Jungle Cruise (2021) and Disneys Revelation of the Method (They lie and take your money)

➡ This text is a conversation about the Disney Jungle Cruise ride and its related movie. The speakers discuss their experiences with the ride, changes made to it over the years, and their thoughts on the Jungle Cruise movie. They also touch on the portrayal of Germans in the film and the confusion around its release date due to the pandemic.
➡ The text discusses a movie that the author didn’t enjoy much due to poor CGI, green screen scenes, and a plot that seemed forced and unoriginal. The author criticizes the casting of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the forced love interest storyline. They also compare the movie to others like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Lost City”, and express disappointment over the movie’s lack of originality and quality. The author ends by questioning a possible censorship in the movie.
➡ The text discusses the unpredictability of movie ratings and how they can impact a film’s reception. It also talks about the production process of the movie “Jungle Cruise”, including its initial development in 2004 and the decision to make it a 3D film. The text also critiques the film’s soundtrack, comparing it to the work of John Williams and suggesting it may be overly derivative.
➡ The text discusses a movie that seems to be based on a Disney attraction, with a soundtrack that isn’t considered the best. The movie, possibly Jungle Cruise, involves a search for a magical flower that can cure any disease and break any curse. The main characters, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, are on a quest to find this flower, which leads to various adventures and a happy ending. The text also mentions the filming location, Atlanta, and the use of green screens, as well as the trend of filming in different locations based on tax cuts.
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, where he plays a tour guide in a dangerous jungle. The movie combines elements from various genres, including adventure, mafia, and horror. Despite its high budget, the movie didn’t perform well at the box office. The text also discusses the casting choices and suggests that Johnson might have been miscast in his role.
➡ The text discusses a movie where Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays a 400-year-old character who is cursed and bound to a river. The movie includes elements of fantasy, such as a conquistador fused with honeybees and a character who is half made out of honey. The text also mentions a subplot about a conquistador seeking a magical flower to cure his sick daughter. However, the text criticizes the movie for its lack of originality and its confusing rules about the main character’s curse.
➡ The text discusses a movie that initially seemed promising but ended up being disappointing. The movie, which features Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, starts off well but fails to maintain interest, with nothing noteworthy happening for a significant portion of its duration. The text also mentions that the movie is filled with clichés and seems designed to make money rather than provide a compelling story. Despite watching the movie recently, the authors found it forgettable and had to reread the plot summary multiple times to remember it.
➡ The text discusses a conversation about various movies, including Tomorrowland, Pirates of the Caribbean, Country Bears, and Mission to Mars. The speakers share their opinions and ratings for these films, with Country Bears being a favorite due to its unique weirdness. They also discuss the poor CGI in Jungle Cruise and the character portrayal in the movie. The conversation ends with a mention of Emily Blunt’s performances in different films.
➡ This text discusses various podcasts, including Paranoid American, which features interviews with a diverse range of people and covers a variety of topics. It also mentions a comic called “Never a Straight Answer” about Stanley Kubrick directing the Apollo space missions. The text ends with a rap verse, possibly lyrics from a song.

Everything that you see wants to kill you and can. I’m pretty sure that’s from the ride. People say that on the ride though. That’s just Florida. Ask about Illuminati sister charting. Is it Disney mind control. Is this MK Ultra Go Disney. We go from meal to me program. No more feel. Cook is there. Ask about to move. Teacher call to everybody. A co business. A wish upon a star. A con Disney, you know, got to just find. Oh, a con. Welcome to the Occult Disney podcast. We’re going down the river looking for all the weirds, mysteries and mice alongside.

It’s the Jungle Cruise today. Is Matt here? Over there it’s paranoid American. You cruising? I don’t think there’s any mice in this entire movie. Are there, Are there mice? I just, I tend to mention Mickey or mouses or mice or something a lot in these. So I felt like I needed to reference. I mean you could see a mouse do it. Mice in the jungle. Jungle mice. Rats. They gotta have some kind of rat, right? Jungle rats. It sounds like a thing. Jungle rat sounds like a thing. Mickey rat. Okay. You can look for Mickey Rat on the Jungle Cruise.

The ride, I’m pretty sure just. Well, it probably is a hidden Mickey. I’m sure it has a hidden Mickey. I’m not quite sure where to look for that, but you know, probably has one somewhere. So. Yeah, let’s start. We’re doing ride based movies. This is the last of them. We’ve done the park now as far as the cinema is concerned. Did you. The Jungle Cruise is still open at Walt Disney World. It’s the river’s America. That’s closed. Jungle Cruise is still there. It’s still there. It’s one of the rides that I just never consider going on whenever I go.

Interesting. So you did not ride it last time? No, I haven’t. I haven’t ridden Jungle Cruise since I think I was a. A little baby. Have they made cool changes in Florida? I ride it probably every other time. If I’m. If I’m at the park all day, I’ll ride the Jungle Cruise. If I’m just there for like the evening ticket, probably not, but one. It’s kind of fun to hear someone in Japanese doing the spiel, right? Like the. Because they’re supposed to be mildly joking and stupid. And I was. I ended up like right next to the guy.

Last time I wrote, I was in the front of the boat, the bow of the boat there. Let’s use some proper termin terminology. So, you know, I gave him a Good job on the way out, he was doing a good job. He was, like, really hyper and weird. So that’s what you want on the jungle cruise. At least in Tokyo. You go into the temple now and there’s, like, this projection mapping thing. Not completely unlike the stuff you would get the end of this movie in the climax. Except I think it’s based on the monkey God or an elephant God, or maybe it changes gods.

I feel like the first one I wrote a year ago is a monkey God, and then when I wrote more recently, is an elephant God. So maybe you get a different God depending on which boat you’re on. That’d be kind of fun. Kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy. Music changes up at each time. But in the jungle cruise, you get a different pagan tribal God. But anyway, the projection matching mapping room there is a draw for me. So that’s why I will ride at least Tokyo’s jungle cruise. I don’t know what the Florida one’s doing.

I guess you don’t either, so I don’t know either. And the truth is, I’m in Florida already for the last decade plus, and I don’t need to go on a jungle cruise. If I wanted a jungle cruise, I would just go to Gatorland or something. I want to. I want to go to the future, or I want to go to the past, or I want to go to outer space or somewhere other than Florida. And the jungle cruise just reminds me I’m in Florida. You want to see some guys wrestling? Wrestling gators. That’s right, wrestling. When I was growing up in the south, there are a few words where the Southern pronunciation and the real word.

For years, I thought they were different words. I thought wrestling and wrestling were two different things. And wrestling is, like, in the dirt and everyone’s got their shirts off, right? That’s wrestling and then wrestling as, you know, like the sport or the. So they are two different things. Yeah, I guess they are. Might involve a ladder and jumping off a roof. And wrestling probably doesn’t involve either of those things. Okay, so those are different things. The other one that took me, like, decades to figure out that this was the same word was a horse and house.

So I thought horse was something different. Probably because of Dukes of Hazard. They got boss hog. Right. I think horse is different. Okay, well, there’s another one, but. But that is supposed to be a horse, right? Is that, like a mangy horse? I don’t. I don’t know, man. I’m. I mean, hoss is a nickname for a Human. And I’m. And I’m pretty sure that it does not just mean horse. Yeah, okay, see, now you’re reopening my, my, my. Barrels of confusion on this. So maybe, okay, maybe I’m not stupid. Maybe these are all different words. So, I mean, you could still be stupid.

I could still be stupid, but these could be different words. So the Jungle Cruise movie, which kind of doesn’t exist, I think. Did you know this existed, the movie itself? I actually think I might have seen this before. Oh, really? Okay, so you’re on tap there. Here’s why you’re saying might, though, because you’re thinking, like, well, it’s easy to cross wires with this. And, like, at least from the posters, it’s easier crosswise with this and those last two Jumanji movies also starring, you know, Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Right. A little bit. Although I actually like those movies.

Don’t hate me. But in this one, there was a. I’ve heard people talk them up. So, yeah, there was a very specific scene where he’s fighting this tiger, and you can kind of tell that him and the tiger are, like, running this con on everyone, that they know each other. And pun not intended. Con. Right. Because Khan was also a jungle. Anyways, but once I saw that scene, I saw it again when I was watching it for the show, and I remembered that part. I remembered how Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Normally in every Disney movie, you’ve got a princess that can speak to the animals, Right.

That they’ve got this, like this green thumb or a green tongue that lets them commune with nature. And in this movie, it’s actually Dwayne the Rock Johnson that has that ability. He’s the Disney princess. I like that. Dwayne the Rock Johnson. And we’re just going to keep calling him that, aren’t we? He’s the Disney princess. I like that. And as I’m watching this, too, it’s. This is a movie about Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Mary Poppins and Nazi Todd from Breaking Bad. And if you watch it with those lens, this is a way better movie. Yeah, that was a weird thing because our antagonists are Germans and they’re trying to, I guess, go for the Indiana Jones.

The Raiders are lost, right? Yeah, but it’s. It’s 1916, so they can’t. They’re not Nazis. They’re. I mean, you know, I guess we did have World War II and stuff, but still, they’re trying to make them Nazis, and they’re not. They’re not Nazis, you know, they’re not. They’re not. They’re not Nazis. Yeah, not, not. Not Nazis. I mean, give them 20 years. I don’t know what party affiliation they have, but in this movie, there was something else I watched recently where it was like that vintage. It was like, too early for. For that, but they were still trying to cast the Germans in that mold, you know? So I.

I guess it’s just like, if you want villainous Germans, that’s what you’re gonna do. Even if the. If it’s an anachronism. Oh. Especially if you don’t show a swastika. If. If you just give them a German accent and you give them some, like, gold sort of, you know, lapels or something, like little shoulder treatment and make them angry, then. Yeah, weird submarine vibe. And it’s. And it’s weird too now, right? Because, I mean, even for us growing up watching cartoons, you’d be like, this. The German guys, these militant German guys always seem to be like the big baddies, right? And then you learn later on in school, or maybe, or maybe not, and then you’re like, oh, that’s why.

And that trope is just gonna, like, continue in existence for the next few generations, at least. The other thing is, this came out in the summer of 2021, which was a time when people were still confused. If movies were out coming out, they’d already come out. They came out five years ago. It’s just 2021 was the worst time to put out your movie, Right. So I feel like this one just kind of got quickly swept under the rug. I’m looking here. It’s like there’s still sequel Talk as of October 2022, but I feel like that’s wishful thinking.

I don’t know if the world needs it. I honestly don’t know if the world needed the last 40 minutes of this movie, let alone a whole nother one. Yeah, the thing that pretty well turned me off on the entire film was I know there were no animals harmed in the making of this movie. You know, that’s what turned you off. You wanted us. You wanted to watch Holy Mountain, basically. No, I’m just saying that the. The CGI animals in this were so crappy looking, I could not quite get into the movie. There are periods I might have gotten in the movie.

And then the freaking leopard is a leopard or a tiger. I felt like a leopard shows up again, you know, whatever. And honestly, for me, it was that. But also, there’s a few green screen scenes in here. That you can just see. Yeah. And they stand out like a sore thumb. So it felt like it’s a high budget company but a low budget production. But I mean, what did all the money go towards? Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Mary Poppins and Nazi Todd, apparently, because it claims a budget of 200 million with a box office of 220, meaning flop.

But again, what does that mean? Especially for movies in 2020 and 2021. Right. So maybe that’s why they’re so wishfully thinking about a sequel or whatever. But yeah, I felt like I was answering your question and sidetracked myself by saying the same thing twice. I do think that this one is a little bit more occult on the surface that most Disney movies end up being and that it’s a little bit. This is going to be weird. Self aware, but not in a good way. Like, it knows it’s a Disney movie and it knows that it can break the rules.

And it’s not necessarily doing any of this for your benefit or for a good movie. But it does show that, like, we know that we’re casting spells. We know that we’re just dropping cheap jokes in the middle of this movie for cheap laughs. Like, they kind of know that it’s just corporate slop, but they’re not embarrassed to let you know that they know. Yeah, it’s like, let’s make the music sound a lot like John Williams. Okay. That’s. They’re doing that. Let’s have some Indiana Jones stuff in here. Let’s have. Have the. The Emily Blunt’s brother look vaguely like Brendan Fraser.

Frazier. Frazier. I can. I can’t say his name the right way. I can only say it the wrong way. From the Mummy, it’s Brandon Frazier. We get to decide. He doesn’t get. We get. He doesn’t get to decide. You know what? Look at my name. Look at my family name. I’ve decided that however people want to say, it’s probably fine if I can understand what they’re saying. So I will take eight pronunciations of my last name. So if Brendan has a problem with me saying Frazier, okay. The thing that bugs me is I can’t say it the right way.

Frazier. I can’t do it the way that Frazier. We outnumber him. He doesn’t dictate how we pronounce his name. There’s too many of us that say Frazier based on. You know what I mean? Like, he’ll just never win. It’s a fight you’ll never win. Yeah. Just. No, it’s the fact that I can’t pronounce it. Like last week I had a class of like 6, 6 year olds all rolling their tongues. I forget what the vocabulary word was but. And I cannot roll my tongue at all. I cannot do it. So they’re like, hahaha, Matt’s joking that he can’t do it.

I’m like no, Matt actually can’t do this. It’s not like you’re teaching them how to, to speak or anything. No, not. And nothing to do with language when you’re talking. What’s a rodeo? Rodeo. See, I cannot roll my Rs. Can you roll your Rs? I can, yeah, like burrito. There we. Oh that, that was actually the vocabulary word burrito. Yeah, it was, it was food in the lesson. So it was burrito. And they were nine, not six. Okay. Memories coming back. Jungle Cruise not so memory coming back. This is, this is a film I’m mostly going to forget.

And I’ll again, if I think about it, I’ll probably think of Jumanji, won’t I? Well here, like I was saying, it was self aware. Here’s a really great analogy that the Rock in this movie, he, he is the Jungle Cruise. Like literally you, you pay him money and he takes you on this cruise. And his Jungle Cruise is a huge scam. It’s engineered second to second have been calculated on how to make you get a certain impression just to ultimately extract as much money as possible from you. And he knows that the people that get scared, he can extract more money from them because they’ll pay him to drive faster or go certain way.

And then at the end of the experience he knows how to like play the heartstrings. And he’s got the poor kid missing a leg or whatever begging for money on the way out. And he’s getting all these tips. So. So the entire Jungle Cruise is all fabricated. Like none of the danger is real whatsoever. And it kind of like lets you role play and go through these emotions just to make a buck off of you. Which is the real Jungle Cruise ride at Disney World. And it’s basically just the Disney company personified or whatever the personification version of a dark ride would be.

And that’s the things in this movie I like the most. Although I would also throw out that Dwayne the Rock Johnson is kind of weird casting for the role. Like, I don’t know, I think of a Jungle Cruise operator is kind of like a, a spry, wiry person, which the Rock is. The Rock is You know, he’s in that Schwarzenegger realm where it’s like, this person scientifically should not be able to exist. Right. Like, when they give him a love interest, I’m like, no, he. Come on. He can’t. The rock. The rock cannot make love. He will crush this woman with his.

With his, you know, the powers of being the rock. Yeah. Honestly, the. The love interest part of this movie only makes sense for the. The, like, the moms that are bringing their kids to watch this movie. And the very end really doesn’t make any sense because we see Mary Poppins basically give up the cure for cancer just so that she can live out the COVID of a romance novel for, like, 15 minutes. And it. And it ends better than that because then they eventually find more of this miracle drug and they get rich off of it like any good capitalist would.

But essentially, she risks it all just to, like, kiss the. The hunk. Right. And that’s it. There’s really no. There’s no chemistry there, and there’s no real reason that the rock needs. And he’s 400 freaking years old. Right. I don’t know. This seems like major daddy issues if you’re going after someone that’s 300 years older than you. Yeah. So movies to compare this with. Well, some of them are very obvious, and we’ve already done that. But when we get, of course, into conquistador stuff, I feel like even with the. The plant taking over the person. Darren Aronofsky’s the Fountain kind of, I think, was more interesting in that regard a little bit.

My comparison was Pirates of the Caribbean. Man. They’re trying to bake that in. It’s like, let’s make these guys look like another Davy Jones. Right. Like, that is crystal clear that they want this to. To take the pirates thing. You know, another thing that maybe where this movie did not sit well with me is maybe like, three months ago we watched this one. Have you seen this one? This is the Lost City with channel tating. Yeah. That kind of does what this movie’s doing. And I thought it was a lot better. Well, because that one wasn’t Disney, and that one was.

Was able to be a lot more adult, I think. Oh, it was. And you mentioned, yeah, mom’s there to watch the love interest. And so that’s. That’s who that movie’s for. That’s. That pushes the romanc. The stone thing. Like, that movie is kind of a rip of Romancing the Stone, but it’s good enough where it’s like, whatever they can do that. It’s been 30 years since romancing the Stone. I got another good example, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t accidentally download the Mormon version of this movie. But there’s a scene when Mary Poppins. And in the movie, her name’s is Lily, but it’s Emily Blunt.

I’m just going to call her Mary Poppins. There’s a scene where Mary Poppins is swinging through the air and. And they zoom into her and there’s this really horrible overdub. And she goes, oh, my gosh. I’m just wondering, did they censor out the word God in this particular scene? Was that. Was. Were they courting, like, the Philippines or. Or some, like, very specific, like, overly Christian market where using the Lord’s name in vain includes saying, oh, my God. And they had to dub it as oh, my gosh. I mean, what if that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back for ratings for some reason, which I don’t see why.

But you know the ratings where it gets weird on you, Right? So there’s no actual standard. You just have to guess what rating they’re going to give you if they don’t like, you have to guess what they didn’t like because they won’t tell you usually. But to contrast these two. Right. Like the one that you just mentioned. What was it called? Lost. Lost Treasure. The Lost City. The Lost City is pg. Harry Potter is a villain in that one, by the way, and he’s great. He’s a villain named. What was Abigail. All the villains have girly names in that.

So that’s kind of funny. What’s the rating on that movie? I don’t think my Japanese Blu Ray is going to tell me, to be honest, but I’m gonna guess pg 13. Okay. Because jungle Cruise is a. Well, I don’t know the Jungle Cruise either because I live in Japan. It seems adjacent, but there’s probably enough scary stuff that it would have to be PG. Okay. Jungle Cruise is PG 13. Okay. That’s interesting. Okay. Man, they. They really. That was wandered the 13 part. Yeah. Lost City, also PG13. So they are at the same. Why would you make the Jungle Cruise and not just go for a PG? Disney Continue that.

PG 13 means at least two F words and one nipple. Right. And if you’re not doing those three things, then you kind of wasted it. Yeah. Yeah. This doesn’t. I guess it’s just the conquistador ghost guys or they’re not ghost. Zombie guys are too creepy. Is that it there’s too many like digital snakes in this movie. That and it’s that the rock has an entire village misappropriating a culture. So maybe that is in itself like saying 2F words and getting Mary Poppins the Flash she wants. Oh yeah, but Disney would do all of the Kippendorf’s tribe jungle to jungle.

They would, you know, completely misappropriate whatever culture they wanted to and it would get like a G rating. Well, no, no, no, no. A jungle. The jungle in 2021 is probably an NC17 rating. That’s on the ADL website. Okay. I am going with the 90s with the rating it got. So. So. Oh, before we get too deep, I’ll do a little of the production stuff. The most interesting thing, of course, this is another like stuck in production hell movie. Right. In December 2004, it was announced that Jungle Cruise would be developed. So took him a while that.

In 2011, it seemed that this was going to be Disney’s live action pairing of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. So they were going to try and like, I guess Toy Story this up a bit and make it the Jungle Cruise. And honestly, I mean, I could see which one is the. The boat pilot in that one. I’m not sure. I guess Hanks. He seems more like. Because I’ve seen Forrest Gump. That’s why I’m thinking of that. Okay. He drives a boat in there, so I don’t know if I would let Forrest Gum drive my boat. He can maybe be on the boat.

Well, he has the only surviving boat after the hurricane. Don’t you remember? You can talk crap out that movie, by the way, as much as you want, but I have seen it several times and, and remember it so. Because you just saw it. It was just on TVs everywhere in the 90s, you know. Do people still think about Forrest Gump much? I feel like the movie we don’t think about much anymore. I mean, generationally. I mean, you’re asking the wrong person because I’m in my 40s too. But yeah, I think about it. I think it was a great.

It was a fantastic movie. It’s a cinematic experience and it’s also one of the most controversial villains in all of cinema. I’d argue at least the just a premise that Jenny might be a bad guy is kind of a hot take and people. And people probably write books about it. Okay, I was processing and before you said Jenny, I did land on Jenny, so I got that. But I guess for 90s good guy or a bad guy or neutral or messed up. She’s chaotic neutral, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, chaotic neutral. That’s what I’m gonna call her.

Okay. But we’re not here to talk about that. And I was just gonna say, I think for my 90s Zemeckis, I’ll easily put contact above it because I like weird space crap. So this movie is loaded with lots of bad puns. And I’m not just. Other than me just saying that, I’m not going to acknowledge any of them because I don’t think. No many of them come directly from ride operators. So the ride is notoriously thick with bad puns. The funny thing is, when they opened the ride in 55, it is a Disneyland original. The animatronics were much crappier, of course, at that time.

I mean, there are no great shakes now compared to some other stuff. But yeah, and then the. The guides were very serious. Like they really take you on a jungle cruise and we really do need to be careful. And somewhere in the early 60s, people are like, you know what? This is more fun if it’s goofy because we’re already going around looking at fake animals. So there. And I don’t know if this was a Metapon, but the rock being a skipper, I just thought that that was kind of some synchronicity there, right? Like a skipping rock.

Oh, okay. I was also working that out. Maybe I’m just not on my A game. I don’t know. Another thing that I noticed almost immediately is that this clearly came out when. And I guess we still are, but to a lesser degree, pushing the 3D cinema. Because there’s a couple scenes in here when you’re going directly towards, say, like a big branch and watching it on just a regular screen. It’s like, I don’t know why they’re giving so much emphasis on this freaking branch. But to me it was clearly like, oh, this is one of those 3D gimmick scenes that you’re in the theater and you see this branch coming at you and you kind of like dip your head out of the way.

But then nobody is in the theater for this one because it was. Because the other one sit like with six empty seats in between you. I’m looking at the poster and I’m not seeing anything that mentions 3D. I’m. I mean, I’m sure at some point someone thought it was going to be in 3D, but I’m not sure. Oh, here we go, the 3D team. Okay, confirmation. Just checking. There’s no way that that scene would have existed if it weren’t to be a 3D gimmick scene. No, I was just wondering in that year if, because of what we were just saying, it did get, you know, not happen in the end.

Even if in production, maybe they’re doing that. My favorite is SCTV. Dr. Tongue. Do you know I’m talking about. No, it’s a John Candy playing like it’s supposed to be like a 50s, you know, 3D horror movie. Like, he’s talking like Peter Laurie and stuff. And just every time it’s like, oh, you have. Just because I got this bug stuff. So I’m like, oh, you have a bug bite. Why don’t you try this? And it has like the music, you know, every like five seconds or something else. It’s just like this super crazy obvious 3D effect.

So what you’re talking about is only like one step better. I think we should get set up for 3D. We should do this show in 3D. Oh, yeah. I just like wave things in front of the camera. That’d be fun. Yeah, why not? Why did I grab that? I could have done that with Godzilla. Godzilla is a much better 3D thing to work with here. We were actually, we were not on this, but we were talking not so long ago about AI Tells. The music for Here is James. Oh, he’s that three name guy. I’m. I’m just going to screw it up.

James Howard something. James Newton Howard did the music. I looked him up halfway through watching this movie because I started to feel like someone just shoved all of John Williams scores into an AI machine. And this score came out. Oh, I don’t know. And there are some of Jane Newton Howard scores I do like. So when I saw his name was there, I was like, oh, ooh. Because I was like, I felt the soundtrack was like overly derivative on this one. Like they were trying way too hard to make it sound like it’s suddenly an Indiana Jones movie.

He could be listening, I don’t know. A valiant try. I think it was a great try. And if you were paying an homage to Indiana Jones, we got it. But yeah, a little on the nose. Okay, well, in that case, King Kong, great soundtrack. Batman Begins, great soundtrack. He did half of the Dark Knight. That’s why I’m saying he’s done lots of real good soundtracks. So I was like, yeah, this is. I’m gonna. The Sixth Sense. I’m gonna call this not one of his best. So sorry, James. I mean, it’s literally a movie designed after one of the, like, C tier Disney attractions.

So I don’t. I don’t know if this is where, like, you pull out all your sleepers. This is. This is the one where you just kind of like grab the notes around the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or there’s the Hans Zimmer approach, where Hans Zimmer basically just has an army of sub composers working for him and doesn’t seem to do much himself. Kind of the Cloud Atlas thing, if you’ve seen that, right? Where you bring in the guy to transcribe and it’s like, hey, what your humming, dude? Just. Just do. Yeah, do the thing you’re humming.

I wrote it. This is like what Michelangelo or like Leonardo da Vinci did, right? You just get like a little army of guys that do your thing and you put your name on it. And I think that that’s how it should be. That was a studio system, right. You know, in the 30s and 40s. And Disney is certainly modern. Disney is certainly trying to at least approximate the studio system in their own way. That’s why. That’s why nobody wants to do something Marvel. Because it’s like, okay, you are now signed on for eight movies. Don’t plan on doing any other movies while you’re doing our eight movies.

That’s the same as the studio system. Oh, some people take it because at least it’s. And then we’re gonna keep you contractually obligated, but not actually shoot any of those other movies. Right. And I. I think it’s even worse with television because it. You know, it’s like two or three years between seasons of things now. So you have these actors that are basically just on call for two or three years and, you know, depending on status, maybe not getting paid for it either. Right. Or not being paid well. So I don’t think Jungle Cruise has to worry about that.

No, I. I don’t think so. I think they got in, made the movie, got out. And I did notice they did some locations, although it said they built limited sets and then did the rest with cgi, which is a sentence I never like to see. Also, they shot a fair amount of it in Atlanta. I’m from Atlanta, one of the main third rail studios. I think they’ve changed the name, but that’s like a. That’s like 2km from the house I grew up in. But when I see something shot in Atlanta now, I’m like, oh, no. The construction they did here was constructing a green screen in the studio.

And then the rest of It. Get ready for green screens is what I tend to read when I see they’re shooting in Atlanta now. The, the studio near my parents house, they did just build a backlot, but I, I feel like filming in Atlanta is getting less popular now. Am I wrong? I mean, I don’t like Atlanta at all. So. Okay, it was. Well, it was Wilmington for a while, North Carolina. Some notable movies filmed there are the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the Crow. So there were like some pretty major movies shot in, in Wilmington.

Especially if they have a little more of an indie edge like the two I just mentioned. You know, it shifts around based on tax cuts and. Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. Yeah, I feel like the wheel is turning to wherever the next spot is because it was Vancouver for a really long time, Atlanta for a long time, Wilmington. It’s weird to look at how many movies were actually shot there in the early 90s. So I guess people in 20 years are going to look at Atlanta, be like, oh my God, all this was shot there on green screens.

I mean, Disney has the money that they could have done this all on location if they really wanted to. Right? Or let’s take a movie like the African Queen, obviously. Another. I mean, they’re basically dressing Rock the Rock the Dwayne Johnson. They’re dressing him up like Humphrey Bogue. Like a. He’s like in a Humphrey Bogart like Halloween costume through the whole movie, you know. Well, he, he’s wearing clothes that were never made for someone of his size ever. Yeah, everything he’s wearing does look slightly too small. Maybe they just don’t make clothes in his size. That might be part of the problem.

That’s, it’s a, it’s a deep like like back world story. Like he actually can’t find clothes that fit him, but they just don’t acknowledge it in the movie because it’s part of his backstory. Well, part of his backstory. And I, I guess we start doing the plot here or I just start talking about the end of the movie as I was about to start doing. Yeah, I mean the, the. Okay, so the plot’s pretty basic. That Conquistadors. And this was based on like an actual backstory. Right. But like one of these conquistadors, they’re looking for this hidden treasure, El Dorado, essentially.

And as they’re looking for it, they, they hear that there’s now this tree. And this almost reminds me of. Was it Rapunzel? I think it was a Rapunzel movie. I Have a note very early on about, oh, because they got the flower that. It’s a flower that can cure any disease and it can break any curse. And then if you just get a single petal of this flower, it can just cure everything. So they’re in search of this. This special plant, the special tree for essentially everlasting life and riches. And yada, yada, yada. They find a native tribe.

The native tribe has this special arrowhead that kind of acts like a magic compass that’ll bring you to this tree. And the conquistadors get impatient and they try and steal this arrowhead, which ends up cursing them. So the vines from the. The Amazon basically come out and. And they attack them and they all get dragged into the jungle, and the jungle consumes everybody, and they turn them into like, a honey conquistador. And there’s a mud conquistador. And there’s like, a few different variations of these different conquistador guys. Weird green glop conquistador. Weird green glob version of one, right? They all have, like, these different, like, variations, and they’re essentially now cursed in part of this jungle.

And. And they are also searching for this arrowhead. Everyone’s searching for this arrowhead. Well, Mary Poppins finds. She finds the arrowhead, but she’s kind of this girl boss, Indiana Jones, and she teams up with Dwayne the Rock Johnson, and he’s this kind of con artist. And they basically decide they’re going to heal the world with an illegal drug smuggling expedition. And towards the end of the movie, they find the magical flower that can cure the world. But instead of curing the world, she gives it to Dwayne the Rock Johnson because he turns into a statue and then he comes back to life and they kiss the end.

And they get rich at the end because they find another form of the flower, which feels kind of tacked on. It was kind of like, oh, they just added that so that this is like a happy story. But they don’t necessarily describe what happens there. Like, how do they go from the tree is dead to. To now the trees alive again? Or was it true love? Was it like the magical kiss of Mary Poppins? See the Last Crusade. Does that be. Well, right where they. He. They do lose the treasure. And it’s emotionally satisfying for the movie, right where here it just would have been like, well, she wasted that flower.

I mean. Well, I mean, Wayne the. Wayne the Dwarak, turn his name into weird things. By the end of this, I like Rock the Dwayne Johnson. I do too, but I was the Dwark. I think it was saying something like that, which is fun. But yeah, if she uses the flower, he comes back. It’s like, that’s nice. He’s not dead, but you are. Like, whereas the Last Crusade’s a great ending, they ride off into the sunset, blah, blah. And then they made two more movies for some reason. But yeah, like you said, my first note here is we both just went way too complicated and invoked Rapunzel.

That’s my very first note. Second scene where we’re in London, which interestingly, they wanted to focus on summer London. The filmmaker said that London’s always like. It’s like winter, damp and cool London. So they won summer London. But that’s the Atlantis scene, right? That’s Milo trying to present his ideas to the. The society or whatever. And I think Atlantis might do summer London too, come to think of it. So it’s just there’s so many weird, like, things that are like five writers on this movie. That’s a bad sign as well. So, yeah, this just feels like the most committing movie possible to me.

It’s very formulaic. It is like the going through MK Ultra programming. They go through this, like, very specific formula. Now this happens. Now this happens. Now this happens. One of the coolest parts of this movie is that when he. When Rock the Dwayne Johnson is giving this jungle cruise to a whole bunch of bumpkins, right? A bunch of tourists that paid all this extra money, they’re kind of falling for it. And he’s part of the movie that. That there. Everything here is dangerous. He has this quote, know this about the jungle. Everything that you see wants to kill you and can.

I’m pretty sure that’s from the ride. People say that on the ride, though. That’s just Florida. Is Australia worse than Florida for that? I feel like Australia is the place where everything really does want to kill you. Fair enough. But in Florida, the humans also want to kill you more so than Australians. And our humans are on bath salts. So even if they don’t normally want to kill you, they have this extra incentive, which I wouldn’t expect an Australian to have putting a fosters in a mate. Right after he says that, he mentions that, oh, watch out.

That’s the poisonous angel trumpet, which is the Torah, which is not necessarily something you would touch and get poisoned from, but it is an incredibly powerful psychedelic. So actually I. This is your personal homework. I want you to watch a video by the Cosmic psychos called we haven’t cursed this podcast, I guess I’ll keep it clean. It’s called FWIT City, right. Which my Aussie friend says that is, that is Australia. So check that out if you want that vibe. Very weird. Not derivative of anything. Except for we have another actor that just kind of pops in here and underutilized Paul Giamatti, who is.

Oh yeah, I forgot he was in it already. He starts out kind of as a mafioso a little bit, but then at the end of the movie, he is completely demasculated. Like he, I don’t, I don’t know exactly what happens to him, but when we start out, he’s a big bad, he’s like a bad guy that, that Dwayne the Rock Johnson is in all this debt to. And he’s having a dodge him and he’s like scared of this guy. He’s got all this weight. And then at the end he just kind of very pacified and like moves out of the way for him.

Do you think they’re just doing more Bogart movies and kind of like doing a this will be the, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Casablanca sort of stuff? Maybe. I mean, I think that this movie does a little bit of everything. It does. Mary Poppins is in it. It’s got the German Nazi sort of angle. It’s got the Indiana Jones angle. It’s got an Italian mafia boss angle. So I went to the Pirates gift store and saw what was selling best that particular week. They’re just trying to put together a whole bunch of little things that work in other properties and then combine them all in the one spot here.

And I mean, well, you tell me, man. Was this a profitable movie? Did this make money? No. 200 million budget, 220 box offices. And it was streaming probably like the day it came out. Right? That’s why I’m saying it’s hard to say how successful this movie was because as pandemic movies, it’s really like, did it come out properly? Did it play in a theater? Did Netflix just crap it out one day? You know, I, I, I will keep referencing this one too. David Fincher’s the Killer is an amazing movie that just does barely exists because it was not ever released properly.

So there’s some diamonds in the rough we’re all going to be discovering in the next 10 years or so. Probably Jungle Cruise, probably not one of them. This makes me want to watch many other better movies in the end. You know, I do like Dwayne the Rock Johnson screen presence. I enjoy it. I will watch dumb movies like San Andreas to see him, so I still enjoy him. Although I would say he is pretty horribly miscast in this. It just doesn’t make sense in this role at all. Yeah, I think we’re far enough in that we could just say, like, I don’t really recommend this one, but we’re here to do more of an occult breakdown, less of a movie review.

So, like, there is stuff to talk about for sure. You definitely don’t need to watch this for entertainment value. And if you wanted to watch this to get some kind of a cult reading out of it, we’ll give it all to you. I think one of the main ones, again, is this archetype of Dwayne the Rock Johnson being this kind of con man. And the fact that we’ve got this, like, white savior Indiana Jones lady versus the evil meth Nazi, and the fact that they mentioned this, the Torah, as the very first time that he breaks character and he lets you know, like, hey, I’m a con man.

All this stuff is dangerous. Wink, wink. By the way, that’s a hallucinogenetic drug that we just passed by there. So I like this. As I’m watching this, I’m just wondering that maybe this movie should have came with, like, little hits of the Torah, little like Angel Trumpet you do on the way into the cinema. And that’s how you were originally supposed to watch this. Oh, you said you just went to Epic Universe and did you ride the monsters ride? Yeah, one of the better rides. Yeah. And I, I, of course not been on it, but I was.

I was hearing people talk about Victoria Frankenstein being kind of refreshing because instead of being like, like, this movie has extreme girl boss energy, right? I think she’s fine, fine in the movie, but Victoria Frankenstein just being unhinged and nuts more than like a girl boss, which they’re like, you know, it’s nice that that ride lets. It’s like, oh, women can be completely insane and unhinged too. Yeah, we all. We honestly need more female sort of like horror unhinged movies. And this one’s a little bit weird. Like, she’s technically the lead. Kind of like how Keira Knightley is the lead of the Pirates movies.

But, you know, it’s got to be the weird, quirky guy. So in the Pirates movie, it’s Johnny Depp, right? Who’s never. He’s not the romantic interest, right? He’s. That’s for Orlando Bloom or whatever. Whereas this one is like, when did Johnny Depp start getting into public image Trouble. That was 2019, because he, you know, kind of derailed the Fantastic Beast franchise, which wasn’t that great to start with. I’m sort of wondering Joaquin Phoenix killed or not Phoenix. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I’m thinking if this movie was their hope, to kind of use all that indie Diana Jones DNA, all that pirates DNA in here.

Everyone still loves the Rock, so maybe we can shift over and make the Jungle Cruise a franchise. I mean, because Pirates of the Caribbean was a dumb ride before the first movie. A dumb ride. I love, just to be clear. But more than the Jungle Cruise. But they’re both dumb rides. So the fact. Oh, you can’t do it as a Jungle Cruise. Why not? You do with pirates. You know, the difference, though, I think, is that Johnny Depp being a con man, it’s like you rap Scallion. You, Aisha attawearing like, you’re such a rap scallion. Johnny Depp.

When Dwayne the Rock Johnson does it, it’s kind of annoying because he also has this, like, Captain America essence to him. Right. Like, how could you. Right. Speaking of that, though, again, Chris Evans eats a baby in Snowpiercer. So, I mean. Yeah, that’s one of the redeeming qualities of his character in that movie too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s an emotional scene. But again, just miscast. Who would you cast as this character instead of Dwayne the Rock Johnson? You need some. I mean, you do need. Well, the. The thing is Gary Oldman, every time. But could he be a conquistador? Gary old, mature.

I’m not. I’m not poo pooing that idea. But they have to look a little Spanish, I guess. Hey, Banderas, could he pull this off? Does Dwayne the Rock Johnson look Spanish kind of. No, he’s not. He’s Samoan. Yeah, but one of the. I think one of the things that has made him a superstar is he does have just like. Like everybody’s ethnicity vibe. Right. Like anything you think of. It’s like. Well, it does kind of look like that. You know, I got the perfect person, man. Johnny Depp. Right. But they had Pirates. They had Depp. And this is the.

We’ve hit the depth wall in 2020, so I don’t think the depth wall exists, man. He might be back, but we’ll see. Also, I. Could they have made another Pirates movie? Because those definitely. I mean, you said you only saw the first two. I only saw the first three. There’s five of them. Most people really quit caring by 4 and 5. I think. I think at that point it’s a sunken cost fallacy. Pun not intended, but I’ll retroactively intend it. Yeah. So. And, and I didn’t see anything in the production that specifically stated that this was their intent to reignite that sort of franchise, but certainly feels like, it feels like a failure at that.

So. Yeah, I mean, what’s, what’s the difference between a zombie pirate and a zombie conquistador? Maybe like 200 years and armor versus non armor. And these guys look more like you’re tripping on ayahuasca. Right. Because they’re in the jungle and stuff. So, yeah, I did, I did really like the idea of the conquistador that somehow fused with honeybees and he’s kind of half made out of honey. And it did remind me there are some pretty interesting backstories of, of people in certain cultures that will preserve themselves in honey naturally and they will slowly kill themselves. They’ll kind of like slowly embalm themselves in honey in order to reach some sort of everlasting state.

And I doubt that that’s where the movie character was supposed to be making a reference to, but I totally connected those dots in my head. Well, was it in the Tibetan thing with the rainbow body? Is that sort of the same idea? Exactly, one of the same ideas, yeah. That you’ll slowly start changing your diet so that you will preserve your body sometimes from the inside out until you just die. But you just die and just look like a piece of beef jerky, essentially. Or in this case, you’d, I guess you would like die and kind of look like beef jerky coated in honey.

Just to rewind about two minutes. The other thing, because with Dwayne the Rock Johnson running the scam and stuff, is like, you say he’s like 400 years old, which it seems like, you know, stealing candy from a baby if, if a 400 year old man is running cons against tourists, you know? Well, I mean, essentially he is a combination of Bill Murray and Groundhog Day and Lestat in Interview with a Vampire. Right. And, and like, that was the first thing I thought of too, when he mentions that he’s 400 years old and you’ve got Mary Poppins falling in love with this 400 year old cursed entity.

Conquistador. That kind of just sounds like vampire, right? Like what, what other fictional characters do you hear? Like, oh, yeah, by the way, I’m 400 years old. You’re just like, okay, cool, I get that. Like this Pretty much exclusive. The vampires and vampires are also very much like these romance novel kind of dynamics. So I feel that as soon. As soon as he mentions he’s 400, you’re like, he’s the love interest. Also like a vampire, you know, got to stay out of the sunlight. Unless it’s. It’s Twilight vampires, then you twinkle. But he’s. He’s. He’s connected to the river.

Like, he can’t. Is it like the Haunted Mansion rule? Like, he can go a little way, but he’s got to come back real quick, his feet wet, that sort of thing? It’s part of the curse that he’s under, is that he’s not allowed to leave the river. He’s bound to the river. Right. So I was just like, he’s on a boat, so he’s out of the river when he does that. I mean, theoretically, he’s dry on a boat in the river. I feel like you’re still in the river. He built a town next to the river.

I assume he’s. He’s in the town a bit. I mean, so let’s just say the curse didn’t come with like, an exact radius chart. Okay. I was just curious because we did the Haunted Mansion where they, like, the kid could go to school for the day, but by the end of the day, the hitchhiking ghosts are dragging them back. Right. Okay. Yeah. How far does this go? Like, for example, the path of a river can change over the course of 400 years. So does that mean that if he sets up shop and then the river shifts a little bit, like, he has to leave whatever little town he set up and he’s got to move because the river moved.

Let’s take back in Ponyo, where the. The. The dad had been a human who became like, what, a water magician, whatever. And when he does come online, he’s just gotta sit there spraying himself because he can’t be dry anymore. He. He was a gay ocean wizard. That’s what he was. Yeah. So anyway, that one. That makes sense. Those rules make sense in a much weirder movie than this one. The rules in this movie don’t make sense. But again, if. I guess if you’re going into a jungle cruise, ride the movie and expecting some sort of cohesive system of physics and like time, space, continuum, then you’re in the wrong movie.

Yeah, it’s kind of like. I guess that’s another thing where they’re like, they did tonally change pirates, so they’re like, it’s probably fine to tonally change the Jungle Cruise. But it’s, it’s those ride operators, right, the tour guides that just make the ride per. On purpose. Intentionally dumber. And I feel like if you’re trying to make a cool Jungle Cruise movie, you know, missed the point. This is, this is one of those movies too. Soon as it started, my eye looks immediately at the, the runtime and I’m like, oh, I didn’t like that. Does this need to be 2 hours and 14 minutes or whatever? It was.

And it didn’t. And I think that the, the peak of this movie really was the very beginning when yeah, the Rock is giving this, this Jungle Cruise to all these rich people and he’s kind of like scamming them out of their money. I could have just watched him do that to like four or five different groups of tourists and this probably wouldn’t have been a better movie than the girl boss Indiana Jones that it’s kind of tries to be towards the end. Yeah, I know, it’s like you can always, I mean Jungle Cruise, I guess it promises you a temple, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t need that stuff to speak of really.

So they do miss the points. And I mean all, none of them can be a straight one to one thing. Weirdly, Tower of Terror seemed to be closest to the ride, you know, which was, was the first of them. So maybe they’re like, don’t make sure to make it like the ride. Country Bears got things a little wrong in terms of music, but I otherwise quite like that one. So Haunted Mansion, I guess because there’s so many iconic images in the ride that you can just put in the movie that always seems to have a little more kinship to the ride.

So. Yeah, I agree. I think out of all the movies we’ve seen that were based on rides, Tower the Terror seems to be the one that’s most closely aligned with the ride itself. That’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s not like that makes the movie good or more entertaining by any stretch. Minus Rod Serling of course. But let’s, let’s, let’s start talking about the Spanish, I guess because that is the most interesting cooked in thing in this movie, which is not in the ride at all. So yeah, so again they, they’re in search of this flower and you find out later that the Rock is part of the conquistadors and he’s also part of this curse and that’s why he’s been around for 400 years.

But he’s kind of the good of the bad guys, right. He, like, broke off from the bad crew. And the bad crew is still after this freaking arrowhead that can guide them to this tree. And the. Because they attacked the Native Americans 400 years ago, they’re just going to be cursed forever. So they’re kind of like these infinite bad guys. But we do find out that there was a noble reason. It was because the main conquistador’s daughter, I guess, and his name was Don Lope Diagetta, I think that was his name. And he’s based on, like, an actual person, that his daughter is sick, and that he’s trying to find the petal of this flower to cure his sick daughter.

And that’s why he loses patience, and that’s why he attacks these Native Americans. But it’s just kind of. They throw all this in there. They don’t need any of that backstory. I didn’t need it. The movie didn’t need it. But you kind of get a little bit more of. Of, like, that depth to it. No, that. That is fascinating stuff. That’s where I was thinking about Aronofsky’s the Fountain, because they have, you know, Hugh Jackman sort of going that getting eaten by the forest in the jungle in the end. So. So many. What does this movie do that’s particularly original, I guess, is an interesting question.

It gives us very original bad jungle animals. I don’t remember ever seeing ones that looking that bad. I mean, Life of PI was like, six, seven years earlier. That tiger looked a little better than this guy. I think the conquistador enemy character designs probably the most original thing that this movie does. Yeah. And that was the coolest use of the C, because in that case, of course, a cg. How are you going to do that otherwise? Well, you bring Rick Baker and see what he does. But especially in a 2021 movie, I’m like, yeah, the. Having the weird contest.

They did that with pirates again, so why not here? You know, I. I got my hopes all the way up at the very beginning of this movie, because when they show the original scene where the conquistador get the curse and they get pulled into the jungle, but all these vines grow up out of the ground, and they. They pull them back, and as the vines are wrapping around one of this guy’s head, it then fades into the actual river system. Like, we’re looking at a map, and the river system looks exactly like the pattern of the vines as they were pulling that guy down.

And I just. For a split second, I thought that Maybe it was going to be a cool like Tartarian reference or that like the, the rivers themselves are these old mystical giants that have like fallen. You don’t really get any of that. I was wishful thinking. Yeah. And I did. I came in this movie kind of. I was like, hey, maybe hidden gem. I like Dwayne the Rock Johnson. So I was kind of trying to bat for it and like that opening, you know, pretty good. And the first 30 minutes you’re like, hey, maybe this is going to be good.

And then, you know, nothing particular happens for the next hour and a half that is worth thinking about again. The movie and the ride and the Disney Corporation, they’re just ex. They’re just all of these little jump scares and tropes that are engineered to extract money from your wallet that’s all three of them coexist in this like meta, ultra meta sort of relationship. I was watching it last night and I, I realized that about. I had to finish last 20 minutes this morning because an hour 40. I had written these notes. It says it’s a geechy CBI looking temple.

We are not experiencing a compelling play wise. I, I realize I just falling asleep on the, the keyboard and writing incoherent notes which is like, that’s time for bed. Yep. New new rating system. Which, which Disney movies can you put on to fall asleep to? This is probably in the top 10. Yeah. Yeah, I could go with that. I mean length is also a thing because if you’re putting on Dumbo, you’re not going to fall asleep in Dumbo. That’s too short. Again, if, if you sit down and watch this going in and say this is about the meth head Todd from Breaking Bad and Mary Poppins.

It is way more of an interesting watch and you can, you can sort of like trick yourself into believing that that’s really the characters. I still need to. I’ve only seen the first season, Breaking Bad. I still need to do the Completion sometime. Too many TV shows to watch. You know, I think it was around the time Legion came out and people were like, that’s your show you have to watch. And for several years Breaking bad over legion. 100 times out of 100. Okay. Anyway, around that time I just like, screw it. I, I don’t. I just watch movies now.

Now I am watching some TV here and there. But yeah, I was. First few years I was like, don’t even if you recommend a TV show to me, you’re just blowing air into the world, man. Well, you missed the golden age, man. Yeah, well, I can go back and watch him. I got Breaking Bad. I got the set over here, so, you know, watch it. I’ve only gotten through the first season so far, and that was five years ago, so I need to probably watch. When you get to the last two seasons and you meet Todd, then we can probably re.

Watch Jungle Cruise. And you’ll. Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. It’s too intimidating, though, because it’s like, well, if I finish Breaking bad. Breaking Bad 5 season Breaking Bad, now I need to watch Better Call Saul as well. So that’s like. I have to commit to both shows, you know, It’s a big commitment. Yeah, no problem with the Jungle Cruise. So, no. No show, no nothing. It’s just a movie that you might fall asleep during or start typing and you won’t remember. We both watched this movie within the last 24 hours, and we both forgot large portions of it.

No, I had to reread the plot summary, like, three times, but. And. And like I said, it’s like, oh, well, first it’s kind of like the fountain, then it’s kind of like Atlantis. Then it’s kind of like the. The one. The most original part where he is running the weird scams, right? And I’m just like, oh. And then it turns into the Mummy for a while. So my way to remember the plot is to remember what movies are riffing off of at any given point, you know, and somehow, even if it tries to take all of the big parts of those movies, it doesn’t.

It doesn’t hit any of them. You want to open up some. Some cans of Amazonian snakes? I mean, honestly, usually when we do these, if we have a movie that’s an hour long, we can do two and a half hours if it’s, like, filled with lots of really cool reads and stuff. This one’s almost two and a half hours, and I think we’ve expended most of it after about an hour of talking about it. Okay, I’m checking in because I was like, I’m going on all the things I need to say, so. And it. Ye don’t want to derail what you have to say.

I mean, I promise you, when I watch these movies, I try and peel back as much as I can. I try and fill. Like, we could technically go on, like, a Wikipedia deep dive on Don Lope D. De Agarrera or whatever, but the movie doesn’t give that much attention to the backstory. So I. I feel like we would be giving it more credit than it deserves to give that backstory here. Okay, I. You know what? I can kind of agree with that because I’m like, man, there’s a lot to talk about there. But they don’t. It’s pretty superficial here.

It’s on the level of the ghost pirates in Black Pearl, you know, and that. That’s about it. Yeah, they don’t do it. So I don’t think we. We need to feel like we should. So since we have a little extra time, why don’t we rank these movies? Okay. It’s kind of a small set. I’ll. I’ll just go through them if you want. And I was thinking about this before the podcast and walking, so I can just. Okay, let’s go through them all and let’s just think of out of like 1 to 10 and see which ones rank highest out of the scores.

Okay. The movies are Tower of Terror, Mission to Mars, the Country Bears, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl. We will be skipping later pirate movies for this. Haunted Mansion 2003, Haunted Mansion 2023, which I guess you didn’t see, so you won’t put that in your ranking. Tomorrowland and Jungle Cruise, there’s not too many of them. I’m looking at the list, man. I think Jungle Cruise is the bottom of my barrel for these, which isn’t a very, you know, notable barrel, to be honest. But yeah, I mean, I think Jungle Cruise and Man Don’t Hate Me and Tower of the Terror are bottom tier.

Tower Terror has more redeeming qualities, but it’s still ultimately a straight to TV style movie and just has that kind of a feel to it. And I feel like that one could probably put you to sleep just as easily as Jungle Cruise could. Jungle Cruise has more interesting scenes and visuals and like action scenes that are completely lacking in Tower of Terror. See, I’m willing to give them a little credit for TV production. Mine is actually 2003 haunted mansion and above that, Tower of Terror because I’m like, I’m giving them a little bit of extra because I’m like, they didn’t have that much of a budget compared to the 2003 haunted mansion which had, you know, truckloads of money coming in.

And then Eddie Murphy, he’s not as charming as he typically is. And that Haunted Mansion movie where I was like, yay, Steve Gutenberg’s on screen when I was watching Tower of terror. So it’s 2003 haunted mansion for me. And above that, I’m actually putting Tower Terror Someone’s going to hate me saying that. But all three of them can just go in like the crappy bucket. I don’t really even care which one is crappier than the other one. This is lower tier, that’s for sure. And I am willing to say the next one up is Tomorrowland, which is at least one tier up.

I maintain that that’s always 3% from being a good movie, but never crosses that 3%. So there’s no segment where you’re like, oh, this is doing it like the entire movie. I’m like, we’re 3% from this being good. We did have a lot to talk about. That was great. But the movie itself, I’m just like, it’s never quite there. I give it a D plus. Like it’ll pass, but you’re not gonna get like a, like a rewarded with a pizza party for bringing it home. Oh, you’re a strict teacher. I, I, I’m willing to see or C plus Tomorrowland, because there’s a lot of fun stuff to look at at least.

And a lot of things. I mean, in Japan, isn’t a C plus the same as like an F? I don’t think they do letter grades. I think it’s just scores. I don’t know, to be honest. On, on the scale. How disappointed are your parents in you? That’s all the grading scale is. I’ve seen Japanese report cards. I have a daughter, I’m trying to. They didn’t have letter grades. I think it’s, I think it’s like, circle is good, triangle is questionable. And then a nice big X if you suck is the, the normal thing. It’s kind of like pass, almost pass or fail.

Something. Yeah. So Tomorrowland would still get that triangle for me though. It has issues, you know, but it does feel like a real movie at least. That just didn’t quite fire on all cylinders. At any point is, is my take above that, I would go Pirates of the Caribbean. Okay. Can I just, I’m gonna jump right to the chase. I assume that you’re putting Country Bears at the top. Yeah, you? Good guess. Okay. I think for me, man, it might be Mission to Mars. That’s my number two Mission to Mars, man. Especially because it was way more occult than I was expecting.

It was all about the face on Mars and hidden frequencies. And it’s got like some, some sort of like Space Odyssey vibes to it. Like it was deeper and more violent than I was expecting. Well, your YouTube clip for Country Bears where you said Disney’s Weirdest movie. I was like, oh, that’s why I like Country Bears so much, because Country Bears, Mission to Mars is. Is a much more evened out movie because Country Bears has that. You know, they didn’t do the hillbilly music. They did modern country, which makes the soundtrack, you know, pretty bollocks for me.

Right. But then the weirdness of everything else. Christopher Walken, I just. I love that. So Mission of Mars, I Will Grant, is a better movie easily than Country Bears, but I like the weirdness of Country Bears. Country man. Country Bears could have been something so phenomenal if they would have gotten rid of the two unknown, like, 2,000 pop stars and put in, like, a couple actual country, like, legends in their places. So a few more. They had. They had Bonnie right in the bar, right? Or whatever. Don Henley. Or was it Don Henley? I remember. I don’t know country musicians that well.

They had. They had a couple. Yeah, that first one, Crystal. What is that? The second girl whose name I don’t remember that at least had a very cool musical number to go with it. So I’m kind of willing to forgive that one. They could have at least had, like, a Taylor Swift in there. She was country back then, right? Not. I. I think she was. Oh, wait, she said 80. She was 12 years old when they made Country Bear, so I don’t think that was going to work because she failed an album in 1989. It’s easy to do the math.

We all know when Taylor Swift was born. Now. Everything I know about her was forced on me. Now, you. You’re not slotting this movie, but 2023 Haunted Mansion, I’m gonna slot it number three. For me, the top three is Country Bears, Mission to Mars, and 2023 Haunted Mansion. That I remember a lot of what happened to that movie and, you know, distinct opposition to the Jungle Cruise, which we’re having. Struggle to remember what happened there. I can remember 2023 haunted mansion pretty well. I’ve mostly forgotten the Eddie Murphy one because I’m remembering the 2023 one. So I.

I still should apologize for not making that the one to focus on, but I just. I didn’t know. Okay. I mean, I’ll. I’ll slip it and I’ll probably watch it over Halloween or something. Yeah. Make it a Halloween view. And I’m not telling you it’s the best movie ever. I am putting Mission to Mars and the Country Bears over it. So, you know, take that recommendation with a little bit of salt. But. And. And any list that ends with Country Bears being at the top of. You already know to set your expectations accordingly. Right. Like, we’re not necessarily rating true 1 to 10.

I. I mean, maybe for you, maybe for you, the Country Bears is a 10, but I’m going to assume the Country Bears is maybe like a six on a realistic scale. So everything sort of shifts along with that. See, though, Country Bears was my number one. I think Country Bears, if I were rating, would get a six, Mission to Mars would get a seven. I would actually rate like on a, on a critical rating. I would, I would agree with you that Mission Mars is a better movie, but I like the dumb, weird stuff of Country Bears.

So as far as just me enjoying it, that’s. It’s got to be number one. I’m not going to take that from you, man. You’re. You’re allowed to have that jungle cruise we’re throwing in the river. Yeah, this. What, What? Yeah. What would you rate? Jungle 2. There were like two things I liked in the movie. Yeah, two and a half, three if I’m being extra generous. I mean, I guess except for the cgi, it’s not like aggressively bad or anything. It’s mostly just forgettable. And then the CGI makes it like slightly worse than it could be.

Knowing that it’s PG13.2 and that they could have snuck in some better scenes makes me want to take like, away another half star, easily. Are the digital animals the worst CGI I’ve seen on a live action movie, especially from a major studio? This might be the bottom of the CGI barrel. It was bad. Honestly, I feel like the animals weren’t even close to one of the worst things in this movie. Okay. They just look like gloop to me the whole time. And I was like, yeah, every. I mean, I know you don’t want a leopard on set, but I don’t know, something.

I mean, they used to have leopards on set, I guess. Well, not only do they not want to have a leopard on set, they didn’t even want to have a stunt person fall off a ladder. Because at the very beginning there’s a scene where she’s like holding on to like a ladder or something and then it gets pushed out a window and it falls. And even the ladders falling were cgi. And I was just like thinking, was the insurance that much money that someone was like, you know What? We’ll just 3D animate the ladders falling. Because the practical version of shooting ladders falling is just too dangerous and risky.

I mean, I feel bad When I hear a stunt person was injured. Back to the Future 2 and the Vice and the motor. The hoverboard smashes through the front glass of the courthouse. That stunt double was severely injured. You know, people have. And that’s in the movie. And, you know, people have, like, died doing stunts. So I get that a little bit, but at the same time, it looks like garbage when you do it. That’s the whole freaking point of the stunt man. That’s why they pay you well to be a stunt double. Same reason that, like, you go on a roller coaster, because you could actually die on it if you knew for a fact that nothing bad would ever happen to you, then the roller coaster loses all of its fun.

And it’s the same exact thing with stunts. Oh, by the way, with Proxima, the Jaguar, they’re saying jaguar that. Jaguars are black, aren’t they? Anyway, they were in a morphs. An actor in a morph suit was on set. I don’t really know what a morph suit is. Oh, it’s just. It’s just one of those. It’s like, you know those Spider man costumes, the Zentai suits In Japan, they had a stuffed toy on set sometimes. That’s pretty fun. And, oh, Emily Blunt. Mary Poppins was actually supposed to look like Amelia Earhart, which makes sense now that I’m seeing it.

Well, they make a big deal, like, she wants to wear pants, which that’s seems too obvious to say in a 2021 movie, but whatever it was, it was just part of the girl boss thing. Like, every single time someone could remind you how she’s breaking the glass ceiling and breaking gender norms and she’s saving animals and she’s going against the grain. Like, they just kind of rub your nose in at every step of the way. Yeah. Emily Blunt, there’s things that I really like her, and she’s not good in this movie, and her character is not good.

I didn’t like her Mary Poppins either. I just got to say that Edge of Tomorrow, she was an Edge of Tomorrow. That’s that. She was good in that looper. Oppenheimer. Okay. I didn’t see Mary Poppins Returns, so I guess we will be seeing. It has some animation, isn’t it? It’s on the list. It is on the list. Well, do we want to put the boat in the dock? Yeah. What do you got going on? What else? What else you been working on? What else have I been working on? Podcastio. Podcast. Yes. We talked about the entire original Twilight Zone.

We’re soon gonna go the Peel Zone. That’s a time enough podcast. I say it twice. Maybe Severance. Everyone likes severance. Now go listen to Imprison in Prison, another severance podcast. Just look up in prison and prison on your podcasters and do those. There’s a few things. How about you? I got one that’s even easier than that. Just go and subscribe to Paranoid American. That’s the name of the podcast. Go and add that to your Apple, your Spotify, your Spreaker, whatever you do. And I’ve got a whole bunch of different shows that I put through on that.

The one that you’re listening to now, I’m a little behind Matt in Time, but occult Disney plays on there. Cartoon Cabal, which is where we talk about non Disney animations. That’s on there under the docs where we review old conspiracy documentaries. The Paranoid American podcast itself, I’ve got interviews with all sorts of different people. Ex military, conspiracy theorists, writers, actors, animators, just all across the gamut. So you’re looking for an extra three to four hours of content every week to listen to at work or when you’re driving or just to terrorize your classroom with. We, we.

It’s. It’s for the kids. We do everything for the kids. So look up Paranoid American on all your podcasts. What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros? Ekifino. Sorry, that’s a joke from the Jungle Cruise. I thought see if it landed. I guess I got to put some spin on it, but I didn’t. Ready for a cosmic conspiracy about Stanley Kubrick, moon landings and the CIA? Go visit nasacomic.com comic.com CIA’s biggest com Stanley Kubrick put us on. That’s why we’re singing this song about NASA comic.com go visit nas.com go visit NASA comic.com yeah go visit nasacomic.com nasacomic.com CIA’s biggest con Stanley Kubrick put us on.

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