The Family That's Prey Together, Pt. 1 — War of the Worlds (2005)

22:16And it felt, yeah, just the character of Robbie took me right back to being, you know, I was 18 at this time. So like roughly his same age and just processing the world having changed this way and what you as a person can or cannot do about it. It was just like a really potent emotional memory of that time for me. Sort of another echo is just the place of kind of the reification, really, of first responders in this movie reminded me of, you know, how people responded, kind of how the conversation and thought around first responders changed around 9-11. You have in this movie, you know, police who obviously have no more idea what's going on than anybody else does, but are desperately trying to keep an entire neighborhood safe, under control, keep people from being trampled.

23:07You have a cop assaulting a car, you know, screaming, you could get 20 more people in there and, you know, getting getting hurt in the process, but also, you know, being violent and crazy. You have a line of very young troops trying to hold back a mob on a ferry, not to mention, you know, watching the military actually go into action against these things. And there's just this sort of this perpetual, you know, thin, I don't know, blue, green, red line of people with some kind of authority desperately trying to keep people safe. When that also means, you know, deciding potentially which people live and which people die, you know, holding the line, cutting people off.

23:47You can't fit everybody in this neighborhood on this ferry. You can't let people go where they want when the neighborhood is literally coming to pieces. So kind of watching the place of authority figures in here among so much chaos, like kind of trying to keep it together and maintain some sort of order at any cost is really interesting. And again, definitely kind of calls back an earlier time as far as like national conversation about the police in specific. I didn't really see it that way, though. I mean, I don't think it's disrespectful to the first responders, the military. But also, I think it kind of treated them as like sort of another obstacle that this family had to navigate.

24:32You know, Ray is attempt to protect his family kind of involved him sidestepping some of these orders or going his own way in some ways. And certainly you see in a couple different situations, you see the authority figures lose control. And then, you know, just surviving becomes not a matter of listening to what you're being told. I think that's true. But I mean, I don't think it's disrespectful to first responders because you're seeing people trying to maintain order in a situation, which means doing what's best for the aggregate, not necessarily what's best for this particular family. The scene on the ferry in particular where the military is trying to keep Ray and his kids and the two neighbors they've picked up off the boat, like they're doing what's best for the people on the boat and the crew of the boat and the boat itself kind of trying to get it out of a dangerous situation, potentially so it can save the lives of everybody on there and then still be like an operable asset to come back again.

25:31But as far as our one family is concerned, that's made to be the best decision for the aggregate. It's not the best decision for them. And I don't know, Robbie stepping up in that moment to try to save people who, you know, other people who went around the authority figures and tried to get on the boat is kind of a turning point for his character. And I think for his relationship with Ray in a lot of ways, we're just we're seeing how difficult decisions become when you're choosing for, you know, what's best for a large group of people in terms of survivability, as opposed to what's best for a protagonist, which is very rarely the same thing.

26:09Well, that's certainly one of the film's most memorable moments. And I kind of want to talk about some other ones, but we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back to discuss those.

26:24The next picture show is once again presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Summer's winding down, but that just makes it the perfect time to catch up with any blockbusters you might have missed. Check out the always unpredictable August releases, like The End of Oak Street, a movie about, you know, family fighting dinosaurs. Or get ahead on awards season as the fall starts to dawn. And if you're seeing more than one movie a month, you really should use Regal Unlimited. With Regal Unlimited, you pay one monthly fee to see as many standard 2D movies as you want with no blackout dates and no restriction.

26:56And we have a discount code to make the cost of watching all the movies you want to see even cheaper. When you sign up for Regal Unlimited using the Next Picture Show code NEXTPIC26, that's N-E-X-T-P-I-C-2-6, you'll get 15 % off an all-you-can-watch movie pass with no blackout dates or restrictions, plus 10 % off all non-alcoholic concessions. Just open the Regal app or follow the link in this episode's description and use NextPick26 to receive your discount. One more time, that code is NEXTPIC26. Don't do this. I want to be here. I know you want to fight. I need to see this. I know it seems like you're happy, but you don't.

27:36Please, you don't. Let me go. Okay, wait, wait, wait. What are you doing here all by yourself? Look, sweetie, you gotta come with us. My dad's getting my brother. I have to stay here. You can't stay here. I'm not gonna leave her alone. I'm not letting you do this. You can hate me. You can hate me, but I love you. I'm not letting you do this. I can't. No. You can't stay here. Please don't go. It's gonna be okay. You need to call me. I can't go with you. Please, she's over here. I can't go with you. My dad's right there. My dad's right there. Just listen to me. I need to be here. I want to see this.

28:10Wait, wait, wait. Just stick with your sister. Please let me go. You need to let me go. Okay, so this is an episodic film. What sequences stand out for you? I will throw out one that kind of haunts me from both times I've seen this film or every time I've seen this film, which is that scene in the car where Ray is driving through the crowd and suddenly the car becomes this object that everybody wants. you kind of understand the actions of every single person in that scene. Not that they're right. It's hard, you know? Yeah, no, that was the exact scene I was going to bring up when you raised this question.

28:51Obviously, we were just speaking about the ferry scene that it sort of leads to. But what's, like, I think so kind of remarkable about the car scene before it is that, like, it isn't a big action moment. but it is so tense and it feels like one of the scariest moments of the film, even though it's just like people in a van. There are no war machines or explosions in sight. And because it's... The real aliens was us all along. Exactly. Yes. And I mean, this is like such a Spielberg thing and like not uncommon in alien movies in general, you know, that like, the story about aliens is, you know, a story that reflects something about us.

29:38But you know, it's not even specific to aliens. In this case, it's just like, humanity in moments of crisis, and how quickly the social order can break down and, you know, every man for himself mentality take over. And how scary that can be, especially when you are someone who has other people in your care and can't just, you know, fight for yourself and yourself alone. I forget which critic pointed this out, but someone I read observed that, you know, the fact that they watch the family watches this play out from inside this all American diner, sort of America, the order of America breaking down from inside this all America.

30:21It's such a, it's such a Spielberg touch. So is, I think them being the center of this maelstrom and then escaping the maelstrom and then just sort of the way the shot is composed where the car is still moving very slowly as the person who picked up Ray's gun murders the man who stole the car as more and more people pile on and it just kind of drifts out of the shot you know it's where we're being told this is still going on and it's still probably going to go on until that car is torn to pieces. Like nobody is getting out of this, but our players have moved on to the next set piece. And there's something I love about just sort of the staging of that reminder that, you know, a thousand stories like this are going on everywhere.

31:06This one's going to continue, but we're just not going to focus on it. We're going to stay with our protagonists while this thing that they have introduced into this tiny little society continues to help it come apart. I mean, to kind of take it to the I was gonna say take it to the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of action, but it actually is an overall pretty quiet tense scene, which is, of course, the basement scene, the tentacles, them hiding from the Russian water tentacles. Yeah. And that's just like the scene I associate with this movie, to the extent I have associations with this movie, as I've previously explained.

31:45But just the interplay of darkness and light, and quiet and tension, and then the where it all leads. I guess it's like kind of multiple scenes, because when the alien, the actual aliens come back, that's another sort of shock moment. But yeah, that's everything about that feels quintessentially Spielbergian. I'd forgotten how much time, how long the basement sequence is. There's several sequences within the basement, but they're down there for a long time. There's several different dramas that play out. Enough to have a bunch of different set pieces. To me, evading the Russian water tentacle sequence, this is an abyss joke for the three of our listeners who don't instantly get it, or may have not seen the abyss in forever.

32:32That sequence just always reminded me visually of the staging of the water tentacle scene, you know, just with more expensive special effects anyway. Actually, maybe not more expensive because the Russian water tentacle was very expensive. I'm getting off down a weird rabbit trail here. You're just trying to push us to do an Abyss episode, which we've been talking about doing for a while. It keeps coming up. We keep bringing it up as maybe it would be appearing with us one of these days. We're definitely going to do that. For me, one of the just most memorable scenes of the movie, which is almost beside the point, is what happens at the end between Ray and Harlan.

33:14The fact that it happens off screen, that there aren't a lot of sound cues to let you know exactly what's happening. the fact that we're getting it through the point of view of Rachel, who is blindfolded, covering her ears and singing. Like, a lot of The Basement turns into a horror movie, the kind of horror movie where the monster's in the house and you're trying to avoid it, just like a very literal nightmare experience. But that sequence in particular with Ray deciding that Harlan is dangerous and frightening and a threat to his daughter and, you know, taking the actions that he does, that also is a horror movie, but a completely different kind of horror movie.

33:57And it's just, it's really striking to me in a movie that's so much about big set pieces and exploding buildings and running from fires and the military is going in one direction and a giant mob is going to the other direction. Just this very quiet off screen moment of deep seated horror. And not for the first time, not for the last time watching this man who has been burdened with more responsibility than he knows how to handle going through a trauma that he you can just tell he's got to pack in internalize and not express for the sake of in this case just one of his kids the one that the one that's left but over and over throughout this movie we see you know this man having very human horror experiences and then having to not let himself respond to them because he's trying to pretend to his kids that everything's okay And this is just kind of the ultimate, you know, he deals with Harlan and then he just kind of sits down to be in shock for a moment.

34:57And he's got to pick up and keep moving. It's a choice you cannot say 100 % was correct. True. You know, you have to like, and I suspect that's without him expressing it, you can tell it's what's going through his mind as well. I was like, did I have to do this? And now I had to live with it. And, you know, it's not very clear to me how we're supposed to feel about Ray as a result. One of the things that I think I find most interesting about this movie on this rewatch, you know, the first time through, it's just a survival movie, an action adventure movie where you're watching three people desperately try to not die in a circumstance where thousands of people all around them are dying.

35:37Watching it this time, I was just really struck by how little we're given of Ray that's likable or respectable. You know, he definitely is kind of a child in some ways. Tom Cruise seems impossibly young to me in this movie, and particularly kind of obscenely young to have a teenage son. But he's not the world's greatest dad. He's not very good in a crisis. He's not very good about facing facts. He's not very good about communicating with his kids or calming them or taking care of them. He's doing what he can under the circumstances, but he's not he's just not an unvarnished hero. He's not a simple character.

36:22And I really like this. I think it's a an unusual choice. as Keith pointed out in the keynote about close encounters. You know, this is a kind of complicated figure who is not doing his best for his family, but is maybe doing the best he's capable of. And that's just a thread, I think, that goes through the movie, but particularly in the sequence with Harland and his decision there. It's just, it's complicated. It's not a simple black and white moral decision. I will say that at the time, there was some talk about whether or not Tom Cruise was appropriately cast as like a working class dude. I was going to say, I found it kind of interesting to see him as a, like a father figure, a family man, which is another thing that he does not play very often.

37:08No, it's true. And I like what he does here. I think it's, I think he's good. You know, does he really suggest a working class Bayonne resident? Not really, but I think it's a really good performance. But I will say this, the fact that the opening scene, the most Tom Cruise thing in this is the opening scene it's established not as he just a stevedore he's the hot shot stevedore that everybody turns to to do the best he's the best at what he does you know so uh that felt to be like the most top gunny uh tom cruise moment in in the film yeah that's hilarious and almost feels a little contractual just like if this is not uh tom cruise is not allowed to lose a fight but it is tom cruise has to be the best of the best he's the stevedore maverick and he gets to run some some prime running.

37:53It's truly possible that they looked at the script and were like, how much time is this character going to spend running? What's Tom up to this weekend? Yes, there's some quality Tom Cruise running. There's also, at the beginning in particular, some pretty quality Tom Cruise flashing that smile around under circumstances where you can kind of see that people like him but also possibly think he's a little smarmy and a little shallow. And have made his family not really like him, which is like an important starting point for the family narrative here. I just want to shout out the simplicity and effectiveness of that family introduction.

38:36I love the fact that Tim purposefully like stands back and stays out of the way and just like minimizes himself. but at the same time very clearly has like stood up for these kids and has made himself a father to them whereas Marianne uh Ray's wife the way she just kind of steps in when Rachel is struggling with a suitcase and then insists on carrying a heavy suitcase up you know several flights of stairs while very heavily pregnant even as Ray and Tim both step in and try to do it it just it It says so much about both her character and her relationship to both of those men without anything needing to be said.

39:19It's just like chef's kiss level of efficient characterization through action, albeit very, very small, very mundane action. I thought I'd think belly either. Miranda Otto is really pregnant. Oh, nice. They wrote that into the script. That's good, efficient use of, hey, Miranda Otto is pregnant. But I think you would lose something if she wasn't. And that whole scene, that whole sequence plays out very differently if she isn't visibly pregnant. Not just in her, you know, choosing to, like, shrug off two men and lift a heavy bag herself for her daughter. But also just when Ray first sees her and says very wryly, like, this is a good look for you.

40:01You know, it's just very, very evident that she's moved on. And that she and this other man are starting a new family that has nothing to do with him. and that she trusts this other man to be a father and be there for his kids in a way that Ray hasn't. Again, very efficient.

40:23Those machines, those tripods they got,

40:30they buried them right under our feet Since before, there were even people here. They've been planning this for a million years.

40:47Please, my dog. Think about it.

40:53They defeated the greatest power in the world in a couple days. Walked right over us. And these were only the first. They'll keep coming. this is not a war any more than there's a war between men and maggots this is an extermination this may not have another answer other than the simplest one but the one change spielberg wanted was to have aliens emerge from the ground rather than descend from the air i think i think he said something like it's just kind of a cliche that he'd seen too in too many movies but what is the logic there i actually found that that's sort of like you know So they've been there for a long, long time?

41:32Well, the machines have. Machines have. And then the aliens themselves ride the lightning down into the machines. Yeah, it's a little curious. But is there a metaphorical reason for this? Does it make sense to have the threat coming from within in some way? No. Yeah, okay. Not to be overly simplistic, but nope. Makes for some really cool visuals and doing something differently. But I don't know that we've got to talk about the book ending Morgan Freeman narration. But it starts off by talking about in the early years of the 21st century, our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own.

42:12And then we kind of turn around and say, oh, but the things have been buried there for untold thousands of years. Yeah, I forgot about that timing element in the intro, because I was going to say, like, to give it some credit, the idea of them having been buried for so long kind of speaks to a century spanning plan like this has been in the works for longer than recorded history, maybe. But then yeah, the narration does kind of blow that up, doesn't it? and i'm fine with that i'm fine with you know this is a 10 000 year old plot it just makes the aliens seem more alien but then you just end up with a bunch of questions about like okay why now why why not when if why not 10 000 years ago when there was like just a lot less to contend with in terms of uh mars-a-forming earth yeah it's like in the uh the new godzilla movies like the the new monsterverse the hollow earth you know there's like a whole other sort of portal there's a portal to another world inside the earth so maybe that's where they uh they came from they spielberg was sort of setting the stage for that franchise there's also uh it's kind of like quater mass in the pit uh the british science fiction movie where they find this sort of ancient alien threat by tunneling in through the by digging a new tunnel in the and then london underground i believe or something i forget what the details are good movie but but yeah well that's just it i mean you know there are thousands at least of these ships around the world and none of them has ever been found when people were like, you know, excavating for sewer systems or whatnot.

43:46In my head, none of this matters. In my head, if you can zap an alien down to earth with lightning and they've got this incredible super future tech, you know, you can have it show up with, you know, a bottle of nanobots that can then, you know, build a super ship out of available materials. And maybe they waited as long as they did because there would be a lot of metal available. I don't know. We don't have to explain it too much. There's very deliberately a lot we don't know in this movie. And a lot of it, I think, you know, to speak to what Keith called an anti-climax, a lot of this story is kind of built around just from the point of view of the protagonists, you just don't know what's going on most of the time.

44:31You get bits and pieces from people. Another sequence, while we're theoretically still talking about sequences, is we like, I really like the montage of, you know, Europe's completely untouched. They got away clean, cut to somebody else saying Europe got the worst of it. You know, everybody's operating on rumors. Nobody fully knows what's going on because the mass media has disappeared. So these protagonists are not saving the world. They're not the ones that come up with the laptop, the Apple laptop that you can just plug into the alien ships and make them all die. they're experiencing things completely outside of their understanding and control so you know i'm willing to believe that there's a bunch of technology at work that we're just not getting the details on and the people saying like oh they've been underground all along are just you know spreading more rumors that they don't really know the truth about yeah nine years separate this from independence day but like the cultural and political environment that produced one film versus the cultural and political environment that produces the other are very different.

45:31Before we move on from scenes that we love, the sequence where Ray has to let Robbie go, the kind of almost torturously extended sequence where he realizes he is about to lose both of them and he has to make a choice between them. You know, the sequence where Ray sings to Rachel, the sequence where Rachel covers up while Ray goes off to deal with Harland and then the letting go sequence like those to me are the three emotional beats of the movie the three moments in this film that aren't just about you know spectacle and and terror and the unknown and I think as far as you know playing a blue-collar workman playing a family man this is also the sequence where Tom Tom Cruise really excels because I can, you know, you can see in just kind of the moments that pass between him and Chatwin.

46:23They're having a conversation and that conversation is kind of repetitive. It's just let me go. Don't go. Let me go. Don't go. And the fact that they only verbalize some of it, I think, is very well done. But, you know, you can see Ray is being torn apart. He doesn't want to lose either of these kids that we're told at the beginning of the movie he's maybe been wanting to lose. You know, he doesn't know how to relate to them. He finds them burdensome. In this moment, he's just having this emotional crisis of he can't save both of them. Which one is he going to save? And he makes his choice. It's heartbreaking.

46:56It's kind of a Sophie's choice, almost. And I do love sort of the mechanic of Rachel, you know, the threat of her being taken away by someone who is trying to help her, you know, someone who thinks that they are doing a good thing, and is protecting her. And so sort of like the overlapping protective instincts in that moment are just really interesting. interesting. And I do like that when he does go after Rachel and they reunite, that woman does get a moment of like, I'm sorry, I thought she was alone. That was really important to me. I think I was identifying with that woman a lot in that moment.

47:38I mean, it's entirely possible that Harland in the basement was going through something similar. He saw a scared child, and he was promising to protect a scared child. But, you know, a strange man talking to your little girl alone about how he's going to take care of her. You can see why Ray reacts the way he does, but you can also see a scenario where Harland really meant it and was just trying to comfort a scared kid. He did seem to be coming pretty undone, though. I know. I mean, he's a loose cannon at the absolute best. Good Tim Robbins performance. too. Tasha, you bringing up the Robbie moment brings me, I want to talk about the ending of this film because in that moment, I feel like Robbie becomes sort of a surrogate for everybody who goes to surf after 9-11, who signs up for the fight, whatever the fight is and wherever it might take them.

48:32And then at the end of the movie, he's just at grandma and grandpa's house. And I think, I really don't love that to be honest. I loathe it. It comes very close to ruining this movie for me. I I, you want to talk about when you first saw this movie, I might have yelled something in the theater. If I did not, it was through an act of will. I was so angry about that. Because it's such a cheat. And it's not just a cheat. It undoes a really spectacular emotional moment in an action scene. And I don't know. It's like a cheat on top of a cheat, too. Because it's already like, oh, everyone's okay. you know like her parents house is fine you know this neighborhood is completely untouched by the cataclysm that has turned other parts of not very far away from here uh parts of the planet into an alien hellscape covered with human blood yeah but it's okay and also robbie's here yeah they've got a nice brownstone they're all fine yeah it's it's sentimental it feels very tacked on it feels very audience focus uh well they don't want the kid to die so let's shoot a version where the kid's alive it's also just inexplicable is that a spielberg thing like like does he ever like kill off you know a main character in that way you don't remember et where uh they're they're flying their bikes past the moon and et doesn't have enough power to keep all the other kids up so he and elliot fly away and the other kids all fall to their death we really dropped the ball not talking about that scene on our ET episode a few weeks back.

50:08I really, I feel like so just every once in a while Spielberg will do exactly what people accuse him of doing all the time. This is one of those moments. I think, you know, I don't think he's overly sentimental most of the time, but when he is, you get something like this. And to be clear, I really like all the Boston stuff up to that moment. I think it's really effective, but yeah, it's a little rough. I would really have to just like sit down with his filmography because one of the one of the problems of has somebody ever done this thing with somebody as somebody that's this prolific, you know, is I'm sure we're forgetting something.

50:45But I did always think it was kind of a cheat that Hooper survived Jaws. And that kind of has a little bit of the same feel to it of just, you know, it's it's honestly, it's more believable than Robbie surviving here. And the tone of the end of Jaws kind of makes it feel like one person's survival is almost beside the point as opposed to a huge moment for the movie. But it did kind of strike me in the same way when I first saw it. It was sort of, oh, you're just going to walk that back then? Okay. Okay, cool. We talked about E.T. and Declosier at length together when we paired those two. We were talking off mic before this as to who we've done more, Spielberg or the Coens at this point.

51:30We should actually tally it up at some point. And we did do Close Encounters way back in the day, too. So we are now closing the loop on our alien tetralogy? Is that true? Unless you count Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as another Spielberg alien movie. But, I mean, is there a through line here? I mean, you certainly get a lot more optimism in Close Encounters in ET than in War of the Worlds. Disclosure Day almost seems kind of like trying to attempt to bring it home, but in a way that's like sort of like really paranoid and scary up to, you know, for much, much of the running time. Kind of what I said before, it's a through line that's not specific or unique to Spielberg and is present in other, you know, sort of alien movies.

52:16But you know, just the idea of it being a story about aliens that is really about us feels very like kind of quintessential to his interest in the subject matter and like the way in which he keeps returning to it. They all tend to be family stories in one way or another, too. And it just occurred to me that in every case, we don't really know very much about the alien race. We're given very little information about them. And it feels like this movie is probably where we have the most information about the alien race. And it kind of comes a lot from the source material, you know, or it's kind of baked in by the source material.

52:59And Morgan Freeman. Sure, sure. I guess maybe the through line is more just like the aliens being more the catalyst than the subject matter themselves. Yeah, I mean, that's just a major threat in science fiction in general. It's either examining a possible future for what we're doing right now, where it might lead, or bringing in something that is inhuman to show us what it means to be human is a very common thing. And I do see that kind of stretching throughout these movies. but you know it could also just sort of come from an impulse to explore stuff he likes while doing it differently you know what if what if aliens were sweet little wise like yoda like childlike creatures okay now what if they were ravening monsters okay now what if they were just completely unknowable okay what if they were the source of like all human wisdom you know just kind of like hitting kind of a series of different balls so you're not just playing the same game over and over.

53:55And E.T. began as a subplot in a movie he never made called Night Skies, which was like an alien invasion movie where the subplot was basically, well, what if one alien befriended everybody? And then we lost the evil aliens in that one and just kept the nice one. Well, anything else we should talk about? I guess I do want to wrap up by talking about the Morgan Freeman narration, which, you know, taking text directly from 1898, as styled as it is and as in the period as it is, and sticking it on a blockbuster in 2005. There is something I like about the opening of, you know, talking about the implacable, unsympathetic eyes, like coveting earth.

54:37I've always kind of liked that wording in the book. The part at the end about how, you know, basically humanity's legacy is a billion of us died to make us immune to bacteria. and therefore humans do not live or die in vain. That strikes me as really overreaching. But also it just, to me, it takes this story that has been so specifically about kind of this one man who may or may not be a very good father still doing his absolute best for his children and kind of being rewarded at the end. And those two children going through tremendous trauma and surviving a cataclysm they can't understand and that is beyond them, turning that into God put molecules on the planet in order to save us from aliens.

55:33And here's a giant philosophy about the purpose of humanity that comes out of it just strikes me as so impersonal compared to the very personal story we just went through. And I kind of feel like Spielberg felt he needed to keep or kept. They felt that they needed to keep that narration, because otherwise, it's unclear why the aliens are dying. And they wanted the explanation. But I hate the wording at the end. Yeah, it's also a place where the 9-11 metaphor just gets like kind of hand waved away entirely, you know, and just the entire ending of this, which does wrap up pretty quickly, to the point where, as you say, it kind of needs the narration to explain what happened.

56:20That does feel like a pretty clear example of the source material butting up awkwardly against the sort of contemporary lens that Spielberg was putting on this story. Ouch, take that H.G. Wells. Points for getting Morgan Freeman, who can make almost anything sound good. You know, if you put enough avuncular spin and enough, you know, agey folk wisdom on it all, it almost sounds reasonable. But it still just does not feel like it belongs in this story to me. Wow. We're going to wind on this particular discussion, but we'll bring back War of the Worlds next episode. And we're not done with this episode yet.

57:00We'll be right back with feedback.

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59:45Now it's time for feedback, but first let's dive into what's happening elsewhere in the extended film-spotting cinematic universe. As usual, it's quite busy. As we record this, Matt Singer and Jordan Hoffman at Film Spotting SVU have recently released an episode about Netflix's The Last House and about the service's apocalyptic obsessions in general. at the movie racket michael phillips talks to screenwriter david canyach about the art of adaptation and when it's best to stray from the source material relevant to this discussion i'm sure and over at the film spotting mothership podcast adam and josh talk about jane chonbrum's teenage sex and death at camp miasma a movie i liked a lot did either of you see it and what you think of it i've not seen it yet i haven't seen it yet either okay yeah we'll see it we'll do a bonus episode it's kind of a shame we couldn't do that one on this because it's certainly a movie about movies.

1:00:31You can find all that plus the latest Next Picture Show episodes at filmspotting.net. Now, it's time for feedback, where we normally address some of the responses we've gotten to recent episodes, but this one's sort of a general question about no particular episode, but germane to the whole podcast. Jenna, can you read that? Sure. Chris from Toronto writes, I'm a longtime listener because I wholeheartedly believe in your maxim that no art exists in a vacuum and that our appreciation of current film can only be deepened by engagement with what came before it. I did, however, recently encounter the famous quote from Orson Welles, which goes strongly against this idea, and I haven't been able to shake it.

1:01:04Quote, the most detestable habit in cinema is the homage, even the unconscious homage. Don't soak yourself in films. You should do films innocently, end quote. In short, Welles thought the new Hollywood directors watched too many movies and should have instead drawn from their own experiences and philosophy instead of copying others. Now, whether Welles is right or not isn't my question. Instead, I was wondering if in the course of your film criticism careers, you have ever encountered a film that was so wholly unique that it would be impossible to compare to anything else you've seen before. Has there been anything recently where there were so few connections to draw with a classic film that your podcast format was impossible?

1:01:40Is there anything new under the sun? Is it true that movies, especially anything made in the last few decades, are just playing the hits of what we've already seen? I've been thinking about this one a fair bunch and particularly about movies where we kind of ran up against the what's a good match question and oddly enough one of the things we've had the hardest time matching has been the marvel cinematic universe movies and that's not because you know there haven't been blockbusters in the past or action movies or superhero movies but when we've paired them we have definitely tended towards like let's let's pick a specific aspect of this movie of the the plot of this movie or something that the director specifically said they looked to for visual inspiration, as opposed to like structurally or plot or even character.

1:02:29Because those movies evolved into such a specific place where they were just drawing on each other and kind of the formula created by Marvel Studios, that they just didn't resemble a lot of cinema that came before in tone and structure or intent. And we had a hard time, you know, maybe if we could have reached back to like Flash Gordon's serials or whatever, that would have worked. But it's not that I think that they're a new thing under the sun. They're just kind of remixing cinema in a way that makes it very hard to connect to classic cinema, really. Yeah, that's a really good one to shout out.

1:03:07Like the most recent Spider-Man movie. I feel like we didn't even really consider it because we've already done Spider-Man 2, which we paired, I believe, with Into the Spider-Verse. And that kind of speaks to another problem that we run up against increasingly these days, 500 some episodes into this podcast, is a lot of times the most clear or obvious quote-unquote homage, we've already done it. You know, like even this week, Jurassic Park was right there. Already done it. Donnie Darko probably would have been fun. We've already done it. You know, a lot of Spielberg we've already done because he, you know, obviously is a director who has had a major effect contemporary film.

1:03:53So he comes up a lot in sort of these comparison points. But to speak to the Wells quote that Chris brings up here, like a lot of the pairings we do, I feel aren't necessarily coming from the realm of homage. Occasionally, we do have a situation where a filmmaker is like, yes, I was thinking of this film. And then we're like, yeah, that's an easy one for us to do. But you know, there are a lot of more unique or unusual films these days that aren't trying to follow in other footsteps, but we have still managed to find a way to connect them to cinema's past in other ways. backrooms being like a really recent example.

1:04:35You know, I don't think Kane Parsons probably had Phantasm in mind when he was making that. I mean, maybe he did. But Tasha, I'm looking at you, our researcher, I don't think you've come across anything to that effect. I'm not sure Kane Parsons is old enough to know that Phantasm exists. I think particularly with our uber young, like new wave of filmmakers who came up on YouTube, they're drawing a lot less from classic cinema. I mean, some of them are super, super film hounds. And some of them were brought up on YouTube and like are drawing from a completely new tradition of media. So, you know, whether there's an homage level connection there, an inspiration level connection there, I think a lot of them are just not going to have that.

1:05:26And we don't let that get in our way. We look for, you know, what was the equivalent of this, like, functionally or creatively, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago? To get to the bigger, the big picture question, too. Like, if in an alternate universe, I continued to study medieval literature, right? And it's a period when originality wasn't only not valued, it was treated as suspect. Well, the idea is you tell the story that's been told before, you tell it better, you do your own thing with it. And I think originality, the idea of a completely original thing is not only an overrated idea, I think it's kind of impossible, too.

1:06:07And you're always building on what's been done before. Maybe the first cave paintings weren't. but I think everything after that has been constructed of bits and pieces of what's come before. So I don't really get hung up unless something's, you know, the line between homage and ripoff can be a little thin, but, you know, I think it's a matter of how well you do it, I guess, and sometimes. So I have no problems with homage and I'm sure, you know, Orson Welles had his sources of inspiration too. He wasn't right all the time. I will also say when you're talking about just really unique films. One of the first things we like we keep a spreadsheet of what we what we have covered and what we haven't, because we've been doing for this for more than 10 years now.

1:06:49And we've gotten to a place where every pairing was sponsoring some kind of, have we ever talked about blank question? So Genevieve in her capacity as producer, organizer, and incredibly ambitious spreadsheet creator. And also, you know, host of our 10 year anniversary episode, put together a spreadsheet. So I so this is how I know that we've done three different Yorgos Lanthimos films over the years. But we didn't do The Lobster. And that one just leapt out at me. Like if we had been pairing The Lobster, there are a lot of things there to draw on in terms of, you know, relationships or weird hotels or like uncomfortable romances between not necessarily suitable people.

1:07:37But I don't think you can point to like, oh, this is a remake of Blank or an homage to Blank. And I think a lot of the films that we would think of as really unique conceptually, or in execution, in narrative, are still coming out of, you know, if you're not coming from some sort of universal feeling, some sort of like human experience, then what are you even doing? Like what kind of story are you telling? I feel like there's always some sort of connection that you can draw on there just in terms of what is this movie fundamentally about or what's it trying to get at? There you go. So what you're saying is basically our podcast is a good idea and should continue to exist.

1:08:18And shove it, Wells. I do think that Wells is wrong. This is not the first or last time he was wrong, but our podcast is a good idea. If I had a buck for every time I've told people like, oh, here's the basic log line of the podcast I'm on. And they have said, oh, that's a really good idea with a tone that implies, damn it, I hadn't thought of that. And now I'm mad at myself because I haven't. I would have, you know, several dollars. Then you tell them that, well, okay, the barrier to entry is actually a little high because it requires watching two movies and et cetera, et cetera, but whatever.

1:08:53We're going to keep doing it. But that's it for this episode of The Next Picture Show. In our next episode, we'll talk about the suburban dinosaurs of the end of Oak Street and how they connect and that film connects to War of the Worlds. Look for that episode next Tuesday on your podcatcher of choice. For ad-free versions of the podcast and extra content, find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. You can find us at nextpictureshow.net and on Blue Sky at The Next Picture Show if you want to keep track of when new episodes drop. Until next time, keep watching the skies and also the ground.

1:09:23You never know where those extraterrestrial threats will come from.

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