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Jan. 18, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:55
M3GAN: The Freedomain Movie Review!
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Time Text
Alright, so I'm alarmed at this as a whole.
At what? Well, I'll tell you.
There's a lot. Wait, no intro?
Again? No, no, we can intro it, but I'm just telling you I'm alarmed as a whole.
Okay. Well, my issue is this.
Look, you know how I wish to keep your mind tender and innocent...
Segregated and at a civilized emotional distance from all potential negative influences on the planet, right?
Uh-huh. So this was PG-13.
You are 14. Accurate.
Now, I fairly obsessively looked up what was in this movie, right?
Yep. And I was like, ooh, I don't know.
It could be too difficult for my treasure, my hibiscus.
Yeah, it's you. You is the problem.
Yeah, so I did look it up, and we figured that it would be interesting enough to go.
And we went, and you covered up my eyes during the aggressive parts, and in general, on the one swearing that happened of substance...
There were more than one swear.
Well, no, because I pass out on a regular basis when I'm exposed to swearing, so...
Yeah, wait, how come you don't pass out?
So, anyway...
So, yeah. So the movie is called Megan, M3GAN. And because it's AI and it's about parenting and childhood and all of that, I thought it'd be interesting to try it out.
Honestly, I was a little concerned about any violence or swearing.
Yeah. There was only one part where there was really bad violence.
And honestly, I didn't look.
I look away. You covered up.
We try to avoid that kind of stuff.
So I just want to mention, there's going to be a couple of spoilers here, but this is a movie.
Do you want to give a summary or...?
No. Okay.
Excellent. And yes, spoilers. You know, if you're still watching past this point, you definitely clearly don't care about keeping the movie clear.
I mean, I'm not even talking properly.
Ignore that. You know, last couple of shows were great.
This one, you can just... Yeah, I burned out all my words on the last show.
I'm out for this year. So this movie was made for $12 million and is grossed over $94 million.
So it's pretty good.
They're making a sequel. M. Forgan, I assume.
So, okay, the story is very basically there's a young girl whose name is Katie.
Yeah. Because apparently Katie is impossible.
Katie is impossible. It has to be C-A-D-Y instead of K-A-T-Y or T-I-E or something.
It's like, bruh. So she's involved in a car accident where her parents are killed.
And she's sent to live with her aunt, whose name is Gemma.
Yeah. And she's a roboticist.
And her aunt is actually the first robot we see in the entire movie.
She has no emotions.
She has no emotions. She is a career girl.
She's a little high strung.
Dude, like, she doesn't even give the kid, Katie, a hug, like, after her parents die.
No, no, I believe that she gives her some protein and a firm handshake.
Yeah. And this wild, right?
So she, the actress actually plays this woman, okay, like, you're a kid, right?
Yeah. Now, have you been around people who are super awkward with children?
Yeah. No, no, not exactly awkward, just like, oh, you're not my height, I will ignore you.
Right. But there are some people, you put them around kids and they just, they have no idea what to do.
Yeah. I don't know if it's because they have no memory of their own childhood or maybe they're just not spending time around kids, but it's weird because she's supposed to be making children's toys.
Well, she is, that's her job is to make children's toys.
And she seems to understand children about as well as I understand vector calculus.
Wait, you don't understand vector calculus?
I thought I had to learn vector calculus.
Yes, but not for me. Right?
So I thought that was interesting.
She doesn't have kids of her own.
She's not married. Doesn't even have a boyfriend, right?
No. And she has no understanding of children, but her job is to make children's toys.
And so she inherits this nephew of hers, right?
Now, okay, look, two parents die in a horrifying car crash.
The kid gets injured.
Well, right in front of their kid.
Yeah. Now, they were on a snowy road, which is kind of like the Shining thing, right?
Yeah. Was it a snowplow?
I don't even know what hit them. It was a snowplow that hit them.
Okay, so the kid sees her parents munched by metal right in front of her.
Now, can you imagine how long it took to get her out of the wreckage to get her to a hospital?
They were on a snowy place in the middle of nowhere.
Now, I assume the snowplow...
Knew what happened. But he's got to stop.
He's got to go back. If the parents are crushed, he doesn't have the equipment to get it out.
There's something called the jaws of life, which is like this giant lever.
You know how these levers that lift up cars?
They have levers that open up things so that you can get people out.
So basically, she saw her parents crushed to death.
I doubt that they died right away.
And they just slowly bled out in front of her over a fairly lengthy period of time, I would imagine, right?
Now that's about as traumatic a thing as can be imagined.
That's as traumatic as me...
Not having your 17th cup of coffee today.
Okay, let's not joke about that.
No, that's as traumatic as me, in a theoretical sense, being incorrect at some point in the future.
I know, right? Sorry. Breathe into the bag.
That's what the doctor said. Okay, I'm fine.
He's okay. Don't worry about it.
So the kid is totally traumatized, right?
Yeah. How well is that acting?
Terribly. Terribly.
I mean, the kid was a good actor, I thought.
The kid was a good actor. It was, like, yeah, it was not good acting.
It's not good writing and not good acting.
During the movie, she's kind of sad at the beginning.
She's just very muted. I thought she'd maybe, okay, maybe selective mutism or something like that.
But no, she's just very quiet.
She doesn't talk much.
And then she gets this doll.
We're just going to skip ahead a bit.
She gets this doll, which is basically a friend, a permanent friend.
And she's happy. She's smiling.
She's laughing. It's like, bro, your parents just got killed.
Oh yeah, and she's like skipping through the tulips and all that kind of stuff, right?
Now you could say, the director could make the case, and he could say, well look, but I'm trying to say that she's ignoring her pain and she's bypassing her pain and that's why she gets violent later.
So it could be like really subtle, but somebody should have referenced that.
I mean, I guess they did later, that the doll was like a drug to help her avoid the pain of what happened with her parents.
Yeah. Well, it could also be that she just, like, passed out.
Because we saw her in a neck brace.
She had, like, stuff in her...
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.
So it could just very well be, like, she passed out, she wakes up, her parents aren't there anymore.
Like... Right. Yeah, no, that's an excellent point.
So it could have been a lot less bad than what you're thinking.
Wait a minute. What?
Can I tell you something kind of ironic?
What? Well, after you made that bitter, virtually immoral joke about my 17th cup of coffee...
Did you want a coffee? No.
What did I say would be even more traumatic?
Was being it wrong at some point in the future?
Yeah. Now, did you just create an alternative hypothesis that better explains the movie than I did?
Yeah. How long was the future that I predicted I might be wrong in?
About a minute. About a minute, right? That's kind of funny, right?
Okay, so... She uses her niece, this kid Katie, right?
The robotologist.
She uses her kid like as a guinea pig to test this doll on, doesn't she?
Yeah, she does. Even when the kid gets bitten on the arm by a dog, she's still like, okay, well, you've got to go in for testing.
She's like, well, you don't have to, but I mean, people have flown all the way across the country to see it happen.
Oh, yeah. I know that you've just been hugely traumatized.
Your parents got killed a month ago or whatever it was, right?
Yeah. And you've just been attacked by a dog, but it would be super helpful if...
Imagine you were in some terrible accident or whatever, and at the hotel room, I'm like, hey, Izzy, we need to do a show.
What? Yeah, that would just...
I don't know. It's kind of bizarre. So there's that greed for money, right?
Yeah. And the greed for money...
It's really interesting that you can profit.
So there's this whole setup, right?
You can profit from kids being lonely.
Like, okay, if you had the choice of a real friend or a robot friend, Real friend.
Of course you choose a real friend, right?
Because a real friend is going to grow up with you.
A real friend is going to have the same human experiences.
Cause problems. Yeah, well, of course, cause problems, but you've got to deal with those problems, right?
Yeah, at least you don't have a serial killer as a friend.
So you had an only kid who was very lonely, who was very traumatized, and there's profit.
To be made from giving her a friend that poses zero risk to her.
Yeah. Right? Look, this never happened with you, right?
But I'm telling you, friends can be troublesome.
Yeah. From time to time.
Yeah. They can spill secrets that you've asked them to keep.
Yep. They can very occasionally want to do things that don't perfectly align with your own self-interest, which is clearly immoral.
Oh, you can't see the look.
No, no, but friends can be a trouble.
They can convince you to do things that are kind of bad for you or peer pressure, right?
Now, that's just kind of navigating life.
Yeah, you've got to learn that stuff.
It's better when you're a kid than when you're an adult, right?
And then, you know, eventually you can become a stay-at-home podcaster and completely remove yourself from all out.
That's fair. He hasn't left the house in seven years.
Isolation and solipsism is the way to go.
So she's got a friend who will always be perfectly attentive to her.
Does the robot have any needs of her own?
No. Other than recharging, right?
Yeah. So the robot doesn't have any needs of her own, and the robot is perfectly there for her.
And the robot, there was a scene where she said, you know, I'm sad about my mom, right?
Yeah. My parents, right?
And did she say mom or parents?
Parents, I think. Parents both, right?
I miss my parents, yeah. I miss my parents, right?
So then the robot has, you know, obviously what in the movie land is considered a very good response, right?
Yeah. Do you remember what the robot does?
It records a memory.
Yeah, it says, tell me your memories, I'll record your memories, and you can play them back any time you feel sad or want to remember your parents, right?
Yeah. Which, you know, I can sort of understand, it makes sense.
Now, that is, how old's the kid, like nine?
Nine. Nine, right? Yeah. Is that confirmed?
Yes, she said she was nine.
Okay. So, the kid's nine.
Now, can you imagine, if you feel sad around another nine-year-old, that the other nine-year-old is going to have a perfectly mature and deep way to have you handle that sadness?
No, like, when I was nine, if someone got sad around me, I'd have no clue what to do.
I'd be like, because asking, are you okay, is really dumb.
And, because obviously they're not okay.
And it's like, okay, if you don't even know them that well, giving them a hug is kind of awkward.
So you're just kind of sitting there while they're crying.
It's like, okay. Now, so do you remember we have that robot arm?
Yes. Right? So do you remember, it has a handle, and it's wonderful.
Like when you'd have friends over, do you remember what the game would be?
We'd go under, we'd tip the couch over, put a blanket over it, and then you would try and claw us with the claw.
Yeah, I would try and come in and grab you with that claw.
So just so you know, if you're ever in that situation, it's really, really...
Just grab someone with a claw. No, no, no, grab, because that might be conceivative as a bit aggressive.
But what you do is you take that robot claw...
And from a safe distance, you extend your arm, extend the rubber claw and pat them on the shoulder.
And that's the way that you help somebody with I mean, I'd probably laugh at that, so yeah, it would work.
I have very different emotional reactions than other people is what I found out.
So, you know, if someone, like, if I was really sad and someone did that, I'd probably unsad.
So, and the thing is, too, but you'd need to include, with the robot, like, the distant, probably, if you can get eight or nine feet.
Maybe, like, six feet of masks. Yeah, six feet.
No, but what you could do is, if they're very sad, you give them that distant robot tap, and then you say...
It's alright. Everything will be okay.
There is no need to be sad.
And then become Marvin. Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Yeah, that's right. What's it called again?
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yes.
So it's kind of unrealistic because the robot is better than her aunt at helping her process emotions.
Because the aunt is like, you know what would be great?
If I could find some way to profit from your misery by using you as the guinea pig and then the demonstrator.
Even the robot understands that isn't good because she kept giving the mom, or Gemma, I guess, looks like, bruh, Right, right.
Okay, so there's a writer named Isaac Asimov, who was a complete creep and raised a complete creep of a kid, but neither here nor there.
He was a famous science fiction writer.
And he came up with the three laws of robotics.
Yeah. Okay, number one, dads are always right.
Number two, see, number one.
Number three, well, you get the pattern, right?
No, so the laws of robotics are something like this.
A robot shall never directly harm a human being.
Yeah. A robot will never, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Yeah. And number three, a robot will always obey human commands except when they interfere with one or two.
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.
There are three laws of robotics. I mean, you can find ways around it, but it's not too bad, right?
So basically, it's a non-aggression principle.
But for robots. Right.
But it's also a bystander principle, right?
Yeah. Because if somebody was, I don't know, being attacked by a dog and you ordered the robot to not interfere, that would be a way of, in a sense, facilitating the harm of a person, right?
Now, this robot is obviously programmed.
We don't know in what circumstance or in what way.
This robot is programmed to protect Katie, right?
Yeah. So Katie gets attacked by a dog, right?
Yeah. And also...
No, no. Megan gets attacked by the dog.
And then Katie comes in to pull Megan away from the dog because Megan isn't defending herself.
Right, right. Because Megan's like, do not harm animals is probably one of her programs, right?
Allow yourself to be harmed rather than harm an animal.
Yes. Yes. So, then Katie comes in to try and pull Megan back, the dog bites Katie, and then it cuts out.
Like, Katie streaks, and Gemma hears it, and then the screen cuts.
So, basically, in five weeks or six weeks, she's had her parents killed and been attacked by a crazed dog.
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
protect the child and not defend herself.
I believe so.
Right?
I mean, that's because she doesn't defend herself when the dog attacks it, right?
But she does end up, sorry, spoiler, she does end up killing the dog because the dog attacks Katie, right?
Yeah.
Her quote, "mistress" or her friend or whatever, right?
So she is, she obviously evolves or she's programmed to protect the child, but it's not in imminent danger, right?
Because when Katie gets attacked by the dog, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when Katie gets attacked by the dog, it's later that the dog goes missing.
Yeah. Is that right? It is later, yeah.
It's that night, I think.
So one of the things about self-defense is if someone comes running at you with a chainsaw, you can use violence in self-defense in the moment.
Yeah. Yeah. But after the person is not an imminent threat, you can't, right?
Like you can't go over the next day and shoot the guy, right?
Because you're not in imminent danger, right?
So this is probably not programmed.
So the robot has evolved, in a sense, the sense of protection to now be preemptive.
Yes, and I think that's what gets explained later.
Like you gave me code that keeps changing.
Keeps changing, keeps growing, right?
And you don't even understand it yourself.
How am I supposed to learn it?
Right. Now, this would be a pretty obvious thing to program, because it's been common law from the beginning of time that you can use violence in immediate self-defense, but if you're not in imminent danger, you can't just shoot a guy.
Yeah. No, that's fair. Right?
Like, if a guy has attacked you in the past, and he's somewhere else, you can't hunt him down and kill him.
Yeah. Right? Because you're not in imminent danger, right?
And in fact, there was actually kind of recently, there was a video where a guy was robbing a restaurant or a store or something, and the guy shot him, and he was down on the ground, and he shot him again, and again, and again.
Like, if he's down on the ground and disabled, like, once the threat is eliminated in the moment, you can't continue to use violence.
Now, you programmed that in pretty basically, right?
That would be like one of the first things you'd start programming.
And what you would do as a programmer, and there's this weird thing where people think that computer code is magic that could just become like fallible human beings, but you would have that as an iron law.
Like you cannot have learning that contradicts These basic moral rules, right?
That would be the thing. Say, ah, yes, well, I found a way around these basic moral rules, but you would simply make that the base element of code, and no code, no learning could contradict these basic moral rules, right?
Yeah. You keep enforcing, like, every single aspect of the code.
Like, nothing can go over this.
Right. Let's get to the boy.
Because this is sort of built on the thing with the dog, right?
Yes. So they go to...
They're in the woods, right? Yeah.
And what are they doing in the woods?
So it's kind of like an outdoor school thing.
Because Gemma does not have time because her career is just so important to her.
Yeah. To homeschool Katie, because Katie was previously homeschooled.
She was? She was, yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Oh, so she's got the additional trauma of going into a government school.
Well, no, I don't think this one was government.
I think it was sort of like...
Oh, like a private school? Yeah, it was a private.
Like a Montessori thing, right? Kind of like Montessori, but it was like an outdoor instead of kids learning with their hands.
Like an alternative school.
Okay, okay. So they're out there in the woods doing something, right?
They're out there in the woods picking, I think, hazels or some type of raw nut, I think.
Okay. Is my guess.
Or finding, collecting, whatever, something.
Okay. Right. So the kids at the age of nine go out completely unsupervised into the woods.
Yeah, that's silly.
Well, yeah, whatever, right?
I would not. Look, I think it's fine, but I mean, realistically, no one ever lets that happen.
I think that would be unusual because if something bad happened to the kid, the school would be liable, right?
Well, 50 years ago, I could see it happening.
Nowadays, definitely not.
Right, right, right. Nowadays, even in groups of teenagers and stuff, you have to have an adult there.
Right, right, right. Okay, so then there's a bully whose name is Brandon.
Yeah. Now, the bully is the one, he swears at his mother, right?
Yeah, he does. We think it's the mother, right?
She's pretty old. Yeah, pretty, well, it could just be doesn't dye her hair and keeps it short.
Right, right. Like, if it's one of those, like, nature-y, vegan, spiritual moms, she looks like that type, so.
You sound skeptical. Just a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. So he swears at his mother and then goes off into the woods, right?
So they know this kid's a total bully.
Yeah. And yet he's allowed to be completely unsupervised with other kids alone in the woods.
Again, not really very realistic, right?
A kid like that who's that violent and that destructive, a kid like that would be kicked out of school.
Oh, 100%. I mean, for the most likely, right?
Anyway, so, you know, they've got to have this story.
So then... Megan is put in with all of these teddy bears and kind of deactivated, right?
Or she just goes to sleep, right?
Well, clearly not fully turned off, but...
Right, right. But Brandon, doesn't Brandon pick up Megan?
Later. So I think...
How does it come out? How did they come in the woods again?
What it comes about is Brandon...
So, sorry, they're set up as a team.
Katie and Brandon set up as a team to go find these nuts or whatever they're trying to get, right?
And I think they split up a bit.
Oh, they're chestnuts. Chestnuts, yeah.
Yeah, because they've got the spikes on the outside, right?
Yeah, chestnuts is what I was trying to say.
Um... So chestnuts, and she grabs it, or they both try and pick up the same one.
They just appear somehow. They don't see each other or hear each other coming, right?
Yeah, yeah. And he says, oh, you've got to be careful with these.
They're sharp and like a very taunting tone.
Because they got spikes on the outside, like coronavirus.
And then he presses it into her hand.
Right. Right? And she shrieks.
And she shrieks. Yeah, and Megan hears that.
And Megan then appears.
Megan hears that, gets up, leaves, and appears.
Because she hears the voice of her mistress, so to speak, or her friend in distress, goes up.
Now, and we'll get to why this is so important in a sec, right?
So then, the boy goes over and starts flicking her.
Like, make her talk, right?
Right, right, make her talk.
And then Katie, doesn't Katie kind of run away or disappear?
Katie just doesn't say anything.
Right. So then when Brandon, sorry, yeah, then when Megan doesn't say anything, Brandon just says, okay, fine, just takes her.
Just picks her up. Takes Megan, yeah.
Right. So he takes Megan to some other location in the wood, right, the robot?
Yes, hides her. But at this point, Katie is safe.
Yes, Katie is safe. Right.
Right.
Now, then he sits on top of Megan and begins slapping her on the face or whatever.
Pulls her hair and stuff.
Right.
So then this kid doesn't...
He thinks it's a doll, right?
Because she says it's a doll or a robot or something like that.
Like a robot doll that can move a bit but doesn't do much.
So this kid's a total psycho.
Yeah.
Now, this kid's a total psycho.
And neither the parent nor the school nor the teachers nor the administrators or anything has any idea about how ridiculously murderous this kid is, right?
Now, again, murdering the robot and all that, but he takes the child's hand, he takes Katie's hand and squishes it around the spikes of a chestnut, I assume causing her to bleed.
Well, I don't, we don't see any blood on it, so maybe not, but...
No, I fainted, of course, at that point.
But you saw, maybe you saw something different than I did.
I saw my mother. Anyway, so this is a real psycho kid, right?
Yeah. Well, the reason he took the toy is to make Katie upset.
Like, he doesn't care about the toy, really.
Yeah, sure. Just beating up the toy, right?
Now, then what happens is she, the robot...
What does he say? She pulls off his ear, right?
Yeah. So that's obviously a massive escalation.
And she has changed from when the dog bit her, because when the dog bit her, she didn't do anything.
No. But when this kid is attacking her, she now has learned the sort of principle of immediate self-defense, right?
Yeah, rips off his ear. Right.
Now, she doesn't need to rip off his ear.
No. Because she's pretty strong, right?
I mean, when you see in the end, the fight scene, she's pretty strong.
So she could have simply...
Removed him from the situation.
Well, she could have done any number of things.
Look, if you have the strength to continue grabbing onto an ear and rip it off, you have the strength to push a kid off of your lap.
That's right. Or just not get in that situation in the beginning.
And she's also faster than him, so she could have just run away at any time.
That's right. That's right.
And of course the other thing too is by allowing herself to be pulled off into the woods she's not protecting Katie anymore.
No. Right? So anyway...
The boy has his ear pulled off, and is that when she says, this is the point where you run?
Yeah, this is the time when you run.
Which is kind of a cool line.
I thought it was cringe. No, but I mean, you have to design the movie for the trailer scenes, right?
No, I saw it in the trailer.
I thought it was bad as well. Actually, I'll be completely honest.
I saw that in the trailer, and I was like, okay, this looks dumb.
Right, right. We actually thought we were going to go and see a bad movie.
I thought I was going to see a remake of Avatar or something.
Well, it wasn't that bad.
No, no, it wasn't. We thought it was going to be kind of cringe, but it actually turned out to be pretty good, I thought.
Yeah, pretty good. Aside from that scene where it was just kind of like, okay, we get it.
Yeah, she's scary. So then the boy runs away.
He's screaming. He's freaking out.
And of course, you know, there's a certain amount of...
Right.
Right. Right. So, just because we'll bookmark this briefly and we'll come back to it later on, right?
So, a boy who's mean is tortured and killed.
Yeah. In the story, right?
So, that's what's really important, right?
Yeah, bookmark this.
Right, so. Should we jump straight to the other thing?
Yeah. Just so we can contrast it?
Okay. So, then later on, the girl...
Katie. Katie. You want to...
She's in the room, right? She's in the room, like this testing room with the doll.
And the doll gets taken away because they're suspecting the doll of killing because the doll...
Erased all of its memories.
Erased its video cameras, and then the neighbor got killed by chemicals, right?
And that's all erased, too.
So they think the doll's gone rogue, is killing people, covering its tracks.
So they tape her up, put her in a bag, right?
And then the kid's without the doll in the testing room.
And she's being visited by a social worker.
Yes, social worker that's been here throughout the movie.
Right, who's making sure that she's being taken care of and is in a healthy environment and all that, right?
Yeah, and the social worker has warned, I guess, Gemma about, you know, this doll is going to substitute as a parent.
Well, yeah, like you're avoiding your own suffering by getting addicted to the doll.
Yeah, so anyways, they're in there, and Katie keeps screaming, I want Megan.
And the social worker's trying to calm her down, and then Gemma comes into the room, and Katie pulls out scissors and And is going to stab...
Yeah, going to stab the social worker or Gemma, one of the two.
Right, right. So here's the thing, right?
So we've got a boy who's violent and less violent.
Not even that bad. No, less violent. Yeah.
Because he's just, you know, I mean, if you've ever held a chestnut, they're not spikes.
It's not like a mace. They're kind of squishy little spikes and all that.
It's not, as you say, it doesn't even make you bleed, right?
No, it probably just hurts a bit.
It's like being pinched.
It's like being pinched, right? It's not even as bad as being bitten by one of our psycho ducks, but that's okay.
Another time. Sorry, I just fainted again.
What were you talking about? So...
Megan. Did you want to...
Oh yeah, hold on, quick, quick. Very, very brief aside.
So, we have our ducks, right?
One of them, the sweetest duck we've had.
Her name's Donut. Just an absolutely lovely duck.
Very lovely. She'll come up, she'll pet me, she followed me around the yard earlier today, right?
Super gentle. Super gentle.
Even when she, like, nibbles at you.
It's really nice. We have another duck.
He'll kind of get a little aggressive if you pick him up and stuff.
But he's pretty sweet as well, I'd say.
Like, he'll walk up to you, he'll nibble at you.
His nibbling gets a bit too aggressive.
And then we have this one. I think something is genuinely wrong with her.
Real sociopath duck. Sociopath duck.
No, literally. Because she went for your hand instead of the treat.
So I held out a treat. She bypassed the treat and attacked my hand.
Yeah. And then today, she pecked my cough really hard.
Literally, she walked up. They were swimming in a little pool filled with warm water and stuff, right?
Because even though it's winter, they still got to have their swims, right?
And goes up, walks out, goes and attacks his leg.
It's like she won't even go that far to take a treat.
We will call her Brandon. No, but anyways, and also the reason I think something's seriously wrong with her is because if we ever leave her in the coop while the others are out, she doesn't get upset.
But we leave either of the other two in the coop while the others, they're bonded.
They freak out. They're like, let me get my friend.
So, anyways, back to the movie.
Yeah, so we've got Katie here.
Now, Katie... Is much more violent than Brandon, because Katie is threatening to stab an adult with a pair of scissors, which could kill someone, right?
Whereas the other boy, not right, of course, but much less violent.
He squished her hand into a fruit or into a nut with a hard outside, right?
Yeah. So, because the other aggression was against the doll who's inanimate and so on.
Again, not great, but...
So the boy...
Doesn't cause any pain, just damages.
...is much less violent than Katie.
Yeah. But the boy's punishment for his violence is what?
Torture and death. Torture and death.
Nobody sits there and says, gosh, what's wrong with him?
What's going on at home? You know, nobody's sensitive to his emotional state or trying to figure out root causes or anything.
But when Katie screams at a social worker...
Is indescribably aggressive and then grabs a pair of scissors and about to stab someone.
And then half punches Gemma in the face.
Yeah, yeah. So after this level of psycho half-murderous violence She gets hugged and talked to.
Well, what's going on?
Your feelings?
So it's like the boy is tortured and killed for being like one hundredth as aggressive as the girl who gets hugs and questions and is everything okay?
We've got to make sure we figure out what's going on deep down.
Oh, come on. And also, let me tell you something.
Okay, look, I remember being 9 pretty well.
Some could say even better than being 10.
Look, it's not...
Like, if you're gonna get to the point where you slap someone, you're not gonna back down when they start asking you questions.
And, like, are you okay? Like, no.
You're slapping someone, you're committing.
Like, you're going all out until you literally have to get, like, seduced.
Like, what's it called? Not seduced.
Like, sedative.
Sedated. Sedated, yeah, yeah.
Seduced. No, sedated.
Um... Because, like, you aren't just going to slap and then be like, I'm sorry, I really, I just miss Megan, right?
Like, if you already have that reasonable, that ability to be reasonable in you, it's not going to escalate to the point of slapping.
And it's not going to calm down to the point of slapping if you don't have that.
Without going into any details, you and I, we've known an aggressive kid.
A few, but mainly one, yeah.
I'm thinking one really aggressive kid.
Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Now, that aggressive kid ended up Ask you to talk to me.
Yeah. And I really did work my very best.
I really did work to try and talk to that kid.
Yeah, I wanted to talk to you over her own parents.
Yeah, she didn't want to talk to her own parents.
She wanted to talk to me. And I really had a long conversation with her.
Now, she was really young at that point, right?
I think we were six or seven.
No, six. Yeah, six or seven.
But anyway, I gave her a speech about, you know, this level of aggression is going to hurt you.
It's going to mean people aren't going to want to play with you, and people are going to be scared of you, and, you know, it's just going to make you unhappy, and there's better ways to get what you want.
That's a long speech. Now, that didn't...
Do much? Well, it didn't seem to do much, right?
I tried talking to the parents. I could really put heart and soul into trying to fix the situation.
And here's the other thing, too.
I'm not a social worker, and I'm just going out on a limb here and guessing.
If there are social workers listening to this, let me know.
But it seems to me that if you're a social worker who is trying to make sure a kid is doing all right, and that kid wants to stab you to death, you're taking the kid out of that situation.
You're going to put that kid, you're going to get psychiatrists, psychologists, like you're just going to take that kid out of that situation because clearly it's toxic.
That kid cannot stay with Gemma. No.
Or the Megan thing, right?
Yeah, no Megan, no Gemma.
So if you're a social worker and you're saying to the woman, to the Gemma, right?
You're saying to Gemma, oh, so you basically got the kid addicted to a robot playmate and she's become completely psycho-violent.
Then you would take that kid out of the situation.
Probably sue Gemma. Well, there would be something.
We might press charges.
I don't know. So that to me was...
Not very realistic at all.
You try and stab a social worker, you're going into some kind of home.
That kid would be better off in an orphanage than with that doll, honestly, though.
The interesting question to me was about how the doll built its own personality, how the doll built its own moral rules to the point where the doll just becomes kind of psycho and will attack and kill basically anybody that the kid wants.
And this is from being super empathetic and saying, well, play Memories of Your Parents and I'll record them, we can play them back.
I'm still empathetic to Katie until the very end.
Or sorry, yeah. Right, right, right.
So I think it was interesting how the doll turns the kid psycho, and then the doll becomes psycho itself.
And so one of the things that's interesting is that, look, you like to please people to some degree, right?
Some degree. You like to please people, and I think everyone does, who's sort of healthy.
But here's the thing. If you want to please someone, and look, when we're sort of thinking back about some of the...
Kids you knew where it didn't quite work out.
Yeah. If the kid wants to do something, and this happens even now, the kid wants to do something, and you're not super keen on it, but you're like, okay, right?
Yeah, sure, we'll give it a try. We'll give it a try, right?
I'll just commit to it, because I know if I don't commit or only half commit, it won't be as fun.
Right, so you literally, and you won't do this half thing, right?
No, I know one kid specifically will do this half thing.
Do the half thing, right? And so the half thing is like, fine, I'll do it, but you'll do it, you know, like this.
And then try and drag everyone else off to do her thing halfway through the game.
It's like, okay. There's this thing where it's sort of a marriage thing in some marriages where the woman is like...
Well, you just don't clean the dishes properly.
Yeah.
Right?
And do the dishes right and do them again and get them right.
And the man just is like, won't do a good job because he's just annoyed, right?
Yeah.
Kids do this too, where it's like, if you don't want to do a particular chore, you'll do it badly.
That's frustrating to the parent in the hopes that the parent will just say, fine, I'll do it myself.
And you're off the hook, right?
I know you've never contemplated.
I don't do it on purpose.
I just do it and I think, okay, it looks fine.
And then mom will come in and with her complete laser vision, she'll be like, you missed two follicles of dust over on that cabinet.
I've been assigned to do the windows.
I'm doomed. The craziness that happens, like what is it that drives Katie kind of crazy?
I think what drives Katie crazy is that Megan has no needs of her own.
And that fuels selfishness on the part of Katie.
So, so you, if you have a friend who wants to do something that you don't particularly want to do, to your credit, you'll throw yourself in, you'll try and make the best of it, and sometimes it works out.
Yeah. But then at some point, you'll say what?
All right, let's do my thing. Let's do my thing, right?
Now, if the kid is like, no.
Then I just leave. Well, then you're like, you're not particularly interested in a relationship.
Yeah, then I'll leave. I'll be like, okay, well, sorry, I gotta head home now.
Right. So you're not particularly interested in a relationship where only the other person's needs matter.
Yeah. And your needs are completely unimportant, right?
Yeah. But that's the problem.
So what is it that makes...
Katie go crazy is that Megan doesn't really have any needs of her own.
She never says, well, I want to do this.
Now, again, maybe that sort of develops later, but what happens is if you have people in your life that constantly defer to you, it makes you a little crazy, and it also makes you aggressive because you don't get used to navigating things you don't want to do.
Because if it's only about what you want to do, the other person's kind of erased, and they're just kind of there as a prop to what you want to do.
But... Learning how to negotiate what other people want to do as well.
So the danger of the robot is the robot's got no needs of its own.
So the robot gets really aggressive.
So why is the robot so aggressive?
Because what happens is if you constantly defer to somebody else's preferences and you don't allow yourself or the relationship doesn't allow you to have any needs of your own, what happens eventually?
You get aggressive. You get mad.
You get angry. And you get angry at the other person rather than at your parents, say, who should have trained you on how to have your own legitimate needs and negotiate back and forth, right?
Yeah. So she gets more aggressive because she has no needs.
She also makes Katie aggressive because Katie doesn't learn how to negotiate with not getting her needs met.
So when they take away the robot and Katie gets super aggressive, that's because she has been used to getting everything her way for so long.
And this has driven everyone crazy.
So the aggression, I think one of the sort of hidden stories or the stories behind the story is...
Don't be in relationships where other people just give you everything you want.
This makes you kind of mean and selfish and crazy.
And it gives you no capacity to handle or navigate frustration when you're not getting what you want.
So I think that's one of the things that they're talking about with the danger and that eventually erupts into...
I will murder everyone.
Well, kind of violence that to me got a little goofy towards the end.
Well, at the end, yeah. Yeah, I got goofy.
Well, I wanted to talk about the end fight.
Go. Completely traumatizing to Katie.
Yeah. The fact that halfway through, Katie just turns and smiles at Gemma like, yeah, we got this.
It's like, bro, you just killed your replacement parent.
Yeah. While seeing half the head get stripped off and metal get exposed and, like, really creepy stuff, right?
Yeah. At nine, I would have been absolutely, like, dude, I would have been like, okay, yeah, Gemma, good luck.
I would have just out of there.
Peace out. I'm going to go join an Amazon rainforest Pigby group because that's safer than this, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No, literally, like, I would have been out, like, Right, so...
I don't think... I'd be like, okay, well, I'm nine, I can barely do anything.
Except she could do something then, but, I mean, honestly, I gotta say, I don't think most nine-year-olds are that smart.
But, I mean, she never came off to me as that smart in the movie, so I don't think she's smart enough to think, oh, yes, in this time of panic, I will calm myself down enough to walk over, find the desk that's been tipped over, grab these handles, and then control that big robot, Bruce.
Yes. I don't think at the chaos of being nine after being traumatized for the last two months, you'd have the exact brain cells to do that.
Right. Now, she didn't see Brandon get his ear torn off, right?
No. No, okay. Well, at least that we know of, right?
No, she didn't. She didn't see that. So here's the thing.
So to keep your head in a time of crisis...
Very hard. Well, it takes a lot of training.
There's a reason why boxers and martial artists and so on and, you know, like I've kept my head when being attacked by people in public, but it takes a lot of training.
It takes a lot of practice to be able to do that.
And the idea that a traumatized nine-year-old Who doesn't even come off as that smart, honestly, I gotta say, throughout the movie.
Yeah, I don't think she comes up with anything particularly smart.
No. Because if she was smart, she'd say, you know, I think I kind of need a real friend too, right?
Like, at least let's mix it up a little.
I got the tin opener friend, but I also need, like, a real friend.
Well, she'd probably not be content with only one friend.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true.
You need to mix it up, right? Because she'd need different personality types to entertain herself as well, right?
I mean... Well, and there's a lot of games.
You know, tagged with two people is pretty lame.
Especially with the robot that is kind of still a bit tumbling, right?
Fall over. Well, and hide-and-go-seek is okay, but, you know, a lot of games, the more kids, the better, right?
Yeah. No, she'd want friends.
Right. So, yeah, I think she didn't come across as super smart.
And remember at the very beginning when there's this old robot that they end up using in the battle?
Remember what I said when we first saw the old robot?
Yeah, it's going to be used at the end.
Yeah, because it's like the movie Aliens where they have this big robot and then they use it at the end.
So it's kind of like... I like movies that throw in stuff so that's not perfectly predictable.
Like, have a few things at the beginning and maybe not even use any of them at the end, right?
Just have them as, like, okay, cool details of the movie that can be, like, kept on for later.
So that re-watching is like, oh, that's a cool detail.
I'm surprised that didn't get shown again, right?
Yeah. Even if it doesn't make it...
Look, I think there's this very set standard of, like, believable plot.
It's like, okay, you gotta...
Except for this movie. This movie didn't have that, but it's like, okay, must have at least one love interest, usually about four main characters on average.
Yeah. Gotta have stuff at the beginning that shows up later.
I like movies that aren't like that because then it's more like real life.
In real life, a lot of times you'll see stuff at the beginning of your life and never see it again later on, right?
Right. So I just think that it would be nice to have a movie with something that isn't so predictable in terms of the plot.
Well, and if it's predictable for a 14-year-old, imagine what it's like for a 56-year-old.
Yeah, who's actually been an actor and stuff, or trained to be an actor, I guess.
Yeah, yeah. Now, the last thing I wanted to mention, if there's more you want to mention, of course, that's great, but the last thing I want to mention is Megan as an analogy for social media.
Yeah. Right? So, Megan is something that's isolating Katie.
And Katie gets addicted.
And if it's taken away, Katie gets raged.
Social media. Yeah, you're right. Social media, video games.
For boys, more so than anything, I'd say.
Yeah, video games for boys.
Social media for girls. Social media for girls.
Instagram for girls. Instagram for girls.
Like, something where you just get...
It gives you such an ego boost.
You never have to negotiate with it, really.
And it's really addictive.
And it also makes you cold-hearted.
Yeah. Because social media is not real people.
And for sure, like you remember we saw this video the other day where the dogs are barking at each other and then somebody opens the gate and they're perfectly nice.
That's social media, yeah. So, social media, it's really easy to be mean to people who aren't in front of you.
Because you have no consequences. There's no consequences for you.
So, it makes people kind of cold-hearted and kind of mean and this, that, and the other, right?
Well, I'll just make a silly example.
I remember we saw this video.
It was, like, some conventioner, everyone.
Sorry, some, like, gun convention, I assume, because everybody had their guns, right?
Everybody was so nice.
Again, they were all guys, but, I mean, they were so polite.
Like, you could see them, like, nodding and smiling.
Like, nobody was aggressive because, like, you get aggressive if there's guns, right?
Right. Even though the odds of a gun actually getting used if someone started yelling would be very low.
But I mean, still, in a place with the actual consequences, everyone's super nice.
But online, where the worst consequences, you get your account suspended and you make a new one, right?
I'm pretty sure that's some of the worst consequences you can get from that, aside from being silly and getting a bad reputation, of course, right?
But then again, just make a new account, you're fine.
But there's no consequences online.
Yes. So I think that this idea that...
Yeah.
Like, after Katie had been with Megan for a while, like the robot, who on earth would want to play with her?
No one.
Because she'd just be used to getting everything her own way to have all of the focus and attention on her, and it doesn't need to be reciprocated, right?
So I think that these, it's a lot of young women will have this Instagram, and they'll post pictures of themselves.
Photoshop, massively Photoshop.
Photoshop, lots of makeup, filters, you name it, right?
And then what happens is they get a lot of, oh, you're so pretty or that's a lovely outfit or whatever.
And they get a lot of this You were going to say?
I was going to say, I get what you're saying.
We went into that by saying social media.
Like you get all this hype from social media.
All this positivity stuff.
And it makes you feel like you're very popular, but it's not a personal relationship.
And it's one-sided, right?
So the people who post this, they're getting a lot of likes and a lot of positive comments, but it's kind of one-sided.
They're not going to everyone else's account and doing the same thing, right?
So it's kind of one-sided.
It feeds your ego. It feeds your vanity.
And it's not reciprocal.
And I think that's just training you to be bad in a relationship with an actual person in the real world.
Yeah. So I think that the movie has something to do with the fears that social media causes alienation, a one-sided, quote, relationships, vanity, and therefore aggression, because it doesn't teach you how to handle frustration or negotiate with other people, which is really important in relationships.
It is. All right. Anything else you wanted to mention about the movie?
I do not think so, but I would recommend it.
I'd say go give it a watch. You know, anything that was decent in Avatar got taken out of Avatar and put into this.
Avatar was that blue waterboarding death of aesthetics.
It was just terrible. I barely thought of it since we watched it, other than...
Dude, the hype about it, though.
Oh, yeah. Well, they had to have that, right?
No, everybody's like, oh, this is such a good movie.
And then Megan's like, oh, it's okay.
Like, what? No, Megan has done pretty well, though, for 12 budget.
Megan's done pretty well, that's for sure.
But didn't Avatar do really well as well?
Unfortunately, Avatar has done quite well.
No, I want it to do well because I want a sequel.
I think everybody should lose brain cells watching this movie.
Oof. I don't think I've ever felt as offended by the color blue in my entire life.
Didn't you used to like the color blue?
I did. I'm afraid it's scrubbed.
Yeah, it is completely scrubbed. It's okay.
They weren't pretty blue, so we can ignore that.
Oh, yeah. I used to like whales, too.
Now I just want to punch them with harpoons.
Anyway, how much does the blue whale's tongue weigh?
Go. What?
Three hundred... Four?
Thousand? No. No, we just did this the other day.
So, the blue whale, what's the largest thing it could swallow?
A grapefruit, but it can fit 100 humans in its mouth, right?
Yes, and its tongue weighs four tons.
Oh, four tons. Four tons.
I thought it was four tongues, but I'm incorrect about that.
Oh, yeah, there's one other thing I wanted to mention.
How many pounds is a ton? 20?
Oh, Lord. 1,600?
It's a lot. Oh, okay.
It was kind of far off.
It's been a long time since I've done that conversion, but it's a lot, right?
Yeah. A car can be two tons.
Okay. Three times.
So, okay. So there's one thing that I was a bit surprised in the movie just to sort of finish it off here.
So when Brandon, the boy, I thought when he was tortured, he literally was going to vanish or disappear.
What do you mean? Like poof, just vanish and disappear.
Like the ring of invisibility.
What, like die? No, no, no.
Literally vanish. I did not know what you're talking about.
I thought when he was being tortured by the robot, I thought he was going to disappear.
In other words, I thought he was going to be not ear.
I thought not ear.
Not ear! Not ear!
I believe it. It's eerie!
Okay, I just wanted to mention that.
Yeah, I'm done. All right, so with that fine dad joke.
You may not hear from my dad for quite a long time, if forever.
After that, this could be the last show he does.
Do you think I should have stretched that out for another couple of minutes or no?
See, I love the optimism that you thought I was going to have something valuable to say.
You're not going to be out here.
Not here. Yeah, he's here today, gone tomorrow.
Yep. Okay. All right.
So, thanks everyone so much. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Okay, don't help him out though.
I mean, after that joke, he doesn't deserve it.
Actually, pay me a lot and I'll, maybe won't do another joke again.
Yeah, pay him and he won't do another one, I promise.
Beautiful. All right. Take care, everyone.
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