Messi Takes England Out of the World Cup, Plus Preparing for Christopher Nolan’s 'The Odyssey' With Ian Wright, Anthony Dabbundo, and Sean Fennessey

26:40Was it strange? I wonder if you've ever had this experience before because this is the first time Messi's ever played England. Have you ever found yourself on the side of cheering against Messi before? No. Yeah. No.

26:55Ian Wright:It's really strange. It's the same thing that happened with Maradona. I don't remember too many times cheering against him, but today, even seeing Messi, when Messi was getting angry some of the times. It's the first time I was angry with Messi. I was thinking, what are you doing? I got angry with Messi with some of the times. But yeah, I think that what we learned today is our great years. And he probably is the greatest ever in respects of what he may go on to achieve. You know, I'll always have a soft spot for Maradona simply because I watched him do some amazing things, Chris. But like in watching Messi for the whole of his career, you know like I did probably with like I watched the most of Maradona's but watching Messi and the levels that he's continued to reach at 39 he's still doing it it's special it's something special we're watching a real genius of the game and probably the greatest we'll ever see I don't think anyone's going to eclipse what Messi's doing right now especially if they go on to win this you know and And I don't know what to say.

28:06Ian Wright:You know, unfortunately, we couldn't deal with him today. I thought we dealt with him in the first half. But it's going to take a lot to try and curtail someone like Messi when you've got the backup that he's got in Argentina. Because they're all excellent players. How has this tournament been for you? You've been in New York for the entirety of it, pretty much. You've been broadcasting and podcasting out there. and I don't know have you gotten to many matches at East Rutherford or has it been mostly studio stuff for you no no no I haven't gotten into it I went to a couple of the warm up games at the start of the tournament I went to France and Iraq but that was that was rained out for a couple of hours and I had to leave but I've been to a couple of Yankees games okay I went to see yeah I went to see the New York Liberty basketball women WNBA I've been having a good time doing that kind of stuff really.

29:02Ian Wright:But I didn't get to see any football matches. I was meant to go to the World Cup final. If England got there, it would have been the final that we would have went to because ITV were just doing it from the studio that we've got here in Brooklyn. And if England got to the final, then we would have went to the stadium. But it's been brilliant, man. Brooklyn's been great. I've had a great time around here. It's been like, you know, this tournament definitely has some black eyes. There has been some real shames of whether it's refereeing, whether it's everything that has happened with the Iran team, or whether it's, you know, like...

29:43But as a sporting event and as a moment for people to kind of come together and enjoy sports together, it's been pretty heartwarming. You know, like I was in Philadelphia over the weekend, and my friends have a bar there, and they were like, it's unbelievable man like we would just on a random Wednesday night have 50 Brazilians take

30:04Ian Wright:over the bar honestly yeah only football does that Chris Chris um you know football and World Cup this is why when people are talking about oh they need to bring the World Cup every two years or every three years no it's such a celebration of football around the world and obviously everything that was happening at the start with with America the visas the tickets the money that everything was going on you know you know all the negativity and the discourse that was going on around it. You know that once the game starts, once the games start, it's going to be unbelievable. Once the fans come, once the fans start to mix.

30:37Ian Wright:Obviously, once we get down to the nitty-gritty like with semifinals, it gets really deep in respects of the fans and the rivalry becomes really intense. But in the main, you know what I mean? It's just brilliant being in and around Brooklyn with all the fans because we're right close to the Adidas fan park right there and everybody's coming there. And it's just been it's just been a joy because everybody's just celebrating football and everybody's had their moment I think that obviously Cape Verde what Cape Verde done people talking about the expansion and I diluted it what Cape Verde showed in their little time in the limelight was you can have a go at the world's best and you can nearly beat them if you're given the chance and that is the World Cup can give you that the World Cup gave us that because I think that if we're going to talk about the beautiful moments in the World Cup on the football pitch, then it would be probably Cape Verde's time in this World Cup, which was magnificent and a joy and it was a credit.

31:38Ian Wright:They were a credit to the game and this World Cup. Yeah, you could really tell when that match ended the way the Argentinian players reacted to the Cape Verde players, which was almost just like, whoa, thank you. Yeah. You know, like... Yeah. Yeah. You know what I love, Chris? Can I just say something? Just quickly. In respect, I wish that we could have played with the same bravery that Cape Verde played with. If I'm going to totally honest, as an England fan. Because they pushed the World Cup champions to the limit. It needed everything. It needed all of Messi. Even though, yeah, Messi came to the game, came to the fore today as well.

32:19Ian Wright:But Cape Verde, they were breaking and still trying to score. You know, again, we could take something from them. You have to be brave. You have to be braver. And they were brave. And that's, again, World Cup gave them that opportunity. And I love that. And there's plenty of matches that happened over the course of the knockouts where teams tried to play defensive shells and play for extra time or play for pens or what have you. But we're going to remember Cape Verde. And if that's what it's about, I was watching that on my phone. my wife was like is this important? And I was like it would be the greatest upset in the history of sports.

32:56Ian Wright:Because it was easily easily because you know Cape Verde going to beat the world champions you know after drawing with Spain you know what I mean again playing against Spain and giving Spain the kind of game where you're thinking oh my gosh they're holding Spain out. You saw what Spain done to France who were the favorites. You know they held them out and then they nearly beat the world champions. we done that game and it was easily the best game of the world cup yeah i was going to ask you if you have like a memory you think you're going to take and if it's cape verde or you think it's going to be azteca or what what your favorite moment from this would be but it sounds like no no no obviously obviously because england um england done it in the end and they beat them with the 10 men it was a real like tin hats kind of like performance from us you know dig out get the boots on and dig in.

33:47Ian Wright:But Cape Verde's game against Argentina for me is the best game of this World Cup for me so far. All right, man. I'm going to let you go. I just want to get your pick for Sunday. You know something I'm probably going to go with? I'm probably going to go with Argentina simply because I just feel that they just can't be beat. Sometimes you have to throw your hands off. If you're 3-0 up. Honestly, they just look like they can't be beat and never beaten. And if there's going to be a team that can do it because they can hold on to the ball and maybe create something, then it might be Spain. But I can't look further than Argentina, Chris.

34:27Ian, thank you so much for giving me your time tonight, man. No worries, man. I appreciate it. Great seeing you. Hope to see you again soon over in England. Enjoy some time off after this World Cup.

34:35Ian Wright:Thank you very much, Chris. Thanks for having me on, man. I love you. Alright, brother. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We're in the heart of the World Cup. Look at these little special bottles for Michelob Ultra. Every play matters here. FIFA World Cup 26. For you, the stakes are just this high. Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26. It's giving you a chance to win$1 million worth of tickets and prizes. Michelob Ultra from the pitch to the poor. Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com slash superior access slash FIFA World Cup 2-6.

35:17Michelob Ultra FIFA World Cup 26 superior access. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus begins on December 1st, 2025. Ends on July 31st, 2026. Multiple entry periods. Visit www.mickeleobultra.com slash superior access slash FIFA World Cup 26 for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. All right. Anthony Dabundo is here, Ringer Gambling Show. Very often, the Ringer's Philly special. Just watched England versus Argentina. I obviously just talked to Ian about that, but Anthony and I are going to talk a little bit about the World Cup final. Anthony, I want to let you get your takes off, though, about that England match, which felt like England thought the match was going to last 70 minutes and not 90 minutes and paid for it.

36:07What did you think, man? I mean England were doing what they wanted to do in the first hour they were winning a lot of the duels they were controlling parts of the game it descended into chaos for a good amount of it sure but once you go up one goal England in the first match of this tournament had a situation where they took a 3-2 lead and Tuchel said we are not going to bunker we are not going to go out playing the old way of England we're going to go out playing our way and then he fell right back into it. I thought that when he brought on Rashford and Tony at the end, it was such an interesting, you know, like last-ditch gambit to win the match, but showed the kind of attacking creativity and, you know, okay, let's try a different option up front with Kane and Tony and use a battering ram kind of, and it was sort of absent from earlier in the match.

37:00I think they were so excited to get that goal. It was such a physical game out there that they just slammed on the brakes. And like I've said to Ian, it was just like it felt like he tried to recapture the Aztec of magic. But that's not Mexico out there, man. That's the reigning world champions and Messi. With Leo Messi. Yeah, and if you're going to mob Messi, he's not going to look to score. He's going to look to find the open man or the man who can get it to the open man. And they had so many chances in that second half. Anthony, what did you think of Spain and France? because I, on one hand, want to do a little bit of back patting because I picked Spain to win the tournament, but I was like, not like that.

37:45I didn't think that they were going to decisively walk over the tournament favorites in France, the team that everybody had assumed was like a cut above the competition. And Spain made them look pretty pedestrian and pretty ordinary and ended Dechamps' reign in France. where are you at with the Spain team? Is this actually been the favorites all along for you? Or what do you think about what you're seeing? So the one thing I'll say specifically about this game is that I thought an under-discussed topic going in was just how much France had to play in extreme heat the entire tournament. They played all their games outdoors, almost all of them in the Northeast.

38:27And the last three were New Jersey, Philly, Boston, all 90-plus degree days. Spain, meanwhile, got to enjoy the air conditioning indoors. Their hottest game was in Los Angeles. So they didn't have to do all of the extreme heat. And I do think that definitely made France look a little leggier, but ultimately it comes down to the same thing that Spain's been doing to beat France the last three years. It's like when teams keep the ball and are daring to possess the ball against France, Dechamp has never, ever coordinated a press, never ever coordinated a counter press the sum of the talent has never actually lived up to what they actually are when you watch them play like this team is way more talented than Spain if you go down the list but I think it's kind of a mark on Dechamp because he won the World Cup in 2018 and then said okay this is how we do it we're going to change basically nothing in how our strategy is and the last four international tournaments you could make the case France was the most talented at all four of them and they didn't win any of them in large part because when they went up against Spain a couple of times or against Argentina in the first hour of that World Cup final, the team that had better structure, better pressing, better team play kind of just walked them.

39:42Yeah. And that's exactly what I felt. And look, I went back and forth a lot of people on this. I always had Spain as my favorite. I never cared that France was running up big scores on vastly inferior teams because of this one matchup, this one thing that Spain had proven and France hadn't proven they could beat. So I was happy to ride with Spain. I was happy that, you know, our friends at Fandle made them an underdog. And it was a great day. You know, it's interesting. I think management in this World Cup specifically, but in international football in general, is such a complicated thing. These guys don't get a ton of time to work with their players.

40:15They're under an incredible amount of scrutiny for every single decision that they make. And in a lot of times, a lot of those cases, context is kind of removed. You know, like even some of Tuchel's decisions today, while strategically I didn't agree with what he did when he did it. You know, he had limited options in terms of guys had injuries, guys maybe were on a yellow card. He loses Kwanzaa in the Mexico match. There's all sorts of mitigating factors for why he had to do what he did. And I don't know what was wrong with Bakayo Saka. We'll find out like in a couple of hours, was he not able to play for today or what?

40:53But when you look at what Deschamps has done over the last few years, is I think, you know, Jonathan Wilson wrote about this in The Guardian. Everybody has always regarded him as somebody who's holding France back. And in this Spain match, you know, Mbappe comes out afterwards and is like, we just, we got it wrong. Like, he put two guys in center midfield instead of three. And we were outnumbered. He played Chiuamani instead of Kone. Or, you know, he could have played Kone and Chiuamani and Rabiot. I mean, whatever the sort of hindsight that you want to apply to this. Deschamps just kind of got taken out by De La Fuente.

41:29And I think you could probably, you know, I don't think Scaloni has like a system that you can really perceive, but he certainly has like that Argentina team playing in a very coordinated fashion and among, they share a spirit, you know? And so there's this ineffable thing with international management. It's not like Arteta with Arsenal or, you know, Guardiola with Manchester City where you could be like, oh, obviously he's having them do this and then they do that and then they do this. It's a lot of it is vibes. A lot of it is is keeping those guys in a bubble and making sure the noise is turned down in the locker room and trying to get everybody rowing in the same direction and all those cliches.

42:09But then you you wind up coming into these high, high leverage matches and one decision or two decisions can really can really send things the wrong way. And to the credit, like Spain probably plays the most like a club team. If that you can make that a compliment because club teams get the drill together. They have patterns. I mean, the second goal that they scored against France was a textbook definition of here's, we're going to pass and we're going to move. We're going to create these triangles. We're going to progress the ball steadily throughout the pitch. We're going to go backwards to go sideways, to go forwards, to go backwards, to go forwards.

42:40We're going to play that one big through ball that breaks the lines. We're going to get the second ball. Then a little give and go. We're in behind. Pedro Poro scores 2-0. And I was out of my seat. Like, holy shit, what a goal, right? And it was nice because you didn't, you didn't want them to win with just the one when the, you know, It was obviously a penalty, but a little bit cheap in the way that Lamine drew it to start the match. So that kind of combination stuff, you rarely saw that from France in this tournament. As much as they were dominating people, as much as they were playing at an elite level, you never saw that.

43:10But also, it's hard to be critical of Deshaun because it has worked to such a large extent. I mean, when they're beating everybody so badly, it's like, who do you drop? Do you take out Douay? Do you take out Dembele from your team? Do you drop Olisse? say i mean he all three of those guys and bark a lot they've all been great players uh so it's very hard when you don't really have quote-unquote tactics to then invent some on the fly and change it and then play a midfield three because they played a midfield three and gotten outplayed we would have come on and said oh you put the handbrake on why did he change let him cook yeah it was working so well yeah i mean i don't think them losing saliva really hurt i think uh you know he is widely regarded as, if not the best, one of the best center backs in the world.

43:54And, you know, it's funny. It's like the vibes in a team and in a camp will be so good until the very last second when the season or the run ends. And then everybody's like, the manager was wrong. Yeah, I want to see, I cannot wait to see the post-match quotes about Tuchel. It was the same thing where Pochettino was the savior of U.S. soccer until he wasn't. And Deschamps was this sort of wizard of French football and finally had learned from his mistakes until he hadn't. Right. And with Tuchel, at least we could see it unfolding in real time. And you're like, this is not going to work. The one issue Argentina's had in this tournament is they're actually not good at winning the ball anymore without hacking people and committing murder ball.

44:44If you just give them the ball, they're pretty good. But Lionel Messi went out to the right wing and he was just standing all alone out there. And they even made a point. Stu Holden made the point on the broadcast where he's like, you know, Messi's not really involved. He's waiting for his moment. And he's just jogging in and jogging in. He gets the ball, draws two defenders, plays one simple pass, 1-1. And you're like, wait a minute. Why are we just letting them have the ball? We should at least make them fight to have the ball. And whereas with, you know, France, it's like we can't get the ball off Spain.

45:13That's a big problem. Yeah. And it feels like with France, they never had that answer with England it feels like they at least knew what the answer was and it was kind of working and then they stopped doing it in the name of like this defensive strategy when the whole complaint about England pre-tournament was are their center backs and defense good enough to hold up then they said we're gonna double down on our defense yeah it makes sense when you have 10 men in the Azteca it doesn't make sense when you have 11 men against Argentina yeah and it was it was strange it was a strange match like it must have felt a little bit like Azteca to them because that seemed like a almost 70 % Argentina.

45:50Yeah, that seemed like they were in the Bombonera in Buenos Aires or something like that. That was wild. Maybe that was just a Fox broadcast because they kept cutting to a wall of Argentina fans and there was not a lot of England fans. It would be Mick Jagger and David Beckham, but they were not showing a huge amount of England support. I wonder whether that... I don't really know how that's going to translate to East Rutherford and whether like Argentina fans are going to take over New Jersey and flood that match. World Cup finals tend to be very, very corporate and very filled out with people who have had that ticket for however long.

46:27And I don't know if they can get that kind of support in East Rutherford, but let's talk a little bit about Sunday to the extent that we're able to since we only just found out who the contestants are going to be a couple of minutes ago. This is obviously like a styles make fights thing where if it's a kicking contest and the refs let Argentina play the way they did today in England up until, you know, somehow both center backs are on yellows and multiple players are in massive melees and then, like, they escape. If they let them kick Spain, you know, I can see this being tight. And then even if Spain is in control of the match, I am now done doubting Argentina.

47:10You know, like... Yeah. You know, I feel like call it a refereeing FIFA conspiracy to give Messi another World Cup on a back-to-back here. Call it pixie dust that's been sprinkled on this side. I don't know. But they find a way to win. They find a way to come back. They're never dead. They seem to play their best football in the last 20 minutes of the match in an extra time. It seems like it should be Spain in a cakewalk. But I feel weird saying that. The thing, though, is even Spain, when they cakewalk people, is not like, oh, wow, three, four goals. Look at Spain. You know, like Spain wants to control the game to a level that they are not taking a ton of risk and like not creating a ton of chances.

48:00I mean, Laminio Maul still only has one goal contribution in this tournament. It's kind of a question every time. Pedro Poro chips in. Fabian Ruiz chips in against Belgium. Mikel Marino comes off the bench. I mean, they're getting more goals from their midfielders and their defenders than they are from their actual attackers at this tournament. So you're like, okay, Spain can keep the ball and can make life really difficult for Argentina to get the ball off them, like England did today for large stretches. But they can definitely do that. I have more faith, if Spain is playing with a lead, that Spain is not going to do what England did today.

48:33And they're going to keep keeping the ball. And they're not going to drop off. And they're going to continue to try to play their brand. Their brand is so established and so effective that it can work. Argentina is a funny team because they've been so bad with leads too in this tournament and overall they play so bad going back to the last World Cup the Copa like they are bad with a lead so I feel like this is always setting up for either Argentina is defending a lead and struggling or Spain is barely holding on to their lead so like either way it's almost guaranteed to be compelling in the last 20 minutes yeah I mean with Argentina like all the all the sort of observations I would have and I bet any metrics I could look at Like every match they end, they end.

49:14I'm like, all these guys are dead. All these guys seem to be crying and praying and sweating. They're all, they are all in their thirties, you know, like they all have just been running for 110 minutes and yet they show up at the next match and start the clock at zero. And like, they're, they're just incredible. They do not seem to be like carrying the previous match into the new one. Spain has given up one goal in the knockouts, one goal to Belgium, otherwise have been an absolute fortress. And the fortress is built on possession, like you said. There was an amazing clip of Thierry Henry on the Fox broadcast after the France match where he broke down that, I think, a passage of play that you were describing earlier.

49:59And he's like, these guys have been playing like this since they were eight. And they've been playing together since they were eight. One of the things you always look for when a World Cup comes around, when a Euros comes around, is you're like, what is the football footballing identity of this country. You know, like, what do these guys want to do? How do they want to play? Argentina is going to be physical, they're going to be aggressive, and then they are going to wait for their moment, and then they're going to turn it on. And they have the best player of all time to do that with. Spain is going to play largely, like, I would identify it with Barcelona style, possession football, pass and move, one touch stuff.

50:37And it really is, like, I've had all of these semifinals and now this finals, I'm like, you could tell me so many different variations. I'm going to go Spain because it's been Spain for me since before the tournament, but it's going to be a fascinating match. If they pull out a yellow because Paredes bricks a guy in the first minute, then we're going to know what's happening. It'll be Lamin-Yemal in some way, shape, or form. He's getting hacked down within the first 10 minutes of the game. Talia Fico is just going to absolutely clothesline him. But yeah, I think it has to be Spain in my head. But in my experience over these last two weeks, it's just like you cannot kill Argentina.

51:24Well, there's a little 2024 Chiefs-y and vibes to what the Argentines are doing. It's like late wins, close comebacks, one score victories kind of thing, like the whole bit. And they keep pulling it off. They keep pulling it off. And you're like, they can't keep getting away with this. And then sometimes you get like an Eagles, you know, shout out CR. Eagles would be Spain. Eagles victory. But sometimes, you know, you get a 49ers have a third down and three to win the Super Bowl. They don't convert. And now the Chiefs somehow win the game. And you're like, well, they did it again. So I will not count out Argentina, certainly.

51:58However, I do think Spain should, is, and will be the favorite going into Sunday. We still haven't seen, you know, like the best of Luminium all yet. I keep saying this every game. and then we don't see the best of Luminium all and then it doesn't matter. But Argentina's wide defenders looked really bad today. I thought they got lucky a little bit in a couple of different sequences where they got away with it. It seemed like they had a note where it was like Pickford was like going long to Spence and guys going down that right wing and trying to get into one-on-ones with the fullbacks and draw fouls and get throw-ins.

52:30Yeah, and it was just it was obviously a point of emphasis for them and it was working for a little while, but then the game got too chaotic. you mentioned Barcelona and I think that's actually a good point so Yamal, Olmo Kubarsi so many of the top players at Spain also play club together Pedri hasn't been starting but he's in the mix they all play club together and with the identity Dilla Fuente kind of came out of nowhere when they hired him it was like who's this guy and it's like oh he's actually been the Spanish U19, U21 and U23 coach he's been managing these guys for a while for their entire careers Yeah.

53:07Yeah. You know, in that international level. So the symbiotic nature of it all is very simple. Yes. In a way where you don't get a lot of time to train together, but these guys actually kind of do because they play the same style, the same brand, the same coach for a lot of the youth guys that have come up through the team. The semifinals felt like the right four teams. And if you look at it in a certain way, the final feels like the right last two teams because we've got the reigning world champions who have also, I believe, won back-to-back Copa Americas, right? Yep. And then you've got the reigning European champions and I believe holders of the Nations League, Spain.

53:44They lost to Portugal, but... Oh, right. But yeah, these two teams actually did play because they have a tournament. They have a game every year. I don't think anybody ever watches it, but the finalissima or whatever it is, where the winner of the Euros plays the winner of the Copa, I think Argentina won, but I also don't think anybody watched the game. Did that take place in... I'm not going to count that one. Dubai or something like that? Probably, yeah. Probably. All right. Well, you and I are both edging Spain. I think we're going to be on Bill's show on Sunday after the World Cup final. I think Bill's interest might be diminished now that England's not in it.

54:22But I'm sure seeing Messi go for a... At this age, go for a back-to-back World Cup. His second World Cup would be... It would be pretty... It's must-see TV. and I think the world's... One of the biggest accomplishments in sports history if they pull it off. Yeah. I mean, I was trying to think of comps for this and is it like... I mean, for Messi, it was like 2019 Masters or something for Tiger, but it's like... It almost feels like it's so much bigger than that. Yes. Way bigger. Yeah. You've seen the photo, right? Yeah. Of Messi. Laminya Mall is a baby. It's insane. It's going to be like the photo.

55:03And I've said this, that like this could go down. If Alminyemol has the career that we think he's going to have, it could go down as like the hardest and craziest sports photo in history off the field. It's so hard to believe it's not AI, but it's not. I thought it was AI for like a month. And then somebody was like, brought it up to me and said, oh, this is a real photo. I was like, no, it's AI. They're like, no, no, no. It's a real photo. And I like searched it, read like four articles and was like, okay, actually, this is a real photo. This was last, a couple of years ago. And I'm like, holy, you know, because they obviously both won the Euro and the Copa on the same day two years ago.

55:35And this was Lamin-Yamal's big breakout. He had just turned 17. Now he's, you know, at the old age of 19, going to try to lead Spain to a World Cup alongside his teammate, Khabarci, who's also 19. But yeah, if they pull this off, you know, if Yamal, after getting baptized by Messi, has like a big game in the World Cup final and then they like topple the champions, no matter what happens, it's an incredible, incredible story. We'll be here on Sunday with Bill to break it all down. Dabundo, thanks so much for joining me, man. Thanks for having me. And sorry again, CR. That's okay. Football's coming home in a couple of years.

56:08It's coming home in a couple of weeks when we start the Premier League. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes, yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady calculated money moves and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group Incorporated.

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58:11There are people teaching strategy, sports, history, even ways to improve your jump shot. It's kind of like the biggest locker room ever, and everyone's sharing what they know on TikTok. Okay, Sean Fennessy is here, the Big Picture Podcast, the Projections newsletter. My close personal friend and a guy who has seen the Odyssey twice. I have. I've seen the Odyssey once. This is coming out probably Thursday night. People will start being able to see the Odyssey en masse this evening, I guess, if they haven't already made plans. They probably should because it sounds like this is going to be a very popular film that's hard to get into if you want to see it in the IMAX 70mm that Nolan wants you to see it in.

58:50Sean Fennessey:that we both saw it in. Yes. And I thought maybe we could, you know, we're going to talk a little bit around the movie because I think part of the, part of the joy of it and the thrill of it is going in and not knowing exactly what's going to happen next, even if you're broadly familiar with The Odyssey, which I know most of Bill's listeners are like classers. Yeah, I mean, deeply literate. Obviously, I've looked at all the translations ahead of time. As am I. Yeah. But I want people to be like, holy shit, the way we were like, holy shit. Are you podcasting for different listeners right now or are you just doing what you do?

59:21Sean Fennessey:Have you given this thought? Because you just, you mentioned Bill's listeners. Well, they are Bill's listeners. Yeah. I mean, like, I think that, I think that there's a good Venn diagram crossover. I don't get a lot of people who are like, and who's your boss? Like, you know, who do you wait for? Good point. But the Odyssey, I wanted to ask you first about the format, actually, since we just made a little bit of a side about it. You know, this is something that Chuck brought up on Bill's pod when he went on over the weekend. And I thought it was an interesting conversation to have with you about whether or not movie going will increasingly become an eventized, as Chuck's words, sort of a luxury experience.

59:58But this idea that to save movies or to keep the theatrical experience propped up, we're going to need to continue to iterate technology and also iterate on the movie going experience. IMAX in 70, especially the way we saw it at Universal City Walkout here in Los Angeles. But I think broadly speaking for a lot of the IMAX experiences is a very specific kind of like movie going experience. Are you a fan of it?

1:00:23Sean Fennessey:Broadly, yes, just because I like the idea of a filmmaker dictating how you see a movie. So in the case of somebody like Nolan or last year with Paul Thomas Anderson or Brady Corbett with The Brutalist, there have been movies in the last three or four years that have been really driven by the filmmaker dictating how you see a movie. Is it on film? What format is being used? Is a dead format being revived in some way? I just think it's good for directors and producers to be driving the technology as opposed to the corporation driving the technology, which kind of intersects with like, I think a lot of the discomfort around stuff like AI right now.

1:00:57Sean Fennessey:So I do think that it's cool. I think Nolan is capable of scale in a way that basically no other director alive is. So it's effective. But I did listen to what Chuck had to say. And I thought there was something interesting in that. And Bill has been talking about this for a long time, about like how much of a premium would you pay to, say, get a film earlier than everybody else? In this case, they were talking about, you know, will there be a limited number of opportunities to see a movie? And will it be more like going to a concert? When I sat down to watch this movie the second time, I was sitting between Mallory and her husband Adam and Amanda Dobbins from The Big Picture.

1:01:33And we were talking about the seating in City Walk.

1:01:38Sean Fennessey:CityWalk has jammed a lot of seats into their IMAX 70 room. And so... It's like going to Barclays or something. Yeah, and it's steep and there's not a lot of leg room. And the fellow sitting in front of me was leaning back a little bit. He was trying to get the full picture of the Odyssey. It wasn't the most comfortable viewing experience. I was very happy to be there. The movie is really special. But I thought to myself, would I pay 50 bucks to sit in a room like this with one-third the number of seats? Yes. Because now what you have is you have these really cool IMAX rooms in like Regal and AMC theaters where there's a lot fewer seats and much more comfortable chairs.

1:02:16Sean Fennessey:And they all recline and they all have your cup holder. And it's a bit more like watching at home. I do think this is an underreported component of why movies are back a little bit. And so that theater in particular, which is one of only like 40 in the country that you can see the movie in this format. And is one of the great screens in America, if not the world. and it is Christopher Nolan's home court. This is his favorite movie theater to go see movies. It's still not the best place to sit and watch a movie. It's one of those funny things. It's like if filmmakers have their personal favorites, they have their sentimental favorites.

1:02:50And it's like in the same way that Tarantino has a movie theater here, the New Beverly, which used to be a gum on the floor kind of grindhouse exploitation type movie theater and still has that architecture. It's narrow, the bathrooms are small. It's an amazing movie theater, but people fall in love with the places that are special to them. Obviously, CityWalk technologically is on another level. And when you're in it, you're immersed in it. I've seen, I saw obviously The Odyssey and I saw one battle there. And both times, it took me a little while to get like oriented, you know. And I think that both first acts of these movies.

1:03:27And I was like struggling maybe to keep up to here to sort of orient myself. And there's a lot of it depends on where you sit. Like there is like a huge chunk of IMAX seats that are just like, get ready to be like nauseous, basically, because you are looking up at Deonna Taylor, or Matt Damon or whoever you're looking at. And it's going to be hard to get the frame in inside of your like eyeline.

1:03:49Sean Fennessey:And that's pretty different, I think, from just going to your regular run of the movie theater, where most people don't want to sit in the front row, but you can get away with it. You can understand the movie. That's how I saw Malcolm X. Tough beat. You saw Malcolm X in the first row? Yeah, it was the last row. Were you late because it wasn't as big of a deal to you? Okay. I was in the St. Patrick's Day Free in Philly. No, I got in there, and then the whole time I was looking up. Yeah, it's not an ideal way to watch a movie. you'll find I think in cities around the country if you're trying to get tickets to go see the movie there are still usually tickets in the first three rows in these theaters because they're not super comfortable I also watched One Battle in the third row and it was a tough sit from that vantage point I would try to get a good seat and that just seems like a strange thing to have to worry about because we have this pre-reserved seating we have this sense of like everybody has their favorite place to sit and the movie is being eventized in a way where seeing it in the right format in the right room matters so much, or at least is being marketed to you as mattering so much that it's like, am I missing out?

1:04:55Sean Fennessey:Should I not go if I can't get the kind of seat I want? I was kind of curious about is, you know, will people be like, well, I'll go see The Odyssey in mid-August when all of this has died down and I can go see it in IMAX 70? I think most people who are not movie freaks are already living that way. You know, they're just like, I have a very busy life and I'm taking care of my kids or I'm busy at work and I go to three movies a year. If you're a three movie a year person, this is probably one of the movies. For sure. I had a conversation last night with my dad who doesn't go to the movies very often and he was like, The Odyssey, tell me everything.

1:05:27Sean Fennessey:How was it? And again, there's usually about one movie a year that we have that conversation. What was it last year? Last year, it was Begonia. I don't know what it was last year. Sean, the end of Begonia. We gotta talk about it. It was probably one battle but because he knows how much I care about PTA. And it was Leo and, you know, it felt like more of an event. But that movie, you know, is not nearly as big as The Odyssey. The Odyssey is cultural waterfall. This very rarely happens where something comes in and it's just like, this is the only thing that's happening right now. I think for the next seven days, this is the only thing in pop culture that feels like it's going to be happening.

1:06:03Yeah, that's the thing is like today's pod is Odyssey and World Cup because it feels like that's the two things. And it was like, you know, there's Summer League. There's little things peppering the ether, but these are two really big monocultural events that are happening, and it does feel like this is one that just has broken through to the people who watch one, two, three movies in theaters a year. I also think that for those people, perhaps, they're not really part of the online discourse about what is the exact right format I should be going to see The Odyssey in and are happy to go see it on a good screen at their AMC or whatever.

1:06:40And I think, honestly, the movie will play that way. I mean, you and I have been watching movies for all of our lives, and we've watched them on bad TVs, phones, various VHSs that weren't good. I was re-watching Barry Lyndon recently, and it was on a really good disc. And so I was like, damn, this is the first time I've seen this movie? Because I've probably watched crappy VHS or crappy DVD masters of it. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Nolan. you have like a kind of mixed relationship with him in that I think you were a little bit skeptical of him earlier and now have kind of like come to the if not to the conclusion that he is like in fact obviously a very talented filmmaker but is also now kind of the biggest game in town for sure

1:07:24Sean Fennessey:no question do you think it's fair to say that he's the definitive filmmaker of this century? yes and I don't even think it's controversial anymore I don't think it's controversial either I was looking for a more exciting way of describing it beyond that, because this is just like he is. He ushers in and in some ways legitimizes superhero movies in 08 with Batman Begins. Then he makes the Dark Knight trilogy, Prince Money. Everybody is sort of on board in it. Also, along with, I think, Iron Man, but I think more, I would say the Dark Knight trilogy, introduces this idea that you can be a very serious actor who comes to these things and between Bale and Ledger and Hardy and everybody who participated in that, you know, make really good work while still working in this world.

1:08:12He does three wildly ambitious original genre films, Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet. He does two award-magnet historical epics. And he's shown us a bunch of stuff on screen, a black hole, a city folding in on itself, the sacking of Troy, I guess a spoiler for Odyssey, The evacuation of Dunkirk, assassins moving backwards through time and space, and Bane. That feel like indelible moments

1:08:40Sean Fennessey:in film history. Would you say Bane's appearance is an indelible moment in film history? I think they expect to find one of us in the Wreckage Brother is an indelible moment. It's like T. Lawrence blowing out the match. The CR just popped out in the BS podcast there. No, I'm fucking CR. Come on. And, you know, our buddies over at the Blank Check podcast like to talk about this idea that a filmmaker at some point in his career like he's been building up equity with Hollywood. He makes a movie. It's successful. And then he has a blank check to do his dream project next. Wildly, The Odyssey kind of is his dream project because Oppenheimer was such a runaway success, maybe against some odds.

1:09:18I wouldn't say all odds. You're going to detonate a nuclear weapon. I think people are going to probably check it out. But this is his blank check movie. The Odyssey is.

1:09:28Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And I mean, he's had five blank check movies. Yeah. He's done this over and over again. Inception was a blank check movie. He made the Batman films, I think, in part to give himself the equity inside the industry to take on more challenging original ideas and has proven over and over and over again that people want these ideas. His movies don't lose money. He doesn't have a movie that most people consider to be bad. I think they've actually been like sort of increasingly going up in box office, although the Batman movies kind of go and then Tenet came out during COVID. But I don't know. What do you think it says about our film going moment and our movie making moment that he has kind of emerged as this figurehead of of what remains of Hollywood?

1:10:12Sean Fennessey:I think he is it's all related to what you were asking about with formats, because he is an event filmmaker. He's a grand stage director. And we're at a time of fractured attentions and a lot of alternatives to movies. and there are fewer tickets sold to movies now than there were 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. And so in order to get people interested in going out to the movies, you need to do something special. And it seems like every time he steps up to the plate, his intention is to do something special. I'm mixed on some of his most beloved movies and there are some of his movies that are not as popular that I think are among his best, but it's not only worth paying attention to, he demands deep attention and analysis.

1:10:55Sean Fennessey:Like scholarship. Yeah. And I think that his super fans find that rewarding and his casual fans are at least willing to have a conversation about what they just watched. And that says a lot. I think that you can't underestimate how willing and quickly we are, how willing we're quickly able to pivot away from what we've just done right now. You know what I mean? Like the minute a movie is over, people take out their phones and they're like, oh, who do I have to text? They stop thinking about the movie. Yes. and his movies just insist that you just sit there for a minute think about what you just saw respect the scale I really have liked the last few movies and I've been trying to think about why that you know Dunkirk to some extent but really Tenet Oppenheimer and this film have resonated so deeply with me and I think it's because he changed editors and Jennifer Lame is his editor now and with Jennifer Lame he's changed his filmmaking style it's not a subtle change he's using images from all different parts of the timeline of the movie earlier and later in the film and he's using this kind of recall style that I think is I don't know if it's it's not revolutionary it's something you can find in experimental filmmaking in the 1960s it's something that you can find in European cinema in the 70s but it is a very sophisticated idea of filmmaking that he's putting in blockbusters and I really really like how he's doing it and he's doing it again in the Odyssey in a really audacious way.

1:12:25Sean Fennessey:And like, this is something also that great filmmakers do is that like they keep stacking on top of their style over time. So you get more and more out of every movie. And then you think about how they're all connected to each other over time and whether he's improving or not improving. And he is right now in that sweet spot. So one of the things that I didn't really think about was that Dunkirk is his 10th film. And it's like since Dunkirk, I think he has sort of moved into this. You know, I know that the introduction of Jennifer Liam happens on... I think on Tenet. On Tenet. Tenet certainly introduces this cutting style that is essentially...

1:12:58I don't even know how to describe it, because one of the things that I don't think he gets enough credit for is how unconventional his movies are. Even in The Odyssey, one of the things that struck me is how little breathing room there is. There isn't a lot of... Guy goes over to a window and stares out and says, well, the Spartans may come one day. He doesn't hold a shot for more than 15 seconds. And some of that is form and function, right? Because the IMAX camera, the magazine doesn't run that long. So he doesn't get these long takes that maybe, you know, we're accustomed to. And maybe our TV watching brain especially is accustomed to like watching people in interiors and a very conventional kind of like master one or one or cutting style.

1:13:37And you're right. Like Jennifer Liam and Christopher Nolan are cutting back and forth across like five minutes later, six years later. And in Tenet, like scenes seem to be already in media res when we're joining them, you Which is not that different than how Michael Bay cuts, but it is given this almost avant-garde polish to the way Nolan does it.

1:13:57Sean Fennessey:And the material is just much more serious. It's not like boom, boom, explosion onto the next thing. I thought you don't think Revenge of the Fallen is serious? It is to me. And I take it seriously. But if you're making Oppenheimer, and even if you're using a frenetic cutting style, it doesn't change the fact that it's a story about one of the most consequential people of the 20th century. And so using tools that are best understood as like action movie making tools for Homer, this is a new thing. It is an evolution, I think, of filmmaking style in a way that I find really exciting. And it's not that it's being overlooked.

1:14:41Sean Fennessey:I think people have cited that something has changed a little bit in recent years. But for something like The Odyssey, you talk about how it's kind of compressed. because there's just so much incident in the story. You just kind of have to go from place to place. But what makes it exciting is not just that feeling of like, oh, the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens. These are things that if you know even just a little bit about the Odyssey, you know this stuff is coming in the movie. It's what he puts in between all that stuff. It's all the spackle. It's all the binding of the story, which is all the stuff that is unexpected.

1:15:11Sean Fennessey:It's going into the past. It's shifting the perspective of how the story is being told. Flashes of the future, which is also the past. But it doesn't have the kind of what I think people maybe rejected a little bit about Dunkirk, which is the discombobulation of time and how people maybe felt manipulated by certain elements of the way that he plays with the timelines in Dunkirk. Although it's certainly like, I think it's pretty legible once you've seen the film to go back and be like, ah, yes, that's him flying over that day. I think it really works with the Odyssey. We're sort of obviously staying away from getting into the weeds with Odyssey.

1:15:50But this is almost an inversion of what happens with Oppenheimer. I understood why Oppenheimer was made the way it was, because that is essentially, with the exception of the explosion, the Trinity test, is going to be this super dry, procedural, kind of dense story about a guy who has an idea, who's running across the globe to try and chase this idea, and then is drafted into service of his nation to do so. And it almost suits it because you're like, okay, let's pop all this up. Let's prop all this up and make it a legal thriller and make it a military, you know, like TikTok. The Odyssey, you would think, is like, well, this is the story, right?

1:16:34This is the greatest action story ever told. This is the most amazing adventure ever told. This is what all the stories are based on. All you have to do is get out of the way. But he actually is like, Like, no, because of all the context around it, because it's like classical, because it's confusing, because people aren't going to know Spartans versus the Trojans versus the Greeks and everything. They're going to have to like get pushed into this like whitewater rapids of this story. And I think it actually really works in Odyssey, but it is like, you're watching and you're like, this movie is going to make a billion dollars probably and be the biggest film of the year probably.

1:17:12And it's kind of weird. It's a weird movie.

1:17:15Sean Fennessey:It's very weird. I mean, there's other choices that he makes. It is an adaptation. I mean, there are things that are left out. There are things that are changed. There's a lot of time spent in the story of the Odyssey kind of pointing out what a sort of arrogant figure that Odysseus is and sort of like what a flawed character he is and rereading it over the last few months. It's like, I've come away feeling like he's kind of the original flawed protagonist. Yeah. And... The original Draper. Yeah. Honestly, he is like, he's a bad TV character. And, but Nolan cast Matt Damon, who's kind of fundamentally decent and one of the easiest people to root for in all of movies.

1:18:01Sean Fennessey:And he's played shitheels. He memorably played a shitheel in Interstellar. But you're just kind of with Matt Damon. It's part of what makes him a good star is you're rooting for him. And so like even that kind of complicates the character of the movie where it feels like a more traditional adventure hero story. But he's doing all this avant-garde work around it. So you're like you feel safe even when he's taking chances. And the same is true of Oppenheimer. Like the first 20 minutes of Oppenheimer, I remember seeing it with you and Andy. And in the first 20 minutes I was like, oh, this is something different and special.

1:18:34Sean Fennessey:Like, this is very special because he's just dispensing with the most boring part of the movie where you have to, like, show him as a child and show a critical incident that informed why this man became a scientist. Like, he just speed ran the first 25 years of Oppenheimer's life with this dramatic score and this flash cutting style that he was doing. And he was just like, that stuff's boring. I'm going to make it as exciting as I can and then we're going to go to the next thing. And the same thing is happening in the Odyssey. You know, you do get this kind of extended prologue where you're, you know, back on, back in Homer's palace or in Odysseus's palace in Ithaca.

1:19:11Sean Fennessey:And then after that, it's just like you're off to the races. And we're going through all these crazy incidents. So, yeah, it's like it's a gutsy adaptation. If you don't think about it too hard, it's just an exciting action movie. You get back to the Tenet thesis of like, just don't think about it, feel it. You can watch his movies and be like, oh, I didn't actually hear much of the dialogue or like only picked up every other line or something like that, which I think people with extensive live music experience will probably have that experience in the Odyssey, just like they do with every one of his movies.

1:19:41But you can also just sort of marvel at what he's doing. You can just look at the landscapes and you can look at the sequences and the set pieces. And you can also just get the feeling from like when you see Bernthal or when you see with Peter Nyong 'o, you're like, I know what's happening. Broadly speaking, I know what's happening.

1:19:57Sean Fennessey:Who do you think are his forebears? Because you asked that really provocative question about who's the director of the century. So it's like probably the previous 25 years is probably Steven Spielberg. Yeah, I was actually kind of looking at this because there's the argument that we could have about who has had the most significant contribution to filmmaking in the 21st century. And you can get into PTA. Funnily enough, you know, Dunkirk was Nolan's 10th movie. One Battle is PTA's 10th movie. I think PTA has a little bit of a harder time putting his movies together. You know, One Battle obviously had DiCaprio and Warner Brothers behind it, and that was his most expensive film.

1:20:38It doesn't seem like he's going to make something even bigger next, but who knows?

1:20:43Sean Fennessey:I'm not sure. Scorsese's had a remarkable 21st century, but I think he almost exists in the same way that Spielberg does to me of this sort of like, you've already been minted, you know? And like, we're just so happy you're grinding these out. But, you know, between Shutter Island, Aviator, Shutter Island, Departed, Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon, that's his 21st century. And critically acclaimed almost all the way down the line, but doesn't command audiences the way that Nolan does. I mean, that's really the thing that Nolan does. Maybe you could say Denis Villeneuve is coming up behind him a little bit.

1:21:17That would be the sort of most obvious contender in this arena.

1:21:23Sean Fennessey:And it's interesting to watch those guys do things that feel more like Cecil B. DeMille or John Ford than like Martin Scorsese or even like Steven Spielberg. You know, Steven Spielberg in his prime was a tremendously personal filmmaker. You know, like, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that's a deeply personal movie. Yeah. I do think that Christopher Nolan sees a lot of himself in the protagonist that he portrays. There's a reading of The Odyssey that it is straight up about Christopher Nolan. For sure. I think it's a reading of the Odyssey that people are going to see when they get to the end of it that is like, oh, this is about the world right now.

1:21:59A hundred percent.

1:22:01Sean Fennessey:We can talk about that after people have seen it. But I'm kind of fascinated by those two directors, Villeneuve as well, deciding to take on a Bond movie, of really spending a lot of time thinking about not just how the audience will react, but what will get the audience interested. And I don't think that Scorsese and Spielberg and some of those guys who came to fame in the 70s, Coppola is among that cohort. A lot of that generation is dying off, honestly. But those guys who are still making those films, they're thinking about themselves, I think, first. Yeah, I wonder whether or not that Spielberg era where it's Jurassic Schindler, Saving Private Ryan, and AI is probably the sweet spot of what is something that's going to bring everybody here, but also will give me an opportunity to express myself about my own personal like kind of passion points.

1:22:51Sean Fennessey:And for Spielberg, that's, he's roughly in his early 50s, which is the time that Christopher Nolan is right now. Yeah, we should do like a larger thing about like how old these guys are, how much juice they have, what they decide to do once they're like, no one's going to take this away from me. So what I want, but I still want to be relevant. Yeah, it's weird. Like, obviously I've gotten a lot of shit, perhaps rightfully so from my inception takes over the years. But one of the things I always felt watching it, I was like, this is a little bit of an immature movie. Like it's a movie made by like a filmmaker who has incredible skill, but like maybe hasn't fully like baked their stuff.

1:23:25Sean Fennessey:And one of the reasons why I've gotten so interested in what he's doing lately is I feel like he is in total command. Like he is the absolute maestro of movies right now. And the thing that we should probably just say about The Odyssey too is like, I can't remember the last time a movie like this was even attempted. Like it's seven countries on multiple continents in multiple climates with hundreds of extras and background actors. I mean, every single actor is in and this has just been like, this is the craziest thing I've ever done and will ever do. And, you know, Damon's done basically a five-month press tour at this point.

1:24:00You know, this trailer came out late last year. They have more or less been on the road promoting this on and off since then. And Damon's story is about making this movie and about like Nolan walking up to him with an IMAX camera with Hoyt Van Hoytema and being like, okay, you're going to walk over there and turn and you're going to look. And he's like, I look and the fleet is there. Like he's got four boats going across. And he's like, there was no signal that that was going to happen. He's just like in control of like the entire game. It's pretty remarkable.

1:24:33Sean Fennessey:You have to doff your cap to him just demanding that this be what the movies are. Like that is what is really special to me about it is like we're in a time where it's been a very cool movie year and there's been a lot of talk about that on Bill's show, on our shows, about how, you know, movies have juice this year. I don't know if they're like back, back, back the way that they were in 1997, but they have juice. And the only way that that continues is if you have powerful people demanding this kind of thing. Yeah. Like you have to say, I want to do the biggest thing you're willing to attempt.

1:25:06Sean Fennessey:And I know that most studios, when I talk to the people who work at studios, they're like, we do want a filmmaker. We want a visionary. We want a person who we can use to sell and market the movie and who also is capable of going to the heavens with anything they try to make. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer, argue with Chris Ryan, a.k.a. CR, but even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job start to finish.

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1:26:19Enter now at Michelob Ultra dot com slash superior access slash FIFA World Cup two six Michelob Ultra FIFA World Cup 26 superior access. No purchase necessary. Open a U.S. Residence 21 plus begins on December 1st, 2025 ends on July 31st, 2026 multiple entry periods. visit www.mickelobalcher.com slash superior access slash FIFA World Cup 26 for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details. Yeah. I do think Kubrick is basically the closest comparison point we have where it's somebody who is working at the forefront of camera technology and is so obsessed with how the movie is being made and the way in which it's going to be seen.

1:27:04He perhaps, not even perhaps, he is certainly a more, I think, complicated and intellectually stimulating and probably unknowable filmmaker than Nolan is. But that's the comparison point. Like Spielberg had it, has people kind of in his pocket at a couple of points in his career, but almost sometimes like feels like... I feel like we're doing the book of basketball pyramid right now. Well, I'm just trying to find, like, I'm trying to like appreciate the moment we're in because I don't think it's going to last forever for a variety of reasons. And so this guy going on this run, doing a superhero trilogy and then being like, I'm going to bring original genre movies back.

1:27:46I'm going to orchestrate massive historical, world historical important moments. And then I'm going to do the Odyssey. It feels Kubrickian.

1:27:57Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Well, you know, Kubrick, one of the great sadnesses of his career, and for those of us who love his movies, was he never got to make Napoleon. Yeah. Right? And this is kind of Nolan's Napoleon. It is like the most epic scale story that he could possibly tell, given the circumstances in the industry at the time. And that movie, Falling Apart, there's an amazing book that is just entirely about the failed production that features the screenplay and all the storyboards and everything that he prepared to do that. The reason he made Barry Lyndon is because he wanted to make a film of that era in the aftermath of Napoleon Falling Apart.

1:28:27Sean Fennessey:there are some differences between Kubrick and Nolan though. Like, Kubrick to me is much more psychologically probing and daring about what it means to be human. Like his representation of violence and sex is way beyond I think anything Nolan has ever come from. No, I mean, that was sort of funny. I was re-watching segments of Nolan's movies last night and it's remarkable how little blood is in Dunkirk. You know, for all the shooting and Tenet, very little viscera. It's why I say Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford. because he's more of a classicist in that way. He's like, he's a very old school thinker and filmmaker.

1:29:02Sean Fennessey:And, you know, he has his uniform. Whenever you see him, he's always sipping tea. He has like, he has personified himself in a very smart way. He casts actors who kind of dress like him and look like him. He does. And, you know, you could also say Hitchcock is probably a clear kind of inspiration in terms of like, what does it mean to be a Christopher Nolan movie? Like a Stanley Cooper movie means a lot of different kinds of things. One of the great things when you watch his, like highlight reels of his movies is like they all look different. All the protagonists are kind of different. There's a kind of an intensity and a mania, but they all are different in a specific way.

1:29:32Sean Fennessey:They're all in different milieus. Nolan, Nolan is working for the masses like and not in a bad way. Kubrick was successful commercially, but not like Nolan. I mean, Nolan engineered Oppenheimer to a billion dollars. That's the craziest fucking thing that's happened in the movies in years. I'm trying to think of like, you know, Nolan is obviously a huge fan of Michael Mann. Dark Knight is hugely influenced by Heat. And Mann has this period where he's doing Last of the Mohicans is a very successful romantic epic set in colonial times. Then you have Heat, you have the procedural courtroom and journalist thriller of Insider.

1:30:15You have this sort of boundary pushing technologically or cinematography-wise collateral. and you have Ali all kind of in this mix. But those films are not making, those were not like the central movies of the year that they were released, you know, largely. You know, they were very well regarded and had obvious converts like me among them. But like, they're not like, stop everything else. We have to talk about the Odyssey for a month.

1:30:42Sean Fennessey:I feel like also movie culture has mostly been behind Man, where, you know, Heat was a popular movie upon its release, but it was not identified as what would become one of the most influential films in the 1990s. It just was not. And I think the good works that you and Bill Simmons have been doing have contributed to that. But there's just been a slow and steady movement toward its overwhelming power. This is something that Chuck joked about with Bill on Sunday as well, the idea of it being overrated now after being underrated for so many years. I don't think, there's no like waiting to talk about Nolan's influence.

1:31:15Sean Fennessey:You know, there's no like, we don't have to wait around to think about the depth and reach of Interstellar. Like, Interstellar was a massive hit upon release. People who were 11 years old who saw it when it came out, it became one of their most favorite and influential movies. Still, like, the most significant, like, thing I noticed about modern movie culture is that, like, it's not all about us. No. And going, when we had a chance to go to this movie theater in London, The Prince Charles, where we got to host a screening of Phantom Thread. but I believe like after Phantom Thread, they were doing a midnight screening of Interstellar.

1:31:52This is a couple of years ago, but I think this is still the case. And the line was down the block and it was all young people. And part of it was like, we're going to bring like drinks in and like we're going to have like a great night watching Interstellar take a gummy and like whatever. But I think that has become like what we think of Jurassic Park.

1:32:07Sean Fennessey:I think, yeah, I think it's Jurassic Park. I think it's E.T. I think it's those movies that when we were kids that... Like Tate Frazier thinks Interstellar is like one of the best movies ever made. And he's, you know, he's right. like for Tate for him that's all that matters you know what I mean and that that's something that like I guess Kubrick did have that you know I guess he did have well I saw Blackboard Orange and it changed my taste forever and I thought about movies differently forever but it's interesting to have now three generations of Nolan fans I mean that's really where we're at I wonder if we'll ever start to see or if we've already started to see and I just haven't picked up on it like people making movies in his style because they're very hard to imitate they're very difficult to finance if you're not him.

1:32:48So it's, I wonder when there will be something that we'll see. I suppose you could try to mimic the Jennifer Lame-Nolan cutting style. I wouldn't try. I would also imagine you would get noted to death by the studio if you're like, hey, it's my second movie, but I've decided to cut it the way Christopher Nolan cut Oppenheimer.

1:33:05Sean Fennessey:I mean, it can be done. It's just, it needs to be the right material and the right skill set. Jennifer Lame, you know, she's an Oscar winner because of her work on a Nolan film. Hoitavan Hoitama is an Oscar winner because of his work on a Nolan film. Ludwig Urinson, we haven't mentioned him. He's now the composer of the last few films that he's made. His work on The Odyssey is incredible. And those people are best in class and they're all working with the director who's at the absolute forefront of the industry and the form. So you could try to imitate it, I guess. You're not going to have $250 million.

1:33:38Sean Fennessey:You're not going to have his vision and you're not going to have all these people who know how to execute. So it's challenging. I think it's really more like feel. Like what feeling does a Kubrick movie give you or what feeling does a Kubrick movie or Nolan movie give you? And then what do you do with that? And how does that inform and influence people 20 years from now? I think that the difference is that you can still watch Kubrick movies and it makes you question things about existence. And when you watch Nolan movies, I think you think about the Nolan movie you just watched. Yeah. I feel like it's a little bit.

1:34:09This is no knock against Nolan, but like I was watching. We did an event where we presented Tenet up in Toronto last week. and so I watched Tenet like in pieces a few times and I started to just realize like all I was thinking about was Tenet and trying to solve Tenet and trying to figure out what he meant to do here with Tenet and not time. That's kind of weird. What if we could go backwards? What would we do? And what if the past was trying to kill us? And what does that mean? It was a very like, when you take your head out of the like the visor, you're like, oh, okay. Like there's a whole world around here.

1:34:42Sean Fennessey:I agree with you. I do think that The Odyssey is a movie that does this really well. It's one of his only movies that I immediately was like, well, what is this really about? And not how does it fit together because I already knew the story. And so that's one of the advantages of this movie is because you are likely to know the story or at least parts of the story and because the conclusion, which is thrilling, is so classical. You don't have to worry about how it all fits together or whether it makes sense or not. You have to think about why he wanted to make it and what it means to him. And then maybe even furthermore, what it means to the world right now.

1:35:18Sean Fennessey:And there is a lot in there. For sure. And I think Oppenheimer had that. And I think Dunkirk was more of like a love letter to a dream of collective responsibility. And I think honestly, it's probably been, that is echoed in the Odyssey. The idea of what we have and what we could lose and all these things. The recurring motif in conversation during the Odyssey is civilization. Yeah. How do we get back to civilization? How do we rebuild? How do we become human to each other again? And what do you do if you break the golden rule? Exactly. I wanted to ask you a little bit about, you know, we grew up reading William Goldman, and he was so amazing writing about movie stars and what they can do for movies and what movies can do for movie stars.

1:36:06and you know tragically I think Keith Ledger would have been the greatest example of somebody who's worked with Nolan then set his career on a completely different trajectory

1:36:15Sean Fennessey:well think about just him appearing in other Nolan movies yeah I mean you can you can fantasy cast him into almost every movie he's made since he probably would have been Odysseus no question yeah or could have been Odysseus absolutely I I did you know this cast is incredible several people stand out in it but it does feel like he's kind of got almost a closed circuit now. And I don't know that like when I see somebody in a Nolan movie, their career changes necessarily. I suppose Pattinson and Tennant, like I started looking at him a little bit differently after that film. But what do you think about what happens to actors when they go through Nolan's school?

1:36:57Sean Fennessey:Well, there's this great story in our buddy Zach Barron's profile of sort of the making of The Odyssey and GQ where he talks to Pattinson and Zach had written a piece about Pattinson before and they clearly have a comfort with each other. And Pattinson was like, he recounted getting the phone call from Nolan about making the movie. And Pattinson was like, wow, you're making The Odyssey. That sounds awesome. I can't wait to read the script. And Nolan said to him, you're the only person that has to read the script. Everybody agreed right away. And, you know, it says something funny about Pattinson who seems like a bit of an oddball in a very charming way.

1:37:34Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And it says something, I think, about what Nolan means to actors. That it's not just that they know the material is going to be good and they want to work with him, but that being in a Christopher Nolan movie is the biggest thing you can do. It's the biggest thing you can do. And, you know, Matt Damon's already appeared in his films, and Hathaway's already appeared in his films. And you've got this long, Himish Patel plays a big part in this movie. He was in Tenet. Yeah. There's a series of actors. He's got a little bit of a company going, a rep. Absolutely. And you've got all these actors who want to step up.

1:38:04Sean Fennessey:But then you have a couple of new people who are very big. You've got Charlize Theron. You've got Tom Holland. You've got people who haven't worked with him before. You'd be stupid to turn down the part in the movie, even though Charlize Theron's part is not that big. It's pivotal, but it's not that big, even though she's one of the five biggest female stars, certainly over the age of 30 in Hollywood right now. This is sort of the funny thing about the way his movies are working these days is that obviously Cillian Murphy and Downey are huge parts of Oppenheimer. So is Benny Safdie, but only for part of it.

1:38:33And so is Matt Damon, but only for part of it. And so is Josh Hartnett, but only for part of it. You don't get the usual, like, I started here and I ended here. With Nolan, you usually, you're like, I'm here. Yeah.

1:38:45Sean Fennessey:There's usually one handsome white guy. Sometimes it's John David Washington, but it's mostly one handsome white guy. And then everybody else around them are just much more famous than the actor you would expect to find in that part. Sure. There are some exceptions. Like, I love John Leguizamo in this movie. I've had such an inspired choice to cast him in this part. But that's not common. You know, like Tom Hardy is playing the third lead of Inception. He's almost the Michael Caine part of this movie, right? Leguizamo. Yeah. It's a very good call. I hadn't thought of that. Just like the kind of like, I am veteran steady, whatever I need to do here, I'm off book, you're not going to have to worry about me.

1:39:19Point the camera at me, it works.

1:39:21Sean Fennessey:And have gravitas, you know? And I fit in, even though you wouldn't think John Leguizamo immediately for The Odyssey. As soon as he's on screen, you're like, oh yes, you were in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. You know exactly how to do this. A modern telling of an ancient tale. You're a stage qualified actor. You know, like whatever stage it is, like you can do this. Yes. Yeah, I think obviously this question is leading to Tom Holland because he will probably be the performance people debate the most, I imagine. I thought he was quite good in it. It's the least effective part of the movie for me.

1:39:53Yeah, Telemachus is the character he's playing and it is a tough role because you're just like basically like asking people what to do for two hours and 45 minutes. But it'll be fascinating to see if this puts him on Matt Damon from age 30 to 55 trajectory, or if he's like, you know, they don't, there's not enough Christopher Nolan's to make movies the way I want to make them.

1:40:19Sean Fennessey:So much of this conversation is about the choices that people are making and that Nolan keeps making interesting choices for himself. He keeps pushing himself to do bigger things and more interesting material, even if it's the oldest material in the world. And in that same Zach Barron story, there's a lot of conversation with Tom Holland about how his eyes were opened to what a movie career could be by working on a Chris Nolan movie and that he demanded that the production of the new Spider-Man movie not only be pushed back, but work differently because of how he watched Nolan work. And now the big thing is just, will Tom Holland make better choices?

1:40:52Sean Fennessey:I love the idea of and hanging out with Robert Pattinson. Robert Pattinson makes the drama. Yeah. And good time. Robert Pattinson's fearless. For an actor as handsome, with the origins in Twilight. He just seems like a guy's like, this is a fucking lark. Yes. I want to just do interesting stuff. He wants to have a good time. He wants to be... Now, crucially, he's playing Batman and is like, that'll pay for everything for the rest of my life. But Tom Holland already has that. He has Spider-Man and it sounds like he wants to keep being Spider-Man. So if he does, what are you doing with your coin when you're not Spider-Man?

1:41:22Sean Fennessey:Right. And that's what makes great stars now because you do have to have this kind of linchpin thing and the Odyssey doesn't come around very often. In fact, it almost never comes around. In fact, you know, this has really never been adapted before. Parts of the Odyssey have been adapted, but it's crazy to think. I mean, Nolan described it as a stunning gap in movie history that this story has never at scale been fully adapted. And he was just like, I just don't think people could do it. I think that's what it was. I think this is now is the only time that it could have happened. But as far as the actors go, yeah, I mean, I hope Tom Holland makes good films.

1:41:57I'm not... I think we just need Tom Holland to be engaged with the idea of making good movies because Hollywood essentially functions when Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Matt Damon and Tom Cruise are like, I want to work with the best filmmakers and I want to give them what they need and I'll put my name up there to do it. And we don't have a ton of new movie stars, you know? I mean, there's a lot of people people like a lot, But one of the things I really like about Zendaya, and I hope Tom Holland follows suit, is that she's like, I may be mad, wildly famous and vaguely unknowable, but just absolutely adored and have like a complete 100 % approval rating.

1:42:37But I'm going to do Euphoria season three, and I'm going to do the drama. And it's going to be, it's going to push up against like the kind of edges of what people expect from me.

1:42:46Sean Fennessey:They serve each other. Taking on audacious, memorable stuff makes filmmakers more successful and makes actors more interesting. So, you know, we can bang the drum all day. Who's listening at this point? You think Zendaya's listening to this episode? What's she doing right now? Zendaya? Is she in the bath listening to the episode? You think she's doing the dishes? Well, she's probably at various Odyssey premiere. Do you think she has her AirPods in during Wimbledon matches and listening to you? Do you think she's like, when are they going to talk about NBA Summer League? CR is hosting the Bill Simmons podcast?

1:43:14Sean Fennessey:What the? I was hoping for a deep dive on LeBaron, Philly. last couple questions one is that you know you're going to do a pod about this with Amanda we're going to pod about it on the big picture I'm sure that won't be the last two pods you do about the Odyssey yep you did you know an extensive amount of podding about like one battle like there are movies that come along every once in a while that feel like you can't talk about them enough does this as a text feel like one of those I that's a great question I've been turning that over in my mind just thinking about what we're going to do on the show for the next few months um it didn't intoxicate me in the same way that One Battle did but One Battle was very personal for me not just as somebody who was obsessed with PTA's movies for so long but what's in the movie hit at a very specific time in my life and that's specific to me and I'm just only talking about what what kind of touches me what moves me I think The Odyssey is a more universal film will be seen by way more people will have a bigger box office.

1:44:19Sean Fennessey:I don't know, having seen it a second time where it improved as a movie for me, but I don't know if it has that same like you gotta go again feeling. Some of it, but... I think I can't wait to go again because almost all Nolan movies, when I first get out, I'm like, okay, now I can breathe. Maybe a better way to put it is like, you'll go twice, but will you go three times? And most films that become mega, mega successes, you know, your Barbies. That means it's like it's a party and people are going two, three, four times. Marvel movies were like that. Two, three, four times. You got to see it two, three, four times.

1:44:53Apparently Obsession was like that.

1:44:55Sean Fennessey:Apparently it was. The Odyssey isn't a party. It's quite a serious movie. It's exhausting. Quite an intense film. And at the end of it, you're like, I went through the ringer on that. So I don't know. I mean, it's an awards contender for sure. It's fascinating to think about him pulling the Coppola. And going back to back. where he goes and does one massive movie, wins every award, and then comes back two years later and then does the exact same thing. That's in play. It's not impossible to imagine a world where the collective Hollywood and international filmmaking world says like, well, you're just the guy right now.

1:45:34Sean Fennessey:You know, you're at the absolute top of the mountain and you decided not to come down after Oppenheimer. In fact, you somehow built more mountain on top of the mountain. And so I could see that being like a nine-month runway of discussion. Well, it's going to be interesting too because the Oscars have, I mean, they expanded to 10 films because of Dark Knight, right? And since then, there has usually been, you get your token kind of blockbuster that gets nominated, but then really like the conversation is between these three or usually two films that everybody has kind of decided it's between these two.

1:46:09And I'm not really like as well-versed on like what the Oscar films might be, but you know, it's going to be weird if it's like the Odyssey versus Fjord, you know? I mean, it will be, you know?

1:46:20Sean Fennessey:You've also got to consider it'll also be Project Hail Mary and Dune Part 3. And there will be big movies that will be sitting alongside of it. And I think that actually helps the Odyssey. Oh, for sure. You know, because Dune Part 3 is probably going to rock. But from what I've heard, it's not as epic as Part 2. And Project Hail Mary, which is a very good movie, but feels small compared to the Odyssey. For sure. It's a two-hander. Yeah. So it's titanic nature and it's cosmic significance. You know, it's all about the gods and fate, power and choice. Huge ideas. I think it's going to stand up pretty well.

1:46:53Sean Fennessey:Now, does Chris Nolan want to do the Oscar campaign in the same way for another six months and take him away from working on another project? I don't know. That's yet to be seen. Well, thanks for doing this with me. So, is this a permanent thing? I don't think so. No? Yeah, I think that we've gotten some, like, already activated Bill vacation texts that are like, hey, let's do this in the coming weeks. So I think he's back. He's coming back. What is this making you think about for your long-term future? Well, it's pretty fun to have any topic be on the board, right? Wow. It is, right? So will this auger the CR show?

1:47:34No.

1:47:35Sean Fennessey:I could never... I think the streets want it. Yeah, but the CR show is all the shows, right? That is the business model of the ring. For Beautiful Bond, that's Adam Schoen. And I just stand there in awe. Yeah, I am. I'm so fascinated by Bill's decision to do this. And he told us a few weeks ago that this was something he had been thinking about. And Bill is a student of late night television. He really understands its history and he's very influenced by it. And some people install guest hosts with confidence and some do it with anxiety. You know, speaking of Odysseus, the ultimate act of hubris on the re-apex is to say, like, I'm flying so high that I can start putting a little sunlight on the baby birds.

1:48:26Yeah.

1:48:27Sean Fennessey:Who would you from the Ringer universe most want to see in the guest hosting chair? Here? Yeah.

1:48:37Sean Fennessey:Tony Buns? Yeah. Yeah. Tony Buns. It's time. I do want honestly like one of the most sincere and genuine sports lovers I've ever come across and a delightful human being like loves sports the way like a 1987 sports illustrated writer who's just like I like the World Cup and tennis yeah well-rounded yeah loves baseball yeah I do really really really want one Cousin Sal episode without him yeah just to see what kind of I think that would be mayhem may cause a schism in their relationship if that happened Okay, but he's the one true troll. Like, Sal would be the one who planned for weeks to just do stuff that drove Bill insane.

1:49:17That's what I wanted. An epic prank. Have all his Holy Cross roommates on to, like, talk about him. Blue boy? Wow.

1:49:24Sean Fennessey:That would be our first blue boy appearance. My big dream, you know, I did have a couple of celeb guest asks out that got politely. You want to reveal that now? Sure. I asked Jalen Brown to come on this podcast. Not personally, but we made entreaties. Okay. And he just has not, you know, he wasn't available. and what would you guys have discussed um wellness I think and uh Philadelphia restaurants I would recommend some spots you might have some spots to encourage you to see and then we asked Brunthal but Brunthal was not able to make the schedule when is it gonna happen I don't know Menelaus come through is he ducking you no I think I think it'll I think it'll happen eventually but like you know I do think that the guest thing is titillating you know when you're just like I just call anybody right well apparently not anybody Jalen Brown not available.

1:50:12Sean Fennessey:It's like you're here. I see you fucking all the time. Do you think deep down Bernthal's mad? No. Did you think he was mad? Like there's an Esquire video. They ask him like have you heard the rewatchables? Have you heard the Wayne Jenkins thing? And he's like love those guys. Do you think he was I don't want to get into a thing here but What do you think? I think I think he probably likes the pod. Okay. Okay. I don't know what context he's heard it in. Did somebody send him that? And he's like, huh, okay, that's pretty funny. What's his favorite episode? Jaws 2? Yeah, probably. He liked it when I said trim stroke.

1:50:50All right, we'll get out of here. I got to let you go. Thanks to Sean Fennessey. You can hear him talking more about the Odyssey on tomorrow's episode of The Big Picture. I'm going to go on Monday's episode. We'll talk. Let's rank those Nolan movies.

1:51:04Sean Fennessey:Where does the Odyssey fit in? That's what I want to do. Yeah. It's hard to say right now, but I think top five for me. Well, let's not spoil that podcast, please, Chris. I'm just giving you a broad idea. Thanks for coming, man. Thanks, buddy. All right. Thank you so much to Ian Wright. Thank you so much to Anthony DeBundo. And of course, thank you so much to Sean Fennessey. You can listen to Ian on Stick to Football and Crossways. You can listen to Anthony DeBundo on The Ringer Gambling Show. And you can, of course, listen to Sean Fennessey on The Big Picture. I've been Chris Ryan. I still am Chris Ryan.

1:51:37I will be back here on Sunday night with Bill and with Dubundo to talk about the World Cup final and thanks to Gahau and Chris and everybody who made the show today talk to you guys soon have a great weekend

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