the, whatever you called it, the quadraphonic pressure sensitive, whatever. I forgot what it said already.
Joseph: Underlay, I think you almost got it...
Willie: Underlay. Yeah, yeah. I started looking that up and there's a Adam Savage, Savage's Tested video. That's-
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -them on the, uh, that omnidirectional treadmill.
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: It's called the Infinadeck. It's the same one.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: It basically just slows down when you turn, when you start walking sideways. Cause it does look more like a traditional treadmill, right? That it just, It's moving in one direction all the time, but as you start turning sideways, it recognizes... I and I can't hear it right now so I'm not a hundred percent certain, but from what I can tell.
As you start turning sideways, it starts slowing down so that you can take steps that are moving to the left or to the right.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: So it's not going to like, you know, keep moving really quickly and make you fall off balance. But yeah, it is-
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: -very cool looking. It's just called the Infinadeck though.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: I like that it's real.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's cool.
Taylor: Yeah, that is really cool.
Joseph: I figured it was just some shit they made.
Taylor: And the vests we know are real. They don't necessarily... the vests I don't think allow you to kick someone in the nuts and actually [Joseph chuckles] feel it yet, but they definitely are getting there.
Joseph: Who was it? Sorrento?
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah, and they do have all of those haptic feedback vests and stuff. I've seen people playing, um, first person shooters in VR, and they'll put on those things. And that's like, gotta be ridiculous and scary. I guess, Joey, you haven't really played any VR, huh?
Joseph: Yeah, no, I haven't.
Willie: Playing a first person shooter in VR in itself is kind of nerve wracking. And when you get caught off guard with anything, like there's, it feels like there's a lot more jump scares in that than there are anything else. So I can't imagine it's fucked up to like play in a haptic vest. Like that.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Taylor: Yeah. That'd be weird.
Joseph: Especially because of what you're playing?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Certain games would be like so much, so much more real and so much worse than others, depending on the style or genre of the game.
Willie: Yeah. I play games to like escape reality. So I like if I'm playing a first person shooter, I want it to be some space sci fi thing that I can like detach from real life. I don't want to like try to make it feel real at all.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: I don't need to feel my spine getting ripped out of my body or something, yeah.
00:19:06
Joseph: It's funny. You brought that up because that's what this whole fucking book is about. Escaping reality.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Or I assume so. I mean, the movie is definitely about that, but.
Willie: It's also funny to me that I think I've seen other people say this too, this is not an original thought, but when you were describing the book at the beginning, I don't know where that preview came from, if that's like just their official sort of plot summary for the movie, but it immediately is like, oh, this is just Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. [Joseph and Taylor chuckle]
I didn't even think about it, but it's, it's literally just Charlie and The Chocolate Factory with video-
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: -game underpinnings to it.
Joseph: Yeah, definitely some similarities there.
Taylor: Yeah, and a lot of the gamey kind of stuff feels more and more now especially, watching it way later feels way more like, um, somebody, somebody who played video games kind of wrote it and or made it and they played back when games were "good." And it was almost like, okay, we got to have these classic nostalgia arcade titles and things that people remember, and then we got to throw all this new gaming bullshit in here too, to make everybody [laughs] happy, like we got to have all these IPs, which is kind of how it works.
But I don't know, now that I've seen it again, this time I feel less, uh, nostalgia and more like, oh yeah, this is...this is a real on point story about how fucking corporations are getting real close to being able to enslave people. And like fucking actual corporation pulling the trigger on like trying to hurt some kids or something, you know, like that, that is what hits me a little more now when I'm watching it, it's like, oh yeah, this is, this is actually not that far off [Joseph and Willie chuckle] for some reasons.
And I feel like it's not the fun ones. Like I feel like we're, we're a lot further off from a fun OASIS where everybody goes and chills and gets coins.
Willie: I feel like that was also the intention, right? In the original thing. And maybe when you saw it, when you were younger, it was just fun. Instead of like having to delve into-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -what it's trying to tell you. So like, good on them, I guess, for doing that. But the movie itself does feel like there are so many references baked in, like pop culture references and stuff that it is, it's cool. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, but it's also a little overwhelming because it does feel like somebody who's like, how many, how many references can I possibly fit into this?
Taylor: Yeah-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -exactly. Like they just try to jam it full of them to the point that it almost wasn't like as fun or as as cool as it could have been.
Willie: Barbara mentioned this too, and I think I agree with this that watching it with what the idea in mind what you said, Taylor, that like, oh, this is like, you know, could happen is very close to real.
I feel like. Honestly, I think the movie is better, would be better served if there were not just less references, but less moments that were like trying to be funny. Because I feel like the story it's trying to tell is good, but I feel like those things are undercut by when they're, it's trying to be funny and it's not really funny.
It's just like that shit falls flat in, in the world. And maybe it's because of delivery. Maybe it's because the way the lines are, are written. It's just like, those jokes just aren't funny to me. So it. It's like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -not even...
Taylor: You think that was because there's a level of like, ah, these are gamer jokes, like gamers will get them or something. And I don't... maybe, maybe we've evolved past [Willie chuckles] that or just aren't about that humor anymore or as much anymore, or as forgiving to it.
Joseph: I think it's more of that because it's got to be really difficult to toe the line between all of that and find something that's like a good baseline for a majority of the audience.
And what would a majority of the audience kind of think is funny or find humorous? It's got to be difficult to write that and make it all work along with the action and all the references and like kind of put it together as a, you know, as a full length picture.
Willie: I think that's true, but I think someone could have done it better.
Joseph: Sure.
Willie: I don't know who that is, but like, you know, because you talk about like, oh, maybe this we've changed, our humor has changed and so it's not as funny. But like, I think about other movies that I watched as a kid that I would still watch now. And even though my humor has like, evolved in a sense-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -that shit will still get me, really hard. I'll laugh at some really ridiculous shit-
Taylor: Yeah, that's true.
Willie: -that like has never changed, you know, even though my humor has evolved, I'm not above just a really-
Taylor: Laughing at some fucking Home Alone or something.
Willie: -silly joke that's like, yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So like, there's a version in there that could have worked, but I'm not sure.
Joseph: I like all the references. I like that there are too many that I, like, there are far more than I can even understand.
Willie: Sure.
Joseph: It kind of sucks, but at the same time, I love that they went to those links to fit all that stuff in there because there are people that will understand and notice and pick up on those, those things. And I assume the more, times you watch it, the more you spot, you know, and you can kind of find as easter eggs, which is obviously a big part of the story is the idea of hiding these things kind of in plain sight.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I love that about it. I, for just a moment, for just a few minutes, went to the trivia section of the IMDB page and it was-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -insane. [Taylor chuckles] There's so many different things being called out about this movie. That was, I think Willie used the word overwhelming earlier. That was really overwhelming to see just how many different things are there.
And some of them way more subtle than I could ever pick up on. Or it's just something I didn't grow up with to even be able to make that connection to begin with, but there's also a lot of things I did notice, you know, from like our time as kids, like Battletoads, that sort of thing, uh, Joust is a big part of the, I think the book as well, maybe even more Joust in the book.
If I heard that correctly at some point.
Taylor: Yeah, there was some good deep cuts on there-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -from some original games.
Joseph: I think it was just a mention of Joust in the actual movie.
00:24:41
Taylor: They did a good, did a good job of representing like a lot of gaming history and stuff. My biggest digs on it were like things like nobody going backwards on that race track, you know what I mean? Like, as a gamer, if you've been playing games long enough you understand that the numbers are fucking overwhelming. Like once... like imagine there's this game you could play and you could get rich beyond your wildest dreams and fucking... there would be billions of people playing that game, and to tell me that nobody has gone backwards on that race that they've been playing for however long and hasn't tried it.
You must not know how stupid gamers [laughs] can be sometimes. Like motherfuckers are going to be trying to do it on a fucking Rock Band drum kit, kick the fucking car sideways, cartwheel all the way over fucking like, okay, nobody ever decided to just go in reverse.
00:25:37
Joseph: Yeah. We have to forgive that one.
Taylor: Yeah. There's stuff like that, that I do have to forgive. And I, I do, but it's just one of those things where as soon as you get off of the rail and think about that, it's like, no way-
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: -gamers are fucking the most like obnoxiously testing-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and, and like, you know, they love to probe every little fucking piece of a game, especially. If it was that big and that good and all that.
Willie: And you tell them like specifically, like go look for the easter eggs.-
Taylor: Right. [laughing]
Willie: -like there's definitely easter eggs here that you've-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -not seen yet.
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: And you know, there are some things that people have been looking for, for years in games, so maybe, but...
Joseph: Dude, five years, they're at five years in at that point.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I think it's more likely it happens by accident that someone fucking drives backwards from the starting line and-
Taylor: Exactly.
Joseph: -then you realize, oh shit-
Taylor: Exactly.
Joseph: -this is new.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: In the presentation of the movie, I think they did a good job of just making it feel like a race that everybody wants to complete. That's the thing to do is get to the end of the race because you think that's where the key is. And everyone's so locked in to that way of thinking because the race is so difficult.
And because no one has ever done it-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -maybe everyone's just so, but has so much tunnel vision to get to the end that you could argue, maybe no one's really, no one's really not thinking outside of the box because that's the only thing that exists right now is that we need to finish this race because that's the obvious answer because no one has done it before.
Taylor: Yeah, nobody caught whenever they were like reviewing that footage ad nauseam, him looking at the camera and going, wish we could go backwards, just backwards, really fast, super fast. Nobody ever caught that. It's yeah, there's a, there's a lot of forgiveness that must be doled out here, but that's okay.
Joseph: What's cool is that Wade did realize it, but he didn't even need to see it. He was already walking away-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -And he just heard it.
Taylor: Yep. Yeah, he knew.
Joseph: Which I think is nice because that's like, that's how fucking tuned in he is to like, reviewing all of this footage and all these memories and stuff like that, you know, as like a Halliday expert.
But I like that he kind of got stopped in his tracks as he's walking away when he heard that because he was just thinking about it with a different kind of, you know, framing it in a different way in his mind. By far, my favorite thing in this movie is just Mark Rylance as James Halliday. I think it's-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -the best part of the performance in the entire film.
Taylor: I agree. That guy's great.
Joseph: I mean, he's great in general, but as that character, like, holy shit, man. Like it's totally believable. It's super awkward. And I just think it's a great, great performance. There's some other good ones too, but that one by far the best for me. You know, there's a part when they're in the stacks, they're at home and Wade's aunt is pissed off that he has her gloves-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -which, do y'all remember that? Is that ringing a bell?.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Joseph: So she's pissed off. And then like asshole boyfriend is also like beatin'em and you know, fucked up shit like that.
Taylor: What was his name? Russell or something. [ laughs]
Joseph: [chuckles] I don't remember. What made me, what made me question everything was why the fuck does his aunt have better gloves than him? You know, why is Wade borrowing his aunt's gloves? Shouldn't he just have, I mean, I know he doesn't have like the full on bad ass bootsuit yet, but why would he even need to borrow her gloves?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: These are the difficult questions, and they were IOI gloves so you know they were probably pretty good. He'd probably jerked off on his gloves too much-
[Joseph and Willie laugh]
Joseph: Yeah, or lost them.
Taylor: -clearly they're glitching out because Russell lost everything, he lost all their shit.
Joseph: And playing so hard that they're just, they're just, they're not working properly anymore.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: To circle back around to the race. I think the racing is fucking amazing. And to have that early in the film, I think it was like, hell yeah, like there's action. I thought it was super cool in the DeLorean where he was like skidding, opening the door and collecting coins from the crashed cars.
Taylor: Yeah, getting him some fuel.
Joseph: Yeah, he didn't have money for fuel.
Taylor: Yeah, that was neat.
Joseph: I also liked that Aech was busting his balls over it and was like, really dude? Like, you're gonna go to the back of the line so you can scam fucking crash coins? I thought that was funny.
Taylor: Yeah, Aech was a great character. Um, I think overall, like, was a good, good kind of like gamer buddy kind of thing.
Joseph: Right. I wanted to ask y'all if you thought in the race when Wade finds out he needs to drive backwards, he does actually drive in reverse, but do y'all think the trap door would have opened if he had spun the car around and then drove straight in?
Taylor: I don't know.
Joseph: Does the trap door still open?
Taylor: Oh, it would have to because homegirl went there on a motorcycle the second time. So what was she like just walking her motorcycle [Willie chuckles] backwards?
Joseph: Oh man, that would take forever.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah. So she must have, she must've just turned around and done it.
Joseph: Yeah, that's a good point. But what if that was a requirement for the gate to even open?
Willie: I just don't remember the way the thing was worded. So I wouldn't have thought of the motor... motorcycle thing, but that makes a lot of sense.
Joseph: Yeah. Taylor is right though cause she goes and gets it right after Parcival.
Taylor: Yep. Now..., I mean, I don't want it to be twisted though I do like the movie in general. Like, it's good. And the whole, like, the whole second half of it being the whole battle of them against, uh, against the Corpo and that kind of thing was pretty cool.
And, um, it having to come to that kind of scene towards the end. You know, it was obvious, but also they handled it well, that whole battle scene, I don't know if we're going to get to-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -that yet, but just, um, you know, playing on all the giant characters from, from the dreams, like Iron Giant.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Maybe that would be the best answer to like my favorite kind of call out.
Joseph: The reference.
Taylor: Yeah. The reference would be Iron Giant just because that one was so cool and had like such a cool part at the end too.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Especially that was one of my favorite animated movies growing up and still really is. We watch it probably once a month at least. So that was a really cool one. Then a Gundam. Fucking crazy. I'm sure that made a lot of people's moments right there. And they handled all that, all the IP really well.
Joseph: Oh, for sure.
Taylor: I think they made it all... the Halo characters, like every, every character that they had seemed to be really well done. I'm curious how that whole process went. How closely they had to work with all those IPs.
And do you have someone from every single studio that owns those kind of hands on deck and making sure, or do they just take a look at it later and okay it?
Joseph: That's a good question. Everything looks 100 percent on point, all of those references and just the visuals in general look amazing.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:32:05
Joseph: I at one point saw somewhere that Steven Spielberg thinks it's like the third hardest movie he's ever made or like in the top three or something like that.
Willie: Yeah. I saw that. And I think, I think I saw that when I was looking through IMDB trivia as well or something.
Taylor: I could see that.
Joseph: Yeah. Which is interesting. I don't really know what that means, but I imagine it's all the references and like, how do you portray all of that and... ?
Taylor: Well, how much CGI do you think that movie had? Like that-
Joseph: I don't know man.
Taylor: -had to be an insane amount, right?
Joseph: Yeah, like 80%.
Taylor: You had to be fuckin... yeah, I would say 80%. I would, I would definitely go with that as potential because that's a lot of fucking work. And if you, if you're constantly having to work with animation crews and artists and all that, it probably is pretty difficult.
And especially when you're used to working with actors and actresses more and in real life scenarios and not so much in a green screen or he's probably well used to sets, but I don't know. You really got to use your imagination I bet for that stuff to work out
Joseph: Taylor in regarding Steven Spielberg just said he's probably used to sets. I would say so.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, he's [Joseph laughs] probably fairly used-
Joseph: I would definitely say so.
Taylor: -to set here and there. Yeah.
Willie: I want to piggyback on that for a second because there's two things. One, he said that the other two movies that were harder to make were Jaws and Saving Private Ryan. That's what...
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: -the other two.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Very believable for both, especially-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -especially Saving Private Ryan, man.
Willie: Yeah, about the being on sets though, there's a quote from him, it's not really the quote that's the interesting part, but there's like he, something about that he donned a headset, like a VR headset to walk around in the virtual sets. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: His quote is literally just something like, "This is crazy." Like he just, that, that was his response to like [Joseph laughs] being able to walk around. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
It was probably
Taylor: like the, the Quest intro with a piano in a room. It's like, there's a piano. Like any, anytime you hear somebody who's not real techie talk about VR-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -it'll always be, they'll always, almost always be talking about like one of the default fucking scenarios from-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -You've opened your new Vive headset.
Willie: I wish I could source where this came from cause it's just a trivia thing. So I don't know how much this is, this is exactly true or like, if it's from an interview somewhere, but the, the thing is, it says like, "during film, filming Spielberg donned a virtual reality headset and wandered around the virtual sets with a virtual camera lying on the floor to check out camera angles and set up shots."
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: That's where he's like, just marveling at this idea-
Taylor: that's pretty cool.
Willie: -something he had never done before.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: So it's a new set for him to be on.
Taylor: Yeah. No shit.
Joseph: This is sort of switching gears, but there's a moment, maybe halfway through the film, I don't really know, where Sorrento finds out who the real Parzival is. So they track him down as Wade Watts in the real world.
Taylor: Wade Watts.
Joseph: And then he offers him a deal, this fucking deal, dude. A rig, that big ass circular rig that Sorrento has, unlimited drops in the OASIS, which people obviously love because of other scenes in the movie, and because you need money for that shit. A penthouse apartment in Columbus, which obviously a huge upgrade from the stacks.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: The Millennium Falcon at one point is offered to him, [Taylor chuckles] but also $4 million a year. And then a fucking bonus for finding the egg, $25 million bonus.
Taylor: Insanity.
Joseph: It's a fucking hell of a deal.
Taylor: That is a crazy deal. And he has to take his headset [laughing] off and just screams.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: He was like, "Ahhh" [Taylor and Willie laugh]
Joseph: Well, and he had that emotion suppressing software running too-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -that Sorrento was able to pick up on somehow.
Taylor: I think he was assuming he had that on and not that he just turned his fucking head... took his headset off or something.
Joseph: Well, he's probably expecting a reaction and didn't get one, so he's like, you must be using that.
Taylor: Yeah. He's like-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -Oh, okay. You're playing it cool, mister. He's over there fucking freaking out.
Joseph: I hit rewind on that scene, and I do think there is some type of visual glitch, like in the hologram, so I think that could also be something that Sorrento saw, like, you could see, like, the feed was being fucked with or something. So, like, a combination of those two. But yeah, what a fucking deal.
Taylor: I'd have probably taken that, I'm not gonna lie. [Joseph and Willie laugh ]
Willie: And then you'd, uh, you'd have to be called a gunter for the rest of your life, which is-
Taylor: That's right.
Willie: -a weird fucking name.
Joseph: Yeah. Apparently it stands for egg hunter.
Willie: Yeah, it does. It's a weird way to shorten that, I feel like.
Joseph: Agree.
Taylor: Weren't they talking about how they could take up 80% of the person's view with ads-
Joseph: Oh, right.
Taylor: -without putting them into a seizure or whatever, like that fucking...
Joseph: That was in his pitch.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. Sorrento's pitch to the board he says that and that, that ties in Taylor to what you were saying earlier about how it's different to watch this movie in 2024.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: After things like that botched-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -fucking Apple ad.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: You know, with the compactor. The response from that and just this idea that, like, fuck, Big Corpo is, like, super close to doing something like this in reality, where they-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -just fucking own you and everybody and everything you do, and they can enslave you in a fucking loyalty center to pay off your fucking debt.
Taylor: It gets real fucking scary.
Joseph: They can just buy your debt without your knowledge, own it, and now fucking decide they're going to enslave you and have them work and have you work for them.
Taylor: Yeah. And I bet that was happening. I bet that was the probably around the onset of that huge thing that's happening now, even, you know, right fucking below the surface is that all these companies are buying up people's debt.
And doing different shit with it. Like, I got a lawsuit served to me three fucking weeks ago over some debt that I had. Literally got served. Dude fucking came up to the door and was like, hey, are you so and so? I was like, Yep. And he was like, Hey, here you go. Fucking served me a fucking summons to court.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Taylor: Yeah. He's like, he's like, you're being sued. And I was like, Oh, okay. [all laugh] I didn't even know that companies could do that. And, um, but they can. And once I started going down that rabbit hole of like, is this legit? And all this, I found out that no, this is a company that they specifically, that's their tactic, that's what they do, is they buy your debt and it's over a certain dollar amount, they can legally sue you and cause you to have to go through all these hoops and to eventually pay it, which, you know, there's always that side of, you shouldn't have had that debt, but also there's that side of shit happens, you know, and you're on the backside of a fucking pandemic and all the other shit, the inflation.
And I mean, I feel like watching this movie, it gets a little too real now for me. That is becoming too much of a reality where people aren't really necessarily protected enough or as much as they should be from corporations. And I could see this being a real path that we end up going down if we keep allowing it to do that and being hands off about it.
And that's interesting to think of that now, as I'm watching it. It's like, oh man, what happened to her dad really fucking sucks, if I remember correctly.
Joseph: She said her dad died in a loyalty center.
Taylor: Yeah, that was it.
Willie: Yeah. And we're not, we're not going to get some cool easter egg to get our way out of this thing either. There's not, there's not a magical solution like this.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Yeah, exactly. In fact, people at the moment hate VR for the, like you're talking about 90 percent of people. There's a very small amount of people that love it and see it for what its possibilities are. But yeah, we're not even close to that. We're just getting to the bad sides of it which is a little, a little concerning, you know?
We don't try to go down those paths on this podcast, but sometimes it's, uh, the similarities get to the point that you almost have to a little bit.
00:39:31
Joseph: I feel like, um, or I wanted to ask Taylor specifically, cause I think I know the answer that Willie would give. But if there was a real, if this was real, this whole situation, there was the OASIS and we lived in their world and there was a real company like IOI and they had the Sixers, which are all those people that like play to try to uncover the egg and find the key to the three different clues, right? To find all those keys, Taylor-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -would you, if that real world existed, would you be a Sixer and like work for IOI and just be living in virtual reality also trying to uncover these clues.
Taylor: Uh, possibly, I mean, not by choice, not by wanting to, but I could see how people might end up on that path if that's the best way to earn money and you get to play games all day to do so, you've got to imagine there's going to be a large percentage of population that go that route, whether it's because the gaming part or whether it's because of the money part, or...
You know, a lot of people, like the thing they dream of most in life is to have a fucking solid job that they know they'll have next year. And that seems crazy to somebody who maybe that's not your dream, but it's there really are people out there and there's people that are like, I want to be known when I die as somebody who worked hard or whatever.
So, yeah, I think that would be unfortunate because it would draw a lot of people in for one of those reasons and just kind of suck them in.
Joseph: Especially people that don't have another answer, right?
Taylor: Yep, exactly. Yeah. If you're desperate. Yeah, I'll go play some fucking games like that for desperation-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -people have made some way worse choices [Joseph and Taylor laugh] in life than, yeah, I'll go play some games. I mean-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -yeah, desperation causes people to basically do the worst things imaginable. So going in and hooking into VR and playing in the OASIS to do stuff doesn't seem that bad, you know?
Joseph: Yeah. And it's a world that you already are going to be in the OASIS.
Taylor: Yeah, that too.
Joseph: And you also want to be in the OASIS to begin with.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You would have to be sick enough at games and earning that you would be able to say, fuck that, you know, and find-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -your own way. But just as it is now, that's really fucking hard. It can be very difficult to like say fuck the establishment and go find your own 50, 000 plus a year paycheck, you know, it's pretty tough. Especially when you consider everybody is a gunter in this case, you know, and everybody's trying to do the same thing. So saturates the numbers.
Joseph: How about that password? Sorrento's password.
Willie: That's what I was looking at right now.
Taylor: What was it? I forgot.
Joseph: It's bossman69, but the two s's are fives.
Taylor: Oh, okay. There we go.
Willie: It's funny cause when I first saw it in the very, very first scene where you have an opportunity to see it, I could have sworn it said boobman69. That was my first thought is that-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -he had done that
Taylor: That would have been so much better.
Willie: But when they show it a second time, I was like, oh, okay. I get it now.
Taylor: Damn it.
Joseph: You think it is Bossman? Like the 5s are Ss?
Willie: Yeah, yeah. It is.
Taylor: I want Boobman. I'm sorry.
Joseph: Boobman69?
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I thought it was sort of falling in line with the stupid gamer jokes sort of thing. And I was like, yeah, it would make sense that somebody would have that. But Bossman69 makes more sense for...
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: For him. Yeah. His role or his character. Best line in the movie, ninjas don't hug.
Taylor: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. There was some cheese, some deep, deep cheese in this one.
Joseph: Also talking about, um, or we kind of been talking about pop culture references when Daito is like late to the fight near the end of the movie. And he's just kind of like sitting cross legged in the van. They're like, yo, you need to fucking get in the fight.
Taylor: Oh, yeah, meditating.
Joseph: Yeah, meditating and like waiting for the right moment. They show a closeup of him and he has a Mortal Kombat pin on his lapel.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Huh. Nice.
Joseph: And I love that tiny little reference there was one of my favorite in the entire movie just because it was so subtle, you know, and you can obviously miss it.
It's not a, not a long scene, so you can definitely miss it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But I love that. I love that they weren't afraid to be very subtle with a lot of these. And I think a lot of that is because they try to squeeze in a billion-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -different references, but they weren't afraid to show a really wide shot that has like Marvin the Martian in it or characters like Battletoads for just a second or Master Chief looking characters, like, and then they're gone, you know, so I love that you can, there's just stuff in there, that's there, you're never really going to see it sharp and in focus because there's too much movement in the scene.
So even if you pause it, like it's blurry as fuck. Like I couldn't even see and make out what all those things were, but I love that they're not afraid for things to be there and people not have the greatest ability to even appreciate them.
Taylor: Yeah. They did a pretty good job overall with the subtlety. They didn't hit you over the head with it too, too much. And, um, I thought they did a pretty good job. I mean, in my opinion, which is just my opinion, I'd say it's probably my favorite video game movie. I don't know, of all time. But definitely of the last decade or so.
And it's, it's got some competition there, Mortal Kombat. They did pretty good with their-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -with their stuff, but seemed like it's set a precedent maybe for some of the sillier ones to come out. Sonic the Hedgehog and the Pikachu detective movie, all that stuff seemed to kind of fall after it and those worked really well too, like using the IP well, but kind of mishmashing it with some decent actors and actresses and some fairly good writing and performances and chili dogs and all that stuff.
Joseph: I loved it the first time I saw it. I don't think I love it anymore just because I've seen it three or four times. I still like it. And I still think it's a good, I think it's a good movie, the way it all comes together. The visuals are, I think, spectacular. And I think the story that it's based on, like all the, you know, the novel and the way it was adapted for film, it feels like it was adapted for film in the correct way-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -even though they're probably very different from each other in terms of the details. The underlying story and quest of finding this easter egg to win this challenge. And then the other underlying kind of thoughts that kind of govern this world, right? It's a shitty world. It's all about escapism and it's super nerdy, you know, and there's like, maybe even too nerdy in a lot of regard, but I do really like the story it's trying to tell or the story that it does tell.
Willie: Overall, I agree. I think it's, it's good. It's probably not my favorite video game movie because I would say something like Mortal Kombat or even something as ridiculous as like The Wizard or-
Taylor: Yeah, that's why I couldn't go that far back.
Willie: -Or if you consider something like, I don't know if you consider something like War Games, a movie-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -that's about video games because it kind of is, you know, that one's a good one. I'll watch that anytime. Like anytime I used to have cable or anything and that one comes on, I'm going to, I'm going to watch it.
Joseph: Yeah. Like you can't not finish-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -watching it.
Willie: Yeah. But, uh, overall it was good. It was nice, like the whole, the main group of actors that we follow, like they all did really well. It was interesting to see Olivia Cooke in something, because right now I'm in the middle of watching House of the Dragon, and I hadn't really seen her-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -in much outside of that, actually.
Taylor: Right. I didn't even make that connection.
Joseph: Is that the Artemis character?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: That's why I recognize her. They're so good at getting, um, actors and actresses that you, you like know them, but you don't know them, know them.
And then it-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -works out so well for those shows.
Joseph: This is why the casting role is so fucking important.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Seriously.
Joseph: And so overlooked.
Willie: The only thing I, I, I wish we could have seen at some point is apparently John Williams was supposed to be on the score and then couldn't because of another conflict.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: I do wonder what it would have been like if John Williams was on this score-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -because the amount of references that his music would have made versus what we got-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: Right.
Willie: -you know, I wonder how much that would have changed. It was still good.
Taylor: There was still some, there was, I don't know who did Back to The Future, the music scores on that one, but that was, I know whenever they were driving the DeLorean and the battle scene, there was definitely some music that played Back To... Back to The Future and I thought that was cool. This was the first time actually that I had ever noticed that or recognized it. I thought that was pretty neat.
Willie: Yeah. Those were really, really good. It's actually the same guy. Uh-
Taylor: Is it?
Willie: -Alvin Silvestri is the guy who composed-
Joseph: Oh!
Willie: -for Back to The Future and composed for this movie.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Crazy.
Willie: So, I mean-
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: -I guess it's a good second choice, right?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: But anyway, yeah, I'm, I would recommend it to anybody who's into video games and who wants to escape for a little while, but also see, you know, [chuckles] as Taylor said, like there's some stuff happening that's very parallel to our world. Uh, and I think, yeah, just for a nostalgia trip, there's a lot of stuff in here to, to take a look at and see what you can pick out.
Cause yeah, it's... there's so many, it's ridiculous.
Joseph: Yeah, the surface level is super, super fun movie to watch.
Willie: But yeah, we, uh, I think, I think we did it. I think we're talked about all we can. I mean, there's plenty more, but it would take a long time to break down all of those. That's ridiculous to even try but yeah... [chuckles]
Taylor: [chuckles] We'd have to have a huge list, and going through what we find out on Mario or one of those that, um, that was actually pretty tough because there were so many-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -references and so many characters.
Willie: I forgot how many like musical cues there were, but it was some ridiculous number.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell
But yeah, thanks for listening to us and go check out this movie. But we appreciate you being here with us and we'll see y'all again real soon.
Joseph: Peace.
Taylor: Peace. Thanks for listening.
Joseph: First to the key, first to the egg.
Taylor: Oh, nice. That's right.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
00:48:45
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: I feel like I remember, I'm not even gonna say it. I don't even want that on record, so I'm not even gonna say-
Taylor: Pfft.
Willie: -the next shit. There [Joseph laughs] was just some, [Taylor laughs] it was just so much.