Dogg Day Afternoon (ft. Mary Steenburgen; and Tom Hiddleston)

25:10Two fingers. Very Dragon Ball. Yes. And yeah, I think I saw some green energy on the edge of the screen. So the sigils that he has, he's definitely got the command of magic that we all know. And also you can see on his sort of gauntlet he's got. Yes, yes. But yeah, I think there's no denying that it feels different to how it felt with Infinity War and Endgame because the build-up to those films was, it felt like the culmination of something, whereas this does not have that. and if anything I think this is a back on track sort of house clearing yeah kind of a an event yeah you're absolutely right this is this is almost the territory the difficult territory that DC have walked where you've got a team up that has not been yet earned exactly and although I really like this trailer and I did really like it and it got very exciting I love the tonality of it there is still a part of me that's just like you're having a big team up of characters who by and large are not characters I'm all that bothered by.

26:11I mean, with a couple of exceptions, without a doubt. But these are not, I would say, a collection of characters that we know and love. They're characters that we kind of know-ish and don't really have strong feelings about. That the MCU itself has forgotten about. Yeah, it feels like this is like the B-team team-up. But that doesn't mean it won't be great. True. I'm holding out hope. And it's been interesting seeing some of the reaction to this trailer. some especially in the wake of the odyssey um have found it underwhelming and like asking like where's the story and stuff like that and this is actually this is actually very consistent with how marvel do trailers especially for avengers films the first trailer is more about establishing the thread which they do and giving you cool shots and cool images the second trailer is when they get into a bit of the story and prime the audience for that and i think they're going to do that obviously they've got Comic-Con coming up.

27:04I think the second trailer will definitely have multiple mentions of the word incursions to really sort of prime people about what that is. But yeah, I think as their first trailer, it was good. I'm holding up hope that they'll stop the landing, but I do have some doubts and worries going into this. I'm pretty psyched. I thought it was a good trailer as well. I get the same worries, but I'm looking forward to it. Very much so. And if you want to hear us talk about this in, let's be honest, excruciating detail, do sign up to Empire Plus because we do have a big old spoilery, well, it's not a spoilery, because we literally know nothing about the film, but a chat, a chat about this trailer, a trailer reaction chat.

27:44For an hour and I think it was 15 minutes. But it's fine, we're fine. But it's fine. That's a normal amount of time to talk about the trailer. For a two-minute trailer, it's all good. Hey everyone, it's Chris here, jumping in as is my Walt with just a little update on this week's episode. So first things first, we're about to go into the news section. This was recorded on Wednesday, as Helen says, in the news section. And as a result, there's a lot of stuff that's happened over the last 24 hours or so. But James and Helen haven't been able to reconvene to discuss that. Things break in at Comic-Con, that sort of thing.

28:20And we will discuss most of those things on next week's show. We will be doing a Comic-Con podcast special, reaction special. Dan Jolin of this parish is also here in San Diego. He's on official business. Very, very exciting. He's not here representing Empire, but nevertheless, he has agreed to do a podcast with me, which will be recording on Saturday night. I will, all being well, turn it around to go out on Sunday or Monday at the latest. And we'll be discussing everything that happened here at Comic-Con. All the people we talked to, all the panels we saw, all the cool things we did. So that'll be a fun one.

29:03And we can talk about all the stuff that's gone down here at Comic-Con. The mind-boggling return of Johnny Depp doing a stunt today as Ebenezer Scrooge, for example, appearing in Hall H and had a pop-up installation in the middle of town. All those things will be discussed. the Marvel Studios panel, all those things will be discussed in that Comic-Con thing, and other news will be discussed as well in next week's episode. Right. Now, since January, I have turned this podcast into a one interview-only podcast, and other interviews have been brought to you in a new regular feature called The Interviews.

29:47and because I'm in Comic-Con and quite frankly I'm massively up against it I haven't had the time to do that this week I haven't had the time to put together this week's episode of the interviews so therefore what I'm going to do is for one week only you're getting a second interview just like old times so you're getting my interview with the star of the dink the great Mary Steenburgen and that's what you're about to hear now now Mary Steenburgen of course an absolute legend with an Oscar winning career that spanned some, what, six decades since her debut in Jack Nicholson's Western Going South and since then she's been seen in the likes of Time After Time, Melvin and Howard, for which she won that Oscar Parenthood, Back to the Future Part 3 Elf, Step Brothers it's a fucking Catalina wine mixer, and much much more and this week she stars In The Dink which is an amiable Apple TV comedy and she plays an older lady, Candice, whose pickleball skills lead to an unlikely friendship and perhaps a little bit more with an aimless former tennis champ played by Jake Johnson.

30:59I caught up with Steenburgen on Zoom the other week and we had a lovely chat about pickleball, about movies and about music to which she's turned her hand over the last few years with results almost as astonishing as the story of how she acquired those musical skills in the first place. I'll let her tell the story. I had a blast talking to Mary Steenburgen. I will say that I had some technical difficulties. Had to abandon my microphone for the last minute and switch to AirPods. So I may not sound like my usual crisp self. A bit like now, actually. Almost as if I'm recording this in the San Diego hotel room.

31:37But I hope that that won't impair your listening experience too much. Because Mary Steenburgen is a delight, as you're about to find out. Here we go. Enjoy. Mary, welcome to the Empire Podcast. How are you? I'm well. I'm well. Thank you. Excellent. Excellent. We're here to talk about the dink, of course, in which you display your pickleball prowess. How familiar were you with pickleball when this movie was pitched to you? Um, my son, Charlie McDowell, who lives part of the time in London and who is a member of the Lemon Pickleball Club there. Shout out to you guys. Um, he gave me a paddle and said, Mom, uh, people even older than you have beaten me at this game.

32:31I don't think they could do that anymore, but that was in the early days. And with that sweet little gift, he gave me my first paddle. And I started playing. And I've been pretty much playing ever since. And I really, two months into playing, I was told that there was a movie that they were offering me. And it was with Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, which sounded amazing, directed by Josh Greenbaum, which was exciting, that it was a comedy, that it shot in L.A., that it was a lead part. And then they said, and it's about the sport of pickleball. And I said, I'll do it. And they said, well, you have to read it.

33:23And I said, I will read it, but I am going to do it. You know, so and when I read it, it was a beautiful script and it was just fantastically funny and made me instantly want to do it. They had you at Pickleball. I love, by the way, there's a what do you call them? Pickleball bats? Paddles. Or rackets? Paddles. Paddles. Pickleball paddle. And it's right beside you. Is that the one that your son gave to you or is that? Oh, no, this is decoration. Oh, just decoration. You have like an ultra deluxe one. I don't just have one. I have quite a few of them. And some of them I'm very sentimental about and I won't play with them.

34:11I'm already doing that kind of thing. It's like collecting guitars for musicians. You know, I'm quite sentimental about a few of them. There is one from when we were shooting The Dink and Josh Greenbaum and Sean Clements, who wrote the wonderful script. They all signed it. So I'm never playing with that one. And of course, you are a musician. You are a songwriter as well. I am. Do you collect instruments also? Do you collect guitars? I have quite a few accordions. Accordions? I know. It's weird, isn't it? I admit it. It's weird. Um, I fell in love with it. Um, and I play strange little French cafe songs to myself a lot.

35:03And also for my grandchildren, they, they like it. There's a certain age that people get to and they're like, get that accordion away from me. But I never hit that age. And my grandchildren are still, they still think it's relatively cool. How did you get into the accordion? We were in McCabe's Music, which is a great music store in LA. And it was Valentine's Day. And my husband had bought me nothing. And I said, it's pretty late in the day. Is there going to be a gift when I get home for Valentine's Day? And he goes, sadly, no. And I said, then can you buy me that little green accordion on the shelf up there?

35:49And he's like, yes, with great relief. And I think he thought it would be put on a shelf at home and never played. And I just became fascinated with the puzzle. I like puzzles. And the accordion is a puzzle that you're doing three different things at the same time. You're playing, in the case of a piano accordion, you're playing the piano. You're playing the buttons, which have chords. and you're going inside and out for the bellows. And so I just loved it and started playing it. That's amazing. I mean, I didn't say I play it brilliantly. I'm not brilliant at it, but I love it. Kind of like my pickleball passion, but no real prowess.

36:43No skill whatsoever, but a lot of passion. I somehow, I suspect not. But I suspect you play it well brilliantly. But I'll get back to the dig in a second. But I'm just fascinated by this kind of musical chapter of your life as well. And that's something that's fairly late breaking and a very unorthodox fashion that came your way. It happened April 17, 2007. I had a surgery on my right arm. And we don't know precisely what happened. I'll never know. But the theory from an anesthesiologist friend said, I think they let your blood pressure get too low. And I think you had some little something that happened in the brain.

37:35I was the same person physically. I was the same person emotionally. but I had this, it's so hard to describe it, but it's as though this musical tornado took residency in my brain so that someone, I would pass a street sign and it would say Lost Lake Lane and that became a song I wrote. And I never had seen the world through music before. and I don't think I received a talent, but I received a sort of opening or obsession that has led to, again, I don't know if it's talent, but a skill because I've actually really, that thing Malcolm Gladwell talks about, the 10 ,000 hours, I've spent many hours, many hours writing music now.

38:42Yeah, I'm just fascinated by this. And in a strange way, you know, I don't know if you think about cosmic coincidences or the universe giving you gifts in a way. It strikes me that, you know, playing pickleball and then two months later, someone comes up and says, I love making a pickleball movie. I know. It just feels like the universe has handed you gifts over the last few years. Yes, yes. Yes, and the only thing that I guess I feel that was my part in it, because I do think I do believe in those sorts of gifts from the universe, the only thing I did right was that I said yes to both of them.

39:29Because a lot of times I think things come our way and we say, I can't do that. I don't do that. You know, many years ago, I went to a psychic in Dublin named Sandra Ramdani. And she told me that I was going to write music. And she saw this image of people standing and applauding and me receiving some sort of award for writing music. And it was at that moment when she was telling me this that I thought, oh, you're probably not a very good sidekick because that is not going to happen. There's no way that's going to happen. I'm not a musician. I have no idea how to write music. I can't imagine that I would ever know how to write music.

40:21And I don't even particularly want to write music. And I didn't believe it. And then all these years later, when this thing started happening, it took me a while to remember that. I think I was writing music two or three years before someone was talking about psychics. And I went, oh, my God, I was told about this one time, and I never put it together. And so I learned from that that when stuff comes along, you know, that is a gift to you, say yes. Say yes. You know, I'm not a great pickleball player, but do I have so much joy in playing? Have I made friends? Do I go out with my granddaughter and play and just can't believe we're doing this?

41:14So much joy has come my way just from saying yes to it. That's amazing. you go through the door that opens. Exactly, exactly. Has that been something that has, you clung to that throughout your career? Yes, yes. Some great films you've made are just, yes, I'll do Step Brothers, absolutely. Yes, Step Brothers was scary because day one, those guys out of the gate were so extraordinary, so far above anything I could ever do improvisational That's what it felt like. And I looked at the great, brilliant actor, Richard Jenkins, who was feeling exactly the same way I was. And we looked at each other and we went, what are we doing here?

42:04And I went home that night and I thought about it and I came back the next day and I said, Richard, I know what we're doing here. And he said, what? I said, we're making it real enough that we're enabling them to play two idiots that live at home with their parents. That's our job. Make it real. And from that moment on, Richard and I were locked into this, and we had the best time. One of the things I was really taken with in the film is that central relationship between Jake's Dustin and your Candace. because there is a hint of a romance between the two of you. I don't want to spoil this for people.

42:51I don't want to tell people where this goes. But I'll be honest, Mary, I was rooting for you guys. I was rooting for you crazy kids to get together. Was that something that you felt as well? And was that something that developed out of being on set with Jake, finding chemistry with Jake, and just playing around with material? or was that always in the script, that connection between the two? It was the hardest thing for, even before I came on, it was the hardest thing for them to figure out how that would end, how that story would end. And like you, I don't want to spoil it. So I'll just say that a lot of thought was given to what those two characters really needed.

43:41And sometimes I felt the same way you felt about it. And sometimes increasingly I felt that how it ends is sort of perfect. But it was an interesting thing because, you know, There's a huge, not small, a huge age difference between us. But there is also the fact that these two people in their own way are quite similar. And they're both pretty quirky. And they both are lost. And they both have similar, they need someone to show up for them. and in the end they do that for each other. Yeah, I agree. I thought it was interesting as well that this is a comedy, but it's a comedy with a lot of heart.

44:47But it was really interesting that it would even explore the possibility of a relationship between two people who, you know, one of them is older than the other. Well, let's just be honest that the woman is older because there have been plenty of films that were just fine with the man being way older than the woman. I can't think of a single one, Mary. Exactly. I can think of a dozen, but I can't think of a single one. But yeah, I think it was a really, really refreshing thing to say as well. I'm so glad you guys explored that. Mary, it's been an avid pleasure. I'm going to let you go, but thanks so much for your time.

45:27Let's move on to movie news. There has not been, I would say, a wild amount. Well, Helen, there has been one big bit of news, and I talk about this on Monday's pilot, but for those of you who can't wait, it's to do with God of War. Because Ryan Hurst, the ghost of Sparta, Kratos himself, we see him in the Odyssey with Telemachus. He is no longer going to be Kratos. Yeah. How do you feel about this, Iman? Are you happy? Are you sad? Does it open the door for Chris Judge to take the role? What do you think it means? I am sad, because especially to have a really cool role like this and be injured in such a way...

46:03Yeah, I think he tore his bicep. Yes, yeah. That's just inherently sad, and I feel bad for Ryan Hurst, and I hope that he heals extremely quickly. Does this open the door for Christopher Judge? I would not be mad at that at all. I think he's so great in that role in the games. He doesn't just do the voice, he does the mo-cap as well. If you're a God of War fan, if you haven't watched the God of War documentaries, essentially, about the makings of that game, please do. Especially the God of War 2018. There's a really emotional moment when he's talking about the Blades of Chaos and getting those back in the game.

46:38And it meant a lot to Christopher Judge, not just in the game, but personally as well. And he kind of retells that story. It's very, very emotional. So I would love to see him take on the role personally. But we'll see. I know that you would also like that, because I remember talking to you about this. Oh my God, I can't believe they didn't cast him from the get-go. I think it was, honestly, I think it was a massive own guy. And I love Ryan Hurst. I think he's a great actor. And actually, I think he was a good choice, but only if you're not going to get Chris Judge. And I think Chris Judge is absolutely the man for this.

47:08He has the most astonishing voice. But also, you know, if people remember Stargate SG-1 when he was teal, like, he's just great. Loads of time for Chris Judge. And I really, really, really do hope that they take this opportunity to do what they should have done in the first place. If and when we do the Equus Quiz judge, do not release another photo like the one that you did at the start of this journey because, God, that was bad. It was. Uh-huh. Helen's well excited about this. Cool. Great, guys. Thanks so much. Hey, I say, Helen, see, what you're doing there is you're pretending not to care, but I know, I know you have a soft spot for Teal.

47:47I know that you are currently in the midst of a big old binge of SG1. Okay. No, first time, we're still going through it. I am one episode away from the end of season 10. At last. Yes. You are the Teal Kive, aren't you? It's been a long road. I am Teal Kive, especially since he started wearing sleeveless shirts. But, yeah, I have, I mean, I don't have any God of War feelings whatsoever. I can search my heart from here to wherever. I'll tell you this, the score for the games is done by Bear McQuarrie. Okay, I'm on board. And those scores are freaking phenomenal. Okay, I do like, also Bear McCreary.

48:22He is my most listened to artist on Spotify most years. Mostly because I work to a lot of Battlestar Galactica. Yeah. And Rings of Power and so on. But I don't care about God of War and I'm glad we've finished talking about it. There were a couple of trailers this week. So there was Other Mummy. Can we talk about that jump scare in that trailer? Which, I don't know about you, it scared the absolute shit out of me. Well, let us set up what the hell the film is first, shall we? Go for it. So this is Jessica Chastain playing the mother to a small girl, but also the other mummy, the mysterious and not nice, I'm going to venture, presence that haunts their house.

49:06Yeah. So the question in every scene that she's in, as far as I can tell, is going to be, is this mother, source of comfort and food and safety and general love and care? or is this other mummy terrifying beast from beyond? Yes. Don't know. I have not had a chance to watch this yet, not because I'm a scaredy cat. Sure, sure. But it looks really good. I've seen a lot of chatter about it and it's just interesting to me to see where we are vis-a-vis horror right now. Horror is really, really clicking and it feels like everyone is trying to jump onto their own horror vehicle and find something that really sort of hits the spot.

49:52So, yeah, I've watched this trailer. I'm not... I'm a bit of a scaredy cat, but I'm going to watch the trailer. There is a scare. It's the best kind of jump scare, which is not one where something jumps into the frame with a loud noise. It's something where something and you see something in the back of the frame and you're like, oh my Jesus, ah! And I had a proper freak out. and I don't scare that easily in that way but it really weirded me out even the cover for the trailer there was a very sinister smile that Jessica Chastain has does that sort of show up I guess in the trailer yeah there's definitely definitely a man of that full on kind of joker this is also we should say directed by Rob Savage who obviously has horror form and things like Host and Dashcam and the slightly less accessible I think the Boogeyman although I was still scared, just to be clear.

50:47And also stars Jay Duplass. Arabella Olivia Clark is the kid. You've got Ditchin Lackman in there, Ariane Moayed, and Karen Allen. So it's a good cast all over. I'm freaked out, but I will have to go see it, I guess. So, yeah. And just while we've been talking about Other Mummy, the trailer has dropped for Clayface. The latest trailer has dropped for Clayface. The upcoming DC film, this was the one with the script by Mike Flanagan and directed by James Watkins and is starring Naomi Aki Tom Rhys-Harris as Clayface who's the author star? It's got Max Minghella in there Eddie Marsan so yeah this is really emphasising I would say the body horror aspect of this film.

51:40If you enjoyed the bit in The Matrix where Nia's mouth disappears this is the film for you yeah now I'm really really excited for this Mike Flanagan who wrote this part of his inspiration for the script was Batman the animated series there's a two part episode in that series called Feet of Clay which is sensational if you have not watched that I highly recommend doing so but that was part of the inspiration for his script and as he's mentioned it definitely gets into the body horror aspect of it. I think what is also at play here is just the tragedy of Clayface. I hope that that really comes through because he's a really tragic character.

52:25And yeah, I'm really, really excited. I think this has actually come at the perfect time for DC, who are a little bit sort of... On the back foot, I would say. On the back foot right now. But as we mentioned, horror is really in vogue right now. and if this can really bridge the gap between not only the comic book stuff but the horror stuff in a really effective way, then this could arrive at the perfect time for them. So, yeah, fingers crossed. How are you feeling, James? I am very whelmed. Wow. The first teaser actually really intrigued me. This trailer felt wildly generic. I was just like, I must admit, I'm really disappointed in that trailer.

53:06I can't speak to the film, I haven't seen it. but you know and Mike Flanagan being involved in the story really gives me hope because I have a lot of faith in him but this this had Morbius vibes to me no I'm sorry I'm sorry it just seemed like really lame and they were just leading in like a lot of the you know I was wondering if there would be interesting ambiguous horror narrative stuff there might be but the beats in this trailer are very much like you know villain or unfortunate hero or anti-hero origin stuff. And the body horror stuff, again, there is a couple of shots in this which are generally quite grim and actually quite good, but there's one in particular that I would say is on a par with that one from 1999's The Matrix.

53:47And I was just like, bad CGI, gooey flesh stuff. I don't know. I have real concerns about this now. Wow. Okay. What about you, Helen? What do you think? I was scared, so I'm in. Yeah, I think it's going to be fun. But yeah, we should say, look, you could be 100 % right, James, but we've got to hope. I really hope I'm not, because actually I was quite excited about the idea of this. And the first teaser genuinely is quite unnerving. So I'm hoping that this is just a very broad trailer. Because presumably they're having a bit of a, oh my God, how do we market this type thing? Are we marketing it to horror fans, to superhero fans?

54:21Who are we trying to please? If the first teaser was marketed at horror fans, I feel like this teaser is marketed at the kind of comic DC faithful. So maybe the film falls somewhere in the middle? Yeah, I would imagine so. Let's hope so. Also, very on brand for a week when we're talking about Pompeii and there is a nightclub called Vesuvius. It's like we planned this, except that we very obviously didn't. They've also announced this week that the Snoop Dogg biopic, which is a thing that is happening. Snoop Dogg. It has a release date and it's going to be out next summer on the same day as the Bluey movie, an event that I want to be the first to call Dog Day after.

55:01Yes. That's very good. That is brilliant, and it must happen. I hope that this is our Barb and Hammer night. Dog with two Gs, obviously. Of course with two Gs. I genuinely, I don't know how we also fold in Jason Statham's Stole My Bike, which is apparently not the same day in the US, but look, I do what I can. Dog Day Afternoon is a thing. Bluey versus Snoop Dogg. Who will reign supreme? I mean, it's Bluey. It's Bluey. What do we think about a Snoop Dogg biopic? It could be really, really fun. They got Jonathan J.D. Davis to play Snoop Dogg in this. the last time I think Snoop was on screen was in Straight Outta Compton and he was played by Lakeith Stanfield in that movie not tall enough but that's right I'd forgotten that or skinny enough and he's a skinny guy but like Snoop is I think you forget of course that he was in the Lego documentary about Pharrell piece by piece they sprayed PG spray all around him every time he was on screen that was a fun moment That was very funny.

56:03If you haven't seen Piece by Piece, I highly recommend it. Literally, even for that joke, it's worth seeing, but it's a really fun movie. He's got the catalogue of tunes for sure to help power this, which will be fun to hear blasted from Cinema Screened. I guess so. And this is directed by Craig Brewer, who of course did Hustle and Flow and most recently Song Sung Blue. Which I really liked. It'll be a little bit of a change from Song Sung Blue. Just a smidge. Just a smidge. But yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Do we think it will break a billion dollars? No. No, I agree. I don't think so. Let's move on.

56:41The things that have... Well, speaking of... Not quite broken a billion yet, but... Things that have made big money at the box office. The Odyssey opened to$264 million worldwide, or thereabouts, which is, one, two, three, a hell of a lot of money. A lot of money. Yes, and that is apparently, unadjusted for inflation, the best opening of Christopher Nolan's career, beating The Dark Knight Rises. Which is incredible. Not adjusted for inflation, but I think it should be adjusted for the fact that fewer people go to the cinema now. So even if you adjust for inflation, but you also adjust for that, I feel like it's still an incredible result.

57:18And that is correct. You should all be going to see The Odyssey on the big screen. I know some of you out there need babysitters or long trips across the tundra to get to a cinema, but I genuinely, this is the one to make an effort for, I think, at the moment. Until June comes out. Yes, but that's six months, well, five months away, you know? You've got time right now. All showings at the BFI IMAX are booked out until September. That is completely insane. It's particularly insane given how many seats in that IMAX are dreadful because if you are down the front on the side, you're just going to be looking at Odysseus' armpit for like three hours.

57:55Counterpoint, there are 41 cinemas in the world that are capable of showing a 70mm full IMAX. Really? 41 in the world. We have two in London. Where's the other one? The Science Museum. Is it the other? I did not know that. Full IMAX. But still, Helen, think about people's necks. Yeah. Think about the necks, Helen. Look, I agree. I'm not thinking about necks. I'm always thinking about necks. Anyone who knows me is like, she's thinking about necks. She's all about the necks. My husband will turn to me and go, are you thinking about necks? Yes, I am. Wind your neck in, Helen. All I'm saying is, we're very privileged here in the studio to have seen it in one of those 41 screens.

58:35Yeah, Amon and I are particularly privileged because we had an empty cinema and we were literally able to pick the perfect seats, which were the back row. You moved seats just as the film began because you're like the guy below you. It's like, that's good. I'm not saying we were sitting in an empty IMAX and a dude sat right in front of me. I'm not saying that happened, but it fucking did. It wasn't Boris Johnson. He was sitting further down. And yes, I did move. I moved along a few. But I think this establishes that Nolan is just the number one director. I think, well, Vulture just released a piece about who's the most powerful, who are the most powerful directors in the world right now.

59:09Nolan is number one. And Kuguru is number two. And I think that number one and two is right because Nolan now, with regularity, his films become cultural moments. Like, the Odyssey is this year's Sinners in terms of people going back to the cinemas, in terms of the chatter about it, the memes about it. The Odyssey has created that moment. And obviously, last year, that was Sinners. Even Oppenheimer, that was part of the Barbenheimer, which was another cultural moment. Nolan has created that regular thing now with his movies. So yeah, he's the number one guy. And to have that return, when you have a film like The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises in your catalogue and to have this opening be bigger than that, that is hugely impressive.

59:49Well, he's the name now, I think, in the way the film makers are. I'm not saying Villeneuve isn't. I'm saying, like, Nolan definitely is. And I would, with love and respect for Villeneuve, suggest that Nolan is a bigger name for the average person than Villeneuve is. You wound me with your words. Love and respect. Love and respect. Apparently, it was controversial of them to include Greta Gerwig in the top five of that list. And can I say to anyone who's outraged at that, get in the fucking bin. She has made three nailed-on classics. books um none of which were uh necessarily easy films to nail and um she is now making a narnia movie and she seems to be able to do no wrong so yeah i think she absolutely belongs in that company we shall see with narnia next year um i think that's the major news as we record we are recording on wednesday uh just because of the life um so if there is other there are other appalling or terrifying things that come out of Comic-Con, then we may have to reconvene at some point and discuss those.

1:00:53But basically, at the moment, that's news. We should, however, take a moment for some other sad news that broke this week. So first of all, there was the sad death of Brenda Fricker, the Irish actress who won an Oscar for her role in My Left Foot, and who was also remembered by a generation of children for being the pigeon lady in Home Alone 2. but she was a lot more than that i do want to be clear like as well as winning best supporting actress from my left foot she was in the field which is an incredible film um she appeared in things like a time to kill angels in the outfield so i married an axe murderer all in that sort of early 90s period after she'd won her oscar veronica gerin a bit more recently which is a great film inside i'm dancing um she had been a great stage actress before that um and appeared in some of the greatest sort of Irish plays and stage plays in Ireland throughout her life.

1:01:49And yeah, she had been ill for a while, but we're still very sad that she died at the age of 81, the very first Irish actress to win an Oscar. There was also the absolutely heartbreaking news this week that Kayleigh Hottle, who was the young deaf actress from the Godzilla vs. Kong movies, died in a car crash. So completely sudden, completely unexpected. and incredibly tragic. She was a really fine actress in those movies and I was looking forward to seeing much more from her, I hoped, in future. So our thoughts go out to the family and friends of both women. Rest in peace to both of them. Okay, it's time now for an interview.

1:02:32And as promised, I think discussed both last week and this, we did indeed send Chris to Naples and then to the ancient city of Pompeii where Vesuvius did not erupt and bury him in a cloud of ashes and stones. Please be. Instead, he got to hang out with Tom Hiddleston and find out about his new three-part documentary series, Pompeii Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. That's all the title, which is out on Nat Geo right now as you're listening to this. So here are Chris and Tom talking about, I assume, I haven't heard the interview yet, ash clouds and mayhem. Subjects that both are surely familiar with by now.

1:03:11Okay, please enjoy. Hey everyone, it's Chris here. Just jumping in real quick from my one bunk Hilton at the San Diego Comic Con to say that, yes, Pompeii at a Time with Tom Hiddleston was broadcast on Nat Geo this week, but it also lives on Disney Plus over here in the UK. So if you want to see it, that's where you go. You go to Disney Plus. All right, here's the interview. Bye. Tom Hiddleston. Chris Hewitt. Welcome back to the Empire Podcast. It's such a pleasure. Where the hell are we, Tom? We're not where we normally are. No, we're not. Let's face it. In a London hotel room. Or King's Place.

1:03:47No. Or the back of a dumpster around Asda. Yeah. Or in any of those places. Or indeed Empire offices. In the Empire offices. That's weird. That was the fourth place I thought of. That's a place I actually wore. Yeah. Where are we talking? Where are we? We are just above the ancient site of Pompeii in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which is now silhouetted against the evening sky with the Bay of Naples behind us. where Pliny the Elder was commanding the Roman Imperial fleet as he watched Vesuvius erupt in AD 79. Oh my god. We're in just south of Naples. We're surrounded by history. We're surrounded by history and not just ancient history, modern history.

1:04:31Maradona. He was wreaking havoc down there, on the pitch, off the pitch. In them there hills. Yes. You can still hear his voice. Exactly. You can still hear the cries of Diego Maradona. Yeah. And we're here, Tom, because I think this might be the greatest pivot since Ross from France bought a sofa. This is incredible because you are here. You're fronting a documentary, but you're not hosting it in the Ant & Dec style. No, indeed. This is a proper historical examination of Pompeii, of what happened in Pompeii. That's it. I'll leave it.

1:05:10yeah no it's called Pompeii out of time and it's for National Geographic and it's on Disney plus and it's extraordinary they approached me with an idea and it was it was the germ of an idea really and they were very clever because I knew I had studied classics at university before I became an actor that was my specialist area of study that was my BA my bachelor's degree and it was something I genuinely loved as a young person and they asked me if I'd like to make a show about Pompeii not knowing that I had come to Pompeii at the age of 17 just before doing my A-levels in 1998 France 98, World Cup summer.

1:05:57Time is circular. Exactly. I remember it so well. I was literally just about to leave school and it must have been, I think it was my first trip away without grown-ups. The first time I ever went away to a foreign country on my own with two friends. But we were unsupervised and so we had to, you know, account for ourselves and budget and get ourselves around. and nobody had done any planning so you learn a lot about life anyway on those trips and and for that reason it was really exciting did you rock up at pompeii almost accidentally did you drift here in a way i might i was studying latin and greek at a level i had a friend who was studying ancient history and another friend who was studying history of art and italy we just loved italy it is a great place to come in the summer anyway um and it seemed to be this in the perfect kind of Venn diagram of all of our interests.

1:06:54We went to Rome and we looked at all the Renaissance art there too and all the ancient history in the Forum. We went out to Hadrian's Villa which is just outside Rome and then we got the train and we got an interrail ticket. Back in the days you could buy those things. I think it was 250 odd pounds and you could get on any train in Europe for free bring that back a bargain absolutely is and so we'd got the sleeper from we got the sleeper from Paris to Rome and then we beat sort of beetles around Rome and then we got another big train from Rome to Naples and we beetles around here and Pompeii was on the list it was in the rough guide it was in the lonely planet and was I knew about it but I had nothing prepared me for for walking into Pompeii for the first time I think I don't know quite what I was expecting.

1:07:47I had seen Roman ruins before, but I had never seen anything archaeological of that scale. It was an entire town the size of Bath, the size of Oxford, massive streets. And we talk about, we use these terms all the time, like following in the footsteps, but you walk through streets of Pompeii and you are literally standing on the same paving stones that they you can walk down streets disappear down alleyways turn a corner see the way there's a bakery or a private house or an amphitheater or a marketplace where they sold bread and fish and olives this is all 2000 years ago and this is honestly what happened at the age of 17 is I It felt like time travel.

1:08:38It felt suddenly this, the ancient world, which I'd read about in books and in class on paper, came alive. It was a real place you could visit. And then the relationship with the past was something that was a living, breathing thing. And it really struck me, as we were talking before we came on air, about I saw that this there were many plaster casts made of people who didn't make it in the eruption of Vesuvius and the covering of Pompeii But the thing that one of the things that really moved me as a 17 year old was seeing the plaster casts of a dog Who'd been chained to that yeah a family dog who'd been chained to a wall and was trying to escape and we had a family dog And it was about the same size and I thought these people were the sense of that history can sometimes give you that people from the past, from the distant, deep past, are just like us.

1:09:35And the tension between knowing how genuinely far away that is. 2 ,000 years is a really long time. Almost too long for us to kind of conceive of. It's so many generations. And yet they were also not like us. And there's a tension between that proximity and that distance that that you know illuminated some very serious light bulbs for me in terms of my curiosity about about history about the world about wanting to understand who we are and where we came from it was very real and very sincere as a young person I could see that that the ancient Roman ancient Greece is the foundation certainly of European culture not of global culture because there are so many other influences in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia.

1:10:25But in Europe, we kind of go back to Greece and Rome and I wanted to study our beginnings because I thought it would give me an understanding of who we are. So that became my degree and now here we are, you know, almost three decades later. It strikes me as well that watching, I've seen all three episodes now, that is there an element of speaking to the present as well in terms of the people of Pompeii ignored the warning signs about Vesuvius now obviously they didn't have the breadth of our knowledge they didn't know we know if that volcano over there yeah so it's wrongly right now Tom I would be over there as fast as you can see I would be across but you know we do have the benefit of that knowledge are you in a way trying to speak to us modern day humanity and the fact that you know we might perhaps ignore warning signs that are happening all around us right now.

1:11:24You're absolutely right we and we have then we have the the means of accumulating the knowledge we have the tools so that there are no mysteries for Pompeii for the inhabitants of Pompeii the volcano was had never happened before. They knew about tremors and earthquakes. They knew sometimes the ground shook. And it was a bit weird. And pots would fall off the wall and things would break. And you'd have to rebuild a bit. But the mountain... People forget the reason there were such settlements here is the land was so rich. The soil was so fertile. The crops were bountiful. It's very nourishing soil.

1:12:03And suddenly, the mountain explodes with more thermal energy than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the volcanic debris, which is pumice, ash, and rock at 300 degrees Celsius, shoots tens, twenties, thirty miles into the sky, into space essentially, grows out like a mushroom cloud or an umbrella pine tree as described by Pliny. And then what goes up must come down, and it becomes like a a storm of fire yeah and but to watch it happen must have felt like to them is this a storm an unusual storm and will we wake up tomorrow morning and the skies will be clear again because they would have endured they would have seen thunder and lightning yeah they would understood you know meteor a lot what we think of as meteorological intensity yeah um and this may have looked like that but it was the mountain however we live in a world where we have so much at our disposal where we can gather information understand it and and we do have to we should listen to the warnings yeah um and i i think there was something very as i said i think in the show we tell stories about the past to understand something about the present what was very resonant for me is that and what i learned for the first time in making the show was that in the wake of Pompeii there was a full-blown humanitarian crisis and that people had survived and they were now completely homeless without a place to belong and refugees from a natural disaster and that those images suddenly the images being painted for me by historians and and archaeologists and classicists were very resonant of the world we live in where there you know climate related natural disasters happening all the time and earthquakes and tsunamis and and and people who are very vulnerable and need our help and that seemed to me like a i thought a very contemporary image but actually it's it's similar in the ancient world and what i hope it does is it generates renewed empathy yeah for each other really um that we all live on this remarkable, miraculous planet.

1:14:20And we need to preserve it and preserve life on it as much as we can. Damn straight. Is part of that, is part of generating that empathy, part of that why you chose to host it in the way that you host it? Yeah. Which is not a very dry, hello, I'm talking to the camera about history. Yeah. Kind of way. Although you do deliver pieces to camera. Sometimes, yeah. This is essentially another acting job for you. You have to tell the story of these three potential survivors as well, get us infested in them. Yes. And the way you do that is that you become infested in them, incredibly emotionally infested in them.

1:14:59Yeah. Can you talk me through that approach? It's so odd because actually the process of it is almost like playing a character. Yes. When you take on a fictional character or a real person you're playing in real life, which I've done now several times, there's a process which is very, for me, probably quite academic and intellectual, which is a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of looking things up, a lot of looking online, reading books, talking to people, interviews, facts, photographs. You know, what can I find out about this person? But the same is true of fictional characters too. What can I find out about?

1:15:35Is there a book this is based on? And then eventually the head stops talking and the heart starts to speak. and you start to emotionally get attached to people. And I can't help it, actually. It's a really natural process to me. The more my imagination starts to become very active and involved in the story. And I knew going ahead, I thought that would be a really interesting kind of synthesis of my experiences. is that I've spent, you know, almost over 25 years in an act of imagination and empathy. That's the job of an actor. And also to have all this research and that somehow the show could be an empathy machine that would hopefully invigorate and revitalize, reimagine the lives of people who lived a long time ago and that we could feel for them as if they were as if they were here yesterday or last week um and that i love the challenge of that meeting that challenge and telling the story in that way so just tell me through how you found these three potential survivors all research there was so many more and that's that it's and it's research that's being upgraded and updated and added to all the time and that the gift of Pompeii is there's writing everywhere yeah graffiti and people writing their names some of it very rude a lot of it a lot of it very silly you know about you know people sort of bathroom habits I mean the sort of stuff that we see in petrol station walls at home but some I may have written yeah right let's be honest but the best thing about it is it's really ordinary and it's everywhere and and and then so you can now they've got the technology that they can track the occurrence of a name they find the name in Pompeii on a headstone or on a wall or in a house and they see where else they find this name because because they didn't have pens and paper they wrote on the walls all the time and if you find the same name outside Pompeii and it's dated to after the eruption it means that person made it out.

1:17:59So you've got this extraordinary fragment of history, which is an incidental piece of graffiti, but actually it tells you, here is a survivor. Wow. And that's how we found Avianius, the teenage boy, is that his name exists in a different part of Italy. Yeah. So you find him in Pompeii, but you find him outside, which means he made it out. And the more research you do, you realize there's... I mean, we found these three amazing people, but there's more, there's so many more. we found it difficult to pick actually. But in the end it seemed like these three quite different people was going to be a really interesting way in.

1:18:33Was this a test, this is the last thing I'm going to ask you, was this a test of your Latin skills? Are they laying dormant for many many years? Dormant and possibly dying, possibly on the decline, on the wane. I've learned, I've remembered that Latin is something you have to stay, yeah you have to keep practicing. As they say if you don't use it you lose it. And how would you say that in Latin Tom? I don't know. Something about utilitarre, perdure, maybe like si, si utilitarre, si non utilitarandum

1:19:16perdendum. Okay give me that one more time, one more time. Si non utilitarum I couldn't have said it better myself. I took Latin for one year at school before they declared it the dead language, and we stopped, and the only thing I can remember of Latin is ambulo. Very good. That's it. Yes. Which means to walk. That's right. Yeah. So if you amble down the street, how else does that feature in English? There's ambulance. Ambulance. Yeah. I guess. Although you kind of don't want ambulances to. You want a little bit more pep in the step. Let's pick it up here, guys. I'm dying. But there you go. Yeah, there you go.

1:19:57Ambularum. Yeah, ambularum. That's how it declines. Cornerstone of Western civilization, guys. I know one word. French, Spanish, Italian. There you go. You surely know the Latin word for love. Oh, no. Come on. What is it? What's the Italian word for love? Amore. There you go. Is that it? Amore. Amore. Yeah. See, points for me. fantastic the michael haddocker movie and more that's a lot oh there we go i'm more amore i know somewhere la vita is bella yeah dolce decorum est etc there you go etc yeah yeah there you go anyway on that note i'm learning a lot you know you know i'm a lot more latin than i thought i like to teach you something every now and again okay just to turn the tables on your core mess kids if you don't know the poem yeah look it up absolutely wilfredone or see if we read too soon yeah yeah cracking poem on that note tom hiddleston thank you for coming I need to ambulo my way out of here.

1:20:53We'll ambulo towards Vesuvius and hope it stays dormant. Take a chance to see it. Okay. Pleasure, man. Thank you, man. Thank you. All right. Film dregs. I mean, sorry, film reviews now. Let's talk about where to start. Where to start from this box of delights. Everyone is running scared from the Odyssey. Yes. Yes, they are. It is very clear. Everyone is running scared from the Odyssey. There are pretty much literally no new films in cinemas. There's nothing new in wide release. Although we should start maybe with Deepwater, because this is Rennie Harlan's new film, and this was going to be in the cinemas.

1:21:34But then, for reasons unknown, it has not gone to cinemas, and it has come straight to digital. Oh, God. I was going to go from best to worst, but if you want to start with Deepwater, let's start with Deepwater. We're going to start with the big release. Oh, God. Do you know what the most interesting thing about this film is? Renny Harlan directed it? It's produced by Gene Simmons. Gene Simmons of the band Kiss is the producer of this film, or a producer of this film. That is the most interesting thing about it. This is the new Renny Harlan film. Oh, God. And this takes place, there is an international commercial flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai.

1:22:12Ben Kingsley is the man at the stick. He's flying the plane. He spent a week shooting a cockpit. it's more of a cameo than anything else. Aaron Eckhart is the first officer. His name is Ben. And a man, and let's get the actor's name. Who is the actor I'm thinking of? Who is the actor? Come on, bring it up, because I don't know. Angus Sampson. Angus Sampson. Angus Sampson plays Hutch. And Hutch is maybe the worst person who's ever been in any film ever. None of us have ever wanted to murder another human being more than we have wanted to see Hutch get eaten by a shark. I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him.

1:22:47A genuinely terrible human being. When we say that every villain thinks he's the good guy, surely this guy definitely doesn't think he's the good guy. This raging bellend, among other things, puts a power pack in his checked luggage. Shock, horridest mate. Don't do this, kids. It causes a fire. The fire causes part of the plane to explode and decompress into a quite gnarly crash sequence. People are being hit in the face with suitcases and getting bludgeoned. Credit where it's due. That's nasty. It's a pretty good crash. Engines blow up. They have to ditch in the ocean. And wouldn't you know it, the waters are shark infested.

1:23:24And they are very hungry. And they are very, very hungry. And then what you essentially get is, and it's unusual because clearly this plane, it's supposed to be going to Shanghai. For some reason, they managed to, when they're going down, ditch in a giant water tank with a green screen around it. And that's really handy because then that's where the rest of the film is clearly set. Why did they put the sharks in the water tank? I mean, it seems silly. If you're going to have a big green screen water tank, you'd check for sharks first, and then they clearly didn't. But then, of course, they were obviously CG sharks, so maybe that was the reason why.

1:23:56The idea here is they have to try and, you know, not get eaten, move between bits of wreckage. People get limbs bitten off, sharks chow down on people. The thing with this film is, it's like 1985 called and they want their film back. Like, it is the most regressive throwback movie I have seen in a really long time. because it's like a comedically bad disaster movie except without, you know, comedy. And it's so, like, the compositing is so glaring and the CGI is, I mean, it's not like it's bad, bad. They look like sharks, but they're so obviously computer generated. And then the characters are incredibly two-dimensional.

1:24:37You know, God bless Angus Samson. Like, he was clearly told, make this guy the most loathsome person on earth and God knows he absolutely did it. But that's not a human being. that's not a real character, no one in this is really believable, their motivations make no sense. The fact that, you know, old Ben, our first officer, wants to get back to his sick child, so he's, okay, great, yeah, he has a personal life, thank you very much for sharing. And then there's the bit where, you know, fucking Chekhov's Lojack gets, you know, introduced in one of the early scenes, I wonder if that'll be helpful.

1:25:05It's, this is so bad, it goes from bad to so bad it's good, to so bad it's actually not good, It's just terrible. And honestly, I would begrudgingly give this a single star. I resent the time I spent watching it. I'm furious. It genuinely, along with the other films I saw this week, made me ring the klaxon for the death knell of cinema. Good God. Whoa. I mean, wow. Okay. I didn't like it either, if I'm honest. I thought it was, yes, trite and silly. I will give it a little bit of credit for killing some people immediately that I didn't think it would kill. But then it saved a bunch of people that I thought were nailed on plot armor and sure enough they were.

1:25:53So that was kind of disappointing. I don't know. There's been a bunch of these kind of like shark plus plane movies recently. No Way Up was actually a pretty good one a couple of years ago, certainly relative to this. I just... What was the one with sharks in the same? What was that one? It should have been called Insane. It should have been. But it was just like under Paris. That was kind of fun. That was fun. There's no plane crash, though. There's no plane crash, but you had French sharks. Yeah, and again, just to be clear, like sharks less dangerous than, for example, hippos. Like sharks not after us on purpose.

1:26:30So, except in this telling, obviously. Yeah, it's not good. We don't have an official Empire review, but it's down there, isn't it? Yeah, it wasn't great. I didn't hate it as much as you did, James, I have to say. And honestly, full credit to Angus Sampson for his performance because the place that I know him the most from is The Lincoln Lawyer, the Netflix series. And he's one of the good guys in that. And he's fun to watch in that. So to play someone so hateable, I mean, he really understood. So hateable. I wanted to. I mean, I sent you a message about it. Yes, you did. That's quick. Oh, my goodness.

1:27:07So, yeah, I think that way. And I think you generally spend just enough time with these very earnest archetypes that some of their final moments at times does feel a little bit emotional. So I didn't all the way hate this. High praise. Eat them all. Eat them all. I was rooting for the sharks in this film. Wow. So you're like a two star. I'm a two star. Wow, okay. I'm on the one-two borders, I'll be honest. Okay. It's not good. I'll be honest, I know we have three films I've seen this week, and I keep forgetting one of them, and they've all had a turn of being the one I forget. That's where we are, like, quality-wise with this week's films.

1:27:54They do not stick in the memory. The good news, James, is that you will not be able to remember any of these films. That is true. Like most trauma, it will be, my brain will blot it out. It will fade, yeah. So that's a film that's out there, and it's not good and we're sorry Reddy Harlan we liked your earlier films yes we did when they were exciting but credit for The Plane Crash maybe that brings up to a two The Plane Crash is good The Plane Crash is scary I'd give it maybe a two just for that honestly it feels like every way you could die from a plane going bad the film covers in that plane crash like objects flying at you hitting you in the head people getting pulled out of the plane mid-air people getting drowned people getting trapped it's just like carnage everywhere I am going to say just as a public service announcement If you are on a plane with two very small children and you leave them alone to go and shag in the toilets, you deserve to get eaten by sharks.

1:28:45That's just a fact. That's fair. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll have much better results with our next film. I'm going to say we go to 72 Hours next, which is the Tim Story film starring Kevin Hart, Marcelo Hernandez, Mason Gooding, and other people. Tiana Taylor's in it as well. and it's the story of Kevin Hart as an ad executive who claims to be 40. I mean... Kevin Hart's what, 46? He's 47. He's 47, okay. Okay, he claims to be 40. He needs to research what Gen Z likes. So when he accidentally gets added to a group chat of a group of guys planning a stag do, he decides to go along with them and he'll pay for them.

1:29:31So they're willing to go with this. which isn't creepy at all yeah and he's basically trying to do covert research for a drinks company so the premise is to put it generously flimsy as fuck yeah it makes no sense and then these the film has to bend over backwards again and again and again to A give these people reasons to keep this man around and B get them into stupid situations that no human being would be in in any circumstances ever of course because they go to Miami for this bachelor party as the Americans call it there are like Cuban coded drug lords because of course there are right like it's like they decide to just like accidentally fall into a Michael Bay bad boys movie for no reason and and of course that's badly done until like maybe one moment near the very end I just I didn't buy a single second of this.

1:30:33It's just, it's not, it's not funny. I think all the younger comedians do their best to make it funny. I think Mason Gooding, who by the way is Cuba Gooding Jr.'s junior. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. He's the one from Scream. There's more recent Screams. He's good and he's, and they kind of, they avoid one trope there because they have the groom not have an existential crisis about getting married. And I like that. Well, he has a very brief one. A very brief one. No, but it's not his crisis about getting married. It's his crisis about everything else around it. It's not about his relationship.

1:31:09I appreciated that one thing in this film. But everything else, I thought, was weak as fuck. So, I mean, I could go to a two to be generous, but I want them to know that I'm being generous. Like, I want to be thanked a lot. They throw in a willycopter early on to try and get your attention. so I guess there's that. Yeah, it's aggressively anti-funny, isn't it? Like if this, you get the impression that, you know, from a science point of view, if this humour were to combine with a funny film, the universe would explode when anti-funny and funny are kind of introduced in the same space. There is, however, and this is why this film would I would grudgingly go to a two-on.

1:31:48There is one joke in this that genuinely made me giggle and it is that he has, without spoiling anything, he has a slight personality change when he does cocaine. And... That made you laugh? Genuinely, I found that funny. I don't know why, but that made me laugh. That was the worst part of the film. Are you insane? I know. I don't know why, but for whatever reason, that bit amused me. And so I gave it a little bit of charity. But no, it's not good on any level. Oh, boy. Okay. Well, yeah, so a star or two for 72 hours. Did you see this, Amon? Did you get a chance to see this? I did not get a chance to see this.

1:32:31You did not, okay. And it looks like I dodged a bullet. No, you dodged a bullet. Yes, well done. Well, speaking of dodging, ducking and diving and sports that would be on ESPN 8 El Ocho brings us to The Dink, which is the new film directed by Josh Greenbaum and starring really good people. Jake Johnson is the lead in this film it's nice to see him be the lead in something Mary Steenburgen who is awesome is in this Ben Stiller is in this Ed Harris is in this Andy Roddick and John McEnroe turn up for no reason this has good people in it and it does some unexpected things and it has a premise that has the potential to be a solid middle of the road comedy and it wastes so much potential anyway This story is that Jake Johnson was raised to be a tennis star by his overbearing father, Ed Harris, and then basically squandered all his opportunities straight after going pro and is now a washed up tennis coach at his father's club.

1:33:34and there was a tension at the club between the pickleball players who are, let's face it, ascendant and the old school tennis players and of course there's rumours of a championship match that will determine who gets more courts. You can see where this is going. I feel like it's insulting my intelligence even to lay out the plot. Anyway, Mary Steenburgen also turns up as a pickleball player and she and Jake Johnson become pickleball partners when he's injured and has to play pickleball. It's just the most you've ever said pickleball in the earth. It really is, and I don't like it. I don't even like pickles.

1:34:11I don't know why I'm saying this. Anyway, they have to play pickleball together for reasons, and the film is kind of about their friendship and that relationship and how that develops in some interesting ways. I just, I didn't think this was bad, unlike the other two films. I don't think it's bad. I even think it has some funny jokes in it, although not all of them belong in this film. Like there's a running gag when John McEnroe shows up that he always has snacks. You cannot be serious. Nay. He cannot be serious. He's always got a snack with him. And where did this snack come from? And that's like a funny little like slightly surreal joke that doesn't belong in this otherwise relatively grounded film.

1:34:51Like it doesn't feel like it feels Anchorman-y. It doesn't feel like this, you know. It just all felt like it was just falling short of the line, you know, or just like clanging into the net a bit too often. and more than it should have done. It's not bad, but it's like you went to go and see tennis, and instead someone's playing pickleball. That's probably the best way I can kind of put it. Yeah. I thought this was perfectly fine. I will say that this is another film that gets across how tricky it is to get sports right on film. Obviously, when it comes to tennis, challenges is the gold standard, and this falls well short of that, to put it mildly.

1:35:31but I had a perfectly okay time with this I think Jake Johnson has really great comedic timing we see that a lot Ed Harris gets a lot of laughs out of playing things completely straight that made me laugh quite a bit Aaron Chen plays PJ who is Dusty's loyal friend he's kind of funny, loyal and weird all in one and that kind of worked for me so yeah I had a perfectly pleasant time with this it's perfectly fine It is the most low three-star movie that has ever low three-starred. It's low-stakes fun. I think I could go to three on this. As I say that and thinking about it, I do think it's a three and not a two.

1:36:15But it's not a high three. It's not close to a four. It's close to a two. Yeah, I agree with that. I do feel a two would be mean. Yes. I'm fully with you on three stars. Yeah, so there we go. Three stars. Woo-hoo, we have a winner! That's on Apple, and by process of elimination is our film of the week. Hooray! But realistically, genuinely and honestly and truly, you should just go see The Odyssey again. I'm not being paid by Chris Nolan to say this. Although he could afford it. Chris, call me. But no, just no. Just no. Or The Invite is probably still on, or Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie.

1:36:53Or re-watch Dunes Part 1 and 2 in advance of Dune Part 3. Nobody has said a single word against Dune. It doesn't need to be defended. I sense your Dune prejudice. Or watch Batman the Animalist series Feet of Clay. Great episodes. I mean, we've got ages before Clay first comes out. Also, that's more the domain of the Pilot TV podcast. Oh, God. All right, well, that is it, isn't it, for this week's Empire podcast. Join us next week when we're going to be joined by probably, I believe, Destin Daniel Cretton to talk about Spider-Man Brand New Day and to celebrate the fact that another honest-to-God film is coming to our cinemas.

1:37:29guys I cannot tell you how long it's been since I saw a film with real stars in cinemas I mean like imagine seeing Zendaya on the big screen do you know what I mean imagine seeing Tom Holland on the big screen imagine seeing John Bercel on the big screen right I mean how long has it been since we've seen those people it's going to be such a relief oh thank god anyway until then until that auspicious occasion until we meet again it's goodbye from Amon peace goodbye from James goodbye do you listen to the Final TV podcast on Monday, where you will hear Steph go absolutely berserk against a show.

1:38:04I have never heard anyone hate anything more than she hated one of the shows that we review on Monday. Look forward to that. Exciting. I'm going to ask you what that was as soon as we put the mics down. And it's goodbye from me. I am genuinely off to see the Oresteia at the Bridge Theatre, which is, of course, about Agamemnon's homecoming from the Trojan Wars. Because these days, Oh, Helen. I'm Odyssey Maxing. Oh, my God, you really are. I'm sorry. I'm Od-cest. Oh, God. Toodaloo.