‘28 Years Later’ and Our Zombie Survival Team
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Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me today, we have both dragged our corpses to the microphone. It's Mallory Rubin. Hey, Mal, how you doing?

Joanna, my beloved, I would share any apocalypse with you, including this one. It's great to be here with you today. I am feeling ill, as I just shared with you mere moments ago. Not the rage virus, though, because we've been talking for longer than half a minute, and I haven't begun to project all vomit blood into the Zoom. This is how we know. So I'm a little off my game today, but could be worse. Yeah.

Listen, Mallory Rubin off her game is sharper than anyone else I've ever had the pleasure of podcasting with. So we're here. If the mention of projectile vomiting blood was not enough to tip you off.

We're here to talk to you about 28 Years Later, the new film from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. So we will be talking about that, a film we both saw this last weekend. We also have a couple extra things that we're going to do along with that discussion, including drafting a zombie survival team and another running segment that I will leave as a surprise when we introduce it to you all at home. Mallory knows it's coming, but you at home. Sort of.

A little bit. Okay. Not really. It's an exciting tantalizing, dare I say, mystery for me as well. Before we get into all of the zombie-related fun, and by the way, Alex Garland, if you're listening, you're not. But if you are, I know that they're not supposed to be zombies. They're the infected. We know that. We know that. We will be calling them zombies anyway today. That's just what we will be doing. Podcast shorthand. We respect it. We respect the distinction, but we will be ignoring it. Okay.

Also coming soon from us, we are doing our Stranger Things Season 1 check-in. So I have been having a really good time re-watching Stranger Things Season 1. So we will be doing our first episode of our year-long plan, Stranger Things Rewatch. So tune in for that. We also have Squid Game coming up. We'll be doing our Squid Game coverage. Next week. Next week. The end of Squid Game is here.

is here and it is upon us. So we'll be doing that next week also on this feed. And then coming up after that, we've got Back to the Future has an anniversary coming. So we're doing something related to time travel in the same way that we're doing something related to zombies today is essentially what is coming up for us.

Also, thank you all. Like, we've gotten a ton of feedback from our speeches episode that we did. People have been, like, really nice and supportive about that and also just sort of like, but you missed, but you missed, but you missed. Great. Also, we've been getting a lot of ideas for what other best of the century episodes that we can doing. Folks have been sending in a ton of suggestions. So we'll announce what that is, you know, in a couple weeks because we will be hitting another one next month. It's our plan to do one per month for the rest of the year. So, yeah.

That's a lot from us, Mallory Rubin. And that's, we haven't even gotten to the Buffy rewatch that people are excited about or the rest of Hot Nolan Summer. So how can folks, you know. Superman Fantastic Four. Oh, Superman. Ever heard of it? Got my, got my notice for my press screening for Superman. Very exciting. So how can folks, you know, follow along?

Here's what I'd recommend. Your F1 takes, if you dame to share them with us, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Follow the pods. Follow House of R. Why not? Follow the Ringerverse. Follow the Ringer F1 show. Follow the Prestige TV podcast. Follow it all on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch. That's right. Not just listen, but watch full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys. On Spotify,

or the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So make sure you're following along there as well. And then follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. We're popping on...

YouTube shorts, YouTube posts. Get in there. Wow. Yeah. Send us your emails as well while you're at it. Keep your thoughts coming for the rest of the Best of the Century So Far series and any of the other stuff that we just mentioned. Stranger Things, Buffy, etc. HobbitsandDragons at gmail.com. The inbox is always open.

One last thing is our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. We're just going to give it blanket spoiler warning for the 28 franchise. Yes. That is 28 days later, 28 weeks later, a film I did not revisit, but Mallory is familiar with, so she can weigh in on if she wants to. And then 28 years later, and we will be discussing the planned upcoming sequel bone temple, which has already been shot and,

We have a little bit of info on that as it pertains to the end of 28 Years Later. So we'll be talking about that. That's its own section at the end. So if you don't want to know anything about that, you can just wait till the end and skip ahead and not learn anything about Bone Temple if you don't want to. Great name. Just a great name. I mean, this whole movie was about a real Bone Temple, was it not? Sure was. Boy, was it, Joanna. This is going to be a real, even by our standards, House of R. I don't know.

It has an explicit rating and contains adult content. I really thought it was going to make it into the final stages, but just so everyone knows, the title of this episode in our document today, a document that I wrote, but I wrote with an audience of one, Mallory Rubin in mind, is 28 Years Later, Swinging Dicks, and Our Zombie Survival Team. So, you know. I have no notes. That is what we are here to talk about today. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. Okay.

Wow. That was a shock and a delight. Carlos did warn me that he had been playing around with some zombie groans and moans. So thank you so much for that, Carlos. Weird, though, that you have the audio of me getting ready for the podcast this morning when I started to realize that I was feeling...

To quote Logan Roy, incredibly unwell. Carlos, how did you get that audio? Let me know on the side. Can we hear a little bit of a replay of what that sounded like, Mel Irvin? You clearing your throat, perhaps? Not sure how much sound effect, voice work, and zombie impressions I should do today for the sake of... I was hoping for more phlegm, but it's okay. Yeah, I don't know if I'm in like a...

an alpha energy space. Sure. I might be more in like a crawler mode. Just, just roly poly worms lurping. Just inching my way forward on the sod and soil, looking for a morsel as various parts of my body.

Mulder and Goop. Yeah. Okay. So listen, if you don't watch these videos, then that's fine. You can listen. That's fine. I just want to let you know that when Mallory did her little zombie impersonation right now, she basically did her imitation of the zombie emoji. Yeah. She just like put her little jazz hands up. That's pretty great. That's true. I did. I did do that. Okay. Okay.

20 years later. Yes. Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland, cinematography by Anthony Dodd-Mantle, all three from the original 28 Days Later film. They shot this on an iPhone. I've heard. A legend that's cropping up around this movie is a little overblown and gimmicky because they took those iPhones and then used like 100...

hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lenses and other equipment around it. But they did do like a bullet time, sort of put up a bunch of iPhones on a rig sort of thing. So iPhones were definitely involved. I just don't want anyone else to think that they can just go out into the wilderness of North Eastern London, England, and shoot on the countryside and get the same exact effect that they got in this film. You can try, and I encourage you to, but I'm just telling you, don't quit your day job if

if it doesn't work out for you exactly as this movie does. Opening weekend stats and figures. This movie made $30 million domestically, $60 million globally on a $60 million budget. That's a pretty decent opening weekend. Second still to How to Train Your Dragon, which is still ruling the box office. But, and I was stunned by this, biggest opening for a Danny Boyle pick ever was

And the franchise by a mile. So this was, this is like, you know, a huge win. And we will just see how it goes because Mallory, you were a little surprised to, we all know very well on this show that Rotten Tomatoes is a, is a faulty metric, but you were a little surprised by the numbers that cropped up on Rotten Tomatoes. What were those numbers and why did they surprise you? Yeah. So the, the,

critic uh tomato meter has been sitting anywhere from a 95 to right now around a 89 or a 90 as we record um since the review started pouring in so very strong critical reception to the film yeah the audience score the popcorn meter i believe

It's a 65%, which I find astonishing. I was like, usually when you, first of all, usually when you see a discrepancy that vast, something is going on. Like, is there like a review bombing campaign? I was Googling trying to figure out what was fueling this. It's just like there is a gap in the response, at least according to this metric. So I find I'm interested to continue to talk to people who have seen the movie and like

see what they think about it. Everybody who I know who has seen it felt somewhere between, was deeply disturbed by it, but quite impressed by it. And I thought this was a modern masterpiece. And that's the spectrum that I've been exposed to so far. But admittedly, the person I've talked to about it is either my husband or somebody who's podcasting about it.

I was like, it hits dead center for a lot of ringer core sort of stuff. So when I heard, you know, Chris and Sean and Amanda talk about it, I was like, this all makes sense to me. Like, their reactions make sense to me. And I think, not to...

get ahead of ourselves because we will weigh in on our particular takes. Yeah. But if I had to guess, I would say an Alex Garland film, especially later Alex Garland films, so the recent sort of men, Civil War, Warfare, are very heady properties and not afraid to get very strange. And if people went into this movie expecting...

closer to 28 days later or something closer to 28 weeks later which these two filmmakers were not really involved in at all which is an even more I would say straightforward kind of action property and then the weirdness the strange ending all these other things might be off-putting I think the reactions have been somewhat polarizing and

And I think that's always fun to talk about. For sure. A B cinema score, which is not a bad cinema score at all. Cinema score is of course the one where they intercept people in the lobby and they're like, what did you think of that movie? Yeah. Demographic. Half the audience has met over 25 in the opening weekend of this movie, which I think is interesting. Yeah.

Next weekend is something to watch just for the overall health of this movie. And the reason why we might be a little bit more invested in the overall health of this movie versus maybe some other movies is this is part of a planned trilogy. Yeah. They have funding from Sony for this movie and the, as I mentioned, already shot Bone Temple. But there's a third movie that they want to make.

And they don't have funding for that yet. And as Danny Boyle keeps saying in every interview, it's going to depend on the box office receipts for these two movies. So if they have a massive drop-off next weekend when Megan 2.0 comes wandering to the theaters, when F1, you know, takes away the dad demographic or whatever, like, and the Mallory demographic's the same demographic. I was going to say, one and the same. Yeah, exactly. I'm the most dad-core person you know. That is...

So true. For sure true. So, you know, what is that going to do for the health of the box office receipts next weekend? It's just a question we're thinking about checking in on perhaps next weekend. Interesting. Yeah, it feels like the initial both box office and critical response has been strong enough to secure the future of the

inside of the larger franchise, but who knows? I have never claimed to be a box office trendline expert, nor will I claim to be one today. I think in addition to just what's happening with this film and this franchise and the future of this franchise, obviously there's also just this larger moment in genre horror. And that's a fun and cool thing too. Like obviously Sinners is a...

of a unique and historic scale. But even being able to enter into that space in 2025 where moviegoers are like, I'm excited to go see a bloody, violent, heady, fun, interesting, very specifically rendered genre horror story. Blood's running everywhere. That's a...

That's just a part of a larger interesting moment in our movie going experience. So that's fun to track. And I do think it's interesting. I was texting Sean a little bit before you had seen it and I had like takes I wanted to get off. So I did subject Sean fantasy to them. And I have done the last, I think the last two big pick episodes on Alex Garland films I did with Sean. So like men and no, I wasn't on Civil War. So just men. But yeah,

The Alex, the, the hardcore Alex Garland-ness of this movie and the way it is like very specific to the themes that he has been trying to explore in these other movies that he has done, Men, Civil War, Annihilation, um, et cetera, et cetera. And, um,

To package that inside of an existent franchise that sort of started his career is such a clever way to engage with IP. Yeah. That I really appreciate that effort. Okay. Yeah, one of my favorite things when like a writer or a filmmaker or storyteller of any form has a –

a theme or an idea that they're interested in exploring and uses a franchise or a genre story of some sort. Like, we talk... This is obviously a through line of our podcasting and the way that we relate to genre stories in general. Like, you know, obviously something that we...

I think there are probably certainly, I don't want to say that our experience is everybody's experience, right? I think there are people who are like, I don't want to actually be thinking about like Brexit or COVID when I sit down to watch a sequel to 28 Days Later. And then I think there are going to be people who are like riveted by that and find that that elevates an already cinematically scintillating movie going experience. And in general, yeah,

As you know, and as we have talked about many times on the pod, including most recently when we did a Ex Machina rewatch, I just fucking love Alex Garland's stuff. Like, not every single Alex Garland story is for me, but that's actually part of why I love it. Like, he is so bold and ambitious in his undertaking, and I think so unflinching in the vision that he seeks to present in each of his stories that, like, when they hit for me, they're just all-time favorites sort of instantly. Yeah.

And when they don't, I find the fact that I have repelled them

By them to be actually, like, impressive and to their credit. There's always just something to think about and chew over. And, like, what I find often with an Alex Garland story is that, with the exception of, like, you know, he has written some things and then written and directed other things, you know. So we'll put them all under the umbrella of an Alex Garland story. But I would say with the exception of something like Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, and probably Sunshine, two of which were directed by Danny Boyle, um...

The other Alex Garland properties I have found tremendously challenging and to a one have in really enjoyed thinking about them afterwards, even more than the experience of watching them sometimes much more than the experience of watching them. And I really, really value that about him because I think his ideas are always interesting. Um, and what they provoke in me, um,

It's something I really relish. So Alex, Alex Garland, incredibly thoughtful and interesting storyteller. Danny Boyle, hugely influential to me. I don't love, again, I don't love everything that Danny Boyle has ever done, but, and he has been in a sort of slump phase for, I think a little while. I really hated yesterday. And sorry, but yeah,

Shallowgrave and Trainspotting. Trainspotting starring Ewan McGregor is like an... Formative. Is like an inciting... Yeah.

Joanna has decided to watch challenging films like moment in my life. I was quite young when that movie came out and I saw it anyway. So, and then I like sought out, yeah, I was like 15. Right. And that's not that long. That's fine. I was 15, saw Transpotting, changed my life, sought out Shallow Grave, which became an incredibly important film for me. And

And A Lifeless Ordinary, even though it is quite weird. I really, really love Sunshine Amazing. Millions is a really, I think, underrated Danny Boyle movie. And I think a really good... That plus Slumdog, which is, of course, a somewhat overrated Danny Boyle movie, is but a really good movie nonetheless, is...

An indicator of how good he is with child actors, both in Millions, which has an all-timer child performance in it, and Slumdog Millionaire, which has incredible kid performances in it. Amazing. So that should have let me know what to expect from the kid performance in this movie, and I was still blown away by what we got. So...

these are incredibly important filmmakers to me. 28 days later is one of my favorite movies of all time. Um, it is so spare and like taught and just sort of like a perfect, like a perfectly constructed thrill ride, visually distinctive entry of the early aughts. Uh,

It is where I think I met... I'm sure it's where I met Cillian Murphy. It's where I became more aware. I had already met Brendan Gleeson and a few other things, but where I really got to know Brendan Gleeson, like, dad core sort of stuff. Naomi Harris. Like, I just... I think that is... I've rewatched that movie just a million gajillion times, even when you couldn't stream it, which was true for a very long time because, like, you and Adam over there, I own it on physical media. So, um...

I just, but I was mixed about this. I wasn't sure like what to expect from this. So, but that's sort of my relationship to Danny, to Alex and to the 20. And then 28 weeks later, I don't care for and did not bother to revisit. And it seems like this movie is pretending it doesn't exist at all. So, you know, you're a mileage be very on that. Yeah. It's I think, yeah, the question of where that fits now in the larger franchise is a

an open one, but increasingly less open as we go and expand the canon. I, yeah, I like...

Quite a few Danny Boyle movies. Actually, I've not seen Millions. I'll have to add that to the list. Very sweet. Very sweet. Yeah, okay. Adding that one to the list. But yeah, I love a number of his other movies. And as established many times, Garland is a favorite. I really agree with what you said. We're just thinking about Garland's work and the wake of it. We've talked a lot before about Devs as an example of that. Obviously, that's a show, not a film. But...

Um, I, I, I had a lot of notes on dev and actually like on like a kind of soul deep level disagreed with its contention and found that I could not stop thinking about it or talking about it and have not stopped mentioning it since, which is just not a thing that typically happens to me with stories there. I'm like, this was like not really for, for, this was not like a day plus for me. So, um,

Yeah, that's just, that's just like what he can do. He's just really one of our great modern philosophers. I think I just, I just find him fascinating. Um, I, I, I really liked the, the 28 franchise as we, you know, talked about in our recent hype meter, we were both looking forward to this new installment quite a bit. Um,

And I, you know, feel similarly, I think maybe not quite as, it's not like I wouldn't list it as one of my absolute all-time favorite movies the way that you would. So I can't claim to have the same degree of passion for it, but I do, I think it's sensational and spectacular and I love it. And I think that the thing about it that always strikes me like from first watch now through any time that I revisit it, it's just that like, if you found yourself describing it, you know,

It would sound on some level like you could be talking about any story about the outbreak of an infection. I was trying to describe it. A friend of mine who went to go see 20 Years Later with me, she's like, have I seen 28 Days Later? What is it? And I was like, uh...

Found family. Yeah, found family. You wake up and the world has changed and a virus has rapidly spread and the extent beyond the space around you is unclear. Are men the real monster? Yeah, exactly. You have to find a family to forge ahead with and then you work your way toward the third act where the real villain is revealed to be your fellow man. But...

when you root yourself in the specificity of the rendering of that vision inside of the film, it is just a masterwork, I think, undeniably. And, like, some of that is the visual specificity, right? And the kind of, like, digital handheld, right? Camcorder, like, of the moment, of the era and time. I loved the way that, like, Sean described it as, you know, thinking about it while you're watching it is, like,

well, the world stopped and like, what if someone just like picked up the last camcorder that they could find and then like made the movie, right? Like that's a fun way of thinking about it. And, um,

The claustrophobic, shaky, you know, the horror of what you're watching, obviously, like the rage virus is, I think, undeniably scarier than many of the other strains of infection and zombie stories. The speed with which it spreads, the fact that, like, you don't even have to be bitten. Just like a crow gnawing on a body. One drop in the eye, you're fucked. That's it. That's the end of your life. You're done. Horrifying.

And then the like degree and ratcheting up of the heart, you know, everything with Christopher Eccleston's character and that troop in the final stretch, it's like difficult to introduce the rage virus and then figure out how to make everybody feel worse about what they're trying to survive or what they might be trying to save. But the film does that expertly. So it's just fantastic. Yeah.

My relationship to the second movie is like... I think it's pretty fun to watch, but I don't think of it as often as the first one. And I think inside of it, actually... I rewatched it last week, and it's...

I find it so propulsive and it moves with such a quickness and a pace that you do just kind of get swept up in watching it. And it's like a, I was going to say pleasant way to spend 90 minutes. That's just simply not the case. Nothing's pleasant about watching any of these movies. It's a riveting, kind of like magnetic way to spend some time. You can't look away. Yeah.

I do always, when I watch the second one, have a lot of questions. Interestingly, in terms of the point about has this movie kind of been retconned out of relevance in the franchise, I think one thing that now feels more relevant

relevant to me, which I was always very confused about at the time was Don, the father's like pursuit of his children, which was like implying something about the preservation of your awareness that I don't think anything else in the movies really seemed like it like supported. But now obviously we have something in this new film with the alpha and the baby that like feels deeply connected to that. So that's interesting. Um,

In terms of like the film ending with, you know, young Andy not showing signs of infection, but carrying the infection or driving the helicopter in Paris. And you're like, there goes the world. And then this movie opens and it's like, not so.

It's just kind of, it's like a little bit of a hand wave for the end of that movie and that's fine. Um, so yeah, I was like super excited for this movie. I thought the trailer was incredible. Like we talked about the cast is amazing. Uh, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, who says no, literally ever, not me, not on this podcast. And Ray Fides just all time, like all time fave. Uh,

I had absolutely no idea who the true star of the movie was, though. Alfie. Or, I'm sorry, were you talking about Samson? I was talking about Spike, young Spike, young Alfie. But you're right, the co-star obviously would be Alpha Samson's giant dong. Yeah. So we'll talk about all of those things today. Great. Okay.

Sadly, a prosthetic dong. All the dongs were prosthetic because Alfie was 13 years old and they were like, legally, we had to slap some prostheses on there. But I think I know for a fact that you had a better time with this movie than I did. You asked me my reaction and you're like, I was like, I don't think it was very good. And then I thought about it for several days and I was like, actually...

to our earlier point, given the fact that I've been thinking about it a lot, I do enjoy that much more. I actually don't feel very excited about ever rewatching it. And Danny Boyle, uh, in, in one of the many interviews, I actually had a couple, he described the tone he was going for as suffocating intensity. And I would say mission accomplished, but it was a, it many times a deeply unpleasant experience for me watching it. Um, and,

But thinking about it, thinking about Jamie and Spike, thinking about Ilsa and Spike, thinking about Ray Fine's performance, the Bone Temple itself. As soon as Ray Fine shows up, the movie kicks into a different gear for me entirely. And that is a section that I would happily revisit any day of the week. But...

I found the experience of watching it not the same pure joy that Christopher Ryan communicated on Big Pick. And like...

Which is not the... You know, something like 28 Days Later, I can rewatch endlessly. So it's not like gore is a problem for me necessarily, but there's just something about, you know, the frenetic editing, which Danny Boyle loves frenetic editing, but like frenetic editing, the like cut to disgusting slurping night vision, infected wandering through the world, the number of spinal cords, and just sort of like, there's just a level of...

uh, aggravation and, you know, unrelentingly that I, that I had, that I struggled with when the movie slows down and, and we spend time in the characters and the emotionality, which is both Danny and Alex say the real point of this movie, obviously. Um, I think this movie is incredibly successful and I think all of its ideas are, I love everything.

Every single interview I've read or watched or listened to of Alex and Danny talking about this movie has been endlessly fascinating to me. So, like, thinking about this movie, and I am...

All in, very excited for Bone Temple. So, like, which promise, which they said is going to be even bleaker than this movie. I mean... And so why am I... Yeah. Like, I'm like, this is unpleasant. Can't wait to do it again. That's sort of where I'm sitting. So... I don't think the times will be tame with a...

Jack O'Connell's Jimmy. Sir Jimmy Crystal? Yeah, the tracksuit mafia coming over from Hawkeye. No, Sir Jimmy Crystal is not promising us a good time, but that is where I am. So you had a much better time. So tell me about your experience. I thought this was sensational. Just really, really, really wonderful. Yeah.

Each of the three acts, and that's actually, I think those three acts are independent of the Jimmy bookends. We have our Jimmy bookends and we have our three acts inside of that. Spike and Jamie, Spike and his mother, and then our beloved Dr. Kelson, all of which we'll talk about more later.

They were so tonally distinct that it feels to me like it should not have worked as a movie, like a cohesive experience. But I think that was part of what I responded to is the jarring change in circumstance based on a choice that you make. I thought the movie was visually astonishing. Whether the iPhone propaganda...

Overblown or not. You know, even beyond that, there is something that just feels like different about the visual quality of it. But even beyond that, the editing, these cuts to the infrared horror escapes, the dream sequences, the chase down the causeway and the stars and northern lights in the sky. Yeah.

The S missing from the shell station so it just says hell. Like, however zoomed in or zoomed out you were, it was unmistakable what world you were in and what had happened to that world. And to pan from the attempts to recreate or fabricate or hold onto or approximate some semblance of life on Holy Island and then to see what –

the wilderness had reclaimed around that, I thought was, like, breathtaking. And then the ideas inside of the film, which obviously we'll talk about more as we go, I found just quite provocative and intellectually stimulating. This is, like, not a movie and not a franchise where the...

bold font headline is as simple as like, the people are definitely better and they're going to win and they're for sure worth saving and they know how to do it. Right? Like it's just much messier than that. And I like that. It's also not like, I mean, we'll see what happens in Bone Temple, but it's not as clear as even 28 Days Later, which is like,

These army dudes are bad. Because, you know, even someone like Jamie, Aaron Taylor Johnson's character, who dramatically disappoints his son. Yeah. I'm like, this isn't a bad guy, necessarily. That's not what they're trying to... And they're not saying this village is evil. But they're saying there are elements here that are...

Our protagonist on the verge of, you know, in the midst of a coming-of-age story is having the scales fall from his eyes about certain things, about the way of life that has been presented to him, about the philosophy, about the stories that his father has told him, all these sort of things. And that is, like, that is much more interesting to me to watch Jamie...

give his child all the bacon and lie about saying he had bacon earlier than for Jamie to be an abusive prick or something like that, which he's not. You know what I mean? Like all of that's much more complicated, which is much more interesting. Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's, you know, that's the next thing. I think that the specific family unit and just the community in general really worked for me as like a way into the world. The

Again, like we've already mentioned Brexit, COVID, we'll talk about that a little bit more momentarily. Religion, faith, the shared experience, like what the film has to say about all of that, while also making room for Samson's giant dick, I just thought was like really impressive and quite gripping to watch. Yeah.

I liked all of the slices of the film in different ways. I was a little thrown by Jimmy's return at the end. I was like, wait, this is just like really jarring totally. Um, but not in a way that I minded, like, because it is, I, you know, I think part of it is what you bring in, in terms of the, the, the knowledge that this is like part one of a, a new stretch of films. The next movie comes out in six months, like six months in January. And also because, um,

You know, Jimmy was dotted in throughout, you know, the... Carving on the torso. Corpse and the graffiti, scrolls on the wall, et cetera. So I was kind of like, I got to say, one note. There just have to be more names. Yeah.

Jamie and Jimmy are the same name, but I think that's... Jamie and Jimmy, but then Jim. Killian Murphy is named Jim. I think that's intentional, right? Yeah, sure, but it's like kind of... Were you fooled the way that I was into thinking that Jamie was the Jimmy at the beginning of the movie? Initially, yeah. It was...

It just took too long for them to show us the crucifix. And I was just like, obviously, like, the crucifix is how we will know for certain that this is the same person. And I have not... He's still got his fleece zipped all the way up. I haven't seen hide or hair of it. So I was like, maybe that's not who that kid was. And then, you know, we get the reveal at the end, honestly. I think just at the very beginning, because these Scottish accents are quite thick. Yeah, but he's... I was like, oh, maybe they're saying... They were saying Jamie instead of Jimmy. But then once you start seeing Jimmy, like, written, that I was like, these are probably...

Probably different people. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's named Jim or Jimmy or Jamie. So Jim or James or Spike, which is different. But Spike might be short for her.

James Jr. We don't know. One last thing I'll say, and I mentioned this on the 2000 draft we did over on the Big Pic feed, but Billy Elliot is another one of my favorite movies of all time. And this is set not in County Durham, but right nearby, so the accents are quite similar. So when you have a young boy like Spike...

with dead mom stuff. That's just like straight arrow down the middle of Billy Elliot for me. And I just got, I, I was a mess.

um, in, in the whole, uh, ritual for his mother sequence of the film. Absolutely. So, um, might've been no matter what the accent, but this, this is a particular like bruise for me, uh, that I sustained 24 years ago, 25 years ago. Um, okay. So we're going to go sort of section by section. You mentioned there's like the father chapter, the mother chapter, and I'm what I'm calling the elder chapter. And then the Jimmy book ends. Um,

So we're going to go through that. Throughout, though, we're going to take a pause from Headier Ideas to play a segment that I'm calling

would you fuck that zombie? Uh, inspired of course by Samson, but also when we were trying to come up with how we would do a podcast episode about this movie and idea we had with our, our beloved Peller Judah was like rank the most fuckable zombies. And then we're like, are zombies really fuckable? And then we said that on the podcast and then the bad babies have been emailing in suggestions. So these are brought to you by the bad. Incredible. Okay. Um,

In general, I will just say as a starter that fucking a zombie is a no for me. I was very captivated by Samson, obviously. You might eat your words. Are you ready? I'm going to take this from probably least moldering to most moldering is how we're going to go. And I will start with something I'm fairly confident you haven't seen, but that's okay. No matter. Okay.

this is again brought, brought to us a couple of bad babies, uh, suggested this one. There was a show called I zombie in which, you know, the zombies, I mean, the main premise of that show is that there was a young woman who got turned to a zombie and by eating dead people's brains, she helped solve the mystery of their murders. It was a great promise for a show, a really fun show. I watched all of it, uh, from Rob Thomas who did Veronica Mars. Um,

This is Blaine McDonough played by David Anders from iZombie. And basically they've just made him look like Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, something you will understand later. Would you fuck this zombie, Mallory Rubin? Okay, so he's like... Wow. Wow.

Oh, my God. Really setting the mood today. Okay, so I have not seen iZombie. I've seen commercials for iZombie. But I will say just from that picture, he looks pretty intact. Yep. Like pretty preserved. Oh, yeah. It's just like a little bit of extra eyeliner and a little bit of like base on the lips to make you look a little pale. I'm just, in general, not really interested in fucking any zombies who have like...

exposed rib cages or like uh intestines hanging out or anything like that so um but in general you said i might eat my words and maybe i maybe i will guys great looking zombie gotta say great looking zombie i'm still i eating my words sure they're gonna eat my brains like that isn't that the thing with zombies i mean that's not looking for during a sexual encounter

Maybe they will preserve your brain because you are a beloved paramour and they will only go after other people's brains. Is iZombie a story where, you know, like, the zombies engage in sexual congress and know their limits? Like, as you know, I'm a big fan of the story being human, where that's more centered around, you know, the vampiric... Vampirism. Werewolfism. Werewolves. Ghosts. Yeah. Um...

But that more general idea of like, we'd just like to try to live a life and that includes sexual congress. Yes, live a life, but maybe there's like times where you slip away from your humanity and your brains, you know? Yeah. What are you going to do? Okay. Okay, I would fuck that zombie. I don't know anything about the character. Number one. But sure. Yes. Why not? I'd fuck that zombie. Okay.

So it's... Sure. Score one for zombies. Okay. I don't have... Let me say this. I don't have... I've not been presented with enough reasons not to fuck that zombie. I think he's...

My memory about this character is that he's sort of like a bad boy that you want to fuck anyway. So, okay. Great. I'm in. Chapter one. Father. We're just going to take some, like, much like this movie, we're going to take some wild tonal swings on this podcast. Okay? So let's come back to... Will you be commenting on whether you would fuck the zombies? Oh, David Anders, who I know best from Alias. Yes, I would. You would fuck that zombie. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Great. Okay.

the way this is a you know this is a visual thing you can watch this podcast if you want to see the images that I'm presenting to Mallory Urban okay

chapter one the father uh we'll come back to the jimmy opener i just want to start with alfie we've already sung his praises a bit but um i just want to say that in an interview with alfie who is just like so what a little cutie he is obsessed with stranger things yeah and the chris or reeve superman alfie come on house of r uh we will gladly welcome you on the podcast for our stranger things uh rewatch yeah standing invite kid yeah um

I, I, actual genuine, like not hyperbole, like a revelation. This kid was so good. So good. And the movie hinges on him completely. I mean, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Jamie, he comes back at the end briefly, but is like barely in the movie after the first act. After the first act, yeah. Yeah. Which obviously centers on them and their pairing and their family unit. But then you're like,

wow, okay, I realize whose story this is, and it is Spike's story. And that was not something that I had any reason to expect based on how the film had been marketed and presented to us. So that was just really cool and fun. And to pull that off, the performer has to be ready to shoulder the entire story. And boy, was he. Just a really, really incredible performance. Moving, charming in those moments of like...

The worry and fear and moments of confronting some sort of new realization about the people around him or the nature of life. Action. All of it. It just all had to be there and was just really spectacular. A very expressive face. Yeah.

This kid has hardly anything on his CV. He was in the His Dark Materials TV show very briefly, but like, and he said his first day of filming was the scene where he discovers Jamie and Rosie, you know, enjoying some adult time. Yeah.

That was the first thing he filmed. That and having to act like he was sick from drinking and stuff like that. This kid smashed it. Smasharoo. Just really, really incredible stuff. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, also fantastic. As you pointed out, we both really like him. We even watched Craven the Hunter. You know what I mean? That's how much we like Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Aaron is...

Honestly, one of my favorite leading men. And Craven aside, has really good taste in the project. I frankly don't dare you. Yeah, I will. And I love this. Him showing up, he is such a physically imposing presence. Here with the long hair and the beard and just sort of his Craven bulk. And...

I think he just does such an incredible job of presenting this dad figure who, again, we don't hate, who is in a tough position because what do you do when your wife is dying of cancer and there's nothing you can do to help her? And like...

are you merely a red blooded male and, or red blooded human and like crave, you know, contact when your wife has sort of like lost touch with who she is. I'm not like necessarily excusing it. There are very like, but it is a very human thing that he does here. And, and I think only almost the worst sin is that,

the lies he tells earlier in the celebration. And for all the...

set pieces that are in this movie, I honestly, my stomach was most turned by that pub sequence, which is shot to be like a horror movie, essentially. And just sort of the surging crowd, the creepy iconography that we find here and there and everywhere inside of this village setting, and then Jamie boasting about what his son accomplished when he didn't, you know, when the reality is Spike didn't

a very good job for a young teen out on the mainland for the first time. And I think also the physicality of Aaron Taylor Johnson, especially in the visual aspect

similarity to a certain degree with the bearded alphas that we encounter out in the real world. I thought that was like an interesting visual connection. I loved this performance. I loved this character of Jamie. Yeah, I thought he was fantastic in the film as usual. And I agree. I found Jamie to be like, actually for me, like a character I felt a lot of empathy toward while also being

being repelled by him and judging him, which is interesting. That's just more interesting. And I think like the movie and the franchise is not really interested in anything we would like traditionally label as a quote unquote hero. That's like not really what this is. Right. And I think that while there are moments of certainly like bravery and moments of bold acts, uh,

at the end of the day, this is like a dude who's still alive when a lot of other people aren't and is trying to figure out how to protect the people he loves but also how to make himself happy. And like, that feels really human to me. Yeah. Like, the idea that if you were miserable and you had yearnings and

I think fucking somebody else in a cave while your kid, unknown to you, but watches and your wife is dying of cancer, screaming and bleeding in your bed is horrible. To be clear, we're all done that. Not great. Really tough. Brutal.

like you understand, you understand, especially in a world like this, that a character like Jamie would be seeking that moment where he feels alive. And especially like that, you could, you feel the way when he returns, when they returned that he's like, now I'm, I'm chasing the high. Like I felt it again and I have to keep it going. And I had the hunt and then I had the booze and then I had the cheers and then I had sex. And it's like, you're,

holding him in like a withering state of judgment, but also you're like, well, of course on some level he would be chasing that over a constant reminder of how hard everything is. That's just like human nature. So I thought that was all fascinating. And to watch Spike, um,

confront something that everybody confronts at some point in different circumstances and context, certainly, but would just like basically who were my parents really was incredibly effective. And this was one of my single favorite things in the movie because everything you just said is right.

Jamie is lying. Jamie is boasting. Jamie is showboating. And Spike feels inadequate and insecure and ashamed that he wasn't better, even though he did, as you said, do quite well. Made it out. A lot of people don't make it out. Tried. A lot of people don't try.

The fact that like the thing that before he sees Jamie and Rosie in the caves and he's like, you're supposed to be caring for my mother, not like fucking this other woman. Um,

The fact that the thing that he's like, and then, of course, we have everything with, like, Dr. Kelson and this idea of what was the fire. You don't know? Oh, you do know? Oh, someone else had to tell me? Wait, there's a doctor who's alive who could help, but you don't want to go try? Like, we're not going to do everything possible to save her? Here's my question about that, though. Like, I don't know that that's true. Which part?

I think everyone knows that she has cancer and it is beyond helping. And Spike is like, you just don't care. And I think what's more true is that Jamie's like, there's literally nothing we could do. So, so I guess I would say that's entirely possible, but like maybe at some point when symptoms first started to manifest, like that there would have been a moment where like, if you knew there was somebody with medical expertise out there, like,

Wouldn't it be worth risking everything to go try? I do think that somewhere in this village, since it's only been 27 years, people know that if you have lumps on your breasts and all these other things are manifesting, you have cancer. You know what I mean? I feel like everyone knows and they just haven't told Spike what it is. Yeah, and certainly, as we'll hear later, like...

she knows and has not been ready to tell him. But so I think like what was really interesting to me about the, like my father is a liar and thus not the man I thought he was, is that before we get to the infidelity and the questions of whether the, the, the truth of a doctor's presence, whether it would help or not is like shared. The first thing that Spike says

is like nauseated by is that his father is proud of him or like wants to be proud of him it's like a lie of pride and i thought that was really fascinating too because in this world like one of the questions is just like are you worthy of any label that somebody puts on you or the expectation that comes with it or how other people what they look to you for in the wake of that and like this rite of passage you know we know that spike is younger than others right it's like

There's that moment by the gate, like 14, 15, that would be better. And it's like 12, he's ready and he wants to go, but then to see what are you going toward? And I thought that was just really interesting too. Like I liked what, what Boyle has been saying about the idea of like risk and kind of how they wrapped their minds around, like, well, would you even go across the causeway? What would that be for?

Why? Right. Well, because of course you would. Yeah, because they don't have endless supplies on this island. You know, we do see like signs about sort of like, hey, supplies are low. So it's an interesting, this island is such an interesting, I mean, first of all, brilliant to set this on the Holy Island with that causeway. So good. Yeah. Which as...

I was texting with Chris. I was like, do you think you and I are the only ones who watched that Jude Law HBO series, which is filled on Holy Island with the Cosmo that gets flooded? I don't think even Jude Law watched that show, but, but it's such a beautiful, incredible, natural set piece to take advantage of. This is a real place. I had, I put in our notes, this, this language from the Holy Island sort of website that

Which says, when the tide is in, you cannot cross. Please don't put yourself at risk or embarrass yourself by becoming the cause of an expensive Coast Guard rescue. This happens on average once a month here, more frequently during the summer months. So, like... Brutal. Don't be a dum-dum, et cetera, et cetera. Easy to imagine. Once a month seems infrequent. Easy to imagine every day someone being like, the current's not going to pull me. I can make it. Come on. I can do this. Current's not going to pull me away. But...

But this natural, you know, we've watched plenty of zombie apocalypse stories at this point, whether or not you stuck around with The Walking Dead for a million seasons or our most recent foray into like what does a zombie apocalypse society look like in Jackson, Wyoming, et cetera, et cetera, like.

Yeah.

Then you look to the elders inside of your community for information about the wider world. And if you find out that your father, you were there, you saw what you did, and your father comes back to the pub and he's like, Spy E was great. He killed everyone. It was wonderful. You're like, what else have you lied about? What else has everyone in this town lied to me about? What is the reality of the world? You've got...

So just the gateway into doubting everything. Yeah, and just sort of like this is growing up and it's just sort of like, what have I been indoctrined into? And, you know, Alex Garland has talked about the way in which she wanted to create this village that was, again, sort of similar to the way that Tony Gilroy talks about this. Not like specific critique of, let's say, like MAGA America or, you know, conservative swings inside of Europe or something like that, but just sort of this idea of

misplaced nostalgia for an earlier time, this sort of regressive looking, you know, this very Anglo-Saxon coded village setup that they have here. The flashes that we get to you know, Henry V and archers and all this sort of stuff like that. So this like Anglo-Saxon

make our islands great again. This, but, but misremembering, he was saying like, it's a very 1950s coded island that we've created here. Right. Um,

And you see inside of this island a father hit a child when he, you know, lashes out at him. And he's like, that's not something in contemporary parenting. I mean, you do see it, but, like, he was like, that was so common in the 1950s. And so we just sort of, like, forget...

outside of our glowing memories and stuff. And this nostalgia thing comes back again and again, and it comes back again, certainly with the whole Jimmy Savile Teletubbies coda of this film, but this misplaced nostalgia for an earlier time. And so this idea of growing up indoctrinated inside of this village of like, our way is the right way. This is, you know, this is the way sort of thing and finding the rot at the center of it, or, um,

Hearing a story of Dr. Kelson versus meeting Dr. Kelson, who represents science, and then meeting Dr. Kelson. What have I been told? What is real? We watched him in that first act. It's so important to watch him in that first act lap up

all the lessons that his father is giving him. His father's just like nonstop giving him lessons as they walk across the land. And many of the things that Jamie is telling him is true and good, you know, information to have. But now Spike has to question all of it

because he is of the age when he should do that and he has had this experience that is pushing him into that. And I think that is just a really brilliant setup for what comes after. Yeah, I agree. I think like the place that we build toward later in the film of Spike, you know, returning, bringing, not returning, bringing the baby, um,

To the gate, but deciding not to go back himself, that he needs to be on a journey of discovery through his own eyes. Like, everybody has their version of that, but what would that look like in this world, in this circumstance? And to confront that, like that his portal into that is loss in many forms, right? A loss of innocence more broadly, certainly. A loss of trust.

a loss of certainty with his father and with the community, a literal loss with the loss of his mother. All of that leading him to a place where he needs to seek some version of truth or understanding that he forges on his own two feet. It's really fascinating in a world where taking a single step, let alone a step that severe, means courting death at every turn. Yeah.

I thought that the causeway, like, in addition to just being, again, visually, like, stunning was so symbolically rich. Like, the fact that you have this natural defense and protection and this ability to see what is coming always or think you see what is coming always, right, from your perk.

uh of of visibility of enviable visibility but then like what is it also it's this tether to this other thing right you're not like fully removed um and there's there's a commentary there certainly like i i thought that the cuts to um henry henry the fifth the 1944 henry the fifth were uh quite effective in terms of conveying what what you're um

what you're exploring there about like this portrait of a certain British identity and ideal. Right. And there's also just something like, obviously like this is a society where Spike grows up and he, we talk about this a lot, right? He's an apocalypse kid. So he doesn't know like when Eric,

shows him his iPhone. What the fuck that is? He doesn't know what the internet is. And of course, we understand that. There's nothing surprising about that. We understand that this is a 12-year-old child in this world where the world ended 28 years ago. Of course, he doesn't know what the internet is, but he doesn't know what the internet is. So there is this generational...

distinction there and who is like maintaining knowledge from before but then maybe going even further back because of what's possible because of the loss of technology and then just really like

society right that's like a society right now is inextricable from technology so like if that all went away where would we be this is obviously on the mind of the film it's something that the filmmakers are talking about a lot in interviews for spike it's like he grew up with this life he grew up with like if you got bacon for breakfast it would be an extraordinary thing he grew up where like you have the the number of arrows that you take in your quiver like that's what

you made with your hands. Like, that's what you could find. This made me really mad. The number of arrows. They just needed to take way more. Yeah. Not just take way more. They left arrows behind in many circumstances where I was like, collect your fucking arrows. Adam and I were having a little mini argument about this because he made that same point. And my... I think that's... You guys are right, clearly. Like, the weaponry is precious, especially once you're stranded. My...

is just like the transmission of the disease. Yeah, like can you risk it? Can you risk keeping something that close to your person that is like coded in the disease? I don't know. I don't know. If they're like holding a baby that was recently inside an infected lady. I have snitch notes on the Wesleyan.

I was just so irritated they were not taking their arrows, but that's, you make a decent point with the infected question. But also, like, what about Spike's arrows that just, like, fly completely wide and don't get anything infected? Those I would try to go get. Once the horde ran past or, you know, tired itself out on the festering mattress before the attic collapsed, those I would probably go get. They had to

have more weaponry on them when they set out. But of course, to like the point from a few minutes ago about, well, yeah, they're going, they're courting the risk, they're willing to accept the risk because they need supplies, they need to sustain their lives and their society. That's not what this is. This is just like you go and you kill. Like we baptize you in blood and then you're a man of Holy Island. You're a man now. Well, but also they were for... Take more weapons with you then, if that's the...

How dare you say they weren't foraging because they found a Frisbee and that's very important. Okay. That was honestly great. The response to the Frisbee was great. I think one of the things I want to mention that because it's, I think, the last image, the last flash of the film is the St. George's Cross flag on fire. And just for American audiences, the St. George's Cross flag, which is the red cross on the white field, which is different, of course, from like the Union Jack flag.

has in, you know, people listening to UK or feel free to disagree with me, hopsanddragonsatgmail.com. Um,

But has been associated with like regressive, extremely right wing ideology. I was reading some articles about it just to make sure that I understood and was not mischaracterizing this. But it's just to say it's not the same as a Confederate flag in the U.S. necessarily. But kind of a similar vibe where like if you saw someone flying the St. George's Cross, you're a little like,

Why are you flying that flag? What do you have in mind there? So, like, the fact that we see that flag inside of this world is, again, meant to signal this sort of regressive idea, this, like, Britain pure idea, and this...

You know, you mentioned Brexit and COVID a couple of times. I think it's really interesting to listen to Alex Garland talk about this again, similar to Tony Gilroy, where he's like, I didn't write this as like a Brexit parallel or a COVID parallel. But the way that I write stories, I write them sort of with the influence of what's going on around me. And those are things that have happened around me. So like, yeah, it's in the soup.

It's definitely there. I'm not saying don't look for it. It's not there, but it's not like my agenda wasn't, I'm going to make the commentary on Brexit. Similarly to the way that when we think about 28 Days Later, we all viewed it in this sort of like post 9-11 sort of space. So it's just sort of like in the water and the mixture here, but not, I think...

I think similar to the themes that we talked about and, or something that could be applicable throughout history of just sort of, this is human nature, this sort of tribalism and all the other things that come with it. So yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think like the, I liked the Boyle quote in the, in the Rolling Stone article about the film, the virus needs to move forward. The British human beings left to fight it are moving backwards. Just like that core thing.

and distinction of the direction of these two opposed forces. If you have the contemporaneous

unfolding in society that you are going to bring to the experience of watching the story or that you assume are on the minds of the people making them. Boyle seems to be like more actively invoking COVID and Brexit. I think maybe than Garland is, but you know, I thought that the big pick chat about this was right. It's like, again, you either you're thinking about this when you're watching the movie or you're not. And either way it,

It works. And I think your Gilroy comp and your Andor comp is fantastic. Like, there are obviously going to be things that are happening in our recent history or our current history that feel more top of mind when watching a story like this. But the themes are, in some ways, sadly often, universal. And I think, again, the, like, incorporation of either historical footage or –

The footage from a Shakespearean adaptation that Churchill had commissioned to –

And in essence, serve as like morale boosting propaganda at the end of World War II. Like you can think about that period of time. Right. So it's it's it spans the decades and the long swath of history. And then part of the question that you ask in the in the immersion of those ideas is, well, what is the future of human history look like when you wind up here? Right. So, um.

When we're on the road, we encounter a couple of new things inside of, as you said in that quote, the virus needs to move forward. The folks are moving backwards. So absolute gooptopia nightmare. That is the sort of roly-poly worm suckers on the ground. This is what Danny Boyle said. We

We've evolved the virus. It throws up variants, which you'll have to come to the film to see. There's three obvious ones and one not so obvious. So we, you and I talked about this a little bit before recording. We're like, okay, the, the worm suckers on the ground, the alphas are the two clearest. You think women who can give birth, like a pregnancy could be, or there's like the alphas pack because, um,

You know, there's the alpha, then there's, like, the alpha pack, which is more interested in, like, hunting and food than it is, like, rage attack of a person, necessarily. And then we've got the baby. Mm-hmm.

Who, to your point, your 28 weeks later illusion, like, is that baby a carrier of the virus? Yeah. Is that baby just going to infect that entire village via, like, spit up or whatever? You know what I mean? Yeah. Or, like, via the breastfeeding from someone. I don't know how they're going to feed that baby. Like, I was very worried about... They have that line in there where it's like, the baby can survive on water for a couple days. I'm like, I'll get that baby some milk, please. Yeah.

Also, here's honestly, of all the things that bugged me in this movie, and please don't abandon your arrows as one of them. If you're going to drug your kid, your 12-year-old kid, Spike, because you've opted to go and accept your death and die, and you want your kid to sort of be in a drugged-out incapacity to say, okay.

don't hand him a baby and say, hold this baby. That's a similar thought. Yeah. Don't make a drugged out spike. Put that baby in the little cart that you found for him. Like, what are you doing? What are we doing here? Anyway, okay. Agreed. Any further ideas on this idea of three obvious ones and one not so obvious? I mean, do we want to use this opportunity? Do we want to talk here about what is happening with the pregnancy in general or do we want to do that elsewhere? Let's do it here. Why not? So...

We still have some stuff to learn about what is going on here, right? And how this works. We have a...

Lying about the placenta. We have a line about the power of the placenta. Yeah. Okay, so... Well, you're not a doctor. No, I'm not a doctor. Said it before, I'll say it again. And Ralph Fiennes is, so... Not a scientist, not a doctor? Yeah. Yeah, I have never built... Nor have I ever built a bone temple. Yes. And so who am I to argue yet with my beloved Ralph Fiennes? That is basically the only... The movie's only effort to explain how...

A non-infected child is born of an infected mother. Okay. So a lot of the infected in the film are, as noted previously, naked. Yeah. We're very far into the apocalypse here on the quarantined British Isles. And it makes sense that the clothing would not be holding up as they run about the woods and the wilderness feeding. Mm-hmm.

The pregnant woman is wearing a garment, though. A dress. An open dress. So I think that that at least introduces the possibility that she is more recently infected. So one possibility is, like, was she pregnant and then infected? Or was she infected and then got pregnant while infected? Either way...

The implication strongly is that Samson is the father. I see two options there. Okay. Three. Here's my third option. So either Samson sexually assaulted a live woman...

I'm assuming that this woman who is uninfected would not want to have sex with Samson, but... Okay. So there's that. Or they were both infected and they had sex. Or she was pregnant when she was turned. Right. He kind of claims the baby as part of his tribe, not his genetic material. But...

Whatever it is, whatever the case, Samson's like, mine. That baby is mine. The other, in addition to the placenta line, the other kind of key line we get is we can't allow them to breed. Yeah. So nobody in the story has any more information than we do about how this happened yet. But the implication of that line is...

We cannot allow the infected zombies to procreate with each other as infected beings. Yeah. That doesn't mean that's what happened in this case, but that is sort of the larger, like, and especially in the context of these overall evolutions of the infected beings into these, like, more advanced and evolved states, um,

That's certainly being strongly presented as, like, a possibility of what has happened here. So it's a lot to process no matter what. It's a lot to think about. I'll be curious if they ever decide to, like, if it's interesting to them to clarify or not. But I think that, like...

When Danny Boyle has said like the theme of this movie is family and then the theme of the next movie is evil. Sounds great. Cheerful time. Yeah. So our family unit inside our human family unit is very clear cut. Then we've got the sort of Samson family unit and then we've got the like roly poly worm sucker family unit because there's kids inside of that sort of like grouping too. So this idea of like.

the fungus loves to, do you know what I mean? Just sort of like what, you know, what is distinctly human about your experience versus like, you know, the infected are just trying to survive like a mushroom apocalypse is trying to survive. And so they're like learning how to hunt, learning how to feed themselves, learning how to water themselves, learning how to procreate. The alpha is defending his, his people, his land, his territory, all of that. I just think that is,

fascinating to think about. Yeah, and the fungus loaves too is the perfect combo. The fact that the crawlers choose seemingly to stay in that family unit and remain together, whether it is the direct conceiving of a child that is actually Samson's or the claiming, the alpha is, as you noted already, in both cases, Samson's not the only alpha that we see, obviously, there's the Causeway alpha as well earlier. The

That's a found family thing, or maybe more directly, like, you know, kill the one, kill the many, like kind of their tribe of turned beings. But they are together in units. And to the like opening note of are we allowed when we're talking about the 28 movies to call them zombies movies?

One of the things that Garland said, this was in the little Rotten Tomatoes trailer YouTube channel featurette on the film. This is what he said about

falls under the umbrella of that distinction, but also feels germane when talking about this question of like, are they breeding and creating new life? And just how are they thinking about family more generally? They haven't died and come back to life, Garland says. They're living people who've got sick and been infected with the rage virus. That dictates some stuff. They need to drink. They need to eat. If they've survived 28 years infected with this disease, what would they look like? Are they similar to anything in the animal kingdom? What would they be similar to? So that

felt this, that was from like before the movie came out and it felt to me like, obviously it's applicable to many things, aspects of the film, but like kind of like a tease about the baby and like that maybe Samson is like, time to have my own kid now. I've, if you had to ask me to pick what I think is most likely, I think those two infected people

made that baby when they were infected. That's what I think. I have so many questions about the science. I'm like more willing to accept the placenta line if the woman was already pregnant and then turned rather than like, but I does not.

not a sinus, so I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. That's fine. The beauty, the majesty, the power of the placenta. Okay, just a couple more things in this father chapter I want to mention. We already talked about sort of the pub nightmare, but I do want to play this. This is actually a Dr. Kelson, a Ralph Fiennes clip, but Carlos, will you play this clip, please? There are many kinds of death, and some are better than others. Infected.

Non-infected alike. Okay, so obviously in most trailers you hear this quote from Dr. Kelson talking about there are many kinds of death, some are other than others, infected and non-infected alike. And I just really liked thinking about that. Obviously, like we're talking about...

I mentioned this... I alluded to this Buffy vampire story... Buffy vampire story storyline in our speeches episode. But this idea that, like, cancer can take someone inside of a zombie apocalypse, right? Like, that...

There is death that has nothing to do with the zombie apocalypse. And so that's obviously top of mind. We're thinking about Jodie Comer's character a lot when we think about this. But also there's this other idea of death, which we've already alluded to a bunch here, which is this like death of innocence. Yeah. Death of idolizing your father. Death of all these other things that come for Spike inside of this movie. It just sort of like... I just think that that is...

In this, like, on the border of adulthood moment in a child's life. Kill the boy, let the man be born. Like, what has to die in order for you to move forward into a wider world? Which I think this film has on its mind in such an interesting way. Yeah, absolutely. So...

We get this essentially like a rejection of the Jamie worldview and Spike is about to enter his mom era. Not that he wasn't already in his mom era. Obviously we see him save the bacon for his mom, like all this sort of stuff like that. Like he's very tender towards her throughout, but.

We're about to get to the mom chapter. Anything else you want to say about this first Jamie-centric chapter before we move on? No. Let's hit the next stretch. Before we do that, Molly Rubin, would you fuck this zombie? Let's see. We love a tonal shift. Okay. Here we go once again. This is mostly a makeup-based situation. This is, of course, Nicholas Holtz. Sure. Yeah.

As R in Warm Bodies. Yeah, absolutely. That's a yes for me. That's an easy yes. I mean, Nick Holt is the easiest yes in sort of the would you fuck this zombie space. Oh, man. If you've never seen Warm Bodies, it's a Romeo and Juliet tale. Her name is Juliet, his name is R, and he's a zombie, but is coming back to life, I think, because of love, if memory serves. Okay. Okay.

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Chapter two, the mother. All right, so we've got Jodie Comer here as this sort of, you know, interesting sort of adult character. Obviously, her illness is progressing. She has moments of clarity and moments where she is regressing towards childhood, thinks Spike is her own father, all this sort of stuff like that. I did watch the trailer, but unlike you, scholar of trailers, I did not...

closely studied the trailer so I had a moment of worry in this movie that Jodie Comer was just going to writhe around in her bed for the movie I was just like you don't hire Jodie Comer to do this and so I was really happy to see that chapter two of this movie is essentially Spike smuggles his mother out of the island to try to get her help with this doctor how does this

Character archetype, which we've seen before, the sort of addled person, work for you? We both love Jodie Comer. We're huge fans. How did all of this work for you? Yeah, I think Jodie Comer is just a mesmerizing performer, so it's always wonderful to spend time with her. It's funny, I almost had the opposite trailer-tricked-my-brain experience with the character because...

you know, there are shots of her holding the baby. So I was like, wait, like, is she pregnant? Like, we don't see her out on the blanket is over her. I was like, is there like, what is going to happen here? Um, not that I thought that was the cause of her, her state, but, um, I was like, she's hysterical. Yeah. I did not know we were going to get a pregnant infected woman. So, um, had, had no idea there. I think like, um,

The way that Jamie ends, well, you know, when we hear initially in that breakfast scene, like the cries from above, and then we first go and see Isla, like the fact that Jamie goes from like brief concern to kind of like,

like... Impatience. Yeah, impatience. Is he just tired of it or is he actually, like, repelled by it? And to see the nurturing nature of Spike's relationship. Obviously, he's so young that part of it is just like, I am not ready to lose my mother who is... At what age would you be ready for that? Of course. But, like, the tenderness, like, the fact that he is there to care for her, the sneaking of the bacon, which is really sweet, but then, like, in a kind of classic 28 movie fashion...

Also sort of like horrifying the way that the meat is like rolled up into the into the handkerchief was like difficult, I thought, to distinguish from the bloody handkerchiefs that she also keeps in the same spot on the bedside table. And it's just like is like a nurturing sustenance. At what point can you no longer distinguish that from the way that your body is like it's it's failing you a little childish and misguided, but like so sweet. Right. And this is just sort of all of like.

Him dragging her across the mainland is, I think, on the one hand, misguided, but on the other hand, this death, this adventure that they go on, this moment that they share, and this choice she gets, this active choice she gets to make. Yeah. Yeah.

you know, is, is worth something, but like, um, the risks he, the risk he puts himself in something that she wouldn't want him to do, um, you know, is, is, is a childish, if extremely well-meant, uh, endeavor. Yeah.

Yeah. And like the, the fact that before her death and before his decision not to return to the community to set off on his own, like this is leaving the community in a different form. Like there's no promise of a return there. Not only that, like he is confronting what it feels like to be lied to, but he, he's lying, right? He's like, there's a fire that he said. That I started. Yeah.

Endangering the community so that he can escape. And it's like, none of that is good ultimately when you're trying to preserve everybody's safety, but he has decided to put somebody he cares about above the community. And then the question of like, well, when you lose that person who you're willing to do that for, what value does the idea of community even have for you was fascinating, I thought. Yeah, I think this feeds into a lot of the conversations we had around The Last of Us in terms of like the social contract and...

um, what's my us. If his us just shrinks down to my mom and me, uh, fuck everyone else. At least he doesn't like burn the walls in order to get out. Right. But I do have a lot of questions about the security at the Holy Island because first of all, he sneaks that baby back. Like who was, who was watching for the baby? Nobody. Uh,

They seem to, like, that they can't take down an alpha, you know, before... And that they're not, like, really aware until Jamie starts screaming. It's like, well, wait, what if someone was not being chased, but the alpha and perhaps the alpha's horde had just been charging down the causeway toward your gates? Like, we don't have anything more than a...

freaking bow and arrow to help us here where are those rolling barrels of flame that they had in jackson wyoming you know um and then the fact that like yeah one fire inside means everyone abandons posts at the wall that's that makes no sense to me either so i have some questions um

met my pal Eric Sundfist and his stunning fiancé? This was, I thought, all great. Yeah. Genuinely all great. Yeah. You know, we have the moment where we glimpse the, where Jamie and Spike, like, glimpse the patrol boat and this idea, again, this reinforcement of

like we have the opening, um, you know, peppering of facts about the state of the world that tells us that like the continent pushed back the virus and the, and, and, um, the United Kingdom, not quarantine zone. Okay. But then it's like, you know, obviously so much of the like really powerful visual, uh, language of the end of the first movie is like, wait, there are like planes above. What if we could like make a help sign, make a help sign and reach them. Um,

And here, for that constant passage of society to just be a reminder that you can never have that again, they're not there to help you. They're not there to see if you need anything. They are simply there to make sure you don't get to them.

potent commentary about the state of the world and the way that a isolated republic is received. But also, not only that, but also something that Alex Garland has talked about that I thought was so interesting is like, okay, so with our access to the internet, we are constantly aware of atrocities happening around the globe at any given time.

And you are aware of that. And you also go get a latte or, and you also do this, that, or the other thing. Like atrocities are happening around the world and Amazon deliveries are happening at the same time. And that's just like, that's not zombie apocalypse. That's just our reality of like this sort of global conscious that we all have and how it requires us to sort of

deaden some of our humanity and sympathy in order to just like get through the day of, of what we have to do or what we not even have to do, but like, you know, the, the small joys of being a human, like you have to forget that, you know, this thing is happening in order to do that. And that is just, again, a very human thing that most of us do on a given day. So. Absolutely. And like for Eric and his fellow soldiers to, to,

be washed ashore. I thought it was very powerful when Eric was like, you know, the second step foot. That's it. That's it. We're never going back home. You don't get to go home. He's already dead. His phone's dying. He's like, yep, that's my fiance. I mean, great comedy beat. We all enjoyed it. Incredible. Yeah. Shelf analogy. Oh, yeah, shelf analogy. Right, I get it. Genuinely funny. Really good. But watching him just like watch the last seconds of his battery before it dies. That blast. Yeah.

tether to his former life. And then also his attitude, this idea of like, how do you think about death? How does Jamie think about death? How does Isla think about death? How does the doctor think about death? And how does the soldier who's like, it's doggy dog, you know what I mean? Like you do what you got to do to survive and that's it. Think about death is like a really interesting through line of the film. Definitely. And I thought too, there was something about

There's sort of like there is a difference between the undeniable truth when it is just plain and blatant and then still hearing somebody say it. So, like, unmistakably, the rest of the world has left the United Kingdom.

We know, because we're watching the movie, there's a quarantine zone. They're not allowed to leave. We're three decades in, right? On the one hand, the world has not like, other nations have not actively like firebombed. I mean, we do have stretches, obviously, in earlier movies where it's like, oh, that's Manchester. It's just like on fire. But they're not, no one's trying to help anymore, right? They've left them alone. And if they make it, they'll make it. And if they don't,

everyone else is okay. Yeah. That's horrifying to confront, but to hear, like, Eric's presence cements it. There's a little part in your mind that, like, you're like, well, maybe, just maybe, there's some explanation for how other places and other people could, like,

Nobody's trying to get them medicine. Nobody's trying to get them weapons. It's so harrowing. And the boats aren't there to help rescue you. They're just to keep you in. Keep everyone else safe and keep you in the pit of horror and the descent into hell. That is just so bleak. I mean, it's so, so, so bleak. And then for like...

you know, like youthful face. Like I should have just been a delivery guy. I was trying to prove a point. Like, do you want to see my banging fiance before my iPhone becomes a brick guy to be the one who's like, no, yeah, this is like the rest, the rest of the world. Everything is just normal. Like it is actually like the world went on was, it was the most comedic part of the movie. And also in some ways to me, the most disturbing. And I thought that was like, that dissonance was very, very, very potent. Yeah.

We've already, of course, gotten into the biological realities of how this woman got pregnant. We have questions. But nonetheless, she is delivering a baby and we have this moment of connection between this woman who's delivering a baby and Isla. And I want to play actually a Jamie clip as we talk about this. Carlos, will you play this clip?

"An affection takes away their minds. It's got no mind, it's got no soul." "Kill it."

Okay. So this is one of many lessons that Jamie imparts to Spike when they go out. Infection takes away their minds. It's got no mind. It's got no soul. Kill it. Right? So he's just sort of like, this is when they encounter the man hanging upside down with Jimmy carved in his torso, the bag on his head. There are birds around. I was like, oh my God, I know what happens when a bird gets a drop of blood. I'm so freaked out. Dude, we texted about this, but like, why is anyone going out without eye coverings? Why are

goggles everywhere. Goggles, like a cover over your mouth. Every orifice. Every orifice. Earmuffs. Just all of it. Crazy. Yeah. The goggles thing is just really, I'm like, did you guys not watch what happened to Brandon Gleeson? I have some thoughts. Okay. So Jamie's point of view in this lesson that, you know, one of the many tenets that he imparts to Spike is like,

The infection takes away their minds. It's got no mind. It's got no soul. This is a soulless, mindless beast. It doesn't deserve to live. Kill it. It. It is an it. Yes. Flip side of that. Here's Isla who's saying, there is something universal about what you are going through here.

And whether or not you have to be a mother or not to recognize that, I have decided to recognize that what you are going through is something that I want to reach out and support you through and help you through. Again, there's a lot of goop and fluids and I... She's a better person than me. It wouldn't be me. But I thought this was a stunning sequence. Yeah.

I thought, but also, I've also seen Train to Busan and I do not get on a train when there's a zombie on that train. There's one single zombie on the train I don't get on the train. But, so the sequence and what it sets up for the baby and the potentiality of like what that baby means for the, in terms of the threat to the village, whether or not that baby is carrying some sort of late infection or Samson is going to go find. They don't.

The way that they don't kill Samson the first time, because Dr. Coulson's like, I like to coexist with them. But the way they don't kill him the second time when he tries to claw through the very earth in order to get to them. I'm like, kill? I know I just said, Jamie, I disagree with it. It's got no mind. It's got no soul. Kill it. But this is a relentless killing machine who wants that baby. And you put that baby in your old village and he's still alive out there?

Do you want to warn them that there's an alpha coming? It's hard to disagree with any of the points you're raising. I think that it's, look, it's just as possible that some of the science and medicine we don't understand about how this happened in the first place leads us to this baby being like a cure of some sort. Oh, sure. That could be just as likely as a source of late infection. But like, regardless, our dear young Spike, um,

Listen, he's gone through a lot, but has also seen enough to understand that Samson is pursuing that baby. And I think bringing it back to Holy Island was a... I know he's trying to save the kid, but really put a lot of other people in parallel. That seems clear. On the, like, no soul front, yeah, this was one of the most kind of, like, philosophically and existentially interesting aspects of the story. Like, what does...

What does humanity look like and what does it mean? And what shape can it take? And what do you have to see in somebody else to think that they're a person still? Like, the thing that this made me think of actually was the line... I love that little moment in Early and Last of Us Season 1 where Ellie and Joel are talking about killing the infected. And Ellie says, like, you know, was it hard, like, knowing they were people once? And to take that further to, like, well, what if they're people still? Like...

Like, what does that mean? And who gets to decide? And if, oh, so on the one hand, like there's the kind of rational, practical part of your brain that like when Isla's reaching out to the woman as she's giving birth, I'm just like, don't touch her. Don't. Don't touch her. And stop. Now, of course, as we, yeah, like as we get to the next act and we understand that

she has a sense of her own timeline and obviously would be maybe thinking about her decisions differently. But that's not really the point. The point is that something transcendent is unfolding that forges that connection and makes the threat less important than the other thing, which is ultimately a connection in the shape of life. And I thought that...

Our beloved pals at the Big Pick. I thought I really loved... I mean, great episode in general, but...

Great conversation about this. First of all, very amusing, but also I thought very stimulating ideas. And Amanda was very out on the secrets. The whole the mama in me recognizes the mama in you. And can I just say, as someone who is not a mother, I've never felt more seen than when Amanda's like, fuck this mama mentality. I really...

as a marketing tool too. I asked my sister actually once, like I had never heard her use the word. And then like a couple of years into being a mother, I was like, what is with this word that you have started using? And I hear other young mothers using, and she's like, she's my sister's into it. And she's just like, she's not usually that kind of person, but she's just sort of like, I think it's just sort of like, I rec, I, you have gone through this thing that I have gone through and I recognize that. And I'm like, okay.

I don't like it, but I'm not a mom. And then to hear Amanda, mommy, like, I don't like it. I was like, okay, hashtag not all moms. It's fine if you do. Yeah, of course. I just thought it was like a really interesting conversation. And obviously so much of that is like rooted in specific experience and perspective. But on the one hand, the idea that like this shared experience could be a bridge that is more

powerful enough to break through the state of the world 28 years into the rage virus was really interesting. And also I thought it was like interesting to hear a conversation like, well, what about like the other aspects of that experience or people who don't have that experience, et cetera. So I thought that was just a good chat. A great chat. But I think also, you know, there's something about, and again, I'm,

Yeah, because Amanda has something that she, a larger point that she wanted to make about Alex Garland's female characters, which I don't necessarily join her on. But I sometimes bump on the sort of like addled but more enlightened than everyone around them character, which is sort of a bit more where I see this archetype fallen. And so it's just sort of like, I can see a higher truth there.

Because I have become untethered from, you know, a lot of the things around me. So, like, that this is accessible to me because I'm operating on a different plane of, like, the tumors are eating my brain kind of existence. And all of that is...

It's sometimes not my favorite and sometimes does work for me. So, um, yeah, that is a lot of where we find ourselves here. Yeah. I thought with Isla and I thought the more, like for me, the more impactful part of it was like the constant, um, you know, in moving in and out of these states of confusion and then lucidity, um, in the states of confusion, um,

Mistaking, as you already mentioned, mistaking Spike for her father. How that then kind of connected to these larger questions about sort of the passage of time and regressing into an earlier state and what is like shared or lost across generations was interesting. But also talking about her father as like

You know, Jamie is modeling masculinity or fatherhood in one way, but what is this other example of this absent example of fatherhood? But what is that? You know what? If he had been around and more active in Spike's life, what would that model of fatherhood have been like? Yeah.

We have one last main section to get to before we get to the jimmies, of course. And I'm just going to sort of perhaps ill-advisedly move forward with our would-you-fuck-that-zombie runner. And we're going to veer into more moldering territory here. And I have for you, Mylar Rubin, number three, the legend Doug Jones as Billy from Hocus Pocus. Yeah. That is...

Billy and Hocus Pocus. Now, here's a question. Billy is a zombie, right? Like, he's a reanimated dead guy. He's not in pursuit of brains, necessarily, but is just being reanimated a dead make you a zombie? Or...

It's been so long since I've seen Hocus Pocus. Well, he's not after brains. He's after cutting his mouth open so that he can yell at some witches. Right. So is undead enough to be a zombie, do you think? Some like mummy a Jace here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Either way, I'm going to say no. It's a no for Billy? Yeah. What if I told you that when they cut his mouth open, insects come out of it?

Is that a... That's why it's... That is specifically why it's a no. That haunting visual is... Okay. That's a real... That's a real mood killer. Okay, so we've crossed the Rubicon from Nick Holtz. Yes. Doug Jones, no. Okay, I have only one more I'm going to tempt you with before we wrap this up. Chapter three, The Elder, Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Kelson, our wise, learned elder medicine man sort of type. Would I fuck this...

lonely doctor covered in iodine, I would. Does he pronounce it iodine? I think he did, and it was just exquisitely British. Iodine. Beautiful. So we're subverting the expectations of the Chris Eccleston third act sort of moment. And also all of the... I was watching an interview with Danny Boyle, I think it was, where he was talking about how...

Ralph Fiennes gave an interview where someone was like, what is it like to be, you're going to be a baddie in this movie? And he's like, no, no, no, I'm a good guy. I'm actually quite nice. And Dan Boyle was like, we were going for something here, Rafe. You just said it. Okay. But anyway, so like all of the, all the trailers, he's covered in iodine, but like, you know, you think he's covered in blood and he's building a bone temple. And you're like, this guy is cuckoo bananas. And.

has lost the plot. Um, we're thinking of Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, all of this sort of stuff. Alex Garland's like, I'm doing a reverse Kurtz. Actually, he is more, uh,

in tune with what is going on than anyone else around him. That is what we are getting instead. And I, like I said before, when Ray Fiennes shows up, he is both spouting like beautiful philosophical ideas and genuinely funny and just kicks the movie up into a different level of existence is just incredibly good. I thought.

So yeah, I mean, he's spectacular as always just a genuine one of one. Um,

I thought this stretch was beautiful and hypnotic and sort of hallucinatory in its quality when we're watching all of the morphine dart-induced swirling mites of fire. I... Again, in terms of the complexity of the idea, on the one hand, there's the version of our expectations based on the trailer, based on the visual rendering, based on the Kurtz comp. And...

that was a warm and welcome surprise in the film that this was not that, that our bone temple doc is not an active threat, that he is going to bring not only insight, but clarity, right. That he will help you bring peace, mercy. This was a beautiful stretch. We'll, we'll get to the, the momentum Mori of it all in a moment. But,

I like, again, though, nothing is simple and straightforward in these movies. And, you know, the fact that when Spike confronts Jamie about the plume of smoke and what waits beneath it, and Jamie shares the story and we see these just unbelievably disturbing visuals of a younger Kelson collecting and then meticulously lining up corpse after corpse after corpse. Um,

He is building this bone temple. There is something beautiful about it. It is a way to honor the dead. The fact that it's allowed Spike to scale to the top and place his mother's skull so that she will always see the sunrise, like incredibly moving.

What does it say that a person, that a character who is this enlightened about the fleeting nature of humanity and the inescapable role of death, who has the ability to help and to provide information and insights, who knows how to neutralize, won't kill, as you noted, Samson in a moment where he should have, but to neutralize the infected in a way that other people do not?

is not communing with his fellow man. Now, some of that is their choice. They are scared of him. They avoid him. They have decided not to go back. But some of it is also his. They're like, we don't want the iodine, Beth. That's not how we choose to live our life. Not for us. Yeah, we're going for like a different kind of complexion out here in the northern English sun. But like, you know, he...

is waiting ultimately at the center of this bone temple and he does not turn them away until he does he does say to spike at the end like you should go and that's interesting and it's also interesting that he has not as far as we know like really actively tried to work his way into this community he is content to be on his own and so i found that like somber and um

just sad and heavy. Very sad, very heavy. Can I just say that I don't want to be part of the Holy Island community either. So, um, I don't... Bone Temple more your vibe? Yeah, I'd rather hang out in the Bone Temple. Okay, my pal that I saw this movie with, um, had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. Two things that she wanted to point out specifically. One is...

And Connelly is really having a moment. And she said that when Jamie got on his knees for Rosie. Number two is...

And she was speaking from like personal experience with her dad, et cetera, et cetera, is that's not how it works in terms of rendering flesh off the bone. So if you at home were like, I can build a backyard smoker and just sort of like get a fresh white skull in mere minutes or hours. Don't try it at home.

It's not how we're apparently it's a lengthy boiling. You can try it home. Absolutely. And we encourage it, but, but first and foremost, you can't just like burn it off. You have to like boil it off. It's a whole thing. Yeah. And secondly, if you were to burn it off, the bones would be charred. They wouldn't be this beautiful. I didn't know how much was that he had really perfected the timing. I will say of all the disgusting things in a very gross movie. Yeah. Um,

The chunks of flesh washing away from the skull. That was the one where my skin crawled the most. It was the worm slurping for me, but we all have our things. But the comedy of mistaking the shoelace for the worm just made it all worth it. Did it? Okay. You tease this idea of memento mori and let us hear from the good doctor himself, Carlos. We play this clip. Do you know the words memento mori? It means...

Remember death. We don't need to do a whole side lesson about the origins of memento mori in ancient Rome or how it has permeated the stoicism movement or how it permeates centuries and centuries of art. Any given great artist has done something that is skull-centric in their time and their day. But the idea, and they articulated the film well,

So I'm just underlining what the film already does. But the idea of juxtaposing, especially in the art movements, juxtaposing something vivacious and full of life, something that is blooming, something that is like lush and all of that with a skull in any given still life or something like that, is to just say death comes for us all.

Enjoy and relish what you have. And we talk about this a lot, this idea of the fact that things end is what makes them worth having and worth living. Marcus Aurelius, you might have heard of him, has this quote, think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. Yeah.

And I was thinking about this. There's this ancient Egyptian custom where during times of festivities, a skeleton will be brought out with people cheering. Drink and be merry for when you're dead, you will look like this. I was trying to...

understand this glimpse we get again and again of this girl in this mask. The mask we see used in target practice. We see it on the dummy when the young men of the village are practicing their archery. We see it on the dummy and then we see it on the sort of like archery master has it on the top of his head in a sort of rakish, comical way. But we see this young girl with the mask on. I can't tell if it's real or not, but there's this like specter of her in the center of all the women bustling around getting...

getting the hall ready for the celebration for Spike. And then in the midst of the celebration of Spike, the girl with the death mask on her face. And so I was like, is this sort of like that ancient Egyptian custom of like a skeleton will be brought out in the midst of all the drinking and all the merriment to be like, yep, enjoy. Tomorrow you may die. It's later than you think, whatever it is. I don't know.

That was a visual that really haunted me and I and alluded clear explanation for me. It does feed into this larger idea of folk horror, which, you know, if you saw Midsommar or if you saw Alex Garland's film Men, which is like just a pure to his bone folk horror kind of experiment. Yeah.

But I was, I was, I was like, do they have their own memento mori practice on the Holy Island? Nowhere near as elaborately architectural as the beautiful bone temple that the good doctor has built here. But all of this is really interesting. What did the memento mori aspect do for you? Yeah.

First of all, I'd just like to compliment you not only on the beautiful history lesson, but on doing mere moments before what you then described, which was juxtaposing something...

lush and pulsing with life with a skull, which is what happened when you talked about the cave cunnilingus and then the bone temple back to back. Yeah. Good work. Good work by you. Thanks. Thanks so much. I just thought this was like, this whole stretch of the movie was incredible. Yeah. You know, it helps to have one of the greatest actors of all time imparting these lines, but like pretty nice. I mean, he's just God, he's great. Um,

you know, on the one hand, it has to be poetry. It has to be history. It has to be religion. It has to transcend something about the day-to-day experience. And also like the 12 year old on the receiving end of it has to understand it innately, right? It has to speak to something like core to the human experience. I,

I had not considered what you're identifying as a possibility about the masks and the role of maybe bringing that further into the camp as like a reminder. I was like, shouldn't be walking around with anything that for even a half a second looks like a face with blood oozing out of its eyes. Just seems unkind, honestly. Could be mistaken for an actual infected. So found that worrying and also just kind of like a mood killer, but maybe like you're noting it has a purpose. Yeah.

You know, there's like... I think that on the one hand, the way that this memento mori idea is presented in the film is so big. Like, it is...

And it's intended to be, right? It is intended to be something that is true for everyone, no matter what. That's the point, right? There's an inescapable aspect to this, and it is the great unifier, more than any other thing. Right. For that to work in such beautiful harmony with something that is so intimate and specific, the relationship between one mother and her child...

was just beautiful. Like it would, it's, that's a delicate thing to try to pull off in a story. But when, when a story does it, it really can, it can just, it's like a Mentos in a Coke bottle explosion of just potency in a good way, not in a messy way. It's like, there's a lot of explosions of fluids in the movie is noted. Um,

You know, I think that one of the, like, tendencies in life can be like, well, you don't understand. This is my thing. This is my pain. This is my loss. This is the thing I want. Right. Nobody else understands what it's like. And that is true, right? Like, Spike's relationship with his mother is his own. And losing that sends him on a journey that will be uniquely his. Right. But for Spike.

Our iodine, I can't bring myself to say iodine, but I am not refined since so, nor are you. And so that's okay. I, if you know, for this, this coded dart blowing eccentric to be the person who helps Spike accept something,

about like the inevitability of an end without then like having a tip into, and so don't appreciate it's like, no, actually the point is to appreciate, to recognize this moment that will come so that you cherish what you have while it's there. You know, again, that's like, it's a bigger idea than can fit in an entire movie. And it was like one stretch in one act of one film. And it was like,

certainly the highlight. Um, so I love that and I can't wait to see what they do with this character because like, again, the, the, maybe the tonal, um, dissonance will remain kind of core moving forward. But like, this is just a very different vibe than tracksuit Jimmy at the end. So I'm like curious to see how that all fits together moving forward. But maybe that's, maybe that's the point. Um,

All right. So we're about to get to tracks with Jimmy and we're going to talk about the Bone Temple briefly after that. We're going to zip through the rest of this. One final would you fuck this zombie moment for you. This is, and again, definition of zombie may vary. You might disagree with me. That's okay. Is it the Night King's army? Yeah.

The Night King's not a zombie, but the whites, you know, is it the Night King's army? No? I didn't think about the white. I should have done Carsey. Carsey. Zombie Carsey. I would have thought Carsey, for sure. Yeah. That was a real mess for me. Okay, speaking of beautiful women, this is The Corpse Bride. Of course, absolutely. As played by Helena Bonham Carter. Yeah, absolutely. That is The Corpse Bride as played by Helena. You know I love a hot cartoon. Okay, so you are... So it's just Billy from Hocus Pocus is where you draw the line. I just... The...

The Corpse Bride has exposed ribcage. Yeah, that's usually, as I stated earlier, a no from me, but... Just like bone o'clock, but bone o'clock in every sense for you, for the Corpse Bride. Okay. Okay.

You heard it here first. All right. Three out of four. We'll try something. Fuck that song. Open-minded. All right. Let's zip through the Jimmy gang and what we know about the Bone Temple. Okay. So we get a bookended approach. As we mentioned, we open with Jimmy. We close with Jimmy and the other Jimmys.

and, uh, we've got Teletubbies. We've got, uh, the, uh, well-known UK media figure, Jimmy Savile, um, here. And we've got a clockwork orange sort of all in the mix of this very surprising, totally different, uh, approach to the very end of this movie. Spike is cornered. He's being chased by the horde. And then here come these pop colored, uh,

flipping through the air, uh, almost supernatural levels of martial arts. Um, you refer to them as a tracksuit mafia. Why not? The Jimmy's are here. Um, the Jimmy gang is so interesting to me. Uh, again, we'll talk about what we know about the Bowdoin temple in a second, but like this idea of a couple of things, um, uh, nostalgia misplaced nostalgia once again from Alex Garland. Right. So there's like the Teletubbies. Yeah. Um,

which is the last thing that Jimmy was watching before everything went to hell. So that is something that is imprinted on him. And then Jimmy Savile, who is an absolute creep show of a human being, but at the time of the outbreak of this particular rage virus had not yet been exposed as sort of like, what if Bill Cosby in 2002 or something like that for American audiences? So like, um,

To revere Jimmy Savile without knowing the reality of Jimmy Savile. To elevate the Teletubbies of all things. Inside of this package of pop culture that, again, Spike, who grew up on Holy Island, where there's no electricity. So there's certainly no Teletubbies. And probably people aren't talking to him about Jimmy Savile. So there's no exposure to pop culture. So thinking about Spike alone in the world, lost his mother, rejected his father.

kicked out by Dr. Kelson, right, is...

particularly vulnerable i think to something as yeah um for sure market friendly cultish as what we find in the in the great jack o'connell my guy love jack o'connell the fact that he crushed it in sinners and shows up to do this at the end of this movie it's just and and season two of rogue heroes is this year like just just an all-timer banger year for jack o'connell um

But like makes me so worried for Spike and what influence he might sway he might fall under because he has no defenses against marketing of branding of this variety. It's a very muted green and brown color palette throughout, you know, like his dad is wearing this like dark maroon. And then we get to these like candy colors, Skittles. And it's like, what is what is this kid to do? How dazzling. Taste the rainbow. So I just think this is.

jarring in the moment exceedingly jarring when you're watching the film but makes me and probably should have been a post credits tease for the sequence basically a Marvel post credit sequence um

pre-credits at the end of this movie, but teasing the already shot Bone Temple sequel. I think that would have been a better structural choice, even though it's literally just the difference of moving it back behind a few scrolling names. Yeah. Yeah, the marketing potency point is such a good one. I love that. And, like, you know, in terms of what is similar but then, like, rendered in a different form, Spike has a lot of exposure to, um...

faith and religious scripture. There are wall hangings all over the village and these ideas about the role that faith has in society are both literalized in the text of the community and then also just obviously on the mind of the movie. Confronting this perversion of the flock. Yeah.

TV and, you know, evangelical sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Like let's, let's, yeah, let's sprinkle some righteous gemstones into our 28 years later. Like the idea of like perverting faith and like seeing zealotry in some sort of extreme form and the, the way that a person who is in a position of power or control is

amasses and then maintains a following. Um, well,

I think this is a great thing for the, I thought the end of the movie, I was like, wait, what? But like, this is a really rich text for the films to explore. And I'm glad they're doing it. Like, of course, a lot of people are trying to survive and build families, but also there would be people who were trying to do horrible things. And there would be people who would try to control other people and there would be people who, right. So like to explore that in the form of this,

person we met as a young boy at the beginning of the film who is just in this frozen state of arrested development at the moment where the world ended for him with blood splattering across his little television. Yeah. That was another one where like, you know, it's the beginning of the outbreak at that point, so nobody knew. But when he's hiding under the grate in the, I'm like the, just the, oh my God. Yeah. Close your mouth, kid. Close your eyes. Close your mouth, close your eyes.

Oh man. All right. Bone temple. Yep. Here's what we know. We're just going to run through this quickly. No spoilers. Obviously this is just sort of like what's out there. Uh, Jack O'Connell and the other Jimmy's are going to be there. So Jack O'Connell is Sir Jimmy Crystal, but then we've got, um, Aaron Kellerman, MF, MF's nest herself. The flag smashers are here as, as one of the Jimmy's Robert Rhodes, silver Dennis from, uh, from house of the dragon is here as Jimmy, Jimmy. Uh,

So we've got the Jimmys. Ralph Fiennes is definitely back as Dr. Ian Kelson. Obviously, Alfie is here as Spike. Yeah. I believe Aaron Taylor-Johnson is in this as Jamie. Because would we be surprised if Jamie breaks the rules and goes out to find Spike? We would not be surprised. But they're keeping it a little vague. So maybe they intend this as like a deus ex machina surprise. Dad's here. Mm-hmm.

Murphy as Jim. Jim, our original protagonist from 28 Days Later. I say bring back Naomi Harris as well while you're at it, you cowards. But thrilled to have Cillian Murphy as

here as well written by alex garland directed by ania da costa as mallory already said this is coming out in january they already shot it so soon back to back uh and ray fines has said that his character is even more eccentric in the next movie and that no duh the bone temple is a main location of the film and this is sort of setting up this like dr kelson versus the jimmies

And for the soul of Spike or something like that, I don't know, inside of the context of the Bone Temple. Anything, any predictions? We've already alluded to a couple ideas, but any predictions you want to make for Bone Temple? Or what are you most interested in watching?

All of it, honestly. I think that overall, thinking about the fate of the third film, I'm happy that the second movie is coming out so soon. That's really fun. I don't love the idea of getting two of them within a six-month window and then having no idea if we're going to have to wait for years on end to see the third one. That's not the pacing that I consider ideal. You know, I...

On the one hand, I'm so interested in Spike's journey and thought this was just such an impactful character performance that, like, how can Spike not be my pick? On the other hand, as you noted, we're in the Jack O'Connell moment, so that's just pretty fun to look forward to. But how can my answer not be, like, Ralph Fiennes? Especially given that it's called The Bone Temple, that certainly promises that we're going to be spending a lot of time rooted in his world and his experience. I'm...

If the Jimmies are out there slaughtering left and right with very vivid, flashy acrobatics and Dr. Kelson is like, I know how to neutralize these horrors and I still won't kill them, that's a pretty core tension. Yeah. So I'm curious to see that. And yeah, my expectation would be that...

Jamie would go try to find Spike based on how the movie ended and the letter that Spike leaves with the baby. So that would be my hope. As far as Cillian Murphy returning as Jim, I'm trying not to get too excited because I don't want to hype myself up and then be disappointed by the volume of his presence. Skip ahead 15 seconds if you don't or whatever, but...

So my understanding from what Danny Boyle has said, and I really think this is part of this is a gambit to get funding. Right. Is Kelly Murphy very minimal in the second movie and will be central in the third movie if Sony gives us the money to do it. So, you know, it's great. Very smart. Very smart. Danny Boyle. All right. Anything else you want to say about this movie?

I don't think so. I had a blast talking to you about it. Same. Again, I really don't want to rewatch it, but I have really good time thinking about it and talking about it with you. Can't wait for Bone Temple. Very excited for that. The last thing we're doing today, and we've already gone a little long, so we might just zip through this, but the last thing we're going to do today is...

Is our pop culture zombie survival team. And here are the rules. We can pick any fictional character. This is a joint team that we are coming up with. We've just decided to do any fictional character from any house of our friendly IP that we would agree best fill the following archetypes. Any fictional genre characters allowed except for one category with parameters. Okay. So these are our categories. The leader,

The weapons expert, the medic, the bite hider, the apocalypse kid, the most heartbreaking death. And here's the one parameter. No kids, no pets in this category. Yes. And then the last one standing. Great. So as we put together our team. Yeah. Who do you want in the leadership role? Molly or Ruben? So our...

First of all, I'm excited to be doing this as a shared experience. It feels right for the prompt. The goal is to move forward together. If we bring people from a fictional universe, they come with their... They're in the world of 28 years later, but they come with the powers or weapons or tech from their world. Within reason, I think. Within reason. We don't want to build a team of, like, just everybody can't be bitten, so, like, what's the point? Yeah. Yeah.

But next tier of like the thing that make them eligible, like are relevant in addition to just their experience, which is probably a big, big factor. Okay. I'm going to try to not repeat my, like not repeat universes in my, my prime nomination. Here's my pick for leader. Jon Snow from Game of Thrones. He doesn't want it, but that's why he'd be well suited for it. Joe, listen,

has faced the night King looked into his eyes. He might tell us and Tavos has beaten white walkers has faced the army of the dead. That experience feels vital here. Um, the curls, the fur perhaps just helps block an orifice or two. If there's a spray of blood thinking about that as well. Uh, listen, he's got long claws, got a Valerian steel sword, dragon glass. Um,

These fuckers and 28 years later are just getting by, as previously discussed, with some wood arrows that they whittle at home. Jon coming in with dragonglass and valerian steel is going to prove vital for our group's survival. He is, while we have had some notes over the years on his military strategy, he is a seasoned military leader. He's a family man. He will do anything for the people that he loves, and also, crucially, because this is set,

At the very beginning of the film in the Scottish Islands and then in the north of England, he's used to bad weather. And we need that. We can't have somebody who's like, sorry, it snowed. I'm out. Like, John's been beyond the wall. John's been at Castle Black. John's been at Winterfell. He's ready to roll. He's my nominee for leader. Who you got? I think these are like the most on brand things that we could possibly come up with because you have presented for years. And I have a similar thing where I don't want to repeat worlds as my main nominee for each category. Yeah.

Steven Rogers. And I know that this is really boring and we talk about Steve Rogers all the time, but like we just talked about him on our speeches pod as like in terms of keeping morale up with love and respect to Jon Snow. Like, I don't know that he was like the greatest like speech. He's a brooder. Yeah, he's a brooder. He's not like a we can do this.

Also, thinking about Steve Rogers' skill set, even if he isn't as super soldier serum-y as... Let's say he loses some of that potency inside of this world, he still has the shield that he can throw that can probably decapitate an entire horde in one go. So, once again, these fuckers with their bows and arrows have a lot to learn. And I think either Longclaw or a frickin' shield...

will do a lot of extra damage. So which do you want to pick? Okay, well, let me ask you a question that might influence our decision.

We both limited ourselves to like one character per fictional universe in our nominations. But what about for our shared team? I ask because we might need to put a pin in this until you hear my Marvel, my MCU nominee. I know. I have another Marvel nominee that I'm actually more attached to than I am to Steve. Okay, so maybe we like... We should do Jon. Pencil and Jon. We can always come back to the category. Okay.

I'm going to pencil in John Snow and we can come back. Okay. My MCU nominee is in the next category. Okay. I do have a runner-up nominee that I'm very open to here, but this is the Tony Stark spot, I think. Weapons expert. Listen.

weapons evolution across many experience sets from the arms race to just his basement lab. Genius inventor, not sure if you've heard. He's also a billionaire. Yeah. Playboy, philanthropist. Joanna, what could be more useful, genuinely what, in the zombie rage virus apocalypse than Tony Stark built this in a cave?

With the box of scraps. Do you think he could build this? No matter what. Do you think just taking apart Dr. Kelson's skull smoker, he could build himself a new set of armor? Yeah. Well, I'm like, also, this is one of the questions, like, does he have his armor with him already? Yeah.

Because if he has the nanotech, this is another, like, not only is that super helpful for him, activate the tech, every orifice is covered, he's not going to be infected, but he can also, like, activate the nanoshield, offer protection to other people, obviously tons of weapons to use for the fight, but also to protect others. He can get it done on his own, he can work inside of a team, willing to make the sacrifice play, as we know. Yeah.

The fact that whatever is around them in a given part of the countryside at any moment in time, he will be able to turn into something useful feels really valuable. I don't know that that's, I don't know that he can do a lot with like mud and sticks, but. Built it in a cave with a box of scraps. Yeah, but scraps were metal. Okay. What could he do with that Frisbee? Great question. Think about it. I'm tempted to go with your first two picks here. Okay.

I need to skip ahead to my main Marvel entry, though. Tell me. Just to let you know. Which category? It's the Bite Hider. This was the category I had the hardest time with. And it's definitely Loki. Like, it's definitely Loki.

In terms of the person in the zombie movie, this is basically a personality hire. This is someone who's going to be kind of a bastard, but really, really fun. Some other options I have here are Dr. Gaius Baltar or Benjamin Linus. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Those are great. They are fun, but they're going to hide the bite and that's going to cause some problems. Yeah. So, okay. The bite hider was the one I struggled with the most because we need them to be capable of hiding the bite, but also still a viable member of our team, which is a difficult balance to strike. So like...

Obviously, Ellie has hidden her bites many times, but that's distinct to that universe. I don't know if it carries over as much. I was thinking, would this be a good spot for a Star Wars character? It has to be a character who would be capable of making the choice to hide the bite, but then also someone who's a little like, these aren't the bites you're looking for. I feel like this category is not about the ability to hide the bite. It's like,

Who is the asshole that you want on your team anyway? Yes. Right? Yeah. My Star Wars suggestion was going to be Ezra because he dabbles in the seduction to the dark side without telling people that he's keeping a Sith holocron around, for example. Yeah. I was going to ask you for Bite Hatter what you thought about Louis from Interview with a Vampire. Oh, that's funny. But I don't know if we're mixing too many...

All of this is fun. I'm trying some bites there. I feel so bullish about Loki, though. How about this? Can we compromise? Let's do Loki there, and I have an alternate to present you for weapons expert. Okay, tell me. Din Djarin.

Love it. Let's get Star Wars in there. Let's do it. We have, just like Tony, all of the Orpheus's are covered, which is just super helpful. He's got tons of weapons with him and experience with various different weapons. I love this. We've got battle prowess, but also, most importantly of all, we want our weapons expert to also have a heart of gold. Who loves a fucking found family more than did Jaren? No one. I love this. My candidates were, I had John Wick in there. Mm.

But your armor argument is a really good one. Okay, fantastic. Loki for Bighthiders. Absolutely inspired. All right, so our leader is Jon Snow. Our weapons expert is Mando. And our Bighthider is Loki. Medic. Medic, yeah. I've got three people I would like to put forward here. Let's have it.

And you may note, as is a theme often with our, we've got a lot of men here on the list. I have a lot of women to present here. I'm thrilled to say I have a woman. I've got Dr. Martha Jones. Okay. From Doctor Who. I've got Dr. Juliet Burke from Lost. Great one. And I've got, this is my number one, Dr. Dana Scully from The X-Files. Those are all really good. Yeah.

I have a Doctor Who nominee coming elsewhere for you, which I can either mention now if we want to consider Martha or we can save for later. Is it under Heartbreaking Death? It's not. It's under Last One Standing. Okay. Oh, I like all three of your suggestions. Let me throw my two out there to you and we can consider them all. I went less core medical professional and more healing prowess. Okay.

Oh, supernatural healing powers? Could be, or just the expertise, or both. So my first nominee is Hermione Granger. First of all, just a witch who can do magic pretty handy, but also someone with potions prowess. The ability to navigate the wilderness and say, okay, our traditional medicine has run out, but I can make you a polstice. I can make you a salve. Someone who can do magic is good in any category. Someone who can do

Magic feels like we should pick, we should make. We do have Loki. That's true. You know, okay. That's true. So who's your other pick? Elrond. Elrond's really good. Can we come back to this one? Let's come back to this one. This was a really hard one. Okay. And that's my, well, I had like a possibility for Lord of the Rings elsewhere, but that's my main Lord of the Rings nominee. My last one standing is Lord of the Rings. Okay. All right. So let's put a pin in that. So we're on Apocalypse Kid? Apocalypse Kid. 11 from Stranger Things.

Daphne Keene is either Lyra Bellacqua or X-23. Lyra was my next suggestion. Okay. So if we both have Lyra, maybe we should go with Lyra. Let's do Lyra. I think the case for XI is like being able to snap next with your mind feels pretty useful. It's great.

The ability to change channels on the TV, not as useful. The ability to stop fans, not as useful. But the ability to just quirk your head in someone's neck snaps is pretty useful. Listen. Does that work on a zombie? Or can a zombie keep going with a broken neck? You know what? Here's the thing about 28 years later, days later, weeks later, all of the laters.

The zombies are actually pretty easy to kill. The infected are pretty easy to kill. But you have to hit... Head or heart. Head or heart. I mean, head or heart is pretty easy. Eleven can just explode on a heart pretty easily. Eleven can disintegrate other beings. Now, granted, you do run the risk of opening a gate to another dimension when you do that, and that's tough. But yeah, head Lyra and Will both. Yeah. What about Lyra and Will as a package deal? Let's do that. Okay. Okay.

Then we get the subtle knife. Yeah, we get the subtle knife. It's great. We can hop through worlds if one gets too zombified. Okay. Most heartbreaking death, no kids or pets allowed. What do you have? Why are you giggling? All right. So, oh my God. This is hard. I was like, I didn't pick a character who has died in a story. Just like, the way I thought about this was, who would, who can we all agree this would shatter us? Right? And so, yeah.

I'm being a little meadow with this, right? Because I think you have to have a performer portraying the character who has a universal approval rating. Okay. And so I am nominating for most heartbreaking death, the tragedy that will unite us all. Cobb Vanth. Okay.

Mr. D as portrayed by Jason Manzoukas in Percy Jackson. That's illegal. That's illegal. This is illegal. Nothing, there could be, would any of us want it to happen? We can't put a friend of the pod in the team. But what greater force would unite the team than losing the god of tits and wine, Mr. D? Nothing could stop us after such a heartbreak. Counter. Counter argument.

This is my Doctor Who. Oh, okay. All right. And it's Wilf. I can't handle that. I can't handle that. It's too painful still. It's too painful. Now I'm going to cry.

Now I'm going to cry. Now I'm going to sob. Let's go back to this. Who's your last one standing? All right, so I have two nominees for last one standing. They're both a little, I think, on the nose and obvious, but I still think they work. The Doctor from Doctor Who. Obviously, the TARDIS, helpful in a zombie apocalypse with quarantine zone limits for conventional travel. I love this that you're like, we're going to do a witch, the Time Lord. I'm trying to survive. I was thinking way too mortal, honestly. I'm trying to make it out. Okay. Regeneration. Yeah.

The experience is certainly that is needed to meet the moment. But in terms of this like Time Lord lifespan, the long life of a Time Lord, on the one hand, the loneliness of watching everybody around you die in the zombie apocalypse, sadly, all too familiar for the Doctor. But because of that, able to withstand, able to withstand the tragedy, the unrelenting tragedy, and also just can maybe live long enough, can live long enough to see the resurgence of man, which I think sounds great. And then kind of a related like, yeah,

spiritual cousin pick would be Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender. Listen, what's a causeway to a remote island when you can be the bridge between realms? Wow. You know? Reincarnation once again, master of all the elements and all the forms of bending. You just water bend the water out of the way. You know what I mean? Then you can use the causeway whenever you want. Or you can just like airball speed his way across. Okay. All of these are great picks. Here's my argument.

And again, I went way more mortal than you did, and I think that was an error, but that's okay. This is a collaborative team. Frodo saved the Shire, but not for him, but he did save it for Samwise Gamgee. So that Samwise Gamgee and Rosie Cotton could live happily ever after in the Shire. I'll never pick against Sam. Never. It's very important to me that Sam survive the zombie apocalypse. I'll never pick against Sam. Never. Okay. Never. Never.

That means I think you can have Jason Mitzekas for most... I'm just going to put Jason. It's not even Mr. D. No, it's Mr. D. It's just Jason. No. No. It is Mr. D, the god of tits and wine. And if...

If Elrond is off the map for Medic, because we're doing Sam, let's wrap up Medic. We could also do Dr. Gaius Beltar. He would like... That would be... If I were picking non-House of Our Properties, I would go to the pit and pick Dr. Mel King. Just shout out Dr. Mel King, an absolute legend. But who did you have other than Elrond? Hermione. Oh, Hermione Granger. Who did you have here? Martha...

Martha Jones, Dr. Juliette Burke from Lost, and Dana Scully from The X-Files. Boy, that's a hard one. They're all good. They're all good. Do you want to do Hermione? I mean, it feels like having magic.

Yeah. It would also help us once again. She said Loki can do magic, so we have magic. It would help us in our reputation. I think we should pick a woman here for our reputations as women in a podcast space. This should be a woman because we don't even have a single woman in her virus. We have Lyra and Will. Shut down, dude. Join her out. What's wrong with us? Oh, man. Great stuff. Is Rosie with Sam? Maybe we can get a couple chicks in here.

Sandwich kimchi and rosy cotton.

let's, let's do Hermione Granger. Okay. Oh man. So our zombie survival team is the leader is John. I think this is a terrible pick for leader, but that's fine. The leader is John Snow weapons and expert Mando medic, Hermione Granger. I was willing to take a L on all of those categories so I could get my W on bite height or Loki. Yeah. The most important thing to me. Yeah. Apocalypse kid, Lyra, Bella, Aqua, and Will. Uh,

Most heartbreaking death, our pal Jason Menzikis. No! Mr. D! And last one standing, Samwise Gamgee. Oh, man. I think it's strong. I think we have a lot of big personalities, but also a lot of team players. We have some supernatural aptitude and tools. I look forward to watching Jon Snow try to manage Loki and Jason Menzikis.

I think he's up for it. I think he's up for it. We could still, it is not too late to sub Steve Rogers and his leader, but we would have to pick a different bite hider. No, Loki is non-negotiable for me. Okay. We're stuck with Jon. Jon Snow it is. We could always put Ellen Ripley was another idea I had for leader.

Or Buffy Summers, have you heard of her? But we'll come back to Buffy once you've actually watched some Buffy. I don't feel quick to comment yet on Buffy. Anything else you want to say about any of this, including any more time you want to spend on Samson and his giant dong? Just thought it was a very memorable movie penis. The bone temple itself. Very memorable indeed. Great to chat about this film with you. I guess we'll be doing it again.

If I'm alive by then, I can make it through in January. Yeah, half a year away. For Bone Temple. Thank you to Arjuna Rangapal, who helped us come up with some ideas for what we were doing on the pod today. Thank you to John Richter for his tremendous work on this podcast now and always. Thank you to Carlos Chiraboga, who surprised us with a few zombie moans and groans, and it was astonishing stuff. Excellent soundboard work. Thank you so much, Carlos.

And thank you to Joe Mead Dinner on social. I'm Joanna Robinson. That's Mellie Rubin. We'll be back with Stranger Things and Squid Game and a bunch of other stuff this summer. Really, really excited to have you here. Stay sharp. Stay alive. Look out for Samson. Bye. Bye.