Prequel to Gerald's Game - V for Vendetta Fan Reaction

[00:00:11] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our V for Vendetta listener polls in preview Gerald's game. Well, welcome back to another prequel episode of this film is like the. Where we talk about movies that are based on books. We got quite a bit of feedback to get into. But before we do that, we have to get to our patron shout outs. [00:00:36] Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. [00:00:39] Speaker A: That's why we have three. Well, two new patrons and then a free member. Our free member joining on Patreon this week is Justin Glaive. I don't know what that gets you, but you're able to follow us on there. [00:00:51] Speaker B: The poll posts are open to everybody. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Cause I would say most of the stuff we post on there is gated by like the pay levels. But yeah, the polls. There you go. Are open to everybody. But we do have an Academy or, sorry, a Hugo Award winner at the $5 level. Joining us is Carissa. Thank you, Carissa, for your support. Make sure you check out those bonus episodes. We'll actually be recording our November bonus here in the next couple days. We watched Heather's, so look out for that bonus episode for November. And at the $15 Academy Award winner winning level, we do have a new patron or maybe a returning patron. I'm not sure. [00:01:30] Speaker B: Do you know, I'm not sure either. It's kind of hard to tell on Patreon sometimes Charlene or Charlene either upgrading. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Or returning or something because they. You didn't show up as a new patron on the list. So you either a patron at some point and you upgrade. I don't know. But anyways, at the $15 Academy Award winning level. Charlene. Charlene. I don't. I don't. Let me know how to pronounce your name. I'm sorry, I don't. Is it a sound or a ch sound at the beginning? What would you. What would your guess be? [00:02:03] Speaker B: My guess would be. Now you've got me confused, Charlene. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Okay, that would be my guess too. But you. I just don't know. I know. You never know, so. All right, thank you, Charlene, for joining us at the $15 level. Hope you get that request in if you haven't already. And our Academy Award winning patrons are Nicole Goebel, Eric Harpo, Rat Fuck this country. Vic Apocalypse, Charlene. See, the fact that she's there in the list makes me think she must have been one at some point. [00:02:33] Speaker B: That makes sense. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Okay. Mathilde. Steve from Arizona, ENT draft. Teresa Schwartz, Ian from wine country, Kelly Napier Gratch. Just scratch. Shelby says somehow Palpatine returned that darn Skag V. Frank and Alina Starkov, thank you all so much for your continued support. Really appreciate it. Katie, let's see what the people had to say about V4 vendetta. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man on Patreon. We had five votes for the book and five for the movie. If you look at it, it says 5 and 4. But we had a late commenter, so I went ahead and counted their vote. Our first comment was from Shelby, who said, these two came up pretty even for me. They both had plenty of things I liked and plenty I didn't. Starting with the book. I loved things like Rose shooting the Chancellor and the Bishop poisoned by a wafer. I can see the skill that would later give us Watchmen in parts of this book. Every so often, that brilliance shines through. And then there were all the parts that left me going, what are we doing? And really. Okay, I guess the first time that happened was when V burned Prothero's dolls and it broke his mind. It was jarring to see Saturday morning Cartoon Logic in the middle of this book that's trying so hard to be a realistic examination of fascism. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Okay, so I want to chime in here. I agree with that, but I interpreted that as maybe he did something else that we didn't see, because that is how you would read it. As it reads in the book is, like, we see the moment of him burning all the dolls, and Prothero starts freaking out. And then we cut, and, like, we're at the police station or whatever, and Prothero's being wheeled in, and he's, like, in a wheelchair, and he's, like, got, like, a cartoony face, and he's, like, babbling about dolls or he's clearly lost his mind. And I wasn't sure if we were meant to think that, like, the act of seeing all these dolls get destroyed, like, broke him or if V also did something else. I don't know. That was my mind thing, was kind of like, maybe he, like, gave him some drugs or something. Or something. I don't know, because I agree, it was kind of like, wait, what? All right, it was a little strange. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Another example is when Finch decided to take LSD when he went to the prison camp. And honestly, most of the last third. [00:05:06] Speaker A: Of the book, I was fine with Finch taking LSD with the prison camp. This is written back in the early 80s, right? And, like, I enjoyed that. Part from like a fun weird like this guy especially then psychedelics were very much like a. And still are to some extent, but like a thing that people were viewing through the lens of like, maybe this can give you insights into the universe. And again, people still view them that way in a lot of ways, but so I thought it kind of made sense and worked and didn't feel that one to me, didn't feel like a weird leap because Finch at this point is already like kind of losing it and not losing it, but he's kind of like he's grown so disillusioned with everything that it's kind of like a last resort, like last ditch effort to try to figure out what's going on. And again, within the time period that it was written, that felt more. It felt like not that strange to. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Me, but fair enough. Shelby went on to say, side note, I'm pretty sure it was Rosemary who bought the gun for protection and Evie who took Gordon's after he was killed. [00:06:12] Speaker A: I think that's correct. And this relates to a note that we have in a comment later that I'll talk about then. But it's just, I think it's just a matter of like having a hard time literally telling their characters apart when drawn and not having any other context for what we're seeing, because that happened in the book. But we'll get to that more in a bit. [00:06:30] Speaker B: My other issue with the book was Evie and Rose's storylines. Evie starts out as a broke orphan who needs money, so she turns to sex work. She gets saved by V and her life quickly becomes about what V is doing and what he wants. He abandons her and she's found by Gordon. Now her life is about what Gordon is doing and what he wants. Gordon dies and she's reunited with V. And wouldn't you know it, now her life is back to revolving around Vee. When he dies, she continues his crusade. Rose starts the book married to her abusive husband. When he dies, she can't support herself financially, so she replaces him with basically the same abusive asshole who also dies. Then she turns to sex work because she can't get a job doing anything else. Rose killing the Chancellor at the end is awesome, but before that, these two stories combined got really repetitive. It's not necessarily unrealistic, but like, I get it already. [00:07:25] Speaker A: I don't disagree that it gets a little repetitive because I felt similarly about like, man, this is the same thing happening to Rosemary again. But I thought it worked again, to get across the idea at least especially In Rosemary's case, because I didn't really feel that Evie's story was repetitive. It didn't feel like I needed. Like, we were repeating elements that weren't necessary. Which, to be fair, I didn't feel that way about Rosemary either. But with Rosemary, I can at least see. Like, I can see it. And for me, it worked because it just. It shows the cycle of abuse, but also the way that she keeps trying to find another way out of this situation, and it just keeps being the same thing again. And it keeps coming back to the fact that she's this cog in this fascist machine. She's not really even a cognitive. I don't even know. She's ancillary to the cogs in this fascist machine, and as a result, her life gets destroyed because of them. And I thought repeating that several times really drove home the cyclical nature of all of this, but also the inescapable way that particularly in a system like this, which is an incredibly, like, patriarchal fascist system, that is all of the people running it are white men. And I think showing that how inescapable it is for. For everybody, but particularly even for, like, what would be seen as potentially a privileged, privileged person within this system, being somebody who's, you know, a white woman who's married to, like, important people politically, I think helps reinforce how just corrupt and rotten and awful the whole system is. And I think the. Again, I think the repetition actually helps drive that home. Shelby didn't think it was necessary, which I can see, but I thought it worked effectively in communicating that. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Continuing now with Shelby's comment, the movie turned out to be another example of media I can't take seriously. In a post Covid world, the government made a virus, and if people really knew how corrupt it all was, everyone would unite to put a stop to it. At the end, Yvie goes, v, you don't have to do this. Let's just run away together and forget about the fascism. I'm not going to dignify any of that. And yet I liked the performances. The movie is entertaining and cozy in its nostalgia, and some parts were well adapted. I vastly prefer the scene where V kills Prothero in the film. [00:10:11] Speaker A: Wow. I could not disagree more on that particular instance. [00:10:15] Speaker B: But I understand why V would sacrifice himself to make sure the Chancellor. [00:10:20] Speaker A: She's talking specifically about the dolls part. Probably more specifically because that part I could take or leave. I think it was interesting. But the train kidnapping was the part from the book that I really thought would have been cool in the movie, so. Which isn't when he's killed, so that's probably not what Shelby's talking about. [00:10:39] Speaker B: I understand why V would sacrifice himself to make sure the Chancellor and Creedy both die. But in the book, he hints that he's going to die, and then Finch happens across his shit at exactly the right moment, and V attacks him and gets shot. And he dies for the pathos, I guess. Again, I ask, what are we doing? However, after listening to your discussion, I'm gonna give the edge to the book because the themes and messaging are somehow just as culturally relevant as it was when it came out. It didn't age the way the movie has. [00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's an important point. I do think the book is just works just as well now as it did in 1980. Whatever, when it came out. Honestly, it might work better now. I don't know. But the movie is definitely a bit more of its time or feels a bit more specifically of its time than the Than the graphic novel does. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Kelly Napier, who said two points before I get into why I picked the movie over the book. One, Mark Twain was the one to whom the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Quote is attributed. Similarly interest. Interestingly similar to Luke, I am your father. That quote is a misquote. The actual quote was, the report of my death was an exaggeration. This took place in 1897. [00:12:06] Speaker A: I also wonder if it's real, because so many quotes that are attributed to Mark Twain aren't actually not saying this one is one of those cases, but it's very often he's one of those people that that quotes tend to get attributed to because he does have a lot of very memorable quotes. Yes, that there have. There are a lot of quotes out in the world that, like, will kind of incorrectly be attributed to him. It's very funny. Like, I've noticed some of those. Again, I'm not saying this one is. You have a year there. It sounds like it's potentially very likely that this was him. And then when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, I do remember that here. My brain was like, oh, yeah, that is like a Mark Twain thing. But just in general, whenever you hear something as quoted as, like, there's a famous Mark Twain quote, you should be a little skeptical because often it's just people just attribute lots of stuff to him that he didn't even say. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Two, I'm wondering if that critic you spoke about in the prequel who thought the movie was too anti American, was Reacting in part to the use of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture when Parliament was blown up. Although Tchaikovsky was Russian and the pieces about the Russians successfully preventing the French Napoleon from invading their country, the piece, specifically the brass and cannon fanfare at the end, is now largely associated with Independence Day fireworks shows here in the United States. [00:13:27] Speaker A: True. I think the other big thing is just that it's very clearly a 911 truther analogy. And I think that like it's pretty, like blatantly that. And I think so. I think that might have been another thing that the critic was reacting to. Like we're putting this weird, like very American, not, not weird. Again, I understand why, but it's a very specific kind of American angle on this, related to like 911 and the inside job nonsense. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Okay, now down to business. I picked the movie and similar to Shelby, it was a pretty close call for me. The book was beautifully drawn and the story is really strong. And I agree with Brian that the death of Prothero was way better in the book. The movie was beautifully shot and I liked that they made Evie's character working for the TV station so that she was part of the problem before being drawn into V's world. I picked the movie over the book strictly because of the overabundance of seemingly interchangeable cast of disposable male characters in the book. Despite many attempts at going back and rereading entire sections of the book, I kept getting lost with which generic white man was which and why. The particular generic white man we refer focusing on at any given time was important to the story. It was too many names, too many factions, and too many threads for me to keep track of. Maybe it was harder for me because I was reading it on my phone where only one cell at a time was on my screen. But I was so, so lost with all of the people. Even Evie and Rose sometimes got confused in my mind because the book was so quick to change perspectives without a lot of setup. [00:15:07] Speaker A: So that is something I completely agree with and was the exact. I had the exact same experience reading it, particularly in relation to some of the men Ro. Like, I don't know if this is a guy that we've met before or like, if they don't give you enough context. I was like, is this somebody we know before or is it. Should I like, is there some plot thread from previously that this character is related to that I'm either not remembering? The reason I didn't bring that up is one I generally I kind of chalk that thing up to me Being stupid. Like, when that happens to me, reading a book, my assumption isn't that the book is bad in some way or whatever. It's that I'm just being. I'm doing a bad job reading it. That's just my own thing. But I also kind of just pushed through it, and then it stopped bothering me. I don't know if that's help. That's not really helpful. But, like, I. [00:15:56] Speaker B: Did you just desensitized yourself? [00:15:58] Speaker A: Kind of. Cause I did. I did. There was a point for, like, halfway through the book where I'm like, oh, my God, I don't who is. And like, it happened once or twice with Rosemary too. So I was like, eh. And I will say so. I kind of just pushed through it. And by I got to the end, it all resolved in a way that I found satisfying. And I didn't feel like I had a bunch of, like, when I got to the end and the story concluded, I didn't feel like I was left wanting by the fact that I was a little confused at times about which characters were which or who was like, whatever. So it ended up working out. But on top of that, I think there's actually potentially. And I doubt it's intentional. Maybe. Maybe it is, I don't know. But I think there's a potentially interesting angle of that being a thematic choice, that these sort of nameless, irreplaceable white men who are part of this system are all interchangeable parts that you can't really tell apart but are all part of enforcing this fascist system. Like, I don't think there's nothing there thematically. Like, that's. Again, it still can. That could be intentional and could have been an intentional thematic choice and can also still make for kind of a frustrating reading experience. Like, those things can both be true and it. Like I said, I don't know if it was intentional, but I think you could. After I thought about it a little bit, I was like, you could maybe read it that way. And if that's what they're doing, it's at least kind of interesting. Even if it's still a little annoying while you're reading it, to be like, wait, who is this Do I know this person? Kind of thing. [00:17:25] Speaker B: That's generic. White man number five. [00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Charlene, who said, I picked the book. I picked the movie. Even though I haven't read the book. You guys said, that's allowed. [00:17:40] Speaker A: It is allowed. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Absolutely allowed. Although after your episode, I'm much more interested in reading It. So a sincere thank you for that. The movie is very well done. I've seen it a few times and find new things to appreciate each time. I do. I don't disagree that it weakens the message to make the fascism less explicit to the everyday people. But for me, the more realistic setting works. And by realistic, I mean closer to today's world. Not that it unfortunately isn't realistic that it could end up the other way. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the same struggle I had. I was like, I understand why you would make it more relatable and more. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah, more look more familiar. [00:18:18] Speaker A: More familiar to the. To the viewer in this instance. So, like, it's a little bit of trade off both ways to have the book's more overtly, like, obviously fascistic universe that the people know they're a part of and kind of just accept versus what the movie does. I think I could see the merits of both. I just ultimately kind of came down on the book side of thinking that. I think the book side just makes it ends up being a little more timeless because when you make it a little more specifically familiar to a viewer in 2005, it then becomes a little bit more. [00:18:54] Speaker B: A little more cemented in 2005. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Two other minor points. First, I'm curious what you thought of or if you noticed the blink and you miss it scene of Evie and Finch during his narration montage to his colleague about seeing how everything fits together. It feels to me just like a note of hope for the future, but has always seemed an odd choice to me to include it there. [00:19:21] Speaker A: I did not recognize. I noticed that. And I don't even know exactly what this is in reference to. [00:19:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I would have to watch that scene again in the movie. [00:19:30] Speaker A: I don't even remember that scene. I'm trying to think even what that scene specifically is. I assume they're talking about Finch and the guy from. He's talking to his second in command, which I think actually might be named Gordon in the movie. I think they might have made him Gordon. Or. No, not Gordon, One of the other people who. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Anyways, White man number five. [00:19:51] Speaker A: But yeah, the guy from Sherlock who's in this. But yeah, I can't. Rupert Graves is the actor's name. Just randomly popped into my head. Is that other guy. Yeah, he must be talking to him in something. But I don't remember this. And I don't remember there being a flash of Finch and Evie or what. Or what that flash of them would have been or what it would have meant. So I don't Know, I don't have enough context, too. Sorry. [00:20:17] Speaker B: And second, regarding V's line about what you have are bullets and the subsequent attack, there's a meme I saw years ago, before I had even watched the movie, that was a picture of V encaptioned bringing knives to a gunfight and winning. That's a classic meme. Gotta love that. [00:20:35] Speaker A: Depends on what you mean by winning, because he definitely gets mortally wounded. But, yeah, he does win the fight, I guess, in the sense that he kills them all. Yeah. And, yeah. Yeah, he's the last one alive. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Is that scene just there because they wanted a badass action beat? Yep. Is it still awesome to watch? Yep. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Fair enough. Fair enough. Like I said, I didn't hate it. I just. Yeah, it's fine. It is fine. It's fine. [00:21:05] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Fuck this Country, which I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume means America. [00:21:13] Speaker A: Yes, I believe the good old US Election. [00:21:18] Speaker B: And they said, I think this one is an easy vote for the book. And I say that as someone who absolutely loved the movie the first time I saw it, without the context of the book. The movie does a great job of evoking strong emotion, but if you push past that, the plot is a mess. The book is definitely a sea of interchangeable white dudes, but when you do figure out which one is which, there are deeper characters whose story is worth following independent of what V or Evie is doing. The movie has exactly the same problem of indistinguishable white men, but doesn't give the viewer any reason to bother distinguishing. Like, Creedy's characterization is so shallow, it is just monologued at him by V when he convinces him to turn over Sutler. Finch's investigation is really the only significant plot not involving V and Evie, and it centers around uncovering a conspiracy that undermines the point of the story and also just makes Finch look dumb. Rookwood looks like V tried to wear someone's face on top of his mask and sounds exactly like V. How could Finch fall for that? We could have fit in the much better Rosemary plot if they just cut out all of that nonsense. [00:22:30] Speaker A: I agree completely with that, because especially, it's particularly hard as a movie viewer. And I think I remember having this thought at the time. It kind of breaks immersion a little bit, because we know, and this maybe isn't the movie's fault, but we know what Hugo Weaving looks like, and we know Hugo Weaving is playing V. So when we see Rookwood, it's like, yeah, that's clearly Hugo Weaving with a fake beard and glasses over his face. And so it definitely. And I think the big thing is that it absolutely just sounds like V. Yeah. And that was actually a thing that was confusing in the movie this time, and I forgot to mention it. And this is actually reminded me of that. I thought when they got done with that meeting with Rookwood, that they knew that was V and that they, like, were just kind of playing along to, like, get the information from him. But then later we get the thing where they're like, rookwood's been dead for years. And they're like, what? And I'm like, wait, wait, you didn't realize that was V. Because, like, it sounds just like him. And you've heard him talk on TV and stuff, like, a bunch of times. He's not really disguising his voice. He's not doing as much of, like, a theatrical thing, but it still sounds basically just like Hugo Weaving anyways. So I did think that was a little silly. A point that I completely agree with. And so I agree with. I think cutting all that out and just subbing in the Rosemary plot would have helped the movie, because then you also get rid of the 911 truth or nonsense, which would have helped me appreciate the movie a lot more. But the other thing is, I completely agree with is that as interchangeable looking and kind of frustrating as it is to read some of the characters in the novel, there is a lot more going on with them than those same characters in the movie. In the movie, they're just there to act as plot development devices. [00:24:23] Speaker B: Like the dominoes. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah, to move nar, but in a way that's like, yeah, dominoes. But they're not domino. They're just literally there to move the plot along. In the book, you can tell they have these rich lives that are being affected by the world they live in, even though we only see very brief glimpses of them. They're not just these very, like, kind of cardboard cutout. Like, this is like Creedy in the movie. It's just like he's the other villain guy. We know nothing about him. We know nothing. In the book. He interfaces with gangsters a little bit, and there's this weird dynamic between him and the gangsters, and there's all these other layers going on. Just because there's a lot more interactions between all those characters, which I understand in the movie, that's the first thing you cut is all that extraneous subplot interactions between tertiary characters. Sure. But it definitely robs them of a lot of what makes their characters interesting in the book, which is kind of seeing the way that this world affects them and how they're shaped by this world and how they're subtly different, even though they all look like the same person. [00:25:35] Speaker B: Continuing with our comment, I'm shocked to see so many people say the movie is the more realistic or true to life of the two, because I think the brilliance of the book is how close it is to what is happening in our world. Trump didn't need to complete an elaborate conspiracy to rise to power. He just lives in a fundamentally broken system, and he exploited people's fears of that system. People aren't aware of how horribly transphobic, racist, and misogynistic his message and plan are. They either like that message or ignore it because they think Trump will keep them safe or make them richer. That is how it is happening in America, and it is how fascism has risen time and time again. The movie is too heightened and removed from real life. [00:26:21] Speaker A: So I agree with this almost entirely. I think the point that when people say that the movie is. It's not that I would say the movie's more realistic, it's that it's. Cause I think the book is very realistic in how it depicts, which is why it's so timeless, in how it depicts the rise of fascism is incredibly realistic. And. Yeah, and I think that's why it is more timeless. I think the thing that makes. I wouldn't say that the movie is more realistic. The movie is more familiar if that, like, the world of the movie feels more like our world did in 2005, whereas the world in the book feels more like a dystopian future. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:57] Speaker A: And those two things. I think that's what the movie was doing was like, not that it's like this is more realistic, it's that. Because I agree, like, it has this huge convoluted, like, super conspiracy sub, like that has to happen in order for the fascists to rise in power. Whereas in reality, it's just. No, just like the world fell into, like, a place of, like, horrible turmoil because of, like, a nuclear war. And then after that, in the power vacuum, the fascists kind of took over and everybody's kind of allowed it to happen. So, yeah, I agree, like I said with it, I think it's just maybe the. A subtle difference in what. At least what I was saying when I said that the book is more. Or that the movie is more, like, familiar or quote, unquote, realistic. The depiction of the fascism isn't necessarily More realistic. Just the world that the story exists in feels more. [00:27:52] Speaker B: It feels closer to our world. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I will say, and I don't want to, again, I don't want to go too far here, but I just want to briefly. The one line in here that I'll kind of disagree with, maybe, and I don't want to say kind of I'll somewhat disagree with, is the line, people aren't aware of how horribly transphobic racism and misogynistic Trump's message and plan are. I think a lot of people are, unfortunately, and I think that's. I think. I don't want to say it's most of the people who voted that way, but it's. I don't know what percentage it is, but I think there's. It's a significant portion of people have no idea and pay no idea, no attention to anything political whatsoever. They think that everybody's lying about everybody. They don't. So it's just like they just want something different because they know their lives suck and this is a different thing, or they think their lives suck and maybe they do in some cases, whatever, and this is a different thing that maybe will, like, make their lives better, but they truly. I think a lot of people don't actually know or are actually unaware of some of the, like, more horrifying and awful things that he says and does and blah, blah, blah. Again, it's not an excuse. It's just. I think it is the. I think that's. I think it's a little bit of both. That's a lot of bit of both. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. We're just quibbling there. But again, in general, I agree that the way that the fascism arises in the book is more realistic than what the movie does and is more timely because I think it more accurately represents what's happening right now in the world. [00:29:28] Speaker B: Continuing here, odds and ends. The girl in the glasses is bollocks girl in my head, and I was genuinely shocked that y'all referred to her as anything else. [00:29:39] Speaker A: I don't know why it would be. Did she say that in the movie? Oh, right. She does that one point where somebody says something and she's like, bollocks. Yeah. I just call her Glass. So for me, she was glasses girl, because that in the book, the first page you see her is just like a shot of her with those, and they're very distinctive, like Coke bottle, round glasses. And so that was like. When I read the book, that was what I categorized her as. Was like, glasses girl. And then in the movie, as soon as I saw her, I was like, that's glasses girl. [00:30:07] Speaker B: So I also identified her by her glasses as we were watching. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Those glasses are just very. Yeah, they're very distinctive. [00:30:17] Speaker B: And the last little bit here, my current mood is perfectly summed up by the Evie quote y'all mentioned. I wish I believed that was possible, but every time I've seen this world change, it's always for the worst. I will say that we're millennials. You don't need to tell us. [00:30:35] Speaker A: I understand that feeling. And I. Yeah, I won't right now. I won't push back against that right now. I'll just say, yes, I agree. I understand that emotion. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Okay. Our last comment on Patreon is from Steve from Arizona. And Steve said Alan Moore must hate people like me because I liked this version of his story and the film version of V for Vendetta. [00:31:04] Speaker A: I think Alan Moore hates most people, if I had to guess, like, based on reading two of his books, seems kind of misanthropic in general. So I don't think you're unique in the fact that he would hate you. [00:31:17] Speaker B: It's not that I dislike the book. It's definitely more fitting of its time and would have made a fine page to screen adaptation in the 80s. There's a dot, dot. There's an ellipses there. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Four dot ellipses. In deference to our Lord Neil Breen. [00:31:35] Speaker B: Of course, an American perspective certainly changed the source material to a point. But with politics, I think you have to adjust the source material for the times. Some points will always be applicable. Militarism, immigration, the hatred of the other. And you have to, unfortunately, make it about those ideals rather than political ideals and the nuances of those ideals. [00:31:57] Speaker A: I don't think you have to. I think you can. And I think it's a perfectly valid thing to do. And I don't necessarily begrudge the movie for trying to do that because I think it does it fairly effectively while still keeping a lot of, like, thematically, what's going on in the book, just not everything. And some people will get to that later. It definitely becomes more of a, like, the triumph of liberalism versus, like, a complete overthrow of the system and anarchy kind of thing that Moore is going for here. Although it's really like. It's more complicated than that. But that being said, yeah, I don't think you have to make it about that. I think you can make it about kind of broader political ideals without making it so focused on specifics, but I don't think it's wrong to try to do that. I think it's totally understandable to be like, I want to take this broader kind of political story and narrowly focus it, to apply it to this thing. I think that makes perfect sense. And that's the thing people do with stories all the time. I just don't think you have to do it. And I think in this instance the book is better for being a little bit broader. [00:33:03] Speaker B: Steve went on to say, I defend the movie because the pacing, sets and dialogue always kept me invested. I didn't care much for the imprisonment scenes, but they are necessary. I'm sure everyone will say this, but we are definitely looking at a close parallel to this world as we are about to be governed by roadkill connoisseurs, have a news host as the Secretary of Defense and the sex trafficker running the fucking Attorney General's office. We would be lucky to get to the world of idiocracy at this point. Anyway, thanks for doing this episode and thanks for doing a film I definitely enjoy. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good movie. Like I said, production wise, I think it's a very. It's a fun, enjoyable movie. And it's still, again, I don't dislike the movie. I think it's a very serviceable adaptation. [00:33:49] Speaker B: Over on Facebook we had three votes for the book and three for the movie. This time I did watch both and while I enjoyed reading the graphic novel way more than Watchmen, my vote goes to the movie. Before that. I would like to give some positives to the graphic novel and what worked better than the movie. First, when Evie sees V's Shadow Gallery and is surprised by his collection of books, paintings, movies and music had a better impact. But the real kicker is when V says you couldn't be expected to know they have eradicated culture, tossed it away like a fistful of dead roses. All the books, all the films, all the music. It's not too far off from what has been going on with older books being banned or rewritten for modern sensitivity. [00:34:38] Speaker A: I think it's a bit off from that. But point being, yeah, some of the banning of books, it's definitely similar commentary like we're talking about like rounding up and destroying entire cultural worth of It's a little bit different, but yeah, there are elements of it that definitely again, that's why it's so timelessly applicable. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Now in the movie, Evie is more surprised by Gordon's Secret Treasures than V's Shadow Gallery. Secondly, in the graphic novel where Evie's with the Bishop. She's more scared, terrified and concerned for her life by his presence and manages to distract him long enough for V to arrive and kill him. In the movie, she's more concerned about warning Bishop than her safety. Thirdly, after being tortured by V in the prison, she's very skinny and pale. Showing the visual horror of being imprisoned and tortured for a long time. Followed by the rooftop scene where she finally feels free with the rain dropping on her pale, skinny, naked body is both a beautiful and horrifying image. I don't blame Natalie Portman for not going full on bail from the Mechanist Machinist 2004 for those scenes. I don't know that reference. [00:35:48] Speaker A: It's Christian Bale. It's a movie from 2004. I think it's about. He's like a prison camp or something. Maybe it might be a concentration camp. I can't remember. I haven't actually seen it. But he very famously, he lost like an absurd amount of weight and became. [00:36:02] Speaker B: Like skin and body emaciated. But she didn't look that different when she was in or out. [00:36:10] Speaker A: That's true. She's already incredibly, like, unhealthily thin. Just. Yeah, I would think. I don't know, maybe she was healthily thin, but she looked unhealthily thin to me. [00:36:20] Speaker B: Just in general, you know, as Hollywood actresses tend to be, especially from that. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Time period that was like, we're 2005. We're like, right in the peak of, like, when it was really, like, as bad as it got. Pretty much, yeah. [00:36:35] Speaker B: Fourthly, the passage of time worked better in the graphic novel, where we have numbers, dates and years. In the panels in the movie, it felt like the events took place either weeks or months, so it was harder to tell how much time had passed. Finally, I liked Detective Finch more in the graphic novel as a kind of Holmes esque type of character, solving the mystery, finding clues and trying to understand the motivation behind V. Now, while it's also there in the movie, it's not as interesting or compelling as in the graphic novel. Now let's get to the movie. V's first encounter with Evie, saving her from the Fingerman and explaining who he is. [00:37:16] Speaker A: Oh, God, you don't have to read the whole thing. This is the whole quote. [00:37:19] Speaker B: This is the whole quote. [00:37:20] Speaker A: It's the whole. Voila. In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Vicariously, is about victim and Vienna Sub that in. Yeah, I love the buildup to blowing up the Old Bailey before it finally explodes his Speech broadcast through the TV network. I didn't mind the love subplot V has for Evie, and it gives him a more emotional side to his character that makes him more tragic than in the graphic novel. [00:37:43] Speaker A: I will say I think we would have skipped it already. Shelby did mention that I was wrong. She does kiss his mask in the book. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I forgot to put that comment. [00:37:52] Speaker A: I just wanted to mention that because I remember that based on this, I still don't think it felt remotely romantic. And I think Shelby would agree with that. That specific detail of kissing the mask does actually happen in the book. I was incorrect about that, but. Again. But nothing else. Nothing. And even in that moment, it doesn't feel romantic. It's more of, like a platonic kind of emotional, familial kiss kind of thing. At least that's how I read it. [00:38:17] Speaker B: Friendship kiss. [00:38:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:18] Speaker B: Whether it's him feeling regret for what he has done to Evie by breaking the glass and crying or dancing one last time before he goes to his doom, where Evie holds him and doesn't want V to die, and he speaks his final words. That's the most beautiful thing you could have ever given me. Gordon is also better in the movie. Unlike the graphic novel, where he's just a guy who's in love with Evie and has sex with her before he's killed. Yes, that's. That's true in the movie. Played by the great Stephen Fry, who brings to life his character with charm and comedy. Creedy betraying the Chancellor and killing him in order to get V, was perfect for his character. Unlike the novel, where I forgot he was even there. [00:39:01] Speaker A: I didn't forget he was there in the novel. He was doing different things. But that's. [00:39:04] Speaker B: You know, speaking of the Chancellor, Adam Sutler, played by John Hurt, who gave a great performance as an evil fascist dictator that gives you chills to your bones when you speak so much. [00:39:15] Speaker A: I did think John Hurt was great. [00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah, he did a good job. [00:39:18] Speaker A: He's not. His name is not Adam Sutler in the book. It's actually something Susan. Cause I remember that I got really confused because people kept referring to Susan, and I was like, who is Susan? And then I realized that's the leader's. [00:39:31] Speaker B: That's the most confusing possible way you could name a character. [00:39:34] Speaker A: Yes, and it's his last name. His name's like, something Susan. But they always call him Leader, normally, like in the book. Like, almost always, they refer to him as Leader. And then all of a sudden, they kind of randomly start referring to him as Susan. And I'm like, I don't remember there being a Susan. And then I eventually realized, oh, that is like at some point they say his whole name or what? I was like, oh, that's the leader in his life. Okay. That was another thing that confused me in the book. I recall now. [00:40:00] Speaker B: It's kind of hilarious. Yeah, I thought aging up Yvie was a wise move. And also working in the TV station, unlike her character where it's her first night as a sex worker after working in a factory. Brian mentioned in the episode that he would have liked to see Evie dressing up as V and giving the speech. While the feeling is mutual, where I disagree with him is Evie restarting the cycle over again by recruiting a person just like V did with her. I don't know why, but that feels to me more generic than the movie's ending. [00:40:31] Speaker A: So the reason I want that I like that ending is because the idea is that this project is never over. We didn't win at the end. Even though the uprising starts at the end of the graphic novel and they rush into. And you can assume because the leader has been killed, the fascist, hopefully the fascists will be overthrown. But that doesn't mean it's over. Like, it doesn't mean that fascism is done and will never rise again. Like there needs to be somebody there again. And so that's what I think the book is getting at by having her start this cycle over again is that there always has to be. We always have to be vigilant. Hence the V against the rise of fascism. And so we can't ever let V die. [00:41:21] Speaker B: Fair enough. [00:41:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I think is what the book's going for, which I think makes a lot of sense and I agree with. [00:41:27] Speaker B: Although I love the ending. Brian isn't wrong that there should have been Fingermen shooting at the protesters since peaceful protests are not peaceful at all in the real world. Somebody always gets killed. [00:41:38] Speaker A: Some of them are. But yes, very often what we remember as peaceful protests were is often not super not as peaceful as we thought because it's usually does not take only peaceful protests to get things done. [00:41:49] Speaker B: Overall, this one was a hard decision to make since I enjoyed both the graphic novel and the movie. But I had to give it to the movie because of all the points I just made. [00:41:58] Speaker A: There we go. Fair enough. [00:42:01] Speaker B: Next comment was from Andy, who said, I chose the book. It looks at fascism more head on, asks harder questions of us, and more explicitly posits anarchism as a solution. [00:42:13] Speaker A: I mean, it very explicitly does. And I will Say I am. My politics are not. Anyways, we won't get into it. I don't know where I land on the whole that range of things. I don't know if I would describe myself as an anarchist necessarily, but I have a lot of sympathies for some of those more further left kind of political ideologies like anarchism, like some forms of actual true libertarianism and that kind of thing. Not American libertarianism, but. So, like, you know, I agree, but that definitely does. It's just the book being like anarchism is the answer is for me. I'm not like, yeah. I'm like, maybe. I don't fucking know. This clearly isn't working great. So. [00:43:04] Speaker B: I think the comic book form allows us to both immerse in the story and also consider the issues and images better once we're done for the adaptation. For me, a lot was lost in the portrayal of Evie and by having her played by Portman in the book. Evie is more explicitly working class, turning to sex work at a young age to supplement a job in munitions. She's drawn to look like anyone who could be your neighbor. And there's a specific focus on her body and women's sexuality. Together with the extended look at their domestic lives, Evie, Rose and Valerie paint an unambiguous and bleak picture of life for women under fascism. The film version is missing many of these layers. [00:43:47] Speaker A: I agree entirely. The movie is missing a lot of those layers. But I think it's more so because of Rose not being there than it is Evie. I thought Portman does a good job. And I don't think. I don't think she looks particularly like, bourgeois or whatever, like too bourgeois to be like this kind of every woman from the working class necessarily. And then. Cause she is. Her character is in the movie. She was like a male attendant or something at the TV station making probably minimum. Whatever, if minimum wage exists or whatever. Making scraps, clearly. But the movie does soften it a little bit by having her just have kind of a normal job and not be forced into the economic situation. Doesn't seem. It kind of goes back to what I'm talking about. Having the economic situation feel a little bit more familiar to probably your average reader or viewer, I guess, for the movie than the book's version where economic situation is a lot more dire, where like, lots of people seemingly are turning to like, prostitution and crime. It's not just like, you know, a few. It's like a lot. A large part of the populace exists kind of in the Margins in that way. [00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I enjoyed the film and like, the same scene as Brian, the Letter from Valerie. It's a moving and frankly upsetting sequence that lays bare the dehumanization at the heart of fascism. It stayed with me long after and asks us to hold human connection sacred. But that does bring us back to the book and Moore's complaints, wanting us to look at the complex whole and our own complicity. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Yep, I would agree. [00:45:23] Speaker B: On Twitter, we had two votes for the book and zero for the movie. Anthony Depos said the film was well made but missed the point of the book. The book, to me, is about the failures of liberalism and the need for anarchy to make a better world. The movie is the eventual triumph of liberalism despite failing in the first place. [00:45:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree. And it's definitely where I could understand somebody who is a committed leftist, a committed anarchist, whatever, like, Alan Moore is. And a lot of people, I would imagine, who would be fans of the V for Netta as a book. If you are like, I am like, anarchy is my philosophy, my political philosophy. The movie absolutely milquetoast liberalizes it in, like, a. And that's. And it's a thing I agree with, like I said, even though politically, I'm a little more like, I don't know, mainly because I haven't done the reading, but because I'm too lazy. But the, like, the ending, like, it really did stick with me. Like, the ending of, like, they all show up and, like, all the army just stands. It's very much like. And then they all clapped and democracy was saved by the. You know, by them all wearing a costume and standing and, like, walking across a bridge. Like, it's just. It's a very West Wing, like, American liberal understanding of how freedom is won and fascism is defeated. It's too easy. It's way too idealistic in a way that even I, as somebody who's, you know, at least nominally, like, a liberal to some extent, point being, even I am like, that's fucking stupid and bad. Like, that's, like, completely, like, undercuts the point of the story and is also, I think, just naive. I think it's a naive understanding of how fascism is defeated. [00:47:22] Speaker B: We didn't have any comments on either Instagram or threads, but on Instagram, we had two votes for the movie, none for the book. And on threads, we had one vote for the book and none for the movie. Which brings us to the end of our listener comments. Yes, and it was a close call this week, but the book squeaked a win by one vote with 11 votes to the movie's 10. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Wow, look at that. Alan Moore stays winning. All right, thank you all very much for your votes and specifically for your feedback. Always love when we get a lot of in depth feedback. It's so much fun to discuss. Really appreciate it. We do not have a learning things segment this week because we did have a lot of feedback that we're already at 45 minutes on this episode. So we're going to jump right in and preview Gerald's Game, the book. This is gonna be good for us, Jess. Really good. That's a marriage, isn't it? Working on the difficult things. For better or worse. Let's go in. Get comfy. I bet you think your husband will be back any minute. It try to go for help. There's no one for miles, honey. Gerald. I'm sorry, baby. You don't get to know my name. I don't like this. I'm serious. Stop. Like that. Stop it. Are you playing? Is this really what it takes these days? Not. We was so wrong. We were happy once. Where were we? Gerald. What? Gerald. It is pronounced Gerald, right? And not Gerald. [00:49:09] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure it's Gerald. [00:49:11] Speaker A: I know. I only say that it's like a witcher joke because I always thought that it was Geralt. And then when you hear it, they're like, it's Geralt. And I'm like, oh, okay, never mind. [00:49:27] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure it's Geralt's Game. I guess I could be surprised when we watch the movie. Gerald's Game is a 1992 suspense novel by American writer Stephen King. [00:49:41] Speaker A: But then again, I also say gif. So you can't trust me about that. [00:49:44] Speaker B: I know you can't trust you for anything. [00:49:47] Speaker A: Sorry. [00:49:47] Speaker B: A Stephen King TFIL alum. We've done several. Several. [00:49:53] Speaker A: Maybe the number one, it's gotta be getting close to, like the most done author, right? I mean, unless you count like Harry Potter. But yeah, it's like one series. [00:50:03] Speaker B: So like, might be close to. [00:50:06] Speaker A: Close to King. I can't think of somebody else because what we've covered. [00:50:10] Speaker B: We did Stand by Me. We did the Cadillac. [00:50:15] Speaker A: Dolan's Cadillac. Let's get that. Yeah. Super obscure one. [00:50:19] Speaker B: We did. We did Pet Sematary, we did Carrie, we did the Shining. And doctor Sleep. [00:50:28] Speaker A: Yep. [00:50:28] Speaker B: That's six. [00:50:29] Speaker A: That's six. And this is seven. Or was that one of them? Yeah, and there's no way we've done. I mean, the only thing that would be close. Would Be Harry Potter. [00:50:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:36] Speaker A: With seven. I can't even. All the rest of our summer series are three books. [00:50:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Three or four books. [00:50:40] Speaker A: And even then I wouldn't really. Like, those are a series. I'm not even like, these are all different. [00:50:44] Speaker B: It's not the same thing. It's not really quite the same. [00:50:47] Speaker A: And so I don't even know if there's another author. We've done. We've done a couple like twice or three times. Like, I know we did somebody. [00:50:54] Speaker B: Not that we've done a couple. We've done a couple Roald Dahl books. [00:51:00] Speaker A: There was somebody else that we did an episode recently. I remember we had done the author, like not that long ago. I can't remember what it was. But anyways, point being, definitely, I think he's our number one. Like, which makes sense because he's maybe the most adapted author ever. Maybe. Like, he's gotta be up there. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Prolific output. This book particularly is dedicated to his wife Tabitha, and her five sisters. It was originally intended to be a companion piece to another of his novels, Dolores Cabourne, which I've never heard of. [00:51:37] Speaker A: There's no L in it. [00:51:39] Speaker B: I copy pasted that directly from Wikipedia. It says Claiborne on my Clayborn. Claiborne. I got confused by the lack of R. Clairborne. There's the lack of the other R. What other R? I'm sorry, I want it to be Clairborne. [00:51:56] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Dolores Claiborne. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Which again, I've never heard of. So that must not be one of his well known ones with the connecting theme of two women in crisis caught in the path of an eclipse. Although this aspect was greatly reduced by the time the books were published. So I don't really know much about this one and I've never heard of the other one. So I can't tell you how much of a connection there really is. I couldn't find a lot about how this novel was. I honestly couldn't find a lot about this novel in general. I couldn't find a lot about how it was received overall at publication. But I did find one contemporary review that I want to read. A quote from writing for the New York Times, Wendy Doniger said, quote, did Stephen King take on these heavy themes to prove that he is a real writer, capitalized real writer, not just a horror writer. We're already off to a good start, Wendy. Was he trying to shift from writing good, bad novels to writing good, good novels and ended up with a bad good novel? [00:53:14] Speaker A: Wow. [00:53:15] Speaker B: The two genres cancel each other out. The horror makes Us distrust the serious theme. And the serious theme stops us from suspending our disbelief to savor the horror. Mr. King seems to be handcuffed to his old technique, the tried and true formula. But perhaps it is now time for him to break loose from his own past. To do this, he would have to confront what may well be his own personal horror. To try, perchance to fail, to write a good novel without any horror scenes. [00:53:49] Speaker A: All right, fucking what? Why does he have to write a good novel without horror scenes? [00:53:57] Speaker B: I don't know. I know it sounds to me like Wendy either is not a horror fan or just doesn't see the merit in genre fiction overall. [00:54:08] Speaker A: An interesting. [00:54:09] Speaker B: And I have not started this book yet. It does sound like it's an interesting, like, mix of things. [00:54:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not saying that it couldn't be correct. Like, her assessment could be correct that, like, maybe the. [00:54:22] Speaker B: That maybe that maybe the mixture doesn't. [00:54:24] Speaker A: Work tonally or whatever, like, thematically just doesn't work. But, like that last line. [00:54:29] Speaker B: But it does kind of feel like she's just shitting on genre fiction. So we'll have to assess that further. Yeah, that's all the notes I have. [00:54:38] Speaker A: All right, fair enough. I do not have a ton of notes myself either, but let's go ahead and learn a little bit about Gerald's Game, the film. Somebody help. Rico, just wake up. It's time to wake up, honey. Five hours you've wasted screaming for neighbors that are half a mile away. If they're even here yet. How long do you think someone lives without water? That will not work. You can pull to your wrists. Break. You're not getting out of those cups. You're not real. You're not real. Gerald's Game is a 2017 film directed by Mike Flanagan, known for Doctor Sleep, the haunting of Hill House, the Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, the Haunting of Bly Manor, Hush, Oculus, among others. Pretty much maybe our most famous modern horror auteur. He's up there with, like, Blumhouse, maybe Shyamalan, although Shyamalan has kind of fell off. But Flanagan's definitely, like, one of the tops in the modern horror game. It was written by both Flanagan and Jeff Howard. Jeff Howard is a recurring writing partner of Flanagan's. He worked on Midnight Mass, the Origin of Evil, which is another Mike Flanagan film that I didn't list earlier. The Haunting of Hill House. And Howard also worked on the Resident Evil TV series that came out a couple years ago that supposedly very bad. The film stars Carla Cugino Chiara, Aurelia, Bruce Greenwood, Carol Strachan, Henry Thomas. Katie Siegel or Kate Siegel, I believe. I don't know why it says Katie. I'm pretty sure it's Kate Siegel. Adeline, that's Mike Flanagan's wife, Adeline Jones and Bryce Harper. And I don't think it's that Bryce Harper the baseball player. I'm pretty sure it's not the baseball player, but that was the last credited person. [00:56:47] Speaker B: We're going to laugh if Bryce Harper, the baseball player. [00:56:50] Speaker A: Bryce Harper shows up. Yeah, Kate Siegel is the one who's. She's married to Mike Flanagan and she's in like, I'll talk about here in a second, but she's in like all of the stuff he does. The film has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 77% on Metacritic, and a 6.5 out of 10 on IMDb. So critics enjoyed it, but general audiences less so. This was released on Netflix, so there is no box office numbers. In 2014, it was announced that Mike Flanagan would direct an adaptation of Gerald's Game. And principal photography started in October of 2016 in Mobile, Alabama. And that is the extent of my production notes. So getting to a couple IMDb trivia facts before we get to reviews. This is fun. At some point, Jesse, the main character, throws a book at a dog in the movie and the book that she throws. And it's also the book that you see on the mantle above the bed. I've watched the trailer, so I know that they're in a bed for a lot of the movie. She throws a dog or a book at a dog at one point. And the book is Midnight Mass. It's titled Midnight Mass and it's written by Kate Siegel's character from the film Hush. If you haven't seen Hush, Kate Siegel plays a deaf author who writes, I think, horror books or something like that. And so this is kind of like a shared universe, like little Easter egg thing. Her character from that movie wrote a book that appears in this movie. And that book would go on to be the title of the series Mike Flanagan made for Netflix called Midnight Mass. I don't know if we're. I guess we don't ever see what the plot of the book is. So like, it could just be like in his mind, like the show is based on that book essentially. But I thought it was interesting which Kate Siegel is also a main character in Midnight Mass, I think, or one of the main character. There's a line in the movie, apparently where Gerald says all things Serve the Beam. That is a reference to the Dark Tower series, according to Indb Trivia. I don't know. There's quite a few apparently, references to other Stephen King works in this kind of through lines and stuff like that, because Flanagan is a big Stephen King fan and he likes his Easter eggs. So getting into some reviews. Actually, there were none of the reviews on Wikipedia, where I normally pull them from. So I went to Rotten Tomatoes and was, like, going through them. And the first one that popped up was from Chris tuckman, who's a YouTube reviewer who I watch. So I thought I would include it because I like his reviews. Carlo Cogino delivers one of the best performances of the year in a faithful adaptation from Mike Flanagan. It was just one blurb from it, but Nick Shager, writing for the Daily Beasts, said, quote, gerald's Game ultimately argues that monsters are real and that they can only be defeated or at least minimized through direct confrontation. End quote. For the Hollywood Reporter, Andy Crump said, quote, unsurprisingly, the film is Flanagan's most accomplished to date, the result of the years he spent giving a damn about his characters and their anguish. He's so good at it, he even makes it look easy. End quote. And then a couple like less glowing reviews. Alan Shirtstal, writing for Village Voice, gave it a rotten score, saying, quote, in bursts between the memories and the ghostly, who's afraid of Stephen King platelets? Flanagan shows that he probably could have made a leaner, meaner, more suspenseful film. End quote. And then for Slant magazine, another rotten review that I found from Chuck Bowen says Flanagan is an unironic humanist, which is rare in the horror genre. And this admirable quality trips the filmmaker up in the second half of Gerald's Game, which pivots on Jesse learning to stand up to diseased masculinity. Flanagan earnestly wants the audience to feel the protagonist's empowerment, which culminates in an embarrassing climax that finds Jesse confronting maleness as literally the embodiment of a embodied by a monster. Ultimately, Gerald's game is the rare Stephen King adaptation to be undone by the story itself. End quote. So he did not think that it worked at the end. So. So we'll be the judge of that. Chuck Bowen. Bowen, as always, you can do us a giant favor by hanging over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodread. Not Twitter. We're not. Fuck Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We don't have a blue sky yet, do we? For the thing. Not that we're gonna do. [01:01:16] Speaker B: We don't have to we don't know. [01:01:17] Speaker A: If we're gonna do it, but I don't know. We have personal Blue sky accounts. You can go find us. [01:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you can find me on Blue sky if you want to. At the moment, I'm kind of enjoying having a social media platform that I don't have to do other things on. [01:01:29] Speaker A: Yes. And that's fine. [01:01:30] Speaker B: I don't think we do like work on. [01:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, but we'll still keep posting on Twitter for now on the podcast account. Whether or not just for the people that still. Because we do get a couple. [01:01:40] Speaker B: No, I did, I did say on Twitter that we were going to be closing that. [01:01:44] Speaker A: Okay, then never mind. Fuck it. It's dying. So go to somewhere else and if we have to, we will figure out the blue sky thing. We'll see. I don't know right now. It's no plans for. But who cares? We'll figure it out later. None of it's real. It doesn't matter. But yeah, go follow us on social media so we can get your interaction. You could drop us a five star rating or write us a nice little review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, whatever you listen to, that'd be great. And Support [email protected] ThisFilmIsLit and if you're a $15 patron, you can request a priority recommendation, which is what this was. This was a request from. [01:02:15] Speaker B: This was from Shelby. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Shelby says somehow Palpatine returned or whatever that terrible line from that movie was. Yeah. Katie, where can people watch Gerald's Game? [01:02:26] Speaker B: Netflix. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Yep, it's a Netflix film. [01:02:28] Speaker B: It's a Netflix. [01:02:29] Speaker A: At least in the U.S. that's where. [01:02:30] Speaker B: You can watch it. [01:02:30] Speaker A: I don't know if it changes other. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Places and I don't think those kind of things get home releases, so I don't think you could rent it anywhere. [01:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, they might. Yeah. I don't know if they ever print those. Like if there's a Blu Ray of. Probably not. Probably not, but who knows? Yeah. All right. Yeah, I'm interested to check this one out because I know roughly the premise. [01:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:51] Speaker A: From watching the trailer. Looks interesting. [01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm interested. My sister has also been wanting us to cover this for a while, so she has not paid the fee to get priority recommendations. [01:03:07] Speaker A: I'll let her know at Christmas. I'll tell her that she owes us for doing this one, but. Yeah, no, it should be. It should be an interesting episode. Very much looking forward to it. And I. I always enjoy a Mike Flanagan joint, so that's going to do it for this prequel episode, and we'll see you back here in one week's time where we're talking about Gerald's game. Until that time, guys, gals, I'm binary pals. And everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.