And they're back! What happens when our world heritage is in danger? There's only one man who can save it! Enter the UN's secret weapon: a bitter hero who loves humanity so much he'd kill us all to save it. But first, why does Russian sci-fi embrace dirt and suffering and what's the problem with the 3 Body Problem? Other than the astrophysics problem in the title, obviously. I'm realizing that's an awkward way to phrase it. I mean the show has a fundamental problem but I don't mean fundamental like the building blocks of the Universe, so less fundamental than that but pretty basic to the idea of the show. Actually, that kind of puts it all in perspective. Who cares about eight episodes of a streaming show when you hold it up against the sheer scale and complexity of the Universe? And, oh god, if the show doesn't matter, what about a podcast episode about the show?! What are we even doing with our lives? Anyway, enjoy!
And they're back! What happens when our world heritage is in danger? There's only one man who can save it! Enter the UN's secret weapon: a bitter hero who loves humanity so much he'd kill us all to save it. But first, why does Russian sci-fi embrace dirt and suffering and what's the problem with the 3 Body Problem? Other than the astrophysics problem in the title, obviously. I'm realizing that's an awkward way to phrase it. I mean the show has a fundamental problem but I don't mean fundamental like the building blocks of the Universe, so less fundamental than that but pretty basic to the idea of the show. Actually, that kind of puts it all in perspective. Who cares about eight episodes of a streaming show when you hold it up against the sheer scale and complexity of the Universe? And, oh god, if the show doesn't matter, what about a podcast episode about the show?! What are we even doing with our lives?
Anyway, enjoy!
Welcome to Don't Encourage Us Plus, the show where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits.
I'm your host Tyler Rake, and I'm here with my co-host, Court Gentry. Today we have a story break episode for you, so feel free to delete it right now. But first, welcome back, how was your break?
Had a much needed rest.
You sure you got enough of that?
You might need a little bit more of that rest.
It might be what's in this glass here.
Ah, that explains a lot.
I was in Turkey for a while, just checking out Istanbul in the coast, which is really fun.
Nice. Did you learn anything interesting about Turkish culture while you were there?
Not too much. I tried to learn a few more words. I think I'm learning like a word every trip.
And I only have like 300,000 more words left, so I'll let you know how that goes. Or I can put a sentence together. I'll be all set.
It's actually really hard. It's a really hard language, but I'm waiting for the AIs, the AI earbuds to come out. That'll instantly translate everything, so I won't have to learn it.
So I'm just stalling.
Honestly, that may launch. At some point, you're going to have that soon, so you're wasting your time learning.
I think we're all wasting our time learning anything at this point, so we'll just wait for the AIs to take over everything. We'll need to know absolutely zero, just how to turn on your device. That'll be it.
Just go to school long enough to learn how to boot.
You're done. You're ready to graduate.
Eight hours and graduated. It was, I pressed on and now I'm home, ready to go.
Booting and charging. Yeah, that's all the future generation is going to learn.
And by future generation, you mean at about three to six months from now.
Yeah, I guess I'm referring to future me.
Future you is now, sir.
So we missed you last time. We covered Deadpool 3, and I understand you saw that movie.
Yes, I did. I did see it in Turkey. It was, I thought it was a great movie.
And I listened to that episode. I thought you guys did a really good job covering it.
I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but since your co-hosts are so or so such big comic book fans, it was really, it was a really fun listen to hear everyone's perspective on it.
Good. Yeah, they did a lot of the heavy lifting since you weren't here.
I wouldn't have added much probably.
No, I'm sure you would have added your in-depth insights and vague disinterest as always.
Let's go with vague disinterest.
So it's Marching Along. It's the number two movie of the year so far, sitting at, I guess, around 1.3 billion, probably maybe even 1.4 by the time this episode releases. Second only to, do you know what the number one film this year is so far?
It's not Inside Out 2, is it?
It is.
Inside Out 2, 1.6 billion at the point of recording. That's an estimate, of course. I'm sure it'll make a ton of money.
Kids movies, right? I mean, they're just, you may as well print money. They don't have to be good.
But this one apparently, or I guess, is good, and there must have been pent up demand for the sequel. Also worth noting, a Disney product. Disney has a lot of hits this year.
So they bought Pixar, they bought Marvel, they bought Fox. So their former Fox movies, Planet of the Apes, whatever 7 or 12 or 15 or whatever number that is, is also doing pretty well. The Aliens movie came out.
It's doing all right. It's doing well in China, weirdly. It's doing okay in the States and North America, but apparently doing very well in China.
I don't know why. Maybe they have Aliens over there. They're not telling us about.
So anyway, Disney having a banner year, their summer in particular doing well. So good stuff. So no burning insights about Deadpool and Wolverine that you want to share with the audience.
I just, I mean, I thought it was such a fun movie.
I wasn't bored at all during any part of that movie. I thought like there would be parts that would kind of be a little slow. But I thought it was like the pacing was great.
I really love their banter. I think they're just perfectly paired. And I'm looking forward to seeing like, good chemistry, looking forward to seeing like what they come up with next in terms of a plot.
I think it would have been beneficial though, from what I heard from the person I went to go see it with, it was that it would have been great to watch Loki, which I didn't watch, to kind of tie into that universe.
So that was the one part where I thought it was kind of like missing something, but I wasn't really quite sure what I was missing since I hadn't seen Loki. But other than that, I thought it was well acted. I thought the characters were great.
It was nice to see Gambit. He was really funny.
Janine Tatum, one of our favorite actors, if you want to listen to previous episodes.
A couple of times, yeah. And by guest on a show, I mean we've criticized.
Burned him in effigy.
But if we get a chance to have him on the show, we'll take it.
Yeah. We'll completely reverse our opinion and be nothing but nice.
Absolutely. We'll delete the episode and maybe re-record it.
Whoa. That's a lot of work.
It's just kidding.
But we'll be nice to his face, right? We can do that.
Yeah. Absolutely. As we always are with all our guests.
No, I liked him as Gambit.
People picked on him a little bit there with the accent and stuff like that. But I thought it was great.
And anytime an actor or really anyone has a real passion for something that I loved when I was growing up, and they're willing to put the work in to try to manifest it from nothing but that passion, then respect, mad respect from me. I love that.
I found myself laughing a lot during this movie. I just, I don't know. There's so many parts that I know people, I think, had some criticisms about it, but I don't know.
Overall, I think it was really well done.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the story was the weak point, in my opinion, but I think otherwise it was a lot of fun, and it works, and it is what it is, and Marvel needed or the MCU needed a shot in the arm, so I think this is it.
Actually, I was reading a little bit more about it recently, and apparently an earlier draft of the film had sort of stripped away some of those Loki references a little bit.
I don't think there was as much of that, in particular the void where they shoot most of the second act, right?
And I'm sure you don't really understand what that is, but it sort of exists outside of the multiverse, or it's a specific part of the multiverse where they kind of dump their garbage.
Anyway, in earlier drafts, they were just going to make that development hell.
It was just literally going to be development hell, and it was going to have a lot of projects, Marvel Comics projects that just never manifested, which would make the Gambit character, or that version of him, make sense because that was caught in
development hell and just never came together. So in this version, he stands out as sort of odd because he never really existed, that version of Gambit.
There was no film, but in that version of the script, I'm sure he was like featured early, you know, he fits perfectly.
And I think they were going to have Mephisto rule development hell, which is a famous character from Marvel Comics as well as other places. So anyway, just a neat shift that they made to kind of make it all work.
The inside jokes were great. Or just like about the Hollywood in general. I really, really enjoyed that.
Yeah, there were there was a layer of jokes about production, which I only caught one or two of them, I think.
And I forgot to mention that, right? So there are different levels of jokes or different categories. And one category was production and one was celebrity, which I knew nothing about their personal lives at all.
So those jokes just, I was like, did somebody get divorced? I don't understand that. So I had to go look that stuff up later.
But yeah, there were a lot of jokes in there for people who are casual fans of celebrity or production or the MCU, everything.
I think with a script like this, I wonder what the stages of the development of the script would be. How many versions of the script were there actually and how many people were putting their two cents in?
And the fact that they got such a great finished product, I'm actually kind of surprised with the level of all of those levels of jokes that you're referring to.
Yeah, I don't understand their process. It seemed like it was quite casual, but it must not have been. They must have been very organized and they must have had frameworks and methods for keeping track.
But when they talk about it in interviews, they kind of talk about bouncing stuff off of each other and just sort of going with what they thought worked.
And I know Kevin Feige came in, or I was told, I guess, at some point, and suggested a few things or requested a few things, and I guess they were able to make that work.
But again, in my opinion, may not be a popular opinion, but the writing, the story, right, is pretty janky. It's sort of like Frankensteined out of junkyard parts. So I think that shows, but it's shocking that the movie does still work so well.
It almost like doesn't matter.
Yeah, that's a good point. Like the characterization was so strong, and the rest of it really worked. But I agree.
Yeah, I mean, didn't have much of a plot. It was super simplistic. But you're so distracted by the rest of it that it didn't really matter, which you don't really say very much when you're watching a movie, right?
You're not like, oh, the plot doesn't really matter too much.
Yeah.
That's kind of insane, right?
It's bizarre. Normally, I'm the only one in a theater full of people that would be that upset about that.
But in this case, I was kind of like, usually you're escorted out of the theater.
It wouldn't be the first time. So, you brought up, it seemed like you were starting to bring this up. Reynolds and Jackman, would you like to see them in non-Marvel products, like movies that feature their chemistry, but not with these characters?
Would that interest you?
That's a good question. Yeah, I think so. It's like a buddy comedy, like a cop, buddy cop comedy would be fun to see them in.
They got to be cops though.
If they're not, I wouldn't want to see it.
So Planes, Trains and Automobiles was part of the inspiration for this film.
And there are different references to it in the film. So this idea of, yeah, oh yeah.
In fact, you know that you probably don't remember because you probably haven't seen this movie in at least 20 years, but they drove a particular car and they had a trunk that belonged to John Candy that they were carrying.
Both of those items or a version of them are in the void in one scene. There's multiple things, right? There's a mug that references and so on.
So anyway, a lot of Planes, Trains and Automobiles references sort of sprinkled through subtly. And that's not a buddy-cop comedy, but it is a little bit of a, it's a buddy comedy, right? So do you think they could pull something like that off?
Maybe not as cops, but do a series of films where it's sort of the two of them playing off of each other? Yeah, I think it's a very old school approach to comedy. I haven't seen it since really the 80s, right?
Yeah, like Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, right? Gene Wilder, yeah. I'm sure people have tried since then, I guess they, but not, like, when they do it now, they do it within one IP.
You get like four sequels of the same thing, but not actually taking the two actors and putting them in different original films.
I think that will be a lot of fun. Yeah, I'd like to see that and see what they can pull off, because it seems like they are like good friends in real life, and they just have that natural chemistry, you know?
Yeah, and they're both in demand, and they have now a proven box office record together, which is quite impressive in a mediocre year. Box office numbers are down like 20 percent from even last year.
And so I would think if they got interested in something, that they'd be given a lot of money and a lot of leeway to have fun with it. And again, I think they've kind of shown that story isn't really that critical.
It's just about attention to detail and having a good time.
And all these decades we've been thinking that story is the thing, but just throw that out the window. Fools. That's right.
Silly fools. I hope your story break doesn't include any story, by the way. I hope it's just characters.
It'll be the break.
The break segment.
Just a thin, thin framework.
Broken. Yeah, well, maybe we'll have to cast Jackman and Reynolds. Jackman and Reynolds and all of our story break ideas from now on.
Just have the audience imagine them as the main characters.
Why not, right?
It'll give it a huge budget. So on a very different note, I also want to talk about something. I finally finished Roadside Picnic, and I'm guessing you know nothing about this novel.
Is that true or not?
Please enlighten.
Okay. So it's a Russian novel published in 1972 by two Russian brothers, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, I believe is how they would say that. It's a philosophical science fiction novel, and it's one of these like rediscovered classics.
It made a little bit of a splash outside of Russia. It was pretty widely translated, but not big, big. Like you would only really know it if you like that kind of thing.
And then it was rediscovered and now it's considered a classic. So I chipped away at it and it took quite some time. Took me several years to get around to finally finishing it, which I did.
And it's really interesting. Before I give you a summary of it, like I'll just give like a brief idea of what it's about.
I'm going to kind of skip to the punchline and tell you that there was a film made based on this, loosely based on this novel, directed by Andre Tarkovsky, which is considered one of the top like 20, 25 films ever made.
Solaris?
No, but that is another film he did. The movie based on this novel was called Stalker. And not again, not something most people would know, unless you're just a total film nerd.
But I watched the movie as well. It's in Russian. There were subtitles.
It is like two hours, 50 something minutes long. It moves at its own pace, let's say. It cannot be hurried.
And there's a lot to talk about in this. So if you're interested, I'll tell you a little bit more about the novel and then the film, which are kind of two different beasts.
But yeah, you can continue.
Just needed permission to bludgeon you with more information.
I was going to say I'm not, and then that would ruin our whole podcast.
That would have been great. Yeah, we'd just play the music, and be like, just wrap it up. Okay, so the original novel, Roadside Picnic, is described as philosophical science fiction.
And that is an apt description. It basically follows three stages of a man's life as he ages and loses hope. So it's very typical Russian.
I don't know if you've read a lot of Russian novels, but, you know, it's not exactly like upbeat, light kind of stuff. So he becomes embittered and cynical, and he starts to lose touch with who he is as a person by the last section.
So he starts off very different, and when he's a young man, he's a lot more engaged and hopeful, and he has these ambitions and dreams. And then by the third stage, he's very beaten down.
And then it ends with an ambiguous moment of possible redemption that it's left totally up to the reader to interpret. So again, sort of Russian style, like it's not neatly tied.
And I think that might be part of what drew this famous director to the project. But while that's the point of the story, there's a backdrop here of a world, the earth, that's been visited by aliens.
The aliens came and went, had no contact with humans. It was over the course of like a couple of days. And they left six zones on earth in their wake.
And these zones are full of bizarre items and phenomena that defy the laws of physics. All right, so the governments of the world, and this is sort of before the novel starts, cordoned off the sites.
And our main character is a stalker, which is one of these people who illegally enter into the zones in search of like loot, like artifacts and things to bring back.
And so while they're there, they have to understand or learn sort of what are the rules of survival when physics is not really the same. And they pull out items which sometimes do nothing and sometimes do really interesting things, right?
So again, the point is not that. That is background stuff. But it does make for some really interesting sections in the novel when he's in the zone.
He spends a lot of time drinking and talking to people outside of the zone.
But there's some really, really interesting sort of like philosophical conversations that have to do with aliens and have to do with the nature of being human and living that I think make this novel a classic. So it's really good.
Son, is it a long novel?
Well, if you read it at the pace I did, yes. I think you could probably get through it a little quicker. Just something about whenever I read a Russian author, it takes me a long, long time.
Yeah, it's like reading Stephen King when he was in his drinking phase, you know what I mean? Where you're just like, oh my God. Okay, thank you.
Can we move along? So I don't know what it is, but like Russian novelists, there's a real depth and artistry, like there's a real, it's kind of like a, how do I put this?
It's like a melancholy place, even in talking about love, that you, it's almost like you're trying to savor it slash rubber necking a car accident. You know what I mean?
You almost can't look away, even though it's sometimes unpleasant to read or what would be boring, it's almost like you're entranced. And that always slows me down.
I read a little bit and I get kind of tired and I go to bed and then I didn't cover much ground. And I get distracted by lighter stuff when my life gets busy.
So it took me quite some time and the end is not something that if you're pushing, you'll find rewarding. So if you want to read this book, I recommend it, but do plan to take your time.
And if you're not interested in thinking, like not about science, but about philosophy and people and culture and life, then you're going to be bored and put it down probably permanently.
I've heard that a lot. I haven't really read the classic Russian authors, but they're considered some of the greatest novelists of all time, right?
For good reason, and they're a good counterpoint for a lot of the stuff that's published elsewhere.
I've always wanted to read War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina is one of them.
Yeah, War and Peace is good. It's not as bad as people say. You can kind of blow through it.
You just have to put the time in to cover the miles, but they're not hard miles. And it's interesting. There's a lot going on.
You get to follow in a very thorough way some people's lives. So that's nice. But yeah, Russian novels are not, in my experience, particularly interested in getting to some sort of happy ending.
And this is really no exception. So if you're okay with that, if you're mentally prepared for that, then you can enjoy it, right? Because you're just meant to be thinking when you're done, I would assume.
So Andrei Tarkovsky, as you mentioned, did direct Solaris, the original that was, I think, remade with George Clooney. Thank you. Did you see the remake?
I never did.
I didn't.
Okay. I haven't seen either version. So maybe we should cover that at some point.
So for this film, Tarkovsky had the original authors, the brothers, write the script, but he made them rewrite it multiple times to remove the science fiction elements. Yeah.
Fascinating, huh?
I know. So they briefly reference some of what I said as the backdrop, but they don't show that in the film. He doesn't show that in the film.
It just isn't experienced. So it's almost like an alternate world. It uses the same main character, but it's not something he experienced in the novels.
It's not at all about the science fiction, really. It is, I think, 100% about human existence. It's just a contemplation on what it means to be human, and in some ways, how that's sort of pointless, or how we are so inherently flawed.
The first 40 minutes are sepia toned, and then they enter the zone, and it becomes color.
But if you take away the science fiction element that you talked about in the novel, what do you have left?
So you have a beautiful film. There are a lot of really stunning framed shots. It's almost like a picture, like a drawing, like a painting, right?
There's a lot of like really gorgeously framed shots, which I thought about you a lot when I was watching this, because I know you would appreciate that. And the director lingers on those shots.
And sometimes he moves in or out, but he really lingers on this framing. And to answer your question, it's basically three men going through like mud and trash for like almost three hours. Yeah.
So you have these beautiful shots of mud and trash and like men laying in it. And it's, I see why it stands out to film critics and to people who love film. I understand that like he did a lot with things.
There's a real juxtaposition that you just don't, you wouldn't expect, right? And it's very surprising. It is extremely melancholic.
Like The Smashing Pumpkins could probably make a platinum album about this movie. It is at no point are you like experiencing like significant joy or full range of emotions.
It's an interesting, I don't, just to give you a little bit more, I know it's confusing the way I'm describing it, but it's a confusing film that does not want the audience, I think, to feel anchored. But basically it follows the stalker.
He is a wife and a child. The child is negatively impacted or tainted by the time that her father spent in the zone. He's recently been released from prison because you're not supposed to take people in the zone and he got busted.
He agrees to take a scientist and a writer, a fiction writer, I believe, into the zone again. And his wife is devastated by this. He's destroying his family.
So he gets these two men. He goes into the zone and you realize that this stalker is essentially addicted to the zone. He's more at home in this dangerous place and he loves and fears it equally, right?
So he's a very odd character in that way. Like he's leading them, but also at times extremely vulnerable. And weak.
And then the other two characters have their own motivations for wanting to go into the zone. It's in the novel as well, but it's emphasized and I think it's a bigger part of the film.
There's supposedly, rumor says, a room in the zone that has an item in it, I think, that when you go in there, it will automatically grant you whatever your deepest desire is. But in order to enter the room, you have to sacrifice someone else.
There's something that, there's like some weird unknown phenomenon that will consume and destroy the first person, and then it sort of like resets or goes away for a little while, and then the second person can go in there.
And whatever they want is granted to them, not what they say or what they think, but what they truly want. So it opens the door for the film to talk about human nature beyond our conscious mind in sort of a key point there at the end.
So I'm trying not to spoil it. I don't think I've spoiled it. I don't know if spoiling is something you can do with this film, but it's an interesting experience.
Is there any other movie that you would compare it to?
So you and I did an episode on an older film.
What was that one? Oh, shoot.
The Signal?
No, this was like classic Cary Grant.
Notorious?
Notorious, right. Good. So I can compare in the sense that it does take its time with scenes.
Like the pace is much more like it really sucks you in a lot more than modern films. Like modern films, as soon as they show something, they're ready to cut to the next thing.
So there's this image density, which is a bit off-putting, kind of like TikTok or something like that, or like modern Instagram where they try to cut an entire vacation worth of photos and videos into like 10 seconds or whatever. So that is absent.
So much like Notorious, you really get your time, not just with the visual, but also the soundscape. And so you find yourself being sort of pulled in as if you're going along into the zone with them much more so.
Beyond that, though, it feels very Russian. Like it feels very... Like you are experiencing the psychology of Russians.
Not the like upper-class, wealthy, travel-the-world Russians, but more the day-to-day Russian view of life and suffering. So I don't know what to compare that to, other than perhaps some of the Russian literature that I've read. Yeah.
Yeah, I think if you watched it, you would be very interested in the visuals. I think the sound would be noticeable to a lesser extent. The story, I don't know what you would do with that.
I don't know what anyone would do with that. It's almost like looking at a painting that has sort of a dark, moderately disturbing content to it. Everybody who stands in the gallery and looks at that painting is going to experience it differently.
So this film, you know, it meets the qualifications for art, hence the high ranking and lists of, you know, films, greatest films and so on.
I have to check out more of his films. I remember a long time ago, I started watching Solaris, but for whatever reason, I didn't continue.
Like, the first few minutes of it, I remember watching, but I don't know what happened, and I didn't go back to it, because I just heard so much about it, that it's this classic, you know, must watch if you love film.
Yeah, I would imagine it's somewhat inscrutable, but I saw a bit of a clip when I was reading about this director.
I don't know if it's true or not, but they were claiming that Solaris is his least favorite film of his own, and it's largely because of they did retain a lot of the science fiction, because I just don't think that's what he's interested in.
You know, again, I don't want to, like, just sort of label a whole group of intellectuals as similar, but it does seem to me somewhat consistent with that kind of Russian approach to fiction, that it's not really about that kind of stuff.
It's more about what it is to be a human of a certain type and a certain place and a certain way and to be different from that as another human and then to just really beat that to a pulp.
You know, just really, like, explore that in a way that feels very surreal. So that can make science fiction kind of tricky because it basically just becomes fantasy at that point.
I wonder if it's similar to French cinema. I know in French cinema, it's really about the human condition and I think I mentioned it before, this idea that in French film generally, or at least the ones from let's say the 60s and 70s, it just ends.
There's no real resolution to what's happening with the characters. Or it's so open-ended that it's hard for you to know how it would go. Kind of like that ending of The Sopranos.
When that series ended, it just like cut to black. That's such a regular take on endings in French film that they're like very much known for. You're not sure what's going to happen next.
Almost like you're just seeing, you're just getting an inside view into someone's life. Like you open the door, walked into their living room. Yeah, and walked out.
But I don't know if I like that so much in the sense that for me, I think movies have to have a solid beginning, middle and end to be truly enjoyable. Like I want to be taken on a journey.
And I think they're, in order for that journey to be satisfying, there has to be some sort of ending. That kind of pulls the pieces together. I understand that there are other ways of looking at end movies.
But for me, the classic Hollywood movie and that structure is what really appeals to me. Even though I can appreciate other types of movies, but this idea that I'm not sure what happened to the characters leaves me a little unsettled.
Maybe that's something I should get used to to enjoy more types of film.
But I agree. The only French film that I really like is Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Oh, I love that.
Like the least French film.
I love that one. Yeah.
It's classic, right? I saw that in the theater and I was like, I love this movie is so cool. Anyway, I don't like that vignette kind of like, okay, now we're done talking.
So that's the end sort of ending Russians. And again, I'm really overstepping my knowledge or expertise on Russian culture. But I think they think that it's an ending.
And this film, I think is a good example of that. Like there is an ending. And I think that they would consider that an ending.
It feels a little bit like an ending. Like it doesn't feel like you were just robbed of the answers, which I think is sloppy. It's just not about what maybe you might have focused on at times.
So there's not necessarily the ending doesn't necessarily focus on the piece you might have been thinking about, but there is an ending. And it's more about the journey of these individuals into who they are or who we all are.
I normally would not go for things that have some of these characteristics, but I did see the value of this film quite a bit. So if you're a super film nerd and or a science fiction completionist and you've seen everything, the novel is worth a read.
The movie is worth a watch. But that's a heavy commitment on both counts.
It sounds it sounds worth watching though. And he's such a classic filmmaker. Probably at least watch one of his films.
If that's not your thing, then there's probably going to be a new Godzilla versus King Kong movie, right?
Next year.
Yeah, I'll wait for that.
That's that's coming for you. Very good. Anything else on your?
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
I did finish the 3 Body Problem. All I can say is, wow.
Oh, great.
Wow. That was, that's something. It's really, I think, the probably top 5 novels I've ever read.
It's just it hit on so many incredible themes about the human condition. And yet I really didn't think it was going to be what it was. I think that was the part that really took me for a ride.
You think it's something, but it's something else completely. And this is one of those that I don't want to go into any of it because you just want to have people read it for themselves because you think you're heading somewhere, but you're not.
You have no idea where you're going.
No, that happens a lot.
And it's so satisfying.
Yeah, Cixin Liu is, I think, the greatest living author in anywhere. I'm pretty sure. Sometimes when I read science fiction, I lament that the greatest authors are gone, at least I used to.
But I think he's up there with the best. He might even be the best. We'll see what else he creates and what else gets translated and how good the translations are.
But it is a real pleasure to go on that ride just through that trilogy. I mean, I've read, I think, everything that's been translated in English, and I've enjoyed every bit of it, and I recommend all of it.
Even his just, like, letters and comments and things are great, and he's, anyway, he's just this brilliant, not perfect, but just incredible author, and his take on humanity in that novel, in that trilogy is just amazing. It's beautiful.
I 100% agree with you. And I think his ability to really understand the nuances of the ramifications of decisions that humans make, and how that, Right. Yeah, and how that web perfectly fits together, even though it's pure chaos, is brilliant.
It really is.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Because it's not a novel about, like, what you think it's gonna be, you know, aliens are coming, this simplistic, you know, trope, you know, it's so much more than that. Right.
Oh, yeah. So many layers and levels and threads and everything gets tied together. And it's incredible.
Yeah. It expands your mind.
There's so much to think about and so many twists and turns that you just do not see coming.
And usually I kind of pride myself in when I'm reading something like, I have an idea what's gonna happen, you know, but with this, not at all, which I was so happy about.
Yeah, I was able to suspend that and just be in the world, which normally I am distracted by those thoughts of like, where's this going and why this and where? Okay.
And so on, like Deadpool, Wolverine, I was like, all right, well, if they're going to do this and that means later, they need to do this other thing or one of two versions of that or whatever. But no, you're right.
With these novels, I just surrender to a greater intellect and let him take me on his ride.
Yes.
Good stuff.
Yeah, it was phenomenal.
I'm glad I gave that novel a try, or that group of novels a try, and I'm glad that I pushed through the first one, because I had a hard time because I think I mentioned on another show that I was reading it before bed, which wasn't the best time to
read it. So I kept feeling I was losing the thread, especially in the first novel with the virtual world and everything.
I just wasn't really understanding what was happening all too well, and then I picked it up again and really focused on it, and I was hooked.
I did the exact same thing. It took me months because I would read a little bit, and then I get kind of tired and fall asleep right before bed. And then I don't know what made me turn the corner.
I think something hooked me enough that I started reading during the day. And that was the best decision because there's so much going on in all of these novels, all three of them.
So I'm really glad I did that, and I think I chewed through the rest in a fraction of the time. It took me to get through half of the first one.
And for me, the impetus was the series. So I watched the series. I was like, I just had a sneaking suspicion, and then that was validated by the fact I asked other people who had read the novels, is this really what this is about?
The way they're presenting this in the show, and they're like, no. One of my friends is like, you are just scratching the surface. You have no idea what you're in for, and that was it.
I was like, you know what? I'm going to go home right now, and I'm going to start getting serious about the first novel and finishing it. And then novel number two is just easy to jump into, and by three, I was just completely, completely hooked.
It is painful.
Like, if you go back and listen to that episode, you can hear the anguish in me, you know, because I want to support the series, because it is a gateway for a lot of people to explore this author's work, and his work is so good.
But it is just a pale imitation of the 3 Body Problem.
Honestly, I think, you know, when they say like a novels on unfilmable, I think this, really these novels are, you just can't do it justice as a mini series, or it's so dense on so many levels from not only like a screenwriting perspective, but the
visual effects involved in just how layered it is from like a science standpoint, or a science fiction standpoint. And there's so many characters, and they're so complex the way that they're written. It's too much, in my opinion, for a series.
Like, I'm sure I'm of course gonna watch the second season of the show. But there's no way that you can't, like the idea of scratching the surface, I don't think you can go below the surface. It's impossible.
It's a joke.
And how do you address all the philosophical questions that are like seemingly opened every chapter?
Like, how do you address all of them? You just can't. And the inner turmoil that the characters are facing.
I mean, it's too much for what they're trying to turn it into, like this mini-series of what it will be a total of 24 episodes, maybe.
Yeah. Isn't that hilarious?
It's like 240 episodes. Yeah.
Yeah. They could do 24 episodes, 10 seasons of that. And it would still, there'd still be a lot they cut.
Yeah, it's impossible.
But I commend them for trying. I mean, it's a good show. So if it wasn't based on this epic 1500-page or whatever it is novel.
But that's the debate.
Can it be a good show in the shadow of such amazing transformative novels?
Or is it just another show? Or is it just a show loosely based on a novel that you aren't really familiar with? Like, is it in that kind of category?
Because once you've read it and then you try to watch that, like, oh my god, this is like... And it's got great showrunners behind it. It's got a great team and he also works on the show, right?
And I just don't think they can do it. They just don't have the time.
Yeah, I don't know that you can film it. I think your point earlier that it may not be filmable.
You know, maybe if you had enough episodes, you could and a big enough cast and you could somehow magically not have them not age, you know, for long enough to tell the whole story.
But it would almost be like a life journey just to watch it filmed, you know, to watch episodes.
So I think you know how everything ties back around these seemingly like inconsequential actions by these characters.
And then you're like, mind blown, you know, like five chapters later, 10 chapters later, you're like, Oh my God, that's what he was doing?
Yeah.
Or that's what she was doing? Like, yeah, so it was amazing. So highly recommend audience.
I know.
Yeah, seriously. If you're a reader or you have the ability to read, this is, it's probably worth just, you know, work on the first one. It'll hook you eventually.
And then get, you know, the second, the third are just going to be amazing experiences in your life. I don't know who would not like this. Like somebody who just hates science fiction, maybe.
I think someone who doesn't have the patience to even think about the science behind the science fiction elements of the book.
I don't think they'd really enjoy it. Because if you don't grasp the basics, I don't think much of it's going to make sense to you, except the parts where there's like conflicts between the humans. I don't know, what would you say?
I think anyone who lives in the moment, anyone whose life philosophy is all about just being present now, and they don't like this idea of saving nuts for the winter.
You know, I think anyone who lives that way is going to find this, it's just going to bounce off, right? It's not going to feel very real or very present to them, because it's very much about big picture stuff.
But anybody who's big picture oriented, I think would love this.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right. So you're ready to do a little story break? Okay.
Oh, there's, is that the theme?
No, it was a story break.
So this story break. If you're listening and you have a great idea for a theme and you want to send it to us, feel free to send it to our socials or our Google account, which I will reiterate at the end of the episode.
Or if you have a beautiful singing voice, don't forget about that. You could also sing us a theme.
Oh, that would be nice.
Send that over as an audio clip.
In any style you like. We are not picky or skilled or talented. We have no vision.
Clearly.
This is an audio only show, so of course, yeah.
So instead of starting with the pitch, which is the traditional way to do it because that works best, I'm actually going to start with some educational background. I think you probably know some of this information.
So I'll ask and try to kind of deliver it in ways that don't bore you. But are you familiar with Unesco?
I know it's some type of UN related organization. Isn't it World Heritage Sites?
Yes. That's one of the things they do. So it's the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
And their mission is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international cooperation in education, sciences, culture, communication and information.
It was founded in 1945 to establish the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind and thereby prevent the outbreak of another world war. All right. So, you know, big idea, broad minded, right?
Trying to kind of link us all deal with the cultural element to conflict.
Their website, which I pulled up for this in preparation, begins with a statement, and this is quotes, since wars began in the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that defenses of peace must be constructed.
So in 1972, they started their World Heritage Program. There are currently 1,223 sites. They are meant to represent our shared cultural inheritance as a species.
Each of these sites is nominated by their home country, and then they have to meet one of 10 creative, sorry, 10 criteria.
I could go through all 10, and it's interesting if you want to read them online, but for the purposes of this pitch, it's just important to understand that they are protected both by the home country and by Unesco, or they are recognized, although
there is little ability by UN to send in troops and protect them for a variety of reasons. They also, as a side note, have biosphere reserves. There are currently 727 biosphere reserves in 131 countries.
So, as I said, despite having recognition, these sites don't actually have a lot of protection other than that, which is provided by their home country.
So these sites can be endangered by human activity at any time, and the UN has been famously stymied by the veto power of the 5 founding member nations multiple times. So my pitch is essentially this.
Because these sites are of such importance, not just to one culture, but to all cultures, to all people, not just now, but also future generations.
And because the UN does not have the ability to protect them, right, they don't have the freedom to go in there with troops or peacekeepers or whatever you want to call them.
A secret agency is born, and my pitch is for a film or a series of films or novels about a character who is recruited and paid by the World Heritage Trust to go in whenever one of these sites is threatened and do what he needs to do to protect it.
Seth, I'm intrigued.
Okay. I was hoping you'd be excited, but you appear to be patiently waiting.
I'm patiently waiting? I think I will be excited, but you're correct, I'm patiently waiting.
Okay, good. That's fine. I can work with that.
We've seen a lot of great movies in the last few years.
You love this genre typically where you kind of have this guy who has special training and he's a little bit of a Black Ops kind of an individual and he goes on missions and does things that can't be accomplished legally or that for whatever reason
there's red tape to prevent that kind of thing. So I thought it would be fun to take that whole sub genre or genre and just set it around this idea of the Unesco World Heritage Sites because I think you could do a lot of really cool adventures where
a Unesco site is threatened by any number of human activities, right? It can be lots and lots of stuff. It can be around environmental protection and business. It can be around terrorism.
It can be around, I mean, just really anything that could happen that could threaten one of these sites. Machu Picchu is one of them, right? You can imagine what could threaten that.
And for a variety of reasons, the agencies or the governments or militaries that would normally step in are unable to do so. Or in some cases, they have their own agenda and enter our agent who is there to protect our heritage as a species.
I like it a lot. My part when I was saying I was intrigued was because I was just trying to think what would be these scenarios that would draw this character in. But in theory, that idea is great because they're so valuable, these sites to humanity.
So I'm curious to hear, let's say, a sample plotline.
Okay. Well, it just so happens I have one ready. Although, news this week has stepped on my sample plotline, so it's not going to sound as good as it might have four or five days ago.
So one potential plot, and maybe this is the first novel or first movie. So terrorists hijack an oil tanker and they take it into the Norwegian fjords, which are protected under Unesco.
They set it with explosives and they threaten to blow it up, damaging that entire ecosystem. They have the crew held hostages and all the terrorists are equipped with dead man switches. The Norwegian government has their own challenge here.
They have their own strategies, and because it's a Unesco protected site, our agent is sent in to cut through a lot of the red tape and the issues going on in order purely to protect the fjords.
So his mission is to prevent the oil from being dumped into that protected ecosystem and destroying the fjords, or filling them with oil for however long. So that's it, right? So he goes in, maybe a high altitude drop sneaks in there.
He is not, his focus is not the hostages, is not whatever the terrorist motivation is, but just to protect the fjords.
I like it. I like that idea a lot. I could see a lot of subplots that you could add to it that would kind of wrench up the tension, you know, like the I'm assuming the Norwegian Special Forces would probably get involved here.
Absolutely.
How he has to navigate that.
Maybe he finds someone like kind of, you know, they always have like this other like character that they're running around with or they run into, you know, that becomes part of the action. Maybe it's a hostage who escapes.
There's a lot you could do with this.
Yes.
And since they're all so different, right?
Well, it's an excuse to explore beautiful parts of the world that have a lot of interesting, you know, history around them.
I think it's very intuitively understandable to an audience that whatever the, you know, organization involved in trying to resolve the problem is going to have their own agenda, and it isn't necessarily going to be to protect our world heritage,
right? And so having another agent in that environment, and he's not always just shooting, right? He's dealing with the complexities of how different organizations handle these complicated situations.
But his job, and he's the only one who has this job, but his job is to protect our world heritage, to protect this site, right?
And I think that's a cool idea, and it adds for, you can have like intrigue, you can have like action, you know, beautiful settings, different cultures, different people, all over the world. It's a little bit James Bond. It's a little bit Gray Man.
It's a little bit of everything, right?
Yeah, I was going to say, it's very much like a James Bond plot, but more multi-dimensional, I think.
Yeah, and it's modern. I think it sort of fits with modern sensitivities. It's not about country versus country, right?
It's not even about like political ideals. It's about like, everybody else is wrong. Like, humans are all wrong, and all that needs to be protected is this site.
Like, it puts the conflict in a different perspective, which I think people will like, and they'll root for this guy who's trying to save something that seems more important than the squabble or the, you know, the greed or whatever it is that's
Yeah, I mean, it's an idea that lends itself for pretty much endless plots and scenarios.
And there's so many of them.
That would be the hope.
I like it. It's a good idea. What, what kind of sparked your initial thought on this?
You know, I was traveling a little bit and I was thinking, wow, they have a lot of these Unesco world heritage sites, but, you know, I wonder like who would protect them if they were threatened because while some countries have that ability, they're
not necessarily going to be motivated. First and foremost, their priority may not be to protect the Unesco site because they have their own agenda.
And in countries where they don't have the real ability to protect that, or they have other bigger problems, then who steps in to protect these supposedly important locations? And I think the answer is nobody.
Then I thought, what if there was someone?
That's clever. Yeah, I like that. I like that idea.
And you could add a lot of the history of like kind of Unesco in general. I mean, there's a lot you could do, right? You could have a whole backstory of how Unesco was even formed as a thing.
Right.
And the history of every site is interesting and it's educational. So if you're reading novels or watching a movie series or a series of movies, you're learning about like the Norwegian fjords and why they matter. Like, why do we care?
You're learning about Machu Picchu and why does it matter? And if we wanted to, we could include the biodiversity sites, you know, the biosphere reserves.
And if you're watching or reading about them, you're learning, why is this so important to our the ecology of the planet? And the future? Like, what is going on here?
Not just with the nature of the life, but also the way humans are interacting with it. What are they trying to accomplish or learn in this space that made it worthy of protection and acknowledgement?
You could also make this almost like you should really do a lot of different genres of this. It could be an action-oriented movie or a series or a standalone mini-series of sorts. Or you could have it be more on the political side, right?
Someone's trying to damage that area or that site for their own political motivation or whatever. And it would be more traditional, kind of like a politically driven thriller or drama.
Or you could even have it be like some type of murder mystery for each one of the sites, which would be a whole other genre. Kind of like what they did with that series, The Bridge, where they find a body on both sides of a bridge.
Like it's Denmark, I think it's like Denmark and Sweden. And then there's another one like the tunnel between France and the UK and the detectives that come in to investigate that murder.
And you find out it's like an onion and they're unwrapping this much bigger mystery. But you could do a lot.
I think it's a fun concept or setting, right? I don't have that much for this one, but I have enough that I think you could really run with it. So I also spend a good bit of time thinking, who is our main character?
Who is somebody that cares so passionately or is willing to risk their lives for a Unesco World Heritage Site, but doesn't really care about the hostages first? He loves our heritage, but doesn't love us. And I thought, how could that happen?
Right? Also, he's got to be somebody of the world or she. Right?
Trump.
He loves America, but he doesn't love us.
Exactly. That's right. It's all about that.
He's going to do a high altitude drop into the fjords. So yeah, and this character also needs to be someone who appreciates world culture, right? He can't just be like, I love my country of origin, and that's what I care about.
This has to be someone who's passionate about and interested in world culture and world geography, the planet, you know, all of what all of us have inherited, the entire earth, instead of just some arbitrarily sort of chalked off space that we've
assigned a flag to. So I thought, who would that be? I think it would be cool, right? So this is just an example.
We don't have to stick with these specifics, but I made him half Chinese, half American, and raised in India, right? And early in his, he was educated as a doctor or as a medical person.
And early in his career, like right out of school, he was working in humanitarian organizations. And he was one or working for one of the humanitarian organizations involved in the Rwandan refugee camps in the Congo.
Remember the genocide in Rwanda in 1998 and pushed all those people into Congo. And they were dying of illnesses and so on.
But a lot of the humanitarian organizations pulled out of providing aid when they realized that some of the people in those camps that they were treating, they weren't refugees. They were actually part of the militants trying to conduct genocide.
So it became very like sort of politically confusing in that moment. And a lot of the organizations pulled out. So that was his first experience with, you know, he started off very empathetic and wanting to help people.
And then he gets, you know, forced out of that environment. Then I thought maybe in like 2001, he's living in England and Manchester during the race riots.
There were some race riots against the Asians triggered by some of the violence of police, or perhaps, what do you call it, when they use too much excessive force, the police used.
Or maybe he was living near the Danube in 2000, when there was a cyanide spill killing all those fish. Like again, like he's exposed repeatedly to sort of the dark side of humans today.
And he sees like how much destruction and damage we can do to each other into the environment. I thought maybe he could have been part of the United Nations at one point, which is how he ended up on this Unesco sort of secret organizations radar.
Maybe he was part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010, right? And so the, you know, the entire world at the time tried to provide aid, but it was it was completely chaotic and corrupt.
And so he might have been part of that Stabilization Mission that actually contributed to the spread of disease in Haiti.
He might have been a mercenary bodyguard slash medic for like a wealthy oil family that had a chronically ill child during the Arab Spring. And he witnessed chemical weapons attacks in 2014.
So today, having gone through these tragedies, having observed them firsthand, he is now embittered against people, but he retained his love of history, world culture, archaeology, and nature.
And he's passionate and willing to sacrifice his life to protect those things.
So I thought over the course of the movies and the novels, his journey would be to reconnect with living people, which is what I think you were sort of getting at with like maybe one of the hostages he sort of links up to with, and maybe, you know,
somebody else involved and so on. So he's forming human connections on these missions, but initially he's pretty bitter, right?
He just views modern society as pretty worthless, and he's seen how much we've lost of who we are, in his opinion, that was good. And the Unesco sites represent our history of when we were better.
So I thought that would make him an interesting, more compelling character. What do you think? Is there anything in that?
Yeah, I think there is.
I was going to simplify it. I had two different ideas in my head, which are not as good as yours.
But I was just thinking that it could be something having to do with his father was involved with something where he was trying to protect, you know, like he was an archaeologist of sorts, but then it makes it almost like an Indiana Jones type of
scenario. And he sees him die in some like violent way. And that's a traumatic incident there. The other idea.
Yeah, like Bosnia.
Yeah.
Or any other conflict or attacked by a terrorist group or something's going on while he's kind of like what was happening with that archaeologist who was attacked by the Taliban or ISIS, I think in Aleppo when he was trying to protect those sites in
Aleppo and he was murdered. That like happened a few years ago.
But that's perfect. You just put that in there.
See, and the other one was that he was somehow forced into doing this because maybe he was kind of like a radical Greenpeace member, but he's too radical and he's the one who's trying to destroy a boat or whatever it might be, a ship that is an oil
tanker, but he gets recruited into this Unesco secret society or secret group where he has to work for them to avoid jail because maybe someone died. Oh, cool. Something like that. He's kind of blackmailed into it, but then so he's a device on him.
So he's kind of like a conflicted type of character in that way. Like he's embittered at first, but then maybe as the novel goes along or as the series keeps moving, he sees a lot of things that maybe change his perspective on what he's doing.
And he finally finds a purpose. Maybe he's been trying to find a purpose by joining kind of like these radical environmental organizations and he thought that was the way, but this is much more fulfilling.
And that's what I was thinking, like two scenarios like that.
I love it. No, I just let's cram it in. Let's put all that in there.
Just throw it all into the pot and stir it around and reveal it as you go. Like initially you think, oh, poor guy. Like he's been through all this stuff.
And then you learn like, yeah, and his father was killed in Bosnia trying to protect something or trying to put it into the violence and you're like, wow, no wonder he's like this.
And then you learn on top of that though, he had a dark period where he was trying to kill people. And they have leverage against him as a result of that. So you're like, oh, he's complicated.
This, that's good. I mean, I don't, he doesn't need to be a good guy. We don't need the audience to feel sorry for him in just a very like unfettered way.
Like it's perfectly fine if he's also done bad things. And they are like using that against him. I like it.
Let's put all of it in.
You know, and it's really the type of story where you could take your pick, right? You want a really heavily plot driven, action oriented show or movie or series, whatever, whatever you need, you want it to be.
Or it can be a lot more character driven. Like we've mentioned, like The Grey Man and James Bond, those guys aren't deep, you know, deep intellectual characters. They're almost just driving the plot forward.
They have certain basic characteristics, you know, like they're courageous and they're, you know, good with weapons and they're smart and resourceful. But that's basically how those characters are drawn, right?
So you don't, you have a couple options here, really. You can really focus on that characterization piece, having them be a very complicated, flawed character with a darker past who's now on a road to redemption.
Or he can be someone who's recruited into this organization. You know, don't know much about them, but they have all these skills. And then it's revealed like their training got them this way, but they didn't really have this complicated backstory.
So you can do it, do it two different ways, make it very action driven or, you know, more focused on this complicated character and have it be action driven.
Yeah. No, I think you, so if it's a series, you can do both and you just have some presumably less expensive episodes, where you get more into the characterization and then more expensive episodes.
So if we pitch this to Amazon, right, white guy with a gun, that's like their favorite thing now, then we just do it that way, where, you know, you have like a tight, I don't know, seven, eight episode arc, and some of the episodes are more the
complex characterization, the in-depth, you know, aspects you're talking about, his complicated past, who he is, the element I added where he's forming relationships with people again, maybe for the first time in a long time, and he's seen more
complexity where he had sort of taken a black and white view of humanity today. And then you have other episodes where he's like surrounded by beautiful fjords and, you know, choking people out on the bridge of an oil tanker. I like that.
In a novel, you have that time automatically, so that's no big deal. And you can spread out realizations about who he is over the course of several novels. Right.
There's a lot to just add and continue to explore because this guy's already fairly baked when we first meet him. Right. I made sure that he wasn't too old, but he's also not so young that he has no real experience.
It's kind of a young Indiana Jones thing. If you want to reference that, right, he's had stories before, which you can show in flashbacks.
And I really want to say, like, so many people are aware to, to maybe vaguely aware of these humanitarian crises, these, like, really bad events. Like, they might recall it to some degree, but I think there's a real interest there.
Like, if you look at these, like, Netflix series where they're like, oh, yeah, there was a murderer in the 1980s and he killed five people and he rode on a railroad car, and they do endless episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and specials and all that
kind of stuff. I think this has the same potential, like learning about different massacres and, you know, massive environmental disasters in all different parts of the world. It's interesting, right? And the factual piece is there, right?
But you're adding a narrative around a character that hopefully people find interesting. So you're learning about real history here.
Yeah, it reminds me of that series Chernobyl. Did you watch that?
I watched the first episode I did.
That was phenomenal. I think it's one of the best series ever ever made. And it's really just based on this one environmental disaster.
And basically, you're following one main character around navigating that. And it was absolutely fascinating. So something like this has kind of endless plot lines, right?
Endless ways to shoot it, which is great in terms of a series. Because you're never going to get really stuck, are you?
No, I think the demand is there. I think it's interesting. What I don't have, though, are the characters.
We have some now some broad strokes for our main character, which I think is great. And who you cast will sort of fill in some of the rest of that. But what other characters stand out to you?
Because it's kind of silly that this guy can just go around the world by himself. Like who is this? Who are these people that are like equipping him and paying him?
I have some thoughts. Do you have any ideas about who would fill out the rest of this universe, this world? What other people?
I think you need the love interest at some point in there.
So maybe there are two love interests, the ex and the new one. That's a typical...
Could he just have a dog?
Or a dog. Yes. The old dog and the new dog.
There you go.
Perfect.
Yeah, the people... you mentioned the people that are equipping him. I think we're turning this into like Mission Impossible now.
I know.
I didn't want to do that, but he does need a team, right? Realistically.
Or contacts in these areas or are they new contacts every time he arrives? That's a possibility too.
That's better.
Like kind of like a fixer.
That's much better.
That they always set him up with.
Yep.
Which again gives you endless possibilities for a plot line. I love that.
Yeah, people inside the government or the military or the police who are involved who believe in this mission, right?
So maybe the person who recruits our main character is in it a lot because he's very persuasive and he's very good at going in to meeting with like the head of a SWAT team or, you know, the, you know, particular business person overseeing something
and convincing them one way or another to support our agent. So maybe we beef up that character a little bit and kind of make him the human manager.
Yeah, you can have that guy, which would be almost like a Remo Williams type of scenario.
Well, you got to have a Remo Williams type. Maybe this is the new Remo Williams thing. Maybe it's Remo Williams saving UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Maybe that's the new, that's how you make him acceptable.
And you've got a great plot already, right? Yeah. I mean, you really have all the elements.
I'm just thinking about every movie in this genre, right? You've got the fixer that he meets up with. You've got the love interest piece.
You've got his handler or group of handlers. And he's off the reservation typically, right? So you can have them.
But I don't know if you want to overcomplicate it with all of these other characters. I guess it just depends what type of movie or series you want to do.
If you want to focus it in on just him and you want to have it very much flashback driven, that's a whole other thing.
The fact that this is another element that, I mean, I think it would take us off on another tangent, but it would be interesting to have a show that kind of shows, like, it's almost like a time travel show, showing, like, why these, how these Unesco
sites even came to be, you know? Like, you go back to the time of the Romans and, like, the Colosseum era.
Oh, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because you have so many options, like, you're getting to understand.
Like, their formation.
Right, but that's a completely different, I guess, a different show altogether.
No, but it's cool, though. Ah, but it's cool.
But you don't know what it is until the very end. I think that will be so cool. Like, you're in this world, and that's part of the plotline, like the Coliseum or whatever it is.
But that at the end is kind of like revealed what it was you were there for, you know, and then it flashes forward, and it shows it as the Unesco site. I don't know. That would be kind of cool.
Yeah, I love that.
That'd be a cool, like, cold open or like, you know, intro, like a brief intro to all the episodes, kind of like The Lord of the Rings, where you get, like, some history of the site.
And you're like, why are we learning about the ice age and the movement of ice through rocks? Like, why would we be learning about that?
And then 30 minutes into the actual, the rest of the film, you realize, oh, man, these things are really in danger by this explosive device or whatever is going on. And they're meaningful, right?
They are connected to our heritage on this planet, our shared earth. So yeah, that would be a cool way to give it context and like real meaning and like raise the stakes, you know? So it's not just like, I don't care because that's not my country.
And you'd get to understand what it actually is that this guy is fighting for.
And kind of like The Last of Us did in the beginning, where they explain the cordyceps.
Yeah, until they quit.
Yeah, until they just stop doing that. But yeah, I think that idea would be cool to have like every episode have that type of intro.
Like you get a kind of like this immediate backstory into the site and then later on, it just makes so much more of an impact.
Everyone could be so different because they're contributing differently to our cultural heritage on earth.
So sometimes it's just really cool visualizations of geological processes and other times it's the evolution of a culture and development and loss of that culture or its contribution to future cultures, right?
And you can visualize that silently or with like no dialogue or with dialogue. You can do it differently every single time. And it would be an exciting challenge for a director, even a writer too, to like do it in a succinct way.
And this is something that people have been practicing for years on like the Learning Channel and the History Channel and stuff like that. So it's not like it can't be done. It can be done very well and very succinctly at a reasonable budget.
And I think it would be enlightening for the audience in a way that these white guy with a gun kind of series on Amazon, for example, are really not, you know, or like Grey Man on Netflix or whatever, like Extraction or whatever, like they just don't
offer that. And I think this would elevate them and make them more interesting to a wider audience and more meaningful longer term.
Absolutely. You could throw the audience into the middle of a situation. So kind of like in the middle of a scene that's already taken place, right?
Let's say like, you have, like again, that example of the Coliseum, you have like the two prisoners in their cages before they actually gonna go and fight inside, but you don't know where you are.
So it's not really, it's kind of like, you're in the middle of a scene about something seemingly so different or someone who's like arrested and then about to be like thrown into that environment, but you don't know what's happening until like the
Yeah, or it opens like a Terminator movie and it's just like, you know, an absolute genocide in Africa or, you know, Asia or Europe and you're like, what is this horror nightmare?
You know, what is this apocalyptic scenario? And then you realize, no, this is really what happened. This was a real event.
And you're just in the middle of it right when you start.
Yeah, yeah, it's cool. So every episode you're seeing it is like actual events that might have destroyed these, these places.
I'm saying my original concept, which I'm happy to change, is just that these are protected sites and they are threatened by a fictional event.
But their reason for being a Unesco protected site is can still be featured in the beginning and that kind of thing.
And our character, through a variety of perhaps moderately plausible reasons, has been present for some of these atrocities, these horrible events, these like environmental disasters, right? He has been impacted by them.
And so we can take a look at a ground level experience of those things too.
I see.
So it's a mixture of different types of learning, right? That I'm trying to kind of pepper into these novels, this series of TV episodes or streaming episodes or movies, right?
And all that really determines which is which is the amount of effort you want to put in in the budget.
Yeah. And I think all of those scenarios can be super interesting.
Like you said, there, you know, people have so much experience now creating these like simulations of or like reenactments of let's say Roman times or reenactments of the Greeks or whatever, like those series to like the Romans or whatever.
It's cool to kind of meld those two concepts together and to have that type of intro, you know, that offers this background without just jumping into like a pure action series where like someone's like, you know, deactivating a bomb or something.
Right.
Yeah, like absolutely. Choking people out.
Yeah. Well, you can still have all that.
You still have all that. You still got that. You've got steamy sex scenes.
You've got. Yeah, exactly.
One per episode, maybe two per episode.
Just one breast per episode. Sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes unclear. Yeah.
So I thought about some other characters, totally optional. I just felt like I needed it. I don't know if we really need it.
I thought there might be a committee, like a shadow committee that manages him. I thought it'd be interesting if they had different backgrounds. This is separate from the person who recruited him.
But you might have one person on this committee who's a scientist, who can talk about and he's passionate about some of the scientific and archaeological elements of these sites.
Maybe you have someone who our character doesn't like, like a hedge fund billionaire, like a farmer bro who brings a lot of money and a business appreciation, but who's at odds, his motivations, like why he's important is directly at odds with our
character, who's seen what greed can do to humans and life and earth. And then I thought it'd be cool to make one of them a former astronaut.
And that person has that perspective of seeing the entire earth as a singular thing in their field of vision, right? Something that so few of us have.
So that was just my idea of a group of people who would have very different perspectives and different contributions, but would still be, for different reasons, motivated to protect these sites, and they might offer something useful to our character.
I also thought maybe there would be other agents, like maybe as we go through the series, we find out he's not the only one that they've recruited other people who do other things and they have different roles.
So maybe somebody is more of a lawyer, somebody else, maybe they're a bit more sinister in the way they handle things, but they are also all agents with the same goal, and they're sent in depending on the needs and the mission and the nature of the
threat. Not all threats are acute, right? Some threats to Unesco sites are long, they're slow, they're bureaucratic, you know, that kind of thing.
So maybe there's some other agents that we come across who pop up, but I really like your idea, and I want to keep it of locals who maybe pop up in later episodes as well, who become part of this web, this sort of loose web of people protecting
Yeah.
I like it. I think it's a good idea. I like the type of ideas that lend themselves to so many different scenarios, because it keeps so many options open.
Right.
And if you're writing it, you can choose what's interesting for you. And when you travel, you can write off your expenses. As long as you go to a Unesco site, you can just be like, hey, working on my novel.
Vacations. Here we go. All right.
So anything else on this idea before we move on and probably forget about it forever?
No, I think we pretty much touched on everything. Everything I was thinking. Plot-wise, I guess the only other thing would be to ask the audience, what would they imagine this being at first?
Would it be a series of novels that can turn into a weekly series, or is it more, do you touch on just one of the Unesco sites and turn that into an eight episode mini-series, right?
Or is it a movie or a series of movies around this Unesco idea where you're just touching on some of the most interesting Unesco sites with the best backstories?
Yeah. I mean, I'm really curious what the audience wants, like what interested them, if anything, in what we talked about. Like what stood out to you is something you'd want more of.
Do you want more action, more adventure, more military combat, intrigue, killing, or are you more interested in the history, the cultural elements? Do you want to learn about atrocities or not? Is that a bummer?
Like what would you be entertained by? Because that's really what this is. This isn't a learning channel series.
This is, I mean, it could be, but this is meant to be entertaining. So where's the line for you between entertainment and education?
Well said.
Very good. All right. So that's it for today.
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