The Silver Linings Playlist
Not every movie wraps up with a neat little bow on the end. Some leave you asking "what the f@#$?!" We're here to find the silver lining in the latter. Join Dustin, Mallie, and Nathan every other Monday as we try to find the light at the end of the tunnel for some of cinema's bleakest endings - and have some laughs while doing so.
The Silver Linings Playlist
Episode 229: Predestination
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Time travel, destiny, and predetermination – it’s all on display in 2014’s Predestination. A small film with big ideas riding on the coattails of Primer, Inception, and a lot of other time related movies that came before it, there’s so much to unpack in what essentially is two movies attached at the hip to one another. So grab your favorite bottle of scotch and get ready for twist after twist as we try to unravel the mystery of who The Unmarried Mother is, plus topics like our…unique rules for time travel, Australian currency exchange rates, boob-shaped bells, and so much more await in our “last” episode of the show. We are Forrest Gump, we carry the flame!
Predestination stars Christopher Kirby, Noah Taylor, Sarah Snook, Ethan Hawke, and Madeleine West. Directed by Michael & Peter Spierig.
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I am just a ghost of Hollywood. I have a stupid cat, a disgusting birthmark on my left hip, and I'm a lousy fucking cook.
SPEAKER_01We back, baby. We back. Great. And I'm Nathan Simmons, and I know where I came from, but where did all you fucking podcasters come from? And this is the Silver Linings playlist, the show where we try to find the silver linings in some of cinema's bleakest predestined endings.
SPEAKER_03Uh-uh. It's all been predetermined. Absolutely. Maybe? Yeah, maybe. Great question.
SPEAKER_01Alternate opening. Is Ethan Haktua anything? It's not nothing. Okay. It's not nothing. There's something there. There's something there. All right. I'll let it percolate. Well, hang on. That's a question you have to ask him next time you guest on Ethan Talktua.
SPEAKER_03Oh, there you go. And now I'm just trying to think of what we could do with Sarah Snook's name, and all I caught was Sarah Snooky. And I'm like, is that anything a jersey shore reboot with Sarah Snook in the Snooky role?
SPEAKER_01I'd watch it. Absolutely. Okay. Sarah Snook and Jaywow chopping it up. Hell yeah. Wait, has she ever played a waitress?
SPEAKER_03Well, no, she's played a fairy, but not a waitress.
SPEAKER_01Damn.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Welcome everyone to the Severlottings playlist. Today we're talking about a movie I feel like should be talked about more. Like this feels like a movie that film bros haven't discovered yet.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01This feels like remember in what was it, 2005, 2006 when Primer came out, and everyone's like, just like that, every film bro was like, this is the best time travel movie ever made.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01I feel like this is like laying in wait for another generation to discover.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01And I think the maybe the reason that it hasn't really taken off is because there's a lot of interesting elements in this movie, to put it the to say the least. It is a not to be that podcaster that's too woke up at the top, but I have a lot of thoughts about this movie being a trans story that's not interested in talking about trans people or intersex people in any meaningful way.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Um, but we'll we'll get into it as we go along.
SPEAKER_03It's also a movie that feels like two movies that you kind of just human centipeded together. Correct. The first half is like, oh, it's this really interesting tale, like this character study and everything. And then the second half is like, all right, we gotta go. We got a lot of time shit to do in the next 35 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Because the second half is all about like catching the bomber, right? Which is not in the original short story. Right. Right. Like I feel like they needed to, like, oh, we need to like it up for a film.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, you gotta have something to put butts in the seats.
SPEAKER_01Debatable. That's what I'm saying, is I think if you just adapted the story, the short story, and gave the characters more room to breathe, you could still have a very interesting 95-minute movie without adding in a time travel terrorist subplot that really gets wrapped up very quickly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's kind of something I'm bumping on as well, is that I don't know that we needed the flashbang of it all. We didn't need the fizzle bomber of it all. Yeah. That being said, Ethan Hawk in that scene. Pretty fucking great. Doing fucking work.
SPEAKER_03I feel like fizzlebomber is almost like a self-owned because the way this plot fizzles out at the last minute is so fucking funny.
SPEAKER_01It did inspire me to bring back the drink of the film because I'm currently enjoying a Jen Fizz.
SPEAKER_03Oh, hell yeah. I thought you were gonna say you're just chugging doers.
SPEAKER_01Nathan, you're a fucking dork. You've read the short, right? Absolutely. Okay, cool. No, that's why I laughed really hard when I got your clue last time we recorded, because I was like, yeah, that is pause. Yeah. What the fuck was my clue? Your clue was not even time travel can defeat wokeness, which is a very funny way to talk about a short story that was written in the 50s before we had a lot of terminology that this movie refuses to engage with. So I was like, Yeah, that is a really funny way of putting it. And then watching the movie, it does feel like and honestly, I think this is one of those movies that I've hurt my feelings on by reading about it after I watched the film. Because there's interviews with the Spearing brothers who were like, Oh, yeah, this is not a trans story, this is not a queer story at all. And I was like, Well, yeah, it inescapably is, it's just you refuse to reckon with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's absolutely objectively a trans story because your lead character is trans, but like, yeah, there's your lead character is forcibly transitioned, dude, and then just goes with it.
SPEAKER_01This movie is fucking wild, which results in, and pardon my language, but the mother of all daddy issues. Uh-huh. Oh my god. Oh my god. What you're left with is a movie that is really well shot, impeccably acted. I think this is a very well-made film. Uh-huh. A movie that I really, really liked that I'm angry about. Yeah. I'm frustrated because I think it could be so much more than it is.
SPEAKER_03Yep, I agree. I think the selling factor on this is it only costs five million dollars, and like it looks like a $30, $40 million budgeted movie. It does.
SPEAKER_01Kind of what Nathan said about if they had just adapted the short story instead of adding the third act movie of it all. Yeah. And it's funny because the titles are similar. You could have almost gotten like a more sci-fi version of like all of us strangers out of this. Totally. Which I mean, anyone who hasn't seen that movie, it was like my fucking favorite movie of like 2024. But I also think it's one of those things where this movie's being sold as from the people who brought you Daybreakers, right? And so I fucking love Daybreakers. I fuck with Daybreakers heavy, but I I think that you can't have people coming to a movie from the directors of Daybreakers and then not have some kind of action suspense element to it. So I I think that's that's just a way that they kind of got in their own way in telling the story. And what's funny is not to jump ahead, but there's interviews with the Spearig brothers where they talk about this story has existed for nigh on seven decades, so we no one's poked holes in it, so we didn't try to poke holes in it. And I was like, but you added wrinkles that overcomplicated while also not reckoning with the short story is a logic puzzle, right? Right. And then it's different when you're looking at people acting this out and you want that depth of human emotion, especially when you have powerhouse actors like Sarah Snook and Ethan Hawk telling the story. Sarah Snook is so fucking good. I knew that's why we were doing this movie. She's incredible in this movie. It's crazy how early this is in her filmography. Yeah, I just I have a I have a lot of feelings, and I I'm really glad you picked this Mally because it's been on my list to watch for a long time and just never never found a reason to throw it on. Yeah, I mean, at least I didn't pick a piece of shit this time. True. That being said, I did technically pick a movie that pissed Nathan off, so it still counts. Well, so I turned to Ashley about an hour in and I said, I think this is the best movie a Mally's ever picked for the podcast.
SPEAKER_03You're not wrong. It's definitely one of those movies that are just like just out of reach of greatness, and you can see the flaws in it. Like Nathan, you said, you know, the short story, you can't poke holes in it, but then they were like, it's kind of like if you had if you had a condom and you're like, this thing is bulletproof, there's no holes in it, and then you stapled it to your wall dick. Yeah, it's not coming off. You're like, I'm gonna use this later. Let me remind myself, let me staple it to the wall. And you're like, well, now you just ruined it. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Hang on. In this scenario, you just got Lucy's hanging on the wall. Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_03Like, if I need one, I just grab one off the wall.
SPEAKER_01You don't even take the statement, you just rip it off the wall. Yep. Yep. You pull it like a flyer for guitar lessons.
SPEAKER_03It goes great with my coming shirt, too, that I'm wearing today.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Uh so if you're new to the podcast, we're a show that watches movies such as Predestination that don't end on a happily ever after, and we try to find the good of them, hence the silver lining in the title. And yeah, this is Mally's pick. Mallie, I know you love Sarah Snook. Is there any other reason why in particular you picked this movie to talk about this week?
SPEAKER_01I was watching it because I've rewatched this movie a number of times and was like, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's oftentimes how I'll put movies on the schedule too. I was like, oh yeah, this would be fun to talk about. And I do have a lot of notes about this one, but it's weird because, like I said, the first half of the movie it's like this deep character study, and I didn't have a whole lot of notes. Yeah. And then as soon as they go down into the basement at the bar, I'm like, oh, oh, this is a movie. Okay, the movie's starting everybody. Hold on, catch up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Man, the way that people just buy into time travel, they're like, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like they have no questions about it. They're just like, oh yeah. And when we see the first time jump, I was like, that's such a cool effect. And then, like you said, the movie sort of hits fast forward at this point, and we watch that effect 15 times in the next four minutes. And I'm like, Yep, still rad, still fucks. Dude, the one where he's after he drops in the car, yes, yeah, after he drops them off at the orphanage, and just the windows just fucking explode is so cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I definitely want to talk about yeah, how time travel works in this movie when we get there, because I have I had some thoughts on it.
SPEAKER_01Perfectly, it works perfectly, I think.
SPEAKER_03I kinda agree.
SPEAKER_01Not a single fucking note.
SPEAKER_03I kinda agree.
SPEAKER_01You talked about primer earlier, and I agree. Primer, one of the best time travel movies of all time. Yeah. This one's more enjoyable because I don't have a migraine afterwards.
SPEAKER_03It's not math-focused. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01With primer, you have to have like a sketchbook to draw out a diagram while you're watching the movie. And this one, I think, has some of the most airtight time travel logic I've ever seen in a movie, except for the ending, which is which throws out predetermination in favor of destiny, which is a different thing. Yeah. They also don't looper it where they just hand wave it away either. Yeah. They do kind of address it. But yeah, I love me a time travel thing, but it's like primer is one of the two things where I've watched it and literally had to sit down and take notes. It was that and Dart. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, Christopher Nolan probably laws primer. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Yes. This one's a lot more straightforward, I feel like. Yeah. Which sounds weird considering what the plot is. Yes.
SPEAKER_03No, I I like I said I definitely have some notes and thoughts on how time travel works in this because I think this is like one of the most logical ways time travel theoretically could work.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And that's the thing, is it when you break it down just in terms of like the diagram of all of the crisscrossing time travel shenanigans, it absolutely works in a logical standpoint.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's when you invite human emotion and interaction into the story that it gets muddled because there are things where I'm just like, why would you do that? Why don't you feel anything about this? A lot of time travel movies follow the grandfather paradox, whereas this movie kind of follows the granddaddy paradox. I'm my own grandpa paradox. Yeah, yeah. I call myself daddy paradox.
SPEAKER_03So if you haven't seen predestination, it is a movie that asked the age old question. What, Nathan? What?
SPEAKER_01Nothing. I just realized we were talking about Tactua, and this movie could be called the Call Her Daddy Paradox.
SPEAKER_03Incredible. But this movie actually asked the age old question. Who's your daddy? What if a destination was pre-fuck you? And uh let's get into the infodump.
SPEAKER_01God, these are getting so low effort. I'm really excited for the next movies.
SPEAKER_03So the year is 2014. The directors are Michael and Peter Spirig, the directors behind some smaller but mostly forgotten horror flicks like Undead, Winchester, which also stars Sarah Snook, but they also did Jigsaw, which is one of the worst Saw movies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Winchester's pretty terrible too.
SPEAKER_03Oh boy.
SPEAKER_01I haven't fucked Winchester.
SPEAKER_03I've seen Undead. I remember zero about it.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck is Undead?
SPEAKER_03It's like a weird zombie movie, but not really, is my memory of it.
SPEAKER_01I never saw that one. I've only ever seen Daybre, apparently.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Get a lot of daybreakers by They are directing the sequel to Fall. Oh boy. All right. The movie stars Christopher Kirby, which I think is so funny, he's the first person mentioned on Roger Everton Review. What? Noah Taylor, which this guy starred in this movie and Edge of Tomorrow in the same year. He loves time travel movies. Yeah. And uh he's also played Hitler in a more than uh one movie and TV show.
SPEAKER_01When he popped up on screen, I said, That's the guy that cut off Jamie Lannister's hand. Oh shit, it is the guy who's so good at playing scummy that he made me feel bad for Jamie Lannister. Dude, he has a scene in this movie where he lights a SIG. Yeah. Man, he made that shit look good. It does. Smoking's cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So fucking cool. JT actually texted me that after he finished the movie last night. He's like, oh yeah, smoking's still cool.
SPEAKER_01I'm millimeters away from smoking SIGs again. Sure.
SPEAKER_03Oh, and uh the movie also stars Sarah Snook, Ethan Hawk, and Madeline West, kind of, you know, the most important characters of the movie. Yeah. What are we doing? Uh the budget was $5 million and it managed to gross $5 million worldwide. Hey. Nailed it. And currently sits at an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes.
SPEAKER_01Buddy, and it earns that 84%.
SPEAKER_03It sure does.
SPEAKER_01Sort of a predestined budget, huh?
SPEAKER_03They were calling their shot right away.
SPEAKER_01No, thank you, Nathan.
SPEAKER_03All right. Let's watch the trailer for this movie, which I have never seen. So I'm curious to see how much they get into the time travel. I feel like that's gotta be the whole crutch of the trailer, but we'll see.
SPEAKER_01What if it isn't?
SPEAKER_03It'd be so funny if it's just all shots from in the bar.
SPEAKER_01At least they didn't say from the author of Starship Troopers. I would have been there day one if it said that again. Definitely avoiding close-ups of Sarasota. Even though I think the makeup's pretty great, it's pretty good. Yeah, love that.
SPEAKER_04You're the only one. Get into the world through the message.
SPEAKER_03Wow, he gets a title card.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. This is a great trailer.
SPEAKER_03I was just about to say this trailer here is definitely post-inception. Like you can tell the nolenness of it.
SPEAKER_01Which is funny because I I remember seeing a tweet about Tenet when it came out that said if primer fucked. Not wrong. That's a great fucking trailer, honestly. It's a really good trailer.
SPEAKER_03So, and what I believe is the boiler room of a train station is where we start.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, the stories I have from those.
SPEAKER_03Where a man attempts to thwart a potential bombing but is shot by an unknown assailant. Just as the bomb is about to ignite, the man attempts to put it in a containment device, but it still goes off and burns his face, leaving him scarred as the unknown assailant leaves, letting the burned man live.
SPEAKER_01There's a couple things in this opening sequence that I thought were really interesting where they sort of tip their hand by having a close-up of Sarah Snook's eye during the fight sequence. And I I want to throw this out up top. Mally and I have read the short story. How does this movie play for folks who don't know what the twist is? Because I I had heard that this was relatively faithful to the story. So I was I went into this movie being like, okay, Sarah Snook and Ethan Hawk are playing the same character at different time periods. Is this movie impenetrable until they go to the basement at the hour mark? Or how does this work for you guys?
SPEAKER_03So I only knew of Ethan Hawk because the only thing I knew about this movie was the poster where it's just him on it. So I didn't even know Sarah Snook was in this until she shows up.
SPEAKER_01That poster's like kind of minority report, uh-huh. Knockoff looking. Yeah. You get a surprise Snook, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_03And dude, honestly, it took me a while to realize it was Sarah Snook because it's like this makeup is really good. The performance is also immaculate. Uh-huh. But I had a feeling we were going to be doing some kind of twisty kind of stuff because they really go out of their way to not show any faces up front, right? Like they don't you don't know it's Ethan Hawk until he takes the bandages off and everything. And I'm like, okay, I'm seeing the eye, but I'm not seeing the face. I'm seeing the guy in the background, but not the face. So I had my guards up pretty quickly about like, okay. And then I feel like I knew this was somewhat of a time hoppy movie. So I was like, okay, well, we're probably dealing with some like, oh, you think it's this person, but it's really this person. I didn't get there was a moment where I started to pick up on the pieces of like Jane and John are one person. And then from there I kept unraveling like minutes before the reveal of like, oh, well, the baby's also going to be Jane slash John. Yeah. Like I kept getting there just before the movie showed me, you know.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's like you say whenever you're watching a time travel movie and someone's face is obfuscated in some way, you're like, well, that's a reveal. Like you're you're blatantly telegraphing that this is going to surprise me later when I find out who's taking Jane on this date or what have you.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. Yeah, they they play it so vague in a lot of instances like that, like the guy that we never see that just abandoned her. I'm like, well, that's gonna be either Ethan Hawk or someone else like that we know. Yes. Yeah. JT, what about you? I forgot to mention JT's here.
SPEAKER_02Hey, buddy. You know, I was looking at the timer, I was like, man, we're 22 minutes in. I wonder if I can go this whole episode without saying a damn thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, what you don't know is I've been time traveling to interrupt you while you're talking. Yeah, this whole time.
SPEAKER_02Wait, whose voice is that? Ethan Hawk's. It's not JT anymore.
SPEAKER_03Now it's uh, I don't know, TJ?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I will say up until the end, I did think Ethan Hawk and uh Sarah Snook were two different characters until the reveal. Yeah. That did get me. But just like Dustin, I knew the reveal of like the man she fell in love with, the date and all this stuff where like they did such a good job hiding. I was like, okay, that's gonna be a reveal later, we don't know what. Yeah. But it wasn't until like honestly, this intro scene just later on, I was like, Oh, okay, yeah, no, they're the same person. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, and kudos to the Spear brothers because the short story is able to get around it because you don't look at any of these people. You know, there's references to someone being like, Oh, they were vaguely familiar, but I don't know why. Yeah. But then you have to show something in the film. And I and I think it helps that they approach this like a noir, so you can play with shadow and you can play with silhouettes, and and I think it's really well done in the movie. Well, and it's like the line which is in the short and in the movie where they're talking about who stole the baby. Yes. And it's like, oh, what he looked like. He's like, Oh, he had a face like yours or mine, which is accurate because both of them and the person that stole the baby are the same fucking person. Right.
SPEAKER_03Kind of uh memories of murder or like he just had a plain face, you know, no discernible features or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01She says a face-shaped face, which I think is a really great line. And I wish I had a face-shaped face the same.
SPEAKER_03I think the split diopter is really great. Yeah. It feels like I'm watching like a pulpy novel from like the 50s, which is pretty apt considering the source material. But the burned man awakens in a hospital covered head to toe in bandages and real quick, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Can I say what this entire opening sequence reminds me of? Please. Y'all remember the intro to U.S. Marshalls? I haven't watched that in a very long time. Oh, brother, you gotta throw that on at least once a year. Okay. It's an incredible film. It legitimately reminds me so much of U.S. Marshalls, like the hat and the coat and the gloves, and like the close-up of the gloves, the close-up of the eye, and like everything's in shadow. Anyway, U.S. Marshals fucks. Okay. Moving on, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, he's given a medal and he's told he'll have one final mission from uh whoever it is that employs him. I'm gonna just kind of get us set up through this because I don't have a whole lot of notes. If you guys want me to stop at any point, I'm just gonna kind of get us to the bar.
SPEAKER_02Do your thing, Daddy.
SPEAKER_03We come to find out that the unknown assailants that shot this guy, or at least uh attacked him, is known as the fizzle bomber, who has been planting bombs across New York City, leaving bodies in their wake.
SPEAKER_02Not just New York City, right?
SPEAKER_03Right. Yeah, they say like all over, but like the big plan is gonna happen in New York.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And the name Fizzle Bomber, they try to lampshade it throughout the movie by saying it's a terrible name. The press are stupid for coming up with it. It's a reference, I believe, to a line in the short story where they say there was a war that fizzled out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so they just like extrapolated it from there, which I don't know entirely works, but I like this shot that when Ethan Hawk first wake up because you see like there's clearly something going on with the eyes, especially with like the iris and everything. They're changing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, his left eye looks fucking crazy.
SPEAKER_03Yes, which I don't know a whole lot. I mean, because I guess we can go ahead and get into like the Reveal that like Sarah Snook Hugh Jackman's in this? Sarah Snook and Ethan Hawk are the same person because Sarah Snook was born with two sets of internal organs, both male and female. I don't know a whole lot about that, but I I wonder if there is some kind of like side effect of the.
SPEAKER_01I've watched an episode of House MD about it, so ask all the questions, you get AMA.
SPEAKER_03I I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I the the minefield we're navigating through this is gonna be tricky, but well, the thing that's weird about it, well, there's many things that are strange about it, but it's the fact that it is uh Nathan, you live in Florida. Tell us all about it. Yeah, well, and that's the thing. So I'm gonna skirt through this as quickly as I can.
SPEAKER_03Sure, I'm gonna prop my feet up. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Republicans would have you believe that this shit happens all the time. Like, no, that that is a like a major talking point is that people just willy-nilly decide to go under gender reassignment.
SPEAKER_03Well, I didn't see a single litter box in Sarah Snook's place or anything like that. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's because they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. That's why, that's why. This movie introduces a sort of fictionalized version of an intersex person. Like the way that this plays out is incredibly unrealistic, even within the narrative of a time travel movie.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01But the idea that they were like, Yeah, while you were under, we decided to give you male sex organs, like to create a male urinary tract while you were asleep. The movie would have you believe that then Jane slash John is just sort of like, okay, and then moves along. There's some lip service paid to it with the sequence where she cries and tries out their male voice for the first time. And the pronouns are gonna flip-flop all through this episode just because of the nature of how the story is told. But it feels like a uh I don't know. I I said this already. It feels like a trans story that doesn't actually like pay attention to the the emotional ramifications of the story. Sure. They don't outright say it, but it's obviously kind of a um like it's not our timeline they live in, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like an alternate history.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because like her whole the space geishas of it all exactly, yeah. Like they literally have a department within NASA that's just basically like, hey, you want to go to space and be a hero?
SPEAKER_03Dude, this is fucking wild. Wild.
SPEAKER_01And they really just gloss past it, like, oh yeah, no, we have this department that's just women to fuck astronauts anyway. It's like, what wait, hold on, hold the fuck on. What?
SPEAKER_03For all mankind, we need you to open up.
SPEAKER_01And not for nothing. It's implied that Noah Taylor sort of engineered a lot of these circumstances to create the perfect agent.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then we also have a story where a character who identifies as a female is erased so that they can be a quote unquote better male agent, and that's not really investigated at all.
SPEAKER_02This is where it's gonna be difficult to discuss. Yeah. Does it spend any more time on the internal organs in the short story? Not really.
SPEAKER_01Again, it's because it was written in like 1957 and there wasn't really terminology for that. I mean, you can even tell in this sequence early on, Sarah Snook references Christine Jorgensen because that was like the like most notable example of a gender reassignment surgery at that time period. Back then, you could only write so much about this kind of stuff before you got labeled a communist.
SPEAKER_03So I'm just gonna admit I'm dumb when it comes to this subject. There are probably a lot of subjects right up top.
SPEAKER_01I feel like you only needed the first half of that sentence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I know, I know.
SPEAKER_01But the movie does try to make it work by saying this is a one-of-a-kind thing. Like this doctor says, I've never seen this before. So I think you can sort of fudge it a little bit, but this is just not what would happen.
SPEAKER_03So I was gonna say, let's engage with the movie in the world that it exists in, and obviously it's an alternate history and alternate science and things like that.
SPEAKER_01No, that's fair.
SPEAKER_03I'm wondering if the intersex nature of it, because I just want to get back to the eye thing. Yeah, yeah. Because you have these competing internal organs, if that is why, like, he has it's almost like an octopus eye, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know why, but this should have been a red flag right away of like there's something going on here, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01They really hammer home, hey, you're not gonna look like you used to whenever we're done with all these surgeries. Well, and then he also has the line of like, I doubt my own mother would even recognize me, which looking back is like, oh. He also laughs at son of a bitch later. Dude, I that's one of my favorite lines in the whole movie. He's like, You son of a bitch. That's funny.
SPEAKER_03But there's also like this part of like where Noah Robertson or Noah Robertson, Noah Taylor says to him, the more you time jump, the more like you start to develop like dementia and stuff like that. And I wonder if there's also like physical ramifications because like I don't see how I guess again, you can always just chalk this up to where an alternate history, alternate science, and all that. This guy gets burned like this, comes out looking like Deadpool, and then seven years later he has no scars, no burns. He looks exactly like modern day Ethan Hawk. And I'm like I thought there was gonna be some time travel shit that happened there too, of like replacing that person. I don't know. It's it's very difficult when you to go back to your question, Nathan, of how does this work for first-time viewers that don't read the story? Like, I'm mostly confused. Sure, but I feel like that's the intention, right? Until we get to the bar and then we go into the basement. I'm like, okay, now everything is clicking in for me. And then I start, like I said, putting the puzzle together before the uh movie tries to tell it to me.
SPEAKER_01Not for nothing. About 40 minutes into the movie, Ashley says, Can you just tell me what the short story is about so that I can like actually just enjoy this movie? Because she said, I'm spending so much time trying to put the pieces together that I'm not really engaging with what's happening in the moment.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I feel like the movie is kind of doing that on its own. Because, like I said, like the first half of the movie, you just are getting invested in Sarah Snook's story. Yes. That like you don't really care. Like, we already said this, but the part I do not care about this movie is the fizzle bomber shit. I could not care less about that. And when it gets revealed, I'm like, well, who else would it have been other than Ethan Hawk?
SPEAKER_01Right. You know what I mean? We've only met two characters.
SPEAKER_03I know, I know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good luck in the bit part, y'all. I was gonna say yeah.
SPEAKER_03Let's get back to setting this whole thing up. So, this is where we get our first inclination of the time travel nature of this movie because he somehow knows that the Philzabomber will initiate their grand plan in March of 1975, which is seven years from now. And so we cut seven years later, and it's 1970, and this burned man is just now, you know, Ethan Hawk. He's got a full head of hair and a mustache, no scars, looks great. Yeah. And he's ready for his final mission, which they say should he fail, he will be court-martialed and killed by lethal injection.
SPEAKER_01Fuck. Which is so wild that like never comes back. He's in bandages and he's given a medal of honor, and then they're like, Oh, by the way, here's your last mission, and we will fucking kill you if you can't do this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And so he's undercover as a bartender in New York.
SPEAKER_01Looking foin.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01My God. He looks like a straight Zaddie in this movie. I was just about to say. Fucking third act reveal right now. My prop cop, his entire bartender fit. No shit. Up to and including the Jackie Daytona toothpick he's got. Oh my god. That's uh I didn't realize it was Ethan Hawk the whole fucking movie.
SPEAKER_03He is just a regular human bartender.
SPEAKER_01This is how we talk in the future. But yeah, he's working undercover as this bartender and inwalks is picked this movie solely because I knew I could get a MatBerry impression out of Nathan with it.
SPEAKER_03Uh Inwalks this irritable customer nicknamed the Unmarried Mother, who writes confession stories for a local digest magazine. Yeah. And Ethan Hawk says, Oh, from the looks of things, I guess you're not celebrating. And Unmarried Mother says, What do I look like? And I just wrote down, I don't know, Tilda Swinton mixed with like Gilbert Grape era Leonardo DiCaprio.
SPEAKER_01Dude, that was the exact conversation that Ashley and I had because Sarah Snook walks in and Ashley goes, Fucking Tilda Swinton dressed as 90s Leonardo DiCaprio walks into a bar, is like the setup for my favorite story I've ever heard. And not for nothing. Someone in the corner just goes, fucking freak when Sarah Snook walks in. But yeah, I we we were having some very serious conversations about like, why is this working? Why is this working for us?
SPEAKER_03It's doing something. Also, I have never heard of a drink called Old Underwear, which apparently isn't even a cocktail because Ethan Hawk just directly pours a bottle into a shot glass and walks away.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's got a bottle of old underwear. Y'all aren't drinking at the right place, is all I'm saying.
SPEAKER_03I guess not. I guess not.
SPEAKER_01Did anybody look up what old underwear is?
SPEAKER_03I didn't. Is it just scotch?
SPEAKER_01Let's find out. Old underwear cocktail. If you don't know, you can't afford it.
SPEAKER_03I probably can't.
SPEAKER_01Old underwear is a slang term for overholt, a budget-friendly American rye whiskey. Oh, it's whiskey. Oh, actually, hang on. It says inspired by a bar order in the 2014 sci-fi film Predestination. It is made into an old-fashioned. So I don't. Is this a time loop too? Did the string not exist before the movie?
SPEAKER_02Well, if this is an alternate universe, maybe it's just something that they made up.
SPEAKER_03That's their version of a Manhattan? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Quick steps. Pour the whiskey into a glass, add simple syrup or muddle your sugar, which is uh the name of my uh soul album. Drop in a cherry, stir well with ice and serve. I mean, it sounds good. I mean, it's an old fashioned. Yeah. That's not what he makes.
SPEAKER_03Well, the part that was confusing to me is like they, you know, he he serves Sarah Snook this drink, and I'm like, oh, that's just straight liquor. And then later they argue over a bottle of scotch. So, like, I'll tell you the greatest story ever for that bottle of scotch. I'm like, so was the old underwear scotch? I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01I don't know, but I I will tell you, I would fight a man for a full bottle of Glenn Livid. Like, I have no problem. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Let me tell you something. Don't tell me to tell you a joke. Boy. If I'm at my job, God yeah, you're just like, make me laugh, funny man.
SPEAKER_03I do think it's kind of funny though, because one of the little jokes he tells us out is about like who came first, the chicken or the egg. Yeah. And then later on he's like the rooster, which is fun because of like the whole time nature of this thing.
SPEAKER_01And he loves Alice and Chains. Loves it.
SPEAKER_03But the two discuss the fizzle bomber, who so far has killed 112 people across New York. And yeah, Ethan Hawk bets a full bottle of scotch that the unmarried mother can't tell him the best story he's ever heard.
SPEAKER_01And if you're not anticipating a twist, the unmarried mother keeps saying shit like the fizzle bomber is actually cool as shit, and a lot of people deserve to die.
SPEAKER_03Well, that was the thing. I'm like, they're laid off very thick, so it can't be that, right?
SPEAKER_01And it turns out it kind of is that. So it just takes a long time.
SPEAKER_03It's so close to being a monopoly guy that I kind of want to call it out for being one.
SPEAKER_01It is. My other question was at this point in the movie, are we supposed to be surprised that Sarah Snook's character was assigned female at birth? Because, like, as great as this performance is and as great as the makeup is, maybe it's just the fact that I can't not see that it's Sarah Snook. And maybe that was the point was in 2014 people didn't know who she was. Yeah. It's just distracting to me watching it, you know, 20 years into her career and being, well, well, that's Sarah Snook. Also, not subtle hint right there. They have the same lighter. Oh, that's good. I didn't catch that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think it's a little bit of that though, Nathan, that yeah, at this point in time, not many people probably knew who Sarah Snook was. But for me, it is a combination of the makeup, and when you dress Sarah Snook like this, she does come across as a little bit androgynous, kind of like a tilde Swinton, which is why I made that comparison.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03But like genuinely, it took me quite a while to realize this was Sarah Snook because of the lighting and the makeup and everything and the performance.
SPEAKER_01She also looks exactly like David Bowie and the man who felt her.
SPEAKER_03There's that too, another androgynous person. It wasn't so much of a reveal when they said, Oh, I, you know, I had this when I was a little girl. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love Ethan Hawke's reaction to that though. Just like, wait, what? It's played really well. Yeah. Especially knowing what you know about the character. Exactly. Because it's like he knows. Yeah, it's it's great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But like I didn't see it so much as a reveal. It's like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I'm just slow on the uptake for that, to be honest with you. But uh yeah, he starts to uh again, I'm gonna start walking through this minefield so carefully. Yeah, yeah. He starts to tell Ethan Hawk his story because he was abandoned at an orphanage as a little girl and given the name Jane. Right. And she grew up being interested in the cosmos and longing for a family. And as she grew older, she knew something was off about her. She was confused by sex, she taught herself how to fight, and she was a top of her class academically.
SPEAKER_01And this is the stuff that I think gets closest to addressing the transition of it all, right? Like the idea that I feel like I'm in the wrong body, I don't quite understand how these things fit together. And the fact that these flashbacks have like big amblin energy also helps with that. Like it feels weirdly cozy, even though it's telling a very sad story. Yeah. I think this portion of the movie is really elegantly done and very like tastefully done. I mean, if they had let Against Me score the entire movie, I think they would have sold it even more. I mean, look, 10 out of 10 movie, absolutely. Oh my god, not a single fucking note would be had.
SPEAKER_03I was getting big never let me go vibes with this whole orphanage and the vibes I had.
SPEAKER_01I could see that.
SPEAKER_03Uh, but yeah, she watched as the other girls around her kept getting adopted while she stayed behind. And in her teens, she's invited by a representative of a program called Space Corps, Mr. Robertson, to audition for what is essentially a sex worker position for astronauts.
SPEAKER_01That is the most placeholder name of all time.
SPEAKER_03Yep. We'll come back to this in the second draft.
SPEAKER_01Like, you know, they're writing the script, they're like, ah, Space Corps never got back to it. It's so funny. And then also, you know, everybody in their kind of space ballsy looking outfits. Yeah. I love the costume design in the space core scene. Everybody's in like Daphne from Scooby-Doo outfits, and then they put on their blue jumpers. The costume design in this movie is pretty exceptional.
SPEAKER_03Incredible. I think the production design, the sets, all this stuff is so good looking. Yeah. This is where I'm assuming most of the money went, honestly, is just dressing these sets and everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. This bit here where the guy almost hits her in traffic and she punches out his headlight, is fucking great.
SPEAKER_03I just think it's crazy that this guy from Space Corps is like, well, you know, astronauts, these men can't just be up in space for days on end without dumping their load into something. So let's just hire a bunch of women.
SPEAKER_01That's basically what he says. No, it's the way it was the first space-bound CEU. It's very important to our fellas abroad.
SPEAKER_03He planted a flag on the spaceship for that. It's an all-white flag.
SPEAKER_01Houston. I'm I'm bricked up. I'm all bricked up, Houston.
SPEAKER_03They think he's surrendering, but it's just an all-white flag because that's the flag color of the CEU.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's why the suits were all white. He planted a flag.
SPEAKER_03And then they literally, like when she's in this interview with the astronauts and these other space corps guy, they try to pull the ew, she's ugly until she takes off her glasses thing with Sarah Snook.
SPEAKER_01Sarah Snook.
SPEAKER_03You watch one of these astronauts raise her eyebrows and go, oh, hold on. Oh. She's a lady. You know, I couldn't tell until she put that bow in her hair, and now I'm interested.
SPEAKER_01They literally try to pull a she's all that. Yep. This interview also, the chairman is like, all the other ladies are very nervous about this. I was like, well, yeah, this place is big and scary, and you're talking about sending me up to space to fuck a bunch of old guys. Like, none of this is normal.
SPEAKER_03This is like Christian Gray's fantasy. Yeah. Instead of get going straight to the low orbit, they go into space.
SPEAKER_01And it is like, you're right, like, this is like an alternate history, and this is in the short story, but the movie, this is the first inkling that the movie takes place in an alternate 1960s. Because like I had to rewind and be like, oh, they are they're doing the comfort made section of the story now. And not for nothing, space geisha training involves way more VR than I expected.
SPEAKER_03Dude, I was like, is this the fucking Black Widow program? Why are they all like they're running on treadmills, they're forced to fight one another? I'm like, I was told the whole thing is they're just gonna be up there. Yeah, they have to fight. I pictured in my mind, these astronauts thought of these women much like the women in Mad Max Fury Road, where they're just like kind of chained up in a corner. Like, that's the way they talk about them.
SPEAKER_01The sparring is nuts, though. It's like, what if you run into an alien? Like, I don't know what that's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_03The idea that like she gets kicked out of this program because like she's punched this one girl in the face. It's like that's what they say. They're like, oh, you're too a little too violent.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's that, but she also the doctors see something on her chart that would disqualify her. And it's like, did she not? I mean, not to be crass, but was there not a thorough exam before you enter the having sex with astronauts program?
SPEAKER_03I feel like that'd be the first thing they do is like strip you naked and like do a physical and everything else, you know?
SPEAKER_01Well, we're not in charge, so I'm gonna be honest. I keep watching the fucking movie. Um, where are we at? It's really good. It's a good movie. What are y'all talking about?
SPEAKER_03I like the like handmaid's tail blue bonus that they put on them. I thought that was kind of a nice touch.
SPEAKER_01She sucks at charm class, which is very funny to me. And Ashley pointed out every time she talks to Mr. Roberts and Noah Taylor, he says, like, we're looking for people with exceptional abilities. I work for a program upstate, and Ashley was like, Is she fucking Gene Grace? Like she enjoyed the X-Men. That'd be a fucking twist. It'd be good.
SPEAKER_03So she gets kicked out of Space Corps, but Mr. Robertson vows to get her re-enlisted. Yeah. And yeah, she's releasing to the free world for the first time, where she works as a maid and learns about confession columns during the day. And like you said, Nathan, she sucked at charm classes, so she starts taking charm classes at night. And she's basically like, I'm gonna show Space Corps, I can have decorum, you know? And uh one night she has a meat cute with a supposedly, because we don't get to see him, handsome, rich, intellectual guy. Yeah. And one night they're out at the park and he tells her, Hey, just wait here for a minute on this bench, and then never comes back.
SPEAKER_01I love that when we see the flashback of their meat cute, all of Jane's lines are given to young Sarah Snook, and then all of the mysterious strangers' lines are given to present Sarah Snook while Unmarried Mother narrates. Yeah. And it's such a smart way to have that character have those lines and still not reveal to us that they're one and the same. I just I think that's so well done.
SPEAKER_03I also think it's interesting because like it's smart filmmaking because when they show the back of the head of the guy that you know she was swept off her feet with, yeah, it's not Sarah Snook, and it's I mean, obviously it can't be because of the way it's filmed, but like it is clearly just a guy. And they play it so close of like, you know, try not to reveal the twist too early. But this is at the point where I'm like, okay, something's up because they're going out of their way not to show this guy or you know, have him talk or anything.
SPEAKER_01And I love Ethan Hawke, you can tell he wants to apologize. Yeah, right. Like the barkeep keeps saying, like, well, maybe they had a good reason to leave you, maybe they weren't a bad person. I don't know. Knowing what you know about the twist, and we're re-watching the movie on mute right now, the things they're not saying are written all over their faces, and they're such good performances.
SPEAKER_03I really wanted to squeeze in a rewatch of this thing, knowing what I know afterwards, but I didn't have a chance to. But one day, Mr. Robertson returns and confesses that Space Corps is actually a front for an organization that specializes in quote reshaping wrongdoings. Yeah. And they use it to find exceptional people who have no past, no family, and no future.
SPEAKER_01Wait, so who are they all fucking then?
SPEAKER_03I think nobody, right? Like, that's the whole point.
SPEAKER_01It seems to me that as far as Robertson is concerned, the unmarried mother is like the fullest expression of the group's plans, right? Like, I don't think anybody like this agent has existed before.
SPEAKER_03I would assume the whole thing is like for the other girls, they're like, eh, you just don't meet the qualifications, whatever, and they just dismiss them, you know?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It's a little vague.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's a little half-baked as well, in in terms of like how it's executed. But uh it turns out that, yeah, Jane's pregnant by the guy that left her, and therefore not useful to Space Corps anymore. So Mr. Robertson disappears and she never hears from him again.
SPEAKER_01Then when Jane gives birth, while she's asleep, this doctor reshapes their internal organs and gives them uh a male urinary tract and basically is like, now you gotta figure out how to be a guy. He's very nonchalant about this smoking in a hospital as well.
SPEAKER_03There's that. But oh yeah, so she she gives me back then, bro.
SPEAKER_01You could. It was awesome. It was awesome. Fucking delivered a baby with a sig in your mouth. God, we used to be a proper country.
SPEAKER_03She gives birth, notably via a C section to a healthy baby girl.
SPEAKER_01You're right, Nathan. Yeah, I was just thinking, like, hey little guy, here, you you have a puff. Your first puff. Come on, light up, smack his butt and make him inhale. Is that how you got started smoking?
SPEAKER_03But the delivery doctor tells her that her internal setup was different. Yeah, she had two full sets of organs, both male and female. Yes. And that because of her difficult birth, they had to give her a hysterectomy. Right. And the way they were able to save her was by, yeah, taking her male organs and giving her a urinary tract. But like you keep saying he forces a sex change on her, which I don't necessarily disagree with. I feel like the language and the way this movie is established is it was either that or you die.
SPEAKER_01They do try to be vague about it, for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And this is the frustrating part because it's not making a statement about it. Anything. It's just like, well, what do you want us to do? It's either this or nothing. It's like, well, the agency's not there. There's no discussions about it. You're right. They just basically like open the door and they're like, carry on now.
SPEAKER_01And then I don't think there were discussions about it behind the scenes either. I know Ethan Hawk and Sarah Snook did a lot of research in playing their characters, but then you also read interviews with Ethan Hawk where he's like, Oh, I don't think it's like a queer story. I think it's a story about everybody. And I was like, well, it's inherently a queer story. Yeah. But it's a queer narrative that's been co-opted to tell a science fiction story, which I don't necessarily love. I kind of bump on it a little bit. But like you said, it's not it was not done with malicious intent. So that's less cruel than than the alternative.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love the scene where Sarah Snook is trying out their male voice. But then it's also we're also told that they spent 11 months in this clinic undergoing multiple surgeries to continue the transition.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And my question was, who's paying for these surgeries?
SPEAKER_03Good question. I guess Space Corps under the table, you know?
SPEAKER_01Oh, maybe.
SPEAKER_03Because like they need her and well, him at this point.
SPEAKER_01It's like, all right, we're gonna put your thing down, flip it, and reverse it, but we will put the bill. Jesus Christ. I hate when my doctor gives me the old Missy Elliott while I'm under. That's the worst. Skird nibilipapin, yes.
SPEAKER_03One thing we skipped over is that, you know, while she's recovering in the hospital, she decides to give the baby the name Jane after, quote, her mother. Yeah. But two weeks later, her baby is kidnapped right out of the hospital nursery by a man with a quote, face-shaped face.
SPEAKER_01And reveal later that Ethan Hawk just walked in right as the nurse opened the door is so fucking funny. Yep. Just the shot of him in a trench coat with the fedora, like sneaking past the nurse.
SPEAKER_03I just wrote down at this point because I didn't know where the movie was going. I was like, this movie should have just been called a poor woman's story. This is so sad this whole time. Like, this woman just keeps getting punched in the physical and theoretical dick for an hour. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What was that? When she gave birth, like the 50s?
SPEAKER_03I guess so, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's a lot easier to steal a baby. Oh, sure. You just walk into the fucking Natal ward, cigarette in your mouth, and just fucking pop one in your pocket. But then there's little subtle moments in Sarah Snook's performance that sort of smooth over these things I'm bumping on, right? Like the shot of them looking at themselves in the mirror after their transition for the first time is incredibly active. Yes. And the moment when John pees while standing up for the first time, and Sarah Snook has this little smile on their face, like, oh, this makes sense to me. God, it's so good. It's a really powerful moment.
SPEAKER_03The back-to-back of her trying her male voice for the first time and she takes her glasses off and she's crying. She says, My name is Jane. Yeah. And then when you cut to the wide shot of John now, because they decided to take on the name John, just standing there fully naked. Sarah Snook has had her her breast removed. She has a male appendage and everything, and they're just staring at themselves in the mirror. Yeah. I was kind of taken aback by it. I was like, this is a shocking thing to see in a 2014 movie, let alone 2026. Absolutely. So impeccably performed. Like the fact that John's like, I never wanted to look in the mirror until I was forced to, basically. And then like immediately stripping themselves nude and just being incredibly vulnerable. I was like, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01Just taking themselves in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not for nothing. The Baz Lerman Elvis little curl that Sarah Snook has in their hair from this point forward is a pretty great look.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. And uh yeah, back in the present day, this is where John tells Ethan Hawk, hey, I'm no longer shooting blanks either. So Ethan Hawk's like, Congratulations, welcome to the club.
SPEAKER_01Look, I love telling people the first time I meet them whether my cum works or not.
SPEAKER_03That's the first thing I say. I'm like, take a look at the shirt, first of all. Yeah. But this is where John vows to kill the man who ruined his life. And at the time back in the past, he reapplies as a man for Space Corps, but is immediately marked as quote, unfit for basic training. And throughout their conversation in the present, Ethan Hawk is clearly trying to get like because he thinks this is the fizzle bomber and is trying to get it. God damn it.
SPEAKER_01I got I fucking started watching the movie again.
SPEAKER_03Where are we at? He's trying to get John to confess to being the fizzle bomber, but nothing directly comes of it. Right. And John decides back in the past to work as a fraud cook in New York. The hours are long, the wages are low. Before they eventually train as a court stenographer, and all this stuff, I'm like, this feels a little force gumpy. It feels a little uh curious case of Benjamin Buttoning. Like, I don't necessarily need to know, like, oh, they worked as a frog cook, then a court stenographer. It doesn't really do anything for the story.
SPEAKER_01DC, how many weird, dumb fucking jobs have you had?
SPEAKER_03Quite a lot, I suppose, but also I don't have an interesting story like Jane slash John does. See?
SPEAKER_01We're all forest gump, baby. We're all the gump. We're all the gump.
SPEAKER_03We are forest gump.
SPEAKER_01We carry the flag. We love Jenny. Weird. Drew just started calling me. This is all broken up by moments of Sarah Snook saying things like this quote here, I was no longer a woman and I did not know how to be a man. Yeah. And they talked about how difficult it was finding a job that made sense for their new situation. And, you know, didn't know what kind of job to get, didn't know what kind of bathroom to go into. And Ethan Hawk says, I'm so sorry, and we know he means it because he knows who this is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He's still trying to put together at what point does the fizzle bomber of it all happen. Yeah. I think that's the thing that doesn't quite work in this timeline. Is we know Ethan Hawke's mission is to make sure that John becomes him. Yeah. You know, eventually, or John becomes a temporal agent. But I think he's still putting the pieces together of who the fizzle bomber is. And I think adding that subplot sort of muddles the story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. She excelled as a woman, but then when she became a man, she was just kind of like a I guess I'll be a fry cook. Yeah. Like she didn't know, like she had no trade, she had no like lost. No idea what the workforce of a man was versus how she was as a woman. Right.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's that she excelled as a woman under the auspices of what the male-centric world at the time wanted her to be good at.
SPEAKER_02What that society would allow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but also she was like, she excelled at like mathematics, like her schooling and everything like that. Like she was top of her class. She was, I don't know, thriving, I guess.
SPEAKER_03But then like you have that, and then they're like, okay, well, we want you to apply to be uh essentially a I was about to say something terrible. You're gonna be a breeding sow for astronauts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's that's what's so wild about this story. And then as soon as they become a man, it's like, well, you're not tough enough, you're not a quote unquote real man. Like that's kind of how society treated them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's something that's a little glossed over, but you get a lot of it in the performance itself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a limbo. Like, yeah, you're technically a man now, but you didn't you don't have the male experience up to this point, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, and and not for nothing, that is something that trans people battle a lot, is like their authenticity being questioned. I mean, even I experience a lot of like body dysmorphia on my own, and that is something that like it's a difficult thing to be in the world when people expect certain things from you.
SPEAKER_03Especially with the trans community, because I'm gonna say a name here, and you guys are instantly gonna groan. But did you guys see I think like a week or two ago when we were recording this, Rob Schneider of all people tweeted out a photo. Oh boy, and it was clearly like AI, and it was a man in a woman's dress in a male bathroom at the urinal, peeing next to a cis-looking male, and the guy was like freaking out. And I'm like, this is what you guys want, though. Why do you make that's the whole argument you're making?
SPEAKER_01So you're saying two things out of both sides of your mouth, and a very powerful argument from the star of the hot chick. Uh, real quick, uh, hey Rob Schneider. What was that? Jesus Christ. Hey, Rob Schneider. What are you doing? I clicked way too many buttons I didn't mean to, but you get the idea. I got it. I got it. I think that I want that to be my new ringtone.
SPEAKER_03So after some time in the past.
SPEAKER_01Rob Schneider is an asshole.
SPEAKER_03The unmarried mother creates that persona and begins writing these confession pieces. And in the present, they ask Ethan Hawk, so did I win that bottle? And I'm like, that's a great story, but have you heard about Star Wars? I don't know if you deserve this.
SPEAKER_01He just starts playing that clip of Pat and Oswald doing his Star Wars Avengers crossover story. Well, wait, hang on. In the timeline, Star Wars has not released yet, DC.
SPEAKER_03But for Ethan Hawk, he knows about Star Wars from his time in the future, so yeah, but he can't tell him that. Okay, then hold on, let me rework it. Have you heard of the Wizard of Oz? Like, there you go.
SPEAKER_01Oh, better story than Wizard of Oz. Fuck off. All right, so I've got a story. Vincent Price and his wife invite seven people over to a haunted house. Now I'm interested. My mother was unmarried. So Ethan Hawk. Man, dude, I did not know you had a Paul Rudd and Halloween six impression.
SPEAKER_03So Ethan Hawk asks the unmarried mother slash John if he could put the man who ruined his life in front of him and guarantee he could get away with it. Would he kill him? And the unmarried mother says, absolutely. And Ethan Hawk announces he knows where he is. And I'm sorry that's a lot of pronouns with all with all these nicknames and gender swaps. It's hard to navigate this. Sure. Everyone will understand. I hope so.
SPEAKER_01Ethan Hawk leads Sarah Snook down into the basement while someone on the jukebox plays the most on the nose song of all time. I'm my own grandpa.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01And Ethan Hawk sings it in case we didn't hear it. Yep. And then he proceeds to take Sarah Snook into the basement, lock the door behind him, and say, killing somebody's not easy, you know. And which is a wild way to start a conversation.
SPEAKER_03This is where, like, we're over halfway through the movie at this point. And now it feels like, oh, come on, we got the movie's this way. Come on, we're running late.
SPEAKER_01I got a time travel movie downstairs. It's like Pennywise in the sewer. Hey, kid, we got a time travel movie down here.
SPEAKER_03Ethan Hawk tells John, I can put the guy in your lap that fucked up your life and guarantee you'll get away with killing him. Yeah. But John has to do something for Ethan Hawk first, and this is where Ethan Hawk announces he's working with Mr. Robertson. Yeah. And yeah, there's a tunnel under the bar, and Ethan Hawk shows John this field kit, as he calls it, that creates a quote temporal wake. It's a time machine.
SPEAKER_01I love the sort of unassuming. It looks like a cello is in there, like a little cello case. Yeah. I love the design.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And the two travel back to April of 1963. And I love the way the time travel is depicted here. I mean, we kind of talked about it already, but it is the way like we when we discussed Looper, where in my mind, if time travel was theoretically possible, it would be an instantaneous disappearance from the present and an appearance in the past. It would like I hate time travel movies where there's like portals and shit that people walk out of, or there's like electrical fields. I mean, the Terminator gets away with it because it's cool, but it's just a displacement. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01It warps the gravity, it they just blink out of existence.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I hope time travel is invented and it involves a fucking portal, just so I can look back at this and call you a bit.
SPEAKER_03I'll be like, God damn it.
SPEAKER_01John asks if he's been there before, and Ethan Hawk gets a look on his face like, I have no idea how to answer that question.
SPEAKER_03But also, like, I like the idea that like once time travel is discovered, uh-huh, that is as far back as you can go. Because he says, like, oh yeah, time travel was discovered in like the 50s or whatever. And I'm like, that that makes the most sense.
SPEAKER_01You can go within 53 years of the jump point, I think is what he says.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You and I have talked recently about time travel shenanigans. And I I got a big smile on my face when he started laying out the rules.
SPEAKER_03As soon as he was like, We have the the zero point. I'm like, yes, that's exactly what it would be. That's that's why, like, in my mind, once time travel, if it ever is discovered, like the second it's discovered, it would be mass chaos instantly. Yeah. Like shit would just be appearing out of nowhere, left or right.
SPEAKER_01Any time traveler should be able to travel back at least to the point that your father ejaculated for the first time. Okay. Wait. I'm listening. Hang on. I'm just gonna be one of those sperms. All right, let's hang on, let's break this down. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, let's open this up. We don't have to.
SPEAKER_01So the first time your father ejaculated for the first time. So his father. His nut. Like, not necessarily the load that resulted in you. Correct. But just the initial load. The load that resulted in you is also the name of my metal album.
SPEAKER_03Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01So just like the first nut that like went over all his entire uh typewriter keyboard. I don't know how they masturbated back then. Yeah. The first nut is also the ice age prequel. Look, let's just say that I made that joke without thinking about it at all. So we don't have to break it down. We absolutely do. Okay, so it's based on your father's first orgasm, not your mother's. Correct.
SPEAKER_03Misogyny. Well, that's not a real thing. Women can't do that, right?
SPEAKER_01Jesus. This is our first episode that's cancelled before it comes out. DC, you're gonna need to sit down and talk to Priscilla about some things. Yeah. Let's get back to Nathan's father's cum.
SPEAKER_02Well, I wonder what JT's got to say about it, though. Hold on, hold on. Okay, I'm gonna step away from uh father's cum real quick.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna step away from father's cum.
SPEAKER_02If the portal thing ends up being real and Mally wants to rub it in Dustin's face, Mally could appear right now behind Dustin. And rub my face in my father's cum? What are you confused?
SPEAKER_01Yes, but JT, I'm such a spiteful bitch that I'm not gonna do that just because you suggested it.
SPEAKER_03Well, damn it. I just where did I lose track of the episode?
SPEAKER_01I'm off the rail. It's my fault. I'm sorry. Anyways, back to Nathan's daddy's orgasms. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02I guess back to father's comment.
SPEAKER_01It's not just my dad. Like my dad, I like it's not just my dad. Hashtag not my dad. No, it is your theory, therefore, it's your father semen.
SPEAKER_03Okay. We can move on. Let's go on. So their plan is to intercept the man who ruined John's life at the moment they first met because Ethan Hawke suspects he may be the fizzle bomber. Right. And I love the moment where John asks if his life is lonely in the future, and Ethan Hawks is, yeah, but there's a purpose. And I I find that's kind of bittersweet.
SPEAKER_01It is, especially because John has told us that he's struggled to find a purpose in his entire life. And he sees his younger self, and there's a beautiful moment. We see John putting it together and realizing I'm on a track.
SPEAKER_03Dude.
SPEAKER_01I have to say this because this is what the conversation was.
SPEAKER_03Dude, as soon as like they go back to 1963 and Ethan Hawk's like, oh yeah, Jane's gonna be down this way. Yeah, I wrote in all cabs. I text you guys, I was like, oh no, because I put it together, and I was like, oh no.
SPEAKER_01Hang on, real quick though, once again though, I mean Ethan Hawk got that shit on.
SPEAKER_03Dude, this suit with his little cunty mustache, this is looking good.
SPEAKER_01And his glasses. That fucking turtleneck, bro. Man, I wish I could pull off a turtleneck. The tactile neck. It's too fucking hot. The short story is a logic puzzle, and it works on the page in cold scientific terms. When you have real people in a scene emoting, you kind of have to reckon with Sarah Snook suddenly deciding, I'm gonna fuck myself.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's also a little bit of foreshadowy because right as the bell rings for Jane to get out of school, we see the bell and it looks like a pair of boobs. So that's how you know. What the fuck?
SPEAKER_01How did you time that out perfectly to when it appeared on the screen for us? That's crazy.
SPEAKER_02She went back in time.
SPEAKER_01Is that why you randomly rewound the movie 30 seconds, like three minutes in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you knew this was gonna like you knew Nathan was gonna bring up his father's cum, and you knew he was like, that bit's gonna run about three and a half minutes. You knew it.
SPEAKER_03Guys, I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm from the future. We've already recorded this episode.
SPEAKER_01Oh, cool. And it's the last episode of the show.
SPEAKER_03It is, but it is our most listened to episode, so it's kind of a double, you know?
SPEAKER_01Oh, hell yeah. All right. Well, in that case, let's wrap it up. R.I.P. that bunny rabbit. They play this at Trump's third inauguration. God fucking damn it, Nathan. It almost works because of the performance. Yeah. The moment when Sarah Snook says, You're beautiful, someone should have told you that. Like this moment of like, I want to protect you, no one's ever really made you feel loved. And thankfully, we do skip over putting an actual love scene into this movie because I do think that's a bridge too far for like the audience's credulity. Yeah. But it this is maybe the hardest pill to swallow is the idea that like because in the fill in the short story, there's like a bit of a mistaken identity and this idea that like they were inexplicably drawn to each other, like instinctively drawn to each other. But in in this, it is a meat cute between someone and their future self, which is just very odd. I don't know how to how to parse it. But it's well acted. Fucking that shot of Ethan Hawke just posted up on the wall. Yeah. Getting cucked by himself. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03I don't know how to articulate how I feel about it, but like it does feel kinda sweet to fall in love with another version of yourself. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It's weirdly sweet, it's weirdly cruel. Oh, it's just fucking full on.
SPEAKER_02Oh god. I guess so. I guess so. I can't, I can't.
SPEAKER_03No, it's weirdly adorable. I just feel like it's devoid of ego because it's Sarah Snook. Like, if it's just fucking, I don't know, Jeff Bezos falling in love with himself, I'm like, this is disgusting and stupid and I hate it. But because there is a timidness and yeah, like an overall endearing nature to both John and Jane, I'm like, this is kind of sweet. I kind of like this. No, it's played perfectly.
SPEAKER_01It's just really easy to fall in love with Sarah Snook, is what we're saying.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And if you're just listening, you haven't seen the movie. So to make it clear, John bumps into Jane, and yeah, this is where we find out, oh, they're the same person. The guy that she fell in love with as a teen and that left her and impregnated her was herself from the future and having a sex change. And so Ethan Hawk watches this from the shadows and travels back to March of 1970, and we're back in the boiler room from the beginning of the movie, where he watches as a bearded man plants a bomb and a shootout begins before things turn physical. And Ethan Hawk is left beaten and bruised as he hears gunshots going off and witnesses his past self being burned and scarred, just like we saw in the beginning of the movie. And his past self travels forward to 1992 as he travels back to 1964 and leaves a message for a future somebody. Yeah. And yeah, I'm sorry if that's confusing. You gotta kinda have to see the movie to understand.
SPEAKER_01Which again, I can't recommend it enough, but if you like this movie and other time travel shit and you haven't watched Dark, you need to. Because that whole thing with like the older Sarah Snook meeting the younger that uh so imagine that, but it's like three entire fucking families. Oh fuck. And that's dark. It is dark. Also, it's all in German.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And so back in the past, we see John and Jane on a date. Do not watch the dub, watch it with subtitles. And Ethan Hawk meets with Mr. Robertson, where he gives him a piece of the fizzle bomber's timer. And it turns out that Ethan Hawk is the one who stole Jane's baby, as we see John and Jane kiss for the first time in her cut with him stealing their baby out of the nursery. It's really good. And I wrote down at this point, as soon as Ethan Hawk took that baby, I said, I swear to God, if this baby somehow is also John slash Jane, I'm gonna lose my fucking mind.
SPEAKER_01And sure the fuck enough. I did like your live text while you were watching it, where it was just like, yo, what is this movie? Wait, wait, what? Yo, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_03Yep. And yeah, so Ethan Hawk travels back to September 1945 with the baby, and I just went, oh my god, I'm right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He goes back to collect John. We see John make the choice to leave Jane on that bench and realize this is how it goes. And I I love this confrontation where John says, I never wanted to hurt her, and Ethan Hawk says I know, and now she knows too. Yeah. Because they both know the same thing. They're both living the experience.
SPEAKER_03Can I say one other thing though? Because we see Ethan Hawk dropping, I have to say it this way, baby Jane Doe. At the steps of the orphanage as he travels back to June 1963. Taking formula well. Yeah, baby Jane Doe should take formula well. God, love the pit so much. Hell yeah. And at the moment when, yeah, John disappeared forever on Jane, he spots Ethan Hawk waiting for him and tells Jane he'll be right back. And this is where he pulls a gun out on Ethan Hawk for tricking him, but then that's when Ethan Hawk says some things are just inevitable. Yeah. And so this is where the part about the character study mixed with the time travel logic doesn't necessarily work because we get into that thing you talked about, Nathan, about destiny, where like if John decides not to go with Ethan Hawk and just stay here, it fucks up everything. Yeah. But the movie is trying to tell you no, it it's inevitable that she will go. And I'm like, well, then there's just no agency left to anything. And then what's the Point of it.
SPEAKER_01It also just feels like they fall for each other because that's what happened, right? Because this whole date is a very weird sequence where Sarah Snook is negging Sarah Snook until they fall in love.
SPEAKER_03While another Sarah Snook watches from the shadows with a mustache and is Ethan Hawk.
SPEAKER_01The ultimate cuck experience.
SPEAKER_03Is it cucking if it's yourself?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, yeah, in this scenario. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like first person cucking, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Self-cuck. POV.
SPEAKER_03So they travel again to August 1985.
SPEAKER_01That one got JT. POV, I'm cucking me.
SPEAKER_03Where Ethan Hawk tells John he's about to embark on the most important journey of his lifetime and that he could save millions of lives. And Miss Robertson tells Ethan Hawk there are new Lees on the Fizzle Bomber, and that when he reaches his final destination, the time travel device will be decommissioned. And yeah, at this point, I'm like, I don't really care who the fizzle bomber is. It's gotta be Ethan Hawk. Who else would it fucking be at this point?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's also heavily implied that Robertson is manipulating him because he sends him home with a time travel device that doesn't decommission.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And with a folder that's basically like, here's all of the receipts for the fizzle bomber. You can easily find him.
SPEAKER_03Yep. And so Ethan Hawk travels back to 1970. He takes that bottle of scotch and quits his job as the bartender and travels forward to January 1975, two months before the Fizzle Bomber's big bomb goes off. Two months. And the device tries to decommission itself, but it fails and displays an error message. This is the part I didn't understand. He purchases a typewriter and takes up writing confession stories just like the Unmarried Mother. Yeah. Writing under the pseudonym Jane, scratch that, John Doe. I like that. Including a novel entitled Time, Love, and an Unmarried Mother. Yeah. I don't know why he does this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not really followed up on. It's just sort of in a montage of him living in this sick-ass studio apartment. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like the movie kind of spinning its wheels for a few minutes before it gets to the final twist, which is weird because your movie's only 95 minutes long. I think either move it along or give us a little bit more meat to the earlier scenes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And so using intel of the fizzle bomber's location, Ethan Hawk tracks him down to a laundromat and finds out. I mean, I don't feel like this is much of a reveal, but the fizzle bomber is an older version of himself.
SPEAKER_01Wearing like a crazy wig and these hilarious fright teeth. Like he looks like he's in a wrong turn movie.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. And yeah, it turns out the fizzle bomber hasn't been killing people. He's been, quote, saving quote, lives from inevitable travesties committed by terrorist or even large-scale accidents by blowing up the sites before they can happen. So it's kind of like if you blew up the World Trade Center before the planes hit and only like 400 people died instead of like a thousand. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, you're splitting hairs at that point.
SPEAKER_01I don't disagree with you. I got nothing to add to. I got nothing to add to a lot of dead air there. I was real scary. Again, I was watching the fucking movie because Ethan Hawke's doing a masterclass right now. Uh no, I was in the moment you said 9-11. Like, yep, soldier.
SPEAKER_03I know, I mean you're activated. I know. Yep. Like the winter soldier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was waiting because I figured Mally had something to say. No, not a single note. Fucking that shit activated me like the fucking winter soldier. I traveled back in time and replaced the steel beams with timber. Wait.
SPEAKER_03But it is it is honestly like, well, I knew that guy was going to die, so I killed him before he could die to save him from dying. What?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What do you mean? Man.
SPEAKER_01Ethan Hawk in this scene looks like me before I cut my hair. It sure does. I do love all this stuff where you know the fizzle bomber is showing him newspaper clippings from tragedies that never happened, and it all boils down to basically like, you don't have to kill me. If you kill me, you become me. Instead, we could just run away together and rekindle our love affair, which is kind of impeccably played by Ethan Hawk here. Wild. But it does, this is again the difference between predestination and destiny, is that like the movie would have us think they're locked on a path, but he's given a binary choice here. You can somehow killing him makes him the fizzle bomber. And I don't know, we're not given enough time for us to like really understand how that works.
SPEAKER_03Sorry. All those sneezes. Well, also, like, predestination's a movie and destiny is a video game. So there's the difference on those two.
SPEAKER_01That's what it is.
SPEAKER_03But also, no, I was so certain we were gonna find out that the girl in the typewriter store that sold him the typewriter was somehow also gonna be him.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna be like, what are we doing? Alice from the antique shop and her cat are catching strays in this scene. Like Ethan Hawk's like, you're gonna move in with her, she fucking sucks. Her cat's annoying, nobody uses a typewriter anymore, you bitch. Maybe I've missed something on every time I've watched this. What the fuck's up with his arm? Oh yeah, one of his arms doesn't work.
SPEAKER_03Is it because of that shootout in the boiler room? Maybe. Didn't he like catch a bullet at that point?
SPEAKER_01He's catching bullets, Alice is catching strays. No one's safe. That's right.
SPEAKER_03Here's the most unbelievable aspect of this movie to me so far at this point, with like 10 minutes left to go. I still can't get over that Ethan Hawk healed that well from those bird scars. Like, that's the only thing I'm thinking about. I'm like, I buy into all the other shit in this movie. That's the part I don't believe. Sci-fi science, man. And yeah, he just puts a bunch of bullets in this guy. He's like, I'm gonna just kill my older self.
SPEAKER_01Like how you you gloss over, like, yeah, yeah, time travel. Where's his scar? Yeah, I get it. Just the cold fucking shot right there. Oh, that's good. Like, do you want to know what we're gonna do tomorrow? No. Pops him. It's a great line, and I love the squib work here when that first bullet hits his chest and his hair like poofs up into the air. Like it's a really nice moment. Yeah. And then we get this really exceptional bit where the movie we get flashes of the movie in chronological order, culminating in Ethan Hawk revealing his caesarean scars and his top surgery scars, which are still dark red after decades.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. This would have been so much better if he also fell in love with his older version of himself, like Ethan Hawk and the Fizzle Bomber, if they just start making out right here. Hell yeah. Way better movie. But yeah, like he lifts his shirt up to the audience, basically, to reveal that he is also Sarah Snook in the future.
SPEAKER_01Like as though we didn't know that already.
SPEAKER_03I I don't know. I was just very fucking confused by this. And then, like, he like stares into the camera for a little bit. I'm like, what are we what happened?
SPEAKER_01I think that's meant to tell us anyway. I'm gonna go be evil now.
SPEAKER_03Why?
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Why the Fizzle Palmer stuff just makes this ending not work, you know? I feel like the movie ended 15 minutes ago, and not for nothing.
SPEAKER_01It's the only stuff that's not from the short story. Like we didn't need it.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I it kind of makes the movie go out on a whimper a little bit where like it was so I don't know.
SPEAKER_01What's that thing you always say where it's uh five-star premise with a three-star execution? I think that's kind of where we're at with this one.
SPEAKER_03And on the emotional beats, if you want to have this reveal that it's Ethan Hawk, also in the future, do it when he's like watching John and Jane from the shadows, you know, like cut the entire fizzle bomber shit out of this movie. It does not matter.
SPEAKER_01I agree.
SPEAKER_03Start in media rails a little bit more than like the bombing of the thing. Start in the bar, you know?
SPEAKER_01It feels like a studio note, like we need to have some sort of procedural aspect to hook audiences.
SPEAKER_03Like I guess you need a blockbuster thing. Like you need some hook of like we gotta stop a bomb, you know.
SPEAKER_01But see, do you feel like this movie was even positioned to be a blockbuster? I I it feels like it wants to be a smaller film, but unfortunately, the Spirick brothers did Daybreakers before this, so they have to do something more high concept. Like somehow the concept wasn't high enough for the backers. I I don't know. It's it's such a weird addition to the story. I feel like the producers or the studio wanted a blockbuster. Yeah. And they decided to adapt one of the most least blockbuster stories of all time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's not a major studio releasing then. I mean, this was like an Australian governmently funded thing, and it's not exactly predestination.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so it's the fucking Aussies we gotta blame.
SPEAKER_03You only have a five million dollar budget. I feel like give them another five, yeah. Or the very least put it in the marketing, bro.
SPEAKER_01Five million in in Australian dollars, that's like fucking 125 mil. It's like six dingos. Sorry to all our Australian listeners, but you guys know what you sound like.
SPEAKER_03I feel like they were trying to get like a low budget inception out the door. You know what I mean? Like, let's do this time bendy kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01And it just does feel like this was sold on it's the original inception, you know, like sort of like how John Carter was sold as the original Star Wars. Like it feels like that must have come up in like a board meeting at some point where it's like, oh yeah, this is Inception before Inception.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, and I mean that worked out so well for John Carter. It did.
SPEAKER_02Oh no. I didn't even thought of that movie in years.
SPEAKER_03Cool. So that's predestination. Did you boys have any other notes that we didn't get to?
SPEAKER_01No, thank you guys for letting me uh hop on and off of my soapbox a few times. I I I've had a hard time trying to articulate the things that I bump on in this movie, but for the most part, I really loved it. Nathan, you're not wearing sleeves. None of us were gonna stop you. Hell yeah, brother. Yeah, you can hop on anything.
SPEAKER_03I really liked the movie. It just the ending didn't really work for me. Again, I I feel like this is like a very good first draft that could have just used a little bit more time in the oven, maybe a little bit more into the budget to like make some of this work a little bit better. But you got the bones of something really great here. And I feel like this story could be adapted again, but you know, like I said, give it an a little bit more time in the oven, maybe you get something better.
SPEAKER_01But uh also not a great title. No, I think the title's boring.
SPEAKER_03I I guess if you make it what was the original story called, like all them z little zombies or whatever? All you zombies. All you zombies. I'm like, I don't know if that would work either.
SPEAKER_01A little obscure, I'll give them that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What I love about that title though is the title is styled with an M-dash on either side as though it's the middle of the sentence. Yeah, I do like that. Which is a fun English major kind of trick. I also wanted to throw out, I really like the score by Peter Spearing. Yeah. In some bits, it's a little, you know, we have Han Zimmer at home, but I I really like the sort of 80s synth aspects to it. Yeah. Specifically the part after he shoots the fizzle bomber that the shit. Yeah, I'm like, okay. All right.
SPEAKER_03I also want to point out that one of the carpenters that worked on the movie was called Michael Chicken who like yeah.
SPEAKER_01As someone who sees all of the nicknames crew members put in, that's not the worst. I've seen some fucking wild ones.
SPEAKER_03And with that, we'll hop over to Prop Cop. So Prop Cop is where we're each going to take one prop from the movie for ourselves, hypothetically, of course. And Mally, this is your pick, so you get first divs. What prop do you want most from this movie?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I already spoiled mine, but fucking Ethonox's entire bartender fit.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah. Nathan, what about you?
SPEAKER_01I want one of those VR helmets from Space Corps because I I just feel like that would be really relaxing. I got a headache. I pop on one of those, block out all the light, put on some ambient music.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03JT?
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna go with the watch that he has. Oh, it's a nice watch. Snazzy watch that he constantly looks at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which is convenient that the watch changes time when he does. Very good point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Uh I'm gonna take that Blackmore Cross medallion that he gets. I mean, it's gonna be stole valor, but it's gonna be like uncut gens for me. I'm just gonna try and hawk that thing, get some money for it. Who knows?
SPEAKER_01Oh, also, while it's playing, uh they're playing the music cues. Great soundtrack on this. We got the Stooges, we got Tim Buckley, like uh some some nice period appropriate songs sprinkled throughout.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's not many choices, but I'm sure we can come up with an answer for it. Uh, who should we play in the movie as a bit part?
SPEAKER_04I don't believe in talking about people's personal lives behind their back.
SPEAKER_03You know nobody likes you, right? So who should we play in predestination? Uh Nathan, we'll start with you. Who's a smaller character you would like to play?
SPEAKER_01Funny you said a smaller character. There's a dude who's built like Popeye that works at Space Corps. Put Sarah Snook in a headlock at one point. And uh, I'd like to play that guy.
SPEAKER_02Okay. JT. Just because of the weird lad delivery, uh, one of the he is legend members from the bar. Sure.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, those guys that are watching the Ali fight. Yeah. Mallie, what about you?
SPEAKER_01Uh it doesn't really matter. They're all a version of John or Jane.
SPEAKER_03That would be crazy if that was the real reveal at the end of the movie.
SPEAKER_01Every character.
SPEAKER_03I want to be the drunk guy at the jukebox that just wants to hear his damn song. He doesn't want to refund. That's good. All right, boys. Let's come up with one. Let's come up with a silver lining for predestination. Any takers? Uh, I got one. Go ahead, JT.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, the fizzle bomber literally gives a silver lining. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. No matter how bad it is. Yeah. The one time a movie's done our job for us.
SPEAKER_03Mal, what about you? What's yours?
SPEAKER_01Technically, Jane was reunited with her long-lost lover. That's right. Look at me. I actually had one. And it didn't involve a child being murdered.
SPEAKER_03Proud of you.
SPEAKER_01This time.
SPEAKER_03I had one that's pretty similar. I put technically Jane never lost her baby since she is the baby.
SPEAKER_01Damn.
SPEAKER_03Nathan, what about you? She is baby.
SPEAKER_01That was a good one. There, baby. Wow. I went with, even though it doesn't last forever, John found their purpose.
SPEAKER_03Yes. It's not such a lonely life after all, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's say this. Let's say you watch Predestination and you were either confused by the ending or let down by it, and you need something to balance things out. A pick me up, aka our double feature. So, what is a movie that pairs well with Predestination that you watch afterwards? I'm gonna go ahead and go with one. It's another time travel movie, and it also has Noah Taylor in it, and we mentioned it earlier. I'm gonna go with Edge of Tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Love that movie.
SPEAKER_03Nathan, what about you?
SPEAKER_01It's what I call my Saturday night. I mentioned it several times in this episode, but I would just roll on to Daybreakers. I think that movie's a lot of fun, has a great visual aesthetic. One of my favorite Willem Dafoe line deliveries of all time, and we're the guys with the crossbows. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Mallie, what about you?
SPEAKER_01Obviously, U.S. Marshals. Okay. Obviously. Obviously. All right. Tommy Lee Jones wears a chicken outfit. Does he really?
SPEAKER_03Oh, maybe he's chicken hulahan.
SPEAKER_01That's the intro to his character, is him in a chicken costume.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_01And he takes the helmet off and walks down the street wearing just a chicken costume and he cocks a gun. Hell yeah. I'm not a chicken. I don't care. So wait, have you watched the movie recently? Because you're quoting it.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_03JC, what about you?
SPEAKER_02Um, I did put down Edge of Tomorrow.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02But as a backup, uh Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Oh yeah. Time travel shenanigans. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01If they ever do that sequel, would they call it Edge of Tomorrow Still Edging?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes, they would. Cool. So do we answer? So do we recommend this movie, Predestination? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I would. I really dug it. It's got some shortcomings and some difficult questions that the movie's not very interested in answering. You're laughing because I said coming.
SPEAKER_02Uh huh. Yeah, because it took me back to the time travel and your dad.
SPEAKER_01Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_03I suppose I'd recommend it. I mean, the pacing's a bit off, but it's worth seeing it for Sarah's next performance alone. I agree. It's so of its time of like the 2014 nature of it, but honestly, I'll take that over most of the bullshit we get today. So yeah. Uh okay. Any final words, boys, on predestination?
SPEAKER_01I just want to say I had texted the boys this earlier that I had sent a voice memo to my wife explaining the plot of this movie to her. His wife. It was seven minutes long. Uh-huh. She has now responded and she said, What the fuck are you talking about? That's about right. I asked what you wanted from Starbucks.
SPEAKER_03Sir, this is a Wendy's. So thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already, subscribe, rate, and leave feedback wherever you're listening to us right now. You can follow us on social media and you get links to everything that you need from us on our website, TSLPpodcast.com, where you can also join our free Discord if you haven't already. And if you want more of our show, check out Patreon.com/slash silverlinings playlist. We're on the Patreon right now. You can get our commentary for Harry and the Henderson's that we released earlier this month for some reason. As well as our first TSLP commissioned episode on Sharkitech 3 Colin Megalodon. And tomorrow, Nathan and I are starting our new four-part miniseries where we're releasing live commentaries on the three Austin Powers films, as well as a secret fourth film that we're calling Shag Timber and Gold Tober in our new miniseries entitled International Man of Commentaries, which you can get for just one dollar a month.
SPEAKER_01Fucking hate you both. Overpaying. And I would just like to emphasize that Nathan has said he never feels shame about the titles of these things until I hear them for the first time. Uh-huh. This is the first time I didn't feel any. This is good. This is good. These are both good. It's all good. At least you didn't go with like dude members or something like that. We did.
SPEAKER_02We pitched that one back and forth. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Oh, god damn it. It's one of your better ones. I'll give you that.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I think the guys who shagged me was uh was thrown out as a possibility. Yep.
SPEAKER_03So last little bit of business here, Nathan. You actually have to give us a clue for what we're gonna be talking about on our next episode.
SPEAKER_01What's our next episode? That is the question. Oh. I thought you were asking me. It was like, what makes you think I fucking know?
SPEAKER_03I thought he was too. Nope.
SPEAKER_01I had a bit.
SPEAKER_03No, I like it. I like it. And hopefully we will have a very special guest on that episode. We'll see if the timing works out, but that will be awesome.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, Hugh Jackman?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Hugh Jackman's finally gonna make an appearance. Actually, I don't know. We talked shit about this movie. He might have some words to say about us dissing Australia.
SPEAKER_01Hugh Jackman's Australian? Man, this is like when I found out Christian Bale was Welsh.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. Or when Hugh Jackman was in X-Men Origins Colonel Wolverine. So thank you for listening, everybody. Rest in peace, Oat Mill. And as always, just play me that damn song. And by the way, I quit.
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