"The Adam Project" is a 2022 Netflix movie that stars Ryan Reynolds as a man who travels back in time to get help from his 13-year-old self, played by Walker Scobell, in order to save his father who died in the past. The movie is directed by Shawn Levy and produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger. In this podcast episode, the hosts discuss the movie's plot and themes, the problems with time travel in movies, and make a strong case for renaming this: The Ryan Reynolds Project. In the end, the hosts get distracted and drift into rambling critiques of Too Hot To Handle, the final season of Game of Thrones, and Is It Cake?. ---------SPOILERS AHEAD---------
"The Adam Project" is a 2022 Netflix movie that stars Ryan Reynolds as a man who travels back in time to get help from his 13-year-old self, played by Walker Scobell, in order to save his father who died in the past. The movie is directed by Shawn Levy and produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger. In this podcast episode, the hosts discuss the movie's plot and themes, the problems with time travel in movies, and make a strong case for renaming this: The Ryan Reynolds Project. In the end, the hosts get distracted and drift into rambling critiques of Too Hot To Handle, the final season of Game of Thrones, and Is It Cake?.
The Adam Project, Too Hot To Handle, and Is It Cake? are all available on Netflix at this very moment.
---------SPOILERS AHEAD---------
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
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[00:00:00] You gotta think of plots these days, like heartbeats, right? You're just looking for a nice, solid flat line all the way through. You don't want any, any of these annoying peaks or trs. You just want nice, solid, relaxing. Don't wanna scare anybody. Yeah, shake anything up. No, come on. You don't wanna wake anyone in the audience.
Alright. Welcome to the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits. Today we talk about the Netflix film, the Adam Project, and uh, if you haven't seen it, go watch it or at least read a summary before you listen to this episode.
We are definitely gonna spoil it. So without any further introduction, I'll take you into the podcast already in progress. We chose this not having seen it, and it's pretty [00:01:00] vanilla. Right, so it's very right down the middle, it's like another statement, right? Yeah.
I thought
it was really, yeah, exactly. It it's about as slow of a softball pitch as you can make.
Yeah. If, if mainstream had, you know, like a title page, like a splash page, like it would be this, you know what I mean? It was like everything about it. I'd
love to see the original script of this movie can see how
much it changed, like three pages. No,
maybe it could be either way, right? It could be word for word, the same script, or they, they had a completely different vision for it.
I was supposed to use some kind of like intense thriller. Okay.
Let's talk about that. Fine. Let's, let's get into that because that is one of the things I wanted to talk about. This very obviously was not originally conceived as a project for, uh, Ryan Reynolds. Right. This was not gonna be a Ryan Reynolds movie.
Clearly, I guess Sean Levy or whoever, somebody [00:02:00] got a hold of the script and turned it into what we saw. Like you're absolutely right. I mean, I think it's abundantly clear. The original version of this was about the kid. Right. The kid was the main character and it was like his, oh my gosh. He, you know, the young kid gets wrapped up in time travel and an older version of himself with lots of cool gadgets and tech, and it's like a fantasy for a kid.
And in the end he gets his dad back. And that would be kind of the final scene is like dad comes home and you know, he's reunited. And it's kind of a throwback to that like spielbergian.
I was gonna say ET like that ET kind of feeling, you know? Yep,
yep. Remember they tried to recapture that with, oh, who's the director?
The invisible monster and the kids, oh,
what is that called? U, not U 5 71 5.
District nine. I think what it's,
it's not [00:03:00] heartache. It's not eight millimeter. It's something
like that.
It's,
there's a number in the title. Hmm. I love whatever anybody on the.
There's clearly some kind of glitch.
I just love to see like the kids movies that your brain would recommend. Texas Chainsaw.
No.
Um, it's
a nightmare on L Street. No.
Oh my God. Super Eight. Super eight. You got it. Super Eight directed by JJ Abrams stuff. Okay. So JJ Abrams was trying to recapture a little of that feel that Spielberg had, and I'm guessing that this script was either written or picked up on the heels of Stranger Things.
Mm-hmm. You know, but it's like we're not gonna do fantasy, we're gonna do sci-fi and it's a little bit last Star Fighter and all that good stuff. But [00:04:00] then, Somebody got a hold of this and a big star got attached and suddenly I think, and the hook came out. Exactly. They had to rewrite the kid. Well, first they had to move him out of the spotlight, even though he starts the film.
So it's really janky and awkward when he moves out of the lead position in the story. Like it's very obvious that moment where it happens. Yeah, exactly. As soon as Ryan Reynolds shows up, oh, the instant you see that smile, right? That face. You're done with that kid. The audience loses all investment in the child, which is nonsense.
Anyway, the other thing they clearly had to do was say, we've gotta rewrite this kid to be a little Ryan Reynolds until Ryan Reynolds shows up. So the kid, the child actor, is doing a weird impersonation of a 40 something year old Ryan Reynolds. The whole first like 20 minutes of the movie, I was like, what?
He's supposed to not [00:05:00] be likable but charming at the same time. Like, what is this from a child?
But he's super snarky, right? Like he is like Deadpool esque
when he is getting beat up. Exactly Deadpool esque. That's a great way to put it.
Very, very strange.
I'm like, yeah, well, that's what happens when, when somebody's Hollywood persona overshadows the.
Right, and it just imprints itself like some sort of weird, like Cookie roller just goes right over the script, just back and forth, back and forth until it gets mashed into something like this. It's bizarre to watch. The original
screenwriter probably just shredded the original script. He's like, I don't need this
anymore.
Oh, I'm sure that guy, it's a different movie. Watch this movie and every scene. He couldn't wait to see what happened next. You know what I mean? It was just complete surprise all the way through
the film. Were there any points in this movie you thought were actually poignant
when they played that Boston song [00:06:00] During the action sequence at the end?
I thought that had some emotion to it cuz I was like, what are we doing? Playing a 1976 Boston song during a movie about time travel where no one goes to the seventies. And I thought, boy, this is, this is really meaningful and emotional. No, the songs, the songs added some emotion. I thought, what? Oh, the mom.
That actress did a good job. Yeah. Jennifer Gardner.
Jennifer Gardner. There was one moment in the movie where I thought, wow, this is actually, you're actually feeling something when they walk into the lecture hall and Mark Ruffalo. You see him for the first time? Mm-hmm. Giving his lecture and they like see him again for the first time cause he's supposed to be dead, you know?
Yeah. I thought that was good, but it only lasted about five seconds, so I don't know if that's a moment or a snap of the finger.
Yeah. If you want point in moments, I would go with the bar scene. Because I do [00:07:00] think you're right. I think Jennifer Garner was good. She definitely added gravitas. Mm. Can we put an echo effect on say very, very low gravitas
for all of you out there?
Gravitas a
smr. We'll fix that in post. No, I think she actually seemed like she's probably the one character that didn't get cookie rolled. You know, when they attach names. But it did seem like she was, she was really connecting with the emotions of that character. Mm-hmm. And yeah, she's good. And I think he was trying to, Ryan Reynolds was trying to also bring emotion and I, it did kind of make it easier for me to connect with the characters and the meaning of the story.
Mm-hmm. You know, but all that just got swept aside so quickly.
That plot, it was so Paint by numbers. Mm-hmm. The beginning. I thought there might be something here that's kind of cool. It's got that last star [00:08:00] fighter meets like a back to the future type of vibe to it. Mm-hmm. In the beginning and then it just all just goes downhill.
Seems like something you could write on a weekend. Like if you were just to follow the plot points of like a very basic family movie. The hero's journey, but on a very, very rudimentary level. He's got some bullies, but those bullies aren't really, there's really nothing much going on. There's no tension in any of those scenes whatsoever.
They're just bullies. He threatens 'em now. They're not bullies anymore, presumably. And that's, did that get resolved? No. Right. They just ran away. And that was the end of it. Yeah.
Yeah. He
scared them. He scared him. You didn't really care about any of those characters. There was no buildup of any of the characters, like who they actually were.
Like it was just cutouts, kind of. The dad's smart, he's a scientist, he invents things. That's what he does. There's no real connection between him and Jennifer Gardner either. And, you know, he's just [00:09:00] an absentee father in the, in the eyes of his son. But then at the end, he's not apparently, He says, I love you guys.
I always have did the, did the
kid, did the kid have an arc? No, I don't think so. He, he must have. They must have thought he did. They must have
thought he did. But what was it? It's really him meeting his future self, pretty much accepting it and saying like, this is just the way things are. This is pretty cool.
That's really the end of it. Real conflicts there,
right? I mean, yeah. So he was, initially, he was a kid who was hurt and being bullied. Mm-hmm. Right. So he had an issue with standing up for himself, or he was using words instead of fists. He was seeking out trouble because he was upset. I don't, that wasn't well defined, right?
No, not, and then at the end of the movie, He just got his dad back the end. Right. Is that really character development to just get your dad back? [00:10:00] Was there a moment that I missed before they destroyed time travel, which is literally what they said in the film. I'm not just, no, I know. Being dismissive with, you know what I mean?
Like I'm not just blowing off the more complicated truth of this film anyway. Was there a moment before they destroyed time travel that the kid developed himself, like to be able to take on bullies or heal from the loss of his dad or anything like that? I must have. It had to be in there. There was just that one
moment that I remember, which is when his older version is fighting those future storm troopers.
Storm trooper s guys, and he's using the VR to attack him with the drone. Right. That was it. Oh no, I'm wrong. And then there was another time that he picked up that lightsaber thing and he started using it and swinging it around. But that was again, is that character development? No, it's just him doing things.
All right, so when they, maybe I just got distracted by all [00:11:00] the flashing lights and the Boston song, but at the end when they were fighting, when they were trying to destroy side travel. Yeah, sorry. Um, he was being held right by that guard who was weirdly magnetic when. The other major characters, none of the major characters were magnetic.
No, no. Anyway, he was being held and then they all got out of the mess and the movie ended. Did he have some sort of agency there that showed character growth that I missed? No. Okay. He didn't. Great story. Yep.
Pretty much that was it. He starts the same and ends the same. He never tries to run away from his future self at any point and try to go do something on his own.
Right. There's no conflict. He's never approached by that woman from the future alone
At any moment, was there a scene? Was there a scene where he treated his mother better, where he would like recognize that she was also her and he was kinder to her? Did I miss that? Is that in there? I think he might've missed it.
[00:12:00] It happened for about three seconds where he's like leaving the house, but he turns around, gives her a hug while she's sitting there. Okay.
Maybe that's the arc. I guess that's his development or that's what they cut it down to. Yeah, he's, he's fine. He's the cookie roller left.
His cookie roller hasn't left a lot.
Hasn it squished this
bill.
Yeah, it's pretty much gone. Oh man. And those, those spaceships from the future that comeback, it felt like I'd seen this movie a million times before. It was so disappointing cuz I thought there might be something here, right? You're going to meet yourself, you know, 30 years ago.
Like all the stories that you could have from that.
You would think, yeah, it's a wish fulfillment, but it's a wish fulfillment for a kid. It's because they shifted the focus to Ryan Reynolds. It doesn't work nearly as well because no one in their forties, not many people in their forties think, I wish I could go on an exciting sci-fi adventure to save the woman I love.
Oh, and it'd be cool if like 10 year [00:13:00] old me was hanging around. That doesn't add anything to the adventure. Like I'll bring all the tech and the gadgets and the mission and the initiative, but he'll be there to like cause me minor problems, you know,
very minor problems. Those really not, these got some bullies
like momentarily be annoying and difficult, right?
Yeah, yeah. And speaking and still focus from me unnecessarily in key moments. Right. That's about it. Which is, I mean, I, I get it. You're right. It's totally a wish fulfillment, fantasy for a kid. Mm-hmm. To find out, oh, I actually grew up to be like big and strong and hot and I have a sexy wife and I can fly super spaceships and you know, my life is really awesome.
And that's cool and that makes sense. But again, you don't cast Ryan Reynolds. Unless you have an equally or more famous kid. Mm-hmm. Then you have to then also work to [00:14:00] keep the focus on the kid, the kid's, the main character. Mm-hmm. Older him is secondary character. He's an extension or an afterthought.
Right. He's not the focus. Right. I'm sure people disagree and they just love Ryan Reynolds.
Yeah. I'm trying to think. It was so great, but then. The whole thing with his wife and they tried to turn it into like this really big deal. Right? The fact that he was coming to rescue his wife or whatever. Mm-hmm.
But then when she's, you think she's killed or was she killed at that moment? She was killed, but he went back. Right. But he didn't really, like, you didn't feel anything about it because you didn't really know her all that well. Right. And then he just took off and then she was killed. Right. But then he hears about it from that villain woman.
And then the next thing you know, he's just back meeting her again. So everything's totally fine. So there was really nothing there that really bonded them or for you to say like, oh my God, it's so sad that she died. It was like, [00:15:00] oh, they just cut. She's not around anymore. She was around for about three minutes.
Yeah, no, she was in it and it was his driving force for the first chunk of the film, like maybe half. Mm-hmm. And that was like, I guess, you know, somewhat interesting. It had some emotional salience, uh, And that actress, I thought played the character pretty well and put a lot of intensity into it. I didn't, I mean, the way she went down at the end was sort of like, I think a betrayal of the character a little bit.
Yeah. Because she seemed smarter and more competent, and probably if this had been, uh, her story and her younger self, the whole thing would've ended much sooner and more efficiently. But, Maybe not if that's her way of dying at the end. It was a weird self-sacrifice where she probably could have eliminated most of the storm troopers or, you know, led to a much longer chase.
But I think the biggest issue with her part of the story is that once again, it was the focus [00:16:00] and then that you get Mark Ruffalo. And the focus shifts away from Ryan Reynolds relationship with, you know, his younger self, or his wife who he wanted, and we got intensely or even their mother. Mm-hmm. It now becomes this weird quibbling between Ryan Reynolds and younger version himself and his father, and they just kind of quibble for a while.
Yeah. Which totally overshadows the relationship with the mother and the wife and puts them way, way backseat in the audience's thinking until you're right. There's a epilogue scene where, oh, okay, everything's great. Happy ending for everyone.
Yeah. It's weird when they do that, when they introduce a whole new scenario, a whole new dynamic between those characters.
Mm-hmm. And within that dynamic, there's not much tension going on. They, mm-hmm. Basically argue a little bit. Very little bit, and then they kind of get on with the business of destroying that [00:17:00] reactor, the time machine. No one says, I'm not gonna do this, or I'm out, or I can't do it. So there's no tension around any one of their motivations.
They're all in and you realize that from the get go. So it's just like this banter back and forth, but they're all gonna go do this anyway. So you're like, okay. I guess that's what's gonna happen. Like there was nothing, well, the father tried to kind of put, right, but they're right.
There's no tension.
There was like a, uh, an act like, uh, I'm out. I don't care about Mike. Okay, I'm back. I do, I love you. Right? Yeah. Love conquers all, let's go. Let's go. Right. You know, so there was like a faint in the direction Uhhuh, but there was never really any tension.
Not long enough for you to say, oh wow, this mission might be in trouble.
Right. Mark
Ruffo may not love his kids as much as he loves the time stream and wants, wants to preserve reality. Cuz that's this kind of film. Mark Ruffalo is cast as the dad who cares more about [00:18:00] anything than his own family. Yeah. That's why you cast Mark Ruffalo. Because he's such a hard edge jerk. Yeah, exactly.
He's the most likable guy. And Ryan Reynolds, right? No, those, those two people together. And you just know they're not gonna start a green and get along. Yeah. Come on. They
can be combustible. What a combo.
Yeah. I, I don't know. I mean, I mean, they're big names. I get it.
And they try to build the villain. A little bit.
Mm-hmm. By having her visit her, her younger self. And I think that was really maybe the most character development of the whole movie. She was that you're gonna call it that? Yeah. Right. Like she was, I guess you can't really call it character development so much. It was an attempt, two versions of her.
Right. One is more pragmatic. The one based in the past, the one in the future knows everything that's gonna happen. So she's so hardened by the whole ordeal. And it would've been nice to see the future wouldn't of it to see what looks like we
did for a hot second. We got to see you for a hot second. In the very beginning, [00:19:00] our introduction to the actual main character, 20 minutes into the film or whenever that was, uh, we got to see the earth from space, future, earth from space.
Did you not zoom in on all that? Get, drink it all in? I don't. Well, the earth was still round. I don't know if that helps.
All right now. Oh, it's coming back to me. No,
I mean, but that's the point. There's really nothing in this film that you need to remember. It didn't take any risks. Not that a movie needs to to be good, frankly, but this one needed something. Yeah,
we've definitely seen this movie before. Done in a much better way. Yeah,
it's, I don't know. Do you think so?
It's a little bit of a dark idea. So this idea that you can shatter reality, you can wreck people's entire lives, fate, it does not exist. All those sort of dark concepts of losing love because it never existed, never happened, someone you love, doesn't remember you. All those kinds of things are [00:20:00] really just treated as like an amusing Saturday morning cartoon in this movie.
Yeah. Do you think that that hurts the film or do you think it's okay? Like, do you think that's fine? It's just a light take. I
think it's fine if you're just gonna look at the surface of this type of movie and say, oh, this is just kind of like a popcorn movie. You're not gonna delve deep into like the actual dynamics of what time travel would be, or him coming back and how he's affecting the future anyway.
Did this all happen already? Is everything locked in? Is it, and apparently with the movie, you can go back, shift everything around and everything's fine.
Right. Yeah. There really weren't any negative consequences to all their monkeying.
No, there weren't, because everything just kind of ended up the way it was supposed to at the end.
The father didn't wanna know what was gonna happen to him in the future. Like, don't tell me, don't tell me. I don't know. I think with any movie that deals with time, travel has the same problems. I think, you know, they're always traveling back, messing things up, but then were they part of the future, you know?
Mm-hmm. Did it already happen? [00:21:00] It didn't happen. Are they on a different timeline altogether? Are timelines merging? Can you destroy one timeline and jump between them to have an alternate ending? Are there multiple versions of yourself? But yeah, I think this movie kind of used that conceit as just a plot point.
We're just gonna send him back. He has to do something and he has to mention time travel. So we're gonna just do an overview of time, travel and the way we wanna say it. Oh yeah. You can go back and change things, but then at the same time, he's always saying like, we shouldn't be interacting with each other, right?
Because we're gonna affect the future. And then at one point Ryan Reynolds says, oh, everything that we know about time travel is wrong. Did you catch that? Mm-hmm. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it didn't make much sense. And he said it in like one or two lines and then he never talked about it again.
Yeah. I think that's the old philosophy of like, hang a lantern on it so that you know, a certain percentage of the audience is gonna be like, okay, so how does time travel work in this universe? And I think the way that they kind of dodged that was [00:22:00] to just sort of acknowledge it in a lighthearted way and then laugh it off and move on.
Certain things are good and certain things are bad, and everything that's gonna happen here kind of closes the loop and you end up with this nice balance of either what was supposed to happen initially, or just good stuff, right? It's like the opposite of the butterfly effect. Remember that movie? Yeah.
Right. Where he keeps trying to make things better, but he realizes every time he changes something, it affects other things in ways that he can't predict until eventually reality is such a mess that he just decides to kill himself in the womb.
Right, right, right. I remember
that one. Spoiler alert. Yeah. I mean is maybe that's it.
You either, it's either that or this. Maybe those are the two options for a movie that tries to examine a recursive time travel on your own life. Right.
Yeah. I keep thinking about the fact that they destroyed the machine that created time [00:23:00] travel, but then at the end, he's back to 2018. Mm-hmm. So is the machine created again?
In the future,
um, you know, once again, I think you were directed not to focus on these things by the style of the film. Just
focus on him pretending to be asleep with his eyes open that he kept talking about. That was his big joke at the end.
Yes, exactly right. That's ex just, I think that is the, just look over here.
He was explaining to the audience how to watch the film. I think he just got the point in the movie. All right, I think, I think we can wrap it up now. Just fall asleep in your eyes open. He cracked the nut. That's the level of intellectual engagement that you need to engage or to activate in order to enjoy this film.
Yeah, we'll just throw a
random scene in there at the end.
This is why I like working with you, cuz you always find the truth. You cracked the knife I
get right, right to the
point. Yep. I think that's what the director was trying to teach us all. But it's
all for nothing [00:24:00] and the top travel
part is just, it's rest.
It's restful time for your brain.
Turn your brain off. We're gonna mention tie on travel, but don't, don't pay attention to that. Look over here.
There's colors. There's lots of colors and lasers and they spin around lots of, yeah. And then some people will hug and, and then you have to go back to your life.
But like for this one, if I start asking you where would you go with this intellectual property? The answer is nowhere. Like I think you're good. Nowhere. I think. I think we would, I think America is good on start. Some scratch. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'd do a sequel, but this time the kid travels through time and goes to the future.
Oh, is he has to reinvent time travel in order to save the wife, his future wife, and. Whatever. It's like, nah, who cares? Because it's just gonna be Ryan Reynolds again, and he's gonna take over the story because he's Ryan and that's gonna be the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, no, we're not gonna, it's gonna be dumb.
Yeah. I would open [00:25:00] by killing Ryan Reynolds. That would be the beginning of the film, and then I'd bring him back in the end where there's like a kind of a throwback where he exists again. And that's the happy ending. Mm-hmm.
That was a
hot twist, huh? I mean, it just would be, as much as Ryan Reynolds can be entertaining, like he overshadows the story too much.
So there's nothing we talk about. Actually,
that would've been a really interesting movie where you think that he's gonna have his future self the whole time, like helping him on this mission, right? But then all of a sudden, his future self dies. Right. And he's just a kid.
With a big pile of
gadgets.
Mm-hmm. Who has to figure 'em all out and make his way to the end of the movie where he is supposed to destroy this time machine, but he has to figure all that stuff out without the help of his future
self. That would be okay. I, I have a question for you. This may be nitpicking, but, uh, I have not mastered the art of leaving my eyes open and turning my brain off.
Do you remember the scene [00:26:00] when Ryan Reynolds explains why ostensibly he needs a younger version of himself, right? Or why he needs that version of himself to come with him on the ship? Do you remember where they go to the ship and it's up in the trees and the ship won't let Ryan Reynolds because
the d n a, it's locked to his D n a.
Right, but it won't let him onto his own ship cause hes injured. Okay. So then he needs the DNA n a from the younger version of himself who he did not intend to recruit, but has to bring along because the ship will only respond to DNA n a, his dna, n a, if he's not too injured to fly, right?
But there's a 10 year old version of him that's never encountered the ship and who doesn't know how to fly the ship.
But he can unlock the ship. Right? That's where you're going with that.
He here. No. Does that make sense? It's not, it's, it's actually worse than that. So you're telling me, if I understand this [00:27:00] technology correctly, it can tell that adult Ryan Reynolds is injured? Mm-hmm. But it can't tell that the other version of him is like 10.
Griffin.
That's what I'm saying.
So how's it, it's like you're missing like two thirds of your mass, but you're probably fine. Fly the ship. You seem really slim. It's shorter. I'm fine with you being smaller and weaker and completely different in every way physically speaking, as long as you are not actively bleeding, which is the one physical trait that I'm able to assess.
You wanna get blood all over the ship. Okay. That's what it's, I'm clear the ship just doesn't, there's few rugs. As long as you're not gonna bleed on me, I don't care if you're 10, I fine. So biometrics is this thing measuring. It's not very good ones. It's not very, your heart, it's not [00:28:00] beating really fast, even though it's much, much weaker than it was like 10 minutes ago or whenever he was on board.
Maybe it
had a sick day during that class on setting the algorithm up to figure out which version of Ryan Reynolds it was. So it could only, he could only detect gunshot wound. He can't detect a.
He can only detect laser blasts or whatever that was, so, so I wonder what the limits are, right? Like if Ryan Reynolds had showed up and he wanted to get on board, but he was the same mass as the younger version of himself, like he was missing both of his legs and both of his arms.
They let him, would the shit be like, that's fine. Yeah, he's fine's fine. At least he's not shot. It's, it's the right dna. He's not actively bleeding on me. There's no bullet hole. He's way lighter now. Check, check, check. Yeah, exactly. Adjusting fuel efficiency calculations. [00:29:00] This is better.
I've been working so hard with this heavier version of Ryan Reynolds this whole
time.
Oh, this is an improvement.
This lower mass of Ryan Reys is
just fine. I don't, I just don't understand how that is supposed to work. And unfortunately, it's a key plot point. It's at a plot point or a pivot point in the film where the kid is dragged on the adventure for specifically that reason, because he is better represents a version like a healthy version of Healthy.
Ryan Reynolds been an unhealthy one. What? Understand how do they, is that how they think DNA N works? Well, according to your dna, N you have a bullet hole,
but this 10 year old version is timeless.
I don't understand. Yeah, maybe. Maybe the bullet version of you. The bullets have DNA on them. It's like polluted your DNA temporarily till you do a DNA flush.
I don't wanna even leave this. [00:30:00] Wait a minute. What point? Who thought like, well, we don't want a pilot who's injured flying the ship ever for any reason. Flying a fighter jet or whatever the fuck is fighter spaceship. Like there's never gonna be a moment where a pilot injur it just shut
down while he's injured.
Didn't do that in
the beginning, did it? Oh my God, you're absolutely right. Yeah. What happens make, just goes into a nose and Wait a
minute. So this is like, Future planes that can disappear or shooting lasers can travel through time. Yes, but you have to pilot them
yourself. There's no self, it's DNA locked to you or, okay, so maybe it has an autopilot.
Maybe that's what it would do. Maybe if the pilot had a bullet hole but was still conscious. I don't know. But see, that seems terrible. Maybe the autopilot would kick in and it would fly 'em to the sun and drop 'em off. I don't know. Fly to a med station, a hospital or [00:31:00] something. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno. But that seems like a great way to get killed.
The future is a weird place. The future is, you know what? It probably is very poorly thought out. This seems like the product of a whole bunch of lawsuits. This is 20 years of lawsuits and this is what they're left with. That's what it's gotta be. Someone was
injured. They jumped into that plane. They didn't realize they were
shot, right?
They crashed. They killed a bunch of people, so they were like, fine. Okay. Specifically, if you have a bullet hole in this part of your body and you're still conscious and you try to activate the ship, it won't let you on board. Is everyone happy? Fine. Here's the, you know, 2 billion for the family of the person who did this the first time, right?
Yes. And so they just locked it out. It's like a bullet hole breathalyzer. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. And probably if he was drunk, it wouldn't let him on either or would it?
Would it even be able to detect drunk Ryan [00:32:00] Reynolds? It's only bullet hole,
Ryan Reynolds. Oh yeah, that's right. It somehow, maybe it just has those two things.
Two settings. That's right. If it had been a stick that poked him, he would've been fine. It's actually just a
push to start, and they told him, was it just blocked into
his dna? He's so narcissistic and he wanted to bring it's, it's my dna.
Oh, I think I got it. Sure. Here are the keys. It's my dna, right? Yeah, sure.
Ryan. There you go. Or,
or Ryan Reynolds wasn't sure. He didn't need a blood transfusion, so he brought a donor. Maybe that's what it's That could be it. She was like, maybe I need another organ or something and the ship isn't gonna be able to grow that. I'm just gonna bring this kid. They're
like, we're gonna give you another lung.
Mm-hmm. Or liver. But he's like, no, I need my own. Sorry, I'm gonna create this warm hole and shoot through it to get
little Oh, you think it goes back that far? Mm-hmm. I was just thinking he made the mistake and was making the best of it. He was like, you know [00:33:00] what, maybe I messed up my liver and I'm gonna get on board and the ship is gonna tell me that I have liver failure and I'm gonna say no problem.
And then knocked that kid out. And then let the ship from surgery and then Yeah. Drop, leave them in a ice bath in a hotel. Sorry, I don't need, uh, pass. I'm, I'm erasing the pass anyway. Who cares? Just use them. You use them for parts. That's probably what it is. That's, that's what makes most You use them for parts.
Oh my god, that's funny. So we pretty much ended the movie before it started. He never starts that space plane. Right.
And
that's the end of it. Oh yeah. We, the, the movie erased the movie. Yeah. Which is always, always a satisfying ending. Always. Doesn't it all feel like you wasted time? Like it was all a dream, you mean?
Mm-hmm. Everybody woke up. It's like every time they do that with Terminator, Where they're like, oh man, they stopped the apocalypse entirely. About two years later, they're like, [00:34:00] oh no, let's, we just made another one and the apocalypse happen anyway, because nobody likes an ending like that. All that stuff that happened, by the way, didn't happen.
Even in this universe. Even in this fictional universe, it never happened. Now have a nice day and lights come mine. You know, that's not, that's inherently not satisfying. Not at all. That's like in, uh, Avengers Endgame, probably. They wisely were like, well, we're not erasing everything. Mm-hmm. You know, we're not just going back to, you know, SANOS was defeated in the past.
They were like, no. There was still a period of time where half of the population of the entire universe was gone. Mm-hmm. Right. Or the galaxy or whatever the extent of that was. So, or Earth, cuz that's probably everybody that we care about in the movie. But they're like, no, they've been gone. And now they're back, so you gotta deal with that.
Otherwise it's like, okay. So we sat through two films in that case and the end result is the beginning of the first film, [00:35:00] which is what this movie just did. Yeah. To us voluntarily. They probably didn't even
realize they were doing it. They're just like, we need an end scene that's kind of funny in quirky and we gotta show the wife cuz everyone's gonna wanna know what happened to her.
Yes.
End of story. Perfect. Good stuff. Perfect film. Great. Great movie. Yeah. Um,
I had high hopes for this movie. I don't know why it kept popping up on Netflix, and I was like, oh, maybe that'll be, that'll be interesting. The algorithm finally got me.
Yeah. Well, next time we'll talk about Is it Cake?
That looks amazing. I haven't watched it yet, but I, I can't imagine what we're gonna get out of that. Actually, I can't believe that that's an actual show. I can't believe I watched
the first episode, like, oh my God. I know I sat there and watched the whole thing and it made me hungry and a little bit disgusted with myself.
They make a cake
and it has to be really realistic. Looking in their judges or
[00:36:00] something. Yep, that's right. And they don't really take it seriously and it's not a lot of money at stake, and you're just sort of like waiting for them to cut the cake.
Think of all the ideas you've ever had in your life, and someone just came along who was like, let's do a show.
On realistic cakes and someone was like, I love it, let's do it.
And the other person said, do what? And they were like, what you just said, right? But what would the show be? It's like nothing realistic cakes, nothing realistic. It's realistic cakes. It's a show about realistic cakes.
But what happens with the realistic cakes?
Nothing. Well,
maybe we cut 'em. Now we've got an idea going. It's a whole room. It writes itself. It writes itself, yeah. Going back and forth and the, and the first guy, like the old television guy is like, I don't hear it. What's the concept? Oh, it writes itself. We got, maybe we have a bowling ball cake, maybe.
It looks like McDonald's [00:37:00] fries. There's an infinite number of things. This could go for 30 years and it
probably will. It's gonna be the longest running show in the history of television.
It's filler about filler.
I still
don't get it. What kinda cake is that? Doesn't matter, but we're gonna talk about it.
That's cause this show needs to be 26 minutes. What was he like?
Imagine all of the different objects that exist in the world. There's this glass
that could be you. You've already made it more complicated than it is. You've already made it significantly more detailed and in depth. You've opened it up the world.
Now it's Lord of the rings of, is it cake? Gonna dial be on a discovery channel,
so it's gotta be a little more complicated.
Remember, you're gonna wake up at the end of this while rested with vague recollections of cake that looked like tacos. And that's
it. I can't, I can't believe
you watched this show.
Okay. To be fair, I skipped through and just watched the parts where they cut the actual case, [00:38:00] and I masturbated the whole time, and Netflix has learned my preferences, and it just jumped at,
I mean, what you did. Now it's like you're a garner. Because you watched that show, what's gonna happen? Oh my God. All your suggestions are gonna be horrendous.
Yeah. Oh, oh my God. What have I done?
Like fish tank design, show design. The wacky as fish tank.
That's what's gonna be, you're absolutely right. It's gonna be flooded. That's probably show is all the way
through. Yeah. You're doomed. You're never gonna watch anything decent again.
Between Adam Project. And Is A Cake Is a cake.
They're like,
we know what this guy
likes. Well, you know what? It'll stop asking me if I'm still watching. Are you awake? It's not gonna do that anymore. It's not gonna matter. It's just, it's just gonna let it run. It's gonna keep going. We're doomed. Pretty sure there's not a brain in his head. It's just cake.
Just cake and convoluted time. As soon as I boot it up, it's just gonna start playing stuff. It's the Game of Thrones of cake. Uh, actually that would've been a better [00:39:00] last season if they just found out everything was cake.
Oh my God. I'd be less upset. I think if we just found that the white walkers, like he vanilla, it's vanilla cake. They all just turn the vanilla cake and then he goes, I hate vanilla. And that's the end of the series.
Let them eat
cake. Right. That could be so, yeah. I mean it's clearly at that point, it's a historical metaphor for something.
What about a show that's called Let Them Meat Cake, and there's one character in every episode that the audience tries to figure out if they're capable. Mm-hmm.
I like that. Right? That's it. But again, you're taking the successful concept and you're adding tension. No
tension. There's no secrets. That's not, you find out whose cake in the beginning.
And then we just watched the rest of the show, knowing who the
cake is. Okay, now you're getting it. Right. Now you're getting it. But you start off and before you [00:40:00] realize that one of the characters might be something other than a character, you find out their cake. And then the rest of the episode is people eating said cake.
Perfect. Nailed it. See? There you go. You gotta think of plots these days like heartbeats, right? You're just looking for a nice, solid flat line all the way through. You don't want any of these annoying peaks or troughs. You just want nice, solid, relaxing. Don't wanna scare anybody. Yeah, don't shake anything up.
No, come on, you don't wanna wake anyone in the audience.
Have you seen too hot to handle? I
watched pretty horrendous some of the first season. Pretty horrible concept. Okay. I'll tell you how much I got outta that show. I watched the first season and I believe one of the women in that is, wait, is it too hot to handle the one where it's like two women and then a bunch of dudes?
No. Is that
the right one's? So one where they're all on like
a, they're all in, they're not supposed to have sex or something. Yeah. Okay. [00:41:00]
Pretty horrible. And there's like an Alexa type device that they talk to,
or I thought that was all like adr, like dubbed in. It's gotta be Right. And they're just pretending.
I bet when they're there, like when you watch the show, it's like, hello, I'm the Uhhuh person guiding you and I'm the AI and you need to listen to me. I think probably when they're there it's like, okay, listen, producer and uh, I want you guys up down. So the role is
try to talk to each other.
Look left.
You're like, Ooh, look right, look surprised. I'm gonna need you to look surprised right
here.
It probably is. This is not the positive podcast that I envisioned. This is not, this is not. This
is now mystery
theater. This is not the up, upbeat, affirming, positive morning commute experience that I thought we were gonna cultivate.[00:42:00]
That's not our audience.
What? A couple of jerks. All right, so thank you for listening. Uh, I don't tell why you're, Still here, but I appreciate it. Uh, we will be back next week with an original idea that you can tear apart, and I hope you guys reach out to us and let us know how wrong this episode was at.
Don't encourage us@gmail.com. Look forward to seeing you next time.