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June 21, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:56
Izzy and Stef Movie Review: Elemental
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Time Text
Oh my god, that hurt.
That should be the opening.
Oh, I think I just gave birth to an air elemental.
Oh my god. Alright.
Wait, wait, if we're doing loud noises...
No, no! I won't blow into it, I'm sorry.
Okay, get it out of your system. All right.
RIP headphone users. Honestly.
So we're doing this review.
Oh, God, this movie.
We saw it a couple of days ago, and every time I've thought about doing it, I've been vaguely depressed and without energy to think about doing it.
Yeah, like, usually when it comes to doing a show, it's like, well, I could do something else, but, you know, shows are pretty fun, right?
Yeah, yeah. So I'm fine with doing the show, but this one, it was like, can we do the show?
And we're just like...
Just losing will to live.
The movie is called... Elemental.
But I've renamed it Helemental.
Because actually, hell would be more simulating.
It's the only time I think...
I almost fell asleep in this movie.
Yeah, I looked over and you were just like dozing.
Oh, man. I was just like, please let there just be a nice, long, slow, talky scene so I can catch a nap without missing anything.
All right. Oh, my gosh. Literally, at one point, I kept my phone on silent, but I could still see when messages popped up.
And I got a message. It wasn't even from someone I hugely liked or whatever, but I was just like, oh, thank goodness I can make conversation with something instead of watching this movie.
Well, and it was super colorful.
Great backgrounds. Like, they poured a huge amount of effort.
It was really pretty. I'll say that's the only good thing about the movie.
Like, visually, it was amazing.
That was... I remember a couple...
Probably, like, six months ago, we watched this...
It was, like, one of those documentaries, like, the nature documentaries, but it was AI... Or not AI, it was animated.
It was set in prehistoric times about dinosaurs.
A dinosaur one, yeah, yeah. The dinosaur nature documentary, right?
Yeah. And it was done with mostly...
Computer generated images.
And I thought, even though that's a full-on realism as much as you can get, that this was a lot better than that.
And it just shows how much technology has come.
That was the one with the Tyrannosaurus Rex who was swimming, right?
Yeah, and it just shows how far the technology has come in just like six to eight months.
Incredible stuff. Yeah, really good visual.
So I made a prediction on the way to the theater.
I said that this was going to be about diversity and getting along with people who are very different from you and all of that, but it was going to cheat.
Yes. And I was right.
So the basic premise is that there are four elements.
Go. There is fire, earth, water, and air.
Right, and we don't really get to see much earth or air, but the fire and the water stuff
was really Heavy in in the scene, so this is just a brief intro to it
There are spoilers here, but the whole movie is a spoiler No, the whole movie is predictable you can get the entire
plot in simply the trailer I've noticed that real quick right before we start. I've
noticed that a lot with Kids movies, or movies especially for younger people, even for older people.
I'll see the trailer when I'm watching YouTube, like a trailer will pop up, and I'll be like, oh okay, I'll watch the whole thing in case you want to do a review on it.
And I'll make an example.
I think it's coming out in a week, and I was originally like, we should review this movie.
It's called Ruby Gilman.
I was like, oh, I know.
We're not doing it. Please, let's not do it.
Algebra. Algebra.
It's so cringe.
Genuinely the worst pickup line I've ever heard.
Oh, and this face.
This face that these teenage girls always make.
Like these wide eyes and this half grin of embarrassment.
It's like they're programming all these kids to be super shy.
Anyway, go on. Yes. Ruby Gilman.
Well, they don't need any programming. They already are shy.
But... That movie.
I was like, hey, you know, we should review that, right?
And I watched the trailer for it.
I learned the entire plot.
Like, that's not the stuff you're supposed to put in the trailer.
The stuff you're supposed to... I mean, it's stupid.
But I personally really don't want to review that one.
But we're holding out for Mission Impossible.
Yeah, we want to do Mission Impossible.
We thought, you know, let's do a couple of kid movies from Pixar and Disney, like all the woke ones, but it's time.
I can't do it anymore. I can't.
I'm done. This is our last one.
Obviously, I'm 14. I'm not watching the kid movies because, oh, it's a kid movie.
I love it, right? I mean, we're doing it for the reviews, but I'm done.
I'm done. I can't do it anymore.
The only kid movie I'm ever watching again is Tangled because that's a great movie.
So the movie opens, Fire Elements, Bernie, get it?
Bernie, yeah.
This is like more jokes than the B movie, right?
So Bernie and Cinder Luman immigrate to Element City.
I'm going to be completely honest.
I never got the pun Bernie and Cinder.
I got Cinder, but I never got Bernie until like five minutes ago.
Cinder all right so they immigrate to element City where they face xenophobia
Fear of others a fear of others who are different from you from other elements and struggle to find a home
They have a daughter Ember and eventually established a convenience store called
the fireplace setting up a blue flame that represents their heritage and traditions and blah blah blah
So Bernie the dad intends to give the store to Ember when he retires, but she must first control her fiery temper
When Bernie allows Amber to run the shop on her own, she...
she becomes overwhelmed by the customers and rushes to the basement.
Her fiery outburst breaks a water pipe, flooding the basement and summoning Wade Ripple, a water element health inspector.
I'm going to be honest, that's the worst character name I've ever heard in my life.
But see, it's because he's water, so it's Wade.
Wade in the water.
Okay, how many water names can you come up with?
Like, I'm going to be serious.
Oh, Marco and Polo.
Okay, I'll punch you.
Okay, cut that from the show.
Peaceful childing, right? No, I'm kidding.
I think people know. I'm kidding.
So, say you have, like, over generations and all, right, you're going to have tons and tons of these water people, right?
Right. How many water names can you come up with?
Like, every third person is going to be named Wade, Riptide, Pebble, I don't know, like just watery.
Yeah, like in streams, you find Pebbles.
No, Pebble would be an Earth name.
Silence. Um...
Silence would be an air element name.
Like, I don't know. Like, ripple, bobble. Like, you're going to get a whole bunch of stuff like that.
It's just... It's stupid that they have to name it after the element, because...
Yeah, yeah. I don't even know.
It annoys me, but...
It's such a bad name. And actually, he's not quite a health inspector.
He's a building inspector. But anyway.
Yeah. Wade notes the faulty plumbing and reluctantly leaves for City Hall to report the violation to his air element employer, Gail Cumulus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so that's sort of the beginning of it, right?
Now... This Ember, this Ember is the fire girl.
I'm going to call her fire girl, right?
Yeah, fire girl. So she's legit insane.
Yeah, she is. So she screams at customers.
Now, I've worked... Karen!
Yeah, I've worked in many stores.
And yeah, occasionally customers can be difficult, but so what?
Like, you don't scream at them, right?
So you always see this in movies.
It's like, one customer has a problem.
Another customer has a problem.
Someone's shaking a product in your face.
And then you just explode and scream at people.
Yeah, I don't think why it'd be that difficult.
In fact, I find it kind of funny.
If customers were being just annoying and being like, I don't even know what, like just asking dumb questions, like the sign says so right there.
I wouldn't get mad at them, obviously, right?
I may be annoyed, but I wouldn't show it.
But it would just be like... I find it funny.
Like, you know, you come home and you talk to your friends and you're like, yeah, by the way, I had this silly customer today.
Listen to the story, right? It gives you stuff to talk about.
We've never seen anyone rude in stores.
I've worked in restaurants. I've worked in a variety of retail stores.
I never even remotely got overwhelmed by customers.
Anyway, they have this kind of thing.
I've seen... We go to stores...
I go to stores all the time nowadays, like malls and stuff like that.
Even if I don't buy much, it's always just nice strolling around, right?
But it's...
I mean, I've never seen a rude customer.
I've seen a few people who might be a bit snappy.
Or some Karens, especially, who are like, if they don't get it right, they get mad at the...
Like, if the chef doesn't get it right, then they get mad at the employees or the waiters instead of the chef, right?
And I can see that. But it's not like...
They don't start yelling. They don't start calling them names.
They're just like, this isn't good.
There's grumbling. There's some grumbling, right?
It's not that... No one's really...
No one's... Like, in the beginning, it had...
Oh, do I want to get one free?
Oh, I'll take the free one, please.
No one says that.
No one's that dumb, okay?
That's IQ 40.
Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, so, when the health...
Oh, the building inspector, when he leaves, she chases after him because she wants him to stop.
Like, that's criminal.
That's stalking. And she jumps this...
There's the fire girl. She jumps into a subway.
She walks past one of the wood people...
And then he burns him.
And burns him down to the, like, almost down to the ground.
Like, burns all his leaves and his limbs off and so on, so his, quote, clothing is gone.
So she's really, really dangerous.
So they're saying, well, you shouldn't be afraid of people who are very much different from yourselves, except if they burn your entire clothing and skin off.
And she did that again with the guy Fern, or Ferb, or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was, like...
The worker, right? The other worker.
Like the sloth. He got really mad, exploded pretty much, and burnt his entire office and him.
And it just made no sense. So they said, well, don't be afraid of, they would say to the wooden people, don't be afraid of fire, even though they show it burning down wood.
But it's fine for a water person to be terrified of a sponge that kind of sucks them up.
So it just didn't really have any logic.
So this woman, the fire girl, she has rage issues, and she wants to be a glass sculptor, although she doesn't really know that.
Her father wants her to work in the shop.
Which she's wanted to do her entire life.
But the moment she meets this guy, the water guy, Wade.
Wade Ripple, the guy with the dumb name.
She's like, oh, I just don't want to work for him anymore.
I don't want to work for my dad, right?
Because he says, follow your dreams as a government inspector.
Oh, yeah. So the guy, the water guy, is all like, well, you've got to be true to yourself, and you've got to follow your dreams, and you've got to be honest, and you've got to be rooted.
And my dreams are to work as a low-level government inspector.
Yeah, so his follow-your-passion speech led him to be stuck in pipes nagging people about government Being up to code in their buildings.
I don't know. And he hates his job.
He's like crying over having to report her.
So, you know, this is sort of a message.
Don't judge people by cliches, right?
So there are lots of cliches, like British people are supposed to be kind of cold.
Irish people are supposed to be not so smart and kind of heavy drinkers.
And German people are supposed to be hyper-organized and all of that.
And so this movie says, well, you know, shouldn't judge people by their cliches.
But the water guy is totally soppy and unformed even as a personality, cries all the time, and the fire girl is hot-tempered and explosive, and so they literally have every characteristic of their element is a cliché, and this movie is like, don't judge people by clichés.
And the plant guys are kind of like a little shy and nice and timid, and the air ones are kind of aggressive, right?
And the water guy, I don't understand the logic.
So why is some water alive and some water is not alive?
That's like us swimming through a sea of meat, and only we're alive, and the other meat is not.
Like some sort of hellscape of human soup, but we're only alive.
And yet the water guy regularly freaks out in water.
Yeah. He's like, come on, we have to get out quick.
He's like panicking. The water is super dangerous.
No, it's not. Maybe he means that a little bit for her, but he seems to be...
But he kept saying we. It's not, you have to get out of this.
It's like, no, we have to get out of this.
It's like, no, that's not how it works.
Now, I think an under-discussed element of the movie is cannibalism.
Yes. I felt a little queasy.
Okay, you didn't feel queasy.
Queasy! No, you didn't.
But you were too busy napping.
Oh, yeah, yeah. But, okay, so in the shop, right, the fireplace, he has, or the dad, Bernie, has this meal, which is a log, like a little stick or a log, and he presses it together with his hands and it creates a crispy fire log wood thing, right? Into a round, like, a round shape, right?
Yep. And...
Then is serving that and eating it himself to the customers.
Now, I personally, maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any trees in the movie aside from that one flowering tree.
And I think there may have been like one...
But mostly what you see is living trees.
Yeah, and maybe that's because so many are caught up and cooked for the...
The fire dude's meals, right?
But I personally didn't...
I didn't think so, right?
Because I never saw any, like, wood cutting down or anything like that, right?
So what I got from that is they're eating the dead limbs of the wood people, it looks like.
Yeah. When they crush it up, it's like, that's not exactly the best.
And that's kind of like cannibalism.
It's worse than eating a dolphin.
Yeah. Because they're sentient creatures who can reason and subject to morality, a full citizen.
So they're eating their fellow citizens' limbs, right?
Yeah, it just seems odd.
And even the fire. So there's fire that's alive, and then you make fire, and then you eat fire.
But if you're eating the same matter that is alive, it seems like you're eating living tissue.
It's kind of like cannibalism.
So I just found the whole logic to be kind of very...
Yeah, it didn't make sense.
Very strange. Also, sometimes, speaking of fire, like sometimes...
Sorry. Later in the movie, it's a flashback to when Bernie and Amber are first leaving their tribe or whatever.
They go on a wooden boat, and they're fine.
Because clearly it's a choice to burn stuff.
And then earlier in the movie, before the flashback, they were knocking on a door, and they set the doorbell on fire.
That's right. A wooden door. There's no logic to this.
There's no logic to it. Yeah, yeah.
Now, there's this whole thing, and I may have dozed through part of it, but there was this whole thing about the canal doors.
We've got to keep the canal doors shut, because otherwise it's going to flood Firetown, like where all the fire elementals are.
And so the solution, so these doors are built to open and close, and apparently the solution to this is to weld them shut with this glass welding thing.
I don't think they're doors exactly, I think.
They open and close, though. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a dam, and they're not exactly supposed to open.
But that's the issue, is that it was open.
No, but they do. They have the middle part.
Oh, yeah, and they have that whole area for it to flow out.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I generally don't...
If something's designed to open, the solution is not to weld it shut.
Yeah, no, it's supposed to be doing that.
Like our front door is a little loose.
We're going to weld it shut. But it's supposed to open, so I didn't quite understand that.
Just find a way for it to open during the right time when it's sunny and it'll dry up and all, right?
Well, and there's this cliche a little bit that girls aren't quite as good at engineering as boys.
And then the cloud girl?
Yeah, Gail. Gail. She's like, this is absolutely going to hold.
And like nine seconds later, it completely shatters and breaks.
Yeah, it's like five scenes later.
It was supposed to hold.
You're the top government inspector thing for this.
You run a whole wing of the government, it just shows government incompetence.
But... Well, the thing is too, like to invert cliches is not to eliminate cliches.
So imagine this. Imagine if the girl was super emotional and cried all the time at everything and people would say, oh, that's such a cliche.
And imagine if the guy was totally assertive and hot-tempered and rode a motorcycle and was tough and people say, oh, come on, that's such a cliche.
But all they do is they take these really drippy cliches and they flip them and they think they've dealt with the cliches because the male...
The Wade, the water guy, cries all the time.
He's got a really high, soft, gentle voice and he's very supportive.
I thought it was like some Asian guy who voice acted him because the voice sounded so soft.
Yeah, yeah. High-pitched. Apparently it was this kind of somewhat macho-looking black guy.
Yeah, the voice does not quite fit the appearance.
We looked him up and we were like, what?
Can you check the search? So, what they've done is they've taken the male cliche and grafted it on the female, and they've taken the female cliche and grafted it on the male.
All they've done is invert it.
It's not creative. It's not interesting.
I assume, obviously, it's a kid's movie.
It's supposed to be comedic and funny.
The only time I laughed, at the very end, the dad, Bernie, bends down to his knees.
And his legs are so short, he probably, when he goes from his foot to his knee, goes down about an inch, and I think that's the only time I laughed, and it was like...
The weird character design.
Don't make him that short.
Because, okay, another thing, the parents...
Two foot tall, if they're lucky.
The daughter is, like, four and a half, five feet.
It's like, that doesn't make sense.
Well, and the girl has to have the long, skinny legs.
Yeah, okay. She's got to have the false eyelashes and the lips, and, like, they've got to make her super girly-looking, whereas the guy can just be this tub of, like, this blobby tub of Elvis hair.
We should have named him Blob.
Okay, here's another thing.
I don't know if this is just my eyes or if it was one scene or something specific, but obviously she barely, she doesn't have any joints or limbs or anything, right?
You can see at some points, even her arms bend like, like just bend like a twizzler.
Yeah, like plasticine. Yeah, like whatever, right?
And she has a thigh gap with the fire.
It's like, y'all didn't have to do that.
It's a movie for, I don't know, I just thought that was so stupid.
Like, Yeah, couldn't they make...
Like, if they were to say that the guy has got this water uber-chad body, like this giga-chad body, and she's like a roly blob and nothingness, like, that wouldn't work.
So they still have to do all these cliches about how attractive and pretty and...
Her waist was, like, smaller than her neck.
It's like, that's not possible.
I mean, obviously, I know it's like fire element.
It's like, it's still just, I think, make it some more...
I just... I miss movies that had more realistic character designs for their characters.
Obviously, it's animated.
Do whatever you want. And I know these are just elements, so it's kind of silly to say, make them look realistic, but...
But why does the guy have to have a dad bod and she looks like a supermodel?
Yeah, she would go with someone higher quality who wasn't a government worker if she really had choices like that, right?
I imagine, yeah. But here's the thing.
In my opinion, it's just I love movies...
Like Tangled and stuff like that.
I know I've already brought that up, but that's really the only one that I've watched more than once recently, so it's the only one I remember.
Like, they actually had character designs that made sense, right?
It kind of worked. Obviously a bit cartoony, but then there's this other one.
I'll go, like, flash forward to the Ruby Gilman thing we were talking about earlier, right?
Where the character design, obviously it's animated, it's supposed to look silly, but...
She doesn't even have a nose.
She has no nose.
The main character...
And the other main character...
But you can't smell underwater.
No! Oh my...
Oh my gosh! I mean, it's logical!
No, and then the other guy, it's the black guy, like her romance, the Algebra or whatever, that cringey thing, right?
I don't know if you've seen the trailer, but please watch it.
It's really... You will lose brain cells.
But put on your cringe helmet first.
Yeah, put on your cringe helmet first, right?
But... In that his face is like two inches wide and his nose is like the entire size of his head.
Well, and he's got this afro that goes on for about three weeks.
Yeah, so I miss decent character designs, just in all movies, especially when it comes to people.
I know this is Elements, so I don't really care, but in movies just in general that are animated that have people bring back normal-looking characters.
Well, and as you point out, the offspring, the fire girl, has no physical characteristics that she shares with her parents other than the fire.
Yeah. Adopted much?
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. So, the whole set-up, of course, and we see this about a bazillion times in the first half of the movie, first two-thirds of the movie, can Firegirl touch water?
Yeah, it gets brought up like six times.
Yeah, so if she touches water, she's just going to go out, you know, licking your fingers, putting them on a candle.
Yeah, like when the water burst out of the pipe, it hit half her face and half her face disappeared.
Melted away, right? And also there's a splash from above when the train goes by, or the boat train.
Yeah, and she has to cover. She has to have an umbrella, because if she touches water, man, she's going to...
So they set up this big barrier.
But you see, when they were dancing and hugging each other, right?
No, but their chemistry changed, according to them.
Now, that's what's called cheating.
So if you're going to set up this whole thing, like fire and water are opposites and they can't touch, you're going to set this whole thing up, and then what happens is they touch and it's fine.
Yeah. And it's like, no, no, that actually angers me as a storyteller.
Yeah, that can't... It's not. Like, if there's a logical explanation that you can come up with somehow, like, I don't know even what, right?
Something. But they had...
Probably 50 people working on this as the main people to go over and make sure it's not too Republican and make sure it's woke and diverse and finding the right actors, right?
I'm sure they had a ton of people.
And obviously a lot of the people directing it would have family members they'd talk about it to.
No one brings this up.
It's literally...
The whole premise of the movie is these elements are opposites and they can't coexist.
And then they, and we used to call this in storytelling classes when I took writing classes
and you have to earn it.
You have to earn it.
So like in the future, I wanted, minus spoiler for one of my books, but I really wanted an
older child to interrogate a younger parent.
Now I won't go through the mechanics of how I achieved that, but I earned it by setting
up all of the premises in the story.
So the whole thing is fire and water can't touch, and then they just touch and everything's fine.
There's barely any steam.
So this makes absolutely no sense.
It destroys the entire premise of the movie.
And it's like in Romeo and Juliet, you have these two families that hate each other, which is why they can't get together.
And it would be like at the end they just, oh no, we love each other.
And then they get together. It's like the whole premise of the movie is they're kept apart because their elements are opposites.
And then they just get together.
And there's no explanation. It was an interesting concept for a movie.
Yeah. But it's just, it was like, as a nice idea, right?
If it was going to be a five minute mini movie or whatever, right?
It could have been a nice idea.
Like no one's really putting a huge amount of effort into it.
It was not enough for like an hour and a half, two hour movie.
It shouldn't have been done.
There's so many other better movies they could have come up with.
You know what I think could have been good?
I love murder mysteries and stuff like that.
Look at the stereotypical women loving true crime and crime.
Murder mystery movies and stuff like that, they're often pretty good.
I think what they could have done is they could have made a murder mystery movie for kids.
Now, I know that sounds counterintuitive because it's murder mystery.
Murder is not for kids, right?
But I think if they wanted to put this much money into a movie, they could have made it funny, they could have made it cartoony, right?
But at least it would have been so much better and it would have actually gotten the kids to start thinking, Who's guilty?
Who's innocent? I think a lot of movies have been so dumbed down recently that kids are just getting dumber and they have shorter attention spans.
Obviously, the IQ can't change, but they start acting dumber because their attention spans are less and they're not exposed to intelligent thoughts.
You can work a muscle. Your brain is a muscle.
You can get wiser, for sure.
I'd rather be friends with a really dumb person who's wise than a really smart person who's not wise.
But I just think...
They should start doing movies...
Just make them intelligent again.
I mean, I know... I've already gone on this about, like, character design.
That's kind of half the make it intelligent looking again.
It's just... I don't like anything, really, about the movies that are being produced.
If you want to make it woke, fine, whatever.
I mean, I know it's for kids. It shouldn't be woke.
But at least have a good plot.
Right? Yeah.
Like, I'll make it another...
I'll go back to something earlier.
Like, forget what I'm saying there, but...
Wait, forget what you're saying where? What I just said, like, about...
Forget all that. Like, not forget all that.
Like, obviously... Changing topics.
Changing topics, yeah. That's what I meant.
Earlier, when I was saying...
The plot, there's a lot of things that contradicted itself.
I've noticed this, so you didn't watch this, or my dad didn't watch this, which is why we never reviewed it, but the new movie, like Across the Spider-Verse or something like that.
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse or something like that.
Yeah, like that one. That just came out.
It's been like a huge thing.
Me and my friends wanted to go watch it, so we all went and watched the movie like a couple weeks ago, right?
Or when it came out.
I don't know when. But we watched it, and this movie has been made or worked on for like four years, because it's been four years since the last one came out.
And it wasn't even finished, by the way.
There's two parts for the movie.
This is part one. It's like...
Two hours and half.
This is the one where Spider-Man can be anything and anyone.
Male, female, whatever. Because it's different multiverses.
Yeah, there's like different universes and stuff like that.
But anyway, so they had four years to work on this movie.
Hundreds of people were involved in it, right?
I'm sure. And...
Me and my group of five teenagers figured out three major plot contradictions within five minutes of leaving the movie theater.
You don't think you could have come up with this in four years and fixed it?
They're just so badly planned out.
It just annoys me.
Agreed. So...
Other logical problems.
So... Wade, the water guy, I think there's a funny scene.
One of the bits that I laughed at was when he squirts himself through a tiny lock to get into the...
Yeah. So there's a scene near the end where the water has been released because it broke through the gate and it's coming to put out Firetown and so on.
So Wade squirts himself through a tiny lock and he's like, oh, I wish I'd made a better entrance.
That was kind of a funny line, I thought.
Yeah. Now, so he can get through a tiny lock, and then there's a bunch of rocks in the chimney, and he can't escape.
Yeah. And it's like, this makes no sense.
If he can get through a tiny lock, a lock that's like this big.
There's no video, but very small.
Yeah, very small. If he can get through a tiny lock, a tiny keyhole, then why can't he get up through a chimney if there's some rocks in the way?
Yeah, it's like, I can't get through.
It's like, how about you use your liquefying attributes?
And then they made him cry his way back to existence.
It's like, what's wrong with the death of a main character in movies nowadays?
It's sadness. Okay, I'm going on a rant again, I'm sorry.
Look, movies, it's not even kids' movies.
Just every movie, almost every movie.
I can think of, I think it was like Cloverfield or something like that, and it was the one where it was held by an actual dude.
Like, the actor was holding the camera the whole time, and it was like one of those vlog videos, right?
Yeah, yeah. Or vlog movies, I guess, right?
I think like the Blair Witch Project, although I've never watched that.
But... It was called Cloverfield, right?
Yes, Cloverfield. I think that was a good movie because it made sense.
The characters actually died.
Realistically, they would die.
Right? I just wish that more movies had that.
Now, I know it's sad, right?
But make it...
It's more realistic. And I think it makes it for a better plot.
And I think tragedy in a movie...
Not every movie should have it.
Like, some comedy movies and all, right?
But tragedy in a movie is often a good aspect.
Now, I know it's a kid's movie, but nobody...
I don't think any of the kids in the movie theater actually cared about the characters...
They were watching the whole time.
They were walking around. They were barely watching the movie.
The kids in our room. Here's the thing, too.
So if you're going to have a movie aimed at kids, maybe don't have a major plot device be that government inspectors review buildings to see if they're up to municipal codes, because they're not going to understand that.
Kids aren't going to know anything about that.
Like, they say it's a kid movie. It's really not.
No, there's a lot of adult-y stuff in it, for sure.
So the last thing that I think I wanted to mention...
Yeah, so the last thing was The Blue Flame.
I never really got the blue flame.
It's like, oh, it's a pretty blue flame.
Heritage and history and culture.
And I actually, you know what?
I thought it was really nice.
Because a lot of movies, everyone exists just in the now and has no particular cultural history.
Now, in this movie, the dad, I don't remember, why did he leave Firetown?
Do you remember that at all? There was like some storm and he felt it wasn't safe for his wife and they're almost like a child or whatever.
Yeah. So he leaves and he brings this flame which represents their heritage and their history and their culture and so on, right?
And the amount of effort that's put into keeping this flame alive, keep your culture alive, you've got to be part of your history, you've got to be part of your tribal customs and you've got to have your culture and all of that.
And then, there were no hybrid offspring.
No.
In this movie, so it looked like water could only mate with water to produce water children,
and fire could only mate with fire to produce fire children.
So when Fire Girl and Water Boy get together, they can't have children.
So the dad is like, he gives up everything to keep his heritage,
almost sacrifices his life to keep the blue flame alive.
And then his daughter goes and he's not going to have any...
Like, that's his last kid. That's the end of the line.
Yeah, that's the end of their line. It's the end of the whole history and culture for him, right?
I don't even think he had any siblings.
Like, that... Cinder?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dad. The dad.
Sorry, Bernie. I don't think he had any siblings because when we saw the flashback, I did not see any, like, uncles or aunts.
Like, that's the end of their entire line.
Right. So, because your daughter wants to date Waterguy...
And go and be a glass sculptor, like your blue flame goes out.
That's it for your entire history and culture.
Like, that just seemed like, where's the good deal?
Like, after all those sacrifices, and literally, remember, people were literally dying, half-dying, to try and keep this blue flame alive, and then that just ends.
Oh, and the last thing I wanted to mention, sorry, I forgot, was the early date that almost killed the fire.
Oh, yeah, it was like their second or third date, and she wanted to go see this...
Flower that was drowned.
Yeah, the flower that was drowned, because she wasn't let into to, like, hate...
or racism or whatever it was when she was younger.
But obviously, because when she touches anything plant-related, they burn to a crisp.
Right.
Right, so I think that makes perfect sense.
I mean, obviously it'd be upsetting, but it makes sense.
Yeah, you don't let the fire girl into the dry forest or whatever, right?
Yeah, so she wanted to go see this tree.
Was it a tree or a flower?
It was a tree that produced flowers.
Okay, got it, got it. I believe, right?
But it had been drowned out somehow.
It had been a something, flower, like, whatever.
But it had been drowned out in a flood.
So the boy takes her in a bubble so she can breathe.
Yeah, because the bubble... Okay, the bubbles...
Oh my gosh, another thing.
Bubbles don't work like that.
You can't just push a bubble around.
It's going to go up to the surface.
You can't really stop it.
Why wasn't the bubble floating up?
And why wasn't his hands pushing through the...
Well, I guess you'd say water tension or something like that.
But if he has to push that light for the water tension not to break...
He can't move it. Then he can't move it.
It's just going to go up to the surface.
And also, the fact that he got his government...
Like, supervisor, Gail.
Like, she's not going to do that.
Right. Like, imagine you have some employees, like, oh, can you help me out by, like, making something for a date I'm having?
It's like, no. Yeah, yeah.
And also, so she wasn't letting...
Like, I give you a paycheck. You can do it yourself.
Hire someone. She wasn't let into the tree exhibit because she literally burns down trees, and we see that multiple times in the movie.
And then it's considered to be a big breakthrough when after it gets drowned out, the whole tree is underwater, and then she can go in.
It's like, well, of course you can go in then because it's all wet.
Yeah, and also the tree, it's been underwater for like probably ten years.
If she was like four, now she's at least, she probably looks like 16, 17, right, in this movie.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope older if she's going off with some guy overseas to go and study sculpture.
15 years. Maybe 5 to 20 or something like that.
Yeah, 5 to 20 or something, right?
Then it's been 15 years.
The tree's not going to be alive.
It's been underwater for 15 years.
It's not going to be alive.
I'm sorry. My plants...
I have a lot of plants in my room now.
Some of them love water.
I get water every day.
They're happy, right? Some of them, you give them like...
One extra spray of water and they die.
Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't.
Plants don't live in water.
Well, that's a few, like the Florida trees.
Okay, but if it was drowned underwater, that's why you don't see them in the middle of the ocean.
Yeah, that's right. If they're drowned in the water, they can't survive.
Maybe it turned into seaweed.
You've got to think through these things, Izzy.
But it didn't turn into because seaweeds don't produce viva something.
Right, right. So, anyway, on this date, she almost died because I guess she needs air and she was running out of air.
Yeah. And... One last thing real quick.
Yeah, yeah. It was never a reoccurring thing that she liked plants.
No. In fact, she burned plants and didn't care.
Yeah, and also the only other thing was that one little plant dude who looked to be like 15 or 10 or whatever it was, right?
Oh, the kid with the flower in his armpit.
Yeah. He looked maybe 12.
I'd say he was 12, right? She doesn't even like plants as a whole because she kept rejecting him, right?
So she has no interest in anything to do with plants.
Except for eating them, right?
Yeah. But her whole life she's desperately wanted to see this plant.
It's like, if you like plants so much...
Have some plants. Obviously you can't have plants.
It just doesn't make sense.
And so she almost dies, and this is considered to be very romantic.
Now, I'm just going to make a suggestion that, you know, as you start to...
Roll into your dating life in your sort of mid to late teens.
If you go on a date with a guy and almost die...
Romantic! I don't think that's particularly romantic.
Maybe not. It just seems like a very bad message overall.
All right. So we're going to rate this as just...
I rarely go into the negative movies, maybe like a couple, but I'm genuinely negative 5 out of 10.
I would have paid not to see that.
Yeah, that was really, really wretched.
Maybe it wouldn't be great, but I thought it would at least be a bit funny.
Again, I'll go back.
I know this isn't the same movie, but the Spider-Man movie that I never reviewed or anything like that, right?
It was funny.
There were some parts where like me and my friends were dying in the movie theater.
Like genuinely funny, not laughing at, laughing with?
Genuinely laughing out.
Yeah, like I had tears in my eyes.
It was so funny at one point.
It wasn't even because of the jokes in the movie.
It was because of my friends' reactions to it and the jokes they were adding on to it.
But it was an enjoyable bit. It was enjoyable and then it became more enjoyable because you're watching it with people.
Right, right, right. Obviously, watching stuff with people is more funny because you can make jokes about it, right?
It was hilarious at some points of that movie, even though it was a bad movie.
This movie, I thought, it's not going to be good.
It's going to be really woke, but at least it'll be funny.
Yeah, there'll be some entertaining stuff in there.
I thought it would be entertaining. I thought they could have done so many jokes with the fire and the water and stuff like that.
But it wasn't even funny. There was one point where I smiled a bit, and that's it.
And was it like 15-20 minutes into the movie, we were like...
I remember you and I just looked at each other like, what is this?
This is so bad, because it had no energy, it had no charisma, it was frantic but empty, which is a really bad combo.
I thought... So I bought some Twizzlers to go into the movie.
I rarely get candy at movies or any other place, really, but I thought, you know what?
I'll get some Twizzlers.
So I thought, it'll be a fast-paced movie, I'll be distracted watching the movie, and I won't eat too many Twizzlers because I'm going to be watching the movie.
And I was going to say, I'll just have, like, three or four, right?
But... When we were watching it, I was so bored.
And when I'm bored, I tend to eat things.
So I was so bored that I'm like, well, the only thing I have here is Twizzlers and popcorn.
I could eat this and at least it'd be interesting.
Because eating is not that interesting of an activity.
Yeah, it tastes good, but it's really not that interesting.
You're just looking for some stimulation.
The fact that I was looking around for stuff to do and I gravitated to eating over anything instead of watching the movie was really not...
It's just like, this is a bad movie if it's so boring that I feel like eating some popcorn is going to satisfy me more.
I couldn't even hate watch it.
No, I can't hate. There's nothing really to hate because there's no story.
It's too bland. And I was just rolling my eyes with all the contradictions and that feels so lazy.
It feels so lazy. You think about all the modeling of the movie that they had to do, all of the cities and the costumes.
Probably had a hundred animators on that.
And nobody's sitting, like, what kind of weird system is it when nobody is saying, well, wait a minute, the whole movie is set up on that these guys can't touch and now they just touch and it just happens.
Like, this makes no sense.
No, like, I... Like, work harder, fix that problem, have it make sense.
Or if he can go through a tiny keyhole, why can't he go between rocks?
Like, just...
Like, there's got to be a weird culture out there where you can't just shut up and animate kind of thing, right?
Yeah, because for me, I mean, I don't...
I've never written anything, really, aside from...
Okay, I've written stuff. No, I'm...
Dad, I mean...
Stop it. I mean, I've never written any book or novel or anything that's more than I'd say, like, 10,000 words, right?
I've done... Well, I guess not really creative stories, but I've done like science labs where I have to write like a few paragraphs.
You've done creative stories? Animations? I am not done!
I've done animations, which I don't exactly consider writing, but it's story making.
And the main thing that I do in the story making is it has to be funny and I can't contradict.
I hate contradictions.
Whenever I think of a story, I'm like, oh, this could be interesting to write.
First thing I do is think, how does it work?
What are the contradictions?
What is the logic of the story?
And I think I maybe I'll get to like halfway into developing a plot and then I'll think
this couldn't work because of this aspect to it.
And then maybe I'll change it.
And then if I change it up so that it could work because of that aspect, it becomes more
boring of a plot or whatever.
And there's just so many ways.
And look, I'm like, I was started thinking of stories and stuff when I was like 10 and I had this logic.
And the fact that these movie makers who are probably all in their 40s and 50s or whatever, with an extra 20, 30 years of life experience.
And $200 million budget.
Yeah, $200 million and you can't hire someone.
And then another $100 million to advertise it.
Yeah, so it's just, it's ridiculous, I think.
It's just... Yeah, stay away from this movie.
There's nothing redeeming about it.
It's not even bad enough to be good.
Yeah. It's just an empty, emotional, vacuous, contradictory, annoying experience.
Frankly, I don't want to watch any more kid movies to review.
My guess is that for future reviews and stuff, we're probably going to be doing more like teenage.
Yeah, I think we have to. We can't do it.
I'm never watching a Disney movie again unless it's an old one.
These are terrible.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, well thanks everyone.
Do you want to do the outro? Yeah.
Uh, oh gosh, that's a voice crack.
Uh, uh, uh, subscribe.
Smooth. Yeah.
Yeah, you do the outro. All right.
Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Issy, for taking this bullet with me.
This was a family massacre. It was my idea to do it.
Oh, yeah. Then you should thank me.
Oh, thank you. FreedomMaine.com to help out the show.
Really appreciate it because we're going to have to go to better movies.
I'm going to have to go to therapy after this, probably.
But I'm sure that they will come up with entertaining movie reviews.
I actually got another request for one of my movie reviews today, so we'll put this out.
Oh, nice. Thanks, everyone, so much.
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