After Dark: The DNC as Wrestling, Bad TV Setups, Alien: Romulus Follow-ups

I don’t think “content creators” vs decline of “artists” is an accurate framing. I think maybe it’s more accurate to say “independent creators/artists” vs decline of megastar artists (who are backed by studios, record labels, etc). Not all content creators are like Hawk Tuah girl. There are millions of regular people who, due to the internet, are now able to make full-time livings by writing on Substack, creating a fitness channel, reviewing anime, etc. Or creating a film podcast! I think the guys kinda missed that THEY are the content creators they were talking about…who get to make a living creating about what they love for their own specific subniche of movie nerds like us. And there’s millions of others out there, with their own self-sustaining audiences who no one outside their niche even knows about. And thank goodness for that too. I’m so glad to have the Dave’s, Devindra’s, and Jeff’s of the world getting to be able to put their creativity/content/art out into the world and we get to be the beneficiaries of it!

Jae

FFS Jeff, your 99 Problems joke made me swallow the chewing gum in my mouth trying not to laugh out loud at work...

Wensi Zhou

Bjorn calls Andy a bitch earlier (and curses around him constantly) and part of his arc was becoming more sure of himself and being proactive instead of passive. He becomes somewhat more "natural" after experiencing that other memory chip.

Hahmstrung

I would argue none of that is in character for Andy. The robot never swears once in the entire film and now all of a sudden he’s trash talking? It makes no sense.

Olivia Oliver

I coulda swore it was Mark Zuckerberg, weird.

Stranger2Reality

Jeff never reads these comments, so he'll never see this, but as a native Angeleno, I always feel like Jeff has an extremely skewed view of Los Angeles. The reason is because he came here looking to make it big, and thus almost exclusively interacted with others who also came here to make it big, he now thinks that's all LA is, and that the city exclusively runs on people trying to make it in the entertainment industry. The reality is that it's always been a very small amount of people here who ever did that. There's tons of different industries here, and LA varies wildly depending on which part of the city, or which neighborhood you are in. The entertainment industry could completely collapse here or relocate elsewhere and the city would still be roughly the same, just because there's so much else here. It's not just industry people and bartenders and baristas who are hoping to break in, though you can find a lot of that in certain areas (like Hollywood or maybe parts of the valley). But that's such a small part of LA, like just small slivers of the city. Whenever I hear Jeff talk about LA like that it makes me feel sad. He was here for 20 years and had such a narrow view of everything the city had to offer because he was so focused on just trying to make it in one industry.

Stranger2Reality

Devindra - thank you for referring me to interview with a vampire, was loving it until the actress who plays Claudia was introduced. The actress is absolutely horrible… I’m struggling to keep watching but hope I can get used to her, but man i loved this show and 2 episodes in with her and I’m about to quit

AJ Karim

Hate to be that guy, but I believe Devindra was right and Dave and Jeff’s recollections were wrong regarding CRT size. Commonly available CRT tvs topped out at around 35”. Looks like there were a few 40” models in the last days of the tech but that was very rare. And the largest CRT ever made was a 43” Sony model that cost $40,000 in 1990 and only 20 were ever imported to the states. https://dfarq.homeip.net/the-biggest-crt-ever-made-sonys-pvm-4300/

Tee Lek Ying

Robert Bobroczkyi played the alien: https://variety.com/2024/artisans/features/alien-romulus-offspring-new-monster-1236109720/

Yochai Gal

Yeah, according to Wikipedia it's actually him playing that creature.

Jesper

The worst TV setup is at Michael Scott’s house on the Dinner Party episode.

David Esposito

Preach Jeff, the over the fireplace was music to my ears because I also discarded immediately houses where you could see in the photos that the only option was tv over the fireplace.

Iker Maruri

Burning fossil fuels inside your home isn’t a good idea full stop really

April Reid

Idk dude, I play a lot of games and I'm constantly talking shit to enemies I just killed. You act like that isn't one of the most common things on and off the screen. You don't have to enjoy the film but I do think your criticisms are a bit inconsistent and unfairly nit-picky, which is certainly a common trend in this Cinema Sins era. Obviously I know it bothered a lot of people, that's why I'm commenting on how baffling I find it.

Hahmstrung

The alien was already dead when Andy said "you bitch", so no, it didn't make sense for him to say it. Like I said, if the excessive amount of meta callbacks enhanced it for you, then kudos. But they clearly bothered a lot of other people. It is what it is.

Stranger2Reality

Found it funny that it seems Devindra thinks all fireplaces are wood burning. Most new ones are gas and while I would never put a TV up there I don’t think it’s “dangerous”

Caleb Peters

You should definitely still email in

Tony Disarufino

Rob Bob not only was a reference for the Alien offspring, my understanding is that he actually played it.

Michael Zhang

Devindra has reached the lifetime developmental stage of measuring the next generation of everything by their worst examples. If you really think about it, EVERY generation consists mostly of morons. Exceptional people are always the exception.

Omar Jacobs

We're reaching a point where the only people making art will be nepo babies because there's no living wage for artists.

April Reid

One of my biggest regrets was throwing out my Sony KVEH36M31 CRT, it was a beautiful 1080i/720P set that would be worth a lot these days. That said it did weigh 88kg and was more than 1m deep.

April Reid

I'm really glad as an Australian to live in a country where politics isn't having to compete with entertainment to get the attention of voters. It must be so hard to motivate people to even show up to vote. Having a political movement be favourably compared to WWE is a bad thing isn't it? Thank god for compulsory voting here really. I was trying to understand the mentality of swing voters, who's out there like "well I was going to vote for the grab her by the pussy man but Lil Jon has really brought me around"? Then I remembered you're just trying desperately to get people to even show up. Watching clips of the DNC was so cooked from an outside perspective. Just real brain rot mentality. Maybe running a country should be boring because it’s serious work. Appreciate the great episode and your perspectives as always!

April Reid

People just think way too hard about this stuff and prevent themselves from enjoying anything. Re, T2: just like it makes sense for Andy to tell that bitch alien to get away from Rain while simultaneously being a callback. Ripley's shoes (which are actually new shoes in a similar style) makes sense in the film as it takes place around the same time and thus fashion would be similar. World building. I think most of the callbacks in Romulus fall into the same category, they just didn't use a fun sci fi or fantasy element to excuse a fan service montage (I loved spider- verse and Deadpool x wolverine, but let's be real about what they are).

Hahmstrung

He said to inject disinfectant: "I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that." What a weird hair to split. Disinfectant or bleach, injecting either would kill you. He's still an idiot.

Stranger2Reality

In T2 Arnold is about to leave Sarah and John and disappeared into a cloud of smoke (tear gas) and says "stay here, I'll be back" which makes perfect sense even if it's not Arnold's famous line he says in so many of his movies. In the Spider-Man movies they are dealing with multiverses and hence there are characters and situations that repeat and overlap from existing properties in the IP, so meta moments make sense in that universe (same as like with Deadpool movies or Kevin Smith movies). With Romulus, it's not trying to be a meta commentary on the franchise in a humorous deconstruction of the IP, but is instead a straightforward film that purports to be a standalone product. You're not meant to be watching it at a remove, through a veil of ironic humor, it's supposed to be taken at face value. So when the entire movie is absolutely littered with nonsensical callbacks to things from the other movies that had no real significance on their own (Ripley's shoes from Aliens, Charles Dutton random lines from Alien³, etc), all it does for people who recognize these things is constantly be reminded that the film is calling attention to itself in a way it's not supposed to be doing. If these callbacks and easter eggs didn't bother you, you didn't notice them, or they actually enhanced your enjoyment of the movie, then that's great. But surely you can understand why it might have bothered others.

Stranger2Reality

Not to sound like an Old Person but the rise of influencers/“content creators” vs the relative decline in people wanting to become artists/writers/musicians/actors is really depressing to me, and speaks to how much the idea of seeking out and creating art just for the sake of art in general seems to be on the decline. I hope I’m wrong but I hope the biggest cultural influences of this current era aren’t Hawk Tuah girl or the Paul Brothers.

Rob

David is absolutely right about some people enjoying listening to content about shows and movies more than they actually watch them. Nowadays I probably watch less than 5% of everything talked about on the show.

Nicholas Nickner

Wil Johnson

Jeff is 100% correct on the "houses are incorrectly designed." Living in the city, fireplaces are the worst because developers will add them to a 500 to 600 sqft unit to signify "luxury" and raise the prices, when all it does is fuck up the layout of an apartment or condo.

Bruce Chang

Just wanted to (playfully) point out that Terminator 2 has Arnold repeat the line "I'll be back" from the first film and there's no "reason" why this completely new character would say that other than to be a callback. I get that there's a fine line and references can easily come off as pandering, but it's hard see why the fan service in say, Spider-Verse, which at times is a Family Guy-esque barrage out-of-context references to famous comic covers and cells, is celebrated but a quick quip with some script context in Romulus almost ruins the movie for some people.

Hahmstrung

Andy should have said a dad joke at the end. He should have been using a dad joke to calm Rain down (call back!), he tells her the set up, is interrupted and eventually kills the xenomorph, then delivers the punchline, cementing a new iconic line for this new Alien series. The track had been laid and then they derailed right at the end.

Brandon Lee Tenney

Yeah, Jeff’s point is well-taken but Swift is a bad example and indicative of how most people who can dedicate their lives to art must come from money to be able to do so. Seeing it in music, film, TV… sad to see.

Brandon Lee Tenney

The Taylor swift effect? Her parents were wealthy and in the Nashville scene

Reynaldo K. Cruz

I'm sure you've already gotten a million emails about it, but I looked at Bobróczky's wiki and he wasn't just an inspiration for the design, HE LITERALLY PLAYED THE HUMAN XENO IN THE MOVIE!?! 😂

Ben Wesorick

When the Cowboys had their Superbowl runs in the 90s, my dad bought a gigantic TV. It was so heavy, when the delivery guys wheeled it into the house the tile front step to our house broke. My parents kept that TV until like 3 years ago.

Jacob Martinez