Gladiator II

Mac versus wild. We have three competitors who could be going up against you. You are in one corner. In the other corner of the coliseum, Mac, would you rather see a big teethed monkey, a rhino or sharks?

So for sure not the rhino. Let's rule the rhino in really yeah, for sure not the rhino. That thing would fucking you've got. There's a zero percent chance you can beat a rhino.

I step in, May I step in. I think the rhino is the dumbest and clumsiest. I might take the rhino use my agility.

You would be dead in a second.

All I had to do was throw sand in its face stand attack.

Uh. The sharks is interesting because like, if you fall into the water, you're not gonna win, but maybe you could poach it from above. I don't know. I don't feel great about it.

Well, are we also saying what the shark? That someone else is attacking you from on land and you could be knocked into the water. So it's a second obstacle.

Not great, not great. Whatever scenario with the shark is not great. The monkey is also not enjoyable, especially if it's got large, large toofs tul and it's all yoked up. Yeah, so you're losing in all three scenarios. I think you would have the best shot to get one of these monkeys, especially if you're chained up with a chain. But I'm telling you you're you're going oh for three because you can't go you can't you can't kill the rhino, You probably can't kill the shark. You would have a chance

The monkey that is in this movie are like giant zombie monkeys that are your size.

They were like baboon almost.

Giant teeth, and they're very, very strong, and they're out for blood. They know what they're doing. They understand murder, and they're cool with it.

Yeah. But once they realized there was an alpha in the ring, things flipped.

You think a monkey is gonna look at you and say that's the alpha.

It was bite his forearm.

I guess even one of these dude.

Some of the funniest videos, by the way, uh people at the zoo going like this to monkeys and monkeys flip it out.

I probably wouldn't recommend that.

I think if there's an animal that could scale a zoo wall, it would be a monkey. Right.

If there's an animal that could take the bars of a jail cell and stretching them open like this and then get out, it's a monkey.

Yeah, you're going over three in this scenario, no doubt.

One Do three? Yeah, job three, King of Queen Mall Street, n dam go And I'm Mac and we have our sandals on and we're playing with wheats, and we are ready to pull out our swords and gingerly touch tips.

Yeah. What a what a great description of our experience watching Gladiator too. Yeah this past week and Goo, let me tell you, well, first of all, what are your thoughts on the original Gladiator? Just set the stage here.

Classic.

It is a classic.

It's a classic movie.

It's not one of my all time favorites, but it's a classic, right.

And also it's one of those movies that crosses over between blockbuster and Academy Award type movie.

Right. Yeah, it has mass appeal for sure, And it was a movie that, like when we were kids, it was always like, you know, short before eight Mile came out, of course, Gladiator was a lot of kids favorite movie.

It also is a movie that has an all time character played by a movie star whereas like sometimes you know it's a guy that's like up and coming kind of fades away. Russell Crowe is one of those all time movie stars and to that point.

You got the second aspect there, you got the up and coming Joaquin Phoenix with an all time villain as well. So it was a great competition.

Oh and also the action in the first one is outstanding and the pacing doll it well. I think the pacing between the action is also crucial to where it lets you take in the action, sit back a little bit, and then another great scene.

Yeah, great revenge story. It's it's a really good movie.

Great end of the movie as well.

And so this movie, that movie came out in the year two thousand. This movie comes out twenty four years later, and it's set twenty years later. And basically we'll get into this further, but basically what this movie does was like, Hey, you liked Gladiator, here's more of that, but less good.

Yeah, it's hey, you know that giant wear its shadow.

I just I was hoping for more. And there's a character in here played by Denzel Washington that was legitimately intriguing and interesting, and there's some there's a lot of shit going on in the Roman Empire, and we just really honed in on the same little thing and it was a little bothersome.

But also people keep on making this point of like, well, did this movie need to get made? I would argue that most things don't need to get made. Sure, sure, So like the answer is like, probably no. But also it's entertaining enough that you're not mad that it was made.

Yeah, well yes, and I'm not mad, but I'm like it felt lazy because the story you writes itself and they literally added nothing more to it. Right, So at the end of the First Gladiator, Marcus Aurelis's Maxim, sorry, Maximus's illegitimate son, yes, from the princess or queen. I don't know what you would call our empress.

She's a queen now she's a queen.

Is alive Lucius and obviously Communist is dead as well, so he's in play, right, And so there's like a natural story to build here, which is the they go down. They just like it's so basic and so simple and there's no frills.

To me, I'll say this though, credit to me going into the movie, I did not see the trailer that reveals that he is Maximus's son, and I didn't read any of the SYNOPSI I didn't even know.

Dude. They literally when mezcal Is casted, they said he was playing Maximus.

I didn't read any of it, so I didn't know, so like going like like, that's a decent little reveal, and then I read everything after him, like oh they.

Told us, Yeah, it was explicit that this is what the story was going to.

Do you think that they should have withheld that reveal.

No, I I like because when you think back to the end of the First Gladiator, that's like the unsolved thing there, right, So they both die in the middle of the ring. Lucius is in play, so it's like a natural evolution, I guess.

I mean this movie had to add some more to him, like well done, he ran away and now.

Yeah, stupid, like it could have just been better. They didn't need to make him do the exact same thing.

They didn't need to fridge his wife like they did in the first movie. These aren't spoilers, by the way. That's it's the first five minutes of the movie. But that first I will say this though, is that first battle scene when they're hucking fireballs back and forth, and Pedro Pascal is like, I hate war, but he's also smirking, like I'm really good at this. I'm like that this is fun. This is still fun stuff.

That was the most fun and best action in the whole movie. Yes, the Colisseum stuff was because you're.

Sitting back home like I would have fought this animal differently.

No, no, no, the CGI, go the CGI. This movie was dog water.

It was fucking I didn't mind the rhino. The sharks weren't great.

Rhino was okay because it was one the monkey's.

Yelling in my face, the horrible stop so bad.

And the couple times we saw like some mortal wounds or for example, an arm getting cut off that CGI was bad too.

That wasn't great. And before we get to the nut and bold something that and I found out the day after that might hurt. My viewing of this movie is across the hall from me was a viewing of the movie Why two K that I passed on to see Gladiator two. And because I don't know how to read in the email it even said Kyle Mooney will be at this screening, I missed out on meeting Kyle Mooney.

Yeah, Kyle Mooney is a soulmate of yours.

I think I would have I would have brought up Brigsby Bear, and then I would have quoted every Bruce Chandling joke that I know. Like, I would have said to him like, hey, I didn't realize you were going to be here because I don't know how to read cursive. And then he'd be like, you don't know how to read cursive to read an email, I'll be like, well, I also don't know how to read regular either.

Good. Yes, Mac Gladiator two is in R rated epen epen. There you go, epen epic. I need an EpiPen after watching it. Epic action adventure.

What were you allergic to?

I just need a little boost of adrenaline.

Okay.

Subgenres here goo action epic adventure, epic period drama, and now my new favorite subgenre, go Sword and Sandy, Sword and Sandal, Sword and Sandal movie.

When I was watching it, I was like, Sword and Sandal wise, it's not at the Gladiator level, but it's at the level of the Sword and Sandal movies that followed Gladiator.

Gladiator, I guess would maybe be the gold standard for that type of movie. This movie is more in the Troy realm of movies, right where it's like, yeah, I did a couple of good things, but ultimately it wasn't that good.

It introduced some interesting characters, but you wanted them to kind of go elsewhere.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. The two best characters in this movie don't get as much screen time as.

They And also the guys that you are meant to root against, there's nothing redeemable about them. So you want that thin line of like do I like this bad guy? No, there's nothing good about these bad guys.

Dude. This movie's projected for sixty five to seventy five million in opening weekend here, which will be second reportedly?

Is that a drop from the opening forecast? I have no idea, because I think the opening forecast might have been around ninety Okay.

All right, And uh, Wicked is projected for one twenty to one forty. And if you're thinking back to Barbenheimer, I believe Oppenheimer made eighty or ninety ye, Barbie made like one twenty or one forty or one fifty or something like that huge weekend coo you give your hand raised.

I wouldn't be surprised if Wicked tops one to fifty or even gets closer, like to like the crazy crazy numbers. Like it is. It's doing so well with the critics, with the people that a lot of people have already seen it though, but like that movie, what a Deadpool make? Deadpool made it like a ridiculous in their first week, and it might be around there.

I don't remember what Deadpool made. Yeah, so Wicked that is doing extremely well in both metris, audience and critics. This movie's doing solid in those metrics. So if there are people going to the theater this weekend making their decision based.

One hundred and five million opening weekends.

Okay, so it won't get it won't get there.

It might get around two hundred, It might do it.

It won't get that high.

You know why it won't. You're right, it's too long.

It is longer than this movie somehow.

So maybe can they show it less? Like they won't be able to get that extra screening in because of the.

Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, Uh, what do I know? This movie? It has a run time of one hundred and forty eight minutes, so essentially two and a half hours, and you do feel it. You do feel it. It's it's weird though it's not very well.

No, because at points it feels too long, but then at the end it feels too rushed.

Yeah, it's it's bizarre for sure.

Do you think we're going to get issue. Are Ridley Scott cut though, where it's like an extra half an hour long? No, I'm being serious and it it kind of feels better at the end, like it feels more.

Though. We'll talk about Ridley Scott a second, because I think we're sort of figuring out that he ain't got it no more.

I would argue that he would say that you're a fucking idiot.

On Roddy Tea's Goose speaking of this has seventy one percent from the critics, eighty five percent from the ad audience, So in general, the majority of people are liking it. Compare that to the original movie that had eighty percent from the critics eighty seven percent from the audience. So people are just basically saying a step down from that movie.

That wouldn't happen in real life. It's not really life.

I would say it's probably two or three steps down.

Yeah.

On Metacritic of sixty three, the original got a sixty seven. It's it's it's a baseline, solid movie. It just feels lazy because it was like it should have been better.

Not my hot Dog hand. It's a C plus.

Yeah, I might even I might even venture down into like the C minus range. It's in that. It's in that range. I don't I don't know if i'd go C plus but maybe maybe it's it's in the sea range.

Either way, dude.

This movie is written by Peter Craig, who've we've had we talked about a couple of times now. Recently he wrote The Town, Hunger Games, mocking Jay Parts one and two, Bad Boys for Life, The Batman, and Top Gun Mavericks. So he's really starting to do these twenty year later later sequels you get Bad Boys for Life, Top Gun, and now this.

Four Legacy sequel. Wise, I think this is like right on the line of what it should be. It shouldn't be any worse than this, and it could have been a lot better.

To me, it's like, it's got to be better than this if we're gonna make these movies, right, this just is like all right, fine, I'm not mad it got made, but it should be better.

Because I would argue that this is right around, if not slightly better than Beatlejuice, Beetlejuice.

No, Beetlejuice. Beatle Juice was much better than that.

I don't think it was.

Yeah, I thought it was much better than this, but you also had sky high expectations.

But also, once again, nowhere near Top Gun Maverick. But Top Gun Maverick has the has the leg up on every other legacy sequel because the first Top Gun is terrible.

You're right if that's helped that the second movie is better than.

The it's way better. It's like, you know how the first Gladiator is at a completely different level than what this is. Yeah, it's the other way around. Yeah, I would say that Gladiator too is better than the first Top Gun movie.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Yeah, it's yeah, we should do legacy sequels now, is it better than the first Top Gun?

Goude. The second writer on this movie is David Scarpa. Uh. He's been a really scott guy. He wrote The Day of the Earth's The Day the Earth Stood Still, All the Money in the World, and that crappy Napoleon movie that came out last year. Upcoming he's doing the Cleopatra movie, So there you go.

He's who's directing Cleopatra.

I don't know. Maybe really Scott, I'm not sure.

Well, it wouldn't be an attachment to Napoleon. It'd be way ahead of time, way behind, unless we do time travel like the original Gladiator Too was supposed to do.

I didn't see Napoleon. Maybe they introduced time travel on that.

I mean, Redley Scott wouldn't be against that. Speaking of the release, were you there? Do you fucking know?

And I'm not going to run through Ridley Scott's illustrious career and he is one of the all time great directors. However, goo and I did a quick peek here. I don't think I've really really liked the Ridley Scott movie in seventeen years. American Gangster was the last one I really really liked.

I didn't even love American Gangster.

So before that, it probably was what's the one that came out after Gladiator? It was Gladiator? And then he had won in oh one that I liked too, and I can't remember the name of it escapes me. So we're talking. Maybe if you didn't love American Gangster it's been twenty plus years since Scott's done a great movie.

But also he's one of my favorite directors because he yells at us so much.

Well, like, he does have the resume, and he has plenty of all time great movies. I just don't think he has it anymore. And that's a common thing with most directors.

He might be on the mount rushmore of modern day directors. Like when I say modern day, I mean like post nineteen seventy five.

Yeah, it'd be hard to argue against his resume for sure.

Hammering.

So, the one thing I'll say about Riley Scott is the movies that don't crush it, like the Alien sequels, for example, are still solid movies. He's so it's like baseline, You're getting an okay experience. You know, he's not making complete dog.

Shit, right, But he also like jumps in and out of the Alien franchise, though it's not all him.

Agreed. We agree of Gladiator too. After his home is conquered by the tyrannical Empress who now lead Rome, Lucius is forced to enter the coliseum and must look to his past to find strength to return the glory of Rome to its people.

I mean, you could just swap out Lucius with Maximus.

Yeah, it's again this movie is it's not bad though it's not. But because it's so lazy, I wouldn't blame someone if they called it bad, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't it doesn't build it out any further. It just takes the blueprint from the first one. And I was thinking about this because we have talked about, hey, you know, fan service, just get where fans give us

I think it almost is like it could have been a bridge if they had cut the movie off around the two hour mark, that it could have been a bridge to a really good third movie in the trilogy if they wanted to do that. But they kind of killed off some stuff at the end that got rid of that unless they want to start time traveling again.

The two thousand and one really Scott movie I was thinking of was Blackhawk Down.

Oh that is a good one, that's a great one.

Yeah, yeah, would.

You put that on the Mount Rushmore of TNT movies.

That's a yeah, it's like a perfect it's.

A Saturday afternoon TNT movie.

Yeah, And that's probably how most of us watched it when we were younger, because we were, well.

You know what, we should do a podcast on that best basic cable movie.

Anything with Jeremy Renner, The Bourne.

Movies, Nicholas Cage late nineties. Yes, yeah, wow, Okay, we got something.

This movie stars Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, reprising her role from the first movie. She of course had the baby out of wedlock with Maximus in the first movie. Paul Mezcala is Lucius, the aforementioned Lucius, who is Maximus's illegitimate son, Lucilla's son. Denzel Washington as Macrinus, who, first of all, I gotta give him a little credit. He's not totally denzeling it up. He's doing it. He's playing the character enough and to me, by far, the most interesting character

Be right, and also we can't really describe his character without spoiling. So the one thing that I will say about him is the worst part of this entire movie is his kissing sound effect. It made my skin crawl every single time.

He kisses a lot of hands in this movie.

That's firsture. But with the sound though, juicy lipsco Have you not considered Denzel's.

Big fan of CarMax. Uh No, not Carmex, CarMax, CarMax. That what it's called the yellow tube shit Coo. Pedro Pascal as Marcus as Ass I think I think that's how he said. Joseph Quinn as Emperor Ghetta and then this was the funniest moment of the movie to me because I didn't realize there was gonna be a second eper. I thought they did a CGI version of a smaller Joseph Quinn. Uh Fred Heckinger as the smaller Emperor Caracalla and laugh out loud the way he looks. He's a diminutive, diminutive fella.

When they first hopped on the screen, I was like, Oh, it's the mc boyles. Nice. But then as the movie kept on going and they kept on adding makeup to them and they're you know, they're big rosy cheeks, you know from the Syphilis. I was like, they look just like Stuart from Matt TV both of them what it was a smaller version.

What I can do talk.

Let the gods decide. The only smaller one sorry, the smaller one also looked like Yeah. He also looked like Timmy from Passions, who was a doll.

The only other two characters whose names you would probably need to remember from this movie are Tim McInerney as three X Thrax three X I don't even remember what they called him in the movie. And Alexander kareim A is Rovi. He's the doctor of the glad. Oh.

I liked him. Actually, he was a good character. I liked him a lot.

He was a good character. But they just used him for Lucius to give us, you know, some like backstory stuff.

You know, this doesn't spoil my favorite part of the movie. I actually cackled. No one else laughed. Everyone in my fucking stupid my theater was an idiot. Is when he goes and does something, and he goes and finds a soldier. He runs up and he pushes another soldier out of the way, And the way that he did it was the funniest thing in the movie. He's like, get out here, like one handed shove.

Uh kut. I had I wouldn't say high expectations for this movie. When this movie was announced, I expected almost nothing because we're talking about twenty four year later sequel. However, once we saw the trailers, were like, oh, we got something here, and that built up a little bit of intrigue, and so I had reasonable expectations. I felt like and I felt like this fell short of those expectations.

I think it met right what I was expecting. I was expecting middling.

You were expecting the laziest version of this movie possible.

And while it was middling, let me finish, I was entertained enough. It was definitely clunky at points. The pasin was a bit off, the fighting in it was not at the caliber of the first movie. The characters, I don't think we're at the caliber of the first movie. And this movie was also too reliant on Hey, you guys like that first movie? No we do? Yeah? Yeah? Should I just go watch that one instead?

Yeah? It was that, And then I think they were really banking on their colosseum scenes hitting and it just didn't for me. They didn't hit at all. They were fucking like.

Also, woop is the timeline of this movie? How long does it take to fill the Colisseum with water and then also drain the water and not have it, you know, have that flood look to it.

Yeah, I question the viability of that, and also.

Well they used to do that. They used to actually do the like the water boat fights and a.

Different era of the Colosseum.

Though as we discovered it, it's all one thing. You weren't there.

No, I like the idea of it. I'm just telling you. The sharks looked like fucking shit, which were not even as bad as the monkeys, So there was there was just a lot of issues in that respect, and I think they were hoping that those would be the tenth polls of the movie, these three Colosseum scenes, and they.

Were all I understand why they added the sharks because like thinking about, okay, adding sharks, so this is cool, but you didn't really need the sharks. The soldiers that are being shot or bow and arrowed in falling into the water, they're gonna die anyways, so the sharks are kind of pointless. I thought one of those sharks was

Yeah, that maybe would have been cooler than what we got. I don't know, it just wasn't.

The people in the water were already dead.

Good.

Yeah.

I thought there was three really good characters in this movie, two of which we didn't get enough streak time.

Of Were they really good or just good?

No, really good okay, but should have but didn't add to two didn't add much to the movie because we didn't get enough background for them. Uh. Paul mezcal As Lucius, I thought was very good. It was I haven't seen him before. I know he's been around these last couple of years, but I haven't really seen anything he's been in. I thought that worked out well.

It's also not fair to compare him to Maximus.

No, No, not at all.

Because if you are, it's you know, not really close.

Sure. The two best characters in this movie to me by a mile, where Denzel Washington's Macrinus and Joseph Quinn's Emperor Ghetta and we get some of Macrinus we don't. We get a little bit of his background when he's you know, when he's talking to Lucius later in the movie. But once you learn like where he was and who he became and his story, that was the most interesting

We needed more, but there's nothing redeemable about him though, so it's like, oh, he's just the son of a bit.

But that's fine because you have Macronus, who is that sort of borderline character, or at least at first you're not really sure what his intentions are. So you have the established son of a bitch in the established good guy and Macronus somewhere in the middle, and they just didn't play upon that enough, because again, this is a really lazily written movie.

I also would have liked a lot more from Pedro Pascal's character. I think there was more to tell there as well.

Yeah, but you knew, like the minute the things got going, you knew where his story was gonna end up.

Shall we get into the none? Yeah?

And also enough for nothing. Connie Nilsen, she wasn't great. She wasn't great. Okay, she was okay, I guess she wasn't great.

Fun factor. I loved the battle at the beginning, and I will accept the rhino fight. I thought the monkey fight was pretty ridiculous, but I did like Mescal's you know, creed like training sequences. They weren't as like crazy he as a rocky movie, but there were some things of like this guy just won't stop.

You know what. The coolest thing this whole movie was, which tell me that happened in the first one too, is them running up the stairs to the coliseum the way Mescal hops around, the way that Russell Crowe did it twenty four years ago. Awesome, looks cool. This movie attempts to have a lot of fun. For me, it didn't really happen. But you're right that opening fight scene when Pascal is leading his army to Mescal in that African country, that was great. I wanted more of that,

Do you even know the name of your own favorite movie?

I was looking. I was looking at the aquater World here acle World. Better title for a sequel than Gladiator, too, although I do like that they used the Roman numeral you know because.

But it also confused me because it turned Gladiator into Gladiator with two eyes true, okay, uh satisfactor hmm. We got where we needed to go, but really had a tough time getting there by the end.

Yeah, I so because because Maximus dies in the first movie, you know exactly what's not gonna happen in this movie, and that makes the end really predictable, and so there's not much satisfying that occurs here.

Borometer hmmm. I don't know if I was ever truly bored during my first time watching this movie. I would expect that I would never watch this again, and if I did, I would be very bored. But my first time through, I was decently intrigued throughout.

Uh. I closed my eyes a couple times during this movie, just for a brief minute brief Now. Granted, I was a tie tie boy when I when I saw it, Who are you me? I was bored. I was bored a couple times during this movie, and like the overarching revenge story and is like, innately a good story if they had added anything more to it than what we got in the first one. So I don't know, I was just boring, predictable.

Oh, you know it's bad. I've now gone two straight movies where I had to pee in the middle of the movie. I got up and went to the bathroom. Jesus, I know I had gone. I had a cal ripkin like streak of not peeing during movies, and now I am just I'm a regular ever Damian.

Everhuford Bathom Durio movie.

Well, I've done it twice now in a row. It's two really long movies though.

So Simmons is old.

Simmons is old. Am I just getting old? Oh Halloween? Will your interest in this movie wane over time? I'll rewatch the first one again.

Uh, my interest has already weaned. In the one day since I've seen it. I was like, this movie's not bad, this movie is solid, And then now I'm here like I don't really like I didn't really like the movie. I don't think I didn't. I didn't. I hate it. So it's winging, it's free falling currently. I'm glad we're recording today not tomorrow, because it might be fucking sinking tomorrow.

Speaking of sinking, a quater world. Is this better than the nineteen ninety five classic water World?

I mean, technically yes, but it's in the same range quite honestly, Like this movie, water World has probably more fun than this movie has.

Which would make a better stage playld oh, I don't know. This would be pretty good at people dressing up like animals and like five people in a giant rhino costume.

Because I would love to see a stage play where there's just like an ocean on stage at all times.

All Right, credit union, who you're given credit to?

I guess Denzel right, Denzel is like carries this movie at points, and this is the most interesting character. But I don't know. I almost don't want to give him cdit because there wasn't enough of him. But that's not his fault.

When life gives you plemings, you make Jesse plemonade. And I think the doctor in this movie, in the little amount of time we go, it's pretty solid.

Rav was pretty good. Yeah, a couple of good scenes there, but again the scenes are like kind of shoehorned in, So I didn't love him. I'll go Joseph Quinn here because we should have got more of him than when he was on screen screen. He was great. He played a really great unhinged.

Bad guy pants ten City Excite bike Mania. What got you going in this movie? I really enjoyed that first battle, and everything else was good enough.

Yeah, the first battle was the best action sequence of the whole movie. And that comes what seven minutes in.

Time out from the start of this podcast? Have you already changed your hot dog score on the dock?

I have?

What in the world is happening?

I have? Yeah, it's I'll tell you it's free falling.

Yeah.

I didn't really care for the rest of the movie one way or the other. It's that's why it's like, it's fine, it's boring, it's not bad. I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm just a fucking poopy pants McGhee on this one. But I did care for Ito's it needed it. Tried for the pants tent scenes in the coliseum, they just didn't.

It did try. It did try for the pantstent and I'll even say so, like, yes, the CGI is a little bit off in this, but I thought overall, though the set designs, the overall look at the coliseum, the costumes actually no credit union whoever did the costumes in this movie. Sure everyone looks great. Wouldn't you love a nice robe you can really let yourself air out.

Denzel's costumes in particular, were magnificent.

Yeah. If you were to rank the costumes, Denzel's at the top, right, for sure, I would say Pedro Pascal had some very nice robes because he also because he's a soldier, so he would have like the shoulder pieces as well. I also, and we saw it in the commercial for it, but you know the armor that is eventually revealed, and yes it is, remember the first one. But the armor's pretty dope.

Yeah, solid for sure, and a nice little flashback to when Maximus is talking to Lucius in the first movie about the arm and what the lions are khu As I'm thinking about this, By the way, you liked this more than Wicked.

Yes, so I'm not a good judge of musicals. Okay, that's why you're gonna need to I might even turn my microphone off for the Wicked podcast.

Well, the fact that I didn't love this movie is probably gonna guarantee that I'm gonna like Wicked more.

I also like, I appreciate the cast of this movie not crying during all of their interviews, like the cast of Wicked. Have you seen their interviews?

They're just having fun, you know, to know.

They're all like we changed people's lives. Maybe I don't know, but come on stop. For those of you tarty to the Mac and Goo party, we rate everything on a forty hot dog rating system, and Mac as someone who believes the First Gladiator is a classic. Yes, I'm in that boat. I am. No one else thinks that way besides me, But uh, this is definitely a step below. It's very retreatty, it's very hey remember this from the

Yeah, it's a fair score. So admittedly, when I left the theater, I was like, maybe he's that in the thirty two dog range, you know, I'm thinking about it, and then I'm looking at the movies I've seen this year in that range, and I'm like, no, I liked all of those movies better. And then so now I'm trying to slot it in the year, and it just kept dropping, kept dropping, kept dropping, and the more I thought about it.

Also, in my review right there in my Hot Dogs, I only said the negatives. I said some positives just before it, And it's the look of the movie. It's the overall, like grandiose rome that's there. It's the you know, the scope of the movie. I think it looks really really good, and I love the costume design, and I love how everyone really buys into, you know, the period piece that it is. I also love people hiding behind pillars and listening to secrets.

I think the movie was acted well. From the three characters I've mentioned already, I think really the driving force behind the quote unquote good in this movie is the underlying story of revenge always plays out. But to me, they didn't add anything to it like this, This movie came in right here, like they wrote this baseline revenge story that we got the exact same thing in the first one of and they did they added nothing. So

No, but if that happened back then, it would have fallen into obscurity. I mean this one probably will too. Yeah, this movie's going to be so okay.

I think it gets killed more for being the same amount of lazy, but twenty four years later. So I just I didn't care for this movie. And it's a bummer and this is this is These are the types of movies I hate to review because I didn't enjoy it. I didn't hate it. It's just smack dab in the middle.

Shall we spoil Let's get to it. Spoilers. Spiler spoilers. I will say about the revenge, It at least changes several times. And while we know that Denzel is up to something, we know that you know he's not just you know, he's not gonna help out Mescal. By the end, you are expecting the revenge to move from Mescal to the syphilis twins to like, maybe that's where it ends, but it does eventually. It's not the revenge on Denzel.

Doesn't kill his mom, kills Luci's mom.

Yeah, yeah, Lousi's mom. Do you think that was just to like tell the audience this is the bad guy. Just in case you guys missed it. This is the bad guy.

Right right, So he's trying to eliminate anyone with a stake to the throne, but also so here so he is easily the most interesting character in the movie, Denzel's Macronus, But in the beginning of the movie, it's not clear that he's a bad guy. He seems like he's a rogue agent operating outside. Yeah, no, that's better. This is what I'm saying, and like you're not really sure of his motivations and whatnot, but as you come to find out he wants he's got his eyes on the throne

Yeah, and like I said earlier, you can't really talk about Denzel's character in this movie without spoiling. He is Jafar, he is little Finger from Game of Thrones. He's constantly working everybody to get to his end goal. And I also really would have liked it if if you had this plan to make this into two movies and you let Denzel get away at the end, and maybe we don't solve the problem at the end, and we just the next movie can just be a bunch of Denzel.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about. I don't think they ever conceptualized a third movie, so that, like I get what's saying, but they could have done that in this movie. Goude like more Denzel stuff in this movie, because it would be more interesting than the exact same story that we got, you know what I mean. Like the first act could have been heavy on Denzel, and then you introduced Mezcale's character towards the end of the first half being bought by Denzel, you know what I mean.

And so it's important to know that Mescal's wife was killed and that is his motivation. Otherwise he wouldn't have done any of it.

Because there are good characters in here, but they don't play the right beats on these characters. So it's annoying, it's frustrating, like it's just I don't know. And you know what really pissed me off is clearly Macronus and Freex are like wagering two guys at like betting on stuff. We see them in place, one wager and then all of a sudden, he's like, you own me ten million dollars, so I'm taking your home. You're like, wait, what, when

I'm also so curious how those twins came into power, yes.

One hundred percent, how did they decide.

To make them both The end of the first movie is like, you're at the same point as the end of this movie, so if they make another sequel in twenty years, they're gonna be like, well, these other people came into power and now we need to get Roam back again.

It's interesting to see how like Lucilla gets pushed out and those two, Like, there's plenty of interesting stuff that I'm sure happened, and we just don't see any of it. They don't talk about any of it, and instead we just get multiple seams of Lucius Ingladiator prison, like the same shit we got in the first movie.

You're gonna change your hot dog score again?

Yeah, honestly it feels like a twenty seven dogar to me because I like the revenge style stuff, and there are certain characters in this movie that are good. I'm at twenty nine and they'll probably finish for at twenty seven though I can see that. But again, that's like that's this, you know, C minus range. It's just I don't even know if it's a good movie. It's fine, it exists, it's not bad.

It's a dumb question. And maybe I should know this as an Italian. How close is Rome to the ocean?

Uh? Rome is inward? I don't think Rome touches the ocean, but it's not far from the ocean, but that's why. So the Roman army was in the quote unquote port of Rome, whatever city that was that Robbie had to go ride and get them. So Rome's probably I don't know, ten miles twenty miles from the ocean. What's your Google maps tell you?

I'm just googling can you create seawater to house sharks? Because you have to get a lot of seawater to put those sharks in the college.

I mean, the Romans had a pretty extensive system in terms of like, I don't doubt that they could have got ocean water to the coliseum. The sharks is the tough one.

What are you thinking, like like an eighteen wheeler or something.

No aqueducts. Come on, I'm looking up Rome, Italy right now.

I'm gonna stick with thirty one. I'm pretty fine with it being a C plus. I had an enjoyable time, but not something that I want to get back to.

So the city they mentioned in this movie, Ostia is I don't know what, but there's like one city between Rome and the in the Mediterranean, so it's not too far.

Okay, let's Getack and mak Sac could be anything that could be a boat. And with Thanksgiving coming up next week, we are here to just remind you once again. And it is November, and November is the month of Movember. And while Mac and I do not have Movember accounts, well we might technically have November accounts, but I don't think I get emails as well. We would like you of donating to us, please donate to our vonde. Just head over to November search Ryan Davey, search Arvon d.

Health, yes, please do. Please do.

Also, with Thanksgiving coming up, that means that the Christmas season is truly here. It's not just goos Christmas season. It is the time to make children's holidays better and the best way for that is to find anywhere there is. We're not telling you specifically to do what we do. We usually go to a boys and girls club, but donate toys.

Yeah, if you've got the means, if you got some extra bucks this holiday season. Goo's the one that turned me onto this and it's a great idea. It's really really easy. What we do we contact our local boys club, boys and girls club. They have a list of kids in need of gifts, kids that don't have much, and they'll give you a couple kids tell you roughly what they're into, and you can go buy gifts for them. And it's just a couple of gifts here and there, and it goes a long way. It might be the

Yeah, it's like last year, one kid wanted the foot bath, one kid wanted an oven mint, the other one of an iPod nano. So like, some things cost more than others. But that's how you show that you care, all right, So Mac, next week we'll do Wicked at the Top. I've already seen it. Max excited to see it.

I don't know if I'm excited to see it.

Is so excited to see Wicked. Well, also, on Thanksgiving we'll have a holiday special for you.

How about that?

Because we did not act tear berd this year, so we'll be no de seer berring instead.

I'm wicked fucking excited for Wicked.

It was a wicked pass a night at the Godden kid.

Just a shitty action. That's the whole Oh I'm in this movie was Wicked.

I can't believe it. Davy put out his Kid do that fucking thing. Davy put out his mount Rushmore of Rats, which, first off, we're gonna eventually do our top ten movie Rats of all time as well. No, Keith did mice. Do you not know the difference?

I sure do.

And he didn't even have the rat from The Departed on there. Has he even seen sim that rat?

I hate that movie.

That's the best rat of all time.

I think they were okay, clearly I'm in the minority there. I'm one of the few people that don't like The depart especially in this fucking area. I think there were people that really enjoyed the movie, and then when they got to the end and saw that, were like, come on, why'd you have to do that? What the fuck? We get it, We understood it. The whole movie is about.

Rats, all right. So Keith's Mouse Rushmore was Mickey Mouse, Jerry Speedy, Gonzales and Mighty Mouse.

I might remove Speedy for a fourth there, but that's three or four pretty good.

I personally went the basle of Baker Street, Fifle Gadget from Chippendale and Pinky. But you could substitute Pinky with the brain.

I think I might go Pinky or the brain over Speedy, and that might be my four. I like Keief's three, though.

I'm all in on basle of Baker Street. So give me him. You cannot take him out of mind.

You are a big, flightful guy.

Feifel Mouskowitz not only an American tail. But when he goes west, there you go. And then Wesley Burho pointed out, like, why don't you have Bernard in there? From the rescuers? And I made the point sometimes in life you have to make tough choices.

It's a great point real life.

Lesson Davey's Mount rat More, I can tell you right now I have it here somewhere was let's see, he had Master Splinter. I agree, Ratatui Rizzo the rat.

So I will say, I'm pretty sure Rattitude is a mouse.

I think he's a rat.

I think he's a mouse.

And he had Templeton from Charlotte's Web. That's the number one rat. By the way, that's a good one, a fair as a veritable smart guess Barrig, smart guess Barck, smart guess Bark.

I know Ratituuhi gives off rat vibe.

But that's the name of the dish.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Remy is a mouse.

I don't know enough about the situation to disagree with you. So I'll also say this though, is at Disney World. At Epcot, they are really all in on Remy the rat. I'll say rat right now. But Remy, like ratituey stuff is all over Epcot, and I wasn't. I know that it's a good movie. I actually like it, like more than most Pixar movies. But I was surprised.

I'm looking at Remy, he's probably a rat, okay.

But I was surprised by how much Remy was used at Epcot.

Yeah, you would think you wouldn't want to lean into the rodent in all of your characters, but it worked for Mickey.

But I'm also thinking more of like, like you want to put your most popular characters on there?

Many Justice for many Nah.

How about any of his kids? Do they have any kids? Because you know, when you think of like kid Disney stars, you think of Huey, Dewey, Louie. They're all ducks, though. You think of Max Max Goof, You know Max Goof goofy Son.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't name of any of Mickey's kids.

If you had to name a female and male offspring for Mickey and Minnie, what would you name him?

You don't say Mortimer because I think that's the original.

Name of Mickey Mortimer mouse.

Or is that Minnie's friend Mortimer?

I don't know.

Do you have to go m right?

Yeah? Mickey Minnie mouse?

Yeah, I have to mac and Macarna.

Michael mouse. Doesn't it too much? No? Uh? Major? Major be cool name for a guy. I know.

If I was naming a mouse and I was still a kid, I'd probably name a mousey mouse or something like that. I was really creative. My stuffed animal Raccoon's name was Raccoony.

I wish you'd come up with rack cooney, if only, if only, which dives back in to ratititui?

Yeah?

There you goll circle.

All right, So that'll do it for this week. Check us out at the top of next week for a wicked and uh then a fun Thanksgiving episode hit A bit up now It's time for girls jumping on trampolines. Tuesdays are Goosdays and Tim Burton I just had a stroke.

Bye.

Please flip the cassette over to side B to continue the adventure. Now it's time for girls jumping on trampolines.