QAA - Bugonia Movie Night (Premium E326) Sample
Aired: 2026-03-08
Duration: 09:22


=== Twist and Tone Disagreements (06:45) ===

[00:00:32]  If you're hearing this, well done.
[00:00:34]  You found a way to connect to the internet.
[00:00:37]  Welcome to the QAA podcast premium episode 326, Bogonia Movie Night.
[00:00:43]  As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rocketansky, Liv Agar, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
[00:00:49]  We don't usually discuss films nominated for Academy Awards for movie night episodes.
[00:00:54]  Begonia has actually earned four nominations for the 98th Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score.
[00:01:03]  But we're making an exception for Begonia because it touches on a lot of the themes that we explore in this podcast.
[00:01:09]  And frankly, we have received a lot of requests for it.
[00:01:12]  Oh, man, I didn't know it got four.
[00:01:15]  I was coming in here trying to be real nice about everything.
[00:01:18]  You're already four fucking Oscar nominal.
[00:01:24]  Uh-oh.
[00:01:24]  I sense like a disagreement potentially between me and Julia.
[00:01:27]  No, I mostly enjoyed it.
[00:01:29]  I'm not trying to take away.
[00:01:31]  Which is good for you.
[00:01:32]  You are a harsh critic.
[00:01:33]  Clemens is just so delightful.
[00:01:35]  Very much.
[00:01:36]  Well, I thought, to me, the fact that he's not nominated for an award is a fairly fair.
[00:01:40]  Oh, that's crazy.
[00:01:41]  It's by far.
[00:01:42]  Like, Emma Stone, no effects.
[00:01:43]  His whole face changes.
[00:01:45]  He is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:48]  Anyways, anyway.
[00:01:49]  Stavros, that was a pleasant surprise.
[00:01:51]  Oomphy.
[00:01:52]  Yeah, oomphy.
[00:01:53]  That was really.
[00:01:54]  It's like the pedophile cop.
[00:01:55]  love you so much stavros uh you are that was the acting was bad man It's fun.
[00:02:01]  I support it.
[00:02:02]  I know.
[00:02:02]  I support him too.
[00:02:04]  I do enjoy.
[00:02:05]  I do enjoy our.
[00:02:06]  I mean, it's like fellow, you know what it is.
[00:02:07]  It's Greek.
[00:02:08]  It's Greek.
[00:02:08]  Like, it's Greek excellence, like insider.
[00:02:11]  It's an insider Greek track.
[00:02:12]  Vulcan excellence.
[00:02:14]  We take those.
[00:02:15]  But sorry for interrupting with my immediate negativity.
[00:02:19]  Travis was going to say something about Naomi Klein, which I actually would like him to put back into the script.
[00:02:24]  Thank you very much.
[00:02:25]  Okay, fine.
[00:02:25]  All right.
[00:02:25]  Finally, it's the end.
[00:02:27]  So, I mean, we'll get into it a lot, but my takeaway from Bogodia is that I thought of it as like the highest production exploration of an idea expressed by Naomi Klein in her book, Doppelganger, A Trip to the Mirror World, which we interviewed her for.
[00:02:41]  She wrote, conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong, but often get the feelings right.
[00:02:45]  The feeling of living in a world with shadowlands, the feeling that every human misery is someone else's profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths are being hidden.
[00:02:56]  This film expresses the particular frustration and tragedy of being at once totally right and completely wrong.
[00:03:02]  But was it wrong?
[00:03:03]  I mean, in this case, that's what was so funny is it was kind of sublimated by, it almost looks like it was like a redirection that kind of took away from the movie for me because it's like, if you're going to say that these people are totally right, then go ahead and say it with your full chest, but then why redirect it to like alien stuff, right?
[00:03:23]  Because otherwise, I think we recognize this kind of frustration.
[00:03:26]  And I have to say, even though I was very tough on it, like I think that the movie that captures the moment and probably deserves a few more Oscar nominations was Eddington, you know?
[00:03:36]  It was like the strategy of tension.
[00:03:39]  You know, as Para Power Mapping said on Twitter, like, I think Eddington does represent the American years of led better than this movie.
[00:03:48]  This movie, to me, is what Fanon would call like a kind of redirection of essential energy that we are going to need in the near future, you know, into Starseed stuff, which is fun, but then like, damn, the tone of the movie is so dark.
[00:04:07]  And then the end is like, I don't know, like a perfume ad.
[00:04:12]  Like, I don't, you know what I mean?
[00:04:13]  Like, it just, it absolutely evaporates.
[00:04:16]  It's kind of like eating meringue.
[00:04:18]  I definitely do think that the twist at the end kind of sours the message.
[00:04:22]  But I do think that there is, like, maybe we can get into this more when we talk about the details of the film.
[00:04:26]  Like, the conspiracy theorists, who in my mind, I'm like, worst case scenario, Travis View, Jesse Plemons.
[00:04:33]  Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:04:35]  He doesn't get everything right.
[00:04:37]  There does seem to be a nuance of like, he's just blaming the aliens in a certain way that isn't quite accurate.
[00:04:44]  So there is some nuance to like hold him to account while allowing, because I assume that that's like, that was probably a concern.
[00:04:51]  The screenplay editor director of like, well, this is kind of undermining our message despite being interesting as a twist.
[00:04:57]  That's the thing with messages, you know, it's like, yeah, it's hard to have a message.
[00:05:02]  And, you know, and I don't really expect movies to have messages right now.
[00:05:06]  I don't think necessarily it's a message.
[00:05:09]  It's just attempting to capture something extremely ambiguous and volatile and horrible and dark, you know, both Eddington and this.
[00:05:17]  And yeah, like I'm a bit tired of the whole, hey, it turned out to be real the whole time, which, you know, is quite common across like this new this new kind of crop of directors.
[00:05:28]  It almost felt like it was a twist that was so obvious that I didn't consider it.
[00:05:32]  And so when it happened, it was like slightly less obvious.
[00:05:35]  It was obvious, but I think it was well executed.
[00:05:38]  It was like totally, they threw themselves into, you know, the, I guess, the twist, which is fun.
[00:05:45]  Yeah, I took it to mean kind of that, like, even when you're right, like, there's a wrong way to go about doing things.
[00:05:53]  I agree with Liv that had the movie ended with her going three, two, one, and the fucking bomb, you know, the bomb goes off, which was surprising to me.
[00:06:03]  I was like, that's really shocking.
[00:06:04]  That was like really shocking.
[00:06:06]  And then, like, you could have cut the whole alien thing at the end, and you would have been left being like, wow, like this dumbass conspiracy theorist like blew himself up for nothing, outsmarted by like the pharmatech lib.
[00:06:17]  And like, you're right, like that message is boring.
[00:06:19]  It's lame.
[00:06:20]  It's, I think, I, to me, I took it as like, even like, you can be right about like, you know, the world is in control of like shadowy forces, but like, you can't do a damn thing about it and look at all the like chaos and violence that you've like caused along the way.
[00:06:39]  Not at all, actually.
[00:06:40]  It's a nice Instagram ending.
[00:06:41]  All human beings die in the most beautiful and evocative ways.
[00:06:45]  A Wes Anderson-ish twist on, like you said, Liv, it's like there was no actually surprising possibility, right?
[00:06:51]  Either he was right or he was wrong, both of which were kind of boring.
[00:06:56]  And I think that what this movie does great is like the vibe along the way, the acting, and some of these moments of like tension between the characters is way more interesting, I'd say, than like, for example, the relationship with the guru in Eddington, which was like a little more kind of trite and cartoonish.
[00:07:13]  So I will like say that this movie, like overall, was really well made.

=== Vibe Over Plot (02:04) ===

[00:07:18]  And I mean, Plemons, as always, just delivering.
[00:07:21]  And in this case, they give him a lot to deliver.
[00:07:25]  And he really goes out of his way to make Plemens look like ugly and kind of like out of control and unhinged.
[00:07:34]  And it works.
[00:07:35]  I was kind of, you know, I mean, the, yeah, the, you know, we'll get into the electric chair stuff, but I mean, you know, I mean, I guess if there is a message, it's that he should have fucking kept cranking that knob until she was gone.
[00:07:52]  Is Lanthamos like just fantasizing about, you know, killing Emma Stone?
[00:07:56]  I mean, isn't there rumors like on Instagram?
[00:07:58]  You would, you might know, Liv.
[00:07:59]  You like a good gossip.
[00:08:00]  No, I do love the gossip, though.
[00:08:02]  Yeah, that they're the rumors that they're fucking, you know?
[00:08:06]  Which I think would, I actually haven't looked into it enough, but I think would constitute some form of affair.
[00:08:12]  I'm not sure which one of them is Mary.
[00:08:13]  I don't fucking really know.
[00:08:14]  But I'll just throw that out there.
[00:08:16]  Frustrating Travis to no end and interrupting a script once again.
[00:08:20]  You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QA podcast.
[00:08:24]  For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com/slash QAA.
[00:08:33]  Travis, why is that such a good deal?
[00:08:35]  Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
[00:08:42]  For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
[00:08:49]  That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Nanny, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
[00:09:01]  It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
[00:09:05]  Travis, for once, I agree with you.
[00:09:07]  And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com/slash QAA.
[00:09:12]  Well, that's not an opinion, it's a fact.
[00:09:14]  You're so right, Jake.
[00:09:15]  We love and appreciate all of our listeners.
[00:09:18]  Yes, we do.
[00:09:18]  And Travis is actually crying right now, I think.
[00:09:20]  Out of gratitude, maybe?
[00:09:22]  That's not true.