War Of The Worlds (w/ Mary & Dezerae of Nerds & Jesus)

Eli (00:02.303)
Hello! I'm gonna start completely over. Like brain farted right in the middle of my hello. Alright.

Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli price and we are here on episode 88 of the podcast keeping on chugging along in our Spielberg series we're gonna be talking about war of the worlds today and it's gonna be fun and exciting and also fun and exciting because I have some new guests on

today I have on Mary and Desiree from the nerds and Jesus podcast. Welcome guys. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. well, so, like I said, they have a podcast called nerds and Jesus. it is from what I understand and, it is a podcast about kind of faith and fandom. So they talk a lot about like.

Mary Howell (00:51.727)
Thanks for having us. Yeah, happy to be here.

Dezerae (00:51.894)
Thanks. Yeah, thanks.

Eli (01:11.991)
how faith intersects with various fandom cultures. I was kind of scrolling through y'all's episodes and y'all have like a good variety of like things you talk about. Yeah, it's really fun. But yeah, y'all want to share maybe Mary first and then Desiree a little bit about yourselves and then maybe y'all can kind of do your pitch for the podcast while people should check it out.

Mary Howell (01:17.636)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (01:25.049)
Random things, yeah.

Mary Howell (01:38.533)
Yeah, cool. Well, my name is Mary Howell. I'm a worship pastor in the Middle Tennessee area. That's also like a massive nerd. I mean, I go to conventions. I'm a Dungeons and Dragons master, DM master, you know, and I, gosh, everything from movies to gaming. I've played so much Baldur's Gate 3 the past like year.

and a half kind of thing. that's kind of my world. I'm just starting to dip into anime. But anyway, with all of that, mean, that's I also I have ADHD. So like the amount of hobbies that I have is kind of pretty crazy. So I decided to start a micro bakery of sourdough just recently. Yeah, you know, why not? You know, it's it's it's the thing. And yeah, so exactly. I always say hobbies are great. And so that's kind of where podcasting kind of came in a little bit into that. But we'll talk more about.

Eli (02:26.359)
Sure.

Everyone's doing it, you know.

Mary Howell (02:37.124)
podcast later, but yeah, I have an amazing five-year-old golden doodle. His name is Bucky, as in Bucky Barnes, and his middle name is Flynn, as in Flynn Rider, so Bucky Flynn. Yeah, so that's kind of a little bit of me in a nutshell. So yeah.

Eli (02:45.601)
Nice.

Eli (02:54.199)
Awesome. Yeah, Desiree, what about you?

Dezerae (02:55.054)
yeah. Hi guys. My name is Desiree and let's see here. I am a mom of a just turned three year old little boy. His name is Weston and he is the coolest thing in the world. I am probably up there with Mary with the nerd.

I love, love, love movies. I love manga, anime, you name it. I'm a huge reader. I can devour a lot of books in a year. That's probably one of my main hobbies. I love crafts. love baking, not as much as Mary does. She's gotten an affinity for the bread.

Eli (03:21.28)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (03:46.787)
I don't understand how it happened, but yeah, I just like bread.

Dezerae (03:49.294)
But when I get the artistic spark, I also deal with ADHD immensely. So it's very fun to have us together in person.

Eli (03:49.354)
Ha ha ha.

Mary Howell (03:57.005)
Yeah, you know, just we use it.

Eli (04:03.53)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (04:04.494)
We've known each other for since 2012. So it's been, don't know how I can't math anymore. It's just, yeah, something like that. So.

Eli (04:08.98)
Okay.

Dezerae (04:09.261)
Yeah.

Eli (04:12.246)
13, 12 to 13.

Dezerae (04:12.334)
It's like, yeah, 12 to 13 years. Yeah. I'm a co-host with Mary with the Nurture in Jesus podcast. And we just talk everything nerdy and we love it. It's fun.

Mary Howell (04:23.021)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (04:25.106)
Awesome. Yes. So what's like the, if you had to like boil down the podcast into like, I don't know, like an elevator pitch, what, would you say it's all about?

Dezerae (04:36.76)
Mmm.

Mary Howell (04:36.94)
Yeah, so right now we took a break over the holidays and then our church and stuff, do like a 40 day fast of just not doing anything secular media, which is also kind of why we haven't really been doing much of podcasting with that as much right now. But hopefully end of February, end of March, then we'll kind of like ramp back up and continue that up. So in case anyone's going in like, we haven't reposted anything. I was like, yeah, you know, it's it's not just you take a break kind of stuff and just, it's live.

Eli (04:48.341)
Yeah.

Dezerae (05:01.544)
Yeah. I promise we haven't, you know, we haven't completely disappeared yet. I'm just taking a little mini break.

Eli (05:04.054)
It's life.

Mary Howell (05:07.01)
No, we I mean, we just had a meeting a couple of weeks ago of planning for the year. So that's coming up. And so the Nerds and Jesus podcast kind of birthed out of our I kind of started at least the first year of the first year of myself and just grabbing guests on. But we talk everything from, you know, we review movies, but also like talk a lot about the stuff that's kind of really hard to talk about within church and or just pointing out different things or things that, hey,

You know, can we talk about this? How does this correlate with it? We do that by also, I also take other nerdy gamers or nerdy, like, you know, video game developers or from cosplayers or those who have ministries that's revolved around that. And I interview them as well. So we do that, but also we talk, wait, D &D, that's the most listened episode. like, do we need to play D &D like live more or something?

Dezerae (05:57.144)
We also play D &D. Yeah.

Eli (06:00.886)
the

Dezerae (06:04.553)
I think it's done.

Mary Howell (06:06.286)
Yeah, or or we ask tough questions like, Hey, can we not have a concussions? Watch Harry Potter can, you know, can what are there dragons in the Bible? You know, we've got to partner with a really cool podcast to talk about that and dive deep in the word about dragons, you know. So or can in Christians be into horror? You know, there's different topics or can can they be into anime or whatever that may be? You any kind of topic that we kind of run with it and just.

Eli (06:26.262)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (06:33.43)
And we also ask everyone else. But anyway, it's just it's a much positive stuff. But at the end of the day, we always take whatever subject is and we turn it back to Christ. And like, how does that how can we as Christians be also nerdy or how can we use that for our advantage as well or just have fun, whether it be creative. But we have fun. We tough we say talk about tough conversations that may have come up within the film, surrounding our faith as well. So we love to talk, talk about it and discuss it. But also have fun. So it's kind of a little mix of

Eli (06:48.918)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (07:03.276)
Hodgepodge stuff, we plan to move into more video formatting within YouTube. Eventually it's kind of like, we're kind of working on, you know, movie reactions live versus like also just on video. So yeah, so that's kind of us in a nutshell. So.

Eli (07:07.37)
Mm.

Eli (07:14.282)
Yeah.

Eli (07:19.434)
Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. So really like it's all about just, yes, you can be a Christian and be a huge nerd and into all these like nerdy things as well.

Dezerae (07:20.398)
Yeah.

Dezerae (07:32.718)
And it's okay to watch it and not feel, you know, yeah.

Mary Howell (07:33.003)
Yes.

Eli (07:35.242)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, there's a stigma there for sure. and so.

Mary Howell (07:37.121)
Yeah, so.

yeah, and especially when they come, we talk about Dungeons and Dragons a lot just because that's always the whole thing, you know, but yeah, Yeah, that's fun.

Dezerae (07:40.877)
Yeah.

Eli (07:43.413)
Yeah. Yeah. It's good to break those walls down. yeah. And there's, there's tons of, you know, people of faith, Christians and plenty of other faiths out there in the movie world, watching movies, reviewing them, you know? and yeah, also in all the other crazy nerdy venues. So.

Mary Howell (08:06.237)
Exactly. Like, especially within everything just pops up, you know, so like if Agatha all along, you know, is all witchcraft stuff, like we talk about that stuff of like how, you know, how can we also still enjoy the show, you know, and stuff like that. So we bring all those topics up. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's us.

Dezerae (08:14.158)
huh.

healthy boundaries.

Eli (08:21.408)
Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So y'all are both obviously into movies or you wouldn't be a guest on this podcast. yes. I so wish we had an AMC or regal here because I have movie pass, but it's not quite as it's good.

Mary Howell (08:28.319)
Yeah. AMC pass, old dude.

Mary Howell (08:36.028)
that's great.

Mary Howell (08:39.745)
About the same. Twenty, twenty one dollars a month, three movies a week, which includes IMAX and Dolby theaters. I mean, it's fantastic.

Eli (08:44.182)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's so good. I'm jealous. but yeah, so that, that being said, we're in the middle of a Spielberg series and I always love to see if my guests can remember their first like Spielberg movie or their first, or maybe even just like the first time you realize like, this is this guy Spielberg makes movies and I've, I know about a lot of them, you know, maybe that's like your first Spielberg memory, but

Dezerae (09:07.246)
Thank

Dezerae (09:15.276)
I know.

Eli (09:16.98)
Yeah. Do y'all have anything? Maybe Desiree, if you want to go first.

Dezerae (09:17.806)
Yeah, do. fun fact, I went to school with Marriott Tissue and did film. So I love this stuff. I nerd out all the time with this. My first one is definitely ET and the Indiana Jones series. I used to watch that with my grandpa all the time.

Mary Howell (09:20.052)
Yeah.

Dezerae (09:44.204)
just the adventure of it, the first adventure that I've ever really gotten to like dive in and just disappear into a world full of like, it wasn't even like a fantasy really per se, it was just this guy going on all these adventures and it just opened a whole world of like, the possibilities are endless. And just, I don't know, I just really fell in love with ET and then also just the Indiana Jones.

Eli (09:52.182)
Hmm.

Dezerae (10:12.479)
For me for Spielberg. Those are my top tier of all time so

Eli (10:17.93)
Yeah, and it's that's that's very so special to to like share with your family like with a family member or like just someone you're close to and Spielberg movies I feel like are so like like they're just perfect for that sort of thing to like share a special bond with someone over. So that's really cool. Yeah.

Dezerae (10:25.336)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (10:33.486)
I

Mary Howell (10:37.792)
Yeah. Gosh, I would have to say Jurassic Park. I yeah, that I think that's probably one of my favorite series. Just yeah, it's just all the things about it. It's just so it's just I remember watching as a kid and being terrified, but I loved it. I love that, like that feeling of like, oh my gosh, what's happening? But I honestly, part of it, too, I think that really kind of

Dezerae (10:42.788)
yeah.

Eli (10:50.166)
Hmm.

Mary Howell (11:06.995)
which is funny, putting it for me on the map as far as the type of movies that I now enjoy watching is was world of the worlds that we're gonna be discussing because, and my favorite is end of the world movies. Like, you don't understand. Like that is my, like I was like, if there's anything end of the world, I will immediately watch it. If it involves zombies, aliens, natural disasters, I'm all for it, 100%.

Eli (11:12.8)
Hmm.

Eli (11:19.894)
Mmm.

Dezerae (11:30.606)
See, we're the same people. I'm obsessed with volcanoes and tornado disaster movies. Like, yeah.

Mary Howell (11:37.149)
Like, you know, I am looking through his like repertoire and I was like, wait Shrek? What?

Eli (11:37.75)
Eli (11:45.038)
producing. Yeah. Dreamworks. It's a Dreamworks production and he's Mr. Dreamworks. Yeah.

Mary Howell (11:48.041)
that but I had no idea that is crazy anyway but super eight you know like fantastic series I don't know if I don't know if he did Cloverfield or not but like Dean anyway so that's kind of introduced for me a lot of like why I love end of the world movies was honestly because of world the worlds so

Dezerae (11:55.733)
yeah.

Eli (12:08.128)
Hmm. Very cool. Yeah. I have, I actually feel like this is if I'm remembering correctly, I, I had seen Spielberg movies obviously before this I'd seen Jurassic park and ET and all that stuff as a kid. but I, I want to say war of the worlds, which we're about to jump into was the first one I saw in theaters. I'm pretty sure. it was.

Dezerae (12:16.878)
.

Mary Howell (12:23.454)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (12:33.694)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.

Eli (12:36.959)
I'm and I'm pretty sure if my memory serves me correctly, it was like a birthday thing. So my birthday is in July and I remember turning 14. It was between my like middle school and high school. So between eighth and ninth grade, I like turned 14 and like my mom took me and a bunch of my buddies to see War of the Worlds at the theater. And yeah, it was like I have that memory. And so I didn't confirm with my mom to see if that was.

Mary Howell (13:00.264)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (13:06.6)
a correct memory. but I think it is. So yeah, I'm just gonna, see, yeah, I have that special. This is not like my favorite Spielberg, but you know, by a long shot, but I do like this movie and have that like special memory attached to it. So yeah.

Mary Howell (13:10.687)
You know, just claim it. Yeah, it is.

Mary Howell (13:27.711)
I mean, this is where I was like, who's Tom Cruise? Like, oh, this is who Tom Cruise is. Like, this is, I feel like was my first introduction that I remember as, I'm not that old, I'm like, I'm 31, but I'm still like, you know, I felt like that was age where I was like, I was probably, I don't know, 12 here, 12 when this movie came out.

Eli (13:43.523)
Yeah. That's, that's about the time where you start saying, Ooh, who's this guy? know, um, that's awesome. Um, yeah. So yeah, she was. And, it's like, it's crazy. And we'll, we'll probably talk a little bit about it, but like, this is like, by like, by a long shot, not her like introduction. She, she's been like,

Dezerae (13:45.806)
Thank

Yeah

Mary Howell (13:48.766)
I was like, who's this Tom Cruise? That's funny. And Dakota Fanning, like what? She's so little.

Dezerae (13:57.438)
little baby Dakota fanny.

Eli (14:11.094)
working for a while now at this point. It's crazy. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so let's jump into where it all started. So obviously this, uh, was not some idea that Spielberg worked up out of nowhere. Um, it goes all the way back to, um, 1989 HG Wells, uh, the man himself, uh,

Mary Howell (14:12.709)
Yeah, I mean, just see her in Cat in the Hat and Twilight at this point, but yeah.

Eli (14:40.875)
I don't know, would he be like the grandfather of sci-fi? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. And I was doing some research and I found that this is not like the first alien invasion story written, but it kind of becomes like the seminal work in that whole genre of that.

Dezerae (14:45.71)
would say so. I would say so.

it kicked it off at least.

Mary Howell (15:08.028)
Yeah, like people just built on it.

Eli (15:09.918)
Yeah. And so like his was the first where there was like devastation and destruction and the aliens are taking over. Like, I'm pretty sure the, from what I could understand the ones before weren't really that sort of story. And so this kind of became like the way to do alien invasion stories. and it's crazy that they were thinking about that stuff all the way back, like well over a hundred years ago, you know,

Mary Howell (15:28.807)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (15:40.415)
but yeah, so it's funny too, cause Wells went, was, listen, I was, I think it was in the special features of war of the worlds. They were talking about how this like writing wasn't even his first choice. He was, he went to university of London for zoology and he was a teacher and he got like injured or something and he couldn't teach for awhile. So he started writing as like a fallback plan.

Mary Howell (16:09.225)
Wow.

Eli (16:09.524)
And then he becomes like the sci-fi guy. Like he basically creates the genre. And which makes sense kind of when you think about like a lot of his bit, which War of the Worlds was like not one of his first works, but a lot of those first ones like Invisible Man and Island of Dr. Moreau are all like kind of like very biological, which makes sense with what he studied. So.

Mary Howell (16:25.084)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (16:32.092)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (16:36.646)
Yeah, I honestly totally forgot that it was a novel first, to be honest. And I'm like, my gosh, bringing back memories. I need to read it. I have a...

Dezerae (16:43.79)
Correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like I am. But the origin of how like this whole thing like really kicked off was that they did they used to do these kind of like a podcast, but it was over the radio and he did a story. He did though he did the War of the Worlds. He read it. And it was so good that people actually people believed it.

Eli (16:45.312)
Yeah.

Eli (17:00.087)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (17:01.68)
The radio dramas?

Mary Howell (17:07.356)
I think it was a Halloween episode, like on radio or something.

Dezerae (17:10.806)
Yes, people believed it and then chaos ensued and then that's how...

Eli (17:11.722)
Yeah. So yeah, so that was the first adaptation of the book and it was in 1938. and I think HG Wells was still alive. at that point it was done by Orson Wells, of Citizen Kane fame. so yeah, Orson Wells basically adapted it into a radio play and they, they did it.

It's really cool and really funny. Actually, if, I think I watched, I was watching a documentary about Orson Welles, one time and they wrote this and the way they did it was like, they kept interrupting the normal broadcast with it. yeah. And so, yeah, people were freaking out.

Mary Howell (17:57.926)
Wouldn't that like cause panic, I feel like.

Dezerae (17:59.997)
it caused mayhem. Like everyone was freaking out.

Mary Howell (18:03.579)
Can you imagine?

Eli (18:04.798)
And they start like they, when they started it, they were like, this is all fake. Like they kind of had like a disclaimer, but like, you, if you miss it, yeah. If you miss the disclaimer, you're like, what? Cause they keep interrupting it as if they're like, like we have updates on the situation with the aliens invading this is happening now. And like, it's, then they like producers were coming in and being like, Hey, you have to stop. People were freaking out and Orson Welles was like, no, I'm not stopping.

Mary Howell (18:10.524)
but someone just like turns it on.

Mary Howell (18:25.113)
Yeah, no.

Dezerae (18:32.142)
And it really doesn't help that they decided to do that in the peak of wartime, like when all of these wars were going on. It's like, what's next? Aliens? my gosh. It's like everyone is like really on edge. So.

Eli (18:36.851)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (18:40.699)
Oh yeah, 1938, I didn't even think about that, shoot, yeah.

Eli (18:46.867)
Yes. it's like, what's, and this will be like a common thread too is because so this is, so when, HG Wells wrote the story, it was kind of inspired by like, it was kind of critiquing in a metaphorical way, like British imperialism and this like kind of Western ego that was like big at the time of like, we're, we're the best, you know,

Dezerae (18:55.552)
you

Eli (19:16.906)
the us Western cultures, we know we hold all knowledge, we know what to do, and all that. And this was kind of like, to push back against those sorts of ideas. so very like, political in its symbology, then Orson Welles is, is doing his radio play kind of like inspired by this like fear of Nazi Germany as well. And so

By the time we get to 1953 with the first film adaptation, which I wanted to watch before this, but I didn't get to it. So unfortunately, but directed by Byron Murphy, it was kind of capitalizing on fear of communism and the nuclear bomb in the fifties. So like these all like kind of have these like political like catastrophe, like fear what's going on.

Mary Howell (20:03.439)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (20:13.662)
And it rolls right into Spielberg because this is very much a post 9 11 movie. it's like very, very September 11th, you know, coded very like they even at one point, Dakota Fanning's, Rachel even says like, is it the terrorists? Like it's very much like all there. and, yeah, I just, I think it's.

Mary Howell (20:20.804)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (20:34.99)
Hmm.

Eli (20:42.186)
very interesting, you know, that this particular work has like 1889

have in my notes I have 1989 it's 1889 and then 1938 1953 and then again 2005 when this released they're all kind of inspired by this like pan like spirit of like fear within like whatever political and cultural context they're coming out of

Mary Howell (21:06.404)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (21:16.122)
It almost reminds me a lot of just, you know, the origins of the reason of Godzilla as well has like the same kind of effects of that. Like, oh, this Godzilla represents the United States, you know, like kind of thing. Like, it's interesting of just how it but it's that fear inspiring kind of thing to, know, the same kind of concepts.

Eli (21:35.221)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. And you can't help but think that he's kind of capitalizing on that. His desire to adapt this movie at this time has to be reactive to 9-11 in some way. yeah, so Spielberg had bought

Mary Howell (21:56.547)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (22:02.752)
the script, the Orson Welles script from the original broadcast adaptation at an auction and began thinking about adapting it. That was in the early 90s. so he kind of, Independence Day kind of beat him to the punch with like alien invasion disaster movies in 1996. And so he was like, well, maybe I want to try to follow that up because, you know, huge success, that movie.

Mary Howell (22:14.969)
purchase.

Mary Howell (22:23.843)
Yeah.

Dezerae (22:24.014)
Okay.

Mary Howell (22:31.93)
That was awesome, really good. I was like, I really enjoyed that one too. Yeah. I mean, Jeff Goldblum's awesome.

Eli (22:33.193)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah. and so, yeah. yeah. but yeah, so he kind of has it in his back pocket and then obviously nine 11 happens. He's, he's worked with Cruz on minority report. and he, I had read at one point actually like right after they were done with minority port, Spielberg was like, Hey, I have these three films that

Dezerae (22:33.752)
So good. So good.

Eli (23:01.514)
I think you would be good in and one of them was War of the Worlds. And that's the ones Cruz was like, yeah, that's the one I want to do. But at the time, like after that Cruz was filming The Last Samurai and then Collateral with Michael Mann. And then he had Mission Impossible 3 on deck. So he had like a lot of projects. But in the summer of 04, it was, he's like,

Mary Howell (23:23.299)
Mm-hmm.

That was like the pivotal of like Tom Cruise's career.

Eli (23:30.871)
peak Tom Cruise. But yeah, Mission Impossible ended up getting delayed, the production, in the summer of 2004. And Spielberg was actually working on Munich, which is the next movie in the filmography. So he was kind of doing prep work and pre-production stuff for that. But Cruise comes to him and is like, hey, Mission Impossible 3 is delayed. Let's do War of the Worlds. And Spielberg's like, all right. So he just puts off Munich and jumps in.

Dezerae (23:37.816)
Okay.

Mary Howell (23:56.035)
Yeah, that's great.

Eli (24:00.79)
It's I guess it's one of those things where like a Spielberg comes to you and it's like hey, let's make this movie You're like, I guess okay I guess I'll drop whatever I'm working on and but it's like the same with Tom Cruise if Tom Cruise comes to you It's like hey, let's do this movie now. It's like, all right Yeah He's a star Yeah, so yeah they the crazy thing about this production is that

Mary Howell (24:13.273)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (24:17.094)
You drop everything for him. He does his own stunts.

Dezerae (24:21.579)
you

Eli (24:30.455)
Paramount who had crews under contract. they were kind of like the production. I think Paramount and Dreamworks were the production companies for this movie. They set a release date for 2005 in the summer, just 10 months later. from like, this project is greenlit, they only had 10 months to like turn it out and release it. Which is a...

Mary Howell (24:57.442)
That's pretty quick for filming.

Eli (24:59.761)
Yes, it is. It's very, very much is. yeah, so they really had to get to work and it's like, it really is kind of, they're coming kind of off of a wave of sci-fi disaster films. like Mary probably, and I guess Desiree too, like late nineties was like the sci-fi disaster movie, like peak.

Dezerae (25:01.773)
then.

Mary Howell (25:03.066)
huh. I was like, nowadays like years.

Mary Howell (25:18.06)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (25:28.55)
You have like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Dante's Peak, Armageddon, and then also like satirical ones like Mars Attacks, which I think is great. Yeah. So fun. So fun and weird. Really? It's Tim Burton.

Dezerae (25:31.118)
Yes, all of them.

Dezerae (25:38.24)
Love that one. Love that one so much. it's satirical. It's satirical. is genius comedy. Like, my gosh, it's perfection. It's so fun.

Mary Howell (25:39.528)
Mm-hmm.

I don't think I've seen it. No, I don't think I've seen it.

Eli (25:49.813)
Yeah, yeah, it's Tim Burton straight up Tim Burton weirdness Strangeness. Yeah Yeah sold So yeah, they're they're kind of they're capitalizing on that they're capitalizing on You know kind of post 9-eleven mindset And yeah, they they get this guy Josh Freeman to write a script. I guess Spielberg's like, okay good start but I'm

Mary Howell (25:50.871)
I'll have to watch it.

Dezerae (25:55.063)
Yes.

Mary Howell (25:55.521)
That's great. I love Tim Burton. That's it.

Mary Howell (26:06.455)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (26:18.696)
Moving on to my guy David Kep, and he takes over the script. Which David Kep, I don't know, I feel like some writers kind of go under the radar, like unless you're like a director writer, less people know your name, but David Kep has written a lot of movies, like successful movies. If you were to like go look at his filmography, it's like, wow, he wrote that and that and that. It's pretty impressive.

But the way he started, which I think was really cool, he was like, okay, all of these successful sci-fi disaster movies, they all have the same cliches. And so he started listing out all those cliches to try to avoid doing those things, to do something new. So it was things like destruction of famous monuments, shots of a devastated Manhattan, the military guys discussing

know, war plans on with a map in front of like a map of the world. You know, a team of journalists filming the destruction and then getting destroyed. So all these like disaster sci-fi movie cliches, he's like, okay, we're not doing any of these things. And I don't think he, I don't remember seeing any of those things. So I think he, I think he was successful.

Dezerae (27:19.086)
Ahem.

Mary Howell (27:22.645)
Yeah.

Dezerae (27:39.276)
No, I will say the one thing I do like about World of the Worlds is that like you took tap on to that is that a lot of the action films that we know and do love a lot of them are like military might how can we like be the best how can we win this and it's always military focused in the middle like a big series it is so with World of the Worlds what I loved about it even when I like studied the film like

Mary Howell (27:40.022)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (27:50.283)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (27:58.87)
in the middle of New York. Always.

Eli (27:59.371)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dezerae (28:08.502)
in school and did those things to compare like essays and things like that is the human aspect of it. It had nothing to do with the military, had nothing to do, it was simply a man trying to save his family and the anxieties and the fears and the experiences that they themselves as human beings pre-alien invasion and during and after how it ended up.

Eli (28:12.118)
Mhm.

Eli (28:24.716)
huh.

Dezerae (28:37.268)
molding them, shaping them, and ultimately changing who they are at the end of it. And so that's what I loved about it. So he did very good.

Eli (28:41.622)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like Spielberg is like the perfect director for that. He's great at like taking these bigger events and like focusing down in on like the human aspects, the, the fan, like the central family drama that's happening within that. cause I feel like most of his, you know, big movies do that in some way, like, in one way or another.

Dezerae (28:58.958)
Hopefully.

Eli (29:14.486)
And really too, like it stays true to the original novel, which is very much like the point of view of the protagonist. And that's one of the things that Spielberg and David Kep wanted to do is they wanted to like, I mean, they switched out, he's not a scientist like he is in the book, but he's just an ordinary guy. But they stuck with like his kind of his perspective, you know.

as much as you can in a movie. And I'm pretty sure it does stick with Tom Cruise the whole time. I don't think it, it never like follows his son off here or the daughter off here. It always sticks with him. So, yeah, definitely stuck with the book on that. And I thought this was interesting too. He's, this is a quote from David Kep thinking about how to like work with Tom Cruise's persona.

Dezerae (29:49.07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it does.

Mary Howell (29:53.43)
Mm.

Eli (30:11.732)
He said, quote, I approached him like one of those characters in a Bruce Springsteen song who got married too young, got a job he hated, and just got stuck in this go nowhere life that makes him miserable. And so he's like, he talks about like, I was trying to think of like the character in Top Gun 20 years later and everything has gone wrong. That's pretty accurate to what we get, I think.

Mary Howell (30:23.99)
Mmm.

Dezerae (30:24.59)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (30:34.303)
Nice.

Dezerae (30:35.086)
That's Yeah, and that's indicative to a lot of people today. They start a job, they keep a job just because it's stability and things like that, but it's not something that they love. A lot of people do that. And so it, again, he attaches onto the human aspect of the experience. And, mm-hmm, yeah.

Eli (30:47.05)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (30:54.379)
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it, it, to, to like changing him from like a scientist guy to just this ordinary dock worker guy makes it like more like you're the audience can relate a little bit better to that guy too. think,

Mary Howell (30:54.452)
for people to be able to relate.

Mary Howell (31:10.942)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (31:14.516)
I mean, different age groups, you know, have the son and the daughter, you know, like there's gonna be teenagers gonna watch and be like, yeah, he's right. Or like, she's like, you know what I mean? Whatever it is, but.

Eli (31:17.734)
huh.

Eli (31:21.268)
Yeah. Sure.

Dezerae (31:22.814)
the parental aspect as well. like when they were just the back and forths between the siblings, the back and forths between the father and the son and him trying to hold on to that childhood of his son for the scraps of it for as long as he could and then coming to realize at a scene at one point in one of the scenes where his son is wanting to run off and join that he has to let him go.

Mary Howell (31:25.16)
Yeah.

Eli (31:28.756)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (31:40.264)
Him not calling him dad.

Eli (31:48.0)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (31:49.525)
That's rough. It's rough, yeah.

Dezerae (31:50.668)
that he's not a child anymore. Like whatever this is, this has swiped away the childhood, like the innocence, like it's no longer. So it's like, okay, I've got to make a choice and I've got to let my son go and trust that he will make those decisions. And so it's just the aspect that he does that is Mm-hmm, yes.

Eli (32:05.322)
Yeah.

Yeah. And he kind of has like a Sophie's choice thing going on in that too, cause he's got to go get his daughter. like, he has to make a quick decision. Yeah.

Mary Howell (32:15.87)
So hard. That's probably like the hardest decision for a dad to do too.

Dezerae (32:16.078)
The cinematics too is fantastic.

Eli (32:19.764)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I really think they, they did a pretty decent job. Like we'll probably get into a little bit. I think there's some things with the story in like the, like last third of the movie that don't necessarily work great for me. but for the most part, I feel like they did a good job, like kind of modernizing the story with the screenplay and.

making it relatable and like keeping it, keeping it with like that right, correct perspective of the protagonist. think they did a good job. But yeah, I'll run through some of the crew on this movie. We'll see if you're listening, if you've been listening through the series with us, you'll hear some familiar names that Spielberg has been collaborating with for a while.

Dezerae (32:59.022)
Thank

Mary Howell (32:59.125)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (33:18.994)
Yeah. So Kathleen Kennedy, his partner in crime has, is producing this one again. She produces a ton of his movies. And yeah, so we, we already talked about Josh Friedman and David Kep with the spring screenplay, but Janusz Kaminski, his guy, his cinematographer for forever. I'm trying to remember. I'm pretty sure it was.

Schindler's List was their first collaboration. they do, Janusz does every movie with him since Schindler's List. So same thing with Michael Kahn, like every movie, he's the editor. John Williams does all the scores.

Mary Howell (34:04.766)
John Williams, classic. He really does that. think about all his repertoire of the movies he's made. He's the main guy.

Dezerae (34:08.024)
Love music.

Eli (34:09.888)
Yeah.

He is. Ron Judkins is a, is a common, like a frequent collaborator with Spielberg for sound. there's some other new names in there like Richard King and Andy Nelson, Anna Belmer. but I don't really recognize those names. Ron Judkins is the one I recognize. Rick Carter is his production designer that he's done a bunch of movies with Spielberg. I feel like at this point, he just like has his go-to guys and he's just sticking with them.

but, yeah, costumes, Joanna Johnston, she, she had some stuff in the special features. That was cool hearing about the costume decisions and stuff, but, special effects. These guys have to get a shout out, David Blitstein, guitar, Rebecca and Daniel Suttick. and I even was able to find like the guys that did the concept art for like the ships and the aliens.

uh, Brian Flora, Mark Garbano, Randy Gall, Kurt Kaufman and Doug Chiang. Uh, so a lot of guys working on that and yeah, I think that's going to be a fun job. You know, like, Hey, we need you to draw. Here's what we're looking for. Dream up. Yeah. What the aliens look like, what the, um, and you know, it's kind of like Spielberg gets it he's like, Oh, I love this. Here's some things to change. And then they get it back.

Mary Howell (35:22.899)
Mm-hmm.

Stream it up.

Eli (35:38.539)
One of the guys was talking about like it's kind of like a refining process they go through with those like concept art things. So that's pretty cool to kind of see. Visual effects guys, Dennis Muren and Pablo Hellman. Those guys are very important in this movie. Obviously there's a lot of VFX in this movie.

Mary Howell (36:04.178)
But even for the year, it's really great. Like 2005, know, and before that, I mean, but still like for the movie and for the time, like, that's great.

Eli (36:06.73)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (36:07.244)
It is very good.

Dezerae (36:14.858)
say this something that's kind of controversial. I'm not a big video effects person per se. I love directors who will really get in there and do the old school Hollywood. Now Spielberg, his stuff is a little bit mixed. It's very tasteful. You have some real and then you have some video effects, which great. If you do something that's totally all video effects,

Eli (36:31.531)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (36:35.519)
Yeah.

Dezerae (36:44.526)
you're gonna lose the detail, you're gonna lose some of that and it's gonna be all chaos. like, like for instance, his, when they're walking at night in the forest and the clothes are falling down, my favorite cinematic visual of, and it's real, those are a little bit of mixed in there, but it just, it's very tastefully done. But I'm not a very big visual effects person.

Eli (36:46.998)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (36:56.811)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (37:07.552)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (37:12.82)
Yeah, no, that's totally fair. I.

I'm kind of on board with that, I think. When something has too much of it, too much CGI, too much, it kind of takes me out.

Dezerae (37:33.708)
I love Transformers, but I would have to say Transformers is the first thing that comes to mind just because the fight scenes with the Transformers, lose a little bit of that experience sometimes.

Eli (37:37.0)
Hmm. Yes. So.

Eli (37:44.095)
Yeah. And that's a really good, that's a really good comparison point because like transformers are like battling in cities and there's these like, there's all these like explosions and buildings. it's like, it doesn't kind of like, there's something off about it all. whereas like in this movie, like when stuff is like crumbling and like blowing up it, like, it feels like

Dezerae (37:58.478)
people everywhere.

Eli (38:14.006)
tangible because a lot of it is like actual practical effects instead of the CGI stuff. Which there's plenty of CGI in this too, but they do have a lot of mix. And so that comparison of something like Transformers in this I think is a good visual comparison of like

the difference there, like the differences there in how it looks and how it feels for sure.

Dezerae (38:43.534)
It gives you a sense of, it gives you a sense of, how do I put this? Like you're more sucked in to War of the Worlds with the mixed duologies of the tangible and CGI compared to something like Transformers, which is like 80, 90 % CGI when it comes to the main characters, which are the robots, obviously. But it's just, I don't know. I just, it's entertaining.

Eli (38:57.504)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (39:11.028)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dezerae (39:11.438)
but I don't have that emotional pull as I would if I'm invested in World of Worlds.

Eli (39:19.7)
Yeah, and Spielberg, I have this quote a little further down. This is something Spielberg was talking about, like in the way he works. It's really interesting and very true, I think, for when you watch through his movies. But he said, quote, on a movie set, you're reacting as the actors do to what's around you. So the general environment is very inspirational.

And it tells me where to put the camera and how to stage the scene. I prefer making things up as I go along right there on the day to really conceive stuff without any preconceptions." And so he, yeah, in that quote, he's like the context is he's talking about like having a real set, like not being in a room with a green screen and a few props, but like having a real set where you can like interact with the environment. You know, he's like, it tells me like,

Dezerae (40:00.195)
like that.

Mary Howell (40:15.983)
Yeah.

Eli (40:18.132)
where to put the camera and it tells me where to put the actors when I get into that space, that real actual space. I think there's something like really meaningful there too in a time where like we're like almost always like inundated with a virtual space of like getting into a real space with real people and like interacting with real things.

Mary Howell (40:25.818)
Yeah.

Eli (40:46.219)
can be like very meaningful. So yeah, I thought that was a cool, like just a cool thing to think about with Spielberg, but yeah, the only other like big name that I wanted to shout out was Vic Armstrong, who's the stunt coordinator. Vic Armstrong is Indiana Jones, basically. Anytime you don't see Harrison's Ford,

Dezerae (41:10.702)
you

Eli (41:13.75)
Ford's face in a stunt, it's probably Vic Armstrong. So I wanted to give him, it's been a while since his name has popped up on the podcast, because I think that probably the last time he worked with Spielberg was probably on Last Crusade, which was end of the 90s. So I mean, end of the 80s. So yeah, Vic Armstrong is back and he's doing all the stunts with Tom Cruise.

Mary Howell (41:16.826)
That's awesome.

Dezerae (41:18.051)
Yeah.

Dezerae (41:44.182)
I feel like stunt people don't get enough credit. They... I know, the full guy. It's on Prime. Yeah, it's... yeah. I love the idea of... and you know, stunt people need to have their spotlight as well. You know, they need to eventually... they're actors, essentially too. They just... you just don't get to see their faces all the time, so...

Eli (41:46.934)
They don't. That's why the fall guy is great.

Mary Howell (41:47.491)
No.

Mary Howell (41:51.29)
I didn't see it, I need to see it. Yeah.

Eli (41:52.83)
It's very fun, very fun.

Eli (42:06.41)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Yeah, for sure. I would love to see, I think the, is it the golden globes or is it the screen actors guild? Some, one of those awards added like a stunt, a stunt award. I would love to see, I would love to see the Oscars do it. Oscars haven't yet. Yeah. Or maybe they have it on the docket to add in the future. I don't know.

Mary Howell (42:25.296)
think they did, didn't they?

Dezerae (42:26.733)
the Oscars?

They should. They really should.

Mary Howell (42:36.111)
Or it's one of those where they actually do, but not televise it, you know?

Eli (42:40.552)
No, it's not. It's not currently. I think it's one, I think that's when they're in talks of like potentially adding, but I'm not sure.

Dezerae (42:40.792)
Probably.

Mary Howell (42:43.012)
No? I dunno. I dunno.

Dezerae (42:48.332)
I mean they should have done that like a long time ago. think it's a fantastic idea just because they give their bodies physically to these roles. mean, it's like they do more of it, you know?

Mary Howell (42:48.368)
You'll be great.

Eli (42:51.135)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (42:57.204)
I know. Yeah, that's true.

Eli (43:02.12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. but yeah, so speaking of stunts, the, the, you know, spokesman of stunts himself, Tom Cruise, just digging into the cast playing Ray Farrier. and, yeah, he Spielberg obviously wanted to work with Cruz again. Cruz hops on this movie has a pretty big.

budget, but it would have been even bigger with Cruz if he would have taken a salary, but he didn't. no, but it's a smart business move. Spielberg does this a lot too. So instead of taking salaries, what they'll do is they'll say, I'm going to take, so this is what Tom Cruise did. He, he signed his contract to take 20 % of the revenue. so he ended up with at least a hundred million dollars from this movie. So yeah.

Mary Howell (43:36.034)
Didn't take a salary with this?

Mary Howell (43:52.462)
Mmm.

Mary Howell (43:56.29)
Nice.

Dezerae (43:56.884)
No, it's very, it's incredibly smart. And a lot of people are doing it nowadays, but that wasn't really on par in the early 2000s. So.

Eli (44:04.724)
Yeah, well like spill spillberg and lucas basically like invented doing that they started doing that with indiana jones, the indiana jones movies and so they kind of like invented that new way of like How to work with a smaller budget but still make a bunch of money off of it But yeah, and yeah spillberg when you watch like the special features you can really tell that like

Spielberg and Cruz are like, they have like somewhat similar personalities and that they like to just like jump into the space like that quote we were reading and just kind of like fill things out and they're like bouncing ideas off of each other and stuff. So that's fun to see too. but yeah, I think this isn't like my favorite Tom Cruise performance or anything, but he's good in this movie. He's, he's just like,

Mary Howell (44:46.029)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (44:52.866)
Yeah.

Dezerae (44:58.862)
Mary Howell (45:01.838)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (45:03.52)
feel like he's just like solid Tom Cruise. I don't know if y'all feel differently, but.

Dezerae (45:08.3)
It's a different perspective of him, I will say that, because a lot of his movies are very... Some of them are, you know, like Top Gun. It's very macho, masculine, cocky, like... But with a little bit of feeling, because he's got like these fears, like the new Top Gun that came out. I loved it, it was fun. But with War of the Worlds, he has a very vulnerable... A vulnerability to him, you know what I mean?

Eli (45:19.914)
Yeah.

Eli (45:29.28)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (45:37.3)
Yes.

Dezerae (45:39.246)
So, I think we lost Mary. Yeah, okay. Yeah, he has a vulnerability to him in World of the Worlds, which I do appreciate, where he allows himself to cry in front of his kids, where he shows that fear, where he does that stuff, he would go into his room. Yeah, he would go into his room and then do that on other films. And so it's just, it's nice.

Mary Howell (45:42.126)
I'm here, it's just my camera.

Eli (45:54.442)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (45:58.689)
Takes a lot of work to get there.

Yeah.

Dezerae (46:06.22)
to see that on this one. It's also not my favorite film of the works, but cinematically, the basis behind World of the Worlds, just all of that is just very intriguing. And I think it was tastefully done.

Eli (46:12.981)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (46:21.578)
Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure Yeah, I agree I think he's he's solid in this movie He does it does take a lot of trauma to get him to that point. He's like crying in front of his kids But he doesn't nonetheless It's that's definitely a scene where things kind of switch for him But yeah Dakota Fanning, I think is great

Mary Howell (46:23.672)
Yeah.

Dezerae (46:33.81)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (46:48.023)
Spielberg had kind of worked indirectly with her because she was in some DreamWorks TV series that he produced. like, he, one of the things Spielberg does so well is like recognize child actors that are good child actors. And he was like, this girl is like just as good as most adult actors at this age. Yeah, she really is. And I think she.

Mary Howell (46:53.996)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (47:14.19)
She's very good.

Eli (47:18.826)
She has this like, she's very good in this movie of like showing trauma and shock and kind of like, I was thinking about how like, can kind of many times when things are happening, you can see in her face that look of a child that's like trying to put the pieces together but can't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Howell (47:26.465)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (47:40.16)
Like every time she went in shock kind of thing.

Dezerae (47:42.314)
Yeah, it was very good. Also, Justin Chatwin, who plays the son, he's extremely good. And he's been in some movies that I've seen that I like the invisible. He's been in. We're not going to talk about Dragon Ball. He has been in that. Just just him as an actor overall is just fantastic. And he was

Mary Howell (48:00.79)
Hehehe

Eli (48:04.403)
Yeah.

Dezerae (48:12.684)
I wouldn't even say he's at his peak because he's doing... I would assume he's doing fantastic things now just because of how superb he is as an actor. But just in this movie alone, like you get to see a bunch of layers of him. And he doesn't even have a big role, but he... the layers that he has that, you know, might not have been written on paper, he very much put forth on screen, which was fun to see.

Eli (48:16.608)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (48:21.622)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (48:38.452)
Yeah, I'm glad you really enjoyed it. I thought his was just very like, meh, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. it's always.

Dezerae (48:44.77)
What?

Mary Howell (48:44.928)
Yeah.

I want to see his perspective of how he got home safely to Boston. That's all I want. That's all I want. Like, what do you mean? What do mean you survived that explosion? Like, I'm sorry, what?

Dezerae (48:51.496)
I know. I know.

Eli (48:53.975)
That's my biggest problem. That's my biggest problem with this movie.

Dezerae (49:01.23)
And the way that they wrote that was very well done too with his character just because as a parent, like all other parents, and so my kid is three, doesn't really mean much, but he's all mommy, daddy, like help me, all this stuff. And everyone always tells me that there's gonna come a time where your child is gonna hit the tweens and he's gonna be like, no, I don't need your help.

Eli (49:16.776)
Mhm.

Dezerae (49:26.954)
no, like you're just ridiculous. You don't know what you're talking about. And that's very indicative to how he is with his dad. It's like, I don't need your help. Like, I know everything. Like, this is my path. And then toward the end of the movie, he's like running to his dad and hugging him and basically being like, I'm sorry, you're right. And that's like how every kid is. So it was really well written with that aspect.

Eli (49:44.726)
Yeah.

Eli (49:51.115)
Yeah. I honestly, like, I'm going to be honest. I'm, I'm really, I'm so glad when people have like opinions that are like more positive than, than me on stuff like this, but I just didn't, I didn't go for any of that. Like part of the movie that was like my least favorite part. everything you're saying is true. Like I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but like, like, so all of that.

Dezerae (50:04.593)
Hahaha

Dezerae (50:10.062)
Really?

Mary Howell (50:14.643)
Hahaha

Dezerae (50:15.34)
That's alright.

Mary Howell (50:20.363)
When we're gone, he's gonna be like, so she was wrong.

Eli (50:22.742)
No, no, I'll, I'll say this, like there's, this is a cool thing about movies is like you connect it. I can like objectively see that those things are there, that that's what they were trying to do. so like hearing you say that I'm like, yeah, that's there. And I'm glad that you connected with it. But like, I was very, I was too busy rolling my eyes at a lot of that stuff. Like I'm like,

Dezerae (50:22.824)
No! I will say, I don't.

Dezerae (50:36.014)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (50:51.734)
What are you going to do? Like you're a, you're a kid in like, in teenager clothes, not in military gear. You have no weapon. Like you, you have no training. Like what are you going to do? And then.

Dezerae (50:53.442)
You

Mary Howell (51:01.343)
Yeah, I'm gonna go fight. With what? With what? Like, I had the same issue.

Dezerae (51:03.576)
You

Listen, there is also that side of things where you're thinking like this dude is a total idiot. Like what is he doing? He's just going to go, go let him go, let him perish. Go, go let him perish. It's fine.

Eli (51:14.912)
Yeah. And then like.

Mary Howell (51:15.883)
You gonna go steal a soldier's gun? Like what are doing dude?

Eli (51:19.114)
Yeah. And then over the hill, it's like, he like runs over the hill and you're like, what are you going to do? What you're going to like run, like scream and like, like grab onto the alien leg and be like hitting it or what are you.

Dezerae (51:26.158)
You

Dezerae (51:34.926)
Listen, I will say that the way that they wrote it and the way it comes on screen is very good. But then there's also that side where it's like, what are you going to do? You have no training. You have no background. What's going to come of that? You're going to get locked in a cage and your blood is going to get sucked out. What's your point? But yeah, but here's the thing. What I didn't like about this film, which I thought was

Eli (51:41.684)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Howell (51:45.13)
Like bro.

Eli (51:48.81)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (51:54.526)
Meanwhile, the daughter is going to be taken by this family. It's like, come on,

Dezerae (52:03.104)
It didn't need to be there. They could have done it in just a different way. It's toward the end of the movie where they had that random guy that they were staying with with a shotgun and he's a little crazy. It was so, it had no context. Like you just meeting this guy and it's like, I know you push it forward to a human standpoint when Tom has to put the blindfold on Dakota Fanning's and go and.

Eli (52:05.206)
Mhm.

Eli (52:10.974)
Yeah

Mary Howell (52:12.903)
It was so slow. That's where it's slow, I feel like.

Eli (52:15.252)
Yeah, it's slowed down too much.

Yeah.

Eli (52:29.054)
Yeah.

Dezerae (52:31.63)
kill this guy so that he could save his family essentially. Like, I get the aspects, but I feel like it could have been done differently. I feel like it could have been written differently. I feel like something else could have happened. I feel like that guy was unnecessary to the plot. At all. Period.

Eli (52:35.286)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (52:39.904)
Yeah.

Eli (52:43.894)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (52:48.394)
Yeah, yeah, so he's like it's obviously it's tim robbins who's a great actor and I think he's He's not like good or bad in this movie. I don't think he's just kind of there and But yeah, so he's like an amalgamation of a few characters from the novel in a way like the care the protagonist in the novel gets like stuck in a house with a guy for a while at one point, but

Dezerae (52:55.661)
Yeah.

Dezerae (53:00.332)
It's okay.

Dezerae (53:16.706)
You should have done that mid-movie and then did something else toward the end.

Eli (53:19.422)
Yeah, but yeah, he, it's like, I, I really agree with like the writing problem with that because for one, like one thing Spielberg's good at is like having slow down moments in the middle of action, to kind of like do care, do a little bit of character development, jump back into action, slow down, do character development. That's like, that's like the recipe and like Jurassic park and jaws, like action.

Dezerae (53:38.67)
.

Eli (53:49.309)
Slow down for a second, character development, more action, and it's like that through the whole movie. Whereas this is like action, action, action. Let's slow down for a whole 25 minutes and then action, action, action.

Dezerae (54:02.094)
It had a little bit of action though. It wasn't even like a whole bunch of action toward the end. It was literally like, we're gonna I'm gonna get sucked up and throw these grenades inside of it and just explode it and then now I'm walking home and It's like the whole and then just like a little action right here a little blip of like their shields are down Let's take it out and then it's like on the way home

Mary Howell (54:04.254)
Yeah.

Eli (54:13.312)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (54:17.717)
Yeah.

Eli (54:28.65)
Yeah.

Dezerae (54:28.654)
It's like, feel like that last 25 to 30 minutes could have been structured differently and written a little bit differently. Maybe he figures that out and then he, I don't know, like it could, it just could have been.

Eli (54:42.538)
Well, it's a problem because for one, he goes and kills Ogilvy. And they don't do any sort of character development with that. It's just like, this kind of sucked. And then they just move on as if nothing happened. And that's such a prime opportunity to be like, his daughter can't look at him the same way. He can't live with himself, something like that.

Mary Howell (54:44.681)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (54:55.334)
Not at all.

Dezerae (54:55.63)
No.

Mary Howell (55:07.283)
Yeah.

Dezerae (55:07.438)
But maybe that was the whole point of him just sitting there and his daughter coming up and hugging him anyways and like understanding she might not know what's really going on, but she knows that Ogle's not there anymore and she knows that her dad's kind of beaten up a little bit and there's blood on him. You know what I mean? And like the look of pure exhaustion and just like his soul is kind of just not there. I don't know.

Eli (55:15.114)
Yeah.

Eli (55:21.43)
I know. She's pretty smart. Yeah. And then like going off of that too.

Mary Howell (55:34.782)
Yeah.

Eli (55:36.107)
Yeah. And I think going off of the other thing you were talking about of like how it ends, it's like this, what was so good about the whole first, like two thirds of the movie is he's the ordinary guy. Like he's reacting to stuff like we would react to stuff like, and then all of a sudden it changes to like, now he's Tom Cruise again and he's going to be the hero and he's going to like point out like he doesn't kill the monster, but he's like the one that points it out.

Mary Howell (55:57.51)
Exactly

Eli (56:05.312)
He's the one that gets the grenades into the weird like orifice on the bottom of the tripod. The tripod. Yeah. And yeah, I feel like that is a writing problem of like you, you had, you built it a certain way and then you kind of like switched gears into, you made this character into a different character for like the last quarter of the movie.

Mary Howell (56:10.952)
Yeah.

Dezerae (56:13.484)
That was weird.

Mary Howell (56:30.184)
How close is it to the book though, to the novel? I've never read it, but do we know? Is it?

Dezerae (56:30.338)
I think you're right.

Eli (56:36.52)
No. And in the novel, it's like, it is like they do die the same way. It's like the common cold takes out the, the aliens basically, but there is like this thing at the end where, he gets back to his wife and his wife is there and he's reunited with her in the book. but it's not like terribly over-dramaticized like it is this.

Mary Howell (56:45.585)
But like the main characters, there's not like, you know, like a family kind of thing. It's just mainly the alien stuff.

Mary Howell (56:59.111)
Mm.

Mary Howell (57:04.891)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (57:06.12)
And like, I don't, like you were saying earlier, my biggest, absolute biggest quibble is like, why is Robbie there? Like, how is he there? Why? Like he, he ran over the hill and then the other side of the hill exploded. Like.

Mary Howell (57:21.797)
I know, he had nothing with him, like what?

Dezerae (57:21.87)
How did they survive? Yeah, there's some writing in this that is questionable and could have been done. I feel like it was kind of hastily done because like you said, they had like what, 10 months, something like that to shoot this film without a short window. So I feel like the first part of it that was already written out and then was taken over by a different...

Eli (57:31.68)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (57:41.916)
Yeah.

Dezerae (57:48.45)
like a different writer, it's because they had a crunch time at that point. And then that's how I feel because it's two different, it's two different films.

Eli (57:51.968)
Mm-mm.

Mary Howell (57:56.744)
Yeah. But I feel like for me, when I first saw it and I saw that he was there, I was happy. was like, oh, I'm so glad he's a man. It's great. Great. Happy ending. Like as a child, you know, as someone as the average like watcher, it's like, oh, man, I'm glad I survived that. don't know how I did it, but I'm just glad you kind of think. But now as an adult, I was like, no, it's OK for them to lose. Like, but anyway, it is what it is.

Eli (57:58.518)
Yeah, it is.

Dezerae (58:05.92)
Yeah, I do appreciate the end.

Eli (58:16.235)
Yeah.

Dezerae (58:16.31)
Ugh.

Eli (58:19.414)
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. bothered, like, I'm like, very eye-rolly for me. Like, what? This makes no sense.

Mary Howell (58:28.231)
I think you just need to take a poll. Did everyone like, you had to take a poll to everybody, like, all right, did you enjoy the ending or not?

Dezerae (58:28.504)
Happy endings.

Eli (58:30.154)
Yeah

Eli (58:34.858)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dezerae (58:35.694)
I personally love happy endings. I like it when the people that I want to live live because it's bad enough that we live in a world today where it's like, I mean, we're all gonna go. It's inevitable, but we wanna live. We wanna live in La La Land. So I wanna live in La La Land even though I saw a bunch of people in this movie perish. Like I wanna, I want my people

Mary Howell (58:38.255)
Yeah, I gonna that.

Eli (58:39.19)
That's fair. Yeah.

Mary Howell (58:48.679)
mean, granted there is a lot of destruction and it makes sense that they would do that.

Eli (58:58.218)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (58:58.639)
Yeah, there's blood everywhere. Might as well make him live.

Eli (59:01.844)
Yeah, blood fertilizer, pretty gross. in the novel, the the novel, the Martians, like their food is human blood. So this isn't quite like that.

Dezerae (59:01.954)
I want my people to live.

Whatever the explosions.

Mary Howell (59:07.644)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (59:15.463)
Ew.

Dezerae (59:16.206)
Can we talk about the effects of the aliens and how they are very similar to the Independence Day aliens? The concept, the visual concept? Like the end where the alien's crawling out and his arm is, yes, his arm is hanging out and then he takes his last breath. Visually, like if you go into Independence Day, there's a scene in the lab.

Eli (59:24.35)
Are they? I don't, it's been so long since I've seen Independence Day.

Mary Howell (59:32.411)
like what they look like.

Eli (59:35.253)
Hmm.

Mary Howell (59:37.255)
Look at it.

Mary Howell (59:41.511)
hold on a second. What?

Dezerae (59:43.872)
Yes, there's a scene at the lab where he comes out of his protective skin. They call it the protective layer. And he's like, like, I want you all to die, basically. And they shoot him. That alien is extremely conceptually, like similar to this one. And so these aliens, yes, they're very, similar.

Eli (01:00:04.564)
Hmm.

Mary Howell (01:00:05.136)
They really are pretty similar.

Eli (01:00:07.958)
Yeah. The big head thing, I guess the big, yeah, the big difference, I guess, is like, like, so the guy that designed the aliens was talking about, like, he was thinking about like a frog and like a frog when it's walking, not hopping. And so like, that's what they were thinking about with the, cause they do have like the kind of three pronged feet and they have three legs and they kind of like crawl like a frog in a way.

Mary Howell (01:00:10.0)
Maybe like the bodies are different.

Dezerae (01:00:15.022)
you

Dezerae (01:00:22.222)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (01:00:35.578)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:00:36.174)
Yeah, they do walk, they do walk a little bit. Yes, they do walk differently, but their head is very similar.

Eli (01:00:37.642)
But yeah, like the head definitely is similar. Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:00:38.138)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:00:43.108)
Yeah, they kind of when you when you Google it like the AI overview on Google says essentially Independence Day aliens are large insect like creatures with a distinct head and body while the world's aliens are described as octopus like with multiple tentacles and a head like structure. So.

Eli (01:01:00.906)
I guess, I guess like to be fair, like aliens, it's hard to like conceptualize aliens and they all end up kind of like having similar looks.

Mary Howell (01:01:09.499)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:01:10.4)
you

Mary Howell (01:01:13.22)
I know it's like aliens can also feel like, I don't know. Yeah, that's up. Maybe that's a whole other topic.

Eli (01:01:19.03)
That's why I love movies like, yeah. Well, they look like, really? They kind of look like the stereotypical alien to me in a way too, and a different one.

Dezerae (01:01:20.718)
except for Night Shyamalan's... the sign. Now that alien creeped me out.

Yeah!

Dezerae (01:01:34.304)
more scary. See, see this one kind of looked cute. It sounds weird to say, but the last shot, the last shot of it, he looked like a little infant, like a little baby drawing his last breath. He's like very puppy eyes and small and feature and all of this stuff. If you compare that alien to Night Shyamalan's The Signs, that one is tall, lanky, very

Mary Howell (01:01:40.409)
I know.

Eli (01:01:41.354)
They're very curious.

Eli (01:01:50.678)
Mm.

Dezerae (01:02:01.502)
original alien how we would picture back in the day. However, it's more human aspect, but with the long clawed fingers and the fact that it is like a chameleon and can blend in that that to me that alien was more scary than this one.

Eli (01:02:21.568)
That's fair.

Mary Howell (01:02:22.159)
There's so many variations of aliens. got into rabbit hole on Googling that comparing aliens. I'm like, my gosh, there's just insane. anyway.

Dezerae (01:02:27.118)
of us.

Eli (01:02:29.194)
Yeah. Well, I like, I like movies too, that do something so different that like, well, men in black has all kinds of stuff, but I was thinking like arrival. like, and like, that's so different. like not like anything else, any other conception of aliens. And so I, those are like my favorite alien designs, ones that are just so, so conceptually different than.

Mary Howell (01:02:34.479)
Like men in black? I don't know. Ooh, yeah.

Dezerae (01:02:36.34)
Love men in black.

Eli (01:02:58.802)
Anything else like it is so other. Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:02:58.991)
that makes you feel like eerie.

Yes, yeah. Like I think nowadays if we see something like that, I'm like, OK, yeah, that's typical aliens. I'm not as scared of it when I see it. But I think that's probably the challenging part for most filmmakers and concept artists. Like, all right, how do we come up with something new because of the amount of alien content in, you know, in film today? So.

Eli (01:03:10.485)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:03:21.526)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I know you guys have maybe like 10 more minutes or so and I definitely want to get your you guys' takes on like maybe some themes or takeaways. And but before we get to that, one of the things I always like to do is like think about intriguing like images or like

sequences and I don't know what were some like what was some like imagery that was used or like maybe a particular like scene that really stuck out to you and and why

Dezerae (01:04:04.672)
I have two. So the one that we that I spoke about earlier where the clothes are falling in the trees and you have the moons back lit in the the forest of them walking that's cinematically just is really good. The other one is the only way I can describe it is a push scene. So it goes from

Mary Howell (01:04:04.708)
Hmm.

Eli (01:04:06.677)
Okay.

Eli (01:04:13.098)
Yeah.

Eli (01:04:21.002)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:04:32.652)
the town where they're in the car where they get overrun by the people and they end up in the diner to then they're walking across the bridge and they get onto the boat to then the alien coming from the water and then tossing the boat over. It's to me, it resemblizes a shove toward toward the end toward the end of whatever it is that it'll be. But it it exudes like a ton of emotion of like anxiety.

Mary Howell (01:04:43.288)
bridge scene man.

Eli (01:04:44.938)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:05:03.305)
fear. I hurt like someone who is in a hurry. I have to hurry. I have to beat this. have to I have to run and exudes like all these emotions and then you get the chaos and of the the people and the almost yes almost claustrophobic in a way because it's like you have and I think that that's probably what they were going for anyways to fear the claustrophobic the the the unknown.

Eli (01:05:08.096)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:05:17.642)
Yeah, that shot of like everyone turning around and looking back. Yeah.

Dezerae (01:05:33.192)
the push for that. And it's just like that whole sequence right in that made me feel uncomfortable. And that's also why I kept watching. I couldn't look away whenever I watch it. yeah.

Eli (01:05:34.262)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:05:40.736)
Yeah.

Eli (01:05:44.875)
Yeah.

Yeah, the, all of that is very like, it's such a good example of like how good Spielberg is at pushing action along and also at the same time, like holding tension and at the same time, keeping a sense of geography, like, know, where you are and like where you're going to and where you've been, like, he's very good at like seeing that space and helping you move through it. but yeah, that shot of everyone looking up.

Dezerae (01:05:56.984)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:06:13.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:06:16.958)
like up at the tripods as they're like coming over the hill, by the way, reminded me. It reminded me of Dunkirk. Have you all seen that? The Christopher Nolan where like that you hear the plane and all the soldiers like start looking back and there's the shot. It reminded me of that. And I was like, I wonder if Christopher Nolan saw War of the Worlds and was like, that's a cool shot. I'm going to use that one day.

Dezerae (01:06:18.894)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (01:06:20.566)
so intense.

Dezerae (01:06:21.487)
you

Mary Howell (01:06:25.798)
man, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dezerae (01:06:27.266)
I've been leaning to. I've heard such good things.

Mary Howell (01:06:32.318)
man.

Mary Howell (01:06:40.567)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:06:40.75)
I would like to think so. I think a lot of drugs just pool from everywhere.

Eli (01:06:42.58)
Yeah, maybe.

Mary Howell (01:06:43.02)
Dash.

Yeah, I feel like mine have, I guess, too, like my, I think it kind of relates to like any kind of like end of the world movies is whenever aliens first appear, like or the build up to what's going on, like what is happening? Like the whole, it's fine. Lightning doesn't strike twice in one spot. You know what mean? And and having it, you know, 20 something times, you know, in that one same spot, like the whole like, wait, what's happening? What's going on? Like those are my absolute

Eli (01:06:54.912)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (01:06:59.854)
you

Eli (01:07:01.812)
Yeah.

Eli (01:07:06.974)
Yeah.

Eli (01:07:14.102)
That's not it.

Mary Howell (01:07:15.958)
favorite moments, I think in every film because it makes me think what would I do in the situation? Like what would I do? Like, and I realize, man, I don't know what I would do. And you know, you're obviously going wrong with the main character, but the whole EMP part of it completely destroyed. you think, man, that sucks from down there. But then you fast forward to my other more, I think really eerie scene is the plane, you know, like seeing it completely destroyed. And because of, we don't know, EMP most likely.

Eli (01:07:39.36)
Mary Howell (01:07:45.379)
But like what that whole those scenes, think. I mean, yeah, it's just and it's an interesting part for him to include this shortly after 9 11. I think having the plane there kind of is a little bit of an interesting like, you know, thing that he did. But I think those two scenes are always like the most eerie parts for me. But definitely something that you mentioned does as well. But yeah, those are kind of the two that.

Eli (01:07:57.013)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:08:14.582)
kind of come to mind, the first one's usually in every film. Like I think of Greenland also with the asteroid, you know, have you got a fantastic movie? But, you know, any kind of like, wait, what's happening? Let's go investigate what's and then the moment it happens and everyone's freaking out running, like it's yeah, it's Quiet Place does it well. the second one, you know, from all those kind of films that have that moment of everything's fine, we're all grand until like, it's everything's not fine. Those are like, it makes me think.

Dezerae (01:08:19.958)
Yes, I love Greenland.

Eli (01:08:20.288)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:08:31.883)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:08:44.2)
I think that's why I love it so much. makes me like, what would I do? Like, I don't think I'd survive any kind of like that disaster or like, like a zombie apocalypse. Forget it. I just know I'm done. Like it is like my dog barks way too much. They're going to hear me like.

Eli (01:08:50.198)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:08:54.742)
Yeah.

Eli (01:08:57.61)
Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love the whole, like the progression. It's another one of those like progression things. Like Desiree was talking about of like, there's lightning striking and like, he's like, no big deal. And then like, he starts to freak out a little bit. He's like, this is weird. What's going on? Everybody like running to that like intersection, which is like a five road intersection that they found that is so perfect for this scene.

Mary Howell (01:09:16.918)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:09:22.414)
you

Mary Howell (01:09:26.59)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:09:27.528)
And then like, instead of it coming down, it like comes up out of the ground, which I think was a really like fun choice to make. yeah, it's, it's very good. and then like the people exploding from the heat rays, like crazy. Yeah. Well too, like he's covered in, he's, he's covered in, yeah, he's covered in people. He's covered in like the ashes of people that have like,

Mary Howell (01:09:44.862)
Yeah, and he's like frozen when he comes into the home, you know, and...

people.

Dezerae (01:09:51.79)
people.

Eli (01:09:57.687)
combusted. But it also is another very strong 9-11 imagery. That's what people looked like coming out of the rubble of 9-11.

Mary Howell (01:10:05.19)
Exactly, that's right.

Yeah.

Dezerae (01:10:10.615)
think it's such a brave choice that Spielberg did that just a few years after the fact. mean, it's just, and it also like everyone was avoiding things like that, like TV shows, films, they were avoiding anything with planes, anything with crashes, anything with terrorists. They just, they weren't talking about it. It became like this trigger. And I think Spielberg in a way was like, no, like let's go through therapy together. Like this is how we're going to do that. Immersion therapy.

Mary Howell (01:10:13.812)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:10:14.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:10:37.494)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:10:38.368)
I mean, it's like the same way to where like probably 2021, no one was really releasing any like films that had to do with the virus. You know what mean? it. But by now, I'm sure there will be 2025. I'm sure there'll be something else. You know what I mean? It's just and that's four or five years after the same distance of that, you know. So I think with time, usually they're always like, all right, let's test it out and see what happens, you know.

Dezerae (01:10:43.79)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:10:50.284)
And we got quarantine.

Eli (01:10:51.765)
Yeah.

Eli (01:10:56.394)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:11:02.004)
Yeah. One of the, one of the images that I thought was really good. It's in a part of the movie that I'm not as big a fan of, but I thought like the imagery of it was incredible was like towards the end when they're walking, you know, they've gotten through all the stuff. he, gotten away from the tripod and they, they walk into the square and you see like all of their, all of the red weed is like gray and dusty now.

Mary Howell (01:11:19.168)
Mm.

Mary Howell (01:11:24.842)
falling.

Eli (01:11:29.43)
And then you look over and there's like the tripod falling against the building. Um, I was like, Oh, that's such. Yeah. That's such a good, like just imagery of like, Oh, there there's hope. There's still hope in the middle of all this chaos. Uh, because you look over and you see, Oh, that thing is like messed up. They do have a weakness, you know? Um,

Mary Howell (01:11:33.64)
Leaning, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of bacteria.

Mary Howell (01:11:47.775)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:11:54.016)
There's no force field, you know. Mm-hmm. That's good. Yeah. But it was, yeah.

Eli (01:11:57.771)
So I really enjoyed that imagery. yeah, what were you guys's, like, did y'all have any main takeaways, any main themes that you thought were interesting before we wrap up with you guys?

Dezerae (01:12:14.796)
Yeah, I would say for me with the film, the overall theme with everyone, including Tom Cruise as character is like the choices that we end up needing to make in order to survive. if I were in that situation, would I make those same choices? Are they the correct choices? You don't know that at the time, but it's that human aspect of like

Mary Howell (01:12:14.88)
Hmm.

Mary Howell (01:12:30.762)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (01:12:42.954)
whether it's right or whether it's wrong, it's going to be a morally gray area regardless. So will I, won't I is the question. it's like, take into your soul into account, like, are you willing to make those sacrifices? Are you willing to kill that person in order to save the people that you love the most? Is that something in your character that you're willing to give up and sacrifice in order to make those difficult choices? So I like that aspect.

Eli (01:12:47.424)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (01:13:11.982)
of films, all the time, but I do like that aspect when it comes to that.

Mary Howell (01:13:20.541)
Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess for me, it kind of ties to what I said, you know, just kind of like, you know, what would I do in this scenario? But a lot of it, too, is just like, I think I would almost do the same thing. Like, how can I protect my family the best that I can? Like, my thing is like if or how am I with my family? Like if something awful happens and I just I'm not don't have.

Dezerae (01:13:33.357)
Mm-hmm.

Mary Howell (01:13:42.845)
the best relationship or something like, or I got in a big fight with someone and something awful happens. Like my first I was like, shoot, like I was the last words I just said to them, you know? And so that's kind of with them. you just see their relationships, you know, estranged in a way of just of that brokenness in it. But seeing them reunited at the end because of the trauma, you know, kind of thing, I don't know. That's kind of something that how much just almost how much devastation, unfortunately, how much devastation or hard times

Eli (01:13:51.711)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:14:12.477)
truly bring humanity and people together.

Eli (01:14:15.486)
Yeah, yeah, one of the things that I, you know, that I thought was interesting, was that the, the choice to like have the alien, like the machines be already like planted in the earth and they're just like sitting there waiting. they've been there for who knows how long. like those are kind of unanswered questions. and it just kind of evokes that.

idea that like the danger, like the danger and evil like might be lurking within the whole time and, and you're like thinking it's out there, especially like in a post, like a post 9 11 thing, like you can apply this like, I guess like culturally, but also personally to like curl.

Dezerae (01:14:48.206)
you

Eli (01:15:11.862)
Culturally thinking like the danger is out there. It's with those things, but there's like it's sitting there like waiting under the ground the whole time It's it's our are we more of a danger to ourselves than anything like out there? and so there's there's that idea culturally, but also like personally to Like just checking yourself like am I more of a danger to myself than like anything anyone else is gonna do to me

Dezerae (01:15:35.63)
you

Eli (01:15:41.417)
And I think that's there. I think it's interesting because Spielberg talked about this as like, it shows so well, how humanity comes together when, you know, things go wrong. and I think we did see that post nine 11 big time, of people coming together, but like, there's also a lot of this movie that shows like people kind of suck also when things go wrong, like.

Mary Howell (01:16:08.862)
Yeah

Dezerae (01:16:09.368)
People were not together on this one. It showed the worst parts of humanity, I would have to say.

Eli (01:16:12.05)
Yeah, so...

It did, it did. And so when I heard Spielberg say that, the special features, I was like, I don't know, man. I feel like you showed like a lot of people doing horrible things out of panic and fear.

Mary Howell (01:16:16.359)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:16:23.31)
Thank

Mary Howell (01:16:24.552)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:16:28.072)
I think in the midst of it, in the midst of it, maybe like out of it, like once everything's done and settled, everyone's like, shoot. You know what I mean? It's, yeah. My bad.

Eli (01:16:31.049)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you like hone in on the characters he was interested in, you can kind of see that that's what he was going for. But like as a whole, like everyone else is kind of like panic fear. Yeah.

Dezerae (01:16:34.894)
My bad.

Mary Howell (01:16:48.925)
panic.

Dezerae (01:16:49.934)
It makes you think like like if something like that or even worse were to happen like What does that say about humanity if we actually do? Respond in the way that these people did you know what I mean? true

Eli (01:17:01.205)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:17:02.301)
I mean, unfortunately, we see glimpses of that in the world already, and it's just unfortunate, you

Eli (01:17:06.358)
Yeah.

Yeah, it is very.

Dezerae (01:17:09.73)
but what it would look like on a grander scale.

Mary Howell (01:17:12.507)
I know, Anyway.

Eli (01:17:15.466)
But yeah, well, before I let you guys go, I would love to hear like your rating, your completely meaningless, but still fun to talk about rating of the movie. yeah, sure. Out of 10 or whatever you want to do.

Mary Howell (01:17:29.297)
Yeah, like out of 10 or.

Gosh. I would say like maybe seven out of 10. Yeah.

Dezerae (01:17:40.402)
Okay. Mine's lower. And I thought I was being fair.

Mary Howell (01:17:44.987)
Really? The only reason, well, I only put it high because this is like the start of like why I enjoy these types of films. Yeah, that's a.

Eli (01:17:45.92)
Wow.

Dezerae (01:17:51.814)
Eli (01:17:53.91)
That's fair. That's why writings are subjective and meaningless.

Mary Howell (01:17:58.309)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:17:58.925)
Yeah, people who are listening to this don't take mine to heart. No, no, mine is like a mine's like a 5.5 5.6. So it's, mean, it's just average. It's there. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, a lot you could take away from this a lot of good, but there's also a lot of stuff that's like, it could have been better.

Mary Howell (01:18:02.429)
She's gonna say like two. What's your rating?

Eli (01:18:05.152)
out of 10.

Mary Howell (01:18:08.22)
Okay.

Eli (01:18:08.97)
Okay.

Eli (01:18:20.278)
Yeah, yeah, I have it at like a solid six maybe Which is funny because I was like I thought you liked it more than I did Desiree and you gave it like You're giving it a little bit lower But yeah, but I also like think a lot in doing these

Mary Howell (01:18:34.087)
Lower.

Dezerae (01:18:35.928)
I know, shocking. I'm the Simon Cowell of the group.

Mary Howell (01:18:38.013)
I don't know. It does not make sense.

Eli (01:18:43.84)
series about like the technical aspects and stuff too. And there's like a lot to appreciate in this one as far as that goes. So that helps bump it up a little bit, even with like all the like narrative quibbles that I have with the story.

Dezerae (01:18:44.022)
you

Dezerae (01:18:58.968)
So to me, the narrative, I like continuity. I like it to be key. And for the simple fact that two different writers wrote this and it feels like two different movies toward the end, that's why I rated it the way I did. But I mean, overall, love the story, love the whole thing. It's just because of that. It kind of just...

Eli (01:19:14.645)
Yeah.

Eli (01:19:19.422)
Mm-hmm Yeah Yeah Yep, that's fair. So that so I would guess for both of you. It's kind of like maybe a middling Spielberg movie or Yeah, he just has some great ones there

Dezerae (01:19:32.174)
Yeah, I'd say that's fair.

Mary Howell (01:19:32.935)
Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:19:37.821)
I mean to compare it to his other stuff is just like, you know.

Eli (01:19:40.596)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:19:40.726)
I know if you compare that to Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park or ET, you know, it's not... it's average.

Eli (01:19:44.478)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Even like I prefer his other Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, far more than this. I don't know if y'all have seen Minority Report. It's great. It's so good. Like I feel like it's underrated and under appreciated. It's very, a very fun and interesting movie, I think. But, but yeah, before you guys go, I would love for you to share,

Dezerae (01:19:53.24)
you

Mary Howell (01:19:57.977)
I don't know. I don't think I have

Dezerae (01:19:58.382)
Bye.

Eli (01:20:17.743)
where to find nerds and Jesus, where to find the show, where to follow you guys. What's the best place to do that?

Mary Howell (01:20:20.453)
Yeah.

Dezerae (01:20:22.19)
you

Mary Howell (01:20:25.403)
Yeah, well we have like a link where it's just bio.site slash nerds and Jesus, which gives you all the links, everything. But either way, if you know, we're on nerds and Jesus on Instagram, on Facebook, we're on all podcasts, platforms, and then just kind of be on the lookout for, honestly I would say like follow our social media, YouTube, because YouTube will eventually be along the way this year, but yeah, so just kind of.

Eli (01:20:31.946)
Mm-hmm. Great.

Eli (01:20:45.878)
Mm-hmm.

Dezerae (01:20:48.844)
YouTube

Dezerae (01:20:54.661)
huh.

Mary Howell (01:20:55.215)
Follow us on there and yeah.

Eli (01:20:56.715)
Yeah. And I'll make sure to put the catch all link in the episode description so people can just click on it. and I would too, I was, I was telling you guys before, if you want like a recent movie, that they talked about on the podcast to kind of like as a good like entry point, cause I think that you both are on that. It's, I, if I remember right at the end of the episode is when Desiree became an official cohost of the podcast.

Mary Howell (01:21:00.091)
Yeah, a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Howell (01:21:22.811)
Yeah. Yeah. It does. Just jumped on jumped on on the in the fall. So, yeah.

Dezerae (01:21:25.643)
huh, yeah.

Eli (01:21:26.518)
Yeah, so y'all reviewed Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and it was a fun conversation. I enjoyed listening to that. So yeah.

Mary Howell (01:21:33.325)
Yeah, that's good. Hopefully we can do some more. I know we got Captain America Brave New World coming out, so we're hoping at least to get that one in. So, yeah. The trailer, man, came out today. my gosh. I'm so excited. That's a whole other episode. Anyway, I'm just a Marvel fan, but yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:21:40.426)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think the fantastic four teaser trailer dropped too. Yeah.

Dezerae (01:21:48.844)
I saw that, I fell in love with it. I am so excited. I am so excited. my gosh, I could talk on and on about Fantastic Four. Yes.

Eli (01:21:52.476)
Hahaha.

Eli (01:22:00.702)
Awesome. fantastic for episode in the future. can already tell. So yeah, go follow them. Go listen to maybe Beetlejuice Beetlejuice episode or something like that. a good entry point, but yeah, thank you guys so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah. All right.

Mary Howell (01:22:02.565)
So anyway, so follow us for all that info.

yeah, 1000%.

Dezerae (01:22:08.942)
yeah.

Mary Howell (01:22:21.829)
Thanks for having us, yeah.

Dezerae (01:22:22.605)
Yeah, thanks.

Eli (00:01.422)
Am back. I really really enjoyed having Mary and Desiree on But I did want to continue this episode Covering some things we weren't able to get to as a group just solo. So it's just me now and Yeah, I'm gonna just kind of jump into a lot of this really interesting stuff about the movie One of the things we didn't

Mentioned when we were going through the cast Was Miranda Otto who plays Maryann very small role in the movie? But it was fun learning that Spielberg so she didn't even know she was up for the role gets a call to audition and Gets the part and then she was actually pregnant and let Spielberg know know that she was pregnant and he was like, yeah cool We'll just make the character pregnant which is

Always fun to learn that sort of stuff. But yeah, there's some other notable names in the cast. Rick Gonzalez and Yul Vasquez play his friends at the beginning, Vincent and Julio. You have Lisa Ann Walter pop up. I've been seeing her in Abbott Elementary watching that with my wife. But she pops up as his kind of old friend. She's also just bartender in the

credits. I don't really know why, but David Allen Blache plays Tim, who's father-in-law, or not father-in-law, stepfather of the kids with Mary Ann Ray's ex, and yeah we didn't even mention Morgan Freeman as the narrator. Crazy. That's how the movie begins and ends with the voice of Morgan Freeman, you know, as you would expect. You also have some fun like

really early sightings of some actors that we're more aware of now and David Harbour, who was a dock worker, pops up and then Channing Tatum was a boy in the church at this point. He was uncredited in the movie, but he was in there somewhere. I didn't even...I should have looked up. I should have seen if there were like some still frames of those guys like in the background of a scene or something, but apparently they're in there.

Eli (02:25.774)
And then the last cast that I wanted to mention Jean Barry and Anne Robinson kind of are the grandfather and grandmother at the very end of the movie They were the leads the two leads in the 1953 version of war of the world So that's a fun cameo for those guys they Spielberg had actually worked with them on an episode of the name of the game when he was working in TV called la-17

LA 2017, which is really a really interesting early Spielberg work that if you can find a way to watch it then you should. But yeah, actually I'm not sure if Anne Robinson is in that. She might be, but Jean Berry definitely is. Yeah, was really fun to see that. Spielberg even told Anne that ET touching Elliot's shoulder was inspired by the Martian touching her shoulder in the

Original 53 version of four of the worlds, but yeah the production some of the stuff We didn't get to talk about that's really fun and really interesting. So the production dates were November 8th 2004 through March 7th 2005 It began shooting just three after three days after the reelection of George W Bush another little nod to the 9-eleven era there

But yeah, they had less than 10 months to finalize this movie. From green light to production, it was less than three months to get the script ready and all that. Start working on all the location scouting, all the pre-production stuff. And then they had under 70 days of shooting. Post-production was only three months. And my goodness, only Spielberg could make a movie like this happen.

such short time. But yeah, so they shot the on location, like, principal special effects plate photography first. So that's basically like the footage that's going to have like visual effects added to it, CGI added to it. So they had to get all of that stuff done on location first so that ILM could start adding the effects for this quick turnaround that they were having to do.

Eli (04:49.772)
Murin, Dennis Murin and Pablo Hellman, the VFX supervisors, they kind of took turns being on set and being at ILM working on adding in the effects in post. So they were really like by six weeks into shooting, they were already like doing post-production work with the score, with the VFX adding in the CGI, doing all that stuff.

So they really had to kind of map out what they were doing and work on it that way. But yeah, so you have, they started off on the East coast doing a lot of that plate photography for the special effects for ILM over there first. So they shot in Newark, New Jersey was the five road intersection.

where the tripod emerges and Bayonne, New Jersey was the van driving escape. You have Athens, New York, where the ferry boat scene took place. They actually like built a little ferry dock out there for that scene. Not all of that scene takes place. Some of that is in a studio, but some of it is out there in Athens. Nagatak, Connecticut was where

They it kind of ends with the military and the dying tripods. That's where that was Lexington Lexington, Virginia was the last place they finished up on the East Coast and that's where like the field with the farmhouse and the The big hill is a most of that is shot in there. So Yeah, they go back back west over to LA. They do some shooting at Universal Studios

They have the plane crash set there, some green screen work with like inside the store during that opening where Tom Cruise is running. You've got they do they use one of the tanks there at Universal for the people like in the water after they get dumped out of the ferry. They do some work at 20th Century Fox Studios. The basement set is built there or cellar, whatever you want to call it.

Eli (07:09.518)
And then also the meadow with the farmhouse covered in like the red weeds and stuff that set was built there at 20th Century Fox Yeah, they've got the Sony Pictures Studios was the other studio they did the tripod cage set there so that was like actually a full Like I think it was like 80 foot by 40 foot built like set with people in those cages on the underside of the tripod

So that was cool. had like, they had it like, some of that was like CGI work, obviously. But yeah, you know, you've got guys on cables getting pulled up into the weird organic orifice that they designed on the bottom of that thing. Pretty weird and gross. But yeah, so that was at Sony Pictures Studios. You have two more on location stuff. Piru, California was where they shot

They found this East coasty looking area to shoot where the crowd kind of ambushes the van that was shot out there. And then the very last, the very end of the shooting was at mystery Mesa, which is kind of north of LA. There was a hill there that they kind of used to mimic the hill from Lexington. And they kind of finished the shooting that stuff that was supposed to take place on that hill.

there in Mystery Mesa with some of the tanks and all that kind of stuff. yeah, shot out a lot of places, needless to say. Pre-visualization was very important on this film, obviously. They did pre-vis for everything dealing with special effects. And then they actually designed the sets after the pre-vis was completed.

The previsualization team, you know, designed all these on this Xeno 3D modeling software and they, they did all that before they were built these sets so that basically like they could be able to show the actors, the previsualization on these sets that are built just like it shows in the previs so that they just knew what to expect. They knew what to act against all that sort of stuff.

Eli (09:37.932)
really helps the actors. And Spielberg talked about the difference between being able to do that and actually show them, hey, this is what's going to be in the final product. Obviously much more refined and looked much better than those previs 3D models look, but this is what you're going to be acting against. Whereas in Close Encounters, he would just have to say, imagine from here to here there's a ship and it's doing this and there's lights and stuff. And he just kind of had to get actors to

Pretend it's there which they're still doing here, but he's at least able to show them like what it's doing how it's moving that sort of thing. So Yeah You also and like some of the special features get to see Spielberg really like His mastery of directing like he's talking to the previous guys and he's like we need to get this done So that I can get it to you know

Dennis Murin so they can start working on what they're gonna have to do So that he can talk to Yanouche so that he can tell them hey This is where we're gonna be having to add in special effects So the camera needs to be able to pick up this and I need to get it to Vic Armstrong so he can start working with the stunt team So that they know the space they're gonna be working in and he could start playing for that. It's like that that's what a director's job is and people don't

Realize that I think a lot of times when you hear a director of a movie you just think like oh It's the guy that made the movie. It's like no this guy is is holding it all together because there's so much going on and you have to be such a good like manager of people and time and projects and yeah, this This the special features in this really showcase like Spielberg doing that so masterfully which I thought was cool

Yeah, if you've got a few scenes obviously with thousand up to a thousand extras like the fairy scene One of the crazy things was so it's not crazy that they used real soldiers You know Spielberg's done that plenty but the crazy thing here is because this movie was so September 11th but they're actually using soldiers that like

Eli (12:02.446)
think it was like 80 % of the soldiers had just gotten back from Afghanistan or Iraq and Or we're gonna be going soon. So that's gotta be crazy to be like I just got home I'll be going back soon and I'm filming a movie in the meantime gotta be crazy Yeah Cinematography wise with the Yanush he he didn't want to make it too stylized

He wanted it to feel pretty grounded and natural and Yanus, honestly, in the special features says that in a lot of movies where I'm like, I don't think you quite got that, but this one he actually does. I feel like he does a good job. One of the things he did was he did a lot of the camera at eye level because it is like...

the perspective of the protagonist, so he wanted to keep it at that level, experiencing everything from that kind of vantage point. so that grounds it. And then too, like, there's not too much, like, stylization with, like, the lighting work that he normally does and the colorization that he normally does, so I appreciated that he actually, like, didn't stylize it too much in this one, because it does need that grounding, I think.

but lighting is a big thing in this because the cool thing about the lights in this is It's kind of the opposite of normal normally like light would signify That things are something good is gonna happen or something like that. But in this the light is usually Signifying danger when the light is showing up. It's because there's a tripod nearby And so he really wanted to utilize that idea

Like there was, at one point they were talking about they had these like flashes of light that they were doing and they found that you do 15 flashes of light and on the 13 one it's not white, it's green. And that was scary for some, that felt scarier for some reason. It's like, okay, that's weird to think about who would even notice that, but hey, you know, I

Eli (14:22.878)
The end product speaks for itself. It is utilized very well. And then in some sequences he would set up like these interactive light structures to kind of be stand-ins for the tripod spotlights, because the reality is the tripod isn't there. So there's no light from the tripod shining down on the victims, you know, running around. So he would set up these like interactive light things that would kind of shine around in spotlight.

So that and then you know the VFX team was able to go in and kind of like follow those so they added You know if the spotlight is moved this way in the actual set then you know the spotlight of the Added-in tripod guy would move that way. So that's pretty cool Yeah, some of the costume stuff I had mentioned with Mary and Desiree that I thought was

fun. Joanna Johnson talked about like spending a ton of time on Ray's jacket. She felt like it was the most important part of his costume to make him feel like a normal guy and yeah it works. I thought it was too interesting her talking about how Rachel's clothes start off like typical like little girl like bright colors like

Vibrant and then hers changed through the most throughout the movie Becoming more and more tattered more and more dirty. So That was cool. And then Yeah, one of the very interesting things was thinking about They they talked about how we're not used to seeing processions of refugees that are Americans And that's what you're seeing in this movie. So they had to think about like how to make this specifically

American procession of refugees with the costuming and the props and stuff, so you have a lot of brighter clothing because Americans wear brighter clothing, and you have like disposable things that people are carrying along with them, like Americans have so many disposable things and we kind of get attached to them and so you're dragging along these like boxes and suitcases and like you know I don't know

Eli (16:45.166)
animal crate or whatever like these things that you don't need but you're carrying it along because you're American and you don't know any better sort of thing they were thinking about that in the costuming so I thought it was cool we talked a little bit about the alien and tripod designs which I think are pretty good the tripods for sure are really well designed and work really well they're pretty true

to the original conceptions of what the tripods would look like with maybe like a more modern feel to it. And in a way, the aliens, we talked about that for sure. But yeah, this one has like a good, we talked about like the mix of special, like the practical effects and the like special visual effects, the CGI. You get some of both.

like there's plenty, there's a decent amount of practical effects like blowing debris, cars on tracks and rigs getting moved around and thrown about. Like they do some miniature work with like buildings exploding that they add in and the ferry boat tipping over was a miniature that they built to be able to capture that and add that in. You've got, you know,

Huge rig on the van that they made where the you know, the camera moves around and through the van, which that's a really cool shot I really enjoyed how the camera like moved around the van in that one scene when they're Cap getting you really close in for those close-ups on the characters and Yeah, you know 15,000 gallons of gasoline to turn the sky orange over the hill so you've got

plenty of practical effects going on. But you also have a decent amount of, know, CGI and special effects. All the tripod and alien stuff. All the, you know, when the road is cracking and breaking apart, when the alien is emerging is all, you know, CGI added in. And some of that stuff works really well. Some of it is a little like, it feels like it's...

Eli (18:59.276)
CGI it feels like it is so that kind of takes you out of a little bit but most of it's like pretty well done like Because there's enough like practical effects to go with it You don't get like caught up on how like strange and unreal it feels so Props to you know, Dennis Mirren and those guys for making that work You know, and then obviously like you also have Tom you got to capture Tom Cruise running and so they have

They basically put a platform sidecar off the side of a motorcycle and have like the camera mounted on there. And so you've got that driving in front of Tom Cruise with the camera pointed back as Tom Cruise is running. Always fun to see how they capture Tom Cruise running for sure. One of the things that they did add in in CGI was there was this

There's this like location that the van was driving through like for the van escape sequence And there are these houses and this big bridge. So if you think back in the movie there's like these houses that kind of explode and this huge bridge that like Breaks and tumbles down. It was like a last-minute idea by Spielberg He saw and he's like, hey guys, can we do this and they're like, yeah, we can make it work and then Catholic Kennedy is like

you know what we should do? We should use that as our Super Bowl ad, which was only one month away. So they really had to do a quick turnaround on that CGI work for that. So I thought that was fun. The plane crash set, really, really great set. Probably the one of, if not the best set piece on the whole thing. It was built out of this.

just visual idea that Spielberg had of like being in on Tom Cruise and the house is in, it looks like the house is intact and the camera pulls back. and you realize like, no, that whole section of the house is just tumbled around, that intact part of the house. and then had on top of that, the plane, the plane crash was, guess, like the context that he added for that visual, idea he had.

Eli (21:19.694)
I thought that was really cool. Um, a really cool idea, but then just pulled off really great. You know, they, they bought a seven 47 and toward a part, which I think I heard or read somewhere that they spent like $2 million on the, just buying the plane to tear apart. And then they built the houses around, um, the plane for that set. Really, really crazy. It looks really great. Um, uh, you, the seller set I think was.

really well done feels very like dusty and celery and has so i shouldn't say celery because that makes it sound like i'm talking about the vegetable feels like a seller and yeah they filled it with a bunch of like old stuff from different areas to make it feel like this farmhouse has been there forever you know you got spill work walking around with like pops props of like the tentacle alien probe thing to

Let the actors know, like, here's where it's going to be. Yeah, a lot of really good stuff there. Williams, the sound and the score. The sound, there's not a lot of stuff in the special features in my research about the sound effects, but Ron Judkins just has this huge catalog of cool sounds that he pulls from. So I'm sure he just did that sort of thing for this one, too. I do wonder if this is where we originate the

famous inception sound, the brrrr

You I even like felt like there were some sections that felt very like Jaws II like with some doodooms in there, but he he did talk about like having some like musical Gestures toward like classical monster movies And you can definitely hear that It was cool too. He talked about like he used a women's chorus to like add emotion and feeling into like the first time like the tripod is like

Eli (23:48.91)
zapping people There's like a subtle like women's chorus that adds a lot of emotion there and then in there's a Like a men's chorus that's singing in like a deep bass that adds that he used to like add tension in the basement scenes And I thought that was really cool and the score at the beginning and the end of the movie when morion freeman is narrating is actually a like synth based score, so

little bit different but yeah um so yeah this movie released in june 29th of 2005 it opened at number one making 112 million dollars domestic on that opening weekend um on a budget of 132 million so almost made back its uh budget on that opening weekend pretty impressive it went on to make 604 million dollars worldwide so it

At this time it was one of Spielberg's five biggest hits and I'm not sure if that's still a case but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I don't know if he's made movies since then that have made more than six hundred million dollars. Maybe so. But yeah, the reception of this was on the whole pretty enthusiastic.

There were a lot of people that were kind of confused by the film. A few of those, you have the New Yorker writing, quote, who are the aliens? What does the attack mean? Nobody raises any of these issues, unquote. That's kind of a dumb criticism to me. Like, that's not what the movie's interested in. You just weren't watching the movie correctly, I feel like, if you thought that it was trying to answer those questions.

Alas, they did write it. Our man Roger Ebert wrote, quote, lacking the zest and joyous energy we expect from Spielberg, unquote. Yeah, I don't know. I guess Ebert just didn't go for this one. I thought it had some energy. I thought it had a good bit of energy, at least the first half.

Eli (26:12.736)
Ebert did not think so. In Le Monde, which is a French publication, they said, the film's plot is loose and sketchy, alternately incoherent and concerned with marketing. Spielberg does not care. His business here is to pile up nightmares. And they went on to say it is, an apocalypse without divine intervention, unquote. Yeah, but.

some people didn't like it but it was in Le Cahiers du Cinema a French publication I probably butchered that they ranked it the eighth best film of that year so they liked it some people did like it a lot of and obviously the the American public liked it they spent their money going to see it so yeah Spielberg a few years later did admit that he wasn't exactly happy with

ending which is kind of tenuous at best it doesn't really stand up as we as I talked about with Mary and Desiree not the best ending it doesn't hold up for me Spielberg kind of feels the same it seems but yeah and that after that through this movie this is like when Cruz was kind of like on his like weird he got on this weird role of like

really turning in on himself a whole lot and he kind of turned the marketing campaign into like the one man Tom Cruise show. This is when he was like jumping on Oprah's couch because he loved his new girlfriend Katie Holmes so much. This is when he's like lecturing Brooke Shields on about taking medications for her postpartum depression. All that kind of, I mean there's

there's other instances too and there's even like you can go watch instances where Spielberg's with him and you can kind of see there's kind of like some what are you doing like we're trying to promote a movie here sort of thing and Spielberg never like publicly expressed displeasure with Cruz but they haven't ever worked together again so you have to wonder about that unfortunate because we could

Eli (28:34.434)
I feel like another Crew Spielberg team up would be fun, alas, we don't have it, and probably never will. This did get three Oscar nominations for VFX, sound editing, and sound mixing. It did not win any of those three. But, you know, technical nominations, I feel like it deserves those. Those were all pretty good. I had more quibbles, by the way.

We went through some of my quibbles, you know, we talked through some of that stuff. I've got to get some more off my chest. I was not really into the intro and outro. It was super cheesy. It was, I don't know, kind of, I don't know. I just didn't like it. Like it's, it's quotes from the book. Yes. it kind of has, I guess, like a older, it's maybe like homage to like

those older sci-fi movies maybe so maybe if I was like a bigger fan of those movies that it's like kind of calling back to maybe I would like it but Yeah, I wasn't that into it another quibble This dude has never heard of hummus. Like come on man. Like I don't understand

his disdain for the hummus. I don't understand how he's never heard of hummus before. acts like it's, he acts like hummus is from Mars. And I just really don't get it. Another quibble is there's an EMP, nobody's phone is working, the power's out, and yet there's a guy at the site of the,

tripod emergence that has a digital camera that works and is filming it. And, know, obviously it's just so that we can get the shot of, you know, it falling to the ground and on the screen of the digital camera, we see someone getting destroyed. but it really doesn't make sense in continuity with the EMP stuff. Don't really understand it, but, another thing we go from

Eli (30:55.278)
people ambushing their van to people orderly, like orderlerly, I don't know, boarding a ferry, like calmly and collectively like in line to board a ferry. I don't think so. I think this panic is still in there. We talked about Robbie. I'm not sure if the aliens are good or not. I don't know. Yeah, we talked about my other quibbles. Spielberg distinctives.

Let's get in, let's get some of those. Offscreen horror. So good in this movie. Lots of offscreen horror, lots of like maybe even quick glances of horror and then turning away as you would if you were actually seeing it. Spielberg said this, he said quote under, no this is not a Spielberg quote, sorry. Correct myself, this is a quote from the book All the Films, which is my,

usually have it up here above my head and I forgot to put it there today, but it is all the films, the films of Steven Spielberg, major source for my research. But yeah, and there they said, quote, under a barrage of spectacular images with effects that are more anxiety-provoking than repulsive, Spielberg exposes the extent of human horror without actually depicting much actual violence, unquote.

And Spielberg in like the special features talks about like how By showing less you can allow the audience to experience more That kind of like less is more approach like the less you show the more the audience will really like feel the horror of it There's such a big part of like Spielberg's filmography that He does really really well in this movie once again sense of geography and action

Spielberg thing He does really good in this movie of doing the whole like a cut to a wide shot where you can really see what all is going on and what the you know what the What the characters are kind of seeing from their perspective as well Low-angle close-ups tension building just incredible composition He does the slowdown moments between action, which we talked about

Eli (33:23.95)
Lots of Spielberg distinctives here Yeah, I Intriguing images and sequences we talked about some of those Marys and Desirees were on my list very good great stuff I Loved the lightning storm. That was great And you know, we've really honestly talked about most of these things I guess the only couple that we

didn't talk about was the tentacle in the basement. thought that was pretty, I thought that was fun. Good tension building moment. The coming out of the farmhouse into the world covered in the red weed, what I thought was a great visual. And then like you have this like classic, this is kind of like both a good intriguing image, but also like a Spielberg distinctive. This image of

Rachel in the field just before being captured is like a classic Spielberg image of a child that kind of like represents the last hint of innocence in life in a harsh world right before it's like snatched away. That's a very Spielberg kind of image. Yeah. And so, yeah, I guess I'll talk a little bit about like character and themes before wrapping up.

I don't feel like they really develop and I mentioned I talked a little bit about this in Desiree felt felt that they did a good job developing Ray as a character and I can kind of see all of her points and they make sense objectively but for me it just didn't personally work you know he he definitely is like joining the list of

divorced, selfish, immature fathers in Spielberg's filmography. There's like the classic interactions with the kids, you know, regaining his moral fiber because of the chaos that's threatening the world and his family. Awakening his paternal like instincts and his paternal morals. It's kind of like in that way, what they're trying to do is kind of the opposite of Close Encounters where in that one, the alien invasion like

Eli (35:49.774)
Turns the father outside of his family and he leaves and this one is trying to do the opposite turn the father back towards his family and I just feel like they don't develop that well in Rey like you don't ever really like I he breaks down in the diner like there's more like the Sophie's Choice moment But like I don't know all of it feels falls kind of flat for me as far as like developing the character

we talked about a little bit about like Man, they could have done so much with like struggling with having to kill oglevee. They could have it just I don't know there was something missing there I can't quite put my my finger on it And he does end up just like dropping the kids back off at their moms in the end Which is like what they accused him of doing earlier. So I don't know. It's just weird. There's there's not a whole lot of character development

that I feel works very well in this movie.

Yeah, so thematically, like there's definitely like, he's kind of evoking a lot of like modern atrocities with his imagery. You've got, we talked about the dust and ash on race face, like kind of like signaling towards the survivors of the World Trade Center. You have a train zooming by on fire as if it's coming out of the hell of Nazi camp death camps.

You've got the horizon eaten up by flames kind of like bringing up memories of napalm in Vietnam I think even like Hiroshima and the colonization of Algeria are invoked at one point in the movies very subtly and briefly but nonetheless And yeah, it's it's very like All that is there it's very 9-eleven coded we've talked about all those things and yeah, it's

Eli (37:53.314)
It's just interesting that this is the movie and this is the venue, but it harkens back, like I was saying towards the beginning of it's really doing with this context of post 9-11 and this imagery that invokes and kind of calls to all these modern, more like recent atrocities. And it's doing what those other adaptations did.

in their time and also what the original did in its time it's kind of making a metaphorical statement about the state of culture and society and where we are politically but yeah yeah very interesting that this is a vehicle for that and maybe another adaptation adaptation will be a vehicle for some future political social commentary but

Yeah.

I guess final thoughts on this Just like thinking about kind of trying to wrap things up with Getting back to Spielberg that you know This is a Spielberg series after all and kind of trying to wrap up getting back to their Spielberg Again in the special features. This is an alien movie. It deals with space. He talks about remembering that time that we've I've mentioned

more than once here on the podcast. It's probably been a while but that time when he was a kid where in the middle of the night his dad woke him up, took him out into a field and let him so that he could see a meteor shower in the field looking up at the stars just kind of like igniting all of this wonder and imagination in a young Steven Spielberg's mind and those

Eli (39:51.23)
imagery, that imagery and those themes of wonder and like fantasy and imagination just continue to show up all throughout his filmography. It's popping up again his fascination with what might be out there that he can't let go of and it just goes to show like our past is very much a part of who we are and I think what Spielberg really

Shows us in this and this still being a part of him and still like popping up even like this far into his career in his interest in what he wants to make It shows us that you know those parts of your past Maybe maybe it's something good. Maybe it's something bad, you know He it was a special memory of his father, but he has a lot of like you know I don't know if trauma is the right words, but a lot of like

bad experience with his father too that's kind of tied up in all that in the past but he takes all of that and turns it into something beautiful makes something beautiful out of it again something exciting something interesting and so yeah that's kind of my final thought today it's been a while since i've done a good like final thought takeaway but that's that's what i have for you take those parts of you from the past and turn them into something beautiful in some way

Like Spielberg does but that's all I have for War of the Worlds wrapping up Really enjoyed having Mary and Desiree from the Nerds and Jesus podcast on It was fun to talk with them and get to know them a little bit You can again find them On all the socials. I'm going to put a link that will just show you all the places you can find them in the episode description down there

You can find them on all the podcast platforms and potentially, I'm sure by the time this is releasing, they are back releasing episodes after their break, their hiatus, and maybe on YouTube now. They're working on some video content potentially. So be on the lookout for that on YouTube and all the podcast platforms for Nerds and Jesus. But yeah, that's it for all that.

Eli (42:13.282)
We are next week. I'm kind of like still working on what I'm potentially doing for next week. It could be a past movie draft that's kind of in an old episode that gets its own episode now. It could be potentially a Leonardo DiCaprio performances movie draft that I have cooking up with an old friend.

I'm not sure if that's happening, so no promises there. yeah, that's a potential. And then obviously we will be picking up the week after that with Munich, which is a blind spot for me. So I'm excited to catch up with that one and discuss it. But yeah, that's all we have for this week. I have been Eli Price for Mary and Desiree of the Nerds and Jesus podcast. You have been listening to The Establishing Shot.

We will see you next time.