‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Does Not Find a Way. Plus: Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is Coming!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture Episode – ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Does Not Find a Way. Plus: Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is Coming!

Release Date: July 2, 2025

Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Featuring: Chris Ryan and Ava Victor

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Introduction

In this episode of The Big Picture, hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins delve deep into the latest installment of the Jurassic franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth, while also building anticipation for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey. The episode features insights from Ringer colleagues Chris Ryan and special guest Ava Victor, a Sundance prize-winning first-time writer and director.

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Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Teaser Trailer

Sean Fennessey begins by sharing his and Chris Ryan’s experience attending an unexpected early morning screening of Jurassic World Rebirth. This spontaneous opportunity allowed them to watch the highly anticipated teaser trailer for The Odyssey before its official release.

• Sean Fennessey [01:20]: “We have just returned from an 8am screening of Jurassic World Rebirth. ... But it worked out well because this gave us an opportunity to see on the big screen the trailer for Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey.”

Amanda Dobbins expresses her excitement for experiencing the trailer in Dolby quality:

• Amanda Dobbins [02:02]: “I was saving it for my Dolby experience. ... I can go see it on the biggest screen possible. As Christopher Nolan intended.”

The hosts and Chris Ryan discuss the visual elements and narrative hints present in the teaser, noting Nolan’s signature use of IMAX cameras and 65mm film to create an immersive experience.

• Chris Ryan [04:07]: “I think that was Christian Bale doing the VO in the beginning. Or is that... It’s John Leguizamo.”

They analyze the film’s thematic direction, comparing it to classic epic tragedies and praising the production design.

• Amanda Dobbins [07:03]: “He is honoring them. And that is just still one of the funniest things that happened on a podcast.”

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Jurassic World Rebirth Review

After discussing The Odyssey, the conversation shifts to their experience watching Jurassic World Rebirth. The movie marks the seventh entry in the Jurassic series and the fourth without Steven Spielberg’s direct involvement, though he remains a producer.

Sean Fennessey provides an overview of the film’s background and key contributors:

• Sean Fennessey [10:01]: “This movie is the seventh film in the Jurassic series. ... directed by Gareth Edwards, a filmmaker who I think at least Chris and I have a lot of admiration for.”

The hosts critique various aspects of the movie, highlighting both its strengths and shortcomings. They praise the cinematography and CGI but criticize the screenplay for its plot inconsistencies and character development.

• Amanda Dobbins [11:01]: “I think you guys both need to learn how to have fun again. ... I don't care. And I think that you should open your heart and learn to have fun.”

Chris Ryan echoes these sentiments, appreciating the visual spectacle but questioning the narrative choices:

• Chris Ryan [12:35]: “Two movies in this movie. Yeah, I kind of enjoyed both of those two movies until the two movies became united.”

The discussion includes specific scenes that worked well, such as the T. Rex sequence, and those that fell flat, like the introduction of certain characters and redundant plotlines.

• Sean Fennessy [34:18]: “But Gareth Edwards has the juice when it comes to this kind of action staging. And the CGI looks really good in this movie for the most part.”

They debate the film’s potential box office performance, considering its reception and the franchise’s history.

• Sean Fennessy [46:51]: “It's at 53%. ... I don't think the word of mouth is going to be super strong.”

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Conversation with Ava Victor – Sorry Baby

The latter part of the episode features an in-depth conversation with Ava Victor, the director and writer of her debut film, Sorry Baby. Ava shares her journey from acting and playwriting to filmmaking, detailing the challenges and triumphs of creating her first feature.

Ava Victor discusses her inspiration and the personal nature of her work:

• Ava Victor [59:35]: “I was looking for companionship in film, and it sort of let me feel a lot, but in the company of the film.”

Sean Fennessey inquires about her creative process and the balance between personal storytelling and broader appeal.

• Sean Fennessey [63:03]: “You just brought it up though. What was it about?”

Ava elaborates on her unconventional narrative structure and her resistance to traditional storytelling methods:

• Ava Victor [66:11]: “It's like, we are in present day, then we go back four years and then work our way back to the present, skipping over the one we missed.”

She also touches on the experience of pitching her film and navigating the pressures of the film industry without compromising her artistic vision.

• Ava Victor [71:58]: “I was writing this kind of three act structure Thing that was supposed to be this big thing. ... and I just felt like there's something.”

The conversation highlights Ava’s passion for filmmaking and her commitment to creating authentic, personal narratives despite industry challenges.

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Concluding Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Sean, Amanda, and Chris reflect on the themes discussed and express their support for Ava Victor’s burgeoning career. They also share personal anecdotes and lighter moments, maintaining the engaging and conversational tone that listeners appreciate.

• Sean Fennessey [89:29]: “Chris Ryan: No, I agree with the people. ... Ava Victor: They're so good.”

The hosts encourage listeners to watch Jurassic World Rebirth and Ava Victor’s Sorry Baby, promising more insightful discussions in future episodes.

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Notable Quotes

• Sean Fennessey [01:20]: “We have just returned from an 8am screening of Jurassic World Rebirth. ... But it worked out well because this gave us an opportunity to see on the big screen the trailer for Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey.”

• Amanda Dobbins [02:02]: “I was saving it for my Dolby experience. ... I can go see it on the biggest screen possible. As Christopher Nolan intended.”

• Chris Ryan [12:35]: “Two movies in this movie. Yeah, I kind of enjoyed both of those two movies until the two movies became united.”

• Ava Victor [66:11]: “It's like, we are in present day, then we go back four years and then work our way back to the present, skipping over the one we missed.”

• Ava Victor [80:59]: “I want a big teddy bear for the movie. That's true. That's true.”

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This episode of The Big Picture offers a comprehensive look at the current state of the Jurassic franchise, the excitement surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and an inspiring conversation with an emerging filmmaker. Whether you're a die-hard dinosaur enthusiast or a cinephile looking for fresh voices, this episode delivers engaging content and thoughtful analysis.

Transcript

[Sean Fennessy]

This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Starbucks.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The unofficial drink of summer is here, and it's just as good as I remembered.

[Sean Fennessy]

Starbucks Summer Berry Refresher is everything you'd want from a summer beverage.

[Amanda Dobbins]

A blend of berry notes shaken with ice and poured over a layer of new raspberry flavored pearls. And personally, my favorite refresher is the Summer Berry Lemonade. It just tastes like summer in a cup and adds a whole other level of fresh flavors.

[Sean Fennessy]

We are on the brink of a major heat wave here in Los Angeles and nothing would be more refreshing and than a Starbucks Summer Berry Lemonade Refresher. Available for a limited time only. Your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks. I'm Sean Fennessy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm Amanda Donna.

[Sean Fennessy]

And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about dinosaurs. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Not a dinosaur, Ava Victor, first time writer, director, whose Sundance prize winning film Sorry Baby is one of the most exciting debuts of the year. Ava is straight up one of my favorite guests in the history of this podcast. Smart, funny, special thinker. Hope you'll stick around for our conversation. Their movie is nothing like the movie we're going to talk about today, which is Jurassic World Rebirth. But before we get to that movie, CR is here.

[Chris Ryan]

Amy, what kind of prison can hold.

[Sean Fennessy]

A man like me? We have just returned from an 8am screening of Jurassic World Rebirth. And we went to that screening for two reasons. The first reason is not invited to a screening by the studio. I don't know why. What the hell, Universal, I guess they don't want us to see Jurassic World. But it worked out well because this gave us an opportunity to see on the big screen the trailer for Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey. The teaser trailer. So, Amanda, I'll start with you. What did you think of that teaser trailer?

[Amanda Dobbins]

It did leak yesterday.

[Sean Fennessy]

It did.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I did not watch it. I was saving it for my Dolby experience.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you read Deadline's description of the trailer? Of course not. No. I'm with.

[Sean Fennessy]

You went in clean.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I went in clean, yeah. I was also like, I am getting up. I got up at my normal time, actually. But I am abdicating all childcare responsibility this morning so I can go see it on the biggest screen possible. As Christopher Nolan intended.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I saw it, I would say. So the screening started at 8. I wanted to say that it aired at like 8.34ish.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, they did something very interesting and.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We were very nervous, um, because I, like, I got There, right at the dot, eight o' clock. Because I am known historically to arrive late to miss trailers and then also miss parts of the movie. But I got there on time. We watched a shitload of trailers.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lots of trailers.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Lots of trailers. And you know. And you at one point were like, yep, I think this is the one. And then I think it was the trailer for Edgar Wright's Running Men.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Shout Out Glen Powell looked good to me. And they kept going. And then there was like the Dolby, you know, part two of the Dolby. Hey, you're in Dolby. And then there was the Nicole Kidman.

[Sean Fennessy]

Speech and we were getting nervous.

[Chris Ryan]

Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

[Ava Victor]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Did we show up here also? When did they. During the. Heartbreak feels good in a place like this. When did they edit in A Star Is Born?

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's been there. This is the new one. This is the second one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know that. And why are you looking at me like that?

[Chris Ryan]

I'm just waiting to get to the Odyssey.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, so was I also, you know, sort of on theme. I don't know if, you know, that's what the Odyssey is about. And so I haven't actually read it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, they dropped the lights.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They dropped the lights.

[Sean Fennessy]

They dropped the lights.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Really nervous.

[Sean Fennessy]

And then the green screen hit and.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We were extremely relieved.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. So looks good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It looks really good. That shot of them, that was a.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lot of buildup for it. Looks good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Excuse me. The horses. And. The horses on the beach. And the Trojan horse. You know, it's very large film that he uses and I see why.

[Sean Fennessy]

IMAX cameras, 65 millimeter.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Huge moment for Bernthal.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that was Christian Bale doing the VO in the beginning. Or is that.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's John Leguizamo.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Is it?

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, there are two voices that we hear. The first is, I'm almost certain John Leguizamo giving this sort of brief narration about.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do you have the transcript here? So Chris, read it.

[Chris Ryan]

Darkness. Zeus's law. Smashed to pieces. A kingdom without a king since my master died.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, now there's a second voice that we hear that may be Robert Pattinson.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Unclear. Before we cut to Tom Holland's teary eyed face. He's playing Telemachus in this film. Odysseus Son. And who is he talking to? Jb, but one John Bernard.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Wayne.

[Sean Fennessy]

And. And he honestly is waning. He is. He is in a. An. An epic tragedy of Wayne.

[Chris Ryan]

You know what I got from this moment? A little bit. Little Last Temptation of Christ.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Like Even Tom Holland's doing American accent. Bernthal is just doing Bernthal in a beautiful, moving way. But I'm surprised to see, you know, you take it out of its classical Western roots of like, okay, so they're going to do English accents or something like that. But I guess they've all agreed nondescript American accents.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Just to align with Damon, I guess. So Damon doesn't have to do the accent.

[Sean Fennessy]

I assume that that was why they made that decision. Cause we have heard him do accents before. Not his strength. Unless it's Boston, historically Boston. He's wonderful at. Not as much an accent, more like an inner self coming out.

[Chris Ryan]

He was good. His accent in Stillwater was good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure. Yeah. You are the world's number one Stillwater defender because he goes to the Marseille Stadium.

[Chris Ryan]

It's sick.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And they do go swimming. It looks beautiful.

[Sean Fennessy]

And you love Camille Coten, right? That's one of your g. We don't see Matt Damon speak in this movie. We see him from behind as he prepares to sort of march to battle the production design. The staging is classical, you know, and.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We see him floating.

[Sean Fennessy]

We do see him floating on a raft of wood in the deep sea, awaiting his fate. I thought we were going to get maybe like a minute of. Is it Charybdis? You know, the sea creature?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, the six headed monster.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we don't get any of that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't know which one is Scilla and which one is. You know what I was thinking about the other day when you were just yelling about how he is honoring UNESCO world sites. He is honoring them. And that is just still one of the funniest things that happened on a podcast. That should be like the final tagline of this teaser.

[Chris Ryan]

I just want to tell the listeners it's interesting that Sean's commenting on this at all because he got up and turned his back on the screen in solidarity with James Cameron, who's called Christopher Nolan a moral coward for not showing the bombing of Hiroshima in Oppenheimer. And I thought that was really cool of you, man. It's not often that people really stand on business in this industry.

[Sean Fennessy]

Big Jim versus Chris is a showdown for the ages. I must say, it's great. Two titans going toe to toe.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They've been angling for it in their own. You know, they. They each want to carry the man's. He was like, that's a pretty good.

[Chris Ryan]

Movie, but he's a pussy.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, Big Jim feels Chris on his heels. That's what's going on you know, he's obviously going for his spot right now. And Big Jim's got a movie coming out in six months, so he's got to start making waves again. Didn't agree with his take. I thought it was very wrong headed, to be honest with you. But it's his right to have it also.

[Chris Ryan]

James Cameron being like, now I must correct the cinematic record by showing this for three hours.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm not sure if that's what I want from Big Jim.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right. And that's what you said after you saw 12 Years a Slave. Right. You said, I need to correct the cinematic record respond to this film. Which I thought was brave. I'm excited about this movie. Obviously it comes out one year from today or one year from this.

[Chris Ryan]

It just feels like such an event. Just totally. You know, Universal had a bunch of screeners trailers before the Jurassic World and you know, they had Wicked, they had a bunch of stuff, but it's just like, yeah, hang on, we'll be there for you in a year.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. No one creates this sense of anticipation quite like Nolan too. And so at this point in time, you know, he's been doing this, this particular strategy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's amazing that he is also creating this level of anticipation for an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, which they are like, it's not your helicopter movie, but the Odyssey.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, There was not helicopters.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's true, that's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

He has not denied the existence of helicopters in this world.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It did look like they were going for an ancient Greek feel, you know, like Bernthal and Tom Holland were wearing like toga esque qualities, draping, you know, as opposed to the more tailored clothes that you and I wear today.

[Sean Fennessy]

You think they should have been dressed like they were in Inception or like.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, no, I'm just saying, like I'm reading the text. That's what we do here on the big picture. It does seem, you know, like they're going for pre electricity.

[Sean Fennessy]

I believe that would be the case.

[Chris Ryan]

I'll be dropping an hour and a half long breakdown of the teaser where I freeze frames and say, this could be a shadow of a chopper blade. This also could be a shadow of a blade.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think we'll see in the moments immediately after Odysseus is floating on the water, Roy Scheider's revived corpse flying in on a helicopter to save him and take him away. Well, we're all very excited about that. Shall we talk now about. There have been a couple of other trailers. I'll just say watch the sentimental value trailer And I was like, I'm ready to be moved to the show.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I didn't watch it. I just responded to the email. When can I see this? I don't need a trailer. I just want to go.

[Sean Fennessy]

November 7th is the same day that Sentimental Value is coming out. As is the Running Man. You mentioned that briefly. Same thing we saw in April at CinemaCon. The action looks incredible. I hope that movie is a lot of fun. We shall see. Let's talk about Jurassic World Rebirth. So we've just walked out of the movie. No prep, no discussion, no planning. You are a sequencing engineer at this screening. There were some real heads at this screening, I would say it was half full at 8am we met some lovely people.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes, we did. Shout out Alyssa.

[Sean Fennessy]

Alyssa, a night shift nurse who was showing up because this is the only time she could see it. I ran into a guy who was like, I got an 11am Zoom. Was the only time I could see this movie today. So appreciate them. I wish I didn't spend my morning this way, but we'll talk about that. This movie is the seventh film in the Jurassic series. It's the fourth film in the non Spielberg era of this series. Although he is still a producer on Jurassic.

[Chris Ryan]

And it is still like the first thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It is the return of David Koepp, the screenwriter who wrote the first two Jurassic movies. It is directed by Gareth Edwards, a filmmaker who I think at least Chris and I, I don't know if I know your opinion about him, have a lot of admiration for, but also a lot of notes for that will continue apace.

[Chris Ryan]

Tony Gilroy did as well.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Tony Gilroy, who of course worked as well on Rogue One, a film that Gareth Edwards started. This movie has a lot of stars in it. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend. Amanda, what did you think of Jurassic World Rebirth?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think you guys both need to learn how to have fun again.

[Chris Ryan]

What's wrong with me?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I don't. You were just a little muted, you know, during the. You weren't pumping your fist at any point. So I was a little nervous. And I know you're not wearing your lanyard and you tried to leave it behind in the theater.

[Sean Fennessy]

What will you do with that long term? Do you think you'll put that in your will?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Rex is really into lanyards right now. My mom went to.

[Chris Ryan]

But he's not into dinosaurs yet.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, he is, apparently. I learned the other day that he knows what a Tyrannosaurus rex is. I just like. I didn't know that.

[Chris Ryan]

And you know then now he's ready.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Have you had to do one of his.

[Chris Ryan]

He's ready for the gift I have for him.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Have you had to do one of those dinosaur eggs with him?

[Chris Ryan]

I have, yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Have you seen this?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Where it's like the bath bomb, but it's a dinosaur egg and then a tiny plastic dinosaur comes out.

[Sean Fennessy]

You can chip it out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're big into that. But yeah. He also likes lanyards. He wears my CinemaCon lanyard around a lot.

[Sean Fennessy]

Those are really safe for a three year old.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And also the. My mom's lanyard from the masters that she gave him. So anyway, I had fun. You know, it is like totally a recreation of the first Jurassic park, like scene for scene. But listen, when people who have maybe lost their connection to wonder find themselves in a field looking at herbivore giant dinosaurs and the theme song is playing like, I am still moved by that. I don't. I don't care. And I think that you should open your heart and learn to have fun.

[Sean Fennessy]

Chris, what'd you think of Jurassic World?

[Chris Ryan]

Two movies in this movie. Yeah, I kind of enjoyed both of those two movies until the two movies became united.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And that was when the movie kind of ran a little bit out of gas. I think it looks awesome.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Incredible.

[Chris Ryan]

Shot on film. Shot by Ridley Scott's frequent collaborator, John Matheson.

[Sean Fennessy]

I turned to you about 30 minutes in and I was like, this is shot on film. This is looks be. It looks beautiful.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And also like shot in real places. They closed down the Brooklyn Bridge park in New York for just like a random scene with a brontosaurus. By the way, the brontosaurus is kept in like the Cobble Hill keeping pen, which. Like Cobble Hill.

[Chris Ryan]

Can I just add. Did you wind up getting that latte?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Of course I did. I'm sorry I came to work.

[Chris Ryan]

I love it. I thought this was two movies. There's one movie where my favorite use of the Jurassic park moving theme song ever. You know, like the. Not glorious, but the sort of. This is the emo part. While Scarlett Johansson describes a former colleague dying in a car bomb in Yemen because she is a mercenary. She's a lioness.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. It literally turned into lioness for five minutes.

[Ava Victor]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I was like, you have my attention.

[Sean Fennessy]

That is not the essence of this movie at all.

[Chris Ryan]

Anyway, there's like a whole one plot. One movie is a search. And there's a basically search and retrieval of trying to get dinosaur DNA to cure heart disease run by Big Pharma. Then 40 minutes into the movie, we just meet a family that is inexplicably boating from Barbados to Cape Town, South Africa, which they have done many times, even though a lot of that involves sailing through a DMZ dinosaur militarized zone.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right. And could you just remind us geopolitically and I guess, like topographically, geographically, like what belongs to the humans and what belongs to this.

[Chris Ryan]

Actually, we're starting this podcast. Really glad you said this.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Thank you so much.

[Chris Ryan]

This is about accountability. The last time we did one of our, you know, kind of now patented deep dives into the lore and narratives of these films.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Sean and I went across the Pratt verse and we. We talked about the Jurassic World, Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World, Dominion.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

And I realized I'd never seen Dominion, so I watched the extended cut last night.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And there's like an extensive amount of stuff that I just did not know.

[Ava Victor]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was the most recent film. In fact, we did an episode about it on this show, but it was Brian Curtis and I who talked about it. I don't know where either of you were. Candidly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I had maybe had a child recently and.

[Sean Fennessy]

You do? Yeah. You had a war.

[Chris Ryan]

Anyway.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So what's up? What's going on?

[Chris Ryan]

So I think I had la. When I had last checked in, I thought they were like, these guys get to keep Costa Rica and that's it. There's been a lot of expansion and. And contraction on the part of the dinosaurs into the real world since I checked in. So Dominion. Dominion, right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Dominion is the final film.

[Chris Ryan]

Really gets into them being, you know, out in the world, terrorizing people at drive ins.

[Amanda Dobbins]

How do they get off? Well, I guess Costa Rica is attached.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, they get off the island in Fallen Kingdom, the previous film. That's the J. Bayona film. They basically like, bring them over to raffle them off to wealthy people. There's like an auctioneering finale.

[Chris Ryan]

Charles Cromwell and Rafe Spall.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So corporations.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, corporations. Consistently the villains of this movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Not against that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure. It's a good idea. It was a good idea 35 years ago when Michael Crichton had it. I think that this movie is coming very quickly on the heels of Dominion, which I think was roundly disliked and made a lot of money, but was not necessarily success. I did not. Was it great?

[Amanda Dobbins]

So. So in the end, they're put in zoos and. And they can have the equator.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's. They get.

[Chris Ryan]

They are still around, though. There's still dinosaurs, like, by Train tracks in Brooklyn, like hanging out at drive ins. But they are largely on the equatorial band where the oxygen is rich.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

And the vegetation is clean.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was the explanation. There are some remaining dinosaurs on the mainland, but those are, it seems like are largely herbivores, including. And they're not dangerous, where they're just.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Taking up a tremendous amount of expediency.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think they said there's an allosaurus that was. That we see or brontosaurus that we see very briefly.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, you're a nimby, huh? For dinosaurs.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, like I guess. I mean, I guess if I Did you vote? Yes, but I just.

[Sean Fennessy]

What's Cuomo's take on dinosaurs?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm sort of like just the dinosaur alone would take up at this point in Cobble Hill, like. Oh yeah, 50 to 70 million dollars. Just like, like it's mass in terms of real estate. Yeah, real estate. So once again, it's only a corporation that is evil could afford that.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you feel like Michelle Williams was like, God damn it, I was going to build.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She's Boreham Hill.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

In this film, Rupert Friend plays, I guess one of the. The head of this mission to retrieve this dinosaur DNA, I think Ingen. Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, it's a little unclear.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It feels like a spin off company from ingen, which is the original company. The film actually opens with a flashback 17 years in the past where we see this research facility that is mutating and mixing a kind of island of Dr. Moreau for dinosaurs that Ingen has been working on to get people more excited about their dinosaur parks, which consistently turn into like nightmare zones of murdered tourists. And if you've ever seen Jurassic World, like, how could there ever be another park?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sure, I know, but you saying this, you, during the wicked trailer turned to me and gave a quite beautiful and thoughtful recap of the profound artistic experience you had recently at Universal Studios seeing a Glinda performance. Like, you actually like theme parks and you understand how when like carried out like correctly, they can communicate with people.

[Sean Fennessy]

This theme park is a murder house. This is a.

[Chris Ryan]

This is a den of go to Universal. If you died every time.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is not. Pterodactyls are picking people up in the middle of the theme park and dragging them away to their death.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, good. They'll keep opening the park. They opened it once and then they opened it again.

[Sean Fennessy]

But then engine is like, we got to make more dinosaurs that are even crazy and more dangerous.

[Chris Ryan]

Interested in the pharmacological and military permutations. Of dinosaur DNA than they are. And like, let's have more dinosaurs.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, that's the case, at least for the Rupert Frank character in this movie. So he recruits Scarlett Johansson, a mercenary who's famed for her work in retrieval. And she makes contact with a man named Duncan Kincaid. Kincaid, who is a shipboat captain and also a mercenary.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think Duncan Kincaid is the name of a character in one of my favorite detective series.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a lot of references to.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, we'll get to another one. There's another significant one, which is the.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you catch Dr. Loomis?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Recommended Zora, who is Scarlett Johansson's character to Rupert Friend. Did you see? Do you hear what he said?

[Sean Fennessy]

What did he say?

[Chris Ryan]

I feel like he's like, Pierre Pasolini recommended you to me.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, he said Paolo Pasolini.

[Chris Ryan]

Paolo Pasolini, Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

So, yeah, you think that was a filmic reference to that? According to St. Matthew, it could be.

[Amanda Dobbins]

A lot of references in this movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

There were a lot of references. The character who comes along with them is played by Jonathan Bailey. Dr. Loomis, who is a paleontologist of some renown, I suppose, and is able to identify what these different dinosaurs look like. They need DNA from three different dinosaurs. A pteranodon in the sky, the largest one. A Mosasaurus, which is an underwater dinosaur. And a Titanosaurus, which is a herbivore of some kind. A large kind of brontosaurus.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Land, earth and sea.

[Sean Fennessy]

Land, earth and sea. And so they're like, we gotta go to Suriname and then we gotta pick up Duncan Kincaid and we gotta listen to Primal Scream while we're there.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's got a boat, so that's why they need him.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yep.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You gotta have a guy with a boat.

[Chris Ryan]

He has a guy named Atwater, who might be South African, who's also a merc, and I know a couple other cool people on the boat.

[Sean Fennessy]

And the gang gets all together and they're like, let's go get some dino blood.

[Chris Ryan]

This is minute 40, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Minute 40, roughly. And at that time, that's when that other family that Chris is referring to.

[Chris Ryan]

Are two family sailing across the Atlantic that we haven't met yet.

[Sean Fennessy]

Just like indefensibly stupid screenwriting. That whole plot is complete garbage. Could have cut the entire thing out of the movie.

[Chris Ryan]

That's not good. Like, if it was about a family sailing.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just the most like, we gotta get kids in danger in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Maybe we see Erolfo, who's the Lincoln lawyer in the Netflix show.

[Sean Fennessy]

The performances are fine. Those kids are Good. Like the young girl especially. I thought her performance was really good, considering she was acting opposite a tennis ball. But that whole.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Who is a small little dinosaur, she be friends named names. Dolores.

[Sean Fennessy]

Dolores, yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Who likes from some right term pretty.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is in this your favorite show?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I'm.

[Ava Victor]

You.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Were you. Were you mad at this from a screenwriting perspective or a parent screenwriting perspective? You did turn to me and you were like, this is irresponsible.

[Chris Ryan]

That's what Marshall Ali's character says.

[Sean Fennessy]

I know. And they put that scene in the movie to kind of like yada yada, where the guy gets there are 50,000 boats in these waters. It's like, there are not 50,000 boats in the waters next to the fucking Mosasaurus. I'm not an idiot. You can't treat me like an idiot in a movie like this. The great thing about Jurassic park is it's an absurd premise, but it very carefully makes you understand its own logic and you go along with it. The entire time I was watching this movie, I was like, this is not well thought out at all.

[Chris Ryan]

Here's my counter to you. This was actually what I thought Final Reckoning was going to be, which is a series of really well planned sequences, you know, that. That come. That maybe don't actually come together in a story. But I understand. You're like, it's insulting my intelligence. Why are they. This is clearly, we need to have a kid aspect. We need to have a baby Yoda dinosaur or whatever. Like, it's obviously like, that's what the deal is. But at the same time, like, I think Edwards understands how to stage these things in a way that's probably like a pretty good JV Spielberg at this point. Like, we're, you know, like there's a. We can get into the individual, like encounters with dinosaurs if you want to. But I thought there was one where Xavier, who is the teenage girl's boyfriend who has come along on this transatlantic voyage, is taking a piss and he. It's like up on his face. Like he's just trying to take leak and two raptors basically zero in on him.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And.

[Chris Ryan]

And then the pterodactyl thing comes and grabs the raptors, but the entire time it's just on this kid's face with all this stuff happening and he can.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Hear it and he gets like splashed by some sort of dinosaur liquid saliva.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So, you know, and it's like it's invented from the moment as soon as.

[Chris Ryan]

The raptors show up.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Chris was just like, oh, no. You know, and then I. So I. I understand your point, which is we have seen all this before and it doesn't make any sense. But I agree with Chris that it is a really well executed version of what we've done. The sequences are good, it looks good.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's really not, Amanda. It's not a really good version of this kind of a movie. Like, it's just not. I don't know what to tell you. Like, there have been seven of these now. It's fine. Like, I think. I think Gareth Edwards is really talented.

[Chris Ryan]

Don't you think it's better than the Jurassic World?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I absolutely do.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think the original Jurassic World certainly is at least neck and neck with this. Like, there was at least, like, new shape toward the plotting of that movie. This is literally just a remake, like you said, of the first film, in part because it's written by David Koepp, where they're kind of like forcing aspects of this story as hard as they can to give you that exact feeling. There's literally a scene in the plains where they're watching a herbivore and they're hitting the theme hard and they're having characters look up in wonder and touch them gently. It is the same.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I know. I mean, there's like, instead of the kitchen, it's the convenience store.

[Sean Fennessy]

There's a fine line between homage and jerking me off. You know what I mean? And this is really on the line of jerking me off.

[Amanda Dobbins]

This is a larger line, personally.

[Chris Ryan]

That's why I think I actually, I found that cap tips to other franchises and other movies more enjoyable than the Jurassic park re run stuff. So, you know, there's references to Indiana Jones, to aliens, to Jaws. And I actually found, like, all that stuff way more enjoyable than like, oh, brontosaurus is necking. You know, like, it was sweet, but, like, you know, I think that the problem is, is that seeing Jurassic park the first time when you're a kid, whenever you've seen it, like, you could see it two years ago and have the same reaction. The first time you see the dinosaurs, you're having the reaction of the people in the park the first time they're seeing dinosaurs. And this thing that they never thought would happen is happening. And as a kid, you're obsessed with dinosaurs, but you're like, I'll never actually know what these things look or feel or move like. And this first movie, Jurassic park, is the closest thing we ever got to that feeling. And ever since then, you know, no matter what technological leaps they make, it's still Going to be like great brontosaurus. You know, Like, I kind of feel like it's, it's a shame. It's a drug and you just get, you get used to the drug after a while.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I don't know. I. I don't think you saw the last two Jurassic World movies. So because of that you're like a little bit more open minded. Like, we just did this three years ago.

[Chris Ryan]

I did this last night.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. But I didn't like them. And I, I disagree. Too far for me, I like a watchable version of original Jurassic park is more enjoyable than like a boring Chris Pratt. I understand Blue or whatever. And he's like friends with the raptor. And then like Bryce Dallas Howard is there and she's got like.

[Chris Ryan]

He's got a little clicker.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. And she has like save the island or something. Like, I don't know. I don't care about those people.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you care about Z?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't care about those performances.

[Sean Fennessy]

You're dying on Rebirth Island. This is a weird one for you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm not dying.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a weird one.

[Chris Ryan]

1.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I didn't have a bad time.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, it looks really good. It's just like. It's just like every Gareth Edwards movie. It's just the plotting and the story is just real janky.

[Chris Ryan]

You blame everybody in the script or you blame Universal being like, we gotta have a family in this.

[Sean Fennessy]

I said this to. Actually, I mentioned this when we were watching the movie. There's a cool sequence where they're moving through the jungle. And again, I agree that there are a lot of cool sequences, but there's a cool sequence where they're moving through the jungle and Jonathan Bailey kind of takes over the movie a little bit and he starts talking about kind of the. The arc of time and science and how we're just like a blip essentially in the history of this planet and dinosaurs have ruled for much longer than we will ever live on this planet. And it's classic David Koepp where he's just got. He's letting someone monologue because other characters are asking questions that you would never ask in real life. You know, there's a part where Rupert Friend is like, well, what do you mean by that? Which no one would ever say when a scientist starts talking. But Jonathan Bailey is a really good performer and that's really well written stuff. So when you're watching that, you're like, this is kind of entertaining and it feels like it's raising the stakes, but it's Totally manufactured, and it's totally transparent. So something that feels deep or thematic is just something that we already learned in 1993 when we saw the first film. There's literally nothing new idea.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, I think that the. The. For as much as you can celebrate, like, the visual achievements of the first one, it also had a very coherent kind of, like, what if we don't. You know, we can do something, but that doesn't mean we should.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right, Right.

[Chris Ryan]

And more and more as the films went on, I think it lost, like, any kind of, like, what is this movie trying to say? Not that it has to say something, but good storytelling is grounded in an idea that matters, whether it's dinosaurs or not. Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's a question of what you ultimately want from the movies. Like, you're saying you want to have that warm feeling of the wonder of a dinosaur sequence.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right, Right. Or, like, be stressed out. Because even though I have literally, like, seen, like, I have the design of the kitchen sequence from the original Jurassic park, like, memorized, and I like, reference it regularly when my sons figure out how to open a new door, you know, I have it memorized. But I was still stressed out in this recreation, which is in a convenience store instead of a thing. And it is like the small child has to hide somewhere, and they're all, like, literally hiding behind as the. You know, like, you could, like, schematically, like, shot for shot, put it on one. But, like, I don't care. It's like, I'm still stressed out.

[Chris Ryan]

I had a couple more questions for you. Yeah, we just. We're just doing free fire, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, let's keep going.

[Chris Ryan]

How long do you think you could survive on a pure licorice diet?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, it's been almost 43 years now.

[Chris Ryan]

So there's a child. A child in this movie seems to only eat licorice both on the boat and on the island. And then befriends another dinosaur, gets through her trauma. Honestly, a lot of trauma for everybody in this movie. Everybody's working through something in a.

[Sean Fennessy]

In a 21st century movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, man.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a storytelling device. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I was. I just saw the drop the other night.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I was like, God damn it. This is like, a fun movie with, like, this ridiculous, like, bookend plot on it. But Mahershal Ali lost a child. Maybe, but never explicitly said so.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, he split.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I think it is. It's explicitly that they.

[Sean Fennessy]

It lost the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They lost a child, and it was, like, too painful. They reminded each other of the child. So they split up and then he takes the picture of the child who I assume that that was like a baby picture of Mahershala Ali.

[Sean Fennessy]

It looks so much like him.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But then I was thinking, like, so, like, what's the ask? Like, who's being like, hey, man, do you mind if we have a baby photo that we can then print out? You know, like, I think that would fuck me up a little bit.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Because we only have 90 seconds of conversation between you and ScarJo to establish your entire emotional register.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I thought it was two minutes, and I have to say I thought this is one of the better ScarJo performances I've seen in sometimes. So I just. That's where I am.

[Chris Ryan]

What did you think of Scarlett Johansson in this film?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I came into it knowing that she really wanted to make a Jurassic park movie that she had long desired to do one. The schedule was never worked out. She basically, like, begged to do this movie. And I thought she acquitted herself pretty well. I think one of her best performances is a little bit of a reach.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But I said in a while.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure. Okay. Yeah, I think she's.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I liked it. I didn't mind it.

[Sean Fennessy]

She looks great. She does not have a lot of dialogue to me. No, she isn't. The first person you'd likely go to for this job would be my guess.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She seemed in control, you know, she knew that she needed Jonathan Bailey to hook her into those, like, the carabiners on either side of the ship so she wouldn't fall over, you know, after she shot the water dinosaur.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was some of the greatest Chekhovsk carabiner hooks I've ever seen in my life. When she flips over the edge. Yeah, she was okay. What'd you think?

[Chris Ryan]

I thought she was good, but the character was silly. Yeah, Yeah, I. I guess.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, same for Mahershala.

[Chris Ryan]

So I. I wonder whether or not you guys had the same sensation I did where it's like, you know, they're. They're boating and they're capsizing and their rescue and then like their kind of adventure through the jungle. The family I'm talking about versus, like. Did you have a preference of which movie you liked more? The mercenary science story or the family survival story?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's pretty easily the mercenary stuff for me, but I was kind of hoping that they would take it somewhere a little further beyond, you know, what was explained to us in the original film about the potential scientific power of dinosaurs.

[Ava Victor]

Mercy, right?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, that was just explored a long time ago.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a very funny moment where they're talking about whether or not they're going to sell the dinosaur DNA to make tens of millions of dollars or make it open source so that everybody can get it. And Scarlett Johansson's like, who should we give it to? And I was like, please just say Robert F. Kennedy. Dinosaur DNA.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. It's just a good example of trying to have it both ways. It's like, you know, this movie's being put out by a massive corporation and it's pretty dumb and they just want everybody to just eat their popcorn and shut up and like it over the holiday weekend. This is not the idea of suggesting that there would ever be a moment in time where a pharmaceutical company would not allow this precious information that they have acquired.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Spoiler alert. Are we spoiling things? Can we hit the spoiler?

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, it's not necessary. I think it's clear who's going to die in this movie from the moment the movie starts.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Actually, I got to tell you, one guy made it who I thought was definitely destined for death.

[Ava Victor]

So.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are you referring to Xavier? Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He showed up as like.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's the other thing is this movie has no guts. Like, it doesn't kill anybody. I mean, come on.

[Amanda Dobbins]

My problem had like just.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just, it's really lame, man. Like, this movie could have been a lot better because Gareth Edwards knows how to shoot a movie. It's just he keeps taking on movies with terrible scripts.

[Chris Ryan]

The Mahershala, like fake death was silly, awful.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it's just super lame.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I was also like, we even.

[Chris Ryan]

Want him to die.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Don't put him in that position.

[Sean Fennessy]

But Mahershal Ali's not actually dying. You don't actually have a relationship to Duncan Kincaid. Make you feel something for sake have real stakes instead of just killing. Like the French captain who falls asleep, who's the most obvious. Like, we've never seen this man in our lives before. He's obviously going to die.

[Chris Ryan]

Short hair.

[Ava Victor]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's too bad.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I. Let's see. Like I was going to try and off the top of my head, power rank some of the dinosaur interactions here. I really liked the water dinosaur. I thought that all the like essentially like this is a great white shark stuff was really cool. The boat flipping was good. There's so many things that know you he does where I'm like, oh, like you're better than like 98 of the people would have done that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And then I liked all the kind of the like sailboat dinosaurs who showed up to help the big dinosaur. You went to the bathroom.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was. I missed some of that. I was watching from the.

[Chris Ryan]

Running the boat into the shallows to try and outrun the Mosasaurus. Is that what it is? That was cool.

[Ava Victor]

The.

[Chris Ryan]

The bird dinosaur. I could take or leave, honestly. And in fact, I'm not, like, a super big fan of airborne dinosaurs.

[Sean Fennessy]

I thought the T. Rex sequence was good. Yeah, that was really clever. Yeah, I thought that was really cool. I'd never sleeping and I've never seen the T. Rex on its back before. That was a cool thing to show us. And then the. The rafts, like, opening up really good. Hiding the dinosaur departing and then the chase through the river. I thought all that stuff was really good. It's a good example of, like, Gareth Edwards has the juice when it comes to this kind of action staging. And the CGI looks really good in this movie for the most part.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

But anytime people start talking, I'm like, yeah, guys, let's go back to getting eaten by dinosaurs.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Can I go back? Can I do Amanda's Science Corner?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

So, like, do we have to vamp for the music to kick in?

[Sean Fennessy]

Welcome to Amanda Dobbins Science.

[Chris Ryan]

Correct.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's like the.

[Sean Fennessy]

That sounded like the Super Mario World.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. That's like the only video game song that I know. So. And this is gonna, like, kind of be a continuation of our. Like the reproductive systems of mutated creatures that we don't really want to be dealing with after 28 years later.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'd like to kind of talk about the embryo. The egg and the embryo extraction process. So what is he. So we think the embryonic fluid. I believe so, is like, has the DNA, but is also. I mean, I guess that is true. That we know in humans from a testing perspective, because now they can test the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. For potential discrepancies in the DNA.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But now. But now they mostly do that with blood.

[Sean Fennessy]

But we see in the movie.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I was laughing because I wasn't sure whether Science Corner was supposed to ask questions or answer.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a really good question.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So. So it's basically he's doing amniocentesis and then, like, the amniotic. So I guess it's amniotic fluid is that they're using, but that.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't know if it is exactly the same in terms of dinosaur eggs and birds as it is for humans.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But you have to assume that's their model.

[Chris Ryan]

I would assume birds would be their model.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, you know.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, it's an egg in a nest that's true.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When the angry mom bird showed up, I was like, oh, you're in trouble. Really? That. That was scary.

[Sean Fennessy]

You related to her?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I did, yeah. I was like, you. It's really. You don't want to be, like, in an enclosed space with some eggs when the mom.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think that that bird dinosaur is on your mom's WhatsApp?

[Sean Fennessy]

Once again, we've learned that pteranodons can't have it all.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Hey, mama. What are you doing with my mama?

[Chris Ryan]

That unhide blanket is coming your way.

[Sean Fennessy]

What did you guys think of the giant mutant dinosaur that dominates the opening sequence and the closing sequence of the movie?

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's pretty ugly, you know.

[Chris Ryan]

Some marks for not having the T. Rex come in and save the day as it has in so many films. I was waiting for the T. Rex to come through and fuck that guy up, you know?

[Amanda Dobbins]

And it did teach me a lesson about maybe we shouldn't. Once again, we shouldn't fuck with nature, you know, because that's what you get.

[Sean Fennessy]

You learned that lesson in 1993.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, apparently I haven't, because we're still here. And also, I'm getting lasers on my face to try to reverse time, you know? Yeah, I did, but just one. But just a laser. Nothing injected yet.

[Sean Fennessy]

You gotta be careful with those lasers. Cause they do attract dinosaurs. So next time you get that laser going. We do learn that the red light. Gareth Edwards, he loves a red light, man. You know, Remember in Godzilla, this is his thing.

[Chris Ryan]

The opening sequence of this movie is very much like Godzilla through the glass.

[Sean Fennessy]

We've seen this before, you know, without. With two actors. I don't know. And as opposed to Juliet Binoche and Bryan Cranston.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Giving the performance of their lives in Godzilla.

[Chris Ryan]

Cranston's such a maniac.

[Sean Fennessy]

I like them both. Really good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You're so angry.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think it was the call time.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. If I brought you, like, a pastry.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it's just this movie was rushed and you can tell. And they could have done better. Like, it's just clear that they could have done better.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Why are you flaring your nostrils at me like. I just. I just showed up.

[Sean Fennessy]

You owe it to the people to tell them the truth.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I am telling them the truth is I got the fuck up. I went to see a movie and I had a pretty good time.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I'm sure some people will feel that way, but I. This is in a realm of a certain. Kind of. Like, this is representative of the circling the drain era of franchise filmmaking. To me, this is like, this is. It's not as bad as Fast X at all. And I'm not as mad as I was about that. This movie has a lot more craft in it, but it's a little insulting.

[Chris Ryan]

I think you're feeling the way I was feeling during Ballerina. Like, I mean, where I'm, like, mad about this and nobody else is really mad. They're just like, that wasn't very good. Yeah, I actually. I mean, I enjoy. I was probably closer to Amanda on this, but that's more just because I'm like, oh, I shot this on film.

[Sean Fennessy]

Huh?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm usually like. I'm usually willing to forgive some of these things. We. I think I just forget.

[Chris Ryan]

It gets too close to something, you know, you like, and then it comes up short.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was just gonna say that I didn't have this problem with F1 because I hadn't quite seen a movie like that before. So the set piece stuff that I saw in that movie, I was like, oh, man, this racing. I've never seen this in a movie before. This is incredible. So I was more willing to forgive some of the script problems in a movie like this. I'm like, I don't know. We got six dinosaur movies already.

[Chris Ryan]

What's your version of this, then? Would it be like, what's a movie that you like? This comes too close to something I already know I like, and it's not good enough.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't know, because they don't. They've just given up making movies with westerns. Yeah, that's exactly Bill Rider. I guess. Like, Netflix movies, you know, like, all of the, like, the Room, the romantic comedy stuff. But even then, it's like, they don't spend any money on that. That doesn't even look good.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know, so, like, the fact that it actually. It does look good. Respectfully, I thought the performances in this movie were, like, better than almost everyone except Javier Bardem in F1.

[Chris Ryan]

But that's Rebirth.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. This is something that I'm.

[Sean Fennessy]

Wild take I'm working on. Like, that's just a wild take.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's, like, actively bad in that movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, but Carrie Con in that movie. Tobias Menzies, James and Idris. Like, you know, this movie's okay, but they're barely humans. They. They barely talk, but they at least.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Have, like, some sort of charisma.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. I don't know. I'm. I'm happy for you, I guess.

[Chris Ryan]

This is like Siskel, Ebert and Chris.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I wasn't that mad. I get mad at plenty of things.

[Chris Ryan]

But do you think one, one thing that I thought was interesting, unless there was a cut scene that I'm not available that we missed, was that there is really no breadcrumb trail to a sequel here. I cannot imagine that Universal will let that go cold. But it's fascinating that I care about that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, Dolores left the island, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Dolores left the island in the DNA island. Why go back to the island? I mean, like, you know, we may not from orbit, you know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I think that's kind of the challenge of this franchise in general is like the first film is contained. The second film they leave and get out into the wider world. The third film they have to go back. Then in the fourth film they're like, we're gonna redo the park. Cause it's been 20 years and everybody forgot. And then we're going to go back to America and then we're going to go back to the island. Like they keep ping ponging back and forth. There's no expansion. I'm not suggesting they go to space, but there's no expansion beyond those two journeys. And so it just gets redundant.

[Chris Ryan]

Dinosaurs in space could be good.

[Sean Fennessy]

You never know.

[Chris Ryan]

James Cameron should make that leave Chris Nolan alone. Source on the moon.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I was just googling like certain geographically to kind of understand like what the next.

[Chris Ryan]

The former Dutch colony, right?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes. But it's.

[Chris Ryan]

Or is it still a Dutch colony?

[Sean Fennessy]

I want to say I'm happy for Vampire Weekend for getting a needle drop in a major blockbuster. And the Primal Scream one was shocking. Yeah, that's the thing is when you go down the list of this movie, you're like, Alexander Desplat did the score. John Matheson, who shot Gladiator, shot this movie. Gareth Edwards, the single greatest CGI artist working in Hollywood.

[Chris Ryan]

So on paper, two Oscar winners, ScarJo.

[Sean Fennessy]

And Marshall hanging out on a boat. This all sounds so good. And you know, here's where I have it. So where is Suriname? Tell us about it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I mean, it is in, in South America, the northeastern coast of South America. And I assume they were on like islands, you know, So I guess they're like headed back to continental South America. But we're not far from.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, they, they departed from Suriname, but I think they went some miles out. Yeah, they went, they had to go.

[Chris Ryan]

To Barbados and then they were in Suriname, so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So Barbados is north. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. We're not that far from the Caribbean. So like maybe they're in like a, you know, their own Bermuda's Triangle. But they'll they could head back to the Caribbean, and then, you know, that would at least be contained again. Those are highlands.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So this is. So you're. What you're saying is this movie might be a secret Bermuda Triangle movie?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, I like where, like, maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

They sail into the Bermuda Triangle.

[Sean Fennessy]

That would be exciting. It would be new. It would be new.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Look, see, we solved it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It would give us a new sense of confusion that I think these films really need.

[Chris Ryan]

They go into the Bermuda Triangle, into a time portal. They show up in 1993. Costa Rica de aged, Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Richard.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Costa Rica is far away from. From, you know, you got to get all the way through the Caribbean.

[Sean Fennessy]

Stick Attenborough.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Dead or Caribbean?

[Chris Ryan]

He's dead.

[Sean Fennessy]

You killed him.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I was thinking about David Attenborough. Still narrating.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, he's still kicking. Yeah. They brothers?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Richard attenborough passed in 2014. Yeah, he was 90 years old.

[Chris Ryan]

You think he caked up from Jurassic residuals? You think they took care of him?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, but he directed Gandhi, so I think he's okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

What kind of residuals do you think Gandhi's throwing off the film?

[Sean Fennessy]

Gandhi or his family legacy? All of his investments in great British imports. Gandhi, probably not that strong. I do believe it was recently issued in 4K. Okay, so there could have been some new revenue streams. No, I'm not a fan of that film, okay? It's quite boring. It's an example of, like, it's something I don't need to own. It's a short list of things I don't need to own. One of them.

[Chris Ryan]

Gandhi, the Jurassic World. Jurassic World, Rebirth. 4K. You will not be buying that.

[Sean Fennessy]

We'll see.

[Chris Ryan]

What are you talking about?

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't. I don't think I own any. Gareth. No, I own. I own Godzilla and Rogue One. Rogue One, you got to own.

[Chris Ryan]

Is Monsters on 4K?

[Sean Fennessy]

Just Blu Ray, but I don't own that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The creator.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't own it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

What would you like for robots to be free?

[Sean Fennessy]

Doesn't this feel very similar to the creator?

[Chris Ryan]

It felt very similar to Monsters, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

But just with a lot bigger budget and more cgi.

[Chris Ryan]

He's like, I've been waiting. In some ways, he's been waiting 15 years to make this movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

He has, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It did feel similar to the creator, where you're like, there's five things that happen in this movie that are some of the best stuff you'll see all year. And then there's a lot that. That could have been workshop.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know, man. It's a holiday weekend. I'm just. I'm ready to go.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm happy for you. Similar moment in the Creator where the. Is it. Is it the national anthem or which. Or is it which. Which kid? A needle drop hits in the Creator where it's like John David Washington flying in a helicopter amidst utter destruction in the world and a Radiohead needle drop.

[Chris Ryan]

Everything in a straight place.

[Sean Fennessy]

I watched everything in its right place.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The Creator on an airplane without sound. So I wouldn't.

[Sean Fennessy]

You didn't get a chance to hear that.

[Chris Ryan]

How come no sound? Just because you were like, I want to go back to silence.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know. Because I was with my child and it's like, it's honestly. And Knox was younger, so it's just like too hard to keep the thing.

[Chris Ryan]

Plugged in, you know, you just pulled it out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, basically.

[Sean Fennessy]

So these movies are an incredibly reliable box office success. And the reason why this one happened as quickly as it did is because there was a need to get a big movie on the slate for the studio this summer. Do you think that there will still be the, like billion dollar appetite for this so quickly after Dominion?

[Chris Ryan]

What's coming up next? What's the next big summer movie after this?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Superman.

[Sean Fennessy]

Superman, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

How many weeks next week?

[Sean Fennessy]

In five, seven days?

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, we heard applause when we were walking out of an 8am screening. Like, I think that this will have decent word of mouth among people who are like, I want to see dinosaurs, rock and roll. And I guess cinephiles who like things shot on film. I don't know. I know that it's not been. Has it been warmly received?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, the reviews are very bad.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But like. But also Charles Holmes was in here being like really liked it, so. And that's a historical hater.

[Chris Ryan]

It's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

Pull up the old Rotten Tomatoes for Jurassic World Rebirth.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It did not.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's at 53%. Yeah. I'm curious. I mean, box office wise, this is a very sturdy franchise. Let's just take a look at the last few. So Jurassic World, this is just domestic. I think Jurassic World did 652 million. Fallen Kingdom 417, Dominion 376. The original Jurassic did 357. Lost World 229 and Jurassic Park 3, 181. If you had to guess. Where do you think this one will.

[Chris Ryan]

Land below Dominion, but in the. I think It'll. I think 300.

[Sean Fennessy]

300. That sounds right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, that sounds.

[Sean Fennessy]

That sounds about. It's going to do 100 million over this five day period, for sure. I don't think the word of mouth is going to be super strong. I think it'll satisfy the Jurassic heads for sure. And there are a great many. So let me tell you about my experience over the weekend because you mentioned and I did get a chance to see Glenda and Elphaba at Universal Studios, which was very nice for my daughter. But we also got to experience something that I did not know existed because I haven't been to Universal Studios in 15 years. There are animatronic dinosaurs in the park. So when you go into Universal Studios in California, you have to go down literally four giant escalators. So you walk all the way to the back of the park and you go down four escalators. And at the back of the park, at the bottom of the park is Dinoland. No Minions, Dinoland and Super Nintendo World. That's where all the Super Mario Bros. Stuff is. In Dinoland, there are quote unquote ingen employees who are luring out life sized animatronic dinosaurs that you can interact with. This experience was so much more cool than this stupid movie. I couldn't believe the technology with which you can interact with these actual dinosaurs. And it obviously makes sense given the nature of this kind of storytelling. But it was a. For once in a while, for once in my life to not be in a movie theater was a better experience. Movie wise.

[Amanda Dobbins]

A hundred times out of 100, I'm picking a movie theater to whatever the hell it is you just described. Like where I'm in, like in our.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know who would not is your son. Your son would have his head split open by this.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's. He's three, so he would just be scared.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's that scary.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But when he's four, he's potty trained now.

[Sean Fennessy]

So one of the this was.

[Chris Ryan]

When's he ready to start fielding grounders?

[Sean Fennessy]

Now this was obviously intentional marketing for this movie, which I didn't realize, but there was a. An employee who was walking around with a backpack that had a little dinosaur in it. Like little kids, like pet. And it was Dolores. She did see it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do you have a Dolores now?

[Sean Fennessy]

No. We saw the Dolores in the park.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Do you have one at home?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, they weren't selling it or anything like that. It was a little animatronic baby dinosaur that kids could interact with.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Kids were.

[Sean Fennessy]

Their minds were melting.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Copperfield aliens.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it was like that. It was just like that.

[Chris Ryan]

Can I tell a person only I thought I was in Oregon over The weekend, and I was on a hike. And before we, like, started the hike, I was going to a ranger station just to go to bathroom really quick. And as I was coming out, I really hit my head hard on, like, a roof Eve, you know, that was hanging over. And I'm like, that hurt. And I'm walking and they're like, are three. These three women, lovely women, are like, are you okay? And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were like, are you okay? That was really hard. And I'm like, do I have blood streaming out of my head? And then they go, are you Chris Ryan? So McKenna and her two friends. I am alive. And thank you. They were big picture fans.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, that's nice. Hi, McKenna.

[Sean Fennessy]

Were you badly concussed?

[Chris Ryan]

No, I was fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I have a hard head. Yeah, I've hit it a lot in my life, you know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did it leave a bruise?

[Chris Ryan]

No, I don't think so.

[Sean Fennessy]

Everything's fine.

[Chris Ryan]

Everything's cool. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are we. Is this really you? Is this not an animatronic? No, no. I'm just. I'm just interrogating a little bit. I want to make sure that you're not the AI Exoskeleton version of cr. You can't really rank these movies because you missed the last two.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Then I can put in my mind Jurassic World at the bottom.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Over. So you prefer Jurassic Park 3 to Jurassic World?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't really remember it, to be honest. I've seen it.

[Chris Ryan]

I gotta. I'm gonna make you upset. I'm gonna put Jurassic World Rebirth at four.

[Sean Fennessy]

Ooh. Over all of the Jurassic J. A Bayona movie. Yeah, I mean, that's fine, but it's like, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are all.

[Chris Ryan]

You wanted to rank them way below.

[Sean Fennessy]

I honestly. Well, you said that you're gonna upset me, and I. Doesn't upset me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We showed up at the movies to have a nice time together, and I.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's not why we showed up at the movies.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You're so mad at us.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not mad. I'm not mad. Don't put in the newspaper that I'm mad about Jurassic World. I am mad.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm mad. You should just, like, get.

[Chris Ryan]

I just wonder.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We should, like, get a newspaper that says I'm mad.

[Sean Fennessy]

You've been the mad queen recently.

[Chris Ryan]

And you were like, at 5, 30, 6 o' clock, you're like, I'm gonna get a beer with CR And Amanda after this. I had a Coke, you know, like.

[Sean Fennessy]

It'S got nothing to do with the time I'm up at that hour every day of my life.

[Chris Ryan]

But, you know, think about, like, science and Robert Kennedy and Zora Bennett that early in the morning. Do you?

[Sean Fennessy]

I think about Robert Kennedy every morning of my life because of the hellscape.

[Chris Ryan]

That we eventually're like, maybe this is the last one.

[Sean Fennessy]

So fucked up. No, I don't. I don't want my intelligence insulted at the movies. That's honestly how I feel. I think that just because a movie is a big blockbuster doesn't mean it has to be stupid. This movie is stupid, in my opinion.

[Amanda Dobbins]

All right.

[Sean Fennessy]

I know that's a hard thing to respond to because there's not going to be any moving me off that stone.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

But it's generally how I feel.

[Chris Ryan]

I've had reactions like that to things. I hope Celine song directs the next one.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not sure that the performances would be any better if she did. Have you gotten any feedback on your materialist love?

[Chris Ryan]

No, I haven't heard anything.

[Sean Fennessy]

Have you guys nothing? No, no.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's okay to just like what you like. It's a tough world out there.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think this will be nominated for best Picture?

[Chris Ryan]

Name nine movies better than it. What's the movie that Neiman talked about the other day for, like, 13 minutes?

[Sean Fennessy]

Caught by the tides. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

That's number one. I sent Sean a meme of two basketball players. One is Michael Porter Jr. Who is a legendary idiot who was on the Nuggets.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And has got a podcast where he interviews, like, porn stars and conspiracy theorists. And mostly he's just sharing his takes. And he's like. It's a clip of him being like, I heard Homeland Security invaded Diddy's house. Why did they do that? And then the next is Cam Thomas. Cam Johnson or Cam Thomas, who got. Who got traded for Michael Porter Jr. Giving, like, an amazing, beautiful answer about the ballet and physique of the jump shot and going left versus going right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

I said. I was like, this is like, the difference between me and Namon on the pod.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's funny.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was really good.

[Chris Ryan]

The MPJ of. Of the big picture.

[Sean Fennessy]

But you're a dead eye shooter. Just like you shoot 40% from three every season. And we really appreciate that about you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Who is your comp for Face of the Ringer?

[Chris Ryan]

My comp? Oh, I didn't get one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You didn't get one?

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Did he get one? Did Sean.

[Chris Ryan]

No, it was just more. It was Joe and then I think Bill, but I can't Remember even. I can't even remember. Joe is Kyrie Irving.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

That was a good one.

[Sean Fennessy]

Van pointed out that she was Tatum.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I was.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting. Because you love your son.

[Ava Victor]

I get that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Was.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was. That was literally why.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, I.

[Sean Fennessy]

But I said it was because she has no swag.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's much like jt.

[Amanda Dobbins]

JT Also forward to timeout for the rest of the weekend.

[Sean Fennessy]

Because I am your father, I don't really have anything else on the movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Wanna talk about Running Man? You want to talk about anything else?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, Running man looks good. It looks fun.

[Chris Ryan]

November.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, November 7th. Yeah, I think it will be. I'm curious if the Edgar Wright action filmmaking style is super mainstream, because this is a movie that wants to be super mainstream. Right. And it's obviously inventive. There's a couple of moments that you can see just similar with set pieces.

[Chris Ryan]

Stairway thing.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah. The stairway moment. The electrified water gun that Michael Cera fires, the elevator sequence, the bomb and the grenade. Like all that stuff is really cool and fun. Colman Domingo's playing it really big as the host. Glenn Powell is playing kind of what you mean. And so is Glenn Powell too. And he doesn't usually play that style of like, he's. He seems very angry and his character seems mad. In the movie. Toe to toe mad with Brolin. One of the king of. One of the kings of mad acting. So we'll see if that works. I hope it does. I like everybody involved.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm open to it. And I'm. I'm mixed on right. Usually. But I, I, you know, the, the.

[Chris Ryan]

Glenn Powell of it all, he seems really into. Be wearing disguises. You know, he's like. He's like, I like that In Hitman, he's like, I'm going to keep doing it. That's like his running.

[Sean Fennessy]

You think you should do that? In Top Gun 3, we're in a fake mustache, glasses.

[Chris Ryan]

Talk about Top Gun 3, we haven't. Do you believe it?

[Sean Fennessy]

I feel like we're gonna have to worry about F2 first. You know, F1 big hit. Now they're gonna make another one. They got Kaczynski back in there. Kaczynski. Really Just a lot going on right now in your world.

[Ava Victor]

I know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Because there's.

[Chris Ryan]

He's an invasive species.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, there's a UFO movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I love him. But like he's coming for. For. For the Miami and. And it's sacred ground, so.

[Sean Fennessy]

So UFO movie, F12. Top Gun 3 and my. A Miami Vice movie written by Dan Gilroy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And did you see the report that just not Kaczynski related, but adjacent to Miami Vice is that the script for Heat 2 has been turned in and apparently Warner Brothers were thrilled.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. That is only in the realm of rumor right now. Right? There's not been.

[Chris Ryan]

Where do you think I live?

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, you do live in the world.

[Chris Ryan]

Much like Odyssey. Rumor and gossip.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, he too. You feeling good?

[Chris Ryan]

I just thought it was interesting that that report came out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

What's the casting rumor right now?

[Sean Fennessy]

Steve Driver. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

It was Austin Butler and Shaherlos was the one that has been the most step forward. I think there was also, like, Austin Butler is going to be in the Don Winslow trilogy. He's going to star in the Don Winslow trilogy. So I think his dance card is getting very full.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I can't remember who. Who else was being kicked around Oscar Isaac at one point, but I. I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

When's the last time you saw Heat?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Two or three years ago.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, fairly recently.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, I turned it on. I can't remember why, but I. But it was somehow big picture related. I turned it on and then Zach wandered in about 20 minutes in it watching Heat and he didn't tell me and then just sat down.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you. Were you watching it because of Ferrari?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Maybe. Or maybe I was watching it before, Even before, because Heat to the book came out and I was like, oh, I'm going to read Heat too. But I should probably, you know, revisit Heat first. But then I never read Heat too, because Zach took it and then read.

[Chris Ryan]

It, but then it popped up in the background. It's. What are you talking about? It's in the bookshelf where you record your podcast.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, that's in Zach's office.

[Chris Ryan]

Everybody was like, holy shit. He too is right behind Amanda's head.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, that's where he took it. Okay. See? Took it in his office and he closes that. We have to keep that door closed because raptors. Oh, yeah, because the raptors figure it out and then they find all the loud toys.

[Chris Ryan]

Two Raptors are like, did you finish you two yet?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's an amazing place to rap. Thank you both. Thank you for loving cinema. You really showed your love today in the face of my discontent. Let's go now to my conversation with Ava Victor. Very happy to have Ava Victor here talking about a debut movie and hopefully your life and career. When there's a first time filmmaker. When there's a first time filmmaker on the show, I always ask the very stupid where did you come from? Why are you here? How did you get here? Question.

[Ava Victor]

It's stupid potentially to you, but to me, it's a fabulous question.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, would you mind answering it?

[Ava Victor]

I would love to answer. I. It's like that question makes me want to say I'm from San Francisco and then talk about movies, but. So I'll do that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Perfect.

[Ava Victor]

I went to school for acting and playwriting and then moved to New York after school and was auditioning for things, and then eventually started writing and started making videos online that were like one minute comedy videos. And then in the Pandemic, everything kind of slowed down and I started watching movies to sort of escape my life, but also to sort of go deeper into my life. Something was happening. I don't totally have the words for it still, but I think I. I was looking for companionship in film, and it sort of let me feel a lot, but in the company of the film. So that sort of set me on a track of being like, well, what if I made my own film? And then I went away and wrote Sorry Baby and sent it to Barry and Adela and Mark at Pastel, who I'd met before, and I felt like they saw me as a filmmaker before anyone else believed in me in that way. You're gonna. This is obviously a podcast, but I will start to sweat because I'm in a small room, and I just want you to know that I know I'm sweating, so it's not an issue for me. I just want you to know I'm ahead of it. I'm not gonna fix it, but I'm ahead of it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm sitting in front of bright lights and also sweating, so we can sweat together.

[Ava Victor]

I would never know. Okay, cool.

[Sean Fennessy]

I naturally don't emanate this glow. This is manufactured.

[Ava Victor]

Thank you for sharing that. I feel more safe and comfortable.

[Sean Fennessy]

Can I interrupt you for a second? Because I did read that you had this moment of relationship building to movies during the Pandemic, which I think millions of people developed a deeper bond to watching things, and specifically films, too. But did you have a big relationship to movies before that? Would you consider yourself a cinephile or a film fan when you were growing up?

[Ava Victor]

You know, I watched. We didn't really have TV at my house. We had a VHS player and then a DVD player, and we had, like, 10 DVDs, and they were VHS. We transitioned to DVD, and that was like, a huge moment for the family. But we started like, I. I watched Singing in the Rain, Swing Time, Top Hat, Like Fred Aster and Ginger Rogers stuff. Yellow and then Hard Day's Night was a big one. And then I watched all of Bewitched and my mom was like, this is sexist but really good. And I was like, not a problem. So, so I, I, I watched a lot of the same things over and over again, but I, I didn't, you know, I feel like there's this thing that happens where people are like, well if you want to make a movie, you have to watch the Godfather. And so I was like, okay, so I'm going to watch all the stuff that everyone says you have to watch. But then through that, found the movie like through the Godfather, through the Shining, like which are amazing. I found the movies that I think were more my speed like Paris, Texas or In the Mood for Love or you know, just like slow beautiful things. But yeah, there's like, I feel like watching movies when you want to make movies starts as like a fraudulent feeling and then you like. I think it started with that and then I sort of fell in love with, with what I was watching and it became much more heart motivated.

[Sean Fennessy]

Can you tell me about the trying to write. Did you, did you buy Save the Cat? Did you buy other screenplays and study them? Like what'd you do? How'd you figure out how to do it?

[Ava Victor]

I'd written one pilot once. I took a class. I really didn't like what I wrote and we'll never talk about it. Hard line there. And then I wrote.

[Sean Fennessy]

You just brought it up though. What was it about?

[Ava Victor]

I know I just tried to like I was just playing with fire. I can't talk about it. It was about a part time job I'd had that really I thought was really funny. And like 20 years we'll have like a hangout and I'll tell you about it. But it's actually really boring. So let's move on.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sounds nice.

[Ava Victor]

I, I wrote like a, I was working on this like movie for a studio and it was, and that was very like three act structure, like sort of. But you know, Save the Cat for me has always been this, I've always been very burdened by the. I've always been very angry and felt very rebellious against that because I'm like, well it's not a check, like it's not a checkbox, you know, thing. But I do think it's a helpful tool to check your work. But I don't think it should ever come from there. But no, I was so I was writing this kind of three act structure Thing that was supposed to be this big thing. And then I went away and wrote another film that was like this sort of queer horror thing that was also a feature but very small. And then Sorry Baby was sort of my third time writing a feature. So by the time I got to Sorry Baby, I was. It was sort of like, rejection is my lifestyle. So I'm just gonna write what I want to write. Like I just had been rejected for like 10 years. Like honestly with like acting. But I've gotten certain things. But there's so much rejection that at some point the pain of not writing the thing I desperately want to write overtook the sort of comfort in not writing it. So Sorry Baby was sort of my Fuck the world. No one wants this. Like, I'm just gonna write the thing I wanna write and maybe just write it to write it. But yeah, structurally it was like. I think I only could write it once I figured out how time worked and how the pieces of the film came together. Because I knew I wanted it to exist over a certain amount of years and have these threads through the years that only this one character can feel and see. And we get led into what those threads are. But yeah, the process of writing, I keep looking for like the notebook I had at that time. Cause I feel like I was very weird about time. And it's like you write this time, you write this time, you stretch here. Like I was doing some weird stuff. But it was, it was good. It was like time with myself.

[Sean Fennessy]

I love that non linear approach that you take in the movie. And I. There are times when I'm. I've seen the film twice now and seeing it. Thank you There. You're welcome. Where I know where I am in the timeline and then there are times where I feel like I'm slipping in the timeline and I don't always know where I am. And you don't use typical tricks of shifting to black and white or putting a sepia tone on what could be perceived as like a flashback or an earlier stage in the character's life. Can you kind of talk about how you made decisions like that and how comfortable you were leaving the viewer uncomfortable with some of those things?

[Ava Victor]

Yeah, I, I was also feeling very like allergic to sepia toned past vibe. Like I was in the color especially. I was like, this can't be too pretty. Like I just, I don't want it to feel like the only thing we really shifted color wise in. In the color was like the jury scene. I really wanted to feel like sticky hot summer. And we had shot in the winter, but that was really actually sort of mild shifts because we had so much light. We just had to make the light a different color. But, yeah, I think, like, the structure of the film is really, like, flashbacks aren't actually happening. It's like we are in present day, then we go back four years and then work our way back to the present, skipping over the one we missed. The reason I started the film, how I did, was because I really wanted it to be very clear that the film is about this friendship. And these are the two characters we are falling in love with and that the film will give you insight into. And it felt important to me that we didn't see the traumatic thing happen at the beginning because I didn't want that to color how we were able to see Agnes. I wanted us to meet her as she is, as we would meet her, and then go back and uncover sort of how we got to this point and why this friendship feels so deep and strong. And it's sort of the reason why the film exists is for the scene in the bathtub when Agnes is telling Lydia what happened. And Liddy holds that information so beautifully. And the film is really meant to be about these milestones and a friendship. So starting with this sort of visit with so much love and joy, but also a little mystery and discomfort about what sort of where they come from and why they're here like this, it just felt like the natural place to start. And, I mean, it's also bookended by, like, Liddy comes in and makes this announcement. And then at the end of the film, we get this sort of manifestation of the announcement. It felt like the right container.

[Sean Fennessy]

I feel like people keep asking you about balancing the tone of this movie. So I have kind of a question about that that I. The second time I watched it, which is when your character is with other people in the film, there is like a warmth and often sense of humor and joke. Not always, but mostly even in dark times in the story. And when your character is alone and contemplative, it's a completely different kind of. It feels like a different kind of a movie. It is a pure. It's like a cerebral drama, an emotional drama. I don't know if you were you thinking of it in that way. That was kind of what I wanted to know. Did you see there being like a, you know, a bifurcation between the tones based on what was happening with your character?

[Ava Victor]

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm kind of. Because I've been asked the question about like humor in the film so much. I feel like I have a theory, and most of it was quite intuitive, honestly, about, like, when we should laugh. Just felt right, certain at certain moments. But I think there's, like, laughter sometimes because Agnes is, I've been humbled to discover, quite awkward. People are saying she's awkward, and I'm, like, heard and humbled. And I think her. She's very blunt and not afraid of silence. And that is comedic because it's uncomfortable. And she is not afraid of sitting in discomfort in a group. So that, I think, is a source of comedy. I think a source of laughter that I don't think is like, humor, but it is sort of is. Agnes and Lydia's, like, joyful friendship together makes us feel a part of it. And there's sort of, like, this euphoric joy there. And then also there's like, a more heightened humor that is sort of the writer telling you to laugh because we're pointing at someone who's doing something weird, and we're allowed to make fun of that person, like the doctor, for instance. So there's, like, laughs in that because we are pointing the. Like, the movie is being like, this guy sucks. And that is a relief. And funny. I. I agree. Like, when Agnes is alone, it's like. It's, like, genuinely not funny. And it's like three Colors Blue vibes. Like, it's a woman alone, like, trying to make sense of the world. And her confronting the world is where humor exists because she's in such a different state than the rest of the world. And that juxtaposition is bizarre and potentially funny.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it really struck me in the scene where you cut to yourself on the toilet and then go to start putting the thesis up on the window, which I thought was like a. That's a scene you maybe wouldn't find in a more conventional version of this story, where we're sitting with you for minutes across minutes, no dialogue, trying to understand what you're thinking, how you were feeling, what decisions you're making in that. Which I just thought was a very cool and interesting choice.

[Ava Victor]

Thank you. Thanks. It took a lot of practicing getting the papers on the window in the same order.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was very.

[Ava Victor]

It was like 2am and they were like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Do you get. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that. It was an interesting. Papers on the window. But, you know, then we cut to the cat meowing. So it's kind of like we got a little something, a little joy.

[Sean Fennessy]

I want to ask you an independent film question.

[Ava Victor]

God, here we go.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you have to go and, like, sell the movie to financiers?

[Ava Victor]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, can you talk about that experience?

[Ava Victor]

Well, luckily, my producers are very, very smart and didn't send me to, like, they're very thoughtful and smart and have a lot of wonderful financiers that they've worked with before. So I. I did very deliberate meetings. It's really interesting. It was my first time having to explain the movie in a way that felt digestible. I was very stressed out because I'd never really done, like, a pitch meeting, anything like that, where I had to display my personality in a way that was nice and the people impalatable. So that was interesting. I mean, it was also like, I made a specific lookbook sort of pitch deck or something for the financier meetings that we sent the script with. And that piece was interesting because I had my own private lookbook, which was like, Double Life of Veronique and things that everyone was like, we don't understand why this is your reference. And I'm like, I swear there's something. And this was a lookbook that was like, Juno Fargo, like, some Claire Denis, but, like, Let the Sun Shine in Claire Denis. Like, it was very. It was much more commercial, you know, and. And the thing. It's hard to explain something before you do it. Like, I was kind of making a case for. I want it to be a beautiful film that feels like an art house film. And also, it's funny and having to be like, Juno plus Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan. I swear, like, there's something that will work and people are just. We luckily got people who sort of didn't really bat an eye at me, at me wanting to be in it and asked really good questions about why I wanted to direct it. And we. It was a really new journey. I mean, every part of making this film has been, like, totally new. I'm like, oh, we do this next. Like, completely shocking. But no, it was an interesting experience, for sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

Related to that. Did you anticipate writing such a personal piece and then having to basically sell it through the entirety of its lifespan, going into movie theaters and having to talk about this thing? That must be very strange.

[Ava Victor]

No, I didn't know. I didn't really know it would happen like this. I think it's good. I didn't know. And the one thing that lets me sort of sleep at night, if you will, is that I did make the movie I wanted to make. So that allows me to feel really glad that that's this is a movie that's. That people are going to get to see. But no, it's a really. I mean, directing and acting and writing the film is. Means that. But most of the press you do is by yourself, which is. I didn't expect, I didn't think of. And when I have Naomi and Lucas around me, I find it to be much easier. But I mean, this is going really well though, so I don't mean this. I mean, I don't. I don't feel like it's a really interesting thing. I think there's a lot of curiosity around what parts are my life and what parts aren't. And you know, the dream is you sort of get to make a film, put it out, then people talk about it, how they want to talk about it, and you sort of never appear anywhere. Like you just get to sort of release it and then let people take what they want. But that's not the realistic thing of wanting people to also see the movie. Like, I have to also. I want people to feel invited to see the film. So it's. It is, It's a journey though. Press is interesting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I talk to a lot of directors on the show and a lot of times they'll be like, this is a deeply personal work for me, but it's about aliens and a war in space. And there's so much allegory and metaphor that people. The press is trying to unpack about a project. But when the movie is almost being marketed to you as a very personal story, an intimate story, then invariably, I'm sure you have to find yourself constantly confronting people, asking you things you don't want to talk about all day, every day. Which I find that like, just a bit strange. But it must be a thousand times more strange for you.

[Ava Victor]

It is strange. I mean, it's also like, well, we're just meeting and you're asking me that, but am I asking you that?

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, damn, yeah.

[Ava Victor]

But I think it's. Filmmakers find, like, I look around and I realize that people have found very creative ways to hide themselves in their films. And I had like this one really smart filmmaker tell me once, like, I just swapped the gender and no one ever asked me anything. And I'm like, haha, that's too funny. But, but yeah, it is like kind of draining to talk about. But I, I do love the. I do love the film and I love talking about the film and, and I, I like when it can get kind of filmmakery. Like, I like to nerd out a bit with like, why I did certain things. Like, there's versions of it that are really joyful of talking about the film. And also, you know, people are writing about the film because they feel moved by it. So it's like, well, that's not so bad. Like, people want to talk to me because they want to ask questions, and that is inherently, like, a beautiful idea.

[Sean Fennessy]

So I was thinking about this recently because I have a friend who published a memoir a few years ago, but a very specific, complicated event in their life. And then he is just now publishing his first novel, and he was using it as a way to figure out almost like, how to write a book.

[Ava Victor]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And so I was thinking about that in regards to you too, and sort of, like, do you see yourself kind of permanently as a filmmaker? Like, is this your vocation now? Was this just the right thing for the right time in your life? How do you see in the aftermath of Sorry, Baby?

[Ava Victor]

I mean, you're gonna have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand if you want to take away making films for me, because I'm addicted and I'm obsessed, and I. And I don't even know, like, what that even means, but I. I feel so excited about what could happen next. And I think making this film as my first film is completely right, and it feels really, like, cosmic in a few ways. And also, I do look forward to the sort of, like, it's a very personal film and it being like an alien film, like you said. Like, I look forward to seeing how. How to move through, like, a. Like through personal to a different energy of film. But knowing how much work it takes to make a movie now, it really has to be, like, you have to be completely obsessed with the. With what you're working on. And, like, I. I look forward to feeling obsessed like that again. And there's this weird grief of making the movie is over, and I'm like, well, fuck, that was cool. I'd love to make the movie again, because that was, like, way too cool to be real. I can't even believe it's a real job. It's almost, like, funny how awesome it is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you. Have you already started doing whatever would come next?

[Ava Victor]

I don't know. How do you. No, listen, I feel quite exposed. Like, I am sharing this thing, and it's being released from me and given to others, to judges they please. And when I was writing this film, I feel like I was banging on a box of, like, let me out. Like, is anyone listening? And now all I want is my box again. So it's a bit of a, like, Sisyphus thing of, like, I want what I don't have. I want the privacy of writing and no one knowing and the secrecy of crafting something alone, which is when I was doing that. All I wanted was to just make something in community. So I miss the thing and I'm excited to go back to my private zone.

[Sean Fennessy]

What about the sort of. It sounded like the feeling of motivation you were getting after being told no all those times in the lead up to writing this movie. That's over now. At least for now. You won prizes for this movie. This is an acclaimed debut feature film.

[Ava Victor]

You won prizes for this movie. I want a big teddy bear for the movie. That's true. That's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

More than that. More than that. But do you think about how do I conjure the requisite motivation to be underestimated and to show them just the true nature of my creativity?

[Ava Victor]

Yeah, I mean, I haven't really felt any sort of arrival at anything.

[Chris Ryan]

I.

[Ava Victor]

There's so much to say in the world that I feel like I just got to say a little thing and it's like, well, if you want to hear more, I have a lot to say. But, no, I think it. You know, no one knows who I am. I made a very small film. It's coming out the same weekend as F1. Like, I do understand. There's no. My mom's gonna be mad by how much I'm saying. You'll cut them all out, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, you won't.

[Ava Victor]

Okay, then I'll work on it privately. Right now. I'll censor.

[Sean Fennessy]

Please don't censor.

[Ava Victor]

It's a weird thing. I don't understand who the film is reaching. I get a sense of it when I'm at a screening. But no, I also think people sometimes want you to make the thing they've seen you make. Like, make comedy videos. No one wanted me to make a movie. They were like, we don't want to do that. We want you to make, like, a version of comedy videos that makes everyone more money. Not my people, but people I'd meet with. And it. It sort of making another movie is about kind of starting from scratch and making the kind of movie you haven't made yet. It's almost like doing a whole new thing. You understand some things about making a film, but other things, because it's a different film are completely new. And it's almost like you have to make it your first film again. And so it never feels like any. It hasn't I haven't felt, like, any sort of arrival or, like, understanding of how to do this. It doesn't feel easy or anything.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you feel, like, any pressure to capitalize this and make more money? That's something I'm always interested in with independent filmmakers. Like, do I have to scrape and claw? So many filmmakers that are in the position that you're in at this exact moment would, like, at least in the last 10 years, like, take a Jurassic park movie, you know what I mean, and just be like, yeah, I'm porting over my Sundance success to join a huge franchise. I'm not suggesting you're going to do that, but I think a lot of times that's informed by, I was broke Till I was 37, and now I need to buy a house if I want to have a family. That sort of thing. You know what I mean? Totally.

[Ava Victor]

It's weird how money works. It's weird how you can make a film like this and it takes five years every day of your life, and then you do something for one day, and it makes, like, five times as much. Like, I don't. It's very interesting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are you a professional assassin or something? What do you. What are you. What's that other thing you're referring to?

[Ava Victor]

You can kill someone. More money than that. No, like, seriously sounding totally scary as I'm saying that. No, I think. Although I would love to, I feel a bit spoiled in a way that, like, honestly, my film got. It was bought at Sundance for. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say the amount, but, like, much more than it was made for, and that's very rare. And, you know, I was on a TV show a few years ago, and that has been carrying me through. Like, the money I made on that has been carrying me through making this film.

[Sean Fennessy]

And you're good on that TV show. I watched that TV show, Billions. Yeah, that was good.

[Ava Victor]

Thank you. Thank you. I was a genius on the show. I remember every word I said before the table because I didn't know what anything meant. And then I one time watched a video of someone doing, like, data, like, doing day trading to just see how their fingers moved on the computer. Like, I. I seriously can't believe I got that part. Bless up.

[Sean Fennessy]

I bought it. It worked.

[Ava Victor]

Thank you. But, yeah, I think I feel kind of spoiled that I got to make something in a very uncompromised way, and I got to do that because I was on, like, a big TV show and could spend those years making it the way I wanted to and didn't have to, like, trade vision for money. And I feel wary of, you know, I. I don't want to do something I don't love, but life is, you know, expensive. So I. I do. I have questions about that.

[Sean Fennessy]

So you will continue to kill, is what you're saying?

[Ava Victor]

I will kill. And I will be in Jurassic park once they invite me and direct it and write it.

[Sean Fennessy]

That sounds great. I look forward to that so bad.

[Ava Victor]

I actually cannot fathom that. But they have one out now, and so that is probably the one that they should have made, because they did. I watched Jurassic park recently, the first one, and I was like, this is a really good movie with the, like, the orb, the golden amber stuff. I was like, I get this. This is cool.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's fantastic. Yeah, the first one is great. Everything after that, you know, debatable.

[Ava Victor]

I don't know because I have not seen it yet, but I will, due to what we're talking about.

[Sean Fennessy]

You have a lot of research to do before you get that gig. I wish you well. Ava, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, is it over? It's about to be. Well, I mean, if you want to keep going, we can, but I feel like I'm boring you. I'm getting you into metatextual questions now, and you're like, gotta think about them. Think about your life.

[Ava Victor]

All good.

[Sean Fennessy]

We do end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen. And it does seem like you watch a lot of movies.

[Ava Victor]

I might need my phone.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, are you going to letterbox? What are you doing?

[Ava Victor]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Great. No, I fucking love letterboxd.

[Ava Victor]

Well, I don't know if I want to say that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Say what?

[Ava Victor]

Okay, I'll say this. Like, two days ago, I saw 28 years later in the theater. It's so good. And I cried in a way that I have not cried at a movie in since Twisters, and that actually makes me cry a lot. And that movie is so good. Jodie Comer is so good. And I think it's Aaron Taylor Johnson, I want to say.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's correct.

[Ava Victor]

Best work to date. And he's very good in it. And I was very moved by the story and many of the visuals, and I liked the score. I thought it was sick, and I liked that they weren't apologetic. Oh, sinners, too. Okay. Since sinners, I didn't cry at sinners, but I felt a lot of stuff, so I guess that's all I have to say.

[Sean Fennessy]

Those are my two favorite movies of the year. So good on you.

[Ava Victor]

They're so good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, they're both so good. Mine and yours. Yes. Well, I wasn't going to say that to your face.

[Ava Victor]

Right. Well, don't mind it. I will definitely pry and ask if it is.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it is.

[Ava Victor]

I mean, honestly, Sinners got me good and I didn't even know anything going into it, which was cool.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's the best way to see it and basically everything. You're a person of taste, I want to say.

[Ava Victor]

I think, because I said 28 years later in Sinners, which are the two top movies of the whole entire year.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, you know, the truth is the truth. That's how I feel about it.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I agree with the people.

[Sean Fennessy]

The people are right. And you're right. Congratulations on your first film. I think it's really good and I can't wait to see what you do next.

[Ava Victor]

Thank you. Thank you so much. This was so nice.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thanks to Ava Victor. Thanks to cr. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. We'll see you later this week for a very patriotic episode of 25 for 25. Number 16 should be fun. We'll see you then. Sa.