The hosts dissect Netflix’s The Adam Project as a case study in how star casting and risk-averse development can flatten a promising time‑travel premise into an emotional flatline. They reverse‑engineer how the project likely began as a kid‑centric Spielberg‑style adventure, then trace how attaching Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, and a generic “family movie” brief distorted character arcs, time‑travel stakes, and the film’s emotional spine. Along the way they pick apart broken time‑travel rules, the absurd “DNA-locked spaceship” logic, and an ending that effectively erases the movie you just watched, before zooming out to talk about Netflix’s algorithm-era content strategy, from Is It Cake? to Too Hot To Handle.
Is The Adam Project a kid's movie wearing a Ryan Reynolds costume? We dig in.
In this episode:
Timestamps:
00:00
The Adam Project's vanilla plot
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 want to scare anybody, shake anything up.
No, come on.
You don't want to wake anyone in the audience. All right, 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 if you haven't seen it, go watch it or at least read a summary before you listen to this episode. We are definitely going to 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 vanilla, right?
So it's very right down the middle. It's like an understatement, right? Yeah.
I thought it was really.
Yeah, exactly.
It's about as slow of a softball pitch as you can make. If mainstream had like a title page, like a splash page, like it would be this. You know what I mean?
Just everything about it. I'd love to see the original script of this movie and 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 had a completely different vision for it as supposed to be some kind of like intense thriller.
Okay, let's talk about that. Fine. 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 Ryan Reynolds. Right. This was not going to be a Ryan Reynolds move.
Clearly, I guess, Shawn Levy or whoever, somebody got a hold of the script and turned it into what we saw. You're absolutely right. I mean, I think it's abundantly clear the original version of this was about the kid.
The kid was the main character and it was like his, oh my gosh, 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.
In the end, he gets his dad back and that would be the final scene is like dad comes home. He's reunited and it's a throwback to that Spielbergian. I was going to say ET, like that ET kind of feeling, you know?
Yep. Remember they tried to recapture that with, oh, who's the director? The Invisible Monster and the kids.
Oh, what is that called?
Not U571.
District 9. I think is what it's called. It's not Heart 8.
It's not 8mm. It's something like that. There's a number in the title.
I love whatever algorithm runs in your mind. Anybody on the phone, there is clearly some kind of glitch. I just love to see the kids' movies that your brain would recommend.
Texas Chainsaw? No. It's not Nightmare on Elf Street.
No.
Oh my God.
Super 8. Super 8. You got it.
Super 8, directed by JJ Abrams. 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.
But it's like, we're not going to do fantasy, we're going to do sci-fi, and it's a little bit Last Starfighter and all that good stuff. But then somebody got a hold of this, and a big star got attached, and suddenly, I think-
And all the books came out.
Exactly. They had to rewrite the kid. Well, first they had to move him out of the spotlight, even though he starts to film.
So it's really janky and awkward when he moves out of the lead position in the story.
It's very erroneous.
That's the moment where it happens.
Yeah, exactly.
As soon as Ryan Reynolds shows up. Oh, the instant you see that smile, 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 got to 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 20 minutes of the movie, I was like, what? He's supposed to not be likable, but charming at the same time. What is this from a child?
But he's super snarky, right? He's deadpool-esque when he's getting beat up. Exactly, deadpool-esque.
That's a great way to put it. Very, very strange. Well, that's what happens when somebody's Hollywood persona overshadows the film, 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 watched this movie and every scene, he couldn't wait to see what happened next.
You know what I mean?
It was just a complete surprise all the way through the film.
5:53
Why the film is an emotional flatline
Were there any points in this movie you thought were actually poignant?
When they played that Boston song during the action sequence at the end, I thought that had some emotion to it because I was like, what are we doing playing a 1976 Boston song during a movie about time travel where no one goes to the 70s?
I thought, boy, this is really meaningful and emotional. Now, the songs added some emotion. I thought, 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 giving his lecture, and they see him again for the first time because he's supposed to be dead.
Yeah. I thought that was good, but it only lasts about five seconds. I don't know if that's a moment or a snap of the finger.
Yeah.
If you want poignant moments, I would go with the bar scene because I do think Jennifer Garner was good.
She definitely added Gravitas. We put an echo.
You've said very low Gravitas. For all of you out there, Gravitas, ASMR.
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 when they attach names. But it did seem like she was really connecting with the emotions of that character.
Yeah, she's good. I think he was trying to, Ryan Reynolds was trying to also bring emotion and it did make it easier for me to connect with the characters and the meaning of the story. But all that just got swept aside so quickly.
That plot, it was so paint by numbers. In the beginning, I thought there might be something here that's cool. It's got that last Starfighter meets a back to the future type of vibe to it in the beginning.
And then it just all just goes downhill.
It seems like something you could write in a weekend.
Like if you were just to follow the plot points of like a very basic family movie, the hero's journey, but under 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 them. Now they're not bullies anymore presumably.
And that's the end of that.
Did that get resolved?
No, right?
They just ran away.
Yeah, he scared them. He scared them. He 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 Garner either.
He's just an absentee father in the eyes of the son. But then at the end, he's not, apparently.
He says, I love you guys.
I always have. Did the kid have an arch? Yeah.
I don't think so. 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, this is just the way things are.
This is pretty cool.
That's really the end of it.
Not real conflicts there, right?
Yeah. So he was initially, he was a kid who was hurt and being bullied, 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. That wasn't well-defined, right? Then at the end of the movie, he just got his dad back at the end, right?
Is that really character development to just get your dad back? 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 being dismissive with, you know what I mean?
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 missed it.
It had to be in the film.
There was just that one moment that I remember, which is when his older version is fighting those future stormtroopers, and he's using the VR to attack them with the drone. Right.
That was it. And 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 basically it. Is that character development?
No, it's just him doing it. All right. So maybe I just got distracted by all the flashing lights in the Boston song.
But at the end when they were fighting, when they were trying to destroy time travel.
Sorry.
He was being held by that guard who was weirdly magnetic when the other major characters. None of the major characters were magnetic. 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.
Yeah. 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.
Was there a scene where he treated his mother better, where he would recognize that she was also her and he was kinder to her? Did I miss that? Is that in there?
I think she might have missed it.
It happened for about three seconds where he's like leaving the house but he turns around and gives her a hug while she's sitting there.
Maybe that's the art, I guess. That's his development or that's what they cut it down to. Yeah, he's fine.
That's what the cookie roller left. This cookie roller hasn't left a lot, has it? It squished this bill.
It's pretty much gone.
Oh, man.
In those spaceships from the future that come back, it felt like I'd seen this movie a million times before. It was so disappointing because I thought there might be something here. You're going to meet yourself 30 years ago.
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 40s, not many people in their 40s 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 10-year-old me was hanging around. That doesn't add anything to the adventure. I'll bring all the tech and the gadgets and the mission and the initiative, but he'll be there to cause me minor problems.
You know? Very minor problems.
There's really not these types of bullies.
Like momentarily be annoying and difficult, right? Yeah. And steal focus from me unnecessarily in key moments, right?
That's about it. Which is, I mean, I get it. You're right.
It's totally a wishful fulment fantasy for a kid to find out, oh, I actually grow 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. And you have to then also work to keep the focus on the kid.
The kid's the main character. Older him is secondary character. He's an extension or an afterthought, right?
He's not the focus. I'm sure people disagree and they just love Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, they're going to think it was so great.
But then the whole thing with his wife, and they try to turn it into like this really big deal, right? The fact that he was coming to rescue his wife or whatever. 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 it didn't really like, you didn't feel anything about it. Because you don't really know her all that well. 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 free to say like, oh my God, it's so sad that she died.
It was like, 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. And that was like, I guess, you know, somewhat interesting. It had some emotional salience and that actress, I thought, played the character pretty well and put a lot of intensity into it.
I mean, the way she went down at the end was sort of like, I think a betrayal of the character a little bit because she seemed smarter and more competent and probably if this had been her story and her younger self, the whole thing would have 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 Stormtroopers or 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.
Then you get Mark Ruffalo and the focus shifts away from Ryan Reynolds relationship with his younger self or his wife who he wanted and we got intensely, or even their mother.
It now becomes this weird quibbling between Ryan Reynolds and younger version himself and his father.
They just quibble for a while, 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 an epilogue scene where, 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, and within that dynamic, there's not much tension going on.
They basically argue a little bit, very little bit, and then they get off with the business of destroying that reactor with time machine. No one says, I'm not going to 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 going to go do this anyway.
So you're like, okay, I guess that's what's going to happen. There was nothing the father tried to kind of- Right, but they're right, there's no tension.
There was like an act, like, I'm out, I don't care about Mike. Okay, I'm back, I do. I love you.
Love conquers all, let's go, let's go. So there was like a faint in the direction, but there was never really any tension. Not long enough for you to say, oh, this mission might be in trouble.
Right, Mark Ruffalo may not love his kids as much as he loves the time stream and wants to preserve reality. Because that's this kind of film. Mark Ruffalo is cast as the dad who cares more about anything than his own family.
Yeah, that's why you cast Mark Ruffalo, because he's such a hard edged jerk. Yeah, exactly. The most likable guy.
And Ryan Reynolds, right? No, those two people together, and you just know they're not going to start agreeing and get along.
yes, that would be combustible. What a combo.
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they're big names. I get it.
And they try to build the villain a little bit by having her visit her younger selves. And I think that was really maybe the most character development of the whole. She was going to call it.
Yeah, she was, I guess you can't really call it character development so much. It was an attempt. There's two versions of her, right?
One is more pragmatic. The one based in the past, the one in the future knows everything that's going to happen. So she's so hardened by the whole ordeal.
And it would have been nice to see the future, wouldn't it?
We did for a hot second.
We got to see for a hot second in the very beginning, our introduction to the actual main character, 20 minutes into the film or whenever that was. We got to see the Earth from space, future Earth from space. Did you not zoom in on all that?
Get it all in? I don't know. Well, the Earth was still round.
I don't know if that helps. All right.
Now, 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 be good, frankly, but this one needed something. Yeah, we've definitely seen this movie before, done in a much better way.
19:37
Time travel logic flaws
Yeah. I don't know. Do you think so?
It's a little bit of a dark idea, right? So this idea that you can shatter reality, you can wreck people's entire lives, you can destroy people's 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 really just treated as like an amusing Saturday morning cartoon in this movie.
Do you think that that hurts the film or do you think it's okay? Do you think that's fine? It's just a light take?
I think it's fine if you're just going to look at the surface of this type of movie and say, oh, this is just kind of a popcorn movie.
You're not going to delve deep into 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?
Apparently with the movie, you can go back, shift everything around and everything's fine, right? Yeah, there really wasn'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 want to know what was going to happen to him in the future.
I was 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. They're always traveling back, messing things up, but then were they part of the future? Did it all happen?
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 yourselves? Yeah, I think this movie used that conceit as just a plot point.
Like, oh, we're just going to send him back. He has to do something and he has to mention time travel. So we're going to just do an overview of time travel and the way you want to 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 going to set the future.
And then at one point, Ryan Reynolds says, oh, everything that we know about time travel is wrong. Did you catch that? 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 never talked about it again.
Yeah, I think that's the old philosophy of like, hang a lantern on it so that a certain percentage of the audience is going to be like, okay, so how does time travel work in this universe?
And I think the way that they kind of dodged that was 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 going to 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.
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. I mean, maybe that's it.
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 travel, but then at the end, he's back to 2018. So is the machine created again in the future?
Once again, I think you were directed not to focus on these things by the style of the film. I just focused 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 just, I think that is-
Just look over here.
He was explaining to the audience how to watch the film. I think he just got the point of the movie. All right.
I think we can wrap it up now. Just fall asleep with your eyes open. You cracked the nut.
That's the level of intellectual engagement that you need to engage or to activate in order to enjoy this film.
We'll just throw a random scene in there at the end.
This is why I like working with you, because you always find the truth. You crack the nut.
You get right to the point. Yeah.
I think that's what the director was trying to teach us all. That it's all for nothing.
And the time travel part is just...
It's rest. It's restful time for your brain.
Turn your brain off. We're going to go on time travel, but don't pay attention to that. Look over here.
There's colors.
There's lots of colors.
And lasers.
And they spin around. Yeah. And then some people will hug, and then you have to go back to your life.
But for this one, if I start asking you, where would you go with this intellectual property? The answer is nowhere. Like, I think we're good.
I think we would.
I think America is good on-
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I'd do a sequel, but this time, the kid travels through time and goes to the future, and he has to reinvent time travel in order to save the wife, his future wife. Whatever. It's like, no, who cares?
Because it's just going to be Ryan Reynolds again, and he's going to take over the story because he's Ryan Reynolds. And that's going to be the end of it. I would open 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.
That was a thought twist, huh?
I mean, it just wouldn't be as much as Ryan Reynolds can be entertaining. Like, he overshadows the story too much. So there's nothing to talk about.
Actually, that would have been a really interesting movie, where you think that he's going to have his future self the whole time, like helping him on this mission, but then all of a sudden his future self dies.
He's just a kid with a big pile of gadgets, who has to figure them all out and make his way to the end of the movie where he's supposed to destroy this time machine. But he has to figure all that stuff out without the help of his future self.
That was it.
25:49
The spaceship DNA problem
I have a question for you.
This may be nitpicking, but I have not mastered the art of leaving my eyes open and turning my brain off.
Do you remember the scene when Ryan Reynolds explains why ostensibly he needs a younger version of himself, 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 DNA, it's locked to his DNA. Right, but it won't let him on to his own ship.
Because he's injured. Okay, so then he needs the DNA 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, his DNA, 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.
yes.
He can unlock the ship.
Right.
That's what we're doing with that. Here, no, it's not. It's actually worse than that.
So you're telling me, if I understand this technology correctly, it can tell that adult Ryan Reynolds is injured, but it can't tell that the other version of him is like 10.
That's what I'm saying.
So it's like, you're missing like two thirds of your mass, but you're probably fine, like this shit. You seem really slim. Yeah, it's OK.
I'm fine with you being smaller and weaker and completely different every way. Physically speaking, as long as you're not actively bleeding, which is the one physical trait that I'm able to assess.
You want to get blood all over the ship.
OK, that's what it is. I'm clear the ship just doesn't want blood. So long as you're not going to bleed on me.
I don't care if you're 10. Biometrics is this thing measuring. It's not very good ones.
It's not your heart. It's not 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 he could only detect gunshots. He can't detect ace or anything else.
He can only detect laser blasts or whatever that was. 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 all of his arms. And would the ship be like, that's fine. Yeah, he's fine.
At least he's not shot. That's the right DNA. He's not actively bleeding on me.
There's no bullet hole. He's way lighter. Check, check, check.
Adjusting fuel efficiency calculations. This is better. I've been working so hard on this heavier version of Ryan Reynolds this whole time.
Oh, this is an improvement.
This lower mass of Ryan Reynolds is just fine.
I just don't understand how that is supposed to work. 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 of a healthy Ryan Reynolds than an unhealthy one.
What?
I don't understand how, is that how they think DNA works? Well, according to your DNA, you have a bullet hole. This 10 year old's version is timeless.
I don't understand, yeah, maybe the bullets have DNA on them. And are polluted your DNA temporarily until you do a DNA flush. I don't understand.
Wait a minute. 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 it's like, fighter spaceship, like there's never going to be a moment where a pilot is injured.
So is the ship 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 if you just make an injury on board? It just goes into a nosedive. 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-guide. It's CNA 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 them to the sun and drop them off. I don't know, fly to a med station or something. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
That seems like a great way to get killed. The future is a weird place. The future 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.
31:18
Rewriting the ending: why erasing the plot never works
That's what it's got to 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. They were like, fine. 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 will let you on board.
Is everyone happy? Fine. Here's the $2 billion for the family of the person who did this the first time.
They just locked it out. It's like a bullet hole breathalyzer. Yeah, 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 Reynolds? It's only bullet holes, Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, that's right.
Maybe it just has those two things. Two settings.
That's right.
If it had been a stick that poked him, he would have been fine. It's actually just a push to start. And they told him it was blocked into his teeth.
He's so narcissistic and he wanted to pray. 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 Ryan Reynolds wasn't sure he didn't need a blood transfusion. So he brought a donor.
Maybe that's what it is. That could be it. He was like, maybe I need another organ or something.
And the ship isn't going to be able to grow that. I'm just going to bring this kid. If we're going to give you another lung or a liver.
But he's like, no, I need my own. Sorry, I'm going to create this wormhole and shoot through it to get. You think it goes back that far?
I was just thinking he made the mistake and was making the best of it. He was like, you know what? Maybe I messed up my liver and I'm going to get on board and the ship is going to tell me that I have liver failure and I'm going to say no problem.
And I'll knock that kid out. And then let the ship for surgery in it, drop, leave them in a ice bath in a hotel. I don't need a pass.
I'm erasing the past anyway, who cares? Just use them for parts. That's probably what it is.
That's what makes them so serious. 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.
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?
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, oh no, we just made another one and the apocalypse happened 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 on. That's not sad, it's inherently not satisfied.
Not at all.
That's like in Avengers Endgame, probably, they wisely were like, well, we're not erasing everything.
You know, we're not just going back to, you know, Thanos 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, right?
34:42
Detour: Is It Cake and the Netflix algorithm trap
Or the galaxy or whatever the extent of that was. So, or Earth, because 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 got to 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, which is what this movie just did to us, voluntarily.
They probably didn't even realize they were doing it. They're just like, we need an end scene that's funny, in quotes. And we got to show the life, because everyone's going to want to know what happened to her.
yes.
End of story.
Perfect.
Good stuff.
Perfect film.
Great movie.
Yeah. I had high hopes for this movie. I don't know why.
It kept popping up on Netflix. And I was like, oh, maybe it'll be interesting. And the algorithm got me.
Yeah. Well, next time we'll talk about Is It Cake? That looks amazing.
I haven't watched it yet, but I can't imagine what we're going to get out of that. Actually, I can't believe that that's an actual show. I can't believe I watched the first episode.
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-working and they're judges or something.
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. Into all the ideas you've never had in your life. And someone just came along and 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, well, you just said, right. But what would the show be? It's like science.
Realistic cakes. It's realistic cakes. It's a show about realistic cakes.
But what happens with the realistic cakes? Nothing. Well, maybe we caught them.
Now we've got an idea going. It's a whole room of executives. It writes itself.
Don't batten for us. And the first guy is like the old television guys, like, I don't hear it. What's the concept?
Oh, it writes us that we got, maybe we have a bowling ball cake. Maybe it looks like McDonald's fries. There's an infinite number of things.
This could go for 30 years. And it probably will. It's going to be the longest running show in the history of television.
It's filler about filler.
I still don't get it.
What kind of cake is that? It doesn't matter, but we're going to talk about it. 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 cake. 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.
Well, mine's going to be on the Discovery Channel. So it's got to be more complicated.
You're going to wake up at the end of this while rested with vague recollections of cake that looked like tacos.
That's it.
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 cake.
I masturbated the whole time. Netflix has learned my preferences and it just jumped at it. I mean, what you did now, it's like you're goner because you watched that show, what's going to happen?
All your suggestions are going to be horrendous.
Yeah. Oh my God. What have I done?
Like fish tank design show.
design the wackiest fish tank. That's what it's going to be. You're absolutely right.
It's going to be flooded all the way through.
You're doomed.
You're never going to watch anything decent again. Between Adam Project and Is It 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 going to do that anymore. It's not going to matter. It's just going to let it run.
It's going to keep going.
We're doomed.
Pretty sure there's not a brain in his head. It's just cake. Cake and convoluted time.
As soon as I boot it up, it's just going to start playing stuff. It's the Game of thrones of Cake. Oh, actually that would have been a better last season if they just found out everything was cake.
Oh, my God. I'd be less upset, I think, if we just found out. The White Walkers, like he.
Vanilla. It's vanilla cake. They all just throw in the vanilla cake.
39:15
Too Hot To Handle and the death of prestige Netflix
Then he goes, I hate vanilla, and that's the end of the series. Let them eat cake, right?
That could be a show.
Clearly, at that point, it's a historical metaphor for something. What about a show that's called Let The Meat Cake, and there's one character in every episode that the audience tries to figure out if they're capable of it. 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.
How about we find out who's cake in the beginning, and then we just watch the rest of the show, knowing who the cake is. Now you're getting it. Now you're getting it.
You start off, and before you 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 got to think of plots these days like heartbeats.
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 want to scare anybody. Yeah. Shake anything up.
No.
Come on.
You don't want to 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 out of that show. I watched the first season and I believe one of the women in that is... Wait, is Too Hot To Handle one where it's like two women and then a bunch of dudes?
No, it's the one where they're all on like a... They're not supposed to have sex or something?
Yeah. Okay. Pretty horrible.
And there's like an Alexa type device that they talk to.
I thought that was all like ADR, like dubbed in. It's gotta be, right? And they're just pretending?
I'll bet when they're there, like when you watch the show, it's like, hello, I'm the 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 I want you guys to look down. So the rule is, if we're trying to talk to each other, half a book ladder, like, look right, look surprised.
I'm going to 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 down mystery theater.
This is not the healthy, affirming, positive morning commute experience that I thought we were going to cultivate. That's not our audience. What a couple of jerks.
All right. So thank you for listening. I don't know why you're still here, but I appreciate it.
We will be back next week with an original idea that you can tear apart. I hope you guys reach out to us and let us know how wrong this episode was at don'tencourageus at gmail.com. Look forward to seeing you next time.