I'm Anny, I'm Noah, And this is no such thing. The show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, we're getting to the bottom of the twin film phenomenon.
No, there's no no such thing.
No touch than.
Touch, thank.
Touch, thank.
Touch, thank you.
Okay, we're here to talk about twin films and why they happen so frequently. But first, obviously we have to know what a twin film is. So we're talking about a pair of movies that have extraordinarily similar premises. Uh, like that I like that pronunciation, and that release within a year of each other. There there are some outliers with this, like there are some twin films that come out more than a year apart.
Uh.
And there are some outliers that have to do with the plot as well, Like there are some movies that seem similar at first, but then when you watch them, they're not really that similar. We're dealing with that right now with Gerrameal del Toros Frankenstein in this movie coming out next year from Maggie Gillenhall. I think it's called The Bride. Sometimes both of the twin films are popular, like Finding Nemo and a Sharks Tale.
Oh yeah, well I forgot about the Sharks two. I was defining Nemo home, so we didn't. We didn't watch Sharks.
Finding Nemo was definitely I think the more popular one. Yeah, you know was a classic, like Substitute Teacher.
Yeah, that's like I remember renting that. I think renting the DVD or something.
Yeah, you weren't going to theater that, you know, Finding Nemo we had the tape.
Yeah, yeah.
And Will Smith delivers a masterclass in Shark Tale.
And my man's psyched has just begged me not to myrtalize all.
Y'all up in here right now.
I might listen to him, but I might not.
And that depends on individual behavior of all the individuals in here individually.
In other instances, one twin film is just way more popular than the other one to the to the point where you might not have even heard of the other one. So one example is Madagascar. We all know and love ye I'm I'm movement movement, movement, movement, not knocked up. There was a Disney movie that came out the same year called The Wild, which was the same plot. Animals from the Central Park zoo end up in Africa. Oh, and it had like I had, like a real cast
wild Have you ever heard of this movie? No? Oh, I need to see it. Let me see some imagery. It just it looks like a generic, like a less stylized version of Madagascar. But in the cast we had Key for Sutherland, Eddie Lizard, Richard Kind was in there, William Shatner. And it's like the same animals too. There's a graft.
Who's the zebra?
There's no zebra? Okay, there's a draft in this one. Anyway, I thought that was interesting making a zoom movie, it would have a draft in line. But of course, the most referred to example of twin films is of course Armageddon and Deep Impact. Uh, we're gonna save that one for later when we talked to the what went wrong folks, But from my recollection, I think like Armageddon was like the big, dumb, loud one, and Deep Impact was supposed to be the higher brow, smartly written one. We'll see
if that holds up. But before we get into like why exactly twin films happened so regularly with so much frequency, what are some other ones that I'm missing? Like, what are some big twin films.
There was the like rom coms of no Strings attached, Oh yeah, and then friends with Benefits.
I'm a doctor, I worked eighty hours a week. I need someone who's going to be in my bed at two am, who I don't have to eat breakfast with. I'm emotionally unavailable.
I'm emotionally damaged.
You know what I'm saying, No emotions, just sux.
Those came out around the same time, around you know, like friends who are love interests or artists.
You were the two Kutcher and uh who Natalie Portman Natalie Portman, and then the other one was Myla Cunis and Timberlake. And that's funny because Ashton Kutcher is married to me Lacunas. They should have just had them in the same movie.
Yeah. I don't know if they were married at the time.
I don't think they were, probably not, but they were on that seventies show together, which is how.
They since then more than oh you're someone someone looked this up, Jame not not now?
Yeah?
What are some other ones? Like one I remember is Dante's Peak. Yeah, I was just thinking that in.
The tone of Dante's Peak, a volcano is turning nature into.
A nightmare, which was Pierce Brosnan like disaster movie that takes place in the Pacific Northwest. You know, they're escaping from a volcanic a volcanic eruption. And this was an example of one that was way more popular than the other one, I think because I hadn't even known about this movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones in a.
City where anything can happen on April twenty fifth.
It will same year or within a year of each other, and same exact plot. But just I had not heard of that one. Have you guys heard of Volcano?
Yeah, but definitely Dante's peak was like always on, like yeah, TBS, yeah, TVs like constantly.
Another classic one that's more recent is Olympus has Fallen, White House Down.
Yeah, we're talking about the safety of the president of the United States.
We're talking about all of them more than.
That, sir, Which is funny because they also both have black presidents in them. Hey, what's funny?
We had run all right? People forget there's been one.
We did have one here. It made sense. Yes, I think Morgan Freeman is the president in one of them, and Jamie Fox is the president and I'm pretty sure right whichever one say, yeah, that's crazy, that's my president right there.
It's like he's young.
So Olympus has fallen? Is the Gerard Butler one, Yeah, okay? And Channing Tatum's in White Houstone, I think, so White House Down will be Channing Tatum and Jamie Fox. Is Jamie Fox the president or is he just any president? James Sawyer?
Oh wow?
And before any Olympus has fallen heads send me angry emails. I should clear that Morgan Freeman's character is only technically acting president. The elected president is Aaron Eckert. But of course, there is one pair of twin films that the three of us have spent a lot of time debating way back, starting in twenty sixteen, and that is a Bugs Life for the colony and for a press but everywhere versus Ants. He's willing to live for the colony, to fight for the colony, to die.
For the colony.
This guy's crazy.
Now.
The reason we've been debating this is that Noah and I feel like Ants is the obvious better movie, and Devin thinks that we're crazy, of course, and I actually want to break the differences between these movies down for the listeners, because I think understanding the differences between these movies might actually be useful for us in terms of trying to figure out why films happen in the first place.
So let's start with the plot. Both movies are about ants that spark a revolution of sorts against their oppressors. In a bug's life, the oppressors are grasshoppers, evil grasshoppers. They're not really dynamic. They're just evil. They just come and bully and eat everything. So where is it?
Where's my phone?
It's a little more interesting.
In Ants, the ants are in a war with these termites that are encroaching on their territory. But the war general for the ants is like sending the ants that are loyal to the queen off to war on a suicide mission so that he and the remaining ants can enact at coup d'eta damite colonies.
Sir, that's suicide exactly.
You have the list I asked for, Yes, General, these are the units loyal to the queen.
So, Devin, why don't you tell us a little bit about why you're wrong to think that a bugs life is better and more interesting than that? Plot.
Well, first of all, both of these are supposed to be kids movies.
That's true allegedly.
Okay, uh so A Bugs Life is picture our universe. Basically, A Bugs Life looks like I don't know if there is some sort of like Easter Egg. It looks like it's a toy story. Yeah, like that style, very similar style. You zoom in on want to Andy's Toys in the grass somewhere, and you saw A bug Life happening, You'd like this makes sense. Yes, so toy story iconic, A Bugs Life iconic. Okay, they live in the same world.
Just just remember that. The thing that I love about A Bugs Life is it has so many memorable scenes. We did it back to backwashing of A Bugs Life and Ants. You know, I had not watched this film since I don't know, well, I was a child.
A long time ago.
That tracks and I had rememb scenes from A Bug's Life, which is crazy all these years. It's not something that really comes up, you know, in pop culture or anything that you're like, you know, I'm not, And I was like,
oh my god. I remember the rain, specifically that rain scene where the ants are running for their lives because the rain drops are like, yes, and it is a thing that, like, from my childhood to now, I thought about and I didn't realize that I was thinking about it because of A bugs lif When it rains and I'm outside and I see bugs, I thought like, oh, shoot, it's to go down. And then when I just watched it more recently, it's like, oh, it's because of a
Bug's life. And that, I think is when you think of childhood movies, those scenes that stay with you, that change.
The way you view the world.
Wow, okay, this is why we make films. And when we watched ants if it felt like some weird Woody Allen nightmare. Okay, yeah, well it's dark, it's very moody. It's just like, I'm like, what, this is not for kids. This feels like some adult was going through something and they're forcing their kids to sit down and watch this. It's like it feels like divorce dad energy.
A bugs Life is certainly more colorful and easier on the eyes. And it's funny.
A Buzs Life is hilarious. Scene the scene, every line is a joke. I'm watching ANTS, I'm like, what, nothing, It really is not funny.
It's kind of depressing, and it's funny because there's an there's PTSD.
It's that's it's funny. It's kind of cob you know, it's it's funny that the Ants have trauma.
I'm sorry, I don't think trauma is funny, but you know some of us, some of us, I guess.
So let's go cast for cast. Here. You got Kevin Spacey obviously as the villain Hopper.
Playing the proper role. Yeah, Evan Spacey, the villain, a bad guy playing exactly great casting if you think about it.
Yeah, but this was the way before he was They knew there's something darkening. Yeah.
Uh.
Julia Luis Dreyfus plays Atta.
Yeah, love interest.
Hayden Penny Tier is a dot the I think the Little Girl aunt Richard Kind. You've got Dennis Leary. So you know, it's pretty stacked cast. But let's look at Ants because Ants has some fucking hitters in the cast. Woody Allen obviously.
Woody Allen, it's a voice.
Yeah, your boy, Kevin space no problem.
Okay, we don't need to go there.
Both films have problematic actors and memory. This is a wash. Yeah, they cancel each other out. Gene Hackman is Mandible, who I believe is like the War General r P. Sharon Stone is Bala. You got Dan Ackroyd, You've got Danny Glover. Jennifer Lopez plays ass Teca Celeste Stallone. I mean this is nuts. Christopher Walking Jim Yeah, I'm gonna say that the Ants cast edges out A Bugs Life cast in terms of, you know, real hitters.
If you just want to put names on the board, sure, yeah, what in the world? Okay, but can you name what happened these people did in the movie?
Gene Hackman is Manda.
Jennifer Lopez was.
Well, you know that's true. I don't have a I don't have an argument against that. Sly Stallone is in there as a character that looks like him.
I remember this, and I believe Chris Walking too is kind of Yeah, they do tell me that's what Sharks did too, which I think all animated movies should do that. No, well, could you talk a little bit about why you like Ants the film better than A Bug's Life.
Yeah, I'm just I like more mature sorts of things.
I like a PG movie.
If I can get one, you know.
I like kind of edgy humor, like that, So, you know, I was, you know, kind of refreshing myself on Ants, and you know, it's it really is a proper war movie. There's nods to Apocalypse now there's there was one scene that really set up to me, especially on our rewatch, was there's this huge, real pretty serious battle scene and then the leader he's decapitated.
The second I remember this.
Don't make my mistake, don't follow it as your whole life thinking for yourself anyway, the bodyless head is you know, kind of giving his final words of like whoa this is?
Is wild?
That's a dark movie.
Yeah, it's just a little for me as an adult watching this, not sharing it with kids, it's more interesting to watch today. Oh grant, I didn't really watch Bugs Life as a kid. I watched it, but it was never like on rotation for.
Me for whatever reason. So it didn't imprint the way where it's like these certain little scenes.
You didn't have a good watch I say that? Did I say that?
I did not say that. I enjoyed watching both of them.
I like picking we're picking one.
That's the prompt.
I simply enjoy the.
More, And I like you had more fun watching Ants.
There's a little bit more of I guess they kind of have different goals. And that's what's tough about this is, despite the fact that they're twin films, they're not necessarily one for want. They're not so easy to compare. And I like the kind of ugly, garish art style of ANTS. Yeah, they look like something to look at.
And I appreciate the kind of neurotic witticisms of you know, the Woody Allen esque character.
Yeah.
I think here in New York the humor was really interesting. But that's not to say I disliked A Bug's Life. I mean, it's definitely I.
Know, I know you two didn't dislike it because y'all were cracking up, gigglin the whole time.
Again, not much being said. You think about sitting with when we're watching ANTS, taking notes.
I watched movies to be entertained.
Okay, you can do both ideally, you get both ideally.
Okay.
So now we know what a twin film is and we've been through many, many examples. After the break, we're gonna chat with the hosts of the What Went Wrong podcast the show about the film and and see if we can get their thoughts on why twin films happened so regularly in the first place. All right, We're now joined by Lizzie and Chris from the popular What Went Wrong podcast. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you so much for having us. It's an honor to be here.
You guys are so much fancier than us.
You have mugste Yeah, yeah, we try, we try.
Before you guys joined us, we were talking about this phenomenon of the twin films. We had just ended a rigorous debate about whether A Bugs Life or Ants is the better film. Noah and I are on the ants on team Ants, and Devin is team of Bugs Life. I'm just curious what your guys take. Are you have a strong opinion you too.
With your Aunts defending I am I'm done. I'm very interested to I can't wait to hear what your argument was for both sides. But now I'm mad.
I would also lean a Bugs Life, although not as hard as Lizzie. I appreciate as the manifestation of Jeffrey Katzenberg in a movie, but I still prefer I think, overall, a Bugs Life. But I have kids that age like I would show my daughter a Bugs Life. I probably wouldn't show her aunts At this point.
I agree with that.
It's an enjoyable film. It's so much fun, so memorable. Yeah, and it feels like, you.
Know, I don't have to think of Alan marrying his stepdaughter while I'm watching it, exactly.
It's you have to do you have to think about Kevin Spacey.
Yeah, I don't need Woody Allen as the romantic lead. And you want to know, my biggest problem with Ants was that I literally screamed at the TV when I was rewatching it for this episode they're human teeth. It's the most horrible, Yeah, says so creepy horrible when he's chewing on the plastic. I was like, I'm this sit, I'm done.
Yes, So Chris and Lizzie. When it comes to Ants and A Bug's Life coming out at the same time, is it true that there was an alleged intellectual property theft? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Well, my understanding is so development on A Bug's Life began before development on Ants, and so John Lassiter was the director of A Bug's Life, who was written by Andrew Stanton. Joe Ranft, who actually does the voice of Heimlich in the movie. Was co story creator with those two, and this was a well known project within the animation community. And I have a slightly different thesis as to why
these two movies are both around bugs. Lizz about Toy Story on our podcast, and one of the reasons that they chose toys was because highly reflective surfaces as a texture are a lot easier to animate. At this point in the technologies, like maturation process in the mid nineteen nineties, it's really hard to do hair. This is why like Monsters, Inc.
And Shrek don't come until the early two thousands. A bug's Life makes a lot of sense because, okay, well we can animate bugs, right they have these they're exoskeletons, they're shiny. This makes sense. Also, it's ants. We can make one model and then we can clone it a bunch of times, and it's like Andy and all his friends at the birthday party and Toy Story. So the allegations were that Lasseter and Katzenberg had more unfriendly terms.
Katzenberg acrimoniously left Disney. He felt he had been owed a higher position by then CEO Michael Eisner. He was looked over after Lizzie remind David Wells or Frank Wells. I can never remember.
Oh man, I want I say it's Frank Wells, but let me double check. He's the he was the head of Disney who I'm sure you guys know about this, But he died unexpectedly in helicopter crash.
It's Frank Wells, so frankly.
And it's pretty wild because you know, we talked about this in Toy Story, but this guy dies in a helicopter crash. And then Jeffrey Katzenberg is like, oh, he's dead. Is it my turn? Is it my turn?
Now?
What's up with the promotion? Let's get this going?
Oh my god.
Katzenberg leaves. He ends up suing Disney for an unpaid bonus of well over one hundred million dollars. He also was on the you know, Michael Ovitz, formerly of CAAA, is coming in. It's a very messy time. DreamWorks gets built, and obviously Pixar starts working with Disney for their distribution
of Toy Story and then A Bug's Life. And so the accusation is that that Katzenberg stole the idea for A Bug's Life or ants from a Bug's Life after having soundboard conversations with Lassiter, who felt that he could trust Katzenberg. On Katzenberg's side, my understanding is he has asserted, although I've heard also that he has kind of admitted as much that he may have taken this idea from Lassitter.
He has asserted that there was a pitch for a movie called Army Ants back in nineteen eighty eight while he was at Disney Animation that was about a worker aunt trying to bestow the benefits of individuality upon their colony that went nowhere, and that that's kind of where the idea originated, and then.
He picked it up.
My guess, my best guess, and you guys can tell me, like, I don't know if we know the truth, but my best guess is there are technological limitations in place, and there's only so many types of characters that you can do at this point in time. And Toy Story had already come out, and I think Toy Soldiers is maybe around this time as well, and so like the DreamWorks is this upstart, we probably don't want to do toys. Okay, we'll do bugs, and we could probably come close to
doing bugs. Pixars doing bugs. They just bought PDI. I'd also heard that PDI specific data Imaging had a BUGS treatment in the works as well that was also different than a bugs life. So again, my instinct in this could get come to my big unifying theory about twin films is that maybe Katzenberg stole it, or maybe he was mulling on this and he saw Pixar as proof that this was a good direction for DreamWorks to go.
Before we get your guys's thoughts and theories about why twin films kind of occur so regularly, or at least they seem to occur so regularly. I wanted to talk a little bit about Armageddon.
Hitting a rock from the outside and we'll be the job so we knew this thing from the inside. Ah, we drill from bringing the World's prest.
Dave Cordriller and Deep Impact, two comments were discovered. Is on a collision course with Earth.
Oh my god.
I haven't seen those movies in a very long time, but from what I recall, I want to see if this is accurate. Armageddon is kind of like the big, big dumb blockbuster, and Deep Impact is a slightly more, slightly smarter, higher brow disaster film.
Is that right?
Am I making that out? No? No, you're right.
But here's what's funny.
They're closer than we remember. Yea, they are.
Closer and honestly, I so we did this for our live show, which was a blast. We did these two movies, and I went into it remembering the same thing, Like I loved Deep Impact when I was a kid, and I was like, this is the smart movie. This is the movie that carries about science, and I can't wait to rewatch this. And I rewatched it and I was like, God, I'm bored. I miss Armageddon and you watch Armageddon and it's just insane. It's completely insane. I loved it.
Can you show us about the similarities and the differences between these two movies?
Sure? So you you know, you have an asteroid that is hurtling towards Earth and the only way to get rid of it is to blow it up, and then from there, from there it just the paths diverge in the wood.
But the how they're going to deal with it is the same blow it up. They're gonna blow it up by drilling and sticking a nuke in the hole, right, and with.
Deep Impact, it makes like a decent amount of sense how they're gonna go about this. They're gonna use astronauts, which you know they're going to space, so that that tracks. And then you have Armageddon where.
This is where Lizzie and I differ in our opinions. By the way, this is the good, good idea.
You have Armageddon where Bruce Willis walks in to Billy Bob Thornton at NASA and he's like, I believe the line is something along the lines of, you know, you want to.
Send these boys into space. Fine, I'm sure they'll make good astronauts.
They don't know.
Jack about drilling. They don't know jack about drilling. I haven't drilling for forty years. And then he basically says, look, you need less astronauts, more oil drillers, and they send like.
One William Fickner into space, and then the rest are all oil drillers and you know what they do it, guys, They get it done.
So they're very similar in a lot of ways, they're very structurally different. What's interesting is obviously army and presents itself as an action movie. Deep Impact is effectively a soap opera. It's a melodrama at the end of the day. But it is interesting both were very successful. Armageddon was more successful at the box office ultimately, and the I
don't know if you guys came across this advice. Some executive at one point say, you know, when you're dealing with the twin film situation, the key is to come out first. But the more I looked into it, I don't think that's really the case. The key is, if you're the lesser of the two films, come out.
Come out first.
What's more important, meaning like, if you don't have the star power, if you don't think you have the marketing punch, maybe you don't think your movies is good, you should probably land first. That that might be good advice.
You know, as I was watching Ants and a Bugs Life and also thinking about Deep In, Back to Armageddon and so many of these other twin films, it does seem to me that the dichotomy is often one of them.
As you explain this, Manny, one of them is set up as like this is the smart movie, like this is the one for all the smart people, and the other ones like this is the big dumb one, this is the big dump gun one, And that seems to be true kind of across a lot of these, and I just wonder why, Like, is that just how they start to differentiate them as they realize that they're on parallel paths.
But I don't know.
I'm curious what you guys think.
It's a great question, especially thinking about some of the other popular twin films examples, Like we were talking earlier about Dante's Peak versus Volcano and talking about how like in some of these instances, one of the movie just becomes way more popular and famous than the other one. I actually hadn't heard of Volcano until I was researching twin films movies. But it's not like a no name movie like Tommy Lee Jones is the star of it.
So I haven't seen Volcano. I don't know if that one is branded or marketed as like a dumber or okay, dumb?
Is it as dumb as Dante's Peak.
It's dumber in the sense that Dante's Peak is making an attempt to model itself after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens and Volcano is there's a volcano in La This is crazy.
That come from? So wait, what is the story behind Armageddon and Deep Impact? How did those come out at the same time.
Well, this one's really interesting. A lot of twin films are disaster films, not surprisingly, and you know, Hollywood, the peak of disaster films in Hollywood was the nineteen seventies, right. You had Airport exclamation Point in nineteen seventy, which shockingly made a ton of money. Things kind of hit their zenis with Towering Inferno, which actually was competing twin films
that came together from two different studios. Irwin Allen was the producer behind a lot of these big, big disaster movies, and they were really an exploration of the peak of what could be done with modern special effects, miniatures, incredible stage builds, et cetera. That tails off at the end of the nineteen seventies. You have some attempts at eco horror like Swarm and stuff like that, and then we
get into like action blockbusters of the eighties. But then you have a new technological revolution with Jurassic Park in the early nineteen nineties, and all of a sudden, we have all these new tools in our toolbox that we can play with, and so then you get this new renaissance of disaster films. You know, Twister with Jon Debant, Titanic for example, and obviously Deep Impact and Army Again. And so what's interesting is one of the films has
its roots in the nineteen seventies. Deep Impact is Xanak and Brown who had produced Jaws and a number of other films, and they were going to do an adaptation of When World's Collide, which was a very famous book about another planet hitting Earth. And I think the problem was development kind of spiraled until the disaster film renaissance had run its course at the end of the seventies. They put the script in a drawer. Early nineties, they
pulled the script out of the drawer. They kind of stopped working together, but they say, hey, we're going to come back for one last hurrah. They take it to Steven Spielberg at DreamWorks, who says, great, I'm going to direct this, and we have all these brand new technological tools. He's just done Jurassic Park, like, we can actually show
an asteroid hitting the Earth. And then Lizzie, maybe you can talk a little bit about how this idea may have found its way to rival Studio Disney in the mid nineteen nineties.
This is another dream Works in Disney rivalry across these two movies, but so unconfirmed, but there is reason to believe that the screenwriter for Uh, Deep Impact, one of the screenwriters may have had lunch with Michael Ovitz.
We lunch with an unnamed president of Disney, yes, and we believe it might be Michael Ovitz.
Right, and this is Bruce Joel Rubin. It could be Michael Ovitz. But regardless, they sat down, they had lunch, and you know, he asks Bruce what he's working on? What are you working on? And Bruce is like, wow, you know, I probably shouldn't tell you. It's for dream for It's for DreamWorks. And he's like, we're buddies. We're buddies here, you know, we're just guys, just a couple of guys.
Michael Ovitz formerly Steven Spielberg's agent, so maybe said to him, Hey, I've worked with Steve for you know, twenty years. We're friends.
I'm a safe space. So anyway, they have this lunch, Bruce explains what he's working on. He you know, gives the full elevator pitch and more for Deep Impact, and then taking notes during the lunch, which at that point you should probably stop talking yes, that's how I remember
what I like about my friends. You know, it's so funny because shortly thereafter, Michael Bay and Jonathan Hensley go in to pitch Armageddon and they have like the loosest of loose napkin scribbled ideas for this movie and they go in and the pitch is so fast. Disney's like, yes, Greenlit, it's happening. We're doing it. And by the way, it's called Armageddon, and you're gonna be in the theaters in
you know, a year. And the theory is that, you know, perhaps they were already noodling this after that lunch, and so when Michael Bay came in and he was like, uh, what about astronauts and oil drillers, they were like, done, done, Michael, we love it.
I can't wait.
And what's funny is Armageddon is the production that worked closely with NASA, and so it's.
The one that they had to have approved by NASA for scientific accuracy.
And what is interesting too, Lizzie, you know, as we talked about in our episode, is there were two other asteroid related projects in development. So James Cameron's Bright Angel Falling was set up at I believe twentieth century Fox at the time, with Peter Hyams maybe set to direct. That never went anywhere, but if you can read the script. I found a copy of it, and it's clear somebody ripped off somebody because between Armagedon, armag has thown so
much from Bright Angel Falling or vice versa. And then you also have Asteroid, which becomes an NBC mini series that's released I think in the back half of nineteen ninety seven.
And all of this isn't coming out of thin air, right, Like all of these all of these movies and TV shows about asteroids were inspired by the news of a comet that NASA foundin Yeah.
The Shoemaker Levy comet had hit Jupiter, and there was all of this imagery of it, and we all of a sudden, really is holy shit. Outer space is like a shooting gallery, and there are asteroids flying by us and comets flying by us all the time that we've
been unaware of. And also, you know, this hypothesis that the dinosaurs had been destroyed by asteroid or comet hitting the Earth had been formulated in nineteen eighty five, but I think had really permeated the popular culture in the early nineties with the advent of something like Jurassic Park,
for example, dinosaurs ares top of mind. So again, I do think it's there are a lot of minds in Hollywood and we're all processing the same information at the end of the day, and so it does make sense that these ideas, maybe they're stolen from time to time. But what seems more likely is, like asteroids, there are so many hurling past us in any given moment, and what's more unusual is that two studios have the hubris to play the game of chicken and decide to go
head to head with developing these movies. And so to me, it's like the way possibly to think about it is that there is actually a lot of potential for twin films at any given moment, and the reason that we don't have them is that studios tend to back away from going head to head with one another with a given film because it's incredibly risky. And I mean, Lizzie
and I talk about this all the time. Studios, you know, they move movies off of certain weekends because they don't want to compete with a different movie that may overlap
in terms of audience. And so one way to think about it might be less I'm going to shoot another bullet, you know, with my gun in mid air, and instead say, there are so many bullets traveling through the air at all times, I'm actually going to remove my other bullets, you know, from time to time, so they don't you interfere with the other studio.
I actually really like twin films. I like watching them. I'm not mad at their existence at all because there's such a great example of it's not about the story or the idea, it's how you tell it. And it's so fascinating to see two completely different directors like Michael
Bay and Mimi Leader. You can't get more different than those two in terms of armageddon and deep impact telling what is a very similar story, and yet the movies are so different and they are individually enjoyable, And I like when studios plow ahead with this and like, yes, I'm sure there's borrowing, you know, there's osmosis of ideas all the time everywhere. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing, because they're not going to be the same movie if it's different people making them.
So what I'm hearing is that to us it feels like twin films are happening so frequently, But what you two are saying is that, actually, considering the way films are produced, twin films could be occurring way more frequently than they are.
So the way I maybe encourage people to think about it after looking into this a bit is, you know, historically a classic form of twin film has been like the A feature in the B feature, right, and so sometimes this has been on the big screen, and sometimes it's either the big screen versus the small screen. So like post disaster film renaissance, you would oftentimes see an A picture in theaters and either a mini series or
a television B picture on television. And I think the thinking here is there is an idea that has seemingly captured the zeitgeist, and the television corollary to the studio is saying, we are going to make our low budget, very fast, cheap and dirty version of this, you know, Tornado versus Twister, the television two part mini series of Titanic in ninety six versus James Cameron's epic in ninety seven.
Because a we think that if an audience is interested in the big feature version, maybe they'll just watch this because they're also interested in this, but also be we could capture a section of the market that that studio is not going to be able to capitalize on, which are the people that are not going to go to the theater necessarily, the people that are just going to
stay home and watch it on television. And this is kind of morphed over time into the Blockbuster more recently, which you guys might you know the guys who do Sharknado, etc. And they do things like transmorphers and paranormal entity and it almost seems like the movie, but it's not the movie that was really born out of two thousand and
six as War of the World. Spielberg was doing an adaptation of World the World's at the same time that these producers, who are kind of Roger kormanesque are trying to do their version of War the Worlds because it's public domain. This ip they realize, wait, a second Blockbuster has ordered one hundred thousand copies of our vhs, mistakenly
thinking they've ordered the Steven at Bilberg one. There's a business opportunity here, and so I think that's that makes sense from a business perspective, and like what you're saying, is the more rare instances to kaiju, you know, going at it in the water, like Olympus has fallen and White House down, for example, And those are rare. I think again, not because the inception of those ideas is rare.
They're actually incredibly common. It's that usually one of the drivers pulls out of the skin and says like, I don't want our cars to hit head on.
Just to kind of distill the reasons why we think twin films are happening in two kind of easily consumable explanations. What I'm hearing so far in this conversation is one reason is, you know, literal intellectual theft. Another reason is that something happened in the Zeitgei said influenced multiple films to be developed at the same time. Example of that would be like Steve Jobs dying and then there's two
biopics happening all of a sudden. And then the third reason we were talking about is kind of just like technological limitations or breakthroughs, like on the breakthroughs.
I think that's exactly right. I think it's a confluence of those three things. And I also just think, you know, it's it's so tempting to think you stole my idea. You know, it's something that we've probably all experienced. But the thing that's harder to come to terms with is that I don't know that any of our ideas are actually that individual when you break them down, and there's there is kind of a collective, unconscious pool I think we're always pulling from, and I do think that's where
twin films come from. Like, yes, sometimes you go to lunch with your quote unquote friend who's taking notes, probably kicking your idea, but there's other times where it's just asteroids and comments are in the news, or it's something people are thinking about. It's something that's in the back
of your mind. It's something and that's in the back of millions of people's minds, and it's something that you realize, hey, I could make money on this, and the fact that somebody else has that idea does not necessarily mean they took it from you. And I think that we underestimate our sort of common brain a bit.
There are also you know, anniversaries, for example, this would tie into the zeitgeist thing. You know, you had fourteen ninety two conquest of Paradise Ridley Scott. You know Christopher Columbus, nobody saw it, and then you have Christopher Columbus the Discovery from the producers of a bunch of Superman films. Also nobody saw that movie. So like, nobody was really interested in the five hundredth Anniversary of Chris, but it
was there. It was embraced by a couple of studios to the tune of one hundred million dollars, Like Lizzie is saying, we are all collectively filtering the same information and looking for stories in a lot of these places, and sometimes it's influenced by twin events inside of other
forms of media. So you know, you have like the mid odds to twenty thirteen sort of ya dystopian future phenomena, right where you have the Hunger Games, and you have Divergent, and you have the Maize Runner and these are all based on like they're all literary adaptations. But that's because the literary landscape was very much riddled with ya dystopian and you know novels. Well, Okay, why is the literature landscape riddled with that? Okay, maybe it's because we're in
the middle of a recession. Right now, and all of the you know, hope and change that everybody said Obama is going to bring, it doesn't see to be happening all of a sudden, and it's gonna be the Hunger Games. And so these books are really resonant. Who knows, but I do think Hollywood is very reactionary. At the end of the day, We're simultaneously incredibly unique, and that the scene to scene differences in these movies could not be more drastic, and yet the big picture ideas that we're
coming to are very universal. I think. Yeah.
And if, for example, Devin and I wanted to make a movie about ants separately, of course they're both gonna have the Queen Aunt. They're both gonna have the ant colony or the army. They're both gonna you know exactly, I'll go. I'll see if I can get I don't know.
Who Kevin Spacey problematic.
All right, So we learned a little bit about why Twin films happened so regularly. But after the break, I want to return to a bugs life and see why Chris and Lizzie think this movie works so well, Okay, we're bad. We're still here with the hosts of what went wrong Chris and Lizzie. At the top of our discussion, we were talking about A Bugs Life Versus Ants, and more broadly, these kind of Disney Pixar versus DreamWorks twin films.
I've always felt like the dream Works titles were a little more interesting because they were weirder essentially and a little more nuanced. But I'm curious about what makes the Pixar movies click for you two.
I feel like the it's very tempting to call these Pixar, if we're talking about Pixar versus DreamWorks, to call the Pixar movies in particular Bugs Life the more sort of simplistic ones. I actually think that they're deceptively complicated when I watched, because I watched both A Bugs Life and Ants back to back ahead of this, and honestly, yes,
A Bugs Life is more geared towards children for sure. However, I think that the sort of the complex like emotional things you have to wrangle with in A Bugs Life, to me are a bit more complex than they are in Ants and tells you exactly what it is upfront, you know, it's yeah, Whitty Allen Aunt is in therapy. They literally tell him you're insignificant. He's like, Okay, I get it. And then he's like, maybe I'm not insignificant. Maybe when you to start a revolution and the people.
I mean, it's like, it's listen, it's fun. I actually I'm not. I shouldn't crap on it too much. It's a totally fun movie, but with a bugs life. It's more like, I think, in making something that is easier for children to relate to, but still very smart, they actually explore something that to me has a bit more depth to it. And in the same and toy story, like, the characters are actually very complex. You don't you know Woody is the main character in that he's he's kind
of a jerk to buzz like. He's a great guy until he's confronted with someone who could, potentially you stir up his position, and then he's not such a great guy. Well, if you and shown up your stupid little cardboard spaceship.
And taking away everything that was important to me, talk to me about importance because of you, the security of this entire universe.
Is in jeopardy.
What And it's this question of like having to wrangle with yourself in a way that I actually think the Pixar films explore better than some of the dream works.
Interesting. Yeah, it's like it's taking these complicated ideas and making it digestible for kids. Is more impressive. You're saying than this is music to Devin's ears.
Is exactly exactly the Bugs Life. They're playing around with gender. Remember the lady.
A real bug being a lady by automatically makes me a girl?
Is that it?
Fly boy?
She's a guy.
Time.
Also, you know self love and embody image. And I agree, it's like that was lying.
Out loud through all of Bugs Life. I gotta tell you how laughing. I couldn't believe how funny that was.
Yeah, it's like in a drama, a line has to work dramatically. In a comedy, it has to work dramatically and comedically. Right if you're like, a Pixar film has to work for children and adults an equal measure. And like Lizzie's saying, that's a that's a hard target to hit.
Yeah it is.
And I think interestingly enough to me, Aunts the characters were less dynamic and more sort of characters versus a Bugs life. They were very complex, Like you know, the Julia Louis Dreyfus, Princess Aunt, total jerk to Dave Foley. I can't remember any of the actual characters names. I just want you guys to know that.
The main character's name is Flick.
She's such a jerk to him and and she like recognizes that in herself halfway through, which was really nice because I was like, man, I hope he doesn't just go for her when she's being you know, such as him. But she turns it around and I just, uh, yeah, man, I loved it, And the whole idea of the bird is so clever and something you would think. Sorry, guys, I'm really sorry.
Great points. Yeah, something I wanted to make it. Something interesting that Noah mentioned earlier was that in the dreams works ones like shark Tail and Ants, the characters are often caricatures of the people voicing them. Yes, which like you got the creator for walking exactly yeah, which I don't know. I just thought that was interesting.
I'm not a fan of that.
You don't want to see like Christopher walking that.
I don't want to see Christopher walking and I don't want to see its teeth.
I salon was awesome. You have to agree, Uh, well, guys, this has been so insightful and useful. Thank you so much for joining us and hope to chat to you guys soon.
Thanks so much for having us. This is great. You guys have a great show. We will be listening.
No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh Hatakedor. The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devin Joseph. The theme and credit song is by me Manny. This episode was mixed by fran Bandy. Our guests this week where Chris and Lizzie from the What Went Wrong Podcast. Definitely be sure to go check that show out. It's a lot of fun and visit No such Thing dot
show to subscribe to our newsletter. If you had feedback or a question, our email is Manny Noah Devin at gmail dot com. Or if you're in the US, you can leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. We'll see you next week.
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