Inferno

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 The End

spk_0 Understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present.

spk_0 So, how do we sift truth from belief?

spk_0 How do we write our own histories personally or culturally?

spk_0 And thereby define ourselves, how do we penetrate years, centuries of historical distortion?

spk_0 To find original truth.

spk_0 Tonight, this will be our quest.

spk_0 The signs are all around you, and they point to now playing podcasts Robert Langdon, retrospective series.

spk_0 Witness the greatest cover up in human history.

spk_0 Brought to you by the secretive order known only as Justin.

spk_0 But a puzzle needed solving. Who better to solve it than you?

spk_0 Arnie.

spk_0 Father. They make me a sinner.

spk_0 And Brock.

spk_0 A modern miracle. A brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls.

spk_0 Who want nothing more than to be voices of compassion in a world spinning out of control.

spk_0 This podcast contains detailed plot revelations, harsh language and theories that might shake the foundations of the church.

spk_0 Or at least your suspension of disbelief.

spk_0 Can you keep secrets? Can you know a thing and never say it again?

spk_0 Listener discretion is strongly advised.

spk_0 Our words should never pass these worlds.

spk_0 The path is dangerous. The clues are misleading.

spk_0 But we hope you enjoy the show.

spk_0 Let the illumination begin.

spk_0 Oh, by all means, let's talk it over.

spk_0 Today we're talking about Inferno, starring Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irfan Khan, Omar C, Ben Foster, Sitzababit Nutsen, directed by Ron Howard.

spk_0 This is Brock co-host of Now Playing.

spk_0 This is Justin.

spk_0 You know, the greatest sins in human history have been done in the name of adapting books to movies.

spk_0 This is Arnie.

spk_0 Oh boy.

spk_0 Well, you know, a lot of movies get adopted from books and they also do really well.

spk_0 But somehow in this series, they seem challenged by it.

spk_0 So far, both of our previous reviews of these Robert Langdon stories by Dan Brown.

spk_0 Nothing's been a home run yet.

spk_0 Even though they've made a lot of money, somehow the translation from book to screen has not been very smooth.

spk_0 And yet, despite making money on those other ones, you would think that doing a third would be a no-brainer.

spk_0 Sure, Angels and Demons didn't bring in Da Vinci Bank, but nobody really expected it to.

spk_0 The same way nobody thought the last Jedi would outgrow the Force Awakens.

spk_0 And so, even with a little bit less money, you'd think that the lost symbol would be happening a lot sooner than 2016.

spk_0 But no, they did not want that to happen.

spk_0 As I mentioned, the studio had bought the rights to all three books.

spk_0 What Dan Brown was then calling his trilogy when they bought Da Vinci.

spk_0 And Ron Howard looked at it and said, I'm not going to direct that, but I'll produce it.

spk_0 And then Tom Hanks looked at it and said, yeah, I'm not going to star in that either.

spk_0 And so, what they said was they were polite about it, but Ron Howard said it's great material.

spk_0 But coming close on the heels of Angels and Demons and Da Vinci code, that thematically and tonally,

spk_0 it might feel a little bit too much like the other books.

spk_0 And then Tom Hanks was like, we worked on it for a while, but the masons were so reminiscent of the dilemmas of Da Vinci code and Angels and Demons.

spk_0 We didn't think there was something there to hang on.

spk_0 And so, they were looking at, is this a James Bond situation?

spk_0 Can we have a new Robert Langdon come in?

spk_0 And while they were spinning their wheels, renowned author Dan Brown came out with a fourth book.

spk_0 And that one got Ron Howard and Tom Hanks back on board.

spk_0 But Sony seemed hesitant. They slashed the budget on this one.

spk_0 You know, Da Vinci code had a budget of 125 million, Angels and Demons 150 million, Inferno 75 million.

spk_0 Hmm. Well, I mean, let's be honest, the gloss from Dan Brown's height of a stardom with Da Vinci code has worn out by this point, right?

spk_0 You already invoked Star Wars. This time frame is weird.

spk_0 That first movie came out in 2005, the same year Revenge of the Sith came out.

spk_0 This new one we're talking about, 2016, Disney had already bought and started and has now had two Star Wars movies by this point.

spk_0 That's a crazy time frame for these same people to be coming back and doing a third installment here.

spk_0 But I get it. I think we're that far away from Dan Brown's height of popularity that I could see them saying like, yeah, let's take a shot.

spk_0 But let's go about half throttle on it.

spk_0 But I also don't understand why Tom Hanks would want to do this movie at all. At this point in his career, he was between giant blockbusters, between Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4.

spk_0 He had some movies that made some money. He had some movies that made a lot of money. But we're not talking like gigantic numbers.

spk_0 He was basically picking and choosing things that seemed interesting to him. That's really what you could say about those 10 years of his career.

spk_0 And this in front of him movie kind of seems like popcorn fair, if you will, versus everything else he's doing.

spk_0 And Captain Phillips was in there. That was a really cool movie for him to be in. Sully, he was a huge hit for him.

spk_0 And Bridgespies made a splash like Mark Rylance won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year.

spk_0 So he was in things that were noticeable, but this one doesn't really fit into the rest of what's going on.

spk_0 So I was really curious on why Ron Howard and Tom Hanks would want to go back to this well after it's just as you said. It's been done. Why go back?

spk_0 Yeah, I was keeping up with Tom Hanks's career at this point. You know, Captain Phillips saving Mr. Banks. I wasn't seeing them all.

spk_0 But I was aware of them all. I did see Sully. And yet, in Ferno, I don't know if I knew this came out. I mean, I really do not remember this marketing campaign.

spk_0 I know it's been nine years, but 2016, I mean, I remember Rogue One's marketing campaign from that year, you know?

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 You're a built-in audience for Rogue One. And Felicity Jones' face was all over that stuff. And she was in another movie that year, which is in Ferno.

spk_0 Yeah, I just, I'm trying to think what in October of 2016 would have stolen all of my attention away from this.

spk_0 And I guess I was only just waiting for Doctor Strange the week after this came out. I was just biting my time until Marvel came back, because I didn't see this.

spk_0 I was even doing reviews of new movies for that UK radio station back then. And so I was seeing a lot of stuff in theaters like Weegee 2 that I would not have gone and seen under my own volition.

spk_0 And yet, this never came up from them as something they wanted me to talk about. It also didn't do well.

spk_0 Well, that might be my fault, because as the fan here, I'm right there with the Arnie. Like this came and went without me even batting an eyelash at it.

spk_0 But, you know, I was still reading the books and stuff like that, but like, man, I tell you, I did not see this in theaters. I think I saw it well once it was on streaming, because it was after I had seen Rogue One for a shirt. And I was like, oh, hey, look, it's gin or so.

spk_0 Yeah, that's exactly why I watched it too. Tom Hanks, I've literally seen every movie he's been in, as we talked about. And Felicity Jones is probably what turned me on to this one in particular, why we watched it like some Saturday night in 2017.

spk_0 It's in my letterbox, so clearly I'd watched it before, but watching it today was like a whole new movie. I had no memory of it whatsoever.

spk_0 But yes, Felicity Jones looks exactly like Jenner, so because she'd freaking three months later, she became Jenner, so on the screen for us, I was like, watch, she looks exactly like she didn't star wars. And then I looked up the date. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's why, because she did it back to back probably.

spk_0 Yeah, I mean, if you again, looking at it though, DaVinci code opened with 77 million domestic in, well, 2006, and then Angels and Demons opened at us softer 46 million.

spk_0 I guess the reason you come back for Inferno is it is the 10th anniversary of DaVinci, but coming into that weekend, they're like, we hope that Inferno makes about 25 million.

spk_0 And it ended up coming in at 15 million. It opened at number two behind, boo, a Medea Halloween in his second week.

spk_0 You're not going to beat Medea. Yeah, that's a tough one to go up against.

spk_0 You might have if you opened it all like these other films, but did this reek of death where people over Dan Brown? I mean, he's still publishing as we talked about new Robert Langdon books.

spk_0 There was another book adapted to screen. The third book that Ron Howard and Tom Hanks both thought wouldn't make a good movie.

spk_0 I guess Ron Howard thought it would make a good Amazon series because he produced the lost symbol for Amazon.

spk_0 Well, I'm going to be cynical here and just say that I don't think he thought it was going to be a good series. He just wanted some money.

spk_0 Because honestly, people are going to watch that. Amazon has all those book series that's going on right now. We talked about it in our Jack Reacher show. There's Bosch. There's the Alex Cross. This makes complete sense that Amazon would do a series for Dan Brown.

spk_0 Yeah, and I think that for me, I'm not going to watch it right away. I think I'll save it for the next time I'm in a Dan Brown mood.

spk_0 Long after this retrospective is in our rear view. Yeah, I do think that Dan Brown stories probably would fare better in a longer format like a series.

spk_0 Yeah, I can't disagree with that. I watched half of it. I meant to watch the entire thing so that I could talk about it on the show.

spk_0 But honestly, it didn't hook me. I really found myself struggling. I had to watch the first episode twice because I just, my mind drifted and I started surfing my phone mid episode.

spk_0 And so I went back. I'm like, I'm going to pay attention to this. And I like the idea. It's a prequel to the movies. It's like Robert Langdon's first adventure and dealing with his mentor who gets kidnapped and his hand gets cut off.

spk_0 And so they find his hand, but don't know where he is. The mentor is played by Eddie Isard. So that's kind of a fun insert. Yeah, yeah, I like Eddie Isard. Yeah, he's fun. Yeah.

spk_0 And so Robert Langdon and Eddie Isard's daughter are trying to find him as well as with the help of a capital police officer Alfonso, who's I think they're for comic relief.

spk_0 They're working with the CIA. It's all taking place in Washington, DC. But my two problems was first of all, I just couldn't get into the Silas character there. The main thug bad guy was a little too out there.

spk_0 And I just couldn't get into it. I wasn't as into the thought of the Masons being the next Illuminati or the night's Templar.

spk_0 But the worst thing, the thing that just made this not watchable to me is the new Robert Langdon. It's an actor Ashley Zuckerman who if we were still covering the Fear Street series, we'd be spending a lot of time with him because he's in all three of the Fear Street series.

spk_0 It's kind of making me glad we punted that, but he's just land. He has no charisma. He has nothing that makes me think he's a super bright Harvard professor.

spk_0 I get that he's supposed to be a younger Robert Langdon, but I just didn't enjoy watching him on screen. And if you don't like Robert Langdon, how can you watch the series? So after episode five of ten, I checked out.

spk_0 I was like, this just isn't doing it for me. There's nothing the last five episodes can do that will make me think this series is worth watching.

spk_0 Yeah, I watched the show on Netflix called the Night Agent. I had read the book and I gave up like episode three because they clearly were trying to pat it with stuff that wasn't in the book. And I really loved the book and I thought, and I saw it six episodes have been great.

spk_0 So I understand if you especially if you know the characters or know the books, you know pretty early on whether or not it's going to be for you. And I'm glad you to make yourself sit through five episodes you didn't want to watch. I mean, time is short. Just don't do it.

spk_0 Hey, I watched a hundred episodes of Teen Wolf, but I couldn't make it through ten episodes of Lost Simple.

spk_0 I did watch like the first ten minutes of the first episode just to kind of get a flavor of it. And while that's not enough to really tell me much about the characters, I kind of agree. Like the guy playing Robert Langdon did not catch me at all.

spk_0 But one thing that did stand out is some of the score. It was almost like sitcom music. Like they walk into a lab and it's kind of like do do do do do do do do do do do do do.

spk_0 And I'm like, what? That's not the right tone for a Robert Langdon show. That's funny. But are people done? Was this like disco? If you weren't there in 1978, you just don't get it.

spk_0 Look, novelists have their characters and there's always loyal followings Justin has read a lot of these books, right?

spk_0 However, I think in this situation because of the popularity of that one book and everyone read the other ones that were available at the time, I know for me I got tired of reading the same story. Like I said mentioned maybe last week or the week before, it was the same twist in one of his previous DaVinci code books.

spk_0 And what you just said about Ron Howard and Tom Hanks saying this law simple thing is too close to DaVinci we don't want to do it. He keeps going back to the same well apparently. I'm not the only person who thinks that.

spk_0 So honestly, I don't know if this character is strong enough to warrant a giant following but Sue Grafton wrote what 22 books with her character and how many Jack Reacher novels are there. So if you have the right character, you can milk it for all it's worth and basically do the same story in different ways with different variations and maybe Robert Langdon, he's just isn't that guy.

spk_0 I do have to say I read Angels and Demons for the first time before we reviewed it. It was the first book. I read it and I'm like, you know, this is a lot like DaVinci code. And then I reread DaVinci code for that review and I'm like, not only is this just repetitive to what I just read, but these aren't good books.

spk_0 And so I decided just to not torture myself. I mean, my father once told me the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again hoping for a different result. And so I did not read Inferno before this movie or before this review.

spk_0 I'm done with Dan Brown myself. I don't know if the world was by 2016. I'm done.

spk_0 Well, I did. I took one for the team and I reread it. Did you read it when it was new? Like when Inferno first came out where you like one of those Harry Potter people lining up at midnight to get the book?

spk_0 I resent that comment. I resent that comment. I was there the next morning when they opened I did not get there at midnight. Thank you very much.

spk_0 I personally ordered them all on Amazon and had them delivered the next day.

spk_0 Yeah, no, I mean, I did get it within the first week of release, but I'm not a fanatic. I'm the fan, right? Like, you know, I can admit that these aren't high literature.

spk_0 But they don't have to be. If you're entertaining, like I love the Jack Retro books, I realized they're not toll-stoy. I get it. But I enjoy the story. I enjoy the character. And I enjoy the way Lee Child writes a book. I really do.

spk_0 So I can understand if Dan Brown has his fans. I honestly think that after reading the same story three times, like many of us did, we stopped reading. And I think at this point also, it kind of wreaks of desperation from everybody.

spk_0 Another book by DaVinci Code guy, another movie with Tom Hanks and Ron Howard. I mean, what are they going to bring that's new to this? And I can't imagine that people at the time were thinking, oh, I gotta go see this.

spk_0 Clearly, I want to see Medea instead. So and my reason for giving up on the books isn't that they weren't page turners. They clearly were page turners much like crack is very

spk_0 inhalingable, but they don't have much in the way of character. They are thrillers through and through that take place in a short amount of time. And I realized I'm going to be dealing with a formula, a very James Bond formula of a new

spk_0 babe, every movie, a new locale, a new mystery, every movie, some new globe trotting, every movie, but there wasn't going to be an evolution of character going on here. We weren't getting an ongoing saga. It was very episodic and it didn't get its hooks in me. I just didn't feel compelled to see what happened to Robert Langdon next.

spk_0 Well, and you know, when we first started doing this, there was some concern that it's like, well, is it going to matter that they shot these movies out of order from the chronological order of the book being written? And honestly, what you're saying is so true, aren't you? Because the characters that we meet never come back from book to book. It's always ever Robert Langdon. And he always ends up right back where he started.

spk_0 It feels like he's eternally 55 years old and constantly going to be working as a professor at Harvard. There might be some mentions to one or two things that happened somewhere else some other time. But honestly, you can watch or read any of these books in any order and it doesn't matter.

spk_0 Yeah, I think that's why they were able to adapt them the way they were too is just I actually having read those first two books. I think in Angels and Demons by making it a sequel, it helped they put connective tissue in that movie having the Vatican go to Robert Langdon because he done the stuff he did in Da Vinci code.

spk_0 Whereas in the book, when I'm reading Da Vinci code, there's a couple dropped lines about how like he was dating the girl from Angels and Demons and they were supposed to get together and they didn't and that relationship broke up and now he's got the new woman he's running around with.

spk_0 Oops, she's the grand, great, great, great, great, great, great child of Christ. So next book, I'll have a new chippy.

spk_0 Well, and Brock, you raised the proper question of why this creative team might want to come back. Right. I'll say this upfront. Maybe it was because they did two and they progressively started moving away from the source material time after time.

spk_0 And maybe for this third one, because I'll tell you right up front, this one departs from the source material way more than the other two. So maybe they wanted to see if this was the magic formula.

spk_0 Take just enough of the book and make more of a movie is up to this point. They haven't quite done that yet.

spk_0 I was trying to figure out maybe they just had a window of time in their schedules. Maybe something as simple as that. But Ron Howard was still directing at a clip at this point.

spk_0 You're before that. He had the heart of the sea. But after this, you'd have solo, right.

spk_0 And according to Wickey, they said that journalists called this the fourth straight box office disappointment for Ron Howard. I'm thinking he's going back to the well after three disappointments thinking he can reverse that course if he goes back to his series.

spk_0 As for Hank's, he hadn't done big blockbuster fair, you know, something to keep him in the public eye. He, as you said, he'd been picking his movies.

spk_0 Or maybe he just liked hanging out with Ron Howard. I do get the impression of these two are great friends and working together. You know, we get to go to great locales, eat Italian food and hang out with a good friend and also add like 20 million to my bank account. Why wouldn't I do that?

spk_0 No, I get that. It makes a lot of sense. So, you know, you can call it a window in their schedule. I think that Ron Howard certainly had that issue going on, right?

spk_0 Because when he was hired for solo a Star Wars story, that was a very curious you and I talked about that at length. Why Ron Howard for that movie? And the answer is he was available because he's not doing well anymore at the box office.

spk_0 And that was a disaster film anyway. I mean, he was stepping into replace directors. Right. He has the directing credits. He changed the film, but he didn't direct every scene in that film. And he didn't create that film. He walked in and was handed a mess.

spk_0 Yes. And had to clean it up like Winston Wolf.

spk_0 Okay, Arnie, why don't you clean this up like a Winston Wolf and give us a plot summary so we can get into Inferno.

spk_0 In Inferno, Tom Hanks's character Robert Langdon awakens in a hospital in Florence with a head wound and no memory of the past few days.

spk_0 He's being treated by Dr. Sienna Brooks, played by Felicity Jones, who helps him escape when an armed assassin posing as a police officer storms the hospital.

spk_0 While recovering at Sienna's apartment, Langdon discovers he's in possession of a biosecure container.

spk_0 Inside is a Faraday pointer, basically a tiny projector that displays a modified image of Botticelli's map of hell.

spk_0 Artwork inspired by Dante's Inferno. The clue suggests a trail of riddles left behind by billionaire geneticist Bertrand Zobrist,

spk_0 a radical who believed overpopulation would soon collapse human civilization played by Ben Foster.

spk_0 In the film's opening, Zobrist committed suicide rather than reveal his plan to authorities.

spk_0 Langdon's attempt to access his Gmail alerts multiple parties to his location, including the World Health Organization,

spk_0 and a mysterious corporate figure named Harry Sims, played by Irfan Khan.

spk_0 Sims was head of a private security firm hired by Zobrist before his death.

spk_0 Langdon and Sienna begin to follow Zobrist's clues across Florence.

spk_0 They discover that Langdon and his colleague Ignacio had previously stolen Dante's death mask.

spk_0 After a confrontation in the Palazzo Vichillo, where the psycho cop dies in a fall, the trail leads them to the Baptist's Rhee, where they recover the mask.

spk_0 A hidden message on the back points them towards Venice.

spk_0 Along the way, Langdon is reunited with World Health Organization agent Christophe Bouchard,

spk_0 played by Omar C., who claims to want to stop the oncoming plague.

spk_0 Meanwhile, Sims meets with World Health Organization director Elizabeth Sinsky, played by Sidza Babit Nudson,

spk_0 and reveals that Zorbist left behind a video explaining his plan.

spk_0 He created a virus designed to radically reduce the human population.

spk_0 On the train to Venice, Langdon realizes Bouchard is not to be trusted, so he and Sienna escape.

spk_0 In Venice, he and Sienna follow another clue, only to go, whoops, we're in the wrong country, we need to be an Istanbul.

spk_0 Not Constantinople.

spk_0 Ha ha ha, somebody had to do it. We all had it loaded, I'm sure.

spk_0 We all had it in our head, didn't we? We all had it.

spk_0 At this point, Sienna reveals she was Zobrist's girlfriend and a true believer in his mission.

spk_0 She locks Landon behind a grate and escapes.

spk_0 Langdon is captured by Bouchard, who says he wants the virus to sell to the highest bidder,

spk_0 but Langdon is saved by Sims, who kills Bouchard.

spk_0 Sims then explains that Langdon's head injury, and apparent amnesia, and the psychocop,

spk_0 were all part of an elaborate deception, orchestrated by Sims Company.

spk_0 I guess he's called Sims because he runs Simulations.

spk_0 It's like the Michael Douglas movie, The Game, it's all fake, and Sims was hired by Sienna to manipulate Langdon into solving the riddle of the virus's location.

spk_0 Viantha, the supposed assassin, was actually an actress, and Langdon was unknowingly part of a larger scheme to uncover Zobrist's plan.

spk_0 Langdon reunites with Sinski, who was his former lover, and who had originally enlisted his help before the memory loss.

spk_0 To gather, they travel to Istanbul, and eventually, beneath the city, they find where the virus is hidden.

spk_0 There, Sienna and Ally, she recruited, attempt to release the virus by detonating a bomb.

spk_0 She succeeds in setting off the bomb, but the virus had already been located and safely contained by World Health Organization agents.

spk_0 Sienna is killed in the explosion, and her followers are shot by troops.

spk_0 In the aftermath, Langdon parts ways with Sinski, who gives him back his trademark Mickey Mouse watch,

spk_0 and then he returns to Florence and quietly replaces Dante's death mask in the museum where it belongs, as credits roll.

spk_0 Alright.

spk_0 There's a lot of names, a lot of places, a lot of hard things to pronounce in that summary, and thank goodness we all are able to watch this with pen and paper,

spk_0 but I still didn't catch a lot of these names, so I was watching it.

spk_0 It was challenging the Duso because like Sims, for example, I don't think his name was dropped until like, well into the movie.

spk_0 And so it was really challenging, I have nicknames for everybody here, and the movie opens up with a TED talk again, the TED talk, giving a lot of info dump, which was a surprising actor who I didn't know he was in this,

spk_0 because again, even though I've seen this before, it's practically a new movie.

spk_0 Ben Foster, who is one of my favorite actors working today, he's playing Zobrist, the billionaire geneticist, who is starting this whole plot in motion,

spk_0 while he explains what he believes is going to happen to the earth and how he can fix it.

spk_0 Ben Foster, not having a great 2016, I mean he did get some nominations for Heller Highwater, but his two big films, Warcraft and Inferno,

spk_0 hmm, not the greatest choices there.

spk_0 Understood.

spk_0 But yeah, he is good in this role, it's a real minor part where he's basically the prologue, and yeah, you talked about a lot of names and things in this movie.

spk_0 I'll just say up front, I can't follow this movie when it's happening, and if I'd read the book, I guarantee some of this would make more sense to me,

spk_0 but they're like mumbling, clues and things, Justin, as someone who read and then reread this book, does this movie make sense to you?

spk_0 Well, actually, I think in this case reading the book is almost a disadvantage, because they do change so much from the book to this movie

spk_0 that it's just causing confusion to me, trying to follow along how they're going to get and do the things that happen in the book.

spk_0 So yeah, with some of the history stuff, yeah, it helps a little bit, but they change a lot of characters too.

spk_0 I mean, just right up top, there is a billionaire in the book, but it's not a white dude from America, it's a European older man, okay.

spk_0 Still a love story there and everything, I mean, I guess changing the age and race of the character doesn't make that big of a difference,

spk_0 but it's a little confusing right at the front, it's like, oh, is this supposed to be the same guy?

spk_0 Hmm, I think Foster has a heavier lift there, Arnie, then you give him credit for, because we have to believe this guy, and what he's doing, his line readings are interesting and put you this way.

spk_0 He's only available in flashbacks, except for the brief time you see him running away before he commits suicide.

spk_0 We see him a lot of these videos, we see him throughout the movie, there's little flashbacks.

spk_0 He is by far the most interesting character to me in this entire story, and a lot of that has to do with he's playing an actual character.

spk_0 Like, he's actually has nuances and he has thoughts and he truly believes in what he's saying, and he has this energy, he has this effervescence of, I guess, a cult leader who would have, or so I'm led to believe,

spk_0 and that is why he's interesting to watch every time he's on the screen, whether it's in the beginning or later on in flashbacks.

spk_0 And that's a shame, because he's dead for the movie, so like, it's really challenging to want to see more about a guy, you know you're not going to see much more of.

spk_0 It is true, my go-to, I understand Dan Brown wrote this book in 2013, this movie came out in 2016, but I didn't see either one of them until 2025, but I did see Infinity War in 2018, and so,

spk_0 when he's talking about calling half the population, literally the Thanos plan of calling half, you know, I can't help but think about that, and imagine if in Infinity War Thanos was like, we should kill half the population, but then Thanos died, and it was left to like, his call obsidian, and his other guard there to carry it out.

spk_0 That's what we have here, you killed the villain who was behind the plan, and I feel like that is a loss, that all we have are his followers in his wake, instead of actually him getting a chance to square off against Langdon and have a battle of wits or something.

spk_0 And the fact that he's running here from Bouchard at the opening, we don't know why he's being chased, but I mean, it's pretty clear he's been talking about we should call half the population, I'm guessing he's trying to do that, and somebody else is trying to stop him, he kills himself there, but he didn't like tell his girlfriend where anything was, he didn't leave it in that bank that the crit text was in, he didn't even know what to do, and he didn't even know what to do.

spk_0 He left it underwater in Istanbul, and a huge map of clues, now I get we're gonna see in a flashback that yes, Zobrist and Sienna Brooks like to play games where he'd give her riddles, but these were too hard, she can't figure them out, he does not seem like a genius mastermind plodder here.

spk_0 Yeah, and they talk about when we first meet her in a moment that she was a big Langdon fan because she loves solving puzzles when she was little, so they set that up, but that she steams that she's stymied, these riddles reminded me of, you guys remember the Batman TV show from 1966, whether we've saw it when we were re-runs as we were kids, the riddler have these insane clues and Robin would always come up with the answers in Batman, I'm like how the hell did you get from point A to point B, and that's a spoof, that's supposed to be campy and silly.

spk_0 These are like Batman 66 level riddler puzzles, not Batman forever easiest shit ones, I'm talking like really hard. There's no way that you can possibly decode all this furthermore, it's so much simpler to like leave a note.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 Then it is to go through all this meccanations and I get it, he doesn't want people to find it by mistake or just go into his email and steal it when he's dead, but there has to be a better way than writing a secret decoding message on the back of a mask.

spk_0 He knew enough that he might be killed to make a video saying if you're seeing this video, I'm dead, but the virus is released.

spk_0 But not enough to use the same company that's holding the video to like send an email that says hey go to Istanbul.

spk_0 Yeah, and to that point he does leave instructions with the company he's working with to release a video at a certain time and all that stuff, so he has thought through this, but what I'm hearing is what we have here and what you guys are doing.

spk_0 What you're seeing on screen, I agree with is we have maybe the most compelling setup for needing to find something out of any of these stories so far.

spk_0 This is going to by far be the biggest consequences of any of these stories and then the lamest reason for a scavenger hunt, right?

spk_0 So something is all balanced right from the beginning here.

spk_0 Well, that's a really good way to put it because I have that exact note here. This is finally some steaks. Finally a journey that's worthy of taking, however, is Robert Langed in the guy for the job.

spk_0 And I mean, blowing up all of Venice had some pretty heavy steaks there too.

spk_0 It was really just you and McGregor who like was stealing the popacy instead of any major plots, but here I'll say this.

spk_0 I'm critiquing Zobris's plot with the perspective of having seen the movie.

spk_0 But when I'm watching this movie, I'm like, well, I had a Thanos was right bumper sticker in the day and so I can see where Zobris is coming from.

spk_0 He's not in my mind and Arch Villain.

spk_0 Well, yeah, Arnie and with that, the novel makes this even more of a moral conundrum because in the book he's not trying to just kill off half the people and that's going to solve everything.

spk_0 His virus in the book is going to make a third of the world's population infertile. So he's not even creating mass murder. He's just kind of playing God and slowing down the reproduction rate of humanity.

spk_0 Which I mean, if you can kind of get on his page with what he's selling here, I think it's a little bit easier to get on the page with him in the book too.

spk_0 Like he becomes way less of a maniacal villain on the page.

spk_0 Yeah, I mean, taking away the mass murder. I could see why Ron Howard and David Cap would want it to be mass murder.

spk_0 It feels more real. It feels much more real in 2025 than I'm sure it did in 2016 when you hadn't lived through COVID.

spk_0 But yeah, making it forced sterilization, you know, you kind of get in this TED Talk Zobris.

spk_0 Like, oh my rights! Oh, you're infringing! Oh, my freedom! You know, he's just so dismissive of that. So you can see why forced sterilization, wow, you know, kind of Nazi theory is also something this guy would go for.

spk_0 Right. But having said that, mass extinction is better for a movie. I'm glad they made the change.

spk_0 But just wanted to point that out there that it's a moral conundrum to maybe side on the side of the bad guy for the better of humanity. I don't know.

spk_0 I did do a little research because yeah, we talked about it in those Avengers podcasts, but I have fears of the dangers of overpopulation and things.

spk_0 And the fact that Zobris is in his TED Talk going, we're at 11.59 and Midnight's disaster.

spk_0 In 40 years, 30 billion people are going to be fighting to survive on this planet. And I'm like, is that math work? You know, and he's giving statistics of how fast the population grew on Earth.

spk_0 But I did do some research and no, we're not going to be at 40 billion people in 2050.

spk_0 In fact, most experts think we're going to hit about 10 billion and then taper off. And with the current reduction in reproductive rates in a lot of countries, they think what we're going to see is a population decrease in a lot of countries.

spk_0 And it's going to be the African nations that are going to boom. But we're going to hit around 10 billion, you know, flatten out at that point.

spk_0 So yeah, we don't have to worry that in 2050, we're all going to be living in stacked housing because there's not enough real estate.

spk_0 Well, real estate is one thing. It's going to be the billionaire water wars that we all have to worry about.

spk_0 Yeah, that's true. That is true. But still, at this point, I'm seeing his point of view. And I'd probably even be more on his side if it wasn't an extinction level event type thing he's doing.

spk_0 But then we're bringing Robert Langdon into this. And in the past two movies, he's just been sitting at Harvard and somebody comes and says, oh, we need you.

spk_0 But this time he's in the midst of it. He's has amnesia. They say he was grazed by a bullet. He has a head wound and he fell and got a concussion.

spk_0 So that's why he has the memory loss. He's got these recurring headaches. Ron Howard is doing some visual stuff here with the flashbacks and the dream sequences and the headaches.

spk_0 That's of little visually striking and the sound system in my home theaters going nuts with the lining. And I'm pulled in. I'm like, wow, this from the opening seems like the most exciting Robert Langdon film. It's just grab and go.

spk_0 I can't argue with that with Ben Foster's charismatic performance. And then you have all of this mystery surrounding Tom Hanks and what's going on with him. All these curious imagery of people dying or blood coming out of a building around a cloaked figure and all sorts of interesting visual stuff that we've never seen Ron Howard do before.

spk_0 At this point, it's really hard not to be curious about what this is all about. So yeah, well done by them to try to pull me into this movie in a different way than we've ever done before in this series.

spk_0 Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I'm coming in with two not recommends and 10 minutes into this movie. I'm like, this is good. Yeah, it feels more modern, right? Both from Dan Brown and from Ron Howard.

spk_0 They're telling a little bit of backward storytelling. We're jumping in to an adventure that's already underway and we have to play catch up with our main characters well. And that's something different for both of these creatives.

spk_0 And then we see Langdon's doctor there, Sienna Brooks, Felicity Jones, you know, I need to see the theory of everything. I just need to get around to seeing that because that's what she's known for. I know we're only from Rogue One.

spk_0 I don't know that I've seen her in anything else. She was supposed to be Black Cat in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and got on the cutting room floor. And I just don't know her.

spk_0 Well, I've seen her in a couple of things. I did see Midnight Sky. I've seen her in the theory of everything and she and Eddie Redmayne worked so wonderfully together. So that's definitely worth a watch there for sure. But I've seen Rogue One like 20 times. So I just know her as Jenner. So in later in the movie, she's wearing a headscarf. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so good like Jen.

spk_0 Yeah, same boat. I mean, if I've seen her here and there, the thing that sticks out most is Jenner. So I mean, that's who she is in my mind and so much so that watching this movie, I can't help but see her as that. But she does a good job here. She eventually does pull me into her character.

spk_0 Yeah, I've only seen Rogue One, what, two or three times in theaters and maybe once after that, I don't love it like you guys do. So I don't see her as Jenner. So I just say that's the actress who played Jenner. So and has the same haircut. Hell, this was probably filmed after Rogue One. But then before all of the Rogue One reshoots that changed the end of the movie. So...

spk_0 I guess I should know something's up. It doesn't feel like a doctor's office or a hospital room. There's no nurses. There's not much equipment. The doctor is not usually giving you this much attention. They're only rounding on the floors. It's always the nurses who are paying attention.

spk_0 I honestly thought coming into this, I knew the budget was slashed. I thought maybe they just cheaped out on the hospital room set. But no, we're gonna find out later. This is not a hospital.

spk_0 See, I just thought it was movie shorthand. I didn't pay it any mind that the doctor was there. I didn't occur to me that there's a lock on the door. It didn't occur to me that there's nobody in the hallway.

spk_0 Really, except for that one guy who gets shot. Because, you know, it's a movie. So at this point in the movie, I'm trusting what it's showing me because at this point in a movie you're supposed to do that to understand, you know, how they're setting things up.

spk_0 Well, admittedly, I've never been to Florence yet alone to a Florence hospital room. So I really have no point of reference to know if this is legit or not looking. Sure.

spk_0 Now that's a good point. I was trying to think I worked in a medical system for 12 years. I do think some of those rooms did lock.

spk_0 Especially if you're in like a patient's exam room in a doctor's office, you can lock those doors if you're changing.

spk_0 But I don't know what it would be like in Italy at all. So yeah, Justin, your point is valid. There's no way I don't think that we could have picked up on that clue of this is all a big act.

spk_0 But I'm just confused, though, what happens when this Viantha character comes in just shooting like crazy.

spk_0 She's just shooting up a hospital and trying to kill Langdon. And the way she comes in there, I just kept thinking about Terminator and the way Arnold Storden's the police station in that movie.

spk_0 I'm like, she's coming in here like the Terminator shooting up the place. That seems dumb.

spk_0 Yeah, well, and it plays the same way in the book and later on when it's explained that this is a setup, they don't really explain what the setup is supposed to lead to.

spk_0 We would learn later that the doctor in the hallway wasn't killed. Those were squibs and they were fake bullet holes in the door. What was your plan coming in fire blanks at Robert Langdon?

spk_0 The plan was to scare him so that he would trust Sienna and run. You know, she was never going to get to Langdon. The locked door was always going to stop her.

spk_0 How much planning did this take with Sienna and this company run by Sims of like, alright, we're going to put squibs inside the door, not on the door, but inside the door so that when she pulls the trigger, what, she has a remote in the other hand.

spk_0 So the squibs go off at the right time and I know squibs are tiny explosives that can burst baggies of blood, but are they powerful enough to dent a door?

spk_0 Right.

spk_0 There's just so much going on in this whole setup that is ridiculous. The whole thing that this is all a fake simulation to get Langdon to trust Sienna is, you know, we reviewed the David Fincher movie The Game. That movie is silly and this is that redox.

spk_0 Yes, but the difference is that none of us know this information right now. So watching it now, we are going along with it and we have no idea and we're getting little pieces of information as we go, which adds frankly more confusion until much later in the movie.

spk_0 When they drop all this as an act later on in the movie much later, then it becomes like, what? That doesn't make any sense, but at this point it seems that, yeah, the terminators after Robert Langdon, this doctor is put in a spot and because she's a bit star struck,

spk_0 because we learn that she knows who he is because they met when she was nine years old. She's going to take it upon herself to make sure this man's okay because a person tried to kill him under her watch.

spk_0 That makes enough sense even though it's kind of weird too that she's what 30 years younger than he is and it kind of feels weird that they're hanging out the whole time.

spk_0 It's Hollywood movies and, you know, yes, it might play better if he was Leonardo DiCaprio.

spk_0 But I do not think a 30 year age gap difference is that big a deal in a Hollywood movie. You know, watching F1, I walked out in Marjorie said, it's really nice that they got a woman age appropriate for Brad Pitt to romance in the movie.

spk_0 And I'm like, you do know Brad Pitt's 61 and that woman was 41. So while they see major appropriate, there's still two decades there. So in Hollywood terms, I'm not blinking at this. I literally thought she was the girlfriend of the movie just like we had the last two,

spk_0 although they did play down the romance in both previous movies, even though it was there in the books.

spk_0 And I will say in the book that this is not a budding romance between him and Sienna, which is good because yes, she is that much a junior to him and in the movie they give him a previous love interest.

spk_0 The director of the World Health Organization, we will find out, has a little thing with Langdon from back in the day.

spk_0 Oh, David Kep in his writing here went to the Dan Brown School of Teases because when Langdon gets to Sienna's apartment, Sienna is like, I have clothes that will fit you.

spk_0 And it's from a guy who sometimes stays here and Langdon like asks questions and she dodges the questions.

spk_0 And meanwhile, later on, Langdon is going to be talking about relationships and how they're not always what you think.

spk_0 And it's dropping that he had some relationship in his past that, you know, two movies never mentioned.

spk_0 Mm-hmm.

spk_0 But now all of a sudden, it's coming up in passing in conversation in Italy, even though he's not going to tell us the audience what he's talking about until two thirds of the way through the movie.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 But also, she does the same thing though. She drops the same things when she's dodging questions.

spk_0 So he's being, you could say, economical.

spk_0 But I mean, when it all comes into play later, I mean, I guess they do set it up for us.

spk_0 But I mean, I just took it as, you know, character development didn't realize that everything she says is going to be worthwhile listening to.

spk_0 And, you know what, in the book, it's a little bit more convoluted because in the book, Sienna is and has been working with the consortium or the CRG, whatever it's called in the movie, I can't quite remember.

spk_0 But yeah, she was an agent for them and also dating the billionaire. So there's a tie there.

spk_0 So the clothes came from a setup that way. But here, they cut that storyline. So yeah, it makes sense that the clothes come from her boyfriend, mold her out later on.

spk_0 And they just happen to be the same size.

spk_0 But they are not the same size. I mean, no.

spk_0 Do you see Tom Hanks in this movie? Did you see Ben Foster when giving the Ted talk? They would not share the suit jackets.

spk_0 Well, they never share any screen time together. So I guess we can just suspend disbelief on that one.

spk_0 But yet, if it's still all a setup, it doesn't have to be his clothes. It could be sizes they know that Langdon would fit into. And they could just said that.

spk_0 Oh, true. Yeah.

spk_0 But they didn't say that. She made a point of saying that's my boyfriend. So whatever.

spk_0 Yeah, that was more of a convenience thing. Like I'm saying in the book, it was a setup for the clothes here. It was a convenience thing.

spk_0 Oh, there you go.

spk_0 Okay. But the whole reason we're in this apartment is for her to point out, hey, while you were out, I found a weird thing in your pocket.

spk_0 And we really need to get on a scavenger hunt, right? It's been a few minutes. We've seen some interesting visuals.

spk_0 We have a compelling reason to go on a scavenger hunt, but we have get to get on the journey yet.

spk_0 And what she found was a vile. Remind me because watching this movie linearly, we kind of get the impression that Zobrist was pro virus.

spk_0 And now he has this like sealed test tube. They have a conversation about is it safe to open or could it release a virus?

spk_0 At this point though, is there any reason why they would suspect a virus when they haven't even yet gone on YouTube to watch Zobrist's talk?

spk_0 Outside of the biohazard symbol on the vile and layinged and having some flashbacks. I guess we should describe it.

spk_0 He's having flashbacks of the play, right? That's what he was seeing. He's seeing blood in the street and people with scabs and scars.

spk_0 So maybe it's in his mind and he is slowly coming back and remembering stuff. But yeah, in the movie, I don't know.

spk_0 I suppose it's to help us as a viewer start thinking about viruses. I guess so too. I saw the biohazard thing and that soon was it before or after they watched the video to discover the thumbprint is on there that works for him.

spk_0 This is after Langdon logged into his Gmail and saw the message from Ignacio, but they don't know to go look at Zobrist until after they see what's in this vile.

spk_0 Okay. We saw him log into Gmail and we then saw Bushard in a black van who's like, he logged into his Gmail from this address apartment three.

spk_0 I'm like, damn, that's some trace routing. If I have your IP, I might be able to figure out your city. I could not figure out your apartment, but he's able to.

spk_0 And how's he hacking Google to get the IP address that's logging into Google's account? Not that Google is unhackable, but you got to be, you know, at least acid burn to in order to get through their firewall.

spk_0 It gets worse though, Arnie, because knowing what we know from later in the movie, when the conspiracy people, the consortium, they call, they talk to Langdon and Langdon gives him a fake address across the street.

spk_0 So the Terminator lady goes to the fake address. How can the World Health Organization people track the Gmail, but this place who can fake squibs in a door and set this entire thing into motion, not realize that Langdon's calling from the apartment or just goes to the apartment anyway because they know the whole plan they begin with. They know the plan. They know she's going to be there in the room.

spk_0 Oh, yes, that is good point. Why is the Terminator cop still chasing Langdon? And yes, they know where Sienna lives. She could just go see Sienna.

spk_0 Personally, I liked the scene before I knew all the reveals and twists when the Terminator cop is going into that fake motel address they gave and that all the World Health Organization people are running into the apartment building.

spk_0 Yeah, and you just see the look on that cop lady's face of like, shit, I went in the wrong building.

spk_0 I did like that myself. I thought that was clever and then she picks them up when the World Health Organization can't pick them up because of that mistake. She's able to track them down. So all of that makes a lot of sense. This movie is one big chase, right?

spk_0 You're calling it a treasure hunt. It's really just a chase. It's this they're running away from all different kinds of people. They don't know who's chasing them and we're trying to figure out we're supposed to be citing with Langdon and Felicity Jones here. But there's so many different factions that you don't know we're working together or not working together.

spk_0 And then at this point, they also introduced the woman who's the head of the World Health Organization. It's the third person to be at the keep track of. It's just a lot of people going after Langdon and it's getting a tiny bit confusing.

spk_0 So the only thing I can do at this point is watch a chase. Yeah, I didn't know who was who in the scene. I thought the guys in the black van were evil and then we're going to find out they're good except we're going to find out they're also evil.

spk_0 I thought the cop was evil. So I don't know who's chasing him, but I'm in for the ride. And again, at this point in the movie, I'm into the movie.

spk_0 The who is chasing him, Arnie, that we already discussed that. No, but it is visually confusing that the World Health Organization has a military division. Right. You got guys in full flackjack at military gear coming in and vans. It's like, whoa, all right. I guess maybe they do have that.

spk_0 I don't know. I didn't get the internship with the World Health Organization. I don't know how they do things.

spk_0 You know, judging by COVID, no, they don't. They don't even have enough people to staff the offices, let alone to hire a merc division.

spk_0 But yeah, they're going to be in there. He opens that biohazard vile and inside is this tube. And I guess retroactively again, knowing the twists, this makes sense.

spk_0 But I'm really confused when a medical doctor looks at the tube and goes, that's human bone. How the hell do you know that's human bone? If you could tell it's bone, I'll roll with it. But you know what? It's a femur from the burbs with Tom Hanks. How do you know this?

spk_0 That'd be the greatest, like, surprise cameo ever if it was the femur from the burbs because Tom Hanks is here in this movie. And they all start screaming. No! What can I do in the movie? That'd be the best.

spk_0 But I mean, it's a bit extra for a prop, right? Like, do we really need it to be carved in bone to just be a projection of Dante's and Ferno painting? Like, it could have just been a projector that need to be carved in bone.

spk_0 No, there's not any symbols on it that matter, right? The carving itself doesn't clue them into anything. It's what it projects that matters. So, I don't know why Zobrist, I guess his just F the World attitude has him stealing bone tubes and cylinders to put projectors in.

spk_0 Yeah, and there's a lot of a lot of talk of the levels of hell and Dante's and Ferno in the book that this movie kind of rightfully just doesn't delve into because you just, you don't have the time to go into all that lore. And that symbol is part of that. But yeah, it's extra and it only really serves the purpose to show Langdon our art professor that there's been modifications here.

spk_0 Things are on this painting that aren't on the original, which then leaves them to a museum. Is that how it went down?

spk_0 They also noticed the levels of hell are out of order as well. And in hindsight, this is like those criminals who try and get the cops off their scent and they say, oh my God, is that a shirt over there that that looks at his blood? Let's go check that out. I tried to give them obvious clues. In hindsight, she's pointing out all of these different letters all over this thing that he didn't see yet because she's helping him through. So, if you watch it a second time, then you realize all of that kind of thing. But again, at this point, we still think that she's solving

spk_0 these clues with Langdon. And it's kind of challenging to know the twist talking about it with you guys because we have to reenact how we were going around the first time because the first time you had no idea that she was leading him on. And so Bravo to her in hindsight of making it believable, a lesser actress would probably tip her hand much earlier than probably all three of us, maybe not Justin, but the two of us might have been clued in. So good for her. But yes, I think their clues lead them to some sort of museum.

spk_0 Well, the clue though is all those letters end up spelling the truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death, Zobrist. So did Sienna actually create this Faraday tube because Zobrist wouldn't leave a clue for Sienna that all it helps to do is Google who the hell is Zobrist and watch a YouTube video.

spk_0 Because that's where they go next is YouTube this movie sponsored by Google Google. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where they find out that he could have created the opportunistic viral pathogen and that he killed himself three days ago. So that's our timetable for Sienna to contact Sims and set up her whole thing is three days.

spk_0 And then yes, he realizes the levels of hell are rearranged. He made an anagram and that somehow and this movie I realized by clue number two is not doing what the previous two movies did which was hand holding you through the mystery as Langdon unraveled the clues with the cryptex or Galileo's book and finding the writing and knowing which point on the map to go to.

spk_0 I felt like Ron Howard did a great job of making sure we understood what Langdon was espousing when Langdon would be like, ah, but the symbology of this goes back to the Mormons and you know whatever he said. Right.

spk_0 I felt like I was being educated even if both movies got a little talky for me at no point did I feel lost at no point in my like I don't understand this in this one I'm like I'm not quite sure what the anagram spelled out but they need to go to the Palazzo Vichillo from this anagram to go see Dante's death mask.

spk_0 That's their next way point of this video game mission is to go see the death mask. Yeah and to your point Arnie this one does feel like the clues and the solving of the clues are definitely secondary to keeping the plot moving forward in the other movies and the other books.

spk_0 We spent a lot of time marinating in these clues in the history around them. This one is zipping right past them and you know what I'm alright with that I feel like this is the third time we've been on this journey and I don't know that we need a history lesson every time a new clue pops up and I'm okay with it so far in this movie.

spk_0 This reminds me a lot of we brought up James Bond earlier right so if this was a Bond movie Zobris would be like Elliott Carver in tomorrow never dies for example a more modern James Bond movie right and then you would have James Bond going from place to place because he finds a clue dead end so he goes to an next place he tries to follow the leads and every time he goes somewhere as an action scene right and that's a James Bond movie so this is kind of like that in structure a little bit right just nowhere near as exciting.

spk_0 But it certainly is a grossing enough for me to keep following on this journey at this point I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with why Langdon's out of sorts because if Langdon was not out of sorts he might have figured a lot more of this out quicker and he might have seen through Felicity Jones so the conceit of him having amnesia is getting a tiny bit long at the tooth as they get to this third location right but it also gives us opportunity to do something we've never been able to do before which is make Langdon a suspect in his own mystery right.

spk_0 Because we get to this museum and find out the mask that they're going to see is missing and they go watch the tape and it's Langdon is buddy stealing it the night before.

spk_0 Yeah he got that email from Ignacio that said the thing we've stolen is safe and you know another mystery what is it they stole he goes there and knows the curator of the museum and is like oh I need to see the death mask oh it's missing and this I would have loved to have seen the before of this.

spk_0 Because it's feeling very national treasure to me that Langdon is working with the director of the World Health Organization and this Ignacio who I don't understand Ignacio's role in this whole thing but at some point the three of them were there like we're going to steal Dante's death mask.

spk_0 Why would they do that?

spk_0 And furthermore we learn later on there's a secret message on the back of the mask so yes that's definitely national treasure hard not to think of that.

spk_0 What I don't understand is they got the email saying we stole something right and then they get to the museum and they watch the video footage and he sees that oh that's what we stole which is weird right his reaction seemed to be like oh yeah I did that.

spk_0 I'm like well wait a second and then what really gets me is everyone's in the room and no one's really freaking out too badly but the security people who are watching the video with the woman who's running the place who's very pregnant.

spk_0 Everyone runs out to go to the cops and leave this poor woman behind with a thief in the video conference center that doesn't make any sense and then they lock them out so now the cops and all of security guards are behind the glass door.

spk_0 I was thinking to myself this is the part where I'm starting to question what's going on right why an earth would all of these people leave a man they just saw commit a crime alone with a pregnant woman unsurplised.

spk_0 It doesn't make any sense and this is what I started scratching my head a tiny bit that there has to be something going on but it doesn't make any sense even when we know it because again if you're working with the director of the World Health Organization and who the hell is Ignacio tell me I don't know who's Ignacio why is Ignacio in this did Ignacio get killed.

spk_0 He died yes okay so he did die in the movie he died I don't know I get the book in the movie so confused because like Ignacio

spk_0 while not on screen Ignacio is a friend of Langdon's he also is a curator of a museum in the area and they met up the night before this is all an adventure we don't get to see right we just learn this later on and yes eventually Ignacio dies of a heart attack at least that's what it said to be somebody got to him.

spk_0 Okay wait a second Arnie's question is legit because we see the guy on the video stealing the mask with Langdon we see him earlier as a vision with a snake biting his neck off or something so we're curious who the Ignacio guy is but we never see Ignacio in the flesh at all so as far as we know he's a figment of everyone's imagination like he doesn't exist he doesn't have to be there Langdon does not need him to steal the mask it doesn't make any sense that you add an extra character in except the point of to get the gmail to do that.

spk_0 That's the only reason Ignacio exists well we also need him to hide the mask right because that's our next adventure oh I see I okay when they show us the video of Ignacio who does not look stealthy or live and Langdon stealing the mask they're like just like doing big steps over the rope they're not doing anything like in that Catherine Zeta Jones movie in trapment you know they're just taking it like honestly to

spk_0 middle-aged men at a Walmart putting something in their card or doing a little mild shoplifting I'm like how can you open this glass case how is there no security in this museum I mean I've been to European museums and there is a security guard in virtually each and every room I can't imagine there's nobody at Dante's death mask where just two older dudes could just

spk_0 wrap it and go it is described to be in like an out of the way kind of alcove that most people who go to the museum might not even realize is there but yes there would be some sort of

spk_0 electronic alarm right at the very least there was in the previous Langdon movie it was a plot point that guy took the painting off the wall to put

spk_0 himself in a cage who wouldn't get killed like good to say why it's like stupid cops it's like one of those

spk_0 stupid criminals are caught on tape kind of thing and it doesn't make any sense at all fallen through the ceiling right yeah yeah

spk_0 kind of stuff like it's juvenile and then instead of Ignacio giving the mask to the director of the World Health

spk_0 Organization instead of figuring out what messages on the mask Ignacio's plan is I'm gonna take the mask to

spk_0 another public scenic tourist destination and hide it in holy water in a zip lock and keep it in the theme of what we're

spk_0 doing here everything has to revolve around Dante and Bertelie and right like he's got to make sure the clues line up with

spk_0 the theme but why is Ignacio leaving clues when Ignacio is supposed to be helping find the thing does he

spk_0 was being chased as email did say that they're after me I'm going into hiding I guess that's enough for a

spk_0 Langdon movie right yeah I guess it is I guess so sure so we get more chases some really cheap looking drones attacking

spk_0 and I thought it was cool and futuristic that they were involving drones in 2016 yes but at the same

spk_0 time I don't know if they were real drones that just didn't film right you know sometimes the blades

spk_0 won't work right with the frames per second on the film you know it's like it's hard to record a CRT monitor

spk_0 because the refresh rate of the monitor can leave scrolling but whatever it was these drones looked fake as hell

spk_0 like I felt like they were just puppets on a string if they were real drones they were just filmed

spk_0 poorly yeah I wonder if we just didn't have that much piloting control of drones back then for filming

spk_0 but I love the scene where they're trying to get through a garden and there's the drones overhead looking

spk_0 for them and Langdon just tells Sienna go now why now what did you see how do you know where the drones are

spk_0 now is there any experience with this sort of thing is cat and mouse kind of chasing and running no

spk_0 he doesn't he's Robert Langdon he's been in adventures but he's not Jason born he's not James Bond he's

spk_0 not even Steve Irkall for god's he's not he's nobody who's gonna be involved in this sort of thing

spk_0 okay it just I laughed out loud when he was giving her directions and how to avoid getting caught I

spk_0 just laughed out loud because it was silly to me that he would be in charge of this operation yeah

spk_0 yeah I agree and if it was something simple like there was a security camera that was panning back

spk_0 and forth and he could get the timing off of that camera but these are drones being controlled by

spk_0 people there's no pattern to evade it just dumb luck but they get to cathedral of Florence

spk_0 Il Domo and the baptizary of Sun Giovanni and I'm writing these names down spell check that man

spk_0 spell check it you know it's making me want to go to Italy my wife's Italian she's always wanted

spk_0 to go I'm like these would be cool things to see in person but is it me or is maybe it's the pace

spk_0 of the movie but I don't even feel like this is a good travel log movie I don't feel like I'm seeing

spk_0 Florence I don't feel like the establishing shots of the glorious historical buildings are

spk_0 pulling me in the way Howard did in the previous two I'm just not feeling the need to call my

spk_0 travel agents and book a tour of Florence I'm sorry Olive Garden let me name drop you a tour of

spk_0 Italy before I go but the previous two movies did kind of put that in where I'm like maybe I should

spk_0 go see Rome yeah I mean you know Rome and St. Peter's Silica those are grandiose places to film

spk_0 and here Florence is historic and it's beautiful but it feels smaller and more historic and maybe

spk_0 more lived in and even the places we're going the museums are going to kind of just feel old right

spk_0 they don't have like this air of history and them so much as they have historical things in them

spk_0 yeah my issue here was I'm unfamiliar with all of these names and they are important whereas I know

spk_0 what the Vatican is I know what the Louvre is even though I haven't been to those places I know what

spk_0 they are in the significance of those places I don't know the hall of 500 and maybe that's something

spk_0 I should know I can name you you know 20 different species of aliens in the Star Wars cantina but

spk_0 I cannot tell you where the heck the hall of 500 is because that's not my interest but it made me

spk_0 kind of feel like at this point when they're dropping basilicas and they're dropping all these

spk_0 different places palazzo's and frescas and all these words that I've heard of but I don't understand

spk_0 in the combination that they're using them I started thinking to myself okay doesn't matter where

spk_0 they're going they're just gonna go there and it could be I pinewood for all I know they're going

spk_0 there now that's at this point where I was like I can't keep track of this anymore they're just

spk_0 going to the next place then to your point Brock I feel like I know a little bit thanks to movies

spk_0 and recent history about Conclave and about the history there and I feel like just through

spk_0 schooling and I have been to the Louvre but you know I know who DaVinci is I know what DaVinci painted

spk_0 so when they're talking about that even if I don't know Madonna on the rocks necessarily you know

spk_0 the Mona Lisa and all of that is so well known but here going to Dante's in Ferno and then

spk_0 when they eventually get to Doge and Rikis Dendolo who was going to attack Egypt but attack

spk_0 Constance and Noble I like does this all fit together is this a theme did I not take that class

spk_0 because I don't know what the hell they're talking about they're saying words right and you know

spk_0 it's techno babble to me yeah so we're in the same picture we're having the exact same problem

spk_0 and at this point in the movie that's key right that's key because we were all going along with

spk_0 this fine and then they get to this location and all of a sudden they're an addict yeah it's

spk_0 actually one beat after this that I give up on the punks but yes they're running through an

spk_0 addict and you know why a Lee Coyote kind of move this terminator cop as I keep calling her because

spk_0 her name is it unimportant is chasing them through the rafters Sienna drops her phone or trips and

spk_0 is Sienna intentionally killing this cop at this point it looks like an accident and the cop has

spk_0 been so violent that when I watched this initially I'm thinking yeah she deserved to die she was a

spk_0 crazy person shooting in public places but was Sienna now killing her on purpose because at this

spk_0 point that cop did get a real kill order okay so I have a lot going on here that we need to talk

spk_0 about so she fell off the rafter made a heck of a lot of noise nobody seemed to hear it no

spk_0 consequences she didn't get hurt she didn't get bloody she didn't break an arm and when the cop

spk_0 tries to kill Langdon she hits her in the ankle and the woman falls through the ceiling I'll get to

spk_0 that in a second but this whole addict sequence I started really noticing that Ron Howard as we

spk_0 talked about earlier was doing things with his camera and his shots that we haven't seen Ron Howard

spk_0 do before this entire addict sequence bothered the hell out of me on how it was shot and I started

spk_0 noticing it that he would go from and down like the cameras on the floor looking up a lot and they

spk_0 would pan up from the floor up to people's heads and then the people's heads are cut off at their

spk_0 tops and their chins all you see is their face and then there's far away shots where someone's

spk_0 not in frame and this addict sequence is like he didn't get coverage enough to actually show a

spk_0 establishing plate I'm not a filmmaker I don't know how to make films but I know a little things

spk_0 about here and there I've watched 15,000 movies right I've seen movies and this seems to be a style

spk_0 he's going for with the steady cam and the weird angles and the extreme close-ups and the far away

spk_0 shots then cut to a close-up that can't really feel what's going on he's not establishing place he's

spk_0 not establishing anything until the woman falls through the ceiling and then you really understand

spk_0 it looks like an addict but I know time do I understand really where they're going and why they're

spk_0 going except that he's setting it up he is doing things today that is his bonkers and I don't

spk_0 understand the filmmaking I'll disagree with you on one point when she falls in the roof yeah

spk_0 it does make a thud and all the people searching for them because they think they stole the mask

spk_0 do look up at the ceiling they do and I think that's what sent Terminator Cop up there yeah okay

spk_0 but I will totally agree with you I don't have a sense of place I don't know where these three people

spk_0 in the Attic Art in relation to each other that's sloppy filmmaking that is amateurish filmmaking that

spk_0 I just don't expect from Run Out. Well also yeah I'll agree with both of you there because the

spk_0 addict is not well established I do think showing her fall and the thud there was even a comment

spk_0 before one of the museum goes like oh must be rats up there or whatever so I think the sense of

spk_0 where they are is established but once we're up there it's almost like magic sienna

spk_0 fell down a few feet on boards below and now she's just magically invisible like it's an open space

spk_0 with just wooden planks here and there she's able to sneak up on this cop without her seeing her

spk_0 whatsoever and stab her in the leg yeah and Langdon's hiding behind a post right and like all the cop

spk_0 has to do is just like wait a minute and she keeps moving towards him shooting this wooden post the

spk_0 logic sensors are going off and then when she falls through the roof through what looks like a

spk_0 priceless work of art when she falls through yes it's almost like the cysteen chapel painting on

spk_0 this roof that she falls through I'm like did you just destroy a priceless fresca and then she falls

spk_0 down and so it looked really good until she hit the floor they don't look like a CGI creation

spk_0 and then Ron Howard does two more shots back to it within the next minute we already know she's dead

spk_0 dude we already know she fell through the ceiling why go back to that as if it's like setting up

spk_0 dread I couldn't understand so I started really watching his filmmaking at this point and being

spk_0 much more critical because it looks like he's trying to like do a project versus do a movie like he's

spk_0 trying different techniques that are done before but I don't understand why for this movie I think

spk_0 he really wanted to establish that she was dead that was a real death because we're getting close

spk_0 to finding out that so much of this is a ruse and some of this has been play acting for Langdon's

spk_0 benefit right so I think we need to establish that there are some real stakes people can die in

spk_0 this somewhat controlled environment okay I thought this whole scene including showing the body

spk_0 three times was casting doubt on sienna which is why I asked the question I did of did sienna mean

spk_0 to kill the cop even knowing that sienna is a double agent I don't know if she meant to kill this

spk_0 cop but we get the moment of her with Langdon and she's like it was an accident and this is the

spk_0 first time I don't trust sienna and I think driving home sienna did something that caused a person

spk_0 to die is to be the first real question in our minds as to is something wrong with her I will say

spk_0 thank god there's only one cut of this movie the theatrical cut there were a half an hour of cut

spk_0 scenes on the blu-ray there was more of her kind of casting doubt upon herself further where she's

spk_0 talking more about her boyfriend and that you know she'll make sure things get done no matter

spk_0 what it takes to do them and saying these lines that in hindsight she's really telegraphing she's

spk_0 evil okay and I can see why they cut a lot of that but here I think in the theatrical cut this is the

spk_0 first time we're supposed to like raise an eyebrow and wonder is sienna killing people on purpose

spk_0 what is her goal another cut scene by the way which would have been helpful is Langdon telling her

spk_0 I'm not gonna go to the cops until I know what's going on little stretchy he seems like the kind

spk_0 who would go to the cops based on the previous two movies but they goes you can go with me or not

spk_0 but I know you love puzzles so you want to come with me but you don't have to this is going to be

spk_0 dangerous in it legal and she goes with him anyway knowing why they never go to the consulate and

spk_0 never go to the cops would have been at least some lip service to the thought of going to the cops

spk_0 about this might have been useful yeah okay there's a scene about that though he does this is not

spk_0 your problem she decides to go along and that doesn't make much sense why she does however it's a

spk_0 movie she's the lead female in the movie she's going along for the ride that's the all-rest to it

spk_0 but the movie at least tries to bring that up yep and Langdon also thinks that the consulate is

spk_0 somehow working with these people that are after him because he doesn't know that his phone call

spk_0 was intercepted by the consortium he believes the consulate sent somebody to start firing at him

spk_0 true and yeah the whole thing with yeah that crazy cop is just so over the top it is out of a

spk_0 born movie it does not feel out of a Langdon movie that you have somebody shooting first and asking

spk_0 questions later exactly but they get out of the plazzo and yeah they go to the baptisery of

spk_0 San Giovanni and again the death mask is in a ziploc and they put water on the back of it and

spk_0 there's a message and I'm like trying to write down it's a long-ass message this is a letter

spk_0 on the back of this mask the time it takes to write that and then they put plaster over to hide it

spk_0 it just doesn't make much sense at all why it's on the back of the mask and I don't understand

spk_0 and did Zobrist steal the mask put the message on it put some plaster on it and put it back

spk_0 okay so that wasn't in the movie like I said I'm having a hard time remembering what this

spk_0 movie was the book Zobrist owns the mask and then he loaned it to the museum as a tax write-off

spk_0 type of thing so it's his mask it's his personal thing he allows the museum to display it so he had

spk_0 okay if that was in the movie I totally missed it I think they might have mentioned that a billionaire

spk_0 donated it okay maybe that's true because later on they talk about the horses the horse heads

spk_0 or something like they were donated it's not real because the real ones are in museum that helps with

spk_0 this a little bit but I did not cash that a billionaire I didn't catch any of that just and honestly

spk_0 and I had the same problem but Arnie did like how did he even get on the back of that so if they

spk_0 did drop it I missed it but at this point I guess I'm trying to pay attention to this and that

spk_0 but there's so many names so many different places we talked about it's really getting confusing

spk_0 at this point so logic sensors are going off like again it's already said it's really long so how

spk_0 the heck did they get it on there and then put it back in the museum was not clear and this is where

spk_0 I gave up on the clues though I'm still enjoying the ride of the movie at this point although I think

spk_0 the Terminator cop was out of a different franchise but I'm still into the chase I'm into the mystery

spk_0 I'm into the ticking clock of the virus but then when he starts mumbling whatever words are on the

spk_0 back of that mask I realize oh this isn't about us the audience understanding these puzzles it's

spk_0 about Robert Langdon understanding the puzzles and us hopefully enjoying watching him run from

spk_0 place to place so that's what I'm going to do I'm no longer going to write down every clue

spk_0 that is given and try to analyze how that clue actually gives the answer as to where they go next

spk_0 because I don't think the movie is interested in conveying that information based upon this long

spk_0 mask message where I almost just bought the book on Kindle so I could look up what the hell this

spk_0 message was to figure out how it meant something right and I think that is that's the difference

spk_0 here between this and the other movies where it's not about the puzzles it's about the duplicitous

spk_0 nature of our characters we don't know who we can trust Langdon doesn't know who we can trust Langdon

spk_0 doesn't know if he can trust himself he's still in the bouts of amnesia here so I think putting the

spk_0 puzzles a little bit to the side here is probably the right instinct for Ron Howard because this is

spk_0 the third time we've been out on this and I personally am getting a little bored with the puzzle

spk_0 aspect of it I know we need to go from place to place to place but we don't need every solution we

spk_0 don't need to see his beautiful mind working on screen let's just figure this out and get to

spk_0 the next thing because what we haven't said yet is there is a ticking time clock here they have

spk_0 until basically midnight tomorrow to figure this out or this bomb is gonna go off if they have a

spk_0 ticking time clock and the bombs going off anyway why see Anna trying to get there why didn't she

spk_0 just let the clock run out she's actually gonna ensure that it goes she's there to plant the bombs

spk_0 okay but if she doesn't get there does the virus still go the bag should dissolve oh that's right

spk_0 it's a dissolvable baggy that's right yeah so further what Arnie is saying is yes I agree that at

spk_0 this point I'm just trying to go to place to place and I'm having trouble getting invested

spk_0 beyond the puzzle because I'm having trouble with the character of Robert Langdon this time around

spk_0 last time we had Tom Hanks in a much better more accessible character than the first movie I found

spk_0 him very bland here he's so disoriented in the beginning if it goes on he's different characters

spk_0 every scene right he's telling her how to go somewhere or these climbing on rafters and now he's

spk_0 trying to solve puzzles and then all of a sudden he remembers he's not 100% in the head yet and

spk_0 it's getting confusing on who this character is because he's like four different characters in one

spk_0 and I'm getting confused and if I can't follow the puzzles then I have to like this character

spk_0 enough to follow him wherever he goes and I'm having problems with that as well I don't know if it's

spk_0 Tom Hanks I don't know if it's the writing I don't know if it's the direction but it's something

spk_0 seems a little bit off again with the Robert Langdon character for me we have half the movie left and

spk_0 I'm already starting to get tired of what's going on character wise with him well fortunately it's

spk_0 at this point we start focusing on other characters we've been having scenes with this guy Sims and

spk_0 his agent's arabast and we don't know who they are and why they're intercepting the phone calls

spk_0 for the consulate and doing all of this but you get the impression that the subordinate is like

spk_0 well we have rules and this is what we do but the Sims who runs the company is like I don't care

spk_0 we are in danger of doing something that could wreck the company's reputation get me whatever video

spk_0 it is and then they get the video and it's zobrist saying the virus is released half the people

spk_0 are going to die you're gonna see unspeakable horrors but it's worth it so yeah it's his manifesto

spk_0 in warning that it's gonna happen his instructions are for the provost Sims to disseminate this

spk_0 information to the press at a certain time right and at this point we see Sims open his bottom

spk_0 desk drawer and then there's some of these most ornate beautiful knives in perfect foam like

spk_0 indentations to hold them perfectly and I was like oh look at that and then I said to myself well

spk_0 he's bringing a knife to fight a virus I made myself laugh but those knives look really cool

spk_0 and thankfully we get to see him use them a few times oh this guy is by far my favorite character

spk_0 in this movie I've been enjoying the energy that earphone con is bringing just in his early scenes

spk_0 I'm captivated by him I'm like why is he breaking the rules he's obviously powerful what is his

spk_0 deal who is he working for why are they intercepting calls why does he have those knives where does

spk_0 he get those wonderful toys and this actor I recognized him immediately from Jurassic World where

spk_0 he's the billionaire in that movie that restarted Jurassic World and then dies when he's doing what

spk_0 he thinks is a heroic helicopter flight thing and he was also an amazing spider man this guy is a

spk_0 really really long career of Indian films but those are the two American films I know I'm from

spk_0 sadly he passed away a few years back kind of young in his 50s but in this movie he is

spk_0 sucking me in and I'm like I want a Sims movie now and so when he's making these deals of the

spk_0 enemy of my enemy as my friend I'm enjoying it much more than I'm enjoying the Langdon stuff and I

spk_0 have a theory on why that is because all of his scenes were filmed traditionally all the camera

spk_0 moves were solid easy to follow editing it was a traditionally filmed scenes with him in

spk_0 Obrist in his battleship wherever he is there's an aircraft care I don't even know where he is

spk_0 but it's like a boat right he's on a ship yeah they're on a boat in the Mediterranean yeah so all

spk_0 these scenes with him in the boat with Abergast are just traditionally filmed so you're sucked in

spk_0 immediately there's no of that other crap coming on so I noticed that here because I too is

spk_0 wondering what's gonna happen now that he's in play I finally got back a little more interest in

spk_0 the filmmaking help do we that and I think it was the right move too because in the book this

spk_0 character basically figures out what's going on has a crisis of conscience and basically teams up

spk_0 with the world health organization and it's just kind of long for the ride like there's none of this

spk_0 like he's gonna go out in the field and start taking care of stuff himself in the book and he goes

spk_0 and meets this doctor Elizabeth Sinsky who we've seen but haven't really gotten to know her we

spk_0 don't know what role she's playing either and we find out here that she's head of the world

spk_0 health organization and yeah even though Sims is like my company does bad things but this is a

spk_0 virus we have the ability to stop so we need to work together on that and that's where also Bouchard

spk_0 catches up to Langdon and it's like I'm with the world health organization and I'm here to help

spk_0 you I've been chasing you this whole time you've been running but I'm actually the one who approached

spk_0 you at Harvard don't you remember I came to you to get your help to find this virus and figure out

spk_0 these symbols yeah game the vile with the hidden little projector on it so Langdon, Sienna and Bouchard

spk_0 are now on a train headed for yet another historical site did you guys figure out that like Langdon

spk_0 did that this guy is lying to him no I can say honestly that the twists and turns of this movie

spk_0 are so erratic and ridiculous that I didn't guess a single one yeah I didn't either I got

spk_0 hoodwinked here I think all finally we're getting all the pieces put together for us it can

spk_0 hour into the movie all this now we're gonna go in real time no more of this backwards and forwards

spk_0 of stuff and now we have answers and then all of a sudden Langdon fakes being sick because he suspects

spk_0 the guy and I'm like oh okay yeah okay he had that flashback of the world health organization

spk_0 woman in his head that made him realize that this man's lying to him but I didn't follow that

spk_0 until he faked his own event wait wait wait all right I'm putting things together again as we're

spk_0 going through this uh-huh so Bouchard does work for the world health organization yes but he's rogue

spk_0 he was working with them and leading a world health organization team in that black van to try to

spk_0 find Langdon and yet Sienna and Sims are the ones who work together to kidnap Langdon inject him with

spk_0 the drug that gives him the temporary amnesia and fake all this other stuff so Bouchard shows up

spk_0 how does Bouchard know Langdon has amnesia and he can lie and say I'm the one who went to Harvard

spk_0 to meet you it's a ballsy lie anyway because if Langdon's amnesia didn't cover that moment of time

spk_0 then Bouchard's cover would be blown but it seems to me like he shouldn't even know Langdon has amnesia

spk_0 mm yeah I guess we're supposed to just understand that he has information that he shouldn't because

spk_0 his entire plan is to get the virus and then sell it to somebody else that's what he's trying to do

spk_0 right but only Sims and Sienna should know about the amnesia thing right so Bouchard is somewhat of a

spk_0 character in the book different name in the book different motivations in the book they make a big

spk_0 deal out of this guy he's having an allergic reaction to soap that he used at the hotel and he's

spk_0 got a skin rash and his eyes are turning red so it's just more fear that this virus may have

spk_0 already been released and people are being infected by it and I think they hint at it a little

spk_0 bit in the movie here because I think Bouchard's eyes are turning pretty red at some point on the train

spk_0 mm-hmm but they don't really speak to it at all there's a couple scenes when Langdon is changing clothes

spk_0 in Sienna's apartment we see his back and there's some lesions on his back and then later around

spk_0 this time we see under his sleeve that there's some lesions and flaky skin on his sleeve and he

spk_0 asks Sienna am I typhoid Mary am I the carrier is the virus in me and I'm spreading it and I'm also

spk_0 infected and then later Sims is gonna go oh yeah the amnesia drug we injected you with sometimes

spk_0 causes skin irritation so it was all a red herring there that we were to think he was the infected one

spk_0 and it's an allergic reaction and yeah I think we get a little bit of that here with Bouchard as well

spk_0 who yeah well first we have to get the betrayal they escape Bouchard on the train and then head

spk_0 to Venice because that's where the clue sent them because of something with Henrikus

spk_0 Dandelo and the horse's heads but the horse's heads aren't really there the horse's heads are in

spk_0 Istanbul yeah they were cut off for transport at some time in history yeah something only Langdon would know

spk_0 right now I get we've had in angels and demons Langdon picked to the wrong place you know the

spk_0 tomb of that guy instead of the tomb that guy built and I can't remember off the top of my head if

spk_0 he made a wrong call in Da Vinci but it's good to see Langdon sometimes not be right it makes him

spk_0 human but having him be wrong so they can go all the way to Venice just to go whoops and do nothing

spk_0 of importance in Venice just go oh the horses aren't here let's go to Istanbul it feels like that

spk_0 could have been tightened up a bit I love the establishing shot finally got an establishing shot

spk_0 that I like of it looked like a drone shot of the Venice it looked like a big swirl with all the

spk_0 canals that was beautiful and and this filming in that location it seemed like they were filming

spk_0 on location in the big square right I laughed out loud when Felicity Jones and Tom Hanks were on top

spk_0 where the horses are and they looked down and they see Bouchard running through the crowd they're

spk_0 really high up and the crowd's full of people so it seemed like he was the only black guy in the

spk_0 crowd right but obviously he wasn't but the way they saw him it looked like he was and it was

spk_0 really funny to me that of all the people and all like thousands of people they actually picked him

spk_0 out and they knew they had a runaway it's only in the movies it's like turn the page and seeing

spk_0 Waldo right away a game that that was an easy one right exactly it was exactly but no no little red

spk_0 hat though but yes it might as well have been wearing one but this is where Sienna isn't going to

spk_0 bother taking Langdon with her to Istian Bull anymore she knows Istian Bulls the place and

spk_0 that's all she needs to know she's gonna trap him behind a great she's gonna go off on her own

spk_0 she now has the map to One-eyed Willie's virus and this leaves Langdon behind with Bouchard who like

spk_0 you said Justin I don't know that this makes a lot of sense that this World Health Organization

spk_0 middle management guy also knows terrorists who want to buy weapons of mass destruction

spk_0 and would do so even knowing it's going to cause death to half the world did someone make sense

spk_0 right the World Health Organization is out there monitoring people that they would consider

spk_0 potential hazards to the world right you probably can't build a lab without them knowing about it

spk_0 right and if they suspect you of doing something kind of shady you're probably on the radar so

spk_0 you probably have some contacts in that world okay okay you made me buy into that it's still a

spk_0 mustache twirling villainous change that seems extreme much like the I'm gonna shoot everyone

spk_0 cop I want this virus that could kill me it's gonna kill half the people I could flip a coin and

spk_0 I might be one of the ones dead but hey I might make a few bucks so I'm gonna sell it this is the

spk_0 scene where we see Bouchard's eyes red but I also noticed that Langdon's eyes were red also so I

spk_0 started believing that they both were carrying the virus I understood it that way because the

spk_0 eyes being red doesn't really pay off it just seems like they need some vizene right it's a false

spk_0 lead you know we're supposed to think that it's a misdirect it's a red eye hearing

spk_0 agreed but it got me I was curious and good for them I at this point was starting to not care

spk_0 but I'm like their eyes are awful red but they're going to where the virus is so I really don't

spk_0 think they're the carriers you never know then badass Sims comes with his little knife and just stabs

spk_0 Bouchard in the neck and that guy's down and Sims looks at it and has this like badass line

spk_0 not my best work like this guy needs us spin off yeah I felt like we were a little bit in

spk_0 John Wick universe for a scene here I agree that was a wikkie and move and then he dirties up the

spk_0 body too was like a board or something like that so they can't immediately figure out he got

spk_0 stabbed in the back of the neck that was like cold man don't cold but he saves Langdon who was

spk_0 tied up and getting monologue almost ready to be killed by Bouchard but he saves the day just in time

spk_0 and he monologues and tells us all what's really going on yes that you were injected with a drug

spk_0 that causes amnesia we even get flashbacks to see the bullet wound on his head was caused by a scalpel

spk_0 how all of this and this is where like I think I'm suffering ocular strain my eyes were rolling

spk_0 so much that this was all a game and Sims runs this company to just put you in these fake simulations

spk_0 it's like wow that is where you're going to go that's how you're explaining this all away

spk_0 and does the company do other stuff I mean at some point Zobris hired them not wanting a game

spk_0 he hired them wanting like a video released so they also have a really killer escape room you

spk_0 gotta try it it's amazing oh the stupid it hurts yes so here's the thing is that we've been talking

spk_0 about this this entire podcast as we saw in hindsight where this this this that it falls apart so

spk_0 what was interesting and somewhat compelling at the beginning and as all of us at different points

spk_0 started caring less and less and less for different reasons to hear him say all this stuff this

spk_0 is not a Kaiser Sozi at the end of usual suspects kind of reveal this is more of a you got to be

spk_0 kidding me kind of reveal because it's just too intricate to be believable and it's just a shame

spk_0 because if you hadn't turned on the movie before now I find it hard to believe you're not going to

spk_0 do it at this point Justin you are the fan and how much of this is from the book and are you

spk_0 turning on the movie I don't hear you hating on it the way Brock and I are Brock and I are

spk_0 beaten on this thing like it's Bouchard and we need to cover up his stabbing like I said with

spk_0 this one this is the book I've read the least amount of times and the movie I've seen the least

spk_0 amount of time so I'm having a hard time remembering what's from which world here but somewhere in my

spk_0 head I have the information that Zobris did hire this company to protect him at all costs and he

spk_0 knows that this company does do this stuff and what he really needed was a year alone where he could

spk_0 create his virus and he even left his girlfriend that we're about to find out is Sienna so he could

spk_0 go do this and somewhere along the line he realized he probably wasn't going to survive this so he

spk_0 needed to leave some bread crumbs for his girlfriend to finish us off if need be and that's where

spk_0 some of this trail comes from but who was making the day-to-day plans who was setting up squibs who

spk_0 was setting up oh Langdon's gonna be here we got a kidnap him and make him have amnesia a lot of

spk_0 this seems to be off of the hip but you know what as a movie standpoint goes if I'm asking these

spk_0 questions that means I'm either bored or not following the story so I think for me it's moving

spk_0 at a fast enough pace that I'm going with it at this point okay okay I will say that now that

spk_0 Sims is here we get the reunion between Langdon and Sinski and we find out Sinski was the one

spk_0 who went to Harvard and got him and it does beg the question again if Sinski hadn't had a previous

spk_0 love affair with Langdon and known to go to him for these clues to the virus then he wouldn't have

spk_0 been involved Zobrist never planned on Langdon and it's only because Sienna knew who Langdon was

spk_0 because she read his books that she knew he'd be the one to help her but I still think Zobrist

spk_0 just should have communicated a little bit more with his girlfriend and said you know here's a

spk_0 secure Google Doc that tells you where you need to go so you don't have to kidnap a Harvard

spk_0 professor to figure out the clues I left for you here hotty here's my tailor his name is Francis

spk_0 he's in Brooklyn go to Hamlox find everything to you just don't say you knew anything and then

spk_0 go to East End Bull viruses there throw a bomb you're good this whole thing Sims is like the banker

spk_0 from DaVinci code Sims will keep your data he's not supposed to watch your videos and Sienna

spk_0 obviously knows Sims because they did that whole plot so this whole thing Zobrist could have just

spk_0 been he's a genius billionaire biochemist but not smart enough to just give Sims a thumb drive and

spk_0 say give this to my girlfriend if something happens to me exactly that's how simple it is but we

spk_0 don't know that until now and with such a big data dump and a big off full you it kind of feels

spk_0 unearned it really feels that it's just too hard to believe I should have known Sienna was bad

spk_0 though because I don't know if it's like this in every book but three out of three movies one of

spk_0 Langdon's closest allies was the bad guy whether it was the caramengo or caramel or whatever he was

spk_0 for the tea bag or Sienna well I mentioned that earlier like I read the books there's the same

spk_0 twist every time it's the same twist to get well in defense of Dan Brown this is not the twist

spk_0 in the book Sienna is not a bad guy in the book oh we think that she might be for a while we'll

spk_0 talk more about it at the end but yeah she does not take this villainous turn in the book oh wow

spk_0 wow that is quite a change so you're telling me that Dan Brown does not do a Dan Brown twist how

spk_0 interesting Robert Ron Howard does yeah apparently but now they raced Istanbul and Sienna finds a guy

spk_0 and his life I need a goon now and you are the goon for me it's the local zealot right it's the guy

spk_0 who suck the Istanbul chapter of this cult that she's in and he has a guy two who knows bombs

spk_0 so you know he knows a guy who knows a guy and they go to the most bizarre concert venue I've ever seen

spk_0 I think judging by some of the behind the scenes stuff that like this is a real location and they

spk_0 really filmed there and maybe there's even really concerts there but then they weren't allowed to

spk_0 swim in the water and have their action scenes so they had to reproduce some of it on a set but

spk_0 some of this is real and really cool like yeah yeah this is an awesome venue yeah it's a museum

spk_0 up top that used to be a palace of some sort and it just happens to be above the ancient sewer

spk_0 ways that they've turned into a concert venue with almost seemingly floating squares of concrete

spk_0 section out like I'm not sure how those musicians got out there they must have laid down a plank

spk_0 let them get set up and took the plank away and out there just there until the show's over

spk_0 it was like legend of Zelda right you got the follows from the pack right it's seriously and

spk_0 what I got confused with is that and it was a really cool visual though I had to give it to them

spk_0 they had like red light in the water so it looked like they were performing on blood so that was

spk_0 really cool but that really screw with me when they have the action scene in the water because

spk_0 I knew it's supposed to be lights but the virus that's in the bag is also red and then people

spk_0 are bleeding so I'm like what is blood what is lights what is virus it got a little confusing but

spk_0 the visual was amazing and it ties into the vision that Langdon's been having you know of the

spk_0 blood water flowing over the man or woman in the veils whichever it was that he was seeing in

spk_0 this vision sadly a lot of his vision never really pays off like the beggar and all this is a lot

spk_0 of Dante's in Ferno imagery that doesn't pay off but here the red water all does with the almost

spk_0 like the shining blood wave that he was seeing yeah and before the panic sets and you know we're

spk_0 hearing a concert at least in the book they mentioned that it was the concert piece they were playing

spk_0 with some old written about Dante's in Ferno so the music here is actually diogenic right like we

spk_0 actually have an orchestra playing while some actions going on in the background before everybody

spk_0 has reason the panic and speaking of the music Han Zimmer is doing the best job of any returning

spk_0 player to this franchise I'm not into the way Hanks is playing Langdon this time like you said

spk_0 Brock the way Hanks is playing this it's too confused I'm not rooting for Langdon the way Ron Howard

spk_0 is directing this I'm having trouble even understanding where things are happening but Zimmer man

spk_0 Zimmer brings the game I have to disagree with you on that one I found the music to be manipulative

spk_0 I felt that after they saw the cut they said to the guy look we need you to amp this up because it's

spk_0 not working the way we want it to work so this music has to do the heavy lifting of trying to make

spk_0 the audience think this is exciting and at the beginning of the movie I was totally in with it

spk_0 but as it went on and on and on and I started not caring more and I started not playing along with it

spk_0 I started noticing things like the weird angles and the weird choices of editing and the weird

spk_0 choices of filmmaking including the music which was so obvious trying to make me stay involved

spk_0 that I turned against it so I love it you love it but I just didn't work for me I actually just

spk_0 like it as listening I waited to see if there was an end credit scene because coming out in 2016

spk_0 they could have done that you know it was well into the Avengers era and I just was enjoying

spk_0 listening to the Zimmer music while the credits are rolled honestly Langdon needed a theme like

spk_0 Captain Jack Sparrow had he needed something like that and he used it sparingly like to do for the

spk_0 Bond theme with Indiana Jones March if he is on his third movie it'd be kind of great to have

spk_0 a noticeable motif that was Robert Langdon's and they missed a boat on that the funny thing is

spk_0 they did that with Angels and Demons they actually took some of the DaVinci code music and recycled

spk_0 it a couple of times in Angels and Demons but if they brought it back here a third time it's not

spk_0 memorable enough it's not anthemic enough to really drive it home for us yeah it needed to be like

spk_0 the Disney theme song right like this reminds of his watch that's missing once again

spk_0 but the action here is pretty decent right we got some bombs going off we got some

spk_0 fist fights we got some drowning going on meanwhile we got a team of guys trying to save this delicate

spk_0 bag into some sort of tech contraption that has three red lights to let you know when it's contained

spk_0 it's the Ghostbuster trap yeah I have to agree though there's an action scene here at the end that

spk_0 is completely worthwhile a great setting a lot of things going on but you follow what's going on

spk_0 you know the players at this point may not know their names but you know the players and it works

spk_0 the way it's edited the way the different story lines are portrayed I was wondering why Santa

spk_0 went there by herself but all of a sudden the two guys come the two zealots are there two thank

spk_0 goodness they're there to help her you'd think there'd be a couple more guys though they can dispatch

spk_0 because wouldn't it be great to see Sims really go at a whole bunch of guys because what he did get

spk_0 what he did do was awesome unfortunately he got hurt in the process yeah this may be on me

spk_0 but by this point in the movie I was checking out and so I found this action very hard to follow

spk_0 much like the attic scene I couldn't tell where these people were underwater I couldn't tell exactly

spk_0 what was going on with the bomb detonation versus these sensor readings we're seeing of the

spk_0 containment is holding or the containment is breaking the one thing that really I knew

spk_0 is that when sienna killed Sims that we were told sienna is now irredeemable and so we're going

spk_0 to be okay with sienna being killed herself sienna was not going to survive this once she killed

spk_0 Sims because the way she killed the cop was questionable her entire agenda is misguided but she's

spk_0 not evil evil until she kills the character that has saved our hero even if he himself is an

spk_0 anti hero and he dies too because of similar reasons right already that's my sims has to die

spk_0 yeah like I said he's an anti hero and so if sienna is going to kill somebody that's the character

spk_0 that audiences are going to be most okay with losing because he's an assassin himself

spk_0 yeah these are things that have to happen in the movie because of the change stakes that they

spk_0 did here keep in mind the virus here is set to kill half the world population right and we've

spk_0 had some people that have done some bad things to get to this point in the book they discover

spk_0 that the virus zobrist our billionaire wasn't zobrist in the book was smarter than we thought he

spk_0 released this a full week before the date that he said was going to happen so this virus is out

spk_0 in the book there's no containment it ends with the virus actually in the world and sienna was

spk_0 there trying to capture it to make sure it didn't fall into the round hands and she tries to escape

spk_0 Langdon grabs her she comes back in the book ends with the book ends with her basically joining the

spk_0 World Health Organization to go give a speech with everybody who's now got to figure out this

spk_0 worldwide virus that has been unleashed I love that ending you know what it reminds me of is watchman

spk_0 where azamandius is telling the watchman his whole plan and how he's going to fake an alien invasion

spk_0 to stop world war three and they're all like well we're gonna stop you and he's like stop me I did

spk_0 this two hours ago I love that twist in that movie and comic and dammit you're making me give Dan

spk_0 Brown some props for copying that and not liking david cap for doing this

spk_0 well you know what when he was talking it reminded me of something that really haunts me to this day

spk_0 was that planet of the apes movie the first one of the new trilogy or now it's what is it

spk_0 more than that but moment james franko went at the end of the movie we see how the virus spread

spk_0 that would make the planet become the planet of the apes right and that kind of haunts me to this day

spk_0 that's how i'll virus spread in the pandemic hit and that's exactly the example i talked to my wife

spk_0 about was remember that into that movie and so here it would have been a very interesting idea to

spk_0 play that why it worked in planet of the apes is because we know the planet of the apes is a prequel

spk_0 we're learning how that came about here would be like oh gosh and now when this movie was made we

spk_0 did not have covid yet right so if they did that ending here and then covid happened a few years

spk_0 later it'd be like how everyone got back into contagion that movie from 2011 you guys

spk_0 even reviewed it here on the show because of that reason right so it would have been much more

spk_0 haunting i don't know if this is the movie to have that ending for the way they wrote this movie

spk_0 up to now aren't i'm not sure if that would have worked but it sounds like a much better ending

spk_0 yeah it would have been a perfect pandemic movie right in the middle of 2021 watching this movie

spk_0 with that kind of sad ending it's like oh well that's kind of where we are but in 2016 they were

spk_0 making a Hollywood thriller yeah more to the point they were making a formulaic thriller and i

spk_0 think cap and howard were scared of not giving us an exciting nail biting clock ticking climax

spk_0 and so we get this row ending that again once they're underwater i don't even know who's who

spk_0 i had to rewind to see what happened to see anna where did see anna go oh see anna was caught in

spk_0 the explosion and died i'm just checked out because action without characterization is hollow

spk_0 and that's where i feel like i'm at with this i did like one thing is that when Langdon was trying to

spk_0 fight that guy who was going after the box with the virus in it that he isn't know how to fight

spk_0 and that was a nice touch because of all the sudden he was Jason born that would have been

spk_0 even more bockers than him you know knowing how to avoid a drone with no experience doing that

spk_0 right so it's nice that they made him a really bad sort of fighter especially in war too right

spk_0 i like that i hear you i like this ending only because at this point i'm ready for something

spk_0 exciting to happen and of all the things that they did mostly right to show me what's going on

spk_0 it's this portion of the movie so i enjoy the ending i will say though after spending

spk_0 god counting the extended cuts nearly nine hours with Robert Langdon over the course of three movies

spk_0 i do feel a little bit bad for him in this aftermath that he and synski can't make it work you know

spk_0 it's been layered in here he was telling sienna earlier sometimes you just can't make it happen

spk_0 and then we get a flashback to them the night he's kidnapped where they're in the rain and saying

spk_0 you know maybe it could have happened but you were going to be the director of who and so you

spk_0 had to go to janeva and i'm a professor at harvard and i must stay at Cambridge and so it's like

spk_0 maybe he'll get an age appropriate girlfriend no they're both career people love be damned right

spk_0 yeah that was point of my heartstrings a little bit too but then i realized they're both like

spk_0 six months away from retirement age like why not just make some plans for next year

spk_0 or maybe like you know i'll have about one day a year we'll make a point of hanging out with each

spk_0 other for a couple of you know a weekend i'll take a weekend off you know world health

spk_0 organization willing they can you know get off on his on sabbatical or something just get off to

spk_0 some other country they haven't been to yet Austria here's Austria is very nice go there

spk_0 it's 2016 face time yeah yeah true that's right but this scene also has a bigger purpose right

spk_0 we can't have our hero without his signature micky mouse watch and Elizabeth happened to pick it

spk_0 up the night that m&n was was fake kidnapped and lost his watch but he's whole again and in the close-ups

spk_0 we see of the watch being ripped off his wrist and falling to the street i swear because it plays

spk_0 several times i swear the watch like fell apart like parts of the watch came off so i don't know

spk_0 if she went to an Istanbul watch repair shop or if she was able to snap the micky mouse watch back

spk_0 together again herself but he gets his micky mouse watch back in perfect condition you know i

spk_0 lost the micky mouse watch very similar way i honestly did you were kidnapped and had a drug injected

spk_0 in your neck in Vienna yes and i'm still having flashbacks from it it's amazing no what happened

spk_0 was i was in college and somebody grabbed me by the wrist and my watch flew off and fell on the

spk_0 snow and it was gone and you know it wasn't a family air lumer anything like that it was just a

spk_0 micky mouse watch that i had that someone gave me so if you're wearing it in college dude it was time

spk_0 honestly i had a micky mouse watch for many many years because i think it's funny i think it's

spk_0 funny to show somebody the time in a micky mouse now i have a smart watch i don't need one anymore but

spk_0 it was more of a funny thing like yeah i'm a grown man with a micky mouse watch it was a joke it was

spk_0 kind of fun but yes i lost that one maybe i'm sharing too much you know the i watch does have a

spk_0 micky mouse face you can download so maybe you can be a whole man again there you go i mean thank

spk_0 you maybe i should hear i'm thinking that the ensuring that Langdon has micky mouse on his wrist

spk_0 might have been part of the negotiations between marvel and sony about getting spider man back in

spk_0 the mcu and disney being like well we're gonna brand another sony property but that's not the only

spk_0 thing to get returned Langdon heads back to the museum where he stole the mask and returns it kind

spk_0 of on the slide he sneaks it back in there and the guard recognizes that it's back and we end on a

spk_0 happy note everything's back in its place i am about to pull a Lewis black and explode at the stupid

spk_0 hitty of that final scene first of all the museum got robbed no we're not gonna increase security at all

spk_0 second Langdon is wanted for theft on tape just because the item is back doesn't mean he's not a crook

spk_0 that they're not gonna still be looking for him and he can't return to Italy because he's a wanted

spk_0 fugitive you negotiate this you hand it back to the pregnant lady when her maternity leave is done

spk_0 you do not reverse national treasure this and sneak it back in and then walk out whistling

spk_0 zippity doodah like your record is expunged no sir go to jail you're an idiot yeah questions of

spk_0 provenance come up right like how do we know this isn't a fake you've had this thing in your

spk_0 custody for a week now you could have produced a fake i was curious on why they made the point

spk_0 of saying that the woman who was pregnant is out this is a reshoot did like they realized they

spk_0 resolved this plot thread and the woman who's actually pregnant actually was out she was

spk_0 unavailable it seemed like a really weird thing to throw in there but she was quite pregnant though she

spk_0 really was she had her baby in the book they say she had her baby yeah so that's probably what it was

spk_0 but she drops her key card on the ground and then walks out the front door yeah it was kind of a

spk_0 head scratcher i guess it was supposed to be like an audience crowd pleasing kind of moment but

spk_0 arny's right you know logically speaking especially after they've had this whole what arny calls

spk_0 the game sort of thing they did for the plot to have this ending it's not as satisfying as they

spk_0 think it is it's not the end of tombs crown affair no i just saw this and all that was going through

spk_0 my head was gene wilder willy wonka in the chocolate factory you loser good day i'm just dawn with

spk_0 this it is so fucking dumb so justin arny do you recommend inferno justin all right we're finally at

spk_0 the end here and i think what i've learned beyond i didn't love these movies is that i enjoyed

spk_0 dan brown novels once every five years or so i do not like stacking them up week after week after

spk_0 week because as we've spoken it becomes apparent of his tropes it becomes apparent his writing style

spk_0 it becomes apparent that you're reading the same story over and over again but if you let it

spk_0 breathe and you come back to it having a new one is almost like rereading an old book but you're

spk_0 being fooled again because it's a new story to some degree so i think that's what i enjoy about

spk_0 dan brown i know it's not high literature but i enjoy the tropes of it you know once or twice a

spk_0 decade so when we sit down and make it homework and we have to pick it apart yeah all the flaws

spk_0 become apparent and the flaws in trying to take these long stories that have back stories and

spk_0 flashbacks and history and all this other stuff and putting it on film it's never worked for me

spk_0 i've given mild recommends to the other ones because i think they work as good companion pieces

spk_0 to people that read the books and her fans of the books but i will say in furno is probably the

spk_0 most movieish movie that we've gotten out of this series the other ones felt like cliff notes

spk_0 to the book and they looked good and they did a decent job at telling a story but they felt

spk_0 incomplete and this one feels like a movie that almost anybody could sit down and watch follow

spk_0 enough and have a good time watching right you don't need to know who Robert Langan is you don't

spk_0 need to know that the Vatican hates him and all this other stuff you can just watch this movie and

spk_0 have a decent time but as a fan of Robert Langan and a fan of dan brown i think this movie kind of

spk_0 does the source material dirty like we already talked about how they completely changed the stakes

spk_0 of the virus and they change the ending and if you're gonna change the ending of the author's work

spk_0 that's telling me something about what you're trying to say here and to me i would have rather had

spk_0 the more dour ending but i understand why they didn't go that way so in the end i'm gonna make

spk_0 it a clean sweep because this to me isn't garbage i've been through the arcade i've been through

spk_0 way worse movies than this it's still an enjoyable popcorn movie to me so it's a mild recommend

spk_0 but what i do not recommend is ingesting too much dan brown in a short period of time if you're

spk_0 gonna get into him spread it out yeah everything's better in moderation for sure yeah like crack it's

spk_0 better if you just again again we're not advocating our audience members to even try crack but

spk_0 you know if you're gonna do it use in moderation uh and don't drive any heavy machinery aren't

spk_0 i'm really glad justin that you were able to give that final thought and allow me to fully understand

spk_0 a more moderate opinion of this film because i feel having watched it like a zealot who

spk_0 wants the plague to be released upon everyone who was involved in the making of this movie except

spk_0 hans Zimmer and so to hear you explain why you like it and can recommend it and why you like dan brown

spk_0 i can sit back and go that makes sense to me i don't feel it myself but i completely understand

spk_0 where you're coming from and i respect that what i don't respect is inferno this is less a movie

spk_0 and more a two-hour travel brochure with the concussion it's a baffling aggressively dumb thriller

spk_0 that keeps tripping over itself trying to seem smart robert Langdon has amnesia that's fitting

spk_0 because ron howard also forgot how movie making works every scene has hangs muttering gibberish

spk_0 with life or death urgency interrupted by bizarre hallucinations that look like rejected constantine

spk_0 b-roll dunked in sepia tone i mean felicity jones's plot is nonsense the billionaire biochemist

spk_0 thinks the only way to save humanity is to wipe out half of it so naturally the logical thing

spk_0 to do is create a plague and hide it behind an art history scavenger hunt if your genocidal plan

spk_0 requires decoding bodicelli and dante trivia maybe it's not as airtight as the ziplock baggy's

spk_0 you have underwater the movie's only saving grace all right uh forgot hans and earphone con those

spk_0 are the two earphone con seems to know what kind of ridiculous mess he's in he delivers his

spk_0 exposition like a Shakespeare cracks dry one liners and casually murders people with zero remorse

spk_0 he's fun but it really feels like he wandered in from a better movie and this finale collapses into

spk_0 full on nonsense as everyone is sprinting through the Istanbul sisters trying to find a virus that's

spk_0 been sitting in a bag underwater for days sienna's big death felt less tragic and more like a mercy kill

spk_0 for her and the audience and yeah by the time langed and is replacing dante's death mask in a museum

spk_0 my only real mystery is why was this movie made i mean the stakes were global extinction but the

spk_0 extinction is so disjointed and joyless it's a thriller with no thrills and i think ron howard is

spk_0 totally adrift here the pacing is frantic but a hollow the visuals are bland despite the locations

spk_0 with a few exceptions i think he did pretty good with those dream sequences but at least the

spk_0 previous two films were great travel logs here everything feels so confined and like langed in

spk_0 claustrophobic i mean i don't think howard was given much to work with though i mean maybe

spk_0 dan brown's book is better but this scripts plot twists or telegraphs so hard they might as well

spk_0 calm with subtitles i mean inferno was convoluted charmless tension free a franchising whimper that

spk_0 proves not every book deserves a film adaptation especially not an adaptation like this so that's

spk_0 a green arrow for you yeah recommend yeah so we've talked about this a lot already throughout this

spk_0 show is movie series book series you go back to a book because you enjoy the type of story and

spk_0 or the character so if you really get down to it every poireau mystery is a new set of people

spk_0 parot comes in he figures out the clues and he satisfi ingly solves the murder at the end right and

spk_0 if you watch a james bond movie you have this crazy megalomaniac who wants to do xy and z and

spk_0 james bond has to go to xy places to get this and falls in love or at least for the day and saves

spk_0 the world so this is a robert langed in story so we want him to solve puzzles and avert problems

spk_0 and unfortunately i don't think run howard or tom hanks have been consistent enough with the type

spk_0 of film they're making and the characterization of robert langed in to really want to go on a ride

spk_0 with them again for a third time the fact that they started off with such promise and that it

spk_0 kept on falling apart as it went along shows me that they really didn't have a strong idea of

spk_0 what they wanted to do like they did last time i kept going back to alpharic hitchcock movies and

spk_0 this could have been in hitchcock's hands probably something to see this has all this kind of

spk_0 things that a hitchcock movie might have but much more complicated right much much more complicated

spk_0 he would have been able to really boil it down to what needed to be told to have a satisfying

spk_0 mystery with the same exact story and really film it differently better make it more interesting

spk_0 and make you want to follow carry grant so when a biplane starts to chase him at a climactic moment

spk_0 or he's climbing on Mount Rushmore you believe this guy who ordinarily wouldn't be doing such things

spk_0 could do those things the i'll dee for Dante i'm in you know exactly so like but that's not what we

spk_0 have here we have run howard doing something else so unfortunately i'm going to have to not

spk_0 recommend this again because this is a different kind of mess than the other two however i give them

spk_0 full points for the attempt and at the end of the day it's just an unsatisfying forgettable watch

spk_0 and we've described why it's a shame i really thought you're turning to this series i was going to

spk_0 see something different and knew that i missed the first time around because it is a series of

spk_0 movies and characters that are consistent but unfortunately i didn't pan out and these movies are

spk_0 not really worth to revisit all these years later yeah no i'm sorry to all the listeners

spk_0 you voted for these because i feel like i've been beating on them like a pinata but i also feel

spk_0 they deserve the beating yeah honestly i mean we're now playing we're not gonna pull any punches here

spk_0 no and i can't disagree with either of you guys's take on this because like i keep saying it's hard

spk_0 for me to divorce the movies from the books and the books from the movies and i feel like with a full

spk_0 picture there's more stuff to enjoy in the movies but if you're just coming at these movies

spk_0 i'm not enjoying these movies the same way i enjoy knives out movies right knives out movies stand

spk_0 on their own mm-hmm those characters are great they're written great and if they were based on a book

spk_0 i don't know that i would care right this is something different for me so yeah i'm not offended by

spk_0 red arrows on these things and i totally get if other people are sitting there going oh come on

spk_0 these movies aren't that bad they aren't great i will admit that so how do you rank them just

spk_0 and because for me i think angels and demons was the best it's the one that i could on a kind

spk_0 day maybe give a pass to divinci code in the middle inferno i want to scrape off the bottom of my shoe

spk_0 i think that's a fair ranking i think angel and demons is probably the most fun movie and like

spk_0 you said with the recent history we've had with all the pokes dying and actually having some

spk_0 conglas and stuff it feels more topical to watch nowadays but divinci code is the book that started

spk_0 it all for everybody right that one will always have a soft spot in my heart it kind of brings me

spk_0 back to simpler times of 2005 reading that novel right but movie wise yeah angel and demons

spk_0 divinci code and then inferno sitting down there at the bottom yeah three for three there's no

spk_0 all the way to say it like that's exactly the order that we should rank those but thank you to

spk_0 everybody who did vote for us to cover these movies hopefully you've enjoyed the journey even if

spk_0 you don't necessarily agree with our arrows or at least with brox and my arrows some of the time

spk_0 Justin was three for three on recommend but hey if you voted for dark man we will be doing that

spk_0 as we said dark man only lost by two votes in this poll so we currently have that scheduled for

spk_0 about six months from now will we look at that in april or may of next year a good kind of kickoff

spk_0 to the summer period you know new release movies our schedules always changing but we will be

spk_0 covering the dark man films for the second place runner up there as for here at now playing

spk_0 next week the three of us are going to be getting back together and jacking in for tron aries

spk_0 talk about a movie series that we've never thought was going to come back again like they

spk_0 announced this movie so long ago and man I don't typically watch previews for movies I know I'm

spk_0 going to see but I had no idea it was a tron preview when it first came on the screen and I was

spk_0 just like my jaw was hanging out of my face I was like oh my god look at that so yeah you should

spk_0 go back and listen to our shows about tron and tron legacy I'm really hoping that all these years

spk_0 later 15 years later they figured out the tron formula and I'm looking forward to tron aries

spk_0 yeah I'm excited to hop in on this one I can't say I was a huge tron fan in the 80s like I remember

spk_0 watching it as a kid because it was just spectacular looking but I don't know that as an adult going

spk_0 back and watching it that I took much out of it but I really really enjoyed the 2010 tron that

spk_0 re-injuvenated for me I went back and I watched the animated series it was part of that as well and

spk_0 I'm trying to stay spoiler free on this one I don't want to know much going in I don't want to know

spk_0 if this is a direct continuation of that last story or if we're going off in another direction

spk_0 I'm excited to sit down and be blown away by nine inch nail soundtrack I'm looking forward to

spk_0 nine inch nails I'm not necessarily looking forward to Jared leto morbid up the screen but we

spk_0 can see what happens hey I've liked movies with him in him so we'll see I'm going in with an

spk_0 open mind even though I don't know that I needed more tron in my life but if they're going to do it

spk_0 let's do it I'll say though you said Brock you didn't know the trailer I was walking through

spk_0 the theater the other day and I saw a poster out of the corner of my eye with a red motor cycle I'm

spk_0 like a new ghostwriter and it was tron I was telling me let's just hope it's good and not just an

spk_0 excuse because they built a tron roller coaster and they need some marketing for it right I mean and

spk_0 honestly Jared letos do like he's due for a good movie he's due for a jail sentence

spk_0 meanwhile this Friday if you are a gold level donor we're off to see the wizard the iconic

spk_0 wizard of Oz from 1939 we did kick this retrospective off a few days ago with the silent 1925

spk_0 movie that I think nobody knew existed reminding me of the days when people got mad at us because

spk_0 we reviewed the detective before die hard but now we're here at the wizard of Oz 1939 there's no

spk_0 place like now playing podcast.com forward slash donate to find out all the details about how you

spk_0 can support independent podcasting and here all of these bonus reviews plus are already released

spk_0 toxic avenger series and are already released I know what you did last summer retrospective series

spk_0 I'm looking forward to watching the Wizard of Oz I've heard good things

spk_0 surprisingly I've seen this one you know like I never saw jaws or a lot of the movies we've covered

spk_0 that were iconic but yes I did grow up with the Wizard of Oz I mean they showed it on TV once

spk_0 a year forever so if you hadn't seen this one although then again I've never seen the 10

spk_0 commandments and they showed that once a year forever too so yeah I've seen this in theaters twice

spk_0 I have a wife who likes the Wizard of Oz the 39 film if not the whole franchise and so we went

spk_0 to a drive-in one time and then a revival theater one time so yeah but have you ever seen it without

spk_0 the sound and the pink Floyd soundtrack instead that's the way to do it no oh well now I know

spk_0 how to watch it yeah oh you never heard of that before the juxtap of the moon never heard of that

spk_0 I know there are so many movies they say sync up with dark side of the moon but I did not know

spk_0 Wizard of Oz was one of them it's surprisingly decent if you're in the right state of mind if

spk_0 you catch my drift in however many states it's illegal are we going back to crack again are we going

spk_0 back to crack anyway I'm really glad we took this journey together to three of us I hope the next

spk_0 time we do a series together from the start that it will be something more worthwhile that we all

spk_0 can sync our teeth into but until then what really matters is what you believe

spk_0 my pray that you break this conclid open the doors and tell the world the truth thank you for

spk_0 listening to this now playing podcast movie review I did what was necessary and I'll do it again

spk_0 if I need to we hope you enjoyed the show well I must say you can't anything but dull

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spk_0 may ask one thing do so gently what more reviews like this one in the archive section of now

spk_0 playing podcast.com you'll find more than 1000 in-depth movie reviews from our panel of hosts

spk_0 access to the archives is only by written decree by the curator and the board of Vatican librarians

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spk_0 YouTube channel their modern conception of hell now playing podcast is produced by Arnie Carvalo

spk_0 associate produced by Jason Latham sometimes I wonder who is serving whom now playing is edited by

spk_0 Heath and Arnie what faster what smarter don't trust anyone the opinions expressed in this podcast

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Inferno

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