0:00

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds,

0:03

a show about how we create them and why we suspend

0:05

our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky.

0:08

We have been living through the era

0:10

of peak TV, where there is too

0:13

much out there for any one person to watch. And

0:16

it seems like everybody has a favorite show that

0:18

they love and can't believe

0:20

it hasn't gotten more notice. So

0:23

we asked you to tell us about your favorite

0:25

sci-fi fantasy shows or movies that

0:27

you think are unsung gems.

0:30

And because of the strikes in Hollywood, we're

0:32

going to need some new stuff to watch pretty soon. By

0:35

the way, this episode has a few spoilers as

0:38

people discuss why they like these movies

0:40

and shows. The previous

0:42

episode was about shows that were canceled

0:45

too soon. And several

0:47

listeners suggested the Dark Crystal

0:49

Age of Resistance for that episode. The

0:52

show came out on Netflix in 2019

0:55

and it was canceled after one season.

0:58

I also considered putting it in the previous

1:00

episode because I was upset when

1:02

Age of Resistance was canceled. But

1:04

Dawn Fancher suggested it for this

1:07

episode.

1:08

She liked the show,

1:09

but she thought one season was enough.

1:11

And I was really curious to hear why.

1:15

The Netflix series is a prequel to

1:18

the 1982 classic film The

1:20

Dark Crystal,

1:21

which was a passion project for Jim

1:23

Henson.

1:24

The 1982 film takes place

1:26

on a planet called Thra. It's

1:29

ruled by these repulsive, vulture-like

1:32

creatures called Skeksis.

1:34

Ah, gross nebri, my favorite. Nebri,

1:38

I want the rare. By the way, it's worth watching the

1:40

movie alone just for the puppetry of

1:42

the Skeksis, which was really cool.

1:46

The Skeksis had wiped out a society

1:48

of small, elvish characters called Gelflings.

1:51

And there were only two Gelflings left in the world.

1:55

You Gelfling? Like

1:57

me? Well, yes.

1:59

But I thought I was the only one.

2:02

I thought I was. To

2:04

be honest, I thought the Gelfling

2:07

heroes in the original film were

2:09

kind of bland. And because of

2:11

that, I never found the story

2:13

in the original film as compelling as

2:15

the visuals. But

2:16

the prequel takes place when the Gelflings

2:19

are thriving. They have this rich

2:21

culture with competing alliances. It's

2:24

almost like Game of Thrones with puppets.

2:27

And most of the Gelflings are slow to realize

2:29

that the Skeksis mean them harm.

2:32

I heard you and that... ...fate...

2:35

His name is Lore! Conspiring

2:38

to end Skeksis rule.

2:40

What happens to the Gelfling if the Skeksis fall?

2:42

What happens to Mother? Is

2:45

it Mother you're worried about? A

2:47

her crown. Why you... By

2:49

the way, if you're sick of CGI, this

2:52

show is beautifully handcrafted.

2:55

They do use CG but very subtly

2:57

for added realism.

2:59

That's what got Dawn into the show.

3:02

It's such a beautiful world and there's

3:05

so many little creatures

3:07

and puppets. Like every time they like...

3:10

They're walking through the wilderness and every time there's a

3:12

shot of them walking somewhere, there's like two

3:14

or three

3:15

little critters to look at. And

3:17

it's just... It was just really gorgeous.

3:20

I had a friend who his main... He liked the show

3:22

but his main problem was he thought it was unbelievable that

3:24

the Gelflings would be so naive

3:27

to think that the Skeksis were really like these benevolent

3:30

rulers. It would have taken them so long to realize

3:32

they're being duped. And I was like,

3:34

really? You found that unrealistic, that part?

3:38

Really? That would never happen

3:40

in the real world.

3:41

That's another thing I liked about

3:43

it actually, yeah, was because

3:46

it is really unsettling because

3:49

a lot of us

3:50

grew up with the Skeksis

3:52

being these clear villains.

3:54

You know, like people would do Skeksis

3:56

impressions at parties in college, you know? Like

3:59

it was...

3:59

a couple words in the voice and like,

4:02

you know, you know, that's a villain. So

4:04

to see characters who you

4:06

relate to

4:08

worshipping them and saying, of course

4:10

they have our best interests at heart is really

4:13

off putting. And I'm pretty sure that was done

4:15

deliberately. It really is like, what

4:17

are we accepting as normal that

4:20

isn't normal. So I thought that was a very

4:22

nice little subtle touch that they did to

4:24

really make you uncomfortable for

4:26

a little bit to see people being like, Oh no, of course

4:29

they're great. Yeah. So

4:31

I was, I was thinking that this would be

4:33

a gone too soon, but I thought it was really interesting

4:35

in your email that you made

4:37

the argument that it's okay. It didn't get a

4:39

second season that in fact it's

4:41

not worth continuing the timeline

4:44

up until this genocide, that this is actually

4:46

a good spot to stop. I thought that

4:48

was a really interesting idea. How come?

4:51

Well, I kind of did want more and

4:53

like in rewatching it again, there was more like

4:55

hints of like maybe a second season than I remembered.

4:58

Cause you know, I watched it a few years ago. I mean,

5:00

I don't know. Cause I don't know what story they had. So I didn't know

5:02

what had come up to here, but I didn't

5:05

feel like some other kind of

5:07

gone too soon things. You do feel like there's a cliffhanger

5:09

that the story is incomplete. The

5:11

way they crafted this story and maybe it was done

5:14

intentionally. I don't know. It felt like

5:16

that there was probably that this was a good stopping

5:18

point and that if they had, you know, maybe there's

5:20

more story, but there'd be a number of stopping points.

5:23

You know, it was kind of a story of

5:25

the resistance to the Skeksis

5:28

that, you know, is going to like

5:29

go to this really dark place before you

5:31

get to like the original movie. But

5:34

I feel like it told the story of unity and

5:36

you know, how they get to a place where they're going to have

5:39

to go through a dark time.

5:40

But what about the idea that you're, we know that

5:43

this is going to fail. We already have

5:45

knowledge of the future that it's going

5:47

to fail. They're all going to die.

5:50

You know, that there's something about ending

5:52

on an earlier point in the timeline

5:54

that you feel like kind of spares

5:57

us from that to some degree or makes

5:59

the story about something very different, you

6:01

know, it makes a story about how we treat each other

6:03

and how it matters to do the right thing, even if you

6:06

can't stop an apocalypse that's

6:08

coming.

6:08

I guess it's nice that it spared us, you know,

6:10

I don't need to have all my media

6:13

bathed in sadness just to make it serious.

6:15

But I do think it's more the second thing

6:17

for me about why this is a good point to stop because,

6:19

you know,

6:20

we've got global warming. I just,

6:22

my community was just devastated by floods,

6:25

you know, a month ago, even though you

6:27

watch this knowing that

6:30

they're going to lose, basically,

6:32

at least temporarily, they're going to lose pretty badly.

6:35

The story is still about them

6:37

coming together, still about them deciding

6:39

that they need to fight, that there is something

6:42

to fight,

6:43

and that they do want to fight for themselves

6:45

and for Thra, the planet.

6:47

They don't know that they're doomed, right?

6:50

But we do.

6:51

But we're still rooting for them. We're still rooting

6:53

for them, even though we know they lose, because how they

6:56

fight and their decision to

6:58

fight is important.

7:00

What we do and how we work together

7:02

still matters, and we still care about those

7:04

characters. We still want good things to happen to

7:06

them, even though we know they're not

7:08

going to win in as far as saving their

7:10

species or preventing, like, an

7:13

ecological, you know, devastation,

7:15

but we still care about them, which means we should still

7:17

care about ourselves.

7:23

We heard from another listener about a show that could

7:25

have gone into the category of Gone Too Soon,

7:28

because it was cancelled after one season, and

7:30

the show that he suggested was also about

7:33

characters trying to stop a planet-wide

7:35

extinction. Odyssey 5

7:38

was a Canadian show from 2002

7:40

starring Peter Weller. It aired

7:42

on Showtime in the US. The

7:45

premise is that a group of astronauts were orbiting

7:47

the Earth, when our planet is suddenly

7:49

destroyed by something mysterious. Oh

7:52

my god.

7:53

And

7:55

then an alien shows up and takes

7:57

them aboard his ship.

7:59

to them in the form of a human, so

8:02

as not to freak them out. And he

8:04

says the same thing happened to his planet.

8:06

He's been going around the galaxy trying to find survivors

8:09

who can help him stop whatever's destroying

8:11

these worlds.

8:13

I pick up radio signals. I

8:15

follow them to their source. But

8:17

when I arrive, the source is always gone. I'm

8:20

always too late.

8:21

Like this

8:22

time? Yes

8:26

and no.

8:28

The alien sends the consciousness of the

8:31

astronauts back into their own bodies

8:34

five years earlier, so they can figure

8:36

out how to stop this apocalypse.

8:38

Mike Shaw has been thinking about

8:40

Odyssey 5 lately because the

8:43

show dealt with AI. It's

8:45

interesting because they never put that forward as

8:47

the premise. They don't talk about or they didn't

8:49

at the time because AI was total science

8:52

fiction. So the idea that AI was

8:54

somehow practical and accessible and

8:57

widely understood in the

8:59

population wasn't

9:00

there. So it's

9:02

not as part of the premise, but once they

9:04

get back to the present or their

9:06

present, which is 2002,

9:08

the driving villain

9:11

seems to be AI. And

9:14

throughout the series, there's

9:16

only one season, but throughout the season,

9:19

they come to discover that not only

9:21

does AI exist, but there

9:23

are different kinds of AI. And they

9:25

have coalesced to a point where they are

9:27

sentient. And there are different

9:30

entities scattered across

9:32

our nascent internet. Are they

9:35

the ones that destroyed us? Where did they

9:37

come from? And the themes of AI

9:39

that we think about today, like

9:42

the issues like, will it take over

9:44

jobs? Can it replace humans

9:46

doing things?

9:48

It's interesting because like the matrix came out about

9:50

three years earlier and that was like, the

9:52

computers got smart and killed us or

9:55

turn us into batteries. This seems to be a much

9:57

more subtle nuance, like a kind

9:59

of...

9:59

of reflects the debates that are happening now

10:02

where people are like, is this good? Is this bad? Like we

10:04

don't, you know, there's different AI like,

10:06

like some of it we already use, we don't realize

10:08

it, we like it. And it seems to be like in that

10:10

kind of murky place.

10:12

Not only that, but

10:14

what one thing the series never

10:16

resolves, and I will get into spoiler here, because

10:18

this is where it kind of clicks

10:20

in your brain when you learn this, when

10:23

you get to the end, there's

10:25

a cliffhanger. And there's

10:27

this implication that wait a minute, there's a group of

10:29

humans that are also working on AI,

10:32

they discover the protagonist discovered

10:34

that the AI they've been fighting against might have actually

10:36

been extraterrestrial. So is

10:39

AI the enemy or is alien AI

10:41

the enemy and human AI is good. You

10:44

know, they even meet what they call

10:46

ascensions and AI that gives itself

10:48

form. And they meet one and he's like goofy

10:50

and funny. And it's a comedic episode,

10:53

but he's like a good guy. And he's an ally.

10:55

So it came out in 2002, right?

10:58

Yeah.

10:58

Post 9 11 sci fi is really

11:00

interesting too, because it deals with some

11:03

really heavy stuff in

11:05

a way that people are having trouble sort of like trying to grapple

11:07

with a lot of like really dark big ideas,

11:10

world shattering ideas, you know, fringe,

11:13

I think 28 days later, you

11:15

know, in The Walking Dead, I just think that people are gonna look

11:17

back and see a kind of interesting,

11:19

introspective weight to that kind of early 2000

11:22

sci fi.

11:24

Not only that, so it's interesting

11:26

you say that because the other show that I think

11:28

about when I hear post 9 11 as I think

11:31

of Battlestar Galactica, right, because that

11:33

was super heavy on

11:36

the post 9 11 stuff like

11:38

it hits you over the head with it. This

11:40

show came out about the same time. And what's

11:42

fascinating is that if you watch this show

11:44

Odyssey five, and if you're

11:46

watching Battlestar Galactica at the same

11:49

time, you will actually hear musical

11:51

echoes. And it is heavy

11:54

on like the oboe and the strings

11:57

that it sounds eerily similar

11:59

to

11:59

to Battlestar Galactica. But do

12:02

you find now that when you

12:04

try to recommend the show to people, they look at you like, uh,

12:06

if it's so great, how come I never heard of it?

12:09

Well, uh,

12:11

so I think one of the things that you

12:13

had said when you had talked about this show is that

12:16

how we've been in this era of peak TV and now

12:18

with the writers and actors strike,

12:20

there's going to be

12:22

not much produced. Just the idea

12:24

of being in peak TV, people know that

12:26

there's stuff they haven't heard of before. So

12:29

I actually maintain like a list on a

12:31

site where I have a list of all my

12:33

shows that I recommend to people. So I

12:35

call it,

12:36

oh my God, you haven't seen this exclamation

12:39

point. And I just share that. And it's

12:41

like 50 or 60 shows on there. I always

12:43

tell myself when I retire, I'll have all this

12:45

show to watch all this

12:47

TV to watch till I die.

12:54

There are also classic shows that many of

12:56

us haven't watched yet. Like if you've

12:58

never seen Twin Peaks, if it came out before

13:01

you were born, it's going to be new

13:03

to you. Tone

13:05

Vontaputa wrote us from Belgium to

13:08

recommend a classic comedy, Spaced.

13:11

The show was created by Simon Pegg, who went

13:13

on to star and co-write the movies, Shaun of

13:16

the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End.

13:19

Spaced ran from 1999 to 2001 in the UK. It

13:23

was a cult hit back then.

13:25

I was introduced to it by friends who worked in the animation

13:27

industry with me because the show was all

13:30

about being a geek.

13:31

Simon Pegg is playing a character called

13:34

Tim, who

13:34

lives an unglamorous life in

13:36

middle class London. He and his

13:38

roommate deal with all sorts of mundane things.

13:41

Relationships, jobs, friends,

13:44

annoying neighbors.

13:46

You know, borrow a teabag. Only

13:48

if you bring it back. You

13:50

can have a teabag, bro, and you can't borrow one.

13:54

Because their lives are so unexciting, the

13:56

characters often space out and imagine

13:58

that they're in a movie. a TV show or

14:00

a video game.

14:02

When Tone first discovered the show, he

14:04

definitely related to it.

14:06

So that sort of thing where your

14:09

life is really mundane, you have a

14:11

job, you have an apartment that's actually

14:13

quite expensive to pay on your own and that sort

14:15

of thing, but in the little things

14:18

of your life, you inject all

14:20

the stuff that you learn from geek

14:22

culture or from references. There's

14:24

an episode where their dog

14:26

has been abducted by a vivisection

14:28

lab and they break into it. It's

14:30

a whole heist movie episode thing, which

14:32

in itself is already a nice reference. Every

14:35

one of their friends gets a code

14:37

name like

14:38

you do in a heist movie. They're

14:40

named after Star Wars characters. Sound

14:43

off, Luke. Oh, Chewie. I

14:45

mean, Leia. Yes, Tim. Oh.

14:48

Jabba. Is Jabba the princess? Yes. Here.

14:51

Okay. Like, I think today everybody would know

14:54

that Leia is the princess book, but in the 90s, knowing

14:57

who the princess is in Star Wars was a pretty nerdy

14:59

thing to be.

15:01

Yeah, and like you're saying too, is when

15:03

you love this particular genre,

15:05

the stuff that you love, it's always the

15:08

end of the universe or life or death in

15:10

every movie and every episode and

15:12

the stakes are so low in your life. Now,

15:15

there's a part of you that kind of wants to live

15:17

in that other world, but you know, it's almost frustrating

15:19

because you, if you have an active imagination,

15:21

you feel like you're almost halfway there, but you know

15:24

you'll never get there.

15:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's only when

15:28

I was like 20 or something, I didn't have that

15:30

imagination. I think space is one of

15:32

the reasons that I

15:33

started to develop that sort of thing, to insert,

15:36

you know, like Scotty references or Star

15:38

Wars references in everyday life

15:41

situations.

15:43

Tone in another recommendation, the movie

15:45

Eric the Viking from 1989. It's

15:49

not exactly Monty Python, but it's Python

15:51

adjacent.

15:52

Terry Jones wrote, directed and appears

15:55

in it. John Cleese is in it too, but

15:57

the main actor is Tim Robbins. It's

15:59

about a vibe.

15:59

Viking, who just isn't into pillaging

16:02

and fighting, he doesn't see the point.

16:05

So he goes on a quest to ask the gods

16:08

to end the age of Ragnarok. Nobody's

16:10

ever crossed the rainbow bridge to Asgard. Will

16:13

we be the first? You mean we'd be

16:15

dead? No, we would be the first living

16:17

men to set foot in the halls of the gods.

16:20

And at one point in the movie, the characters go to

16:22

an island called High Brazil.

16:25

And the thing with High Brazil is it's enchanted.

16:28

If a drop of blood is spilled on the island, it

16:31

sinks beneath the waves.

16:33

Very interesting

16:34

climate change metaphor, I think. Of

16:37

course that happens. The islands, because

16:39

there's Vikings on the island, murder happens, and

16:42

the island starts sinking. And

16:44

the inhabitants of the island, they're

16:47

very nice to each other all the time because

16:50

they can't kill each other. They

16:52

have to avoid any possibility

16:55

of violence.

16:56

But how do you take revenge? How

16:58

do you punish people? How do you defend yourselves? We

17:00

don't have to. We're

17:02

all terribly nice to each other.

17:05

But then the islands start sinking and the inhabitants

17:07

of the islands don't believe it's sinking. They

17:10

just keep saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. We

17:13

have things in place that this

17:15

cannot happen. It can't happen.

17:17

But it is, look! I've already appointed

17:20

the Chancellor as Chairman of a full

17:22

committee of inquiry. And in the meantime,

17:25

I suggest we have our things on. All

17:28

up to the point where they're all underwater

17:30

and they're all gone. Do

17:32

you find it hard to convince people to watch Spaced

17:34

or Eric the Viking? Yeah, because they're

17:37

old. Today being

17:39

a geek is really mainstream with the MCU

17:41

and like Star Wars and everything. But

17:44

it's the easy part, you know? It's not

17:46

the watching the really weird movie that's

17:49

old and

17:50

that's strange and that doesn't

17:52

fit with sort of commercial commercially

17:55

produced content of today. You

17:58

have to feel a bit like an outcast.

17:59

to enjoy it. I mean I don't want to

18:02

exaggerate but you do have to have this feeling

18:04

of being not normal

18:07

to empathize with the characters in in

18:09

that sort of content and Eric the Viking

18:11

isn't he's an outsider in this violence

18:13

ruled Viking world similarly

18:16

Tim in space this is a bit of an outsider

18:19

in the adult world you're talking about the other

18:21

stuff too that's that's more accessible

18:23

and those things the fantasy is you're one of the Avengers

18:25

you're one of the Jedi you know it's a little it's

18:28

different yeah true yeah yeah you're

18:30

you're the hero you're the

18:32

the big shiny famous person yeah

18:34

yeah

18:36

but some movies that are supposed to appeal

18:38

to people who want to imagine themselves as the

18:41

big shiny famous person

18:43

they don't always work out either Drew

18:45

Meyer is a podcaster I've actually

18:47

been on his Doctor Who podcast several times

18:50

and he wrote to us about one of his favorite films

18:53

John Carter from 2012 it's

18:56

about a Civil War veteran in the 19th

18:58

century who gets transported to

19:00

Mars which has futuristic spaceships

19:03

a feisty princess armies

19:05

at war and aliens

19:07

of all shapes and sizes the

19:11

movie was based

19:18

on the classic series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

19:21

from the early 20th century

19:23

in fact the John Carter books were

19:25

some of the first science fiction books ever when

19:28

Drew was a kid he loved the John

19:30

Carter books and the comics as well

19:33

but the movie it

19:35

was the single biggest

19:38

financial bomb in movie history no

19:40

was that big yes yeah

19:43

yeah almost 300 million dollar loss

19:45

wow I gotta go big or go home I guess

19:48

well there's a yeah personally

19:51

I think the movies financial failure

19:54

sort of informed a lot of the negative reviews

19:56

that we we got around the movie well

19:58

what did you think of it I

20:00

I loved it.

20:01

I absolutely adored it. I absolutely

20:03

adored it. So what did you love about it? I,

20:06

okay. So here's the thing.

20:09

Part of what I loved about is nostalgia of seeing

20:11

something that I loved in both literary form

20:14

and in a graphic novel form on

20:16

the big screen being realized with

20:18

modern technology. I thought the voice acting

20:21

was great. I thought most of the acting, real

20:23

people was great. I thought the world

20:25

building was fantastic. I thought the designs

20:28

were fun. I think the realization

20:30

of the Martians, they're supposed to be like 15

20:32

feet tall and that, you know, massive four armed creatures.

20:35

And, and yeah, I know that they're like eight

20:37

or nine feet and the actors had to be on stilts.

20:39

But I think the realization of that is

20:42

truly spectacular. Just

20:44

that the world, a giant

20:47

city on mechanical legs,

20:50

barreling down the desert on its

20:52

way to mine more. And

20:55

resources from the dying planet.

20:57

I mean, all of this stuff is so imaginative

21:00

and it was a romp. It felt

21:02

pulpy and it was exciting.

21:05

Let's

21:05

face it. The biggest change they made from

21:07

the books for the movie series is people are

21:09

wearing clothing, which is not the case in the

21:11

original book. So, you know, I think that was

21:13

probably a smart choice on Disney's part.

21:15

Nobody was wearing clothing. He

21:18

has a lot of naked folks in the books. Yeah.

21:23

So, okay. So somebody's listening. They're like, oh, well, baby,

21:25

this was misunderstood. Maybe I will see. I'll watch

21:27

it on Disney plus. Do you think it definitely holds up for somebody

21:29

coming in cold, not knowing anything about

21:31

John Carter?

21:32

I think folks coming in, just

21:35

listening to this, give it a chance.

21:37

You don't have to know anything about it. Just know

21:40

that there's going to be a lot of fancy names. You

21:42

don't really need to worry about that. The plot

21:44

might be a little confusing,

21:46

but again, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

21:49

Like, think of it as a big summer blockbuster

21:51

popcorn film. There you go. I

21:54

think that one of the problems is like, I know people

21:57

who had never seen Star Wars as a kid

21:59

and

21:59

they decided to finally watch it. And because

22:02

Star Wars has been strip mined by everybody else,

22:04

when they watch Star Wars, it seems like the most derivative

22:07

movie they've ever seen in their life because everything

22:09

they've seen in Star Wars, they've seen somebody else do

22:11

it since Star Wars does John

22:13

Carter have a similar problem because it influenced so

22:16

many things and almost feels like it's

22:18

derivative of the things that it actually

22:20

influenced.

22:21

That is 100% exactly

22:24

accurate. Yeah, I think the the directing

22:27

job was originally offered as a mechas and

22:29

some exes like, nah, now Lucas

22:31

has already stripped everything he needed to out of this film. You

22:34

know, they've got they got master characters called jeddaks

22:36

that are running around in this desert planet

22:39

with large howling bestial

22:42

characters and, you know, dark lords

22:44

who have control people's minds and

22:46

can shoot lightning. And I mean, all of this

22:48

stuff was taken from these books. It

22:51

was

22:51

inspired by like these little kids reading science

22:53

fiction at a young age. You know, everybody

22:56

read this. It was a hugely, hugely

22:59

popular pulp science fiction story. I

23:01

like these films that people

23:03

don't seem to love. I don't know if it's

23:05

capitalism or what it is that people just

23:07

assume that the quality of a film is how

23:09

much money it made. Listen,

23:11

you and I both like films

23:14

that didn't make much money. There are there are

23:16

movies that are just aren't out there for

23:18

everybody.

23:22

To me, the fact that John Carter was a

23:24

flop and the planned franchise never

23:26

happened

23:27

actually makes it more interesting.

23:29

These days, I've been feeling franchise

23:31

fatigue.

23:33

I'm hungry for something new, something

23:35

weird, something that swings for the fences.

23:38

Sarah Harker wrote in to recommend

23:40

a show that

23:41

might fit that description.

23:43

Centaur World is an animated

23:46

series on Netflix. The main character

23:48

is a war horse who gets separated

23:50

from the warrior who's riding her. The

23:55

horse, whose name is his horse, seems

23:57

to be falling off a cliff, but she's

23:59

still

23:59

She snatches a magical medallion in her

24:02

mouth, which transports her to

24:04

a world of centaurs.

24:06

Her initial goal is to reunite with her

24:08

writer.

24:10

But is her learning how to be

24:12

dependent upon a community?

24:15

But it's Horace also telling that herd

24:17

that they do not have to be so isolationist

24:20

in their community that they can go out and explore

24:23

and see how the world has changed.

24:25

So how would you describe the tone of the show?

24:27

Because I think it's interesting that like it's

24:29

got it seems like it has like really has

24:31

like over the top humor. It has

24:34

lots of sincerity to it, but then it could also

24:36

deal with like dark weighty themes. Is

24:38

that right?

24:40

I would say it is a light hearted

24:42

deep dive into trauma and

24:44

culture and it is about

24:47

change and growth and community.

24:49

And there's also like

24:52

a whole song about being in completely

24:54

anxious and your coping skill is to breathe in

24:56

a bag. You can breathe in a bag.

24:59

Just breathe in a bag. Yeah,

25:03

Centaur World is a musical like

25:06

the whole series. The

25:08

other thing I will warn you is that I watched

25:10

this show in 2021 and I still turn to

25:14

my partner and go, guess which Centaur World

25:16

song stuck in my head? Some

25:19

of them are very simple, but there's also these beautiful

25:21

layers. They do a great job of light motifs

25:23

in it. There's a bunch of Broadway actors in

25:25

it because it was made during COVID and they couldn't be on Broadway.

25:28

So they just did this weird show.

25:42

Another thing that Sarah likes about Centaur

25:44

World,

25:45

it tells a complete story.

25:47

It stops like it comes to a natural

25:50

conclusion. They didn't drag it out.

25:53

It feels like they understood that Netflix was

25:55

only going to give them two or three seasons. So they did two

25:57

seasons. The characters are

25:59

wildly different and

26:02

also make this beautiful ensemble. There's

26:04

like one song where everyone's

26:07

like, we don't know where food comes from in Centaur World

26:09

because they just, you can't just go eat grass. The grass is grass

26:11

tars. Leaves are leaf tars.

26:13

Like everything is a Centaur.

26:16

I don't want to be a dumb dumb

26:18

dumb. I'm just hungry

26:20

and I want some information, Mr.

26:22

Please. Where does food

26:25

come from?

26:28

Here's a character called Comfortable Dug who

26:30

is the, at the admission of

26:32

the show, the most sexual attractive

26:34

character you've ever met. I'm Comfortable

26:37

Dug, Comfortable Dug.

26:40

I'm Comfortable, Comfortable,

26:42

Comfortable Dug.

26:44

And he has a song about becoming himself, becoming

26:46

Comfortable Dug. You know, I used

26:48

to be called Comfortable Dug because that's my name, but now I

26:51

am Comfortable Dug and all of you can be Comfortable

26:53

too. The one in the lines of the song is like, I've never found

26:55

a husband or a wife. And it's just very

26:57

casual about like,

26:59

like sexuality is never explicitly discussed.

27:01

Not like, ooh, I, but identify as bisexual,

27:03

which I do. But like characters are casually

27:05

queer. Like one of the characters is

27:08

coded as being trans. Again,

27:10

these conversations don't really come up

27:13

in the show because it's about war

27:15

and trauma and musicals

27:17

and becoming comfortable with yourself and being

27:20

willing to embrace who you are. It

27:22

is such a good show that I like

27:26

was so hesitant to watch.

27:28

And then, cause it was 2021 and there was a huge

27:30

surge. A lot of my friends ended up getting COVID.

27:32

So I would like write them cards, like saying,

27:34

Hey, feel better. Here's some like my media recommendations.

27:37

If you would like something to do while you're stuck in your room for two

27:39

weeks. Also send to our world, please

27:41

join me in hell. Please join me in like,

27:43

just being like, Breathe in a bag, breathe

27:45

in a bag.

27:47

She's right. I have not been

27:49

able to get these songs out of my head.

27:51

I've been walking around the house all day today, singing

27:54

I'm comfortable, Doug. I'm

27:56

comfortable, Doug.

27:59

So far, we've, from people who are fans.

28:02

But what happens when you work on a film

28:05

or a show that gets lost in the flood of

28:07

content? Caitlin Martin

28:09

works in stop-motion animation. She

28:12

was very proud of the work that her team

28:14

did on the film Wendell and

28:16

Wild.

28:17

The movie is on Netflix.

28:18

It was directed by Henry Selick, who famously

28:21

did The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline,

28:23

and it featured the voices of Key and

28:25

Peele.

28:26

We are Wendell

28:29

and Wild. Your personal demons.

28:32

Who? Well you can summon us to the land

28:34

of the living. Why would I do that? Because we'll

28:36

give you whatever you want. Huh.

28:39

Only thing I want is my parents.

28:42

And they're dead. Uh-huh. Conference.

28:46

We can't raise the dead. Well, we do know

28:48

how to lie. I like that

28:50

plan. My

28:52

previous experience before joining Wendell and Wild

28:55

was only in pre-production. So when I got

28:57

to join Wendell and Wild, it was the full

28:59

momentum of, you know,

29:01

we have 35 stages running

29:04

at the same time, and this is what it looks like to have

29:06

camera team and the ADs and lighting

29:09

and scenic. Everybody just kind of

29:11

like mad lily and running around and

29:14

getting it across the finish line. As we got

29:16

towards the end of the shoot, they tagged me as Puppet

29:18

Wrangler, which is a

29:21

person part of the team who helps move puppets

29:23

from the fabricators. So they're doing

29:26

costume hair, attentioning

29:28

the armatures to make sure everything functions

29:30

well, and then getting it into the hands of the

29:32

animators

29:32

for the shots. So when you were

29:34

working on the film, was there a lot of excitement among the

29:37

crew of like given the talent involved that you

29:39

were working on this film?

29:40

Oh yeah, it was huge. There were

29:43

folks who were part of the crew who had worked with Henry

29:46

during Nightmare. Some folks

29:48

have been there since Coraline, so there were some people

29:50

who have been part of Henry's team

29:53

since the beginning of his career in his work,

29:55

and there was a lot of history there. We had

29:57

folks on our team who were fresh out of undergrad, so

29:59

This was their first film out

30:02

of school. A lot of passion, a lot of excitement

30:04

around getting it off the ground. Wow.

30:07

When the movie was released, did

30:10

it get the attention you're hoping? It

30:12

was interesting because no one understands

30:16

how the Netflix algorithm works.

30:19

For us, this

30:21

was the project that we'd been working on

30:23

every day for many, many years.

30:25

Then you don't really have control

30:27

over how Netflix distributes

30:31

it or how their algorithm works or really

30:33

what that looks like. We got

30:35

a very limited

30:37

theatrical release. There were some theaters

30:39

that showed it in, I believe, LA, New

30:42

York, a couple in Canada.

30:44

We had a local release for all

30:46

the artists to get to enjoy, bring friends and family,

30:49

and get industry support from other

30:51

stop-mo people here in Portland. But

30:53

when it came to looking for it on

30:55

the Netflix homepage, for folks

30:57

who didn't work on it and people who might not

30:59

be plugged into the stop-mo

31:02

scene, I don't know if it reached them.

31:04

We'd be like, oh, when the mile just came out.

31:07

I don't know if it landed with

31:09

that impact to people who didn't know that

31:12

it was being made.

31:13

I think for anyone working on a movie or a TV show,

31:15

no matter what you're doing, it's going

31:17

to be frustrating if a project comes out and you feel like it's

31:20

not seen enough. But I feel like with stop-motion

31:22

animation, the word people often use is

31:24

painstaking to describe it.

31:28

I mean, so much of it is about putting in

31:30

the time because you know there's going

31:32

to be a payoff in the end. So does that feel kind

31:34

of extra frustrating with something like this?

31:37

Oh, I think so. And

31:39

very much as a labor of

31:41

love, you want as many people to see it as

31:43

possible. I think Henry Selik obviously

31:46

has a huge cult following. And

31:49

for us to contribute

31:50

to that body of work was incredible. And

31:53

you also yearn for why a

31:56

cult following? Why can't we have the

31:58

greater world change?

31:59

stamping this painstaking

32:03

labor of love. What

32:05

have you found in terms of when you start pitching

32:07

it to people? Have you found like, okay, this actually

32:09

kind of hooks them. How do you describe

32:10

it? Yeah, I would describe

32:13

it as

32:14

it's a lot of the classic ingredients

32:16

of Henry that the audience has come

32:18

to know and love. It has a very specific

32:21

visual style that he also developed

32:23

with Pablo Lobato, who is the

32:26

character designer who did the illustrated passes

32:28

of Jordan Peele and Keegan

32:30

Michael Key as Wendell and Wile. Henry

32:33

wrote it in conjunction with Jordan Peele and

32:36

Key and Peele are two of the main voice actors,

32:39

so you're getting their comedic sensibilities

32:41

plugged into it. And then that's paired with

32:44

the protagonist Kat, who, you

32:46

know, she's gone through incredible hardship

32:48

in her youth

32:51

that has impact how she has grown. Now

32:53

in her teenage years, she is trying to find

32:55

her direction and navigates

32:58

coming of age in a very

33:00

profound and grabbing life by the horns

33:03

kind of way. And all of those intersect for

33:05

a really wild ride. There's

33:07

not going to be much of a fall TV. There's probably going to be hardly

33:10

any bit of a fall TV season. People are looking

33:12

for stuff to watch. This is perfect for like,

33:14

you know, the Halloween time, October.

33:16

Yeah, absolutely. I know last

33:18

year when it came out, it came out,

33:20

I think, a week before Halloween. So

33:22

we didn't get a lot of lead up into getting

33:25

to get the momentum going for Halloween. But this

33:27

year, yeah, absolutely. There's there's demons, there's

33:29

monsters, there's spooky undead

33:32

souls, fake blood,

33:34

you know, all the all

33:36

the good stuff you come to love.

33:39

One thing all these movies and shows have in

33:41

common,

33:42

they took creative risks.

33:44

Those choices may not have always paid off in

33:46

terms of the box office or the ratings, but

33:49

they still went for it.

33:51

And fantasy genres have so much room

33:53

for creativity if people are willing

33:55

to go there. AI

33:59

wouldn't

33:59

know how. Happy

34:03

watching everyone and take your time. It

34:06

might be a while.

34:09

That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special

34:11

thanks to Don Fancher, Tone Vantaputa,

34:14

Drew Meyer, Sarah Harker, Kaitlin

34:16

Martin, and Mike Shaw, who

34:19

like me is originally from the Boston area.

34:22

But unlike me, he still has the accent.

34:25

You know what's so funny is I lived in Beijing

34:28

for 11 years and the

34:30

Beijing accent is the exact opposite

34:33

of the Boston accent. So we drop

34:35

our eyes, they add our

34:38

onto words.

34:38

There's like actually got the Boston

34:40

area who moved to China to do standup and he

34:43

had this great joke. Boston lost

34:45

all their eyes and then just went to Beijing. In

34:50

the show notes, I put a list of everything we've recommended

34:53

and some of the stuff our guests recommended that I

34:55

was.