We're going to geek freaks and freak.
Today I'm joined by Jonathan.
Well, hello.
And we have squeaks.
Squeaks?
That's for the.
That's for the visual. There, there.
Extra bonus for the turn.
Yeah, yeah.
We have a lot to talk about today.
Well, actually, let's be honest, it's like that.
But we have some news about Carrie and Foggy and Daredevil season two.
There's a monopoly movie in the works.
Vikings is coming back.
We're also going to be discussing the best and worst adaptations.
And are they getting better or worse over time?
We're also, have an interview with Rob and Elise from Nerd Best Friends,
so make sure you guys tune in for that.
Let's
go ahead and get started with our question of the week, though.
What movie, show or game
that you wish you could experience for the first time?
Again? Squeaks, let's start with you.
Oh, man.
Okay, so first game it has to be and always will be.
Like one of my best friends, is King of hearts,
and, I still have memories of, buying that shit when.
When layaway was a thing. Right.
And like, scaling your because paid it off,
but to say, but also like memories of like, you know, yelling at my parents
to come see, like, look, you know, like I'm winning,
I'm playing with Winnie the Pooh or whatever,
character that pops up on the screen, whatever world.
And, those are some of the, like,
I don't know, just memories.
I don't ever leave your hand. One of those core memories. Right.
So, Kingdom Hearts is something
that I wish I would experience for the first time again.
I remember, yeah.
When that was first coming out, we were camping at Dillon Beach,
and that was back when we, like Game Informer and stuff like that.
So we got information
and there was this news that there's a new Final Fantasy, but it was going to have
Disney characters in it.
And it was, it was at a buzz before the game came out.
And yeah, that was like a lot of hype.
I know one of the first games I remember a lot of hype before it even came out.
Yeah for sure. So that that definitely mine. Yeah.
Yeah.
What about you, John?
Yeah. I'm thinking Halo probably.
And I say that and I bite my own tongue in the same, word
because I know there's a new halo Halo infinite out and I haven't played it.
But I remember back in the day when we had the time and we lived here,
and so that, you would play through all the halos together.
And it was just such a good game, like it was well made of its time especially.
It stood out above everything else.
So. Good. Yeah.
But aside from games, I would love to be able to rewatch for the first time
both Avatar The Last Airbender, because that was just such good writing.
I mean, we were young watching this animated show
that seemed like it's for kids, but the writing was for adults for sure.
And then heroes remember heroes like.
And. Yes.
I don't even remember, I think NBC yeah.
Yeah, it was so good at the time and they tried to do a reboot.
It just wasn't as good.
And I'm sure if you rewatch it now, it seemed cheesy and cheap.
But back then when we didn't have MCU and things like that,
it was, yeah, groundbreaking.
And it is in the development of another reboot.
So we could be cool. Yeah.
That'd be, for me, the no surprise hero World of Warcraft.
That idea of a game that's that big, that's always connected.
It's always live that community, to to just get lost in the Barrens or,
you know, wherever, that is as much as you play it.
Now, we've been playing it for over 20 or 20 years at this point.
And it it just can't capture that like the first time.
And I even when somebody new comes to the game,
like experiencing it through them is the best.
So that would be one game I wish I could experience one more time
like they'll having.
It was the game you bought a PC for, you know, gaming PC for
and yeah, that was good days.
Good days guys. Right?
Let's go ahead and get into our news.
So first off we're going to be talking about Daredevil season two.
So spoiler warning for that.
If you guys haven't seen the first episode of Born Again.
But we just heard from the show co-creator or co.
Yeah, showrunner that Karen and Foggy will be returning for season two. So
when you're watching their first episode, there are definitely some reshoots.
And that's because Kevin, foggy Bill, Bob Iger came in and said like,
no, no, no, guys, we need to clean up how we do Disney shows or a marvel shows.
They're not working well.
And so Agatha was the first one
to have a showrunner, a show Bible, things like that.
And one of the things they changed was like
Karen and Foggy weren't in the episode.
And he's like, that's crazy. I mean, we need to have Karen.
They are Daredevil.
They're they're his corner.
They're his soul and morality.
So they brought him in and you could feel it.
But if you guys know what, I'm kind of talking a little bit to the spoilers.
People will move away.
Foggy dies in the first episode.
In the first ten minutes. Yeah.
So the question is, how do you bring him back?
We see this all the time in comic books.
You know, people being brought back from the dead.
Do you think it'll be a psychological thing,
or do you think that we're going to get some sort of like Lazarus Pit?
What do you what do you guys think?
Well, a quick question, then. How does he die?
Because that changes a lot, how we can bring him back.
So he just shot the.
Video Jonathan haven't seen it yet.
So, Yeah.
He is shot in the chest by balls.
Okay.
So I mean, that in itself, he could be in the hospital and recover from right.
In, in the, in the show, because this happens in the first 15 minutes.
We then jump one year ahead and he has been dead for a year.
So Daredevil and Karen both think he's dead.
Everybody thinks he's dead,
and both of them move on with their lives because of it.
I almost so. Yeah, I mean, go ahead.
Yeah.
Like, we saw the hand and the, the ninjas and stuff, like how they have
that resurrection ability.
They could write it that way.
Was in his character is always going to be one who was resurrected from the dead.
And that would be, you know, a supernatural twist to his character
who is very,
you know, walking the straight and arrow and just a normal guy
in the superhero world.
So I don't think they would do something like that.
I think it would be more likely that he was taken by somebody else,
kept alive, you know, one of these secret organizations,
kingpin or somebody and, you know, kept alive and healed and to be
either used as leverage or blackmail against Daredevil later
on, or maybe to get information out of him or something like that.
But I don't I hope in the end his character doesn't actually
change dramatically, maybe grows, you know,
finding new purpose or something like that, but not to be.
Oh, he's a now he's an undead lawyer. Yeah.
And Jane is, you know. The zombie. Lawyer.
In the court.
Yeah, yeah.
Your honor, brains.
Yeah.
That's a actually a super good idea, John, but I was thinking more like,
I don't really care about this character,
so I feel like maybe a little bit like flashback.
Flashback points or like something in his mind
that's telling
and kind of trying to help them steer in the right way,
because then we'll get some, like, relationship,
bonding between them even in like, an afterlife and kind of make a helped
Mike make certain decisions,
but not like to bring him back or keep him alive or do whatever.
I just think I don't
I don't think he's like, he might be strong in this series,
but he's not really, like, strong in the Marvel Universe.
Right?
To me,
there are times where, like, She-Hulk, he pops up in comics, with the She-Hulk.
But even at that,
he's kind of just like that character to joke around, about, that.
Yeah. If I if I remember right.
I think, like She-Hulk
sleeping with, like, another dude and they're in the
same apartment together, so he just hears it all night, but, Right.
I don't know, I just do we care like Frank.
I know you're like, watching this. Well, keep it up already.
Yeah, I. Would say
the key with foggy and with Karen is that they keep Matt Murdock still.
Matt, without falling too deep into like, I am Daredevil.
You know, like the Batman problem, right?
Where Bruce Wayne is all but forgotten for for, Batman.
The thing that keeps Matt still grounded is his friends.
And with Karen out of the picture, because she also moves to save Sisko
after this event.
And as she's gone. So he's by himself.
And he does seem to be losing himself a lot.
Not. Necessarily Punisher if he doesn't have that that balance in his life.
Right.
But that's part of
that's the problem with Daredevil is you don't want him to go full Punisher.
You have a Punisher for that.
You want him to still be like lawyer first, Daredevil second.
Yeah.
So that's kind of the problem with me is
I do want there to be something that keeps him grounded.
And, what I would like for him to try to do,
if they're going to be so adamant about bringing foggy back,
is to do the Joker Batman thing that we see from the Arkham games.
Joker dies in one of the Batman games. Yeah.
And this is. Yeah.
He's still yeah, he's still there in that future games,
but he's basically like the devil on Batman's shoulder the whole time,
kind of whispering in his ear, suggesting things, his morality check.
And that would be very cool to me to see foggy
kind of like sitting next to him while he's sitting there,
you know, fighting somebody or he's about to punch somebody might be too hard.
And he's like, that's not what you would do, Matt.
You know,
I think that would be kind of a fun little duality there of different characters.
Do we want to see him like Joker? Oh, sorry.
Or do I want to see him like Joker where he's all, messed up looking like,
you know, Joker was.
I would like to see him always show up with, like, a chest in it
or like a bullet in his chest.
And I was, like. A bit of blood on the shirt.
Yeah, a little too dark.
I think that
would tease, like, a, interesting lesson or something like that to everybody.
Also, to, you know, to the audience that, you know, somebody who passes
isn't truly gone if you remember them kind of thing like that.
Right? Yeah.
You know, people can live on forever as long as we learn from
the things they taught us and stuff like that.
So I think that's a little too deep for the type of show we're watching.
Yeah, it's a little too deep for this show.
Okay. So I yeah, I don't.
I doubt they would go that route.
But every kind of cool.
It's not too deep for Daredevil though,
because his whole thing is that he was raised in the church is bombs.
And, a nun.
It's not too deep for the character, but maybe Trent is, because.
I'm trying to get cut.
Kind of
because I watched all the season one, and then I watched a little bit of season
two back when they first aired and then stopped.
So I finished season two or in the beginning of season three.
So right now he's like struggling with his faith
and trying to, you know, regain his strength and all that stuff.
So it's really good.
Arc that he's in the middle of.
Season three is my favorite one. So yeah. So.
That's when you get a bull's eye to is in season three.
So he's going to be from let's go ahead. Move forward.
We have a monopoly moving.
At first I'm like, that sounds stupid,
but it's being written by the guys who do that Dungeons and Dragons.
I but to me, yeah.
What do you think speaks to about this?
Yeah.
I mean, okay, so, I'm kind of looking forward
to potentially seeing it
for the fact that it was done by the Dungeons Dragons breakers.
And then I'm kind of like picturing it to, like, it'd be like this big,
trying to think like this big city, right?
Of just, like, glamor, big buildings and stuff.
Like, what kind of the things that you want to strive for,
strive for, like buy property on, well,
Park Place or something like at the end, right? Yeah. Boardwalk.
It'd be nice to see those cities were like, yeah, this is the ghetto.
We don't really care about these ones, but,
you know, people still own the real estate and it'd be great.
So, yeah.
Yeah, it'd be funny to see, like, this is maybe like this, group of guys,
like, consistently like, try to, like, buy a property, right?
So it'd be funny, like to see, like, those kinds of wars or whatever.
And, and I could see a lot of humor with this thing, but I think at the end,
obviously, like the
the lesson learned,
I would feel like if I was like pitching this movie
to it's like, okay, what happens when? So it does buy it all.
And then what? Like, what do you have?
I mean, you probably like
ruined relationships or whatever when you do own everything but something.
A twist that I would really like to see though,
is something that the Lego movie did
the whole time you're watching this movie, but at the end of it,
you see it realized that there's people that playing with these Legos.
So I would like to say during the movie,
if there was like this, you could say god like type character that's changing
things around or events that are happening that they don't know why.
And it's because there's someone orchestrating the whole game, board game.
If you do that, then at some point, whoever's the banker
has to be stealing from the bank.
That'd be great. Now.
Or like somebody cheating in the game, when we find out later on, it's like,
oh, that's because they were hiding that they had this card or something like that.
That's our brother Miguel.
Yeah.
So to me, I'm thinking like, is has to have Jack
the Jack black in it or somebody like him has got to be.
Getting that. Right away.
I'm thinking of the Jumanji. Like how good those were.
Those are.
But I'm thinking that in the world of the cat
in that movie with Mike Myers, I remember how like, when cool that.
I love them was.
I was forgotten, Jim. Dude.
So good, so good. And so that says one.
And it wasn't it wasn't good.
It isn't like platinum is amazing praise.
Like him when he's doing the whole chef scene and stuff in it.
Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.
I think that's why I got a lot of bad rap, but I thought it was hilarious.
I love that movie.
Oh my God. Yeah.
So I'd like to see Jack black as some some rich guy in the city or whatever.
And he's going around trying to buy up all the buildings in town.
And then there's two young kids who realize like, well, no,
if you guys buy everything and he and he's jacking up rent and stuff like that,
so people can't afford anything.
And so two young kids realize like, well, he buys up everything he's got owner all,
and we won't have anywhere to live and blah, blah, blah.
So two young kids have to like, work together to try to overthrow this guy
that's trying to make a monopoly. And it's in their small town.
So that's a good idea to have,
like someone that's trying to buy it all and then the kids or whatever.
But I kind of want to see something a little different.
Like I want to see like some trade war type stuff to like Wolf on Wall Street.
Leonardo. Yeah.
And they're always.
Yeah.
Especially with, with what you're mentioning beforehand.
Like, we see like this big battle.
Like if it's a serious thing,
these writers, I think it would be a joke, but would it be a seriously like,
if it is this big battle amongst like four different kings of New York or whatever?
And then at the end, you zoom out, you see,
it's like four kids in one of his apartment. Kirito.
So he's like, oh yeah, all these asshole
attitudes is actually just these four kids sitting around a table.
That'd be kind of a fun little thing, like, oh, it's all childish.
The funny thing is, a first original creator of monopoly
made the game to teach people that that monopoly is bad
and capitalism is bad, but then was kind of upset by it.
Her game was bought and sold, blah blah blah blah.
But I think it was like that.
And it was celebrating capitalism and the police and stuff like that.
She's always hated that.
And so it's funny that, well, we're talking about this movie.
We're all coming to the same consensus
that at the end there's a lesson to be learned,
that the lesson that she wanted in the first place is that it's not great to
own everything.
But I mean, with with John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein,
the two writers on this, I do feel like it will be a comedy.
And maybe there is a thing where we kind of do like,
a yeah, a satire on, on capitalism, but also like
just these guys constantly making all their money and losing it all
because, like, you keep going around to the poor area every time you go past go,
this could be a part where they go to jail and somebody's
gonna have a car to get out, stuff like that.
Maybe they can make a little bit of jokes
about that, you know, Community Chest or whatever.
Yeah, I think it's a little soft, right?
Because, you want to have this lesson, but then you also make this game
where, like, that's the point you want to win, right?
And so you make me do it. Right.
But it'd be funny to kind of see, like what you said,
like, go, past these poor areas, whatever.
But imagine, like, like these, like big wigs, right?
Or just trying to get these, like, really nice properties,
but somehow they keep landing, right.
Whatever. They did make it on these poor properties.
So all these, these like people with these small
properties are getting rich because they keep landing on them.
I think that'd be funny.
They just be like, oh fuck, Boulevard or whatever it's called.
Know? Yeah,
one dude's always in the railroad. Two
it's all on the writers.
Because again, when I hear monopoly movie, like, why are we doing this?
You know, this reminds me of that battle.
Well, you know what?
Honestly, I'm saying this, but that battlefield movie, what is it called?
Battleship. Battleship movie? When that thing was announced.
Kind of stupid. It's not the worst movie. It's actually.
Kind of. Good. Yeah, yeah.
It's just the premise.
When you think of, like you're, you're
grasping at straws to take a board game that has no depth to it.
And you're you're making all of the story, all of the at almost nothing.
You're taking a picture and writing a whole book about it.
And it's like,
that's that's kind of a lot just to get the value that it provides
from being recognizable.
Yeah.
But you know, if it if you can make a good movie out of it, then do it.
It's still it's still a recognizable name.
It's almost like the barbarian. Invasion I have.
I mean they have like different jobs and stuff like that,
but they're not like a super, like, story based, established concept already.
Like the indie was. Right?
And they I thought, that movie's great.
I love the Batman movie. Cracks me up.
I one thing it's kind of disheartening is the fact that these guys aren't
making more Dungeons and Dragons movies.
Like that thing to me was so great.
Yeah, I was wondering. Like, make another one.
All right.
Moving forward, Michael Hirst, he's
the creator of the Viking series and his Viking spinoff.
He's making a new series for Amazon called Blood Ax.
So just a little, little story behind blood ax, Eric.
Blood ax, and his wife, Gun Hilde will also be on the show.
He was ruthless, both in politics and in combat.
His father was a king of Norway.
Eventually, what happens is Blood ax takes over Norway and then.
And then takes over Northumbria.
So he's like this conquering.
He's one of the first big kings.
Did you guys have a chance to watch the Vikings series?
And what are we needing?
Why do we need more of these basic. Oh my God, yes.
I watched it all, and I think it's, crazy.
Binge watch it during, like, one of the my first born or something like that
and on leave or whatever, but it's got this like,
it's, hints of Game of Thrones without the intense, like, magical side.
Like there are some stuff like, I don't know what you call it.
There's, there's some,
spiritual type stuff that goes on, but it's a really grounded also.
And, and, it just, I don't know, it's just the characters were perfect to me.
I had a blast with it.
It was definitely, like, after the first season.
You could tell, like, the budget went up, right?
The first season was horrible. Like fighting.
Like I'm just seeing a bunch of people laughing and shit.
But then next thing you know.
Yeah, now we're doing, like, crazy, like, ripping bodies apart and stuff like that.
Like, really gory. It gets gorier.
The seasons where they go attack France.
You're like, this is the movie budget. This is crazy. Expensive.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah.
I don't know, it was just, good storylines with, issues that were happening
of like, who's helming what and who's taking charge when others are gone.
And, I don't know, it was just that, again, it's it's Game of Thrones to me
without the crazy, not as much magic, you know, I guess.
And the politics aren't as intense either, too.
Like, you write about the Game of Thrones thing,
but it was also kind of like the scaled back a little bit.
So it's a little bit more enjoyable to watch
unless like you have to focus on absolutely every little detail.
Because it was just like oh yeah I know that guy with the ax.
He's going to go to that guy with the ax
and like it was nice like that, you know in that way.
Yeah.
And also the thing too is, is that was based off of a legend amongst
the Norse, about, Ragnar Lothbrok, who was kind of like everybody's dad.
This character, like, literally has a statue of him in Norway,
so, like, this is actually a real person.
And when when we get the spinoff or like later in the seasons
for Vikings, that character, this son is a real character.
So it's interesting to see the take kind of go into
like the book basically like these are real characters.
So yeah, this is more their history than fantasy.
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
What is it that you guys want to see out of this
that we might not have seen before?
Like, for me, I would like to see other cultures
and their interactions, like, we got a little bit with, like, France
or whatnot, but, with Northumbria and things like that. No.
Like, I would like to see other nations at this time kind of come into conflict
with the Vikings and how they handle them, because, they were
they were different than their neighbors in a lot of ways.
And also, let's show the Vikings more extensively
like they were farmers first, Raiders second.
But every so we show them on screen.
Yeah they're raiding it.
So it would be of if you guys played Valhalla.
It's a great interpretation of them.
Like most of what they're doing is just trying to establish colonies and yeah,
and survive in a land that has actual feudal, feudal whatever, like actual land.
But instead, like,
so exact all time in these movies, you see some more of that?
What. Like what?
So is this post first Vikings.
So at the end of the Vikings series, I remember like,
yeah, they were kind of being drifted away and and like actual a history.
Right.
Like adopting like,
Catholicism and all that stuff.
So it's like the Vikings kind of slowly went away.
I'm assuming this is beforehand.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Because this is a long span and a lot of different areas
that are Vikings, you know, technically.
And so yeah, this would be I think this is beforehand.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I don't know, maybe that continued conflict of, like the people going away
essentially, maybe they feel like their, culture is being written off,
you know, because of maybe conflicts with other cultures and stuff like that,
like we see in the lots of the, The Last of the seasons,
maybe something like that.
More where that conflict, I don't know.
Yeah, I like that idea because like in The Last Kingdom,
which is a very good series and actually making a movie for right now.
If you guys haven't watched that, I absolutely recommend it.
Maybe even with the Vikings.
And in that one specifically, they're taking over England
and there are certain tribes of the Vikings
that have joined the English side and are now kind of like English boys.
You know, they're just they're like, oh, we're still Dane.
And they're like, no, you're not, you know, you're you're go to church now.
You're not worshiping the trees like we do. Whatever.
Yeah. So, you know.
Yeah, we need to actually see out like deals
being made, like Vikings make making deals with, like, Englishmen or whatnot.
And then kind of betraying their own tribe.
I would mind saying that. Yeah.
I like and from, like, Game of Thrones, I like the,
you know, elevated fantasy side of it, dragons and magic and whatnot.
And I know this isn't going to have that to it
because it's just a totally different vibe.
But I think more depth to the story, like you're saying,
like, doesn't have much the politics and stuff like that.
It doesn't have to be so strategic and super complicated.
But like you're saying like kind of elaborate
on the culture more and like, what does it look like
when they go back home when they're not in war?
What are their bakers, you know, look like they have to eat?
There's there's a butcher somewhere.
It's like they're not all just, you know, the warriors like.
And Star Trek.
We see the Klingons like.
Well, somebody makes the Klingon armor.
Somebody you know does builds their ships.
Where's the engineers? Where's the doctor?
You know, we only see warriors, so it'd be cool to see kind of.
Yeah.
The the depth in their culture that you don't get from the other shows.
Yeah.
That is kind of a blindspot in Star Trek itself, too, is the fact
that we don't see a lot of people who are not in Federation.
And I remember very clearly the one episode of Voyager I could think of
where, Harry Kim has a like a what if episode of
what if he didn't go on Voyager and it's like, you know,
oh, there's this coffee shop with those who were like,
there's coffee shops in in Starfleet, you know, there's like all kinds of these.
It's like, oh, I didn't even think about how people are like,
oh, that guy's an artist.
You're not on a ship somewhere fighting Klingons or whatever.
It looks like Klingons at that point.
So yeah, that would be kind of cool to kind of expand that.
Well, both in Star Trek, because now I'm thinking about it.
And here too. Yeah, yeah.
And the last thing too is like, I think Vikings was originally made
for the History Channel.
The second one was made for Netflix is the first time that Amazon taking it.
And Amazon
has been leaning hard into fantasy, The Rings of Power and Wheel of Time.
So they kind of are getting pretty good at making those fight scenes and
making them look good.
Let's move forward.
We're gonna be going into our discussion segment for this one.
And a discussion this week is, the best and worst adaptations.
And when does Hollywood get it right or wrong?
So first off, for this one, we're going to be going over
some of the good adaptations.
We have some of the bad adaptations
we have, because it seems like it's something that
I can't tell you how many times I've told people like, oh, that's me.
So comic book, I picked up a video game
and it's getting better and better in my opinion.
What do you guys think makes a good adaptation when it's
stick strictly to the source material, or when they try to and reinvent it
and you think it.
I think it, I think it has to be reinvented.
I think sticking to the source material, you get the same thing
on a different medium, which doesn't always translate
well if you take a comic book and you're making it,
you know, shot for shot in a live action, you know, series,
it just doesn't play the same.
It wasn't made for that, you know, that medium.
But I think also it's, largely based on fan expectations from the source material,
because if you make something that is such a cult classic,
like I'm going to say this thing and it's going to sound like a sin
if they were to remake back to the future right now.
What a sin exactly.
People would hate. It because that is, everybody loves it so much that
to remake it, you're going to inevitably butcher it in some way, right?
Like if you take, you know, something that is so dear to people
and do your best with it, it's still not going to meet their expectations.
So the trick to me,
I mean, and I'm nobody in the business but to find something that is good
but not thoroughly, like exploited or not, you know, saturated in the market.
For example,
the first Iron Man movie was so good because Iron Man was a comic book,
but it wasn't like everybody's talking about it all the time right now.
It wasn't a real big hit, you know? It was just it was good.
It was just one of them.
But then, you know, when you do Superman, you know, there's a little more judgment
around that because he's a little more well known.
So, yeah, I think it to getting a source material
that is adaptable more than whether you adapt it or not.
I think you have to adapt it, but you have to get one
that's easily adaptable without offending everybody or making people go crazy.
Yeah.
I remember
specifically with
Iron Man being in a comic book shop after the movie release and thinking like,
this is like a new era of what movie should look like.
And there was some nerd.
In there.
Who was all like, yeah, this is what Iron Man looks like.
The comics I'm like.
And I'm thinking to myself, like,
I have never even open an Iron Man comic book,
and this guy's worried about it not being accurate.
Who the hell knows who Iron Man is? Exactly.
But now everybody does. It.
You know, like the comic book had it wrong, but.
Yeah. That's like going to the galaxy.
Everybody, let's go to these Galaxy movies.
I would love to be the person who had a Garbage Galaxy
comic book before the movies came out.
Yeah, I don't know anybody. Yeah.
To, or throw a hat into this, so I think a good reputation, obviously.
And we've seen it, like really recent and I'll name it shortly after.
Is that they are pulling like the beloved parts of what we love about
like the source material, but like doing their own thing with it
doesn't have to be the same story, because now
we're just going to critique it like crazy and movie.
I'm kind of like referencing, right?
I guess I'm referencing right now
is the Sonic movies and how successful they have been.
So the like, the Sonic, the characters themself like to the T, right?
They're perfect and like their origin part of it also.
But then you got someone like funny that can pull off the, Doctor Eggman.
Jim Carrey, and it doesn't have to be the typical,
yeah, they one of the costumes, but it doesn't have to go
the same route like we usually see in a movie. So like,
I mean, obviously they did that, right.
And now we got three or what? Three?
Now I'm about to lean on four
now with the ending of three that it explains,
like what we're going to expect with number four.
Yeah.
But then you have and I hate to say it
because when I was little, I used to watch this quite often.
The old or the Super Mario movie.
Right. Super Mario Bros.
I loved that, I loved it by the.
Time I. Did.
Yeah, but you.
Got, like, like, kind of like a confusing plot.
It could be at some,
some points and then you have like, miss, what do you call it, miss?
Oh my God. Peach.
Oh my gosh. No. Character cap miscast.
Miscasting very different than what it really, originally is.
But again, it's a movie that I kind of liked when I was little,
but if we were to see it again, we were like, what the fuck is this?
And then compared to that masterpiece that that, the animated movie that came out,
then it's like, okay, that that was perfect to me with Bowser.
Okay.
Oh, okay. Bowser always steals peach, right? Like that's the thing.
But did we ever get, like, a love life story with him?
So it's like, again, you're taking, like, the best parts of what we love
and bringing it over and then adding something new to it where, like, now
you got the Bowser song thing in a page, like a hit, and that can't not.
Right?
So yeah, you got to throw a twist to it.
But still I brilliant pull the things that are beloved.
I think that movie is a direct like depiction of 90s movie studio.
That was the style back then. It has.
It's that with the, you know, a story from a very underdeveloped game at the time.
Now there's so much more Mario content. It's been shaped a lot more.
So the new one is definitely based on newer Mario games and like,
it's been very thoroughly adapted.
Now, if we look at it from today, it looks kind of like a steampunk movie.
So if you were to retry, to remake it as Mario, a steampunk type movie,
that would fit a lot better.
You could remake that version of it.
But like I saying, like, there's so much more Mario now that that was just
based on like the NES, Mario, I think, or maybe the N64, but yeah.
Three was on the horizon like it was in development.
I think that came out in 91. So yeah, it was 93.
But that's a really good example of them just kind of ditching a lot
of what they do know about Mario. Like, we know what toad looks like.
He doesn't look like that.
We know it.
And like, Bowser is not a dinosaur, but they made him a dinosaur.
Yeah, right.
You know, so there was all kinds of thing
they took liberties with that, I think turn away most fans.
What's with the school in the city?
Why are we in the city?
So if like that, that was were just totally
now does it stand alone as a fun romp outside of it?
Like, I just watched that movie again a couple years ago for Snoop podcast,
and revisiting it is like, this is nearly unwatchable.
Actually, it's pretty bad through the lens of being a kid.
It was like, oh, I don't have any other Mario content.
I need this.
But as an adult, you're watching.
You're like, this is I mean, even the acting is bad in this thing that John
Leguizamo, who I think is amazing now, but yeah, it is pretty awful.
I want to throw my hat on on like, the what makes a good adaptation
is you take what is like the heart of the reason we like it.
Yeah. So,
you know, The Last of Us, it's
that survival and leaning on a father, father and daughter relationship.
Let's go back to the daddy.
Which about daddy
is the idea that you live in a fantasy world, but there's, like,
this little wild, crazy stories in a band, like a little party.
Like weird things happen. Fun things happen in a little party.
If you can pull that out, you can almost change everything around it.
And so for that Dungeons Dragons movie where we're watching these two, that right
on that one guy I remember like his name was like Jonathan, but not Jonathan.
They think he's going to be talking about them and he's like writing.
He's a he's an echo.
They write him outside the window and it's like we're going to part of you.
You know, it's like such a classic thing.
And as a DM, there's so many times
where I'm like, guys, if you guys waited for like two seconds,
you would have heard you're fine.
But instead, Daniel's crashing through a window
because he thinks it's going to look cool.
And he rolled good on a dice.
That that pulled at the heart of what makes Dungeons and Dragons good.
And then, like, wrapped everything else around it.
So if you can nail that, you're good.
Like Game of Thrones.
If you can nail the political drama that's really good in the books, there it is.
So many times they forget that, like the avatar movie that came out in like 2010.
First off, you changed anything.
There was no absolutely no reason for that.
And then there's like, you guys don't have any of the whimsy
or the heart that's in this thing that makes us love it
instead of just showing things, bending it made no sense.
Yeah. Do you think there's too much?
So you brought up Last of Us.
Do you think there's too much of a copy and paste?
Because I feel like a lot.
Okay. So I'm going to compare it to.
So Last of Us just really felt like the video game adaptation.
And I feel like there was too much that was really added.
But you had wicked, which was pulled from the obviously the play,
but the movie brought like, okay, now we have more dialog in between
the characters.
We could kind of fall in love with the characters a little bit more.
Yeah, they're building more of a relationship
because they're conversating instead of just like, singing songs, whatnot.
Do you feel like there's too much,
like they need to break down a little bit, you think?
Last one, I should maybe add a little something to it.
Or are fans just going to be pissed off and upset about it?
When I think about that, I think about Lion King a lot.
When they did a live action Lion King movie,
the first one, our complaint was that it was too much like the story was too
much like the regular movie.
What a shot for shot.
Yeah, but but if it wasn't, we would complain about that too. Exactly.
And so I think for The Last of Us, there's a lot of people
who don't know about that game at all, and they are being woken up to this
amazing story. Yeah, okay.
But for wicked, there were a lot of things that, by the original medium
being a play, being a musical that they probably didn't have the ability
to show a lot of dialog.
And what is it that I said beforehand and it pulls at the heart?
What is it that relationship between the rich girl and or the,
you know, like the famous popular girl, whatever.
And then the outcast being pulled out and put on a screen.
Yeah.
There. Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, like that kind of like dichotomy, the Mean Girls aspect of it.
That being amplified, I think is a good movie is, damn it,
it's really I'm actually looking forward to we could part two.
If you need to know.
I know I just saw the play, so I did.
Really?
I can tell you all the spoilers.
So let's go ahead
and look at a couple of successful,
adaptations, and then we're gonna look at some of their bad.
I'll start us off on, on a really great one.
I think the Lord of the rings trilogy.
Yeah. You just can't do better at that.
I think it's as faithful as you possibly can be.
There are things where I think an adaptation knows it like that won't
translate well.
So, like Tom Bombadil,
a lot of people complain, like, why is Tom Bombadil not in this?
I don't think he would have done well in this way.
First off, you breaks up the story pretty, pretty wildly,
and he's kind of a whimsical, floating like a cute character from Star Trek,
so he wouldn't fit well with this like, large saga we're setting up in the books.
You have time to breathe with that.
But in the movie you did, and I think.
Overall.
Perfect adaptation, probably the best one I did like, because every argument.
It's so good that you assume, like the Lord of the rings was,
was a movie first, you know?
Yeah, yeah. A lot of ways. Yeah. Man.
No, I said, I yeah, I thought minority like Sonic was perfect.
To. Me it was. Like.
It was great. So. Yeah, I'm.
I'm surprised you're not mentioning Harry Potter.
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Because I was wait for that one. Yeah. I
ask about it.
I think it's the best one. Best version.
Yeah I know, yeah.
The things that they took away from the books in
the movies were like kind of like, I don't care, right?
I think I said it before in the first one there was like a specific ghost.
They cast the ghost, they did all the work.
The actor was upset that he wasn't in the movie.
But then when you read it, like
from the book into the movie, like I can see him gone.
So maybe it was the right decision.
There's a second Quidditch game in the book.
Felt extremely rushed.
Maybe we didn't need it, so they didn't do it.
And I felt like, yeah, I felt like the things that they took away
from the book to the movie were perfect.
And it just smart decisions that you don't have to pull everything, you know?
With Prisoner of
Azkaban, they changed how the reveal happens, right?
With, the mouse or with the rat being, everything is.
Yeah. What was it, though? Do you remember.
The. Yeah. They changed.
I think they changed the reveal to where it happened before him.
But you weren't like it wasn't Harry being surprised in that moment.
And so it was like, well, they're making it more cinematic in the movie, too.
It's like a surprise for both us and Harry at the same time.
I think that was a good move.
Like, I kind of just that you needed that.
And then the way the time
turn, the situation worked, I thought was shot perfectly.
But that's my favorite of the Harry Potter movies.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's almost
it's almost like the stuff that they took away were right decisions, you know.
Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
I'll give you another really good one for me.
Oh, sorry. You got one? No. Good. No.
Game of Thrones, of course.
Is, Yeah.
Yep. Everything. Everything.
Game of Thrones has been good so far. No complaints.
But, like, I remember you reading the books too.
And you would tell me chapter by chapter kind of how
what was going on in the story and stuff and then us watching it together do.
It's like there's I know
there's a lot that, you know, probably didn't make it on screen.
But yeah, it takes that kind of changing things to fit better.
Like, I mean, they did cut out some really good stuff, but it's like, Katlin,
that being, beheaded and then resurrected with, Lady Stoneheart
and a big, big cut on her neck.
And so it's like, that looks really cool.
And visually that would look that would that would be great for us.
And it's such a great, like, elevates the story and puts so much more investment
in that character.
But for the mainstream audience, that's trying, that's just
tiptoeing into this whole fantasy world that might be a little bit past
their their limit, maybe pushing past the edge.
So I think that's why they had to dial back.
They had to take the tops off of some of the story.
That was a little too out there.
Rein it in a little bit
so that the average, audience member could, you know, enjoy it as well.
And make it a little more mainstream.
Yeah. It's hard to like Lady Stoneheart
literally a zombie that had to hold her neck.
She could speak.
And I remember so well, we were wondering, are they going to bring her in?
The actress,
on a whim, posted on her Instagram, like a picture of rocks shaped into a heart
just because she's like, oh, look, it's heart shaped rocks.
Whatever she thought is cute. Holy cow. You don't.
The amount was subtly disgusting.
Like, there's 14 hearts, there's 14 rocks that there's that there's going to be
these people that are going to be here. And then it was like, oh, you messed up.
And then that in February, February of 90, whatever, she was sent a picture of her,
like holding her neck, like, oh my God, that must have been giving us a hint.
No, she just likes to be choked back.
You. I think.
Yeah. Right.
Rick in, In the books.
Wild is that he's actually on the island.
Escargots.
It's an island with cannibals that ride on unicorns.
And it's like you can't. Show that on TV.
That's so silly. A little too much. Yeah.
But there are, like, White Harbor, I think it's so freaking cool in the books,
but it's just something you didn't have time for in the, in the, in the show.
That's like this.
Like, oh, what about the Lannisters of the North guys?
Like, where's the North's money?
They have their own version of the Lannisters.
They're from White Harbor.
The merrily, merrily, I think it's called, And they'll they'll work
with the Lannisters just to screw them over and funnel money to the Starks.
Like they're really cool family.
And I really wish they showed it
more like they had, like, this one place that, like, literally,
they kind of keep as a prestige area where the king one time came,
the king of the North came one time, like swears frailty to them.
And they look at the Starks as like brothers.
And it's such a cool story.
And they are the rich family, of the area. So.
But that's something you just can't you don't have time in the show.
Who is the the Ironborn?
I think Prince or King who I think is, very and or something like that,
who would wear a full suit of armor
and would jump from ship to ship and fight and armor.
But, you know, if he falls between the ships, he's gonna drown.
I was like, damn that.
That's such a cool. Character to what I love, too.
Is his brother the one that we do get in the show?
The the whole subplot between the two of them
is that he hates him so much because he stole his wife,
and it's specifically told in the books.
East, who took his wife because he has a bigger dick for them. It's
that's the whole.
Thing, is that he's like, this fierce war that jumps from ship to ship and blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. But man, I'm not packing a lot of heat.
Okay?
Brother, I understand.
The one more I want to add to this is the Dark Knight
trilogy, because they were like, hey, we've done Batman to hell.
How are we going to change it up?
First of all, yeah, Christopher Nolan, you get a good director first.
And they made this kind of believable world.
Even when Bane's blowing up the stadium, you're kind of like.
I mean, yeah, if you.
If you're Bane, that makes sense.
With Bane being in this world kind of makes sense.
How do you make Joker seem so believable?
Yeah, this joker seems somewhat believable.
And I think that they took an adaptation from the comics.
Like, they pulled it obviously, from a lot of the earlier years
from not necessarily year one, but kind of the earlier stuff.
And they made a Batman that I think is so the gold standard that all other Batman's
now I compared to the Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale Batman in my opinion.
And they had all kind of source material and they cherry picked
just the things that work well, and they built on it too.
I can't imagine somebody looking at Dark Knight and thinking.
Oh, no, know.
I think I like, you know, the Batman looks better, right?
Oh, yeah. I really like nipples on my suit, actually.
You know,
they're so useful.
Yeah.
I mean, at least if they were little intended or something,
they write that into the book.
The more so one of the things we're pulling,
we we didn't mention it
beforehand, as much, but now it's we're looking at some of our favorites.
It sounds like one of the things that makes a good adaptation is removing
things from the source material and adding things to improve it.
Looking at the bad adaptations that we could think of,
let's keep that in mind and I'll go with The Hobbit trilogy.
I started with the Lord of the rings trilogy.
Oh man, I think a bad adaptation is The Hobbit trilogy.
Not that I didn't enjoy it, but they were so worried about
packing in as much content as possible to make three movies out of a very short.
I mean, it's like not a long book I read.
I read the books and that saying something.
Yeah, you both did before the movie came out,
and it was originally gonna be two movies, and they made it three movies.
And when you're watching that, you're just like, why are we don't need
all this extra stuff? It doesn't make any sense.
And I think that they were so adamant about adding things in so much
that they lost a lot of what made the source material super good,
which is this kind of fast pace.
Each chapter has a beginning, an end to the story.
It was really meant to be like, read to your kids chapter at a time.
And they they kind of just decimated that by making this big grand story
that felt, you know, like a blob that was kind of just misshapen
and moving in one direction. It wasn't really that great.
And so I think The Hobbit was a bad trilogy,
but you guys got.
I got a shitty, Street Fighter movie, back in 2009,
I don't know, hopefully that's like, you know,
done properly.
The last, Street Fighter we were talking about.
Yeah, but, yeah, like, oh, my God, acting's horrible.
The plot was garbage.
Yeah. Characters were not even, like, faithful.
It felt like it is just like, what was even the point of this?
So this is what forced people away from
wanting to even, like, spend money on these type of, yeah, you're ruining.
I rather just go back home and play Street Fighter six and make my own life.
And it was nothing like the original game or like that,
or any of the fun of the game. No, not at all.
Not at all. Yeah.
Don't want to ever see this shit again.
So it was hard for me going, trying to find bad adaptations,
because if it looks bad, I just don't watch it.
And that's the case for almost like, all of them that people had negative
reviews, like. Well, I can't really talk too much about that.
I never seen it. But I'm jealous of you anyways.
Okay.
I don't think I saw the Assassin's Creed movies from 2016.
But I heard that that was one of them, too.
It's like, it looks familiar.
I remember it had, a certain actor, I wonder.
Yeah. There we. Go.
You're probably him.
Yeah, yeah,
I saw it.
And, you know.
It's still a shitty movie. The second time.
The giver. I remember reading the book.
I never watched the movie.
And, Ender's Game.
Also, I read the book in school,
and I didn't watch the movie, but those were both reviewed as bad.
I will defend the Ender's Game movie as much as I possibly can,
because that is a hell of a hard story to pitch.
And, especially when you get to like the sequel books to that.
But I will say that at the end of that, they still kind of land
the point that it was bad that he was good at killing these bugs.
I remember I showed that movie to Daniel, who was like, what is this?
You know, I'm like, yeah, I watch it. It's a good story.
And by the end he walked away with like a changed soul.
I was like, just like.
But he was like. He was like, wow.
So he was a bad guy.
And like, the nation was a bad guy.
And he is becoming a guy who is of like leading them.
But yeah, I think it was that bad.
But Ender's Game is kind of a tough one.
You know, that actually deserves to be adapted into a show, not a movie
that we could really let the characters breathe.
I think we're seeing a lot more success in making a series out of something
than just a movie.
Because a movie is so compact, you have to hurry up and fit it in.
And two hours, you know, maybe three max.
But it doesn't give you the the growth and character development stuff
that we love seeing now in even a mini series of eight episodes or six episodes.
Yeah. Oh.
But the show that I really want to talk about, I love the show,
but fans had a lot of complaints about it because it wasn't
close enough to the source material.
And that's Halo.
We watched and talked about Halo a lot in here and is such a good to me.
It looked especially visually so accurate, and I think the biggest thing
the fans didn't like
is that the story didn't follow what they're expecting from the game,
and especially with that, that one character,
the girl that it kind of deviated and followed her more.
Yeah. Master Chief taken off his helmet.
So much and stuff, it's like, okay, there's
I understand that a lot of the complaints, but it's mostly
just not sticking to the game closely enough.
I think it pulled a lot from the books.
And unfortunately,
I think that show would have done a lot better if it just wasn't called Halo.
It was just something else.
Well,
not about Halo, like the show actually, I think was had a pretty good production.
If it was a.
Starship, Starship trooper, branch off.
Yeah, that's.
Well, that's another good.
Oh, God, that's a great adaptation, actually.
No, you're bringing it up because the like.
Yeah, it really like, fixes the book actually,
because the book's message is a little bit wonky. Anyways.
But yeah, the Halo series,
as much as we love Paramount around here, thank you for the sponsorship.
The Halo series was a real misstep.
Before.
Like,
you know, mean like ten years ago
when you said there's gonna be a video game adaptation.
That was bad news, was going to be bad.
I think the horror movie had a lot to do with that.
Why are video game adaptations working now?
The Last of Us and like the Detective Pikachu
movie, stuff like that, why are they working now?
They didn't before.
I think because at least one of them at some point was successful.
So they decided they can put money behind it.
Because movie adaptations used to be the made for TV sci fi channel garbage,
and now they're actually okay, let's put 50 million or $100 million
behind it because it's recognizable and we've seen it pays off before.
So it's worth the investment in most cases.
Yeah.
And I think one of the big highlights
is that they pull people who actually see why the game worked.
So for,
The Last of Us, they have the game creator in the development team for that show.
So he obviously knows what it's supposed to be like.
And you know, other things too.
I'm not necessarily pulling anything specific.
But if we look at the detective Pikachu one, what?
Clearly they got a bunch of younger audiences
that grew up or, they grew up on Pokemon games to make it.
Nobody grew up on Mario.
That made the Mario movie, because that's impossible.
But you could tell that's the case for the The Pokemon movie.
Like, oh, it's the whimsy, it's the world.
The idea that you can be walking and seeing a Cubone on a field.
Is is. Almost the magic alone.
You didn't really need to change too much after that.
That was pretty.
Big when you mentioned it to Detective Pikachu,
because it was on my honorable mentions list.
Also, Tron is, another one I didn't talk about, but.
Yeah. I to give me a chance.
I love that movie.
Not in a dance station though series. Right.
And they're working on more. They're working at different areas.
Is coming up this year.
It, was just referring.
It's not a series.
No, it's not an adaptation. It was. A.
But yeah, I guess it's the same, same medium.
It's just a reboot or.
Re retell like a number two. Right.
And yeah, it's a sequel because it's the same actors.
Jeff Bridges comes forward from the old one.
Yeah, but I mean, there was a Tron in the 80s.
That's what I mean is this Tron is based off of.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's more of a. It's a sequel to the 80s one.
They're Tron Legacy is a sequel to the 80s and the Tron areas.
I just wish it wasn't Jared Leto, but
because he has, this will not satisfy his club.
Redefined his career. A lot of fans.
I hope so. I'll start over. Come on.
But I'm just so happy to have more Tron back.
It's like one of those things where we'll be shouting from the mic.
I know Dan is gonna preorder his ticket, but, the idea that they get into all world
and then just seeing that, like light cycle cut a cop car, I'm like, all right,
you guys.
Yeah.
Man, be cool.
So, yeah.
Go ahead, hit up our social media guys.
Let us know your guys's favorite adaptations.
Or worst adaptations and why you think they're working now.
And they did beforehand.
I really like this discussion.
We try to we're going to try to do some more of these discussions going forward,
because I know that they're making YouTube videos
and it's just, you know, on a slow news day.
It's for this group.
We're going to be shifting over to our watchlist.
Jonathan, why don't you lead the way?
What are we watching this March.
All right, so if you guys I'm still catching up on Daredevil,
so don't hate me.
But Daredevil Born Again is out, so you guys should be watching that.
If you haven't watched previous Daredevil, get caught up with me.
Also, survivor's back on.
So we're watching survivor, which is, you know, season 48 already.
Such good show.
Damn. That's crazy 48. Movies, though.
I just watched a movie called The Gorge on Apple TV.
I believe it was.
It came out, in February.
But, you know, it's really good.
It's already out now, so you don't have to wait.
So if you haven't watched it yet, watch that one.
Then we have the Snow White movie, is coming out this month.
Are you guys going to see that?
I am, I'm going to watch it as a hate watch.
I plan on going in and throwing popcorn at that screen.
But I do.
I'm going to go watch another movie,
but I do plan on buying the popcorn buckets for it because they're pretty.
They're pretty badass.
Thanks, man.
Yeah.
I've I figured I have to watch it because Susie wants to see it,
and she doesn't want to see a lot of movies.
But I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful that it's not at least, you know, complete garbage.
It will be a different taste. It'll be.
You're coming back to do the review on that? Yeah.
I can't wait to hear what you take. Is the crack.
This year was complete garbage.
Yeah.
I also really want to watch Mickey 17.
I think it just came out.
Yeah, my Novocain looks good.
I probably won't see it in theaters though, but that does look good.
So if you guys have time, check it out.
That's a streaming one for me too.
I can't wait to see that though,
because Jack Quaid, I am such a Jack Quaid fan now.
Great voices.
Yes. Yeah, and Lower Decks and then another Jason Statham movie.
If you guys love his movies, they're all very similar, but,
you know, can't get enough of them.
It's called The Working Man.
What's the plot? Things like. That.
It's guys.
It's like
he's a badass undercover trying to play a regular guy, leaving that world behind.
And then he realizes corruption
and people being abused, and he's like, you know what?
I got to step up, protect the abused.
So he goes around and cracking skulls and.
Sounds like he's just in the movie.
He is pretty much all.
By the way, I just saw Johnson this at the gym,
but they're making beekeeper too.
So if you guys are beekeeper fans, yeah, they they're continuing that story.
That's cool.
I'm going to have to start a DVD collection
of just all this Jason Statham movies. I need shelves.
That you could just throw in. Yeah, they're always there.
They're definitely worth.
You know, watching, like, check out Instagrams like that.
You know, they do. Was somewhat decent.
Yeah. Anything else on the list on them?
That's it. There's, Yeah.
Not a lot of great movies coming out right now,
but in the near future, we got a lot in the pipeline.
17 is definitely on my my list. That looks great.
Yeah, that looks good.
I got a couple shows I got to add to your list, Jonathan,
first off this Sunday and it's an event for me
is Righteous Gemstones the final season.
What?
Yeah I thought it was already done.
Nope.
We got one more season and it starts tomorrow night for you and me.
No way.
This is good news to me.
I didn't know this was coming out.
I thought, yeah, it's cool baby. Bobby. Billy's back. Baby.
I thought it ended perfect.
Or like, you know, like as it.
That's crazy.
I know it had a very good kind of like.
Oh, they're all watching the monster truck together. Family.
There's one more season.
The dads retired. They're getting him out of retirement.
Yeah, dude.
And I just got to watch the trailer, and this is tomorrow.
I know that tomorrow night.
I know guys.
I'm already like, what am I going to make for dinner?
Dogs outside I the data.
Trust me, I know. Dude, that's easy.
It's one of those things
like you mean Daniel, text each other random names or whatever the hell from.
And it's just such a perfect show.
My goodness, what the heck. Okay.
Surely excited I watch anything Danny McBride makes.
I love the dude. So funny, Yeah. So good.
And then also, I know that I've kind of fallen off of it,
but I do need to keep up with it. Is the Wheel of Time is starting again.
Season three, March 13th.
Are you guys watching? Will a total.
No, I haven't seen any of it.
Stunned silence. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunate.
And then this is show I'm kind of which I haven't seen yet.
It came out on the sixth is Deli Boys, and it's these two, Pakistani American
who inherit their father's, biggest convenience store.
Deli? Sorry.
It's deli boys deli.
I read anything right now, and, they find out that he was actually, like,
a crime boss and or involved in a crime family.
And now that he died, they have to continue his job,
because otherwise, there's a missing part of that crime. Family.
And so these two kids that are like, oh, great, we have to
we have to make deli sandwiches now and find out
they're actually in the middle of a big crime syndicate
and had to try to keep up the ruse.
It's it looks so funny.
And I like how it's kind of that dark humor humor thing like that, but.
Yeah. Interesting. And what's right.
What's what's that?
One of the deli boys. Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. By the way, I made it.
Interesting connection watching, Daredevil the other day.
Foggy Nelson and Oz Cobb are brothers
from the Penguin.
They have the same mom.
You think so?
The same mom. Actress. Okay.
Okay.
I was gonna say hello.
I want to see the two. I saw her come on screen.
I was like, wait a minute.
She plays, you know, Oz's mom on the, The new Penguin series is like,
oh, man, that's a whole, I mean, cross dimensional connection.
That's funny, I like it.
I would love to see Oz and, Fisk in the same room.
That kingpin penguin, Going to be in two powers, different parts of the city.
But then they were starting to rival with each other because,
bumping borders or something like that.
Yeah. Go to war.
Oh, my God, that's the Marvel DC crossover I want right there.
Yeah, that'd be so much greater than heroes versus heroes.
But the villains versus villains.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Imagine like a period where MCU or DC
or both get to the point that, like, the heroes actually all got killed off.
So it's like a rebirth.
The cities are all being taken over by villains as they rise in power.
And then, yeah, we then we need the the punishers
of the ground level heroes to start to elevator surface.
Yeah. Come to light. A really fun, it's the.
It doesn't end very well, but the beginning is the injustice.
It was a video game, and they made it a comic book and then a movie.
But the start of that is that Joker comes to Metropolis,
which Batman's like, why are you doing that?
So he goes to check it out.
And what what he's doing is he's he kills Scarecrow, takes the fear toxin, gets
with he kidnaps Lois Lane.
Superman comes in to save Lois Lane.
Boom.
Based on his fear toxin, gets into his system.
Then he sees Lois Lane as doomsday.
And he he.
So he doesn't know what he's doing.
So he takes doomsday, and he flies me to space.
Gonna kill him. And Batman is like, stop, stop, stop this Lois Lane.
And he kills Lois Lane, who just flat out she's pregnant with Superman's baby. So
and so. The whole story is like, super baby.
Hero. Yeah.
So Superman is like, I can't trust humanity to protect itself anymore.
Becomes like the king of humanity
and Batman and his, like, rag tag team are trying to stop him.
It's such a good beginning. Doesn't end super great.
But that beginning is so freaking awesome.
Yeah. Where's that movie? Come on, let's.
It is a movie.
It's animated though you can't say I don't watch.
The animated adventure. Disney animated movies are
phenomenal. Bro.
They're always good. They're not very long.
Oh, by the way, speaking of this month, next week
and we'll have a review on the Geek Fix podcast.
Of course I know why am I plugging gave this podcast you guys are listening to it.
We're gonna be discussing invincible.
The season's ending, and I think that's just like.
I mean, how do they not miss?
It's good every single time. Yeah.
So if you guys aren't watching that yet, it's always worth the watch.
And that's finale next week.
All right, let's shift over to our interview with Rob
and Elise from the nerd best friends.
Today I'm joined by Annalise
and Rob from the Nerd Best Friend podcast.
How are you guys both doing today?
Well, I'm great, thank you.
Fantastic. Thank you. Break smiles.
All right, so let's let's, let's start with you.
Annalise.
Can you break down a little bit of what this podcast is all about?
Sure.
The short, short version is that Rob and I have been best friends
for a very long time, for over 30 years.
We met in high school,
and, somewhere along the lines, we were like, let's do a podcast.
And Rob's actually done a couple of podcasts in the past,
many, many years ago, and we couldn't quite land on what to do.
So we thought, well, we're both nerds, we're best friends,
and we like to talk about, like, very nerdy things all the time.
And it's just one of the things that's hinged
our friendship is that we play games, we play video games.
We hung out and our nerds about stuff and love sharing that with each other.
And so the whole premise of our podcast is that you can be nerdy about everything
and anything, and we're going to have these conversations that either
you wish you could have or you're already having.
So that's kind of the premise of our podcast.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's our that's kind of our tagline is the nerdy Conversations.
You're already having or wish you could.
Because we always thought, you know, we have professional lives
and we've done, you know, we're in education, we're in technology.
You know, we're in management. We do all these things.
But really when we think about like,
oh, what would be like our dream job or our dream scenario, I'd be like, oh,
we'd own that comic book game store, cafe bar, and we'd hang out all the time.
Talking birds, having conversations about the new game, the new comic book,
the new movie that's coming out and all that kind of stuff.
It's like, well, we're probably not like, that's not the trajectory we went on.
So what if we did that virtually right?
Thanks to the internet, we could still just hang out
and have those conversations, meet new nerds, you know, meet new people
that have those same kind of interests and have those interesting conversations.
And so that's that's it.
The idea is you're walking into our, you know, virtual space.
Where you can nerd out about anything.
So Rob just stole my teenage journal where I was talking about my nerd cafe, and.
It's it's troubling.
We all want it, right?
Does yours also talk about, like, the lazy, like, shut up, dog
lying by the door? Kind of like you said.
Yeah.
New crypto, of course.
Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
We're on the same page.
Yeah. So you guys.
So, Rob, you actually had podcasts before this,
can you kind of touch on what those were?
And that's transition at a new show?
Sure.
I mean, this was back, our 22,000.
Yeah, probably about 20.
Years internet radio days when it wasn't even considered podcast.
At the time. Yeah, yeah.
Or it was early.
It was early podcasts, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
You mean you had to, like, download an RSS feed link kind of thing?
But my brother and I were very into, racing racecars
and NASCAR and stuff like that, because that was the era.
It was more popular than ever back in 2000 with, you know, Jeff
Gordon and Dale Earnhardt and all that kind of stuff where like,
you know, we get together on these Sundays and we, you know, drink beer
and watch these races and sit here and talk about it.
Let's start recording a podcast.
And so, we recorded that podcast, the two of us, it was called the Track
Smack Podcast because we were talking smack about NASCAR.
It was just an excuse, really, to hang out with my brother in law every week
and talk about racing kind of thing, and that kind of went nowhere.
And then he had kids and he's like, I can't do this editing anymore.
And then because I had a little bit of experience with that,
I actually did, a podcast for the school district that I work for.
And, so myself and a colleague, we set up a podcast
for the school district
all about educational technology, new releases, the idea being like,
hey, it's really tough to get professional development to all these teachers.
It's, you know, we have all these different places
for the community to learn about what's going on.
And, our school district, let's try our podcast.
And so we did that, and for a couple of seasons before
Covid hit and then being, in educational technology,
when schools shut down and everything had to go digital, we were very busy.
And yeah, this project. Also, ended up dying.
But for sure, the Nerd Best Friends podcast has been the most consistent
and the longest lasting and something that, we're actually
we're actually building an audience, right?
And we're we're having those.
I mean, we're here today
because we're making connections with, other nerds and other fields.
Everyone that we've met and gotten feedback from
has been super cool and super nice.
The idea of, you know, the nerd getting bullied
like it was when we were kids and where we kind of needed a safe space
to talk about this stuff.
Everybody's got that safe space now.
Everybody's talking about this stuff. It seems like. I mean, everybody.
We come into contact like you, Frank.
It's just been super inviting and really cool.
Yeah, that's one of the things that we like about Geek freaks as well, is
we always harken back to, you know, early 2000
when Phantom Menace came out
and all we heard about was like, oh, this is a terrible movie.
It's terrible, blah, blah, blah.
But for us kids that were our first Star Wars, Star Wars, we were like,
I don't know, I thought that was pretty awesome.
And then when you grow up, you're like, wait a minute.
We all thought it was awesome. We just were talking to each other.
And so it's like, it's nice that now we're not hiding in the band rooms anymore.
We can talk to each other about the stuff that we actually do think it's cool
and it's nice it like, you're guys. Okay, wait.
Yeah, I was going to interrupt as well. What did you.
Did you play?
I was no, I was definitely playing Pokemon cards, but I was in the band room.
Kids.
Yeah, I knew where the kids were at.
Johnny.
You were one of the hangar outers. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
We're a couple of trumpet players. There we. Go.
A couple of, of drum majors. And that's true.
That's where you eat your lunch, you hang out, and you.
That's where we were playing Magic the Gathering. That's where we were.
That's where I learned how to play poker.
Yeah, that's what that's about.
Oh, God. Yeah.
If you did just in my senior year that if you did it right,
you played poker, like in multiple classes with the same friends.
And then eventually, by lunchtime, you were finishing up the poker game
for the day, and I was like, that's how you plan a senior year.
And stuff like that. It's great.
Okay, so
with your guys, a show of you guys founded in 2021,
and I gotta say, I listen to a lot of different podcasts,
especially parties on the network.
You guys have such a well-produced show, with that practice.
That's why I was like, okay, Rob's had a podcast of the past
that makes total sense.
You guys got really great transitional music and audio quality.
What goes into producing this episode?
Every, every week.
Before you say anything?
I mean, this is good.
This is great because when we pitched the way we had the conversations
about the podcast and when we and when we, talked about it, I was a no.
I'm like, I've done podcast before.
It's a lot of work. There's so much editing.
I don't want to do it on a lease.
So you you've made the assumption which you which made logical sense.
I don't do any of it on a lease.
Does all of the production and post work and editing and I agree, it's amazing.
Yeah. So you both you both are very kind.
I don't I mean I listen to podcasts that I just my hope is that we're putting out
a product that represents who we are and we are both educators.
Right. I'm I'm a high school principal.
Rob is district level, you know, chief technology officer.
We're both management educators now.
Yeah.
That whatever we put out
should represent us professionally,
even though this is not about our professional work.
So that's that's the standard.
I push this podcast.
Are we? Actually, I really wanted to do a Buffy podcast.
I am a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I was 18 the year, Buffy was released.
I was in college, and it spoke to me in a way
that no other show had spoken to me before.
It means a lot to me personally.
We were going to do a show about that, but Rob brought up some good points.
Like, what do you do once that shows over?
Yeah, you could do things that are tangential to it, but you know,
at some point it will just naturally have an end.
And if we're going to do this, we're going to do this
in a way that we can build an audience and just keep doing it.
As long as we enjoy doing it.
And so I learned everything on the fly, how to edit.
We, you know, what tools to use.
You know, I did go by a nice microphone just to make sure
that our audio quality was good, but I have found
a little bit of a creative output in the editing and have gotten to a point
where it's my once a week, it's my Sunday activity.
Spend some time the family make breakfast.
We either record or I am editing.
So we alternate, which is also why we, you know,
we're not as timely as we would like because we record ahead of time.
We give ourselves a buffer.
So I have time to edit, but,
yeah, it's it means a lot to me to to produce something
or to have something out there with my name, our names and our voices.
Yeah, that that also just stands for the high quality that we both learned, right?
We, we met in that band room.
And if one or either of us had decided not to do marching, that we probably would
not have become best friends.
And so we learned that excellence,
from our band director at the time, that I think both of us
continue to apply those types of excellence lessons in everything we do.
You don't get into management, without wanting to strive for that.
Excellent. So our podcast should reflect that.
So I appreciate the compliments, but it's really just about,
representing us who we are and the fact that being a nerd is okay
and it's important.
And we still don't like to see kids being bullied because they
are nerds about Pokemon or,
the students at my high school are flabbergasted
that I could walk up to them and talk to them about fantasy football.
Or I can walk up to a group of ninth grade boys
who are playing magic and actually know the things.
So embracing all that are in all kids, embracing
all of them is a huge part of also just we're nerds and it's okay.
We like being nerds. It's awesome being nerds.
And that's that's important to me.
I tell people when I'm introducing the podcast,
I always say, like, just start with the most recent episode
and go backwards because I know how good it sounds.
Now. It, it always sounded good, but, you know, like, oh, if you love it now,
you'll stick with it when maybe it was a little rough back in season one.
So just listen backwards so you can jump around. With that.
But yeah.
How does an amazing job with our podcast, I, I even, I even remember
calling her one day around the end of season two.
I was listening to the podcast in the car along my list because I was
it was a long drive,
so a lot of podcast played and ours was kind of in the middle of it.
And I called her.
I said, you know what?
I think our podcast. Is. Good because I.
Was listening to these other ones and I'm like, ours was better than some of us.
We're doing something here. Good job.
Genuine surprise there by him.
We're actually okay. Yeah.
You guys.
Yeah, it's a great show and it's very conversational.
And you bring it up a great point with you guys being educators.
I'm wondering,
have you guys seen a difference between how people celebrate fandom from
when you guys are kids to nowadays seeing kids being geeks and nerds are like.
Oh, 100%.
I mean, my school has a D&D club and a club for just about anything
you can imagine, right? And, I can't imagine.
I tried to be in Chess Club when we were in high school, and I was
one of one who wanted to be in chess club, but now it's a thing, right?
It's much more embraced.
And, you know, when I talk about the podcast with people,
I tell them, like, you can be a nerd about anything.
If you love doctor Pepper or you love Pepsi, you could go on to social media
and find a fan group of that thing and just nerd out with those people.
And that's what's behind our show.
And, I love seeing it from kids.
I have students from my school that listen to our podcast
because they're also nerds, and they they love it.
So, yeah, the yeah.
I would say the biggest difference with that
from when I was a kid is, is like I only said, it's the internet.
When we were kids, it was like, who?
You know, it's kind of the same.
Who were the influencers then, right?
Who was the cool nerd that brought Magic The Gathering to the band room
the first time?
Who was the cool nerd that told me, oh,
I'm reading this new Transformers comic, and it's really different
than the cartoon, and you're going to love it.
It was more word of mouth, right?
So we had to have that, or going to the store and just figuring out like, oh,
they put something new on the end cap, I guess, you know, like, I'll try that out
there wasn't this idea of like, oh, I'm thinking of something.
I have a computer in my pocket.
I'll just pull it out and all of a sudden there's a wiki page,
there's a fan group, there's a podcast, there's 13,000 YouTube channels about it,
all of that kind of thing.
So you can really get so much more information now.
Which makes it difficult in some ways, because we can't spread our time
everywhere.
But also there's like I only said, there's always a group for you in
whatever it is that you find a school, you can find another group of people
because of where we are, where we are with the internet now.
Well, it's nice to hear kind of a positive effect
on the internet, on the kids, because I think a lot of us, you know,
always hear the doomscrolling the bad news side of it.
So is, the internet
helping and creating communities for kids where they can find a home?
Is that more of a positive than we're seeing out of the negatives?
I mean, well.
I think about this a lot
is right.
We're only going to hear about the negative effects.
And there are some
I do think one of the most important lessons
we can teach adolescents is how the algorithms work.
You click on something and then you're going to get fed just that voice.
And it's an echo chamber because they're trying to feed you
the things you want and then sell you things that they think you need.
They being the operative term there.
But if if teenagers are a
allowed the time to understand that,
then the impact of it is not as great as we would think.
And technology is going to be a battle forever in education,
but the ability to connect, I think, is important.
We're almost I think, if I may, Rob,
he has described it at times of like when we were in high school, it's almost
parallel to coming out.
Right.
You come out as a as a daddy nerd, and you're careful to make sure there's
this person safe, me to let them know and ask them if they play D&D
and that stigma is gone.
So it's a yes.
And there's still the
the not so great sides of social media and how it feeds algorithms.
And Rob may have a different answer of experiences.
Yeah.
You know, when I get this question and get it a lot because sometimes I have
to, defend, internet in front of students and things.
Really what it comes down to is we have been poor stewards
of the internet, specifically web 2.0 with, social media and things.
We as parents, as educators, as adults,
we got that effect to, social media.
And the internet does such a good job with dopamine and modeling it
after casino machines and things like, we're constantly scrolling
to we're constantly in front of that screen to
and we know that, you know, children look at adults and emulate them.
And we also didn't understand,
because of the rapid nature of technology growth, that, hey,
you know, all of a sudden we're looking around and seeing like we're
spending a real long time on these screens.
I mean, I think we did before,
there were definitely kids that would go home
and just plop themselves down in front of the TV after school from,
you know, 3:00 in the afternoon to 9:00 at night and kind of zombie out.
And there was, you know, concern about that.
Even when I was a kid of like, how much time you're sitting in front of the TV,
and now that TV is with us always during the school
day, the workday, the after work, you know, middle of the night.
It's always there.
So, like I said, educating, understanding how these things work, right.
If you're if you're getting entertainment for free, like guess what.
Like you're the product and those kinds of things.
So educating and being aware of it.
But on the positive side and I'm definitely an internet optimist,
I think the internet is the most incredible
achievement of mankind since the first campfire.
You have a community, right?
You know, anecdotally, as an example, when, schools shut down and things,
you know, we're all, you know, tight during the Covid pandemic,
my son was okay because he had a group of friends
that would all jump on discord and play video games together. Right.
And I would overhear them in the living room.
They weren't just talking about the video game, they were talking about life.
They were talking about what was going on.
They were talking about different friends.
They were having the normal conversations.
It's just that they couldn't be in the same room.
So the internet gave them a tool where they could still be kids.
Same thing with us.
Like nerd wise, I'm a huge D&D player.
I have run D&D games since I was in high school.
It's a huge hobby for me, and it's one of those hobbies where
if I play daddy every week, it's like, yeah, there's a Dungeons and Dragons game.
But really, what it was was a dinner
with a group of friends and conversations we would have in and around the game.
It was connection and community that I was building that not a lot of adults have.
Right.
And it's like, yeah,
we framed it around this nerdy thing, but really,
it turns out I was a pretty healthy and well-adjusted adult
because I would spend time every week with friends.
And then when that shut down, I started getting all these requests.
Can we start an online game? Can we start an online game?
Can we play daddy?
I hear people are doing it on zoom, or they're doing it on discord,
or there's these digital tools now.
And so we said, okay, sure.
And we started this game with like eight people in it.
And we played it every week.
And for years.
And, it was a very special time.
And it was made possible because we had the internet tools,
we had the community, you know, available to us.
And it became a really special time, to the point where
and this would be an episode to check out.
We played a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons from first to 20th level.
We played almost every week for four years to get there.
Yeah.
And our final adventure where we fought the big boss and did the whole thing.
We also decided, let's do it in person.
And so from all over California and different parts of the country,
everybody we got, we came to Vegas and we rented a event space,
and we played that game there, and it was the first time
we had all been in the same room, in the same place.
It was the first time some people had ever.
Even met.
Each person in person, and there were tears, and it just felt so special.
And all this stuff.
And so when I talk about the internet is great, that's those are the moments
that I'm grabbing as far as like, no, this is really a powerful tool
that connects people as much as it can isolate people as well.
That was Rob and Annalise from the Nerd Best Friend podcast.
It's just part of the interview.
The full interview is on the Geek Freak's interview, feed.
It's, much longer interview, and we're gonna be talking more
about diving into geek culture,
what it's like starting a podcast and being educated at the same time.
And it's just such a really good conversation.
We've talked more about D&D, so go ahead and check that out.
Links are going to be in the description
for everything, including Rob and Elisa's podcast and Geek Freaks interviews.
Let's go ahead and get back to you, squeaks and Jonathan.
Let's move to network news.
Again, I just want to give you a reminder.
We have a brand new show in the network called Anima Plus.
If you guys want to join their discord, I can't suggest that enough.
It's a really active group guessing anime.
These two guys are amazing.
Array and own, They're blessed.
And we've been working together on getting them to some convention.
So if you guys are, in the Boston or the new Jersey area,
you guys want to go to anime conventions,
you'll have a chance to meet, Anime Plus there.
And then for our last podcast, it's season 12.
We're in the middle of it right now.
We just picked our favorites. We want to hear from you guys.
Who are your favorites this season?
We'll track them along the way and see how they do over.
Challenge accepted.
We're doing Game Changer
from the drop out studios, and we're covering Daredevil every week.
We're Phantom portals.
Aaron and Brasher just did
500 days of Summer, a movie I haven't seen before, but it's got so I.
Did you watch that?
And they had a really good discussion about like, Love and Pursuit
so that and I want to give a reminder headlines is back.
We canceled it, but we brought it back because Laura masters canceled.
I can't do the little master.
It's just too damn boring.
But, headlines is back.
It's done every single day.
And you guys can subscribe on any your favorite podcast platforms
and on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Let's get to our recommendations.
What are your recommendations for the week?
Johnson. Let's start with noise.
So we got next month
because I was talking about movies and stuff we got coming up this month,
but next month we're going to have The Last of Us.
So definitely want to rewatch season one.
Season two is coming out in April,
so watch that and Andor season two comes out next month.
Yes. So or starts up next.
So both those I will be trying once I once I get kind of with Daredevil.
I'm going to try to watch both those before the next season starts.
So I would definitely recommend that do.
That's a good or do you get streaks.
Yeah.
So you've seen this from last month and I've actually spent some time now in it.
But yakuza pirate in Hawaii. Right.
It's such a.
Weird, fun game.
And I was talking to people for this podcast about it,
but, yeah, it's just your typical Yakuza game.
Especially it has the same fighting style as Yakuza.
The, Oh,
my God, the crazy ass titled The Dead Man, but no name or something like that.
But, yeah, it's funny at times, but, it's it's essentially, this,
combination of old school pirate theme in modern day Hawaii.
And your crew is a mixture of both and, it's just wacky.
It's fun.
So far, very interesting story.
I spent, quite a few hours and now.
So, Yeah, I could I could highly recommend.
Yeah, that's a good one.
For me, we have the Minecraft movie coming up, which I think
looks pretty abysmal, but I do want to give it a shot.
And so I have two recommendations for you.
First off, there's a, show called Minecraft Story Mode.
I believe it's called.
And, it's actually shot like within Minecraft, essentially.
So it kind of like fleshes out
some of the lore in Minecraft, some of the world building.
The other thing I want to suggest to you guys is the newer Jumanji movies,
because I think that's the vibe they're going for with this new Minecraft movie.
And those are those are so fun.
They're a nice little romp.
Of course, the classic Jumanji movies the best,
but these ones you have just the rock doing rock things.
You have Kevin Hart doing Kevin Hart things.
But I would say that performance of Jack black,
who is going to be playing Steve in the movie, is where it shines.
He's so fun in that movie, and he does a hell of a good job.
And it was returned to him
being a side character, which I think was where Jack black does his best work,
not when he's the main character and yeah, all around a great movie.
So just to kind of kind of get you guys primed up for the Minecraft movie
coming up that we hope is decent and not abysmal.
We'll see how it goes.
I'm not looking forward to it, but I we'll see.
All right, guys, thank you very much for joining us this week.
And we'll see you on the next one. Bye bye.