S02E10 — Mickey 7 / Mickey 17

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Mickey 7 / Mickey 17

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Hear our family’s take on the book-to-film adaptation of Mickey 7, including some rants about political commentary gone rogue.

CORRECTION: We incorrectly state during this episode that Darius Blank was not mentioned in Mickey 7. This is inaccurate; Blank is mentioned in the book but not portrayed as a murder-loving psycho as in the film.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

We were so excited for the Mickey 17 movie after our one-year wait, but it fell completely flat—with plot holes, below-average writing, and moments that made us question if the writer even read the book. Meanwhile, the Mickey7 novel gave us sharp humor, smart sci-fi, and a main character we actually liked rooting for.

Tim: The book was better.
– Book: 8/10
– Movie: 3/10

Donna: The book was better.
– Book: 7.5/10
– Movie: 2/10

Rebekah: The book was better.
– Book: 8/10
– Movie: 2.5/10

Josiah: The book was better.
– Book: 7/10
– Movie: 2/10

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Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Donnna: Mickey man burning through his life so many times. 

Do, do, do Mickey 

[00:00:08] Donnna: man trying to eat the food that looks so gross. 

Do, do, 

[00:00:15] Donnna: do. Well. I think it’s gonna be a real wild time and they keep dropping me from the printer. And we’re not sure what else we can say. 

[00:00:30] Josiah: What can we say?

Hello everyone. Welcome to the book is Better. The podcast. 

[00:00:56] Rebekah: Yay. I’m trying to really do these a little differently every time and I don’t know if I like it or not, but I hope you do. Um, this is a clean podcast. We are a family of four, mom, dad, brother, sister, uh, and we review book to film adaptations. And today we are talking about a film that we have all been so excited to see for over a year.

Yes. And we are so excited to talk to you about our thoughts. Yes. Uh, it’s. The film is called Mickey 17. The book is Mickey seven. Um, spoiler warning for both the book Mickey seven, the film Mickey 17, and also the sequel to Mickey seven in Time Matter blues. We might talk about that just a tad, uh, at the end of this episode as well.

So we are gonna spoil it. Um, I will also give a content warning. Our general rule is if you wouldn’t let your kid watch the movie or read the book, or either, uh, you know, they probably shouldn’t listen to the episode. We’re not gonna get into anything too terribly inappropriate or anything, obviously, but this is probably not an episode I would watch or listen to, rather with your littles around.

So, okay, today’s fun fact is if you had a clone and could ask them to do anything before you released them forever, what would it be? So as we introduce ourselves, we will answer this fun fact question that I still haven’t many. Okay. Wait, I have a question. We, the context of this, are we. ISTs, which is a part of the Mickey seven book.

Are we people that think that our clones are soulless? Or do we think that my clone also has a soul? ’cause this changes my answer 

[00:02:32] Josiah: Is this fun fact? Assuming that we have control over our clone. 

[00:02:37] Donnna: Yeah. I mean they’re gonna do what we want before. Yeah, that’s right. We let them go. That would assume Or solace.

Hmm. 

[00:02:45] Rebekah: I’m gonna say soulless so that I can say the answer. I wanna say, if I could create a soulless clone, um, I might plan some sort of really intricate crime. Probably not like a violent crime, probably more like stealing a lot of money or something. And then just like have them implement my plan perfectly just to see if I could do it without actually committing a crime.

But this very much ba butts up against my faith-based views in real life. So even I don’t like that answer, but it’s literally the only thing that came to mind when I read the question. But I’m Rebecca. Oh, I am the daughter slash sister of the crew, if you will. 

[00:03:19] Tim: Yes, the crew. How about, how about the one who wrote the question, answer it first or next, 

[00:03:26] Donnna: that assumes that she has an answer 

[00:03:30] Rebekah: or did she write the answer that or she wrote the question to which no one had an answer.

[00:03:35] Donnna: Perhaps. My name’s Donna. I am the wife and mom of this crew. I had several things like they would lose like a ton of weight and wear some outfit I would never wear, or, and that’s so superficial. It’s sadly superficial when I could get funny them to steal. Like Rebecca said, it makes so much money 

[00:03:59] Rebekah: and I think without, without doing anything wrong.

Yeah. But then if we’re the one pulling the strings, doesn’t that mean that we’re the ones doing stuff wrong? I can’t win here. Yeah. 

[00:04:06] Josiah: Conspirator, conspirators. 

[00:04:09] Donnna: But if we’re not the original. Then we’re soulless too, so it doesn’t matter. Okay. Interesting. Oh, 

[00:04:16] Rebekah: I think we are all ISTs. Oh no. Whoops. 

[00:04:20] Tim: Oh, I am the husband and dad of our crew.

Wait, husband dad, the space. 

[00:04:28] Donnna: I know, I know now. Oh no. Okay. It was crazy. I would have her go have dinner with Tom Cruise because I couldn’t do it. ’cause then I’d be unfaithful to my husband. 

[00:04:38] Tim: Ah. And she’d have to tell you what it was like. Yeah. Yep. That’s hilarious. 

[00:04:43] Rebekah: I love that. In your most wild fantasy, you have dinner with Tom Cruise.

What was I gonna say? 

[00:04:49] Donnna: Dad is sitting husband sitting in the room with me. I mean, come on, let’s think this through. That’s hilarious. Okay. The pod, 

[00:04:54] Tim: the podcast husband and dad is not, not that. Much stranger. Um, my name is Tim. Hi Tim. And I can’t think of anything that I would really legitimately want, want a clone of me to do.

So I thought maybe if they cleaned up my, I was gonna say ask Yeah. In my office the way that you would want it, would, 

[00:05:18] Josiah: the way that I want it and I didn’t have to do it. 

I love that idea. My 

[00:05:22] Josiah: first thought was that they’d clean up the whole gym building. Now, now, now that it needs cleaning. Hey, I’m Josiah not that needs 

[00:05:30] Rebekah: anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:31] Josiah: I’m Josie 31 m uh, also known as Mickey man, the brother, son of this crew. I 

can’t think 

[00:05:43] Josiah: we’re all like, trying to think of another one. No, I give up. I’m done in the longest week, week of my life. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I think that I could ask them to do anything before I release them forever. They’d volunteer at the theater I run until I leave the theater.

Might not be for a while. Nice. Free labor. But you didn’t really say do one thing. 

[00:06:04] Tim: Nope. 

[00:06:04] Josiah: Just what would you want them to do? Yeah. Yeah. Volunteer release forever a second. Me. Today I had auditions. I wish that I could have been at the door to check people in for auditions and also been at the table to welcome them to like the actual, actual audition space.

Like I got there eventually, but I just, I needed to be in two places at once. 

[00:06:25] Rebekah: I don’t know why my mind immediately went to crime and terrible activities we do, but now that I’m thinking of it, we do in that way clean. I could literally just have no, I could own more businesses. Yeah. And I could actually get all this stuff done that I wanna do for all the projects I’m working on.

That would be legitimate money. 

[00:06:44] Tim: Ew. Gross. Something else. Instead of a life of crime. How interesting. Some, the only 

[00:06:49] Donnna: one that picked 

[00:06:50] Rebekah: Sin Grace. No, I did. I had several ideas and all of them were very sinful. Okay. So, okay. You ready? Why don’t you walk us through what happens in the story of mc. 

[00:07:04] Tim: Set the scene podcast listeners.

The wind is whipping across a vast frozen planet of Heim. Mickey Barnes is an expendable, a disposable worker who dies on dangerous missions and is replaced by a freshly printed clone. Memories intact, supposedly. Mm-hmm. When a mission goes wrong and Mickey is presumed dead, a new version of him is created, but against all odds, the original Mickey, well, Mickey seven or 17 survives now.

Mm-hmm. There are two of them. That’s a problem. The colonies leaders, especially the ruthless Commander Marshall, strictly forbids, multiples, considering them an abomination. If they’re caught at least one, mickey, if not both, will be permanently erased. No. As they scramble to keep their dual existence a secret, Mickey seven and eight or 17 and 18 must navigate a colony on the brink of collapse, a growing alien threat, and the terrifying realization that their very survival might unravel everything.

Ta ta, 

[00:08:16] Josiah: ta. 

[00:08:19] Rebekah: Hmm. Amazing. Alright, well that is about everything that happens in both of the, in both of the stories, 

[00:08:28] Josiah: uh, today and even then it was kind of, it was kind of more like what the book had than the movie. True. 

[00:08:33] Rebekah: Very true. So we’re gonna talk about major differences today. We’re gonna start with a few major things that impacted the setting.

Then we’re gonna go through characters because that is where I think, you know, you start to get into how these works are very different. Then we’ll get into plot and timeline changes and walk you through what happens there. So mom, you wanna get us started with the first major change to the setting? 

[00:08:58] Donnna: The book Mickey seven is set in a far off future reality.

About a thousand years in a, after a major diaspora from the planet Earth, during which explorers set out to colonize beachhead colonies on habitable planets within range of anti-matter engine space travel. Conversely, the film Mickey 17 is set in AD 2054 and represents a relatively new season of humanity in which space exploration to colonize planets has just begun.

A little bit of trivia here, director Bon June Ho said in an interview that he deliberately then moved the timeline closer to our present to ground the story in a more familiar reality. 

[00:09:42] Rebekah: I didn’t know a lot about him before, like we’ve read some stuff for this. I know obviously some of the other things he’s done, although I don’t think I’ve actually seen parasite, which is like his most popular thing, didn’t it?

When like best picture or something. Yeah. Is that right? It it did, yeah. Um, but from what I was reading, it seems like it’s like a thing for him to kind of take a. I dunno if satirical is the right word, but like kind of extreme or over the top take on things that are also supposed to feel really relatable.

I don’t know if that’s the right way to describe it, but he likes the whole every man kind of thing, like, and so that makes sense. Like with him as a director wanting to make it feel like more familiar than something that’s just like way in the future. 

[00:10:20] Tim: Yeah. For a science fiction fan though, I think it was unnecessary to change.

The time like that. That’s kind of a Like to reduce Yeah. An odd thing to do with science fiction. Oh no. It happens 500 years in the future. Hey, great. We’re science fiction fans. Yeah. You know, 

[00:10:33] Rebekah: so throughout the book, Mickey seven recounts historical events from the past millennia, including successful and failed colonies and the fact that it’s been 600 years since anyone has even heard from anyone on earth.

He and the Dakkar crew began their travel from the planet mid guard, a well-populated earth-like planet that had been colonized hundreds of years before the film Mickey 17 actually begins on earth. Mid guard does not exist and the Dakkar expedition crew all leave from there. Other colonies are subtly mentioned, but they’re all assumedly, very young and underdeveloped.

I mean, at the most, you know, the movie set 30 years in the future, so it’s not exactly like there could be a whole lot 30 of colonization happening. 

[00:11:14] Tim: It, it sounds like in the film, he means for this to be the first attempt at a colonization They did and that’s what it seems like. No, they 

[00:11:22] Rebekah: did it. But they mentioned other colony expeditions that had left.

Did they? Yeah. It was really in passing. It was during that like council thing at the, near the beginning of the movie where they’re talking to the commander. Um, so I think it, I mean, again, in reality if this was happening, the most you could have had, would’ve been a few people probably leaving a few years before.

And so a lot of these colonies in the book, they talk about like, you know, terraforming and things that take decades or lifetimes to do. And so it just really changes the, the concept of like what is really going on so 

[00:11:51] Tim: well, certain technological elements are different in the film, including there being gravity throughout the ship, during the flight to Niel Heim, uh, no dome around their base on planet, no use of communication earpieces and mics while outside on heim, which comes into play in a moment.

And the lack of clarity around the technology developed in the next 30 years that would allow. For near light speed travel in the book. The latter point was explained thoroughly as it related to anti-matter technology, which becomes a major plot point to the climax of the novel and a feature of the sequel anti-matter blues.

Also, the book characters had to use rebreathers due to the lack of air pressure on the ground while the movie characters could breathe normally while outside. 

[00:12:36] Rebekah: I did look that up after we watched it. ’cause I think one of you asked after we left the movie. Mm-hmm. Did they have to wear something? Yeah. So that definitely changed.

[00:12:44] Tim: The communications technology comes into play later. Mm-hmm. Further into the movie, when Mickey is hearing. Voices that he assumes are from his clone dreaming and because their communication devices are like in part of them, are internal and they can think things and he thinks that the clone is thinking and trying to communicate and he’s getting aggravated with it.

Turns out it’s the alien that’s found a way to communicate with him, which comes into play with the way that the film or the. Book climaxes. Yeah, 

[00:13:16] Rebekah: it seems like the ocular device. Well, so they have an ocular that’s like implanted and then they wear these rebreathers when they go outside and they seem to always have the communications device in their ear.

Right, because like throughout the movie, they talk to each other that way somehow. Always 

[00:13:29] Tim: talk to each other. Yeah. I think there’s

[00:13:31] Rebekah: ocular and audio implants that are not part of the film, which is a lot easier to explain in a book than it is to show in a film to, to be totally fair. So, 

[00:13:39] Josiah: so all of that’s not in the movie.

It’s, it’s very different this climate. ’cause the aliens still have to communicate with Mickey and in the movie they do it through this translator. They invented like out of nowhere, 75% of the way through the movie. It’s just a big day x. It’s, here’s been sitting on the desk. Explain that it works perfectly.

After 15 minutes, look what we just 

[00:13:59] Rebekah: invented. 

[00:14:00] Josiah: It’s like, um, in the, in the time of the film, they learned that the creatures are sentient and there is approximately five minutes. Of available time. ’cause it’s a, it’s a little bit after, but like when they learn the creatures are sentient, there’s kind of like a gunfight or, or a holdup, like a Mexican holdup, what do they call it?

Mexican fight. Right. Mexican 

[00:14:21] Rebekah: standoff. I just watched that off a big bang. 

[00:14:24] Josiah: Thank you. There’s a big standoff where they aren’t able to do anything, like invent a translator and that’s only like 10 minutes and then there’s like five minutes until this character who’s not in the book brings a translator device to Mickey.

That works perfectly. No explanation. It’s, it’s one of the things that tells me that bong chun ho might be dumb. 

[00:14:47] Rebekah: Oh no. Well, I mean meaning not explanation, meaning 

[00:14:51] Josiah: can’t speak meaning on the Yes. Meaning can’t speak. Exactly. This is a college, this is like college class level mistakes of, yeah. By the end of class, you will not make these sorts of mistakes.

Right. So I 

[00:15:05] Donnna: got part of, related to this, not the translator part, which I do agree with, but I thought when those, uh, creepers threw him up out of the hole and put him up on the snow, he didn’t really get to talk about that much when he got back on the ship. And I get he lived and he wasn’t supposed to live.

And, and I, I get, I understand he couldn’t just go out and to proclaim to everybody, Hey, they saved me. But I thought this was such an unexpected thing because those creepers were supposed to eat him. Period. That’s, yeah. Everybody thought it and Bernard didn’t thought he died. 

[00:15:40] Josiah: I, I think that’s part. Yeah.

And 

[00:15:42] Donnna: then I was like, oh, that is huge. And he couldn’t even share it. Like it was just a side comment. Later he finally convinces them, wait, they don’t wanna kill us. 

[00:15:52] Tim: I think all of that plays into the change in the timeline because they got to the planet bit by bit. Some of their people were killed and they killed some of the aliens ’cause they seemed to be just bad.

They were beginning to run out of food ’cause they’ve been there long enough and it was going to be a non, it was gonna be a very hostile planet. They had finally discovered. So I think the timeline from when they landed to the time that the events happened with Mickey seven or 17, not dying, being thought dead, I think that timeline was compressed so tightly that you didn’t have the story.

You know, I, I didn’t mind that the film started with that moment and then went backward and told you a little bit of the story, but I felt like because they compressed the timeline, it didn’t have the time to do the kinds of things. Like we’ve sent out rescue mi or we’ve sent out explo exploratory missions, but we keep getting killed.

Um, and now we’re down to this many people or those kinds of things. You didn’t have any of that happening in the, in the film for sure. So aside from the plot and timeline changes and the. Compression of the timeline. In the characterization, Mickey, the most obvious change to the main character is the number of iterations that he’s experienced in the book.

Mickey seven and Mickey eight discover they’ve become multiples, whereas the film features Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. The director mentioned on multiple occasions in interviews that he felt seven iterations wasn’t enough for the deaths he wanted this Mickey to experience. But there’s also speculation that he chose 17 specifically because of the possible political commentary, and there’s some political commentary in in the film other than the iterations.

Mickey seventeens also portrayed as a working class schmo, 1st of June ho’s typical hero types, rather than Mickey seven, who was an educated historian without job prospects as historians weren’t really an in demand need. For beachhead colonies, which is why he signed up, you know, in desperation to be part of it.

’cause what he could do wasn’t necessary. 

[00:17:57] Rebekah: Yeah. I have several opinions on this. Mm-hmm. I think that the idea of 17 iterations rather than seven makes sense to me. I like that they added this whole thing of like, he was the one expected to test this vaccine to make sure that they could all walk freely outside without dying to the local like bacteria.

I thought that it was really funny. Like the, honestly, one of my favorite parts of the movie was seeing all of the silly deaths and like his hand getting cut off and like all this stuff like that over the top stuff I thought was actually really interesting. So I liked that part. 

[00:18:26] Tim: But why did you need, I mean, why did you go to 17 when like four of them died with the same thing, all died from the same thing?

[00:18:34] Rebekah: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. 

[00:18:35] Tim: It, it’s like, okay, we need, that seems like a stretch to me. We need all of these. It almost seemed like he wanted to have a bunch of them, so he had plenty of ideas to put in there. Oh, he’s, yeah. And then he didn’t have quite enough ideas 

[00:18:45] Rebekah: to put in. Oh, no. Like you didn’t actually see all of the 17 deaths or whatever.

Yeah, I think it was, I, I didn’t mind that. I think the one thing that bugged me, and this was when I started looking at the directors, like he likes the working class schmo thing, is a quote like, that’s. A thing that’s said a lot about June Ho’s typical person a lot. I honestly liked that Mickey was, he was kind of irresponsible in the book, so he wasn’t like just some, you know, super hyper intellectual or whatever in the book, but I loved that he was a historian, like the stories that he told about the explorations in the past and all of these, like technology things and stuff like that.

For me, that’s one of the things I love about sci-fi and so I kind of understand the idea of the every man, but I don’t know that I loved it compared to someone that was actually a lot smarter than the person portrayed as Mickey in the, in the film. Yeah. 

[00:19:32] Tim: I didn’t have a problem with Paton’s portrayal Sure.

As a little bit more quirky because I, I think it could have worked even with the historian, well, you know, I went to college, I spent all of this money on college, and I learned a skill that was completely unnecessary to the world, so I could never get a job that I. That sounds, that 

[00:19:51] Rebekah: was kind of funny in the book, but yeah.

[00:19:54] Tim: Right. And playing that kind of, you know, I thought this would be a good thing, but I really didn’t think it through. So yeah, here I am. I, I thought that kind of lightheartedness to his character was okay for me personally. 

[00:20:07] Josiah: Well, I, I heard that Robert Pattinson sometimes didn’t know whether he was playing 17 or 18 during certain scenes until, like, right before it started, and I, maybe it was on purpose.

I, I think someone mentioned it might have been meant to capture the confusion or the dread of a clone struggling with, you know, their identity and stuff. But I guess whether that’s completely accurate or not, what do you, what do you guys think of his performance? Dad kind of talked about his thoughts, but I went, mom, what, what do you think of Robert’s performance for 17 and 18?

[00:20:39] Donnna: Well, I haven’t seen everything that Robert Pattinson’s per. Trait. I haven’t seen every movie he’s been in, but the ones I have, I’ve seen a number of them. But the ones I have seen, this is the first one where he could be a slapstick. He could be, yeah. Uh, the even dark and violent. Even dark and brooding even his voice.

I, I like the fact that he changed his voice a little bit, that it sounded a little immature, a a little, just the pitch of it and that he was kinda happy go-lucky, whatever. I, I thought he pulled that off. And I will say we listened to, I listened to several different reviews from, uh, from a whole range of reviewers.

All of them agreed. His performance was great. And so I was kinda like, oh, that’s, yeah, that’s cool for him. I mean 

[00:21:23] Tim: that of, of anything that they might have disliked or, you know, had differing opinions about on the movie, his performance was a good performance. Uh, I personally think it was probably one of the highlights of the film.

[00:21:35] Rebekah: Do you guys remember the movie where Steve Carell played, like a wrestling coach? Yes. And he had like soft 

[00:21:40] Tim: catcher. 

[00:21:41] Rebekah: Catcher. I didn’t even see the whole movie. I 

[00:21:43] Tim: didn’t even remember the title, 

[00:21:44] Rebekah: but I literally remember looking at that and being like, cannot even see Steve Carell like it. I not, just can’t see the Michael Scott office character.

Yeah. I can’t even see Steve Carell. And he like transcended that, like as an actor, I felt like this felt like that for him. Mm-hmm. Like I could not process that this was the same person in Twilight. Or the same person in Batman, and I love that, or I love, love that feeling. And then Yeah, true. 

[00:22:07] Tim: The Lighthouse movie, all of those were dark and brooding and Yeah.

Suky kind of thing. They were kind of all similar, but this was very different. I appreciated that. 

[00:22:17] Josiah: I thought Robert Pattinson as Mickey 17 was somewhat of a Martin Freeman in The Hobbit, where it was a big highlight in a, in a bad movie. But I didn’t really like Mickey 18. I I didn’t get it. I’m, I kind of just 

[00:22:32] Donnna: hoped that the director wanted us not to like him.

I kind of hoped that because, well, I didn’t get him. I didn’t even understand, but he was such a departure. 

[00:22:40] Josiah: What was Mickey 18? You meet him and he is immediately a homicidal maniac. Yeah. And then in the next scene, he’s a drug 

[00:22:47] Tim: addict. Some of the reviewers said that their thoughts on that was that the duplicator, the printer, um.

Didn’t, when it printed the new ones and put the memory in, there were parts of the memory that were glitchy almost. Um, and so Mickey 17 was compassionate? No. It was the audience’s 

[00:23:06] Josiah: job to, yeah, to ask questions when no one in the movie asks any questions at all. I get that. Well, they, I get that they did 

[00:23:12] Rebekah: actively mention that all of the like iterations were different because Naasha had told him.

No one asked why. That’s weird. Well, naasha told him that like one of his iterations was incredibly annoying and like that, you know what I mean? So they did kind of mention it in passing as like every iteration’s a little different without any sort of 

[00:23:32] Josiah: inquisitiveness. 

[00:23:34] Rebekah: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I do think that that, that’s a theme in kind of throughout some of the changes in the movie, I think, is that there’s a lot of like little things that feel like they just happen kinda, it reminds me of the translator.

It’s like, you know? Mm-hmm. It just, oh, this works. This is what happened. Will get soft’s only 30 years future. But you know. Yeah. 

[00:23:51] Josiah: We’ll what? It’s just something that happens. Yeah. 

[00:23:54] Donnna: Also, in the other, in her description of prior iterations of him, none of them were like mentally unstable iterations. Like this guy 

[00:24:05] Josiah: killing your best friend.

Trying. 

[00:24:08] Donnna: Yeah. None of them were there. Like they were others. They were other, much less just common things we think about people. Oh, they were. He was a little annoying or Oh, he was dotting or he was, you know, whatever. 

[00:24:21] Tim: It is a wonderful sci-fi question though. What would you be like if you kept being copied?

Is your essence always the same or there things about you that without the particular background or iteration would be different? Yeah, like the book asked that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I agree. Did not care. Yeah. 

[00:24:40] Donnna: Yeah, 

[00:24:40] Tim: definitely. 

[00:24:41] Donnna: Um, the best friend is our next characterization change. Mickey seven and Mickey 17 both joined the Dakar expedition with their supposed best friend, but the character is completely renamed and retooled from book to film.

[00:24:56] Tim: I want to just say before you finish that I did not realize he had a different name. You didn’t, I did not notice in the movie that he had a name. Yeah. That’s so funny. I remembered, I remembered the name from the book, but I couldn’t tell in the film that it was a different name. 

[00:25:08] Donnna: Oh, wow. Uh, well, in the book, Bartos McKee’s best friend and has been since they were kids, Bartos, a talented and successful fighter pilot.

Who has excelled at basically everything he’s tried. He’s described as tall, lanky, redhead, who’s smarter and more dextrous than he looks. A scheme of Bartos does technically get Mickey into financial trouble on mid guard, but Barto didn’t realize it was happening. Mickey Barrett bet on Bartos opponent in one last POG Ball Championship believing him to be incapable of winning.

While Mickey does discover that Berto lied to him on at least one of his previous deaths, it’s clear that Berto is still a fairly loyal friend, even beating up a fellow crew member. To defend Mickey. At one point, 

[00:25:55] Rebekah: the film changes the best friend character to Temo, played by Steven Yon. Temo is an all around jerk of a person who captured Mickey in a doomed plan to start a macaron shop.

What? Getting them in trouble. Macaron. That is real. I didn’t make that up. That is not sarcasm. Getting them in trouble with a lone shark before convincing Mickey to join the Dakkar expedition as an expendable. Timo is also a pilot, but supposedly, quote, just got his permit end quote, prior to the mission and while on Niel Heim, Mickey catches Teo selling drugs illegally.

An event that leads to Mickey 18, nearly throwing his best friend into the corpse hole. The whole thing was. A mess. 

[00:26:33] Josiah: You know what Timo is also where I got my jacket. That’s, yeah, that’s 

[00:26:38] Donnna: a little bit new. And the shoes I have on too. 

[00:26:41] Tim: Yes. I have a question about, about Berto. I seem to remember, and it’s been, I, I read the book months ago, but I remember Berto planning to throw the game that he was playing, which was why he was in trouble with the Lone Shark because he was a bookie and he was supposed to throw the game and lose.

So that’s why Mickey, ’cause he knew that he’d made that deal bet on him to lose. And at the last minute, Berto says Berto couldn’t possibly have lost. So I had to turn around and win. ’cause I couldn’t go out unless I’d won. And I feel like he said that line in the book. 

[00:27:16] Rebekah: Oh, interesting. That might be right now that you say it like that.

Yeah. So it wasn’t like Mickey, Mickey went off of what Barto said, babe. Barto ultimately was, he’s ultimately his mind, kind of a cocky jock figure Exactly. Is how he’s painted in the book. But he’s not, he’s not like a. An inherently terrible person. Timo is like awful. Like they paint him as like, you should hate this guy.

Please hate him. This is really obvious. We’re gonna make it really easy. He’s awful. And I just like that whole thing was so confusing to me. 

[00:27:44] Tim: Yeah, he is just kind of a creep. You don’t like him because of that event. You don’t like him all that much more in. Book except that sure, he’s got to go a lot farther.

He hears the creepers coming. He knows that if he goes down, he is probably going to get killed. And you know the commander’s really gonna be mad ’cause two of them died. 

[00:28:00] Donnna: And they do make a big deal in the book about how important it is that they keep their compliment like that. That is a, I do remember that being, yeah, they 

[00:28:09] Tim: big blow.

And that’s because of the squeezed timeline. Because in the book, the timeline shows they’ve been losing people to these creepers and they can’t lose. Down past a certain point, huh? 

[00:28:19] Josiah: That’s completely different from the movie where the creepers specifically would never, Hmm. Yeah. We talk about that a little later.

Yes. Well, you know what we talk about right now, the girlfriend, Nasha Naville, best City on Earth named af. After Nasha or Naasha depend the book of the film, depending 

[00:28:42] Rebekah: on what you’re listening to. 

[00:28:43] Josiah: Yes. So Naasha is pretty similar. Few differences. She’s still a strong black or or non-white crew member.

Loves Mickey for exactly who he is, threatens any woman who could try and claim her man. But in the film, she ends up being a bit more violent at times. I believe in the book, she’s the, the fighter, the, the, the Flitter pilot alongside Berto. It’s, I think it’s the, they’re only two on the mission and the movie.

She’s like an agent. She’s kinda like a, she’s on security. It’s kind of like soldier, police officer, firefighter. So Naasha is not a flitter pilot. In the movie, she’s more of a security officer, so we lose Mickey’s historian role and like a thousand years of history. But Naasha also loses her complex backstory as part of a society on a nearby colony planet to mid guard, uh, that had to leave their planet.

They were treated as lesser citizens after their arrival. So that’s a lot of world building that’s lost from the book to film. She doesn’t have that backstory of her. She’s just another person who came along on the Kar. Voyage. 

[00:29:46] Rebekah: I do have to say we’re, we’ll get to, you know, potential political commentary, but I thought in the book, this was actually a really interesting portrayal of like an instance of like racism.

And it was a really inter, because they talked about like the people that had come from this nearby planet and had to come to mid guard, they looked different and they were just treated lesser. And like Naasha grew up and like decided to do this thing becoming a fighter pilot, which was incredibly competitive.

Mm-hmm. And very hard. And she was this really, really strong like female character and like took this really powerful role. And I thought it was interesting, like I don’t think they tried to take away her strong leadership role or whatever. They just made her a lot different. But I. You know, in general, I just didn’t like losing a lot of the interesting history stuff.

’cause I thought it was, it was just really good world building. 

[00:30:30] Tim: Well, I think that’s part of what people like about things like Star Wars and Harry Potter. There’s a, there’s a lot of world building. You really feel like you’re immersed into their situation and this, you know, you seem to miss almost all of the history.

You know, that people want to leave the planet, you know, that they can. Print human beings, but it’s been outlawed. And what else do you really know about the world, the universe that they live in? Not, not a lot. You’re really kind of cut off from all that. Um, another characterization change is the other woman, Mickey seven befriends cat, a security officer who offers him room in her bunk one night, but ultimately turns him into the Commander Marshall after learning that Mickey is a multiple Mickey 17 of the film befriends and nearly kisses Kai, another crew member who recently lost her partner while exploring the surface, Kat is a level-headed, curious character, whereas Kai is sultry and mysterious as she mourns her loss.

Um, it makes her a bit more shallow, I think. Than the character of the book. 

[00:31:32] Rebekah: Yeah, she, we talked about this before we started recording, but the book and film both contain sexual content, generally offscreen in both cases. Mm-hmm. So there’s no, like, we didn’t know going in if it was going to be extreme. So I was glad that it was not onscreen as bad as we, you may have expected.

But the whole film does kind of take a more sensual, like a lot of it’s over the top in general. But there was like a character we didn’t mention that taught Mickey everything about being in multiple, and there was like this kind of weird tension between the two of them. And then they add this tension between him and Kai and they like almost kissed and it’s just kind of odd.

But that was in general, like they kind of worked that sensuality a little more into the film. But again, it’s. Not, you know, even what does happen is still pretty offscreen. But I preferred Kat in the book. I thought that she was an interesting, like, is she a protagonist and then becomes an antagonist.

Like she, you know, kind of flips around. So I, I preferred her. I felt like Kat or the Kai was kind of flat 

[00:32:24] Josiah: to be fair with the explicit stuff on screen. Rebecca did go to the bathroom during the, the only really, oh, I forgot about explicit part. Forgot, yeah. Yeah. There, there was one. It’s rated 

[00:32:34] Tim: R for a reason.

[00:32:34] Josiah: Yeah. There was one explicit shot that was, I, I was listening to a viewer say, and a family of four left theater during that shot in my theater. I was like, well, I can, I can see that happening. But yes, Rebecca went to the bathroom. I maybe on purpose, I don’t know. 

[00:32:47] Donnna: Well, here, I think it’s probably a decent time to bring it up.

If you haven’t seen the movie, there’s one shot of a bare rear end, but it’s not during a sex scene. It’s completely during something. So when he’s falling out of the Yeah, he’s falling out of the printer and nobody ca nobody sees him and they let him fall out. That was, 

[00:33:06] Rebekah: yeah. Was on that topic. That was one of the funniest parts of the movie too, was watching him come out of the printer and them con, continually forgetting to put the bed part on.

So he just fell and looked like he might have broken his neck. Yeah. 

[00:33:18] Donnna: And you realize how limber 

[00:33:20] Rebekah: that, I mean, 

[00:33:21] Donnna: how the, he was in half. 

[00:33:22] Tim: I thought that that section was really nice as well. ’cause that was a better use of the multiples of who he was to show that, you know, they printed him the first time and they were paying attention and all of that stuff.

And eventually it just became so routine that they were having a coffee while he’s printing. Oh no, somebody forgot the table. Oh well, he’ll be in the floor when it’s done. You know, they got to a point where they just didn’t care. 

[00:33:46] Donnna: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was funny and it was like, that’s where part of the dark comedy had its best moments, I think.

[00:33:53] Tim: I think that was kind of black books, you know, red dwarf kind of comedy. Yeah. 

[00:33:57] Donnna: Uh, then we come into the character of Darius Blank as part of the film only plot with Timo and Mickey owing money to a loan shark June Ho added the character of a death loving Darius Blank and an unnamed associate who ends up on the dard to hold the two to their debt blank.

And his weird love for filming gruesome deaths random, uh, are not in the book. Mickey Ditto a lot of money on Midt Guard, but a specific guarantor is never mentioned. It seemed in the beginning, like blank was just a way to. Put some weird other dark stuff in. I, it was very bizarre. Mm-hmm. And I, the book, but the book plot was about a guy who kept replicating himself.

[00:34:45] Rebekah: No, this is a different person though. We will talk about that other guy. But it was like they added this. To fill that space. But you’re thinking, that’s what I mean of man Cova who is in this movie, but a totally different character. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. They like had two weird death obsess. Like this was one of the things to me that felt like what Josiah is talking about with like set up with no payoff.

Like I don’t Yeah, understand. Like they had this whole thing where, you know, he had Naasha and both Mickey’s and was Timo Timo there where they were like in jail cells and the guy was gonna film him being killed. And I was just deeply confused the whole time, like. Yeah, it was just, it just felt weird. It was 

[00:35:21] Tim: a strange, it was a strange thing.

It, it should have ended up on the editing floor. 

[00:35:26] Rebekah: Yeah. Um, 

[00:35:27] Tim: there are other things that should have been added. 

[00:35:29] Rebekah: Yeah. I think opinion. Think you could’ve made the story. Yeah. I think you could’ve made the story and the science part a lot more compelling and more interesting. And you could’ve even leaned into the silly dark, but silly parts with like Mickey’s deaths and stuff.

But yeah. Adding in this odd blank, that blank dude that 

[00:35:46] Tim: was just Gru supposed to be gruesome and Oh, you find him strangely funny, but it’s like, no. Yeah, just gruesome. It definitely 

[00:35:54] Rebekah: fell. Not as I think it was intended. Okay. So let’s talk about Marshall. ’cause this is, uh, similarly to Mickey’s best friend.

The leader of this D car expedition is. Almost completely not the same person between book and film. So in the book, commander Hym Marshall is a military-like commander in charge of the Niel Heim colony. He is a natalist, which means he’s a member of this religious tradition held by many humans that believes the process of printing and uploading human consciousness creates soulless individuals who aren’t like at the same level as like an, as a human.

I’m not even gonna say a naturally born human ’cause that actually seems to refer to something in the movie because they bring embryos and like grow people in labs and stuff. It’s not like they have a problem with like, you know, humans grown from embryos in a lab. It’s just that they have a problem with like printing humans.

So this religious conviction makes him a clear antagonist to Mickey seven who Marshall heartily dislikes. And to be fair, Mickey’s sarcastic attitude with him does not help. Uh, it makes it kind of worse, but the commander in the book is. Basically portrayed as someone who genuinely wants the mission to succeed.

He’s willing to hold a very tight ship in order to make it happen. He and everyone else stick to incredibly stark rations and bear living conditions. And it, unless I missed something, it seems like Marshall in the book, he lives just like everybody else, um, within the dome. He’s not portrayed as inherently bad.

He’s just religiously opposed to the existence of expendables, like Mickey and above all things of multiples. 

[00:37:28] Tim: Yeah, I think, I think that’s fair. I think, I think that’s fair. 

[00:37:31] Josiah: That’s so, that’s interesting that it’s like a reasonable character that has religious, religious ideals that they’re trying to stick to.

Man, but it’s like obviously, and he’s also very 

[00:37:45] Tim: military oriented, which means X plus Y equals Z. I mean, it’s very, yeah, this is what you do a military thing and we’re on a planet, we don’t have enough food. What do we do? We ration, you know, who should get the least rations? Well, the person that’s, that we could get rid of anyway.

Or does it matter that we have enough bio protein to print another one? Well, that’s a waste of protein. But 

[00:38:09] Josiah: you know, this idea of the natal is it, it exists on earth right now. Like we could clone a human right now. Like we have, we have animals. It’s ethics of we don’t know what a soul is. We can’t agree what a soul is, and he is like, you know what?

We could physically clone a human right now, but I think that we shouldn’t. For a variety of reasons that some of us, there are enough reasons that most people agree with one of them. So like, oh, so it’s not that he’s insane because he has these religious beliefs. Yeah, it’s, it’s very tempered. Was it, was it a religious belief in the book?

Yes. 

[00:38:49] Tim: Was it a religion? Okay, nihilism. Remember if it was described as religious was just a belief or, 

[00:38:53] Rebekah: yeah. And I will also point out, just on that note, Mickey kind of portrays him. This is a book written in the first person. He does seem to portray him as someone with what he considers slightly extreme beliefs.

But Mickey just doesn’t care. He’s just, yeah, kind of. I would call him either atheist or agnostic as portrayed in the book. Like he just doesn’t care for him. It was a job he needed to get off the planet. Who cares? I just think history is interesting, you know what I mean? 

[00:39:17] Josiah: And I know that it’s from Mickey’s perspective.

So when he says that Marshall is a little insane about it. And it makes sense that Mickey would think Marshall is insane in the book. Mm-hmm. And it would make sense Oh yeah. As an audience member to say, well, what Marshall believes really isn’t that insane. It’s just Mickey has a perspective as one of the only, one of the first expendables, or one of the only expendables around.

But, uh, the film Governor, Kenneth Marshall, is a two time failed politician tasked with heading this mission in the film. This version of Marshall also dislikes Mickey, but he’s also a cartoonish, absurd, instantly unlikable character who does pretend to like Mickey when it serves his own Ames, his wife.

El Alpha is a film only edition. She is just as ridiculous. She’s obsessed with sauces. Oh, and I think I’ll give that about as much explanation as the film does. Mm-hmm. The Marshalls live in a lavish over the top suite within the Dakkar ship on Niel Heim. Kenneth Marshall is above all things an idiot who has to be fed lines and ideas by his wife and his camera.

Holden right hand man and Marshall has little to no original thoughts of his own. He is about as authoritarian as the Marshall of the book, but 50 times Dumber. He espouses like a vision of Niel Heim. I think what he says in the film is it’s a, he wants it to be a pure white planet of superior beings.

Which thought it was interesting that he said white. He has to be referring to the snow. Yeah, he’s, it’s covered in snow was ’cause he’s got, he has a bunch of non-white people, Cru make sense? Yeah. And he, he like that are planning on breeding and, and populating the planet. So, uh, but he sounds and seems very white supremacist.

Seems like an authoritarian, 

[00:41:12] Rebekah: you know, you just said that and I just realized in a minute we will just mention the whole thing about Kai, but he identified her and I don’t think she’s Caucasian at all. Right. As a perfect specimen is what he called her. So actually that’s super interesting. Sorry. Okay. So due to Governor Marshall’s characterization, this is probably a good time.

We’re gonna spend a little bit of time to discuss the controversy over whether or not Mickey 17, the film was intentionally built as political commentary on Donald Trump and the. Extreme views he’s often claimed to hold. So director June Ho has multiple times directly opposed this claim by viewers. He said that Marshall’s character design was based on many political leaders and dictators throughout history.

And the reason that he was with I LFA is because he took inspiration from several dictator couples from different periods of time, from so say Romania and the Philippines. However, mark Ruffalo, who did play Marshall in the film and is very, very left-leaning, like you know self-proclaimed, has made a few thinly veiled comments suggesting that he was indeed pulling inspiration from his pre perception of President Trump and may have even.

Quote, as he said it underplayed the part. So mom, can you just walk us through the kind of the odd coincidences if there, if they are to be believed by June ho, that made viewers like guess at this motive. 

[00:42:29] Donnna: Sure. And I will say, before I read these, I was amazed that Mark Ruffalo could constantly show his upper teeth all the time.

Are those, 

[00:42:36] Rebekah: were those like, uh, please tell me they’re not his teeth. It’s not his. Right. Those were implants. Really. Those were makeup, right? They had to be, 

[00:42:42] Donnna: I have no idea. And I didn’t read anything about it, but I kept thinking to myself, he’s gonna close his mouth. Right. Oh my gosh. But his smile, his teeth are there all the time.

And I know that was part of the character. Like I realized that. But I was, he’s 

[00:42:54] Rebekah: like the guy from Thor, Ragnarok. What’s his face? The silly one on that planet. The one who always plays himself. He was in Jurassic Park. Jeff Gold Bloom. Jeff Gold Bloom. He’s the Jeff Gold Bloom from Ragnarok. I just, it’s been bugging me what kind of person he seems like.

Oh, so he’s not Donald Trump. Yeah. Jeff Gold Bloom. We 

[00:43:12] Tim: know. Jeff Goldblum from Ragnar Rock did play that kind of demented character, but I don’t know that it ever seemed like this one. Did you know he was, was over? I know they reminded me a little bit of each other 

[00:43:24] Rebekah: for sure, but yeah, I get what you mean.

[00:43:25] Donnna: So a few of the things through, through the film, Marshall brought many slavery followers to the Dekar Expedition, many of whom are seen wearing red hats during rally like events led by the governor. Um, another one. Okay. Uh, it’s mentioned that Governor Marshall was a two time failed congressional candidate.

The production dates for the movie overlapped with Trump’s announcement of his second presidential run made official in November two th uh, 2022, which could have been the inspiration for the claim of a candidate losing to elections. 

[00:43:56] Josiah: Well, I think it can easily also mean that, uh, a third of the country would see his first electoral win as a loss.

[00:44:06] Donnna: Sure, sure. 

[00:44:07] Josiah: He lost two elections in the popular vote. 

[00:44:09] Donnna: Exactly. And, and as mentioned before, the choice for Mickey 17 is the number of iterations could have referred to Trump’s first year serving in presidential office. I would never have pulled that one like in my brain. I, I guess, but I’ve read some of those, of that.

I read a lot of articles on it. Yeah. Marshall and Elfa are white hyper religious characters with strong white supremacy tendencies looking to create a superior race. They even engage in bizarre and disturbing. I mean, worship singing was what it was supposed be. 

[00:44:42] Josiah: This is not a Trump, this is not even a Trumpian thing.

[00:44:44] Donnna: No, I don’t think he, I don’t think this doesn’t make any 

[00:44:46] Josiah: sense because I feel like, yeah, mark Ruffalo and even Tony Collette, I think played Alpha. 

[00:44:52] Donnna: Yeah. 

[00:44:53] Josiah: Mm-hmm. That’s right. I feel like Do they think that this is a Trumpian thing to 

[00:44:58] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:44:58] Josiah: They worship sing during the, 

[00:44:59] Tim: I was listening. I was listening to one, one review that that was.

Positive about the movie and this particular thing, but they said, you know, it was obvious from the Red Hats in the people standing in line wanting to get off the planet, and they talked about the fact that, uh, they felt like he’s seen as a religious Messianic character in, in reality, they likened this to that, that obviously people have this religious feeling about him.

[00:45:27] Rebekah: I do think it kind of goes back to that like the portrayal of maybe Trump is like a. Like a Christian nationalist or whatever. I don’t know This part, there’s a lot of that 

[00:45:36] Tim: terminology. 

[00:45:37] Rebekah: I can understand why like these articles kind of added this in as the, you know, explanation. But while I found the religious caricature and of like, incredibly offensive, I didn’t find it offensive because of anything that had to do with politics.

[00:45:51] Josiah: No, I was, I was, I could, I can never watch this film again ’cause of that worship singing scene. Yeah, it was, 

[00:45:56] Tim: I had, I had a lot of problems with, with that caricature of, 

[00:46:01] Josiah: I, I don’t think you’ve mentioned Christian worship. That they were singing like a hymn. Yeah. And it was obviously played for laughs, like they were stupid.

[00:46:08] Tim: Oh yeah. It, I, that was very offensive. I didn’t notice the red hats on the people that were waiting in line it off the planet. I, I only saw that because I listened to a review and Oh, they saw it. I think the director could have been ac accurate that he wasn’t really looking at it as a specific person that was being played.

But I’m pretty sure that Ruffo was very specific. He, and he said that. So, I mean that’s kind of the conclusion I ended that kind of up. That’s kind, that’s kind of going by their own admissions one didn’t, one did and it was seen as, it probably looks like it. I think Bon 

[00:46:44] Josiah: Bon, who is a liar. Oh, whatever his name is.

Well, 

[00:46:47] Tim: he does, he does a lot of. Movies that are social commentary and true. I watched just a tiny clip of a review on parasite and the lower class characters that have to work mm-hmm. For the upper class characters climb this tremendously long staircase, which is all a commentary on the fact, you know, they, they live in the dungeon basically.

But isn’t it 

[00:47:13] Rebekah: like a capitalism, like they’re trying to comment on capitalism? Is that the, he’s, 

[00:47:16] Tim: he’s anti-capitalism too, which I always find interesting. It’s easy to protest against some things when you kind of live in that world. I mean, you’re making lots of money, making million dollar movies and things like that, and you say, oh, capitalism is bad.

It’s like, okay, that, I’m not sure that’s. The easiest place to make those kinds of statements from, but based, he’s looked up to for making his previous, 

[00:47:39] Rebekah: yeah, based on his previous works and kind of the way he portrays capitalism. I can also understand why he, as a director, would also want to add that as like a theme in this movie, even though like one of the really cool things about, yeah.

It was definitely a director choice, not necessarily about any particular figure, but one of the things I did like about Mickey seven is that it felt very, like, it was like just, it’s the science mission. It’s like everybody’s on the same level. Everyone gets the same amount of food unless you’re like in trouble or whatever, right?

And so I thought that that was a really compelling world building element. Although again, this goes back to trying to make it relatable, trying to make it feel like what we live in today or whatever. Sorry. And Mom, we interrupted you. You didn’t even get to finish other second.

[00:48:20] Donnna: I mean, I think we covered a lot of, I think we covered a lot of our thoughts on that.

That that next one, the next part’s What bothered me? I will. Okay. I, the, the worship singing was very off-putting for sure, and it’s because of the way it was done in the midst of the rest of their characterization. I wasn’t even thinking about. How he did or didn’t look like he was portraying Trump, just his character, and then they start singing this music.

Yeah. And it freaked me out. I was like, I’m not hearing this. I, I can see. It’s weird. Yeah. If it hadn’t specifically had to do with use the words worship and stuff like that, it was just weird. But this part. Drove me crazy. Naming 

[00:49:00] Josiah: literal God. 

[00:49:01] Donnna: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:49:02] Josiah: Yes. Because 30 years in the future, instead of a thousand years, it’s just a whole, yeah.

[00:49:06] Donnna: Yeah. The couple claims that sex is banned during the travel portion of the mission, but will be celebrated once plants can be grown in their new colony and calorie restrictions are lifted. Marshall suggests that to Kai, that she should be the first in his planned natural births on Heim, leaning into the pure race angle, um, as well as control over her reproductive choices.

This hints at the claim dictatorial obsession, sometimes associated with Trump in terms of sexual freedom, which to me, see again, I didn’t even 

[00:49:43] Tim: hear it. I didn’t make the connection that, because I did find the. Concept of what he was talking about, I found that really strange and disingenuous. ’cause he and his wife are, you know, they live differently, acting weird than the rest of the crew.

Well they live so different than the rest of the crew. And I think if that were all that was involved in it, I would, I would see in the portrayal that there was a definitely a division in the classes. Yeah. But that was not. Part of the book. I Like You Rebecca. I thought that there was great science fiction.

Everybody’s kind of equal and we’re all struggling through this together. It’s difficult and if you do something wrong, you get half rations or whatever. But we were all in this together, which was different than the movie 

[00:50:25] Rebekah: for this particular one. This to me, actually kind of backs up June ho saying that it wasn’t based on a single figure because the idea of like forbidding sexual activities and certain things like that and like having kind of control over that, that’s kind of a feature of a lot of dictatorships in general like that we’ve seen in the past too.

So it’s like that one for me felt, it just felt like a little bit of a stretch to be like, oh, this was commentary on Trump himself. I think in general there, there’s definitely hints that a lot of people that. Our professional reviewers loved the movie, partly because of some of these commentaries and portrayals.

Obviously we’ve talked about it ad nauseum. It’s not the whole movie necessarily, but yeah, I just wanted to like discuss it ’cause it was controversial whether the idea, whether or not it was intentional. So yeah, 

[00:51:13] Tim: we’ve lis we listened to reviews on both sides of that. So, I mean, it’s not, it’s not that nobody notices that there’s this possibility of this controversial stuff in the movie.

[00:51:23] Josiah: Well, one, uh, similarity between the film and real life, Donald Trump, I don’t understand how this can be true that the film was filmed in 2022 and I can’t find any evidence of when re how recent reshoots were. But there’s an assassination attempt on Mark R’s character and it grazes his cheek. 

[00:51:46] Rebekah: That was another thing that was mentioned several times.

Yeah. But the book or the storm that storm was, was done. Yeah, that’s what like almost two years before that happened. 

[00:51:54] Tim: It was either. Prescient, or it was part of a reshoot. 

[00:51:57] Donnna: And, and I, I guess for me, we watch a lot of different movies. Uh, we watch a lot of different genres, and we’ve seen some that take political commentary to one extreme or another.

And that’s fine. I still watch the movie and I don’t share my political views in light of, oh my gosh, you’re not worth being a human if you don’t agree with me. I, I feel like we should be able to share our political views and share them. Okay, that’s fine. But in this case, I guess I, I didn’t see. As much Trump caricature, and maybe that’s because I view Trump differently, and other people saw it.

Oh yeah, he was going over the top because this is what I think, you know, that kind of thing. But for me, the, the sexual innuendo of him and his wife trying to make announcements to the crew and talking about there would be no sex and she’s almost eating his face, you know, I just, I was just like, okay, that’s, that’s distressing.

And I think, so they were going for this very over the top portrayal of, of this couple. But I will also say at the, toward the end of the movie, Tony Colette’s. Per portrayal. And I’ve seen her in other things, uh, but I don’t specifically follow her. But she has this one scene where she’s shocked by something and she has a look on her face that can tort her face.

Oh my gosh, that was so crazy weird. She did great. I, I don’t even know what she did with her face to make her do that. But if you do see the movie, it would be interesting to know if you kept, if you see what, what I’m talking about. I 

[00:53:34] Rebekah: was ama like honestly that was a spot of great acting. Yeah. 

[00:53:38] Tim: There are plot and timeline changes.

The book focuses heavily on exploring themes of what it means to be sentient, to have a soul, whereas the film seemed always to kind of circle back to the single question, what does it feel like to die? Um, in the book, Mickey seven had memories of near death experiences, but technically couldn’t remember the dying itself because of the way the upload process worked.

He had to upload before he died. So what does it feel like to die? He never knew, uh, Mickey 17 avoids the question in the film, but clearly seems to have an answer that he just doesn’t want to share. What you 

[00:54:14] Josiah: just said, I think is giving too much credit to the film. Yeah, interesting. I think the film is dumber than that.

Really think It just 

[00:54:21] Tim: doesn’t explore that. It’s like the simple question. Just feel like the die. Yeah. I 

[00:54:25] Josiah: think the were. I think that we’re just putting, it’s an interpretation, and I don’t know this for sure, but I, I would more quickly subscribe to the interpretation that Bong Juho did not care to make.

He just avoided that question basically. He didn’t, he didn’t care. Avoided the theme. He was uninterested. 

[00:54:43] Tim: Well, I would say that that’s, that’s, that’s got to be, that’s got to be at least very likely because when I was listening to the reviewers talk about his other films, the things they remember from his films is the class war, the hatred of Capitalism, and different things like that.

And so if this theme is about what it means to be sentient, what it means to have a soul that doesn’t fit any of those themes of his. Movies, and so perhaps he just, it was just a non-issue for him. 

[00:55:13] Rebekah: This was something we discussed at dinner right after watching the movie, but Josiah and I kind of, I think we seem to agree that it was in my, I think in your opinion too, but in my opinion for sure.

I thought the question of like, the nature of sentience and the soul was a really interesting theme in the book, and I felt like the, like, oh my gosh, people just kept coming back up to him. What does it feel like to die? What does it feel like to die? What does it feel like to, I’m like, I don’t know, 

[00:55:36] Tim: first, and then, and then Josh.

Josh want the answer you’re looking for. Yeah. And Josh actually answered that question as we were talking at the table. He never experienced. Death. 

[00:55:45] Rebekah: Yeah. He experienced the awful lead up 

[00:55:47] Tim: because they didn’t upload. Yeah. After they couldn’t, they had to upload before he died, so he never knew what it was like.

So it was kind of a non, you know, it was a nonsensical question. Even in the context of the movie. It was just like, oh, what is it like to die? Well, I have no idea. ’cause we never tell you after the fact. 

[00:56:05] Josiah: Mark Ruffalo character is the antagonist of the film. He is explicitly the bad guy in the film and nothing about his character.

Or his plot has anything to do with the idea of what is the soul, what is sentience? Or even if you’re giving the movie any credit Markel’s character and his antagonism has nothing to do with the question of what does it feel like to die like, even if that’s the film’s theme, which I don’t think it is, the antagonist of the film has nothing to do with the themes of the 

[00:56:40] Tim: film.

I think he’s a caricature. That’s, that’s part of what my problem with the Ruffalo character. I think he’s a caricature and, and he doesn’t, but he was a 

[00:56:49] Rebekah: caricature. That didn’t reinforce 

[00:56:51] Tim: the point Well, right. It’s just, but it, it’s almost, I don’t know how to, how to put this exactly, but it’s like this caricature that just stands alone, like almost in the corner, in the edge of the film, in the corner of the film distracting you every, so yeah, there’s this, Hey, look at this thing.

Okay. What does that have to do with the plot? Eh, not, not that much, but it’s funny. It’s really important, but is it really important? 

[00:57:14] Josiah: Being charitable. Did bong June ho read Mickey seven and not think about sentience and like, if we clone a human, do they have a soul? Which is like, yeah, I don’t know. I’d love to explore that in, in the book.

I’d love to like see things that show. Yeah, they, yeah, he kind of probably does have a soul. What does it mean that something we created with science, like not through natural birth, has a soul? What, what does that mean for our lives and our sense of morality? You know, instead of seeing all of that bong, Jho said, oh, you can kill a guy and bring him back to life.

That’s what capitalism does. Oh my. Yeah. So I’m gonna make the movie about capitalism, even though it’s like that’s not exact. Yeah. There only being one expendable, I think is a horrible allegory for capitalism. Yeah. Like even if you love or hate capitalism, having one guy that you can kill and bring back, that’s not really a scalable, like capitalism is scalable.

Right. And that’s one of the critiques of it is that you scale it up to billion to everybody. To billions of dependable people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone would be expendable it. It doesn’t work. Bong, jho, you don’t know what you’re doing in this case. 

[00:58:28] Tim: Here’s something I think that’s, that was fascinating. I listened to one review that was actually four different reviewers and then we listened to four other reviewers.

None of them that were one reviewer each. Yeah, there were one, one each and all of those, none of them had read the book. Oh. And so their review had nothing. They just watched movie, nothing to do with the connection to the book. And so it’s like, oh, it’s wonderful. It’s about capitalism, it’s about this, and it’s about that.

And it’s like, yeah, but the book wasn’t 

[00:58:54] Josiah: So in capitalism when you wanna make a capitalist system go to a new place that doesn’t have an economy, it what? Yeah. Well that, well that in the first place doesn’t make any sense. The problems with capitalism are that it’s embedded in society for hundreds of years.

And you’re, you’re, you’re go, like what critics would say, and you’re going to a brand new alien planet where the only other. Species on the planet seems to be sentient, insect, hive minds, which they’re not really even a hive mind in the movie, maybe who, who don’t have any sort of economy. They just have like a, a beehive mother queen sort of society.

Everyone else’s workers, which is, I, I guess socialism. I, I don’t think that, what, what does it mean? What is BHO trying to say? That a capitalist authoritarian brings a bunch of people, half of whom, if not more agree with him as like a cult leader. What does it mean for him to bring them to a planet of alien socialists?

What does, what does that mean? 

[01:00:01] Rebekah: But literally everyone that he brings with him, except he and his wife all live. Essentially a socialist society, like in the book where everybody’s equal. 

[01:00:10] Josiah: Yes. 

[01:00:10] Rebekah: So it’s like Dr. Carr is a 

[01:00:12] Josiah: socialist society. Yeah. Because it, I mean, the military essentially a socialist society.

Yeah. And it’s very military. 

[01:00:18] Rebekah: It’s, it’s, it’s just an odd choice. Like it was such a good book to make movie. That’s such a great point, 

[01:00:21] Josiah: Rebecca. It’s not a capitalist society. He’s not in charge of a capitalist society. Mark Ruffells character is in charge of an authoritarian, socialist society. Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense.

[01:00:34] Donnna: Yeah. I mean, I know we’re trying to like get into his head, but I just wonder if, if there was, gosh, I don’t, I don’t even know. Because, you know, I, I will say our discussion, the way our discussions played out, most of the reviewers we listened to were the same thing. It was like we were expecting this amazing thing.

We were so excited to see his first work after parasite, and this was a little weird. Yeah. So it’s not just us that, you know, I don’t, I don’t throw him throne. Right. 

[01:01:01] Josiah: Yeah. I, I’ve heard no one compliment the writing of this film. I’ve heard a few people say it’s a really interesting film. The writing kind of falls apart, but it’s like visually interesting.

And they love Robert Pattinson. Yes. 

[01:01:13] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[01:01:13] Josiah: Yeah. 

[01:01:14] Rebekah: Addon did an incredible job, but I think that’s Martin Freeman in line is what I read too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well let’s keep talking about the plot differences. ’cause there’s a lot, 

[01:01:23] Donnna: uh, the film Omits Mickey Seven’s choice to not upload his memory in the six weeks since his last printing, which in the book causes his divergence for Mickey eight and plays a key role in the Comex.

Instead, the movie establishes early on that each iteration I. Has unique personality quirks. While the books Mickey’s are nearly identical with their differences stemming from memory issues, the films, Mickey 18 is distinctly blood thirsty while Mickey 17 is horrified by his violence. Both versions begin with a fight between the two, but in the book, neither is willing to kill each other, whereas in the movie Mickey 18 is clearly ready to off his prior self.

So I gotta tell you, I get, I think if this is what was going on, I get that you would want to make the iteration that he battles with I I get you’d wanna make it very different, but I wondered if because 17 didn’t actually die, what they had to remake him. Or what, how because his life didn’t really conclude 

[01:02:34] Tim: bloat his brain.

[01:02:34] Donnna: Maybe that’s where the disconnect came in and the next one was like unhinged. Now that’s a far reach. 

[01:02:42] Tim: It’s six weeks of gap. We, it’ll be The interesting question to try to answer exactly is a try. It is a science fiction type of question to ask in a science fiction film. 

[01:02:53] Rebekah: If I’m being really nice to the film, my.

I think that that could be a really interesting question, which they obviously didn’t ask. Like Josiah pointed out, I like mom’s question a lot because it almost seems like after the initial upload, it’s almost like everything in his consciousness just automatically uploads all the time in the movie is like kind of if you’re being really generous and like really trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That’s kind of what it seems like because he does give the impression that he knows what it feels like to die and all that. And so maybe the lack of the previous one dying causes this like blood thirsty nature. But Josiah, you did point out something earlier about how you didn’t get 18, like you just didn’t get him.

And then I thought, 

[01:03:35] Josiah: well, and I was, I was on board for a few minutes when you first meet 18. Right. And I think, oh, he’s so different. I’m so excited for the film to show me why he might be different. I, is there something about, yeah, the way that Mickey 17 was treated, that changes his whole view of the world that he just came into.

[01:03:53] Rebekah: But is it possible that part of that. Is was a problem because Robert Pattinson wasn’t told who he was gonna be. So he had a really strong vision for who Mickey 17 was, but maybe he just didn’t have as strong of a connection with like this person he was supposed to be, you know, showing you as Mickey 18.

And on top of that, he had less time to prepare when those scenes came up, perhaps, 

[01:04:15] Tim: supposedly he had a, he had a couple of other iterations that he, that he went with and, and the director said, no, didn’t like it, not that. 

[01:04:23] Josiah: Okay. Did any of the early Mickey eighteens scenes strike anyone else as Batman esque?

Kind of. He kind of dropped a lot of his accent and he was brooding email. He did change his voice. 

[01:04:37] Rebekah: I got more of that like dark hero guy in the very final scene he’s in. I would say that’s probably when he seemed more Batman like. So we do. Okay. We learned in the book that events of 500 years in the past led by a psychopath named Man Cova are what led to the demonization of the concept of multiples and many strongly held beliefs claimed by Natalus in the present day of the book.

So reminder multiples means more than one iteration of the same expendable living at one time, which wouldn’t for a needless. 

[01:05:12] Tim: Spendable initially. Sure. It would’ve just been a clone. Yeah. 

[01:05:15] Rebekah: Oh yeah. But it basically, two of the same person living at the same time, they call those multiples and those are very, very religiously offensive, um, in this like context of the book.

So here’s the story of Manco. Once the richest man in the universe, man, Cova developed the technology to successfully transfer consciousness, not just duplicate bodies in the process of creating new expendables, or at the time clones. They talk about how the cloning technology was actually viable hundreds of years earlier, but the clones were like.

Automatons. They had no personality and they, they never could develop a personality. Even when they were printed as babies, they could not grow and learn, and it was, you know, kind of outlawed for a while until manitoba’s technology. So then he sets up a colony again. This is 500 years before the events of Mickey seven sets up a colony on another new planet where a beachhead colony was already there.

He becomes like a neighboring colony on this planet, sets out to create a bunch of multiples of himself. He eventually ran out of biological material to print new versions of himself. Really creepy 

[01:06:21] Tim: when you know that. 

[01:06:22] Rebekah: Oh, so he started kidnapping and killing the weakest and oldest members of his neighboring colony to make more copies of himself.

So at the, at the end, it was like a, you know, an army of man covas, destroy everyone on the planet, occupy it completely on his own, and then. Uh, Mickey seven, you know, the historian telling you this story, recounts on man Cova destroyed an approaching colony ship, which was, uh, an attempt at military force, the first and only one of its kind, uh, and that he was only defeated after defeating that colony ship when a, a nearby neighboring planet sent what they call a bubble weapon powered by antimatter to blow up his entire planet because he couldn’t see, see it coming.

He couldn’t see it coming ’cause it didn’t have to slow down. By the way, the bubble technology is just another really interesting example of the cool sci-fi stuff that you get in the book that’s not, you know, translated into the film. Correct. So I loved that story of Manitoba. Well, Manitoba make a, an appearance in the movie sort of.

[01:07:23] Josiah: Yeah, kind of. I don’t super, I don’t supermind the film adaptations version of Man Cova, but you do lose a really psychopathic story that, okay, so well in the film, man, Covas a psychopath, he made three copies of himself murdered homeless people and used multiples of himself to hide it by providing one of the multiples an alibi.

So this version of Man Cova can’t have been much older than Mickey himself. You know, maybe a generation older. Uh, so I, I think that the film man Cova would make sense in the real world as like, oh, that’s what multiples are like. So like, we don’t trust them. But in the book, it’s, it, it’s, oh my goodness, a religious.

Uh, revolt when it’s like, whoa, wait. A whole planet of soulless clones built by a, the a Trillionaire Mastermind psychopath took over an entire planet. It’s just so cosmic. Yeah. That it makes sense that that would, that would last, you know, mana Cova having happened a couple decades prior maybe, or maybe.

What, 10 years prior? 10, 10, 15 years. 

[01:08:31] Rebekah: I mean, it can’t have been that much longer. Yeah. 

[01:08:33] Josiah: Yeah. So I just don’t think it, I don’t think the manco of the film would be talked about in 500 years. Yeah. Like the book Manco would be, but the full 

[01:08:42] Rebekah: genocide of the book Manco created. Yeah, the book one, it was really the would 

[01:08:45] Tim: blast in the generational memory.

Yeah. To be 

[01:08:48] Rebekah: fair, the book one also does not at all fit in the timeline. June Ho decided on, so it would not have worked at all, but 

[01:08:54] Tim: had to edit it out. So interesting. Because of his choice in the timeline, 

[01:08:58] Donnna: the most significant subplot in the film was another movie only edition. As we followed TIMOs character through the process of dealing drugs, nearly getting both Mickey’s killed, fearing death from Darius Blank, and ultimately killing blank’s unnamed associate by throwing him down the corpse hole.

[01:09:17] Rebekah: I could not have cared less about this. I never cared. I hated Timo from the beginning, but not in a way that was interesting. It’s really hard not to, I didn’t about, I didn’t care stuff. I know. I didn’t care about like the Darius blank thing. I just thought that made no sense. And like he fought, literally, he was like fighting with the associate and then throws him down the hole.

And this whole time I’m like, I, I don’t care. Like just get to something that’s interesting and that has to like, it’s just so funny because it also is something that feels so out of place in the setting that you’re in. It’s, it’s again, like the example Josiah gave. It’s like, why would you pick a story where you just go off onto a colony planet and then tell a story that you could tell in any major city in present day.

Like just tell that story like June, if you really cared to tell that story. 

[01:10:10] Tim: June Ho also made a choice with the timeline that. The trip didn’t take that long in the book. That was a long thing. They were so far away from communicating with other colonies, you know, it was, they were so distance and they had to watch every 

[01:10:25] Donnna: kcal 

[01:10:25] Tim: and Right.

The, the associate of Darius Black wouldn’t have mattered, you know, he’s not going to bring you back the money. 

[01:10:33] Josiah: That is the reason they go on the ship in both book and film. If Darius Black and reached them on the, even though they’re on Niel Heim, right. Then what was the point of Mickey being an expendable?

Yeah. I didn’t even think about that. Wow. Dad, wow. You just, you just, uh, unleashed the plot hole. The entire reason that the plot happens, the plot cork hole makes no sense. Yep. That is such a good term. 

[01:11:02] Rebekah: I hadn’t even, I had not even thought of that, honestly. 

[01:11:06] Josiah: Me neither. That’s crazy. Me neither. And you know what, you know, you know what we haven’t even talked about.

The, like primary conceit of the novel is Mickey seven and eight trying to hide their existence as multiples, which would’ve been so much fun. I mean, maybe 50% of the book. Yeah. You know, you introduce it in, uh, near the beginning of the book and it’s, it’s kind of the end of act if you’re splitting it up into three acts, which is a very film thing to do, not a book thing, but it’s kind of the end of act two.

Yeah. And them discovered as multiples is act three. 

[01:11:38] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:11:39] Josiah: Yeah. But, um. So they’re ultimately, so Naasha finds out and it’s, and it’s a big deal, but it’s, she doesn’t turn them in and she still loves the Mickey’s, but they’re caught by Kat and Barto. Who in the film would be Kai and Timo? Yes. Mm-hmm. Or Yes.

So in the book, prefer Mickey Seven’s wrist injury and, you know, they have limited rations of food ’cause they have to split it between the two of them Creates significant issues for the book Protagonist it, the, the rations were mentioned in the movie, literally never brought up again. It was one of the best ticking time bombs in the book.

Yeah. Every time, I mean. I am not good at reading books. I’m dumb when it comes to reading books, but I felt every time when their kcal count got reduced because they did something bad. Oh. And like, even though Marshall didn’t know that it was being halved every time it hit me in the gut. Oh, so so how much longer?

And they survived. Oh, my, how exactly That time bomb of they’re gonna starve. The film goes out of its way to express the supposed dangers of multiples only to skip. They’re hiding as a major plot point altogether. Okay. Let me tell you what this is like. Are you ready? 

[01:12:55] Rebekah: I’m so ready. Mm-hmm. 

[01:12:56] Josiah: Okay. Do you remember this Alfred Hitchcock quote, this famous quote?

He says, if you, what is suspense? You know, if you, if you have a, a family around a table or just eating dinner and then a bomb goes off and kills them all, what do you have? Five seconds of surprise shock. But if you have a family around a dining. You know, dining room table, eating dinner, very peaceful, quiet.

You tell the audience there’s a bomb that’s going to go off in five minutes, what do you get? Then the whole tone has changed. It’s five minutes of suspense. So what the film did was tell us there’s a bomb under the table that’s gonna go off in five minutes and then skipped the five minutes and just went to the bomb exploding.

It’s the worst of both worlds, is what the film did. I couldn’t believe it. Naasha. I have no idea what you’re gonna think at the end. No, naasha actually shouts be before they’re really found out. They’re found out by Kat, but Kat hasn’t revealed the duplicates to everyone yet in the film. She doesn’t film.

There’s this chaotic cafeteria. Well, she doesn’t get to She She doesn’t get to, yeah, she, I think they’re in the negotiations stages of Ken. Should I, Kat and Naasha share the Mickeys as boyfriends and then Kat wouldn’t, first of all, oh my gosh, so much. Kat Kai has a line in the film that she accuses Marshall of thinking of her only as a uterus, which is like a, a girl power moment.

I think it’s very cringey, but it’s shorthand for I have girl power. And then for this girl power character to negotiate with another girl about, oh, I want your boyfriend, so let’s negotiate when to when. 

[01:14:44] Donnna: You can have that one. What 

[01:14:45] Josiah: is this? That’s not a girl power moment. No. Oh no. It’s like, oh, all women want is a man a moment.

And I, women can be complex, but it’s, those are the only two things she did in the movie. True. It was very weird. And they conflict with one another. The juxtaposition is not good. The only two things she does in the movie. Okay. So anyway, during that ca there’s a chaotic cafeteria scene before they’re the, they’re really found out as duplicates.

Yes. Naasha shouts in the middle of dozens of people. The other Mickey, something like that. Where’s the other Mickey? Yeah. I was furious and I’m glad that you guys caught it too. Yes. Because we didn’t, we didn’t like talk during the film. Yeah. In the theater. So I’m so glad that like all of us remembered when it was like, well wait.

The why would Naasha would never have done that in the book. She, because she would have risk revealing the duplicate Mickeys. She cared about them. She cared about keeping them a secret. Oh my. Well, to replace this

[01:15:41] Tim: main plot line, the film shifts the spotlight to Governor Marshall’s obsession with creating his planet of superior beings who follow his form of cringey Christianity and generally acting as a dictator.

The second half of the movie is about Marshall’s attempts to defeat the creepers, the native inhabitants of Heim by sending out both Mickey’s with explosive devices to destroy the gathered creatures who’ve surrounded the ship. That’s the book plot line. The film plot line is that they go out. With explosive devices.

That’s, they have explosive devices actually 

[01:16:22] Josiah: the same. Yeah. That strangely enough the same. 

[01:16:24] Tim: But they’re going to gas them well, so I’m not sure. Sure. Why Ally, 

[01:16:30] Josiah: the motivation of them having explosive devices is because I LFA is gonna have them compete to see that’s who can get the most creeper tails for her sauces.

That is the reason. Yes. For the climax of the film. That is tail sauce. 

[01:16:48] Tim: That is so strange. Mm-hmm. So, so serious. And we try 

[01:16:52] Donnna: so hard. We’ve tried so hard not to talk about El Alpha’s weird sauces. Oh, the sauces 

[01:16:56] Tim: Uhhuh. I have no idea why that was just Brazy like, I get you 

[01:17:02] Rebekah: having a week Anyway, sorry. Yeah, we could just go on forever about that.

[01:17:05] Donnna: Yeah. Well, the reason the creepers gather around the ship in the film is because Marshall has kidnapped and nearly killed one of the baby creepers, and the queen or the mother of the creepers leads her people to surround the ship until her child returns another baby. Creeper was also killed after it was accidentally transported inside the ship.

[01:17:29] Rebekah: So the movie presents the creepers like they’re sentient kind creatures who will only hurt or kill in self-defense. In the book, they’re a hive mind. It’s also subtly suggested in the film that they’re a hive mind in very much in passing, and so they have killed some Dakkar crew members. Because as Mickey describes, they see all humans as ancillary parts to the main dome and the creatures in the dome.

Mickey seven in the book tells the one communicating with him that he is the quote prime, like the one he was communicating with, like the prime or the, it seems like the queen maybe, and I did write this down from the book, according to Mickey, in the book quote, they couldn’t care less about any of the creepers we’ve killed, end quote.

Right? Well, first of all, they completely changed the motivation for killing them because in the movie I. None of the creepers had killed anyone. Like they made it so that they were just totally like calm and civil. But in the book it was like, okay, well we have to like fight back against these things because they’re killing the members of our very, very small colony with very few resources.

[01:18:35] Tim: Well, in, in both the book and film, the climaxes are definitely different. The climax ends as Mickey seven or Mickey 17 successfully communicates with the prime creeper and stops her from destroying more humans in the book. This happens as Mickey finally realizes that she’s been the one causing his odd dreams and crackling audio feed as she’s learned how to communicate with him, telepathically through his communicator.

You know, the, he’s been thinking that it was Mickey eight dreaming and communicating with him, and he can’t get away from it. Finally, she kind of says enough, she’s learned enough of the language to communicate with him before Mickey seven can resolve the conflict. Mickey eight is killed by the creepers, but remember for the creepers, every one of those other creatures is just ancillary killing them.

Doesn’t matter that it means nothing. 

[01:19:29] Rebekah: It’s very similar to Enders game, like the Enders game hive mind, where they just didn’t really care if they lost ancillaries. They didn’t, you know, it was the exact same thing. It’s that sci-fi hive mind idea, 

[01:19:41] Tim: right? Di they didn’t matter and they didn’t under, they didn’t know why the humans would have a problem with the killing of the ancillaries set.

They’re not important. Right? Well, in the book, Mickey eight is killed by the creepers before Mickey seven finally puts it all together and realizes, oh, they’re, they’re communicating with me and, and this is how they feel in the film. The climax occurs as Mickey 18 kills Commander Marshall and himself with the bomb that he’s carrying while Mickey 17 uses his hot off the lab bench, brand new translator to talk to the prime.

[01:20:17] Rebekah: It’s just magic. It’s Dick again, it’s magic. 

[01:20:21] Josiah: It’s a, what do you call it, tj? Deus Mackinac. Deus x Mackinac. Oh, it’s so interesting that Tom John, not the dual sex 

[01:20:28] Donnna: machine, not that team could have put 

[01:20:30] Josiah: it so interesting that Mr. Bong could have put it a thousand years in the future when they just have technology to do this sort of thing.

Or he could have used the book plot that already existed, but instead he decided to make something up that didn’t make any sense. Well, 

[01:20:48] Tim: Mickey 17 returns her child with the help of Naasha who saved the baby creeper from death by catching the rope he hung from with her teeth. My personal feeling about this is the book was about Mickey and Yep.

And his struggles and those kinds of things. Mm-hmm. The book was about Mickey. The film was partly about Mickey, but mostly just for the plot that it allowed mm-hmm. To raise up a very strange character in the commander and his wife, who never should have even been part of it. And. To make Naasha something more heroic than she was in the book.

I mean, she was in the book and she was a good character, but it was like, raise her up, raise up the commander, and make Mickey the main story less. 

[01:21:37] Rebekah: Yeah. You make Naasha the dynamic character. Mickey’s now the static character in the movie. He doesn’t learn or grow or you know, anything. He just, 

[01:21:46] Tim: or even use his 

[01:21:46] Josiah: brain, he 

[01:21:47] Rebekah: just, he just exists and kind of goes with whatever’s happening in the moment.

[01:21:51] Josiah: It’s the Hobbit guys. 

[01:21:52] Rebekah: Yeah, same 

[01:21:53] Josiah: thing. You’re not messed up with the Hobbit. You’re not incorrect. 

[01:21:56] Rebekah: All right. So the Deon of the book and film diverged completely at this point. So the climax really big. It’s like weirdly recognizable, the same, but not at all the same. And then the rest of it is. Incredibly different.

So in the book, McGee seven tells Marshall after the, you know, Mickey eight dies, he comes back, tells Marshall who is still alive, that he gave the creepers, the anti-matter bomb, sent out with him as a form of mutually assured destruction so that neither species would kill members of the others anymore.

This is actually a lie in reality. He hid the bomb out in the ice field and the creepers never actually knew that he went out with a bomb to destroy them in the first place. ’cause he didn’t want to tell them because he didn’t want them to kill them. Uh, but he uses that deception and his position as the one able to communicate with the native species to quit his job as an expendable, which Marshall has no choice but to accept.

Also, he does point out that there are a bunch of tunnels of the creepers going directly underneath the dome. And so he was saying like they would be able to easily kill us all, like with, they could put the anger matter mom 

[01:23:02] Tim: under the, under the dome and we’d be gone. 

[01:23:04] Rebekah: So, like I said, Marshall does not die.

He’s not killed in this version. Uh, but Mickey seven at the end tells Naasha that he’s gonna wait for Marshall to die before telling whoever becomes the new commander. What really happened with the creepers? ’cause he’s kind of hoping for somebody who’s more sensitive to him. And this sets up the novel for its sequel and anti-matter blues, 

[01:23:25] Tim: and all of this makes Mickey smart.

He’s not a doofus. 

[01:23:30] Donnna: He found purpose and was willing to accept his purpose and, and go with it. 

[01:23:34] Josiah: He has agency, he drives. Mm-hmm. Yes. He drives the plot for kind of likeness, being the 

[01:23:40] Tim: titular character 

[01:23:41] Donnna: and, and Naasha and Naasha. While she was an intelligent woman and she was, she, she had a, a great skill and all those things.

The beautiful part about her was how she was faithful to him in every iteration, even to the point that she would sit with, with him while he was horribly dying. She didn’t want him to be alone. There was nothing wrong with that being who she was to me, like I was like aggravated. I was a 

[01:24:08] Josiah: hero. She was a hero in the context of how 

[01:24:10] Tim: she treated Mickey.

Yeah. What is, what is wrong with a hero whose heroic nature is seen in compassion? No, she has to. Fight people. She had to, you know, grab the rope with her teeth and hold it. ’cause she’s strong and powerful. She was a fighter pilot. She’s, 

[01:24:26] Josiah: yeah. Yeah. She had girl power. Sure. But it doesn’t have to be where all her strength comes from.

[01:24:33] Donnna: I mean, I thought that was, it. Thought that that was really good. I thought that’s very, is pertinent to the story because that she, the book, she was strong. I mean, she was, she was an amazing, for me, she was an amazing part of the book. And I, I thought wow. To think about her and they did deal with that in the movie.

They did make the point that she stayed with him and even showed her sitting with him while he’s dying and is dispo, I mean his from, from like different things they shot him with and they showed her doing that and I was like so excited to see that part of it. 

[01:25:08] Josiah: You know, what was also left outta the film is Mickey as a commodity.

There are a few people who reject Mickey because he’s an expendable for religious reasons. Totally, I mean, believable. I, I, I don’t know what side I would be on if we started cloning humans, but in the book there were also people who were like, oh, you’re expendable. That’s so interesting. And they gravitated him.

They gravitated towards him. Like he was an object that, I mean, and, and he didn’t like that either. Hey, you know, it was in the film. It had an ending. Thank God it did. The Denu Ma after Marshall is killed by the main character, uh, and he, he’s an unlikeable character, so if he were isolated, it might not be too disturbing.

After that, they flash forward. There’s a time jump that shows the council. Oh my gosh. It shows the Council on Heim barely mentioned before the end of the movie in the, uh, the Flash Forward is when Naasha joins the council. Well, she’s, she run, uh, yeah, Mickey was such a supportive boyfriend. My girlfriend ran for political office and we didn’t really think she was gonna do great, but then she wanted a landslide to be a member of the council, not the head of the council, just a member.

Mm-hmm. But it really feels like she’s the head of the council. The, the, the only, only council member you really see at the end, only one with lines. She’s, she’s giving the speech. Okay. So she heads the project. To destroy the human printing machine. First of all, why is there a project for that? That sounds like bureaucracy to me.

Mm-hmm. 

[01:26:47] Josiah: We had 12 committees and it only took a year and a half to decide. Mickey gets to blow up the human printing machine by pressing a large button, which is a callback to a traumatic incident from his childhood where he pressed a red button in a car. We don’t know what it did, but he wrongly associated him pressing the button with causing the car crash that killed his mother.

Yeah. There’s this weird 

[01:27:15] Rebekah: button theme that also went through the movie I almost forgot about, 

[01:27:18] Donnna: and to inject another positive piece here. The scene after he has that dream or that memory or whatever, and he’s sitting there. Uh, on his, he’s sitting there in a room by himself and he’s weeping because he has recalled this memory and it seems like it’s a memory that he doesn’t often think of or that it ever comes to mind.

It was the recall process. He’s weaving. Yes. I didn’t even remember was so. I was affected by him crying, sitting there like that. Like it really? Yeah. And that, 

[01:27:47] Josiah: that was before we knew how absurd the memory was. 

[01:27:51] Donnna: Yeah. Before we knew where, where they were going with it. But it, but for him, just to say another nod to his acting, uh, uh, his acting.

Mm-hmm. I thought that that was incredibly, it felt real. He seemed genuinely overwhelmed by it. We’re gonna move forward and look at some trivia and see if these stats bear out what we have been discussing up to this point. Uh, so book release was February 15th, 2022. So the movie release was exactly three years later at Berlin Owl, the Berlin International Film Festival.

So February 15th, 2025, and then February 28th in South Korea and March 7th in the United States. 

[01:28:36] Tim: Don’t you think it’s interesting that it was initially released in Germany, which has good memory of Hitler? And in South Korea, which is next door to the dictatorship of North Korea with the theme, the way the movie is interesting that it was released in Germany and released in South Korea.

[01:28:59] Donnna: So, uh, okay, so the book rating on good reads is 3.78 out of five. The movie RA rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 78%, which is fresh. Uh, the IMDB rating is high. That is so high. It’s so depressing that it’s that high. The IMDB rating is 7.1 out of 10. Uh, the production cost is 118 million. Oh, that seems a little, he was basic, 

[01:29:26] Tim: given a blank check because of his.

Previous film, parasite. Oh, people 

[01:29:29] Donnna: have been dying. I mean, the stuff I read, people were dying to get see. Oh. For five years, his next thing, uh, opening weekend in the US was 19.1 million. Ouch. Now, the, the 2 28 opening in South Korea broke the post pandemic record, which was previously set by Patons, the Batman.

[01:29:50] Josiah: They love Robert. 

[01:29:50] Donnna: And in South Korea they grossed 1.7 million the first day, 9 million, the first weekend. So somehow like Robert Pattinson for whatever, um, the, or the leader who 

[01:30:03] Rebekah: is from there. Yeah. Boo is South Korean, so Yeah, that’s 

[01:30:05] Donnna: true too. But, but the Batman, he didn’t do the Batman, but he didn’t do the Batman.

[01:30:08] Tim: He didn’t do the Batman. 

[01:30:09] Donnna: Mm-hmm. So USA Canada Gross. And I just went back and got these numbers today. So they were up a little bit. Yeah. 28 million international, also 28 million. And the total, uh, for the world worldwide is. 56 millions and we are two weekends in. Ooh. Um, it was, and I’ll finish it out by saying, and they’re not number 

[01:30:30] Josiah: one today.

[01:30:31] Donnna: Uh, I’ll finish out by saying it’s rated r that’s 

[01:30:34] Josiah: almost half 

[01:30:34] Donnna: Yeah. Movies rated R and it was filmed in the Warner Brothers Studios. It leavesden in Waterford, Herford England. And I will also say that even though it’s not completely confirmed, the sources are saying, I’ve looked at this in a couple places, that they’re gonna stream this starting on March 25th.

Oh 

[01:30:55] Rebekah: my gosh. Wow. That’s, so, that’s a great big, that’s a major fail. What? 

[01:31:00] Donnna: Yeah, 

[01:31:00] Rebekah: big 

[01:31:00] Josiah: flop. 

[01:31:01] Donnna: So, you know, whether they, whether that’s gonna be the exact one or not, but sources are, I’d, I’d be interested filling that a little bit to find 

[01:31:08] Tim: out if the, if the process for, for films and, and things, if it’s cheaper to stream it and you can make the money that you make from streaming offsets the money you would lose by leaving it in the theater and Yeah.

Not much for 

[01:31:23] Rebekah: movies that like, weren’t a success when they first came out. Right. 

[01:31:26] Tim: If, if you can actually make, you know, more, you know, make 20 cents on the dollar streaming it, or 10 cents on the dollar, continuing to have it at the theater, 

[01:31:35] Josiah: streaming is becoming a more profitable source. 

Yeah. True of revenue 

[01:31:40] Josiah: For movies, I think.

Oh, that was an, we were talking a little bit about the Oscars this past week. I didn’t mention, I think it was Sean Baker when he either won best director or best writer, best screenplay. Uh. Original he, I think it was him who said, please, movie studios, executives don’t stop making films. For the cinema, please, we can, we can do streaming, but don’t rely on it.

Please don’t take away the big silver screen experience. And Quentin Tarantino introduced him, and so he was standing behind him. Quentin Tarantino was like, yeah, yeah, that’s, I believe with that too. Well, isn’t it? Was fun. Isn’t that what 

[01:32:23] Tim: the whole introduction at the a MC Theater is with, um, the actress With the tribe?

Yeah. With Nicole Kidman, Nicole kid. That’s a little more capitalist. But I mean, she comes and says, I’d love to see that the theater. But I mean, it’s the, it’s that same sentiment. It’s a, an experience to see, well, how many movies have 

[01:32:39] Rebekah: you seen in the last five years since Covid shut down theaters? How many movies have you seen where they’ve had introductions at the beginning from the actors of the movie that are like, thank you so much.

Thank you for coming, for coming to the theater and seeing this the way we wanted you to see it. Yeah. Right. And Tom 

[01:32:53] Tim: Cruise was, was famous for saying, you know, his post covid movie Maverick was. Had to be at the theater. 

[01:33:01] Donnna: Yeah. He said, I’ll wait as long as we have to wait. We’re not it out until gonna be, we’re not gonna stream.

It’s 

[01:33:05] Josiah: gonna be, I I did read a deadline report that I think estimated, what was it? Warner Brothers spent 80 million on marketing. So I think that they’re trying to recoup 200 million, which you could 

[01:33:17] Rebekah: see they would want to do that. Well, a couple points of interesting trivia. Uh, this was Bong June host’s first film, like we said, since parasite in 2019.

NPR listed the book Mickey seven on its list of best sci-fi books of 2022, and it was a nominee for best sci-fi book on good reads. 

[01:33:37] Tim: An indie wire article says, unlike the elaborate sets in bongs, last Oscar winning film parasite in 2019, the interior of Mickey ship is quote, very gritty and grimy. The whole point of this, uh, ginormous space is.

That you never get a sense of how many people are actually there. Everyone feels quite anonymous. Even until the end of the movie, we still don’t have any idea where these corridors end and the outer boundaries of this space are. End. Quote quote, it kind of had to feel like these characters were just thrown in the middle of a vast ocean with no sense of direction.

End quote. Uh, note in the book, commander Marshall tells Mickey that just 190 people departed from mid guard on the expedition, which is why it’s bad that the, uh, creepers are killing some of them. They need them all. I also think 

[01:34:27] Josiah: that quote, the vast ocean quote. Mm-hmm. I think he’s wrong. He’s so confident it seems, but it’s like, yeah.

Uh. I feel like a much better. Okay, so he’s trying to talk about capitalism. I get it. But I feel like with the plot it should be more like the ship is safety and outside the ship feels like the vast ocean, but he’s saying that the ship, their home is the vast ocean because it has. So little boundary. You don’t ever get a sense of how 

[01:34:56] Rebekah: big the ship ship is or how small.

You can’t, you can’t even tell what the routes are to get from one place to another on the ship. 

[01:35:01] Josiah: Well, he’s using that symbolism to represent the character’s actual feelings. And I don’t think that’s how the characters would or should feel. Yeah. So I think that him doing that symbolism is not creatively good.

[01:35:16] Donnna: Yeah. Um, Robert was the first person considered for the role of Mickey, and he immediately accepted the offer in an article from Empire Patson stated he used different accents to separate the Mickey. He started the initial script reading imitating Johnny Knoxville. Mm-hmm. And Steve-O from Jack Butt, sorry.

But Bong suggested that he take another route. So he took his next inspiration from Ren and Stimpy Rob based his physical acting on Jim Carey’s. Uh. Uh, character in Dumb and Dumber. Wow. And it was interesting. I loved this reading this because Renin Stimpy was the dumbest and quirkiest goofiest comedy.

And I’ll never forget his, their, they did a whole 15 minute episode on the game. Don’t whiz. On the electric fence. And I was like, when we were, you guys were, you were young. And I said, we caught this on Nickelodeon and that we were at mom’s. And I can remember sitting and laughing until I cried because of this silly thing.

And when he said he took it stupid, I immediately saw where he was going Yeah. With it. And I thought that was an interesting, uh, fallback. Like he would ev like what he would know, but I guess he would know. He he would’ve been a kid 

[01:36:34] Josiah: before we, we get off trivia. Did, did you hear the Will Helm scream? I know nothing about what that is.

Uh, I’m gonna do an impression and then I’ll tell you about it. Are you ready? Oh. 

[01:36:43] Donnna: Oh, 

[01:36:45] Josiah: that was horrible. 

[01:36:47] Donnna: That was a horrible impression. 

[01:36:50] Josiah: It was around an hour and 16 and a half, uh, timestamp in the movie when the bulkhead door slams closed on. Who will call pigeon man? Uh, I don’t know. 

[01:37:02] Tim: Useless. Unnecessary.

Crazy why in the world Character Red 

[01:37:06] Donnna: shirt. Go ahead. 

[01:37:08] Josiah: And it was also, it’s also a red dwarf joke from season two when Captain Hollister is dressed as a chicken or something. Yeah, 

[01:37:15] Donnna: yeah. 

[01:37:16] Josiah: Uh, it’s, it does, it’s 

[01:37:17] Tim: not, that one makes more sense. So why is Will Helm scream important? Private 

[01:37:22] Josiah: Will Helm was a character in the charge at Feather River, a a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.

And the, the stalk scream had just been added to Warner Brothers Stalk Sound Library. Uh, the charge at Feather River where private helmets. You know, is the namesake for the Scream. It was the third film to use the effect, but that’s how it got its name. It’s thought to be voiced by an actor, Sheb Woolley.

Not sure, but it was, uh, featured in all of the original Star Wars films. It’s, it’s everywhere 

[01:37:56] Tim: in Norse mythology. Heim is a realm in a permanent state of winter. It is the afterlife for those who do not die. A heroic death. And mid guard, if I’m not mistaken, is the realm of humans in North Norse mythology.

[01:38:13] Rebekah: So what you’re saying is the author actually put time into thinking about what he was going to write and why and why. Okay. So very, very quick mini game hopefully. But do any of you know anything about the sequel anti-matter blues? If you had to guess the plot for a sequel to the Mickey seven book, what do you think happens?

[01:38:38] Tim: Oh, I think, I think he loses track of the anti-matter bomb that he hid. 

[01:38:43] Rebekah: Okay. 

[01:38:44] Tim: And he doesn’t know what to do and he is trying to keep them from being accidentally destroyed. 

[01:38:49] Donnna: Okay, anybody else have a thought? I think that he struggles with his multiple iterations and he begins to like come to this, this pivot point in his, in his life and he try has to grapple with that.

[01:39:03] Josiah: Marshall dies new commander. Mickey tells him about what actually happened with Annie matter, Annie Matter bomb, and the creepers. And this new commander is a little more violent than Mickey expected, and he actually wants to use his, the human’s un hither to unknown advantage over the creepers, against the creepers.

And it becomes a conversation about the use of weapons of mass destruction on sentient beings. 

[01:39:33] Rebekah: Interesting. So Inta matter blues, uh, mom and dad both actually had features of it. Maybe a little bit of Josiah as well. But, uh, he does end up losing the anti-matter thing. He hid it in the middle of an ice field and shockingly when the weather changed, it went missing.

So Marshall comes to him and basically says, it’s been two years. I let you quit your job even though you can’t. So he’s just been working, helping raise rabbits and do menial labor basically around the colony. And, uh, Marshall tells him about some accident that supposedly destroyed so much of their anti-matter supply that by the time the winter comes again, which will probably be in just a couple more years, ’cause their spring season and, and summer season are like years at a time.

And then winter is years at a time. By the time they get to winter and need the anti-matter, they won’t have enough. They have to get that weapon back. He goes, it’s not there. Also, the creepers have stopped communicating with him for over a year, and so he has to get their attention again. And I’m only a few chapters into the book, so I, I read the kind of concede of this one, but he has to communicate with the creepers again.

He ends up being connected to one that goes by the name of speaker that talks to him like as, and they fall in 

[01:40:46] Donnna: love. 

[01:40:47] Rebekah: Uh, no. Uh, but this, the one called speakers, the one that kind of speaks to him on the creeper’s behalf. Apparently Mickey is very antagonistic towards them, and his character becomes even more irresponsible in this book than the first one.

Uh, and so they basically have to, uh, there’s a lot more complexity in the way they develop, like the, the Society of Creepers and the way that the two, you know, colonies have to survive. And coexist and all these things. Everything that I saw actually suggested that the second book might be a little better than the first one.

What? Like that it felt a little broader and a little more interesting. So I thought that was really interesting. 

[01:41:24] Josiah: Well, surely there are more clones after what you’ve read. 

[01:41:27] Rebekah: I did. There might be. I, they didn’t destroy the machine. That was just a thing in the movie, obviously. Um, so 

[01:41:32] Josiah: that’s true. 

[01:41:33] Rebekah: They didn’t destroy the machine in the book and I didn’t see in anything that I read if there were more, um, you know, more duplicates ever made.

However, um, I haven’t actually read through the book and everything I found was kind of like light spoilers. Nothing was giving me a full ending. So I don’t know how the book actually ends. So. 

[01:41:51] Josiah: Okay, well, I’m gonna look it up and not tell you. 

[01:41:53] Rebekah: Okay. I don’t mind spoilers, so I don’t care. Um, all right. So as we end, I wanted to start doing something in our final verdict, just a tiny little add-on, but in addition to giving your verdict, is the book better or is the movie better and why?

I also think we should give star ratings out of 10 for how we would personally rate the book in film. ’cause sometimes we’re like, well, the book is better, but they were like a nine and a 9.5, or the movie was better, but they were both terrible or whatever. So I thought it would be interesting to also give our review of each work.

So I’ll go first. Uh, my final verdict is that the book was so monumentally better in this case. I think the bond, like his whole, the commentary was terrible. It didn’t make sense. There’s holes everywhere. The plot didn’t, it just fell flat. I think Robert Pattinson did an incredible job. I think several of the other actors did really well, and I think the first 20 minutes of the movie were really good.

But other than that, I have been so looking forward to this. It got delayed a full year. We were gonna do this episode a year ago, and then the book or the movie release got delayed. And I have been looking forward to seeing this movie for the better part of like 13, 14 months. And I was so annoyed leaving the theater.

Uh, so I was really, really disappointed. Uh, ratings wise, I would probably give the book for me about an eight outta 10. It’s not like the perfect book and I love it more than anything, but I very excitedly read it a second time, uh, preparing for this episode so that I just finished it again. Uh, as far as the movie goes, it is probably like a two and a half outta 10 for me.

I have to give it a tiny bit of credit for some of the stuff I liked, but I think it just. Oh, it was just so bad. I like, I don’t know how anyone thought this movie was better than that, so I’m shocked by some of the high ratings we’ve talked about. But that is, uh, that’s my perspective. 

[01:43:41] Donnna: I enjoyed the book.

I did read the book a second time as well. Mm-hmm. Because we did read it some months ago, and like you, I was super excited to see the movie. I’m a big fan of Robert Pattinson and I thought this, I, I thought the trailers were compelling. I, so I was always calling. It was also cool that it felt where we could see it 

[01:44:01] Rebekah: together.

[01:44:01] Donnna: Yes. And then it worked out, Hey, we could see this together and that, that’ll be awesome. It’s hard to really say it a lot of different things. Just, I’m just gonna say, I would say the book, um. I could follow it. That was sci-fi that I didn’t get lost in. So that was pretty cool. So I’m gonna say, uh, seven and a half, between seven and a half and eight for the book.

Um, it is something I wouldn’t mind going back and reading again at some point. The movie, I really, really did enjoy Robert Pattinson’s character. And even though I didn’t get why Mickey 18 was psychopathic, I did think he pulled it off. Yeah, I thought that he successfully pulled it off. So I’ll say three, I’ll be.

Gracious, I suppose, for him and for the creepers because they didn’t end up being horrible, you know, killers and it was just a mom wanting to protect her kids, you know, whatever. Mm-hmm. Uh, so that, I guess that would be my statement about it. 

[01:45:02] Tim: I would probably, I’d probably give the book an eight. Um, I will read it again.

I enjoyed it and I think I’d like to read it again. I will never see the movie again. I sat in the theater. I was very, I was very concerned that I was seeing something differently than the rest of my family. ’cause I thought, I am so disappointed and so disturbed by the movie and not disturbed in ways.

It’s like, oh, I need to think about these deep subjects. And that’s disturbing. That’s, it wasn’t that, it was just, just off-putting. Mm-hmm. It was just, mm-hmm. Yeah, off-putting and disturbing in that kind of way, I won’t ever see the film again. Um, and that’s sad because I really did like Robert Pattinson, despite the fact that he was goofier than I think the Mickey of the book was.

Um, I think that it worked and it told me in the trailers that I could expect a mickey that was going to have some lighthearted humor to it because I felt like that’s what the book had. You know, there was some lighthearted humor the movie missed on that. It really missed on that, I would probably give it a, a three out of 10, perhaps, maybe a four if I’m being extremely generous.

’cause I liked his performance. I, I didn’t see anything visually in the film that I thought, oh, that looks like that’s a really. Bad effect or they did a bad job at that. Uh, there weren’t things like that. So I’d have to give it for the film as a film, you know, I’d have to give it maybe a four. 

[01:46:28] Josiah: This movie makes me so angry.

I mean, I could give it a random number if you want, but with Hobbit three, it’s not. A cohesive story. Mm-hmm. And it’s not that it’s something that is saying something that I don’t agree with. Mm-hmm. Which it, it is trying to be that, but it fails to even say mm-hmm. Something I disagree with convincingly.

Right. To say anything convincingly, cohesively. And so, by my estimation, it’s not a movie like Hobbit three is not a movie. If I pretended to give ratings one to 10, I guess a two or three. But, um, but I would just give it two thumbs down, as in, it’s not a, it’s not a film, it’s not a story, so don’t even bother with it.

The book was better than the movie, but there was no movie. So that’s my verdict. 

[01:47:16] Rebekah: Okay. Well, deep thoughts everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review. It is incredibly helpful. And. We have a brand new one on Apple titled Woohoo, my favorite podcast, and superfan. Seth says, I don’t have any complaints at all.

The quality is incredible. The hosts are informative, funny, and personable. It’s clean too. I can’t believe nobody else has come up with this idea for a podcast before, but I’m glad it was them that did, unless you really care about. Spoilers, I recommend just listening to every episode. 

[01:47:51] Tim: Rebecca, you wrote such a beautiful review.

[01:47:53] Rebekah: I didn’t write that one. I 

[01:47:55] Tim: promise. Good. 

[01:47:57] Josiah: Thank you. Or any of them. Thank you. I haven’t written any of the ones. Come on now. 

[01:48:03] Rebekah: Alright. If you, uh, would love to leave us a review like Superfan, Seth, it makes us really happy and feel good. Uh, also, we’re now live on Patreon and we’re looking for ways to make that really, uh, useful.

Useful to our subscribers. Would love to have you, uh, even support as a free subscriber or join a paid tier if you would like to do that for some extra content. You can find us on X Instagram and Facebook at book is Better Pod. And if you wanna send feedback, ask us questions to answer on future episodes or just have some fun with us, you can join our free Discord server.

There is a link for it in the episode description. Until next time, bye 

[01:48:40] Josiah: bye everyone. Good. Thank you. I love you all so much. Thanks for listening to all of this passion.