The Triumph of ‘The Odyssey,’ and the Christopher Nolan Movie Rankings

Amanda Davin

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Sean Fennessy

I'm Sean Fennessy.

Amanda Davin

I'm Amanda Davin and this is the

Sean Fennessy

Big Picture, a conversation show about the Odyssey. CR is here to share his thoughts on Christopher Nolan's extraordinary film sensation. And then he will help us rank the entire Nolan filmography. But first, let's talk about some movie news right after this. This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title. You pick a feeling. And prime makes that easy. With great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life. Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving. Shows you can't wait for and deliveries you don't wait for. One click away from streaming to fast shipping. It's on Prime. Okay, C.R. you knew today was going to be an important day.

Chris Ryan

That's why I wore my A's hat, because the A is for Menelaus. You know what I mean?

Sean Fennessy

I don't know what that means. I'm going to do a quick programming reminder though, for the listeners before we turn it over to your Is this

Amanda Davin

a reminder or announcement?

Sean Fennessy

It's an announcement that will serve as a reminder for people who watch it twice on social media. That reminder is we're doing a mailbag later this week. We want to hear your crazy theories on the Odyssey, the box office, the summer movie slate so far. Spider Man. Spider man is coming out soon. Bnd. Yeah, bnd.

Amanda Davin

Brand new day show.

Sean Fennessy

Where should people send their questions?

Amanda Davin

Bigpickmailbagmail.com I'd like to amend very briefly what he Said, we want to hear your crazy theories within reason, and we'd like them to be phrased in the form of a question. Long essays will not be read on thebigpicture.com okay.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Thank you, Amanda. All right, Doomsday. This is why you're here. Actually, the gods knew. Athena knew that they would release the Avengers Doomsday trailer, and it is here. Now, I'll preface this by saying the exact trailer that was released Amanda and I watched four months ago in a giant coliseum in Las Vegas.

Amanda Davin

Twice.

Chris Ryan

You've been sitting on this.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, I think we've said a lot of rude things in reference to it over the last four months or three. Whatever.

Chris Ryan

I said this. I. So I don't want to repeat myself, but I do want to bounce some things off of you. I don't want to repeat myself. From the Watch podcast, which isn't another show.

Amanda Davin

I do.

Sean Fennessy

What? You're on another podcast.

Chris Ryan

Do you think they meant to release this on the Monday after the Odyssey?

Sean Fennessy

I mean,

Chris Ryan

you think they were like, there's a lot of energy in theaters now. Let's. Let's get in on it.

Sean Fennessy

Got me tongue tied.

Amanda Davin

I have been mystified by every single step of what is going on here. I mean, and you could say that about everything having to do with the Avengers since the, you know, the first one, which I thought was rather charming. But from the moment that we were in Vegas, where there were a large number of fans. I have never been to Comic Con, which starts this weekend, and which is, I think, the reason that they programmed this trailer. But there was what I imagined to be a Comic Con vibe in the room at Cinemacon, which is historically a trade show for people who own movie theaters. And longtime Cinemacon goers all observed that this was a little weird. Shawn and I did not respond to it in the room.

Chris Ryan

Plants.

Amanda Davin

I'm just saying that the energy was different.

Sean Fennessy

It was more that they had invited a lot of influencers and a lot of friendly voices towards the Marvel product, and those people responded in kind in the room and were cheering. And I'm sure that this morning there were some people who absolutely love Marvel who were cheering. However, the reaction is definitely different than it was three years ago, five years ago, nine years ago for movies like this. Just online. Just online. And maybe you can say, that's not real, but when we saw it, we were like, ooh, this is kind of sad.

Chris Ryan

Have they done a teaser?

Amanda Davin

Didn't they play it twice?

Sean Fennessy

They did show it twice, yeah.

Amanda Davin

Because Robert Downey Jr. Was there in some sort of sparkle suit and was kind of like, fake working the crowd, like, do you want to see it again? And then all the influencers were like, yeah. And then I wanted to leave for my flight.

Chris Ryan

But have they done a teaser for this that I forget?

Sean Fennessy

There were four individual teasers that came at the end of last year where they showed sort of separate characters reflecting on wherever their lives are going. I mean, in this trailer, we see a large number of characters that people are very familiar with, a kind of collision of the most recent phase of Marvel storytelling, the more classic phases one through three, Avengers characters, and then a lot of the Fox characters, especially X Men characters, all of whom will be meeting up to battle Dr. Doom, who is going to be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.

Chris Ryan

They went with the voice. They went with Count Chocula.

Sean Fennessy

They are doing some sort of West German 1979 accent. You know, Werner Herzog is Dr. Doom. And, you know, that's cool. I guess, if Downey's giving a performance, that's better than just running back. Tony Stark is Dr. Doom. But the movie itself, the reports on the ground have been not strong about the state of the script throughout the shooting process. Marvel feels cooked. I don't know what to say.

Chris Ryan

It just feels completely. I would just say that, like, I'm joking about the Odyssey thing, but I'm not, because most people went and saw the Odyssey this weekend, and then they wake up and they watch this on their phone or on their computer or whatever, and they're probably like, that's not a movie. This isn't. This doesn't look like what we're capable of is people with cameras. Like, this looks like you guys shot this in the back of a Lowe's and turned the lights off and, like, backrooms.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

But, like, honestly, dude, you know what? Backrooms makes this look like shit. You know what I mean? Like, the visual imagination of this entire project needs to be rethought and remixed and redone and we can keep doing. Kevin Feige really likes Lestrada and, like, all that. And maybe I'll be proved wrong or maybe, like, this is actually the lowest of expectations at this point. I don't really have a problem with necessarily the group of people that they, like, presented as, like, stakeholders in this movie, like Neymar and, you know, Yelena and Sh. Like, it's. It's. It's bracing because I think we're used to seeing the Hulk and Captain America. We get, like, a brief moment with Thor and all these guys, but, man, it Just doesn't look. Literally look good.

Sean Fennessy

You weren't bought in on the Gambit vs Shang Chi Showdown that no one ever honestly like.

Chris Ryan

I really like Channing Tatum. The Gambit thing is actually kind of sad to me. It's a little corny.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, it's a little corny.

Chris Ryan

It is kind of sad.

Amanda Davin

I was thinking very gleefully this morning about the Odyssey's position in relationship to Comic Con, which will be this weekend, and how we already had our own Comic Con and it was this weekend with people at 2am you know, bartering on the streets for their tickets to 70 millimeter IMAX, which, you know, is its own thing. But the. The fan culture, the enthusiasm, the. The. The nerding out totally moved to the Odyssey in a way that I'm thrilled about.

Chris Ryan

Is there like three translations are in the top 10 of Amazon right now or something like that?

Sean Fennessy

I think there a very simple explanation for the very apparent vibe shift, which is that the first Avengers film, which was what, 2012. I mean, that's almost 15 years ago now. So everybody who was really young and excited about those movies at that time is just older and presumably has matured beyond that being the center of their life culturally. And so if that's the case, then I think the Avengers Doomsday is going to be very successful financially. I don't think it's going to be massive. And that will be the most interesting thing. Like, if this is less than a billion dollar movie or less than a $1.5 billion movie, maybe we'll make that the benchmark. That's fascinating because this is as big a movie as they can make. The problem that I had with it that I think I said at the time when we first saw it was more like, what is the story? What was so wonderful to me about Infinity War and Endgame was the incredible buildup over a decade of storytelling we've never seen.

Chris Ryan

I think that they're just in a lot of trouble with the multiversal storytelling. I.

Amanda Davin

The.

Chris Ryan

The Bendis version of Secret wars, like, all this stuff with like, Earth616, like, is really cool in comic book form, as evidenced by Amanda's facial expression right now.

Amanda Davin

I was honestly just trying to remember if we've seen Galactus yet. Are you gonna say Galactus? Is that Secret Wars?

Sean Fennessy

He's. I think it sounds like he's been vanquished. He was in Fantastic Four.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. Oh, I forgot that I saw that film. Yeah, yeah.

Sean Fennessy

This very much Invisible Woman, like, knocked him down because she put her hands out in the air. Remember when that happened? That was how the.

Amanda Davin

We don't see him eating any planets. Right. That's what he does. Or universes, galaxies.

Sean Fennessy

He eats plant.

Chris Ryan

The Silver Surfer is his harbinger.

Sean Fennessy

That's right.

Amanda Davin

Why are you so mad at me for engaging with your content?

Chris Ryan

No.

Amanda Davin

I just think you talked to Aunt Galactus once on the watch, like, five years ago. And I heard you and I listened and I remembered.

Sean Fennessy

Why didn't you stand up for Julia Garner as Silver Surfer the way that you set up for all of Nolan's podcast.

Chris Ryan

I don't care where I was during the entire Fantastic Four thing. Was I in Europe?

Amanda Davin

What happened?

Chris Ryan

I feel like I missed. I didn't talk about it. I think Andy talked about it with Lindelof on our show. Like, I don't. I never got to comment. I watched it.

Sean Fennessy

You must have been on vacation. That was a classic thing where when we saw that movie, I was like, it's over. And they really want this to work. And they tried a couple of different things. And, you know, those super fans screamed at us after the first week of release. And then the movie just disappeared. It's like that movie never happened. Nobody cares about that movie. They don't care about the characters. Like, and those characters are pretty critical to a big movie like this because you're supposed to get invested in the way that you're saying with this new crew.

Chris Ryan

There may be another trailer for this movie that comes out that everybody is like, oh, that's the one. Like this. Now I'm excited. But this feels like this movie will have to be the Infinity War to Secret Wars Endgame. Right. Like, and that there will be a setup and a payoff. But I really liked Infinity War because Infinity War had, like, this kind of, like, moment of shock and awe to it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And I don't know if it's an incredible ending. I don't know if Namor in Distress is going to do the same thing that Infinity War did. But, you know, we shall see.

Amanda Davin

And also, it's still dated for the same day as Dune 3. What is going on?

Sean Fennessy

It seems like they're just sticking to it.

Amanda Davin

My tip line is open. If anybody wants to just call me secretly and explain what's going on.

Sean Fennessy

I don't understand. They have Infinity Vision. This will be releasing an Infinity Vision. Will you be seeing it in Infinity Vision?

Chris Ryan

I'll see it in whichever way Christopher Nolan tells me I should be watching it.

Sean Fennessy

I don't think he'll be commenting on Doomsday. I Don't think so.

Chris Ryan

You can't see the top of Eggman's head.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. I mean, maybe we're varying the lead by talking about this next, but just before we started recording, there was an announcement that a judge was pausing the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. And a temporary restraining order was instilled for 14 days by the 12 states that are attempting to block this merger. What do you think this means? Do you think that this means that there is a chance that Rob Bonta and the rest of the states that are attempting to block it are going to have any success?

Amanda Davin

No. My district appellate Supreme Court knowledge is fairly rusty, but I assume there's an appeals process in this. And I. As I understand it, appeals processes ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. And as we all know, that's going very well in the United States.

Sean Fennessy

What's going on there?

Amanda Davin

Yeah, they're just happening. It's good work. You know.

Sean Fennessy

Who's your favorite Supreme Court justice? Chris? Not all time. Currently. Gorsuch.

Chris Ryan

Well, he's interesting. His because, like, his whole thing with, like, Native Americans is really, like, it's a curveball.

Sean Fennessy

He stands on business with one issue. Yeah.

Chris Ryan

I would say, say that I have learned not to get my hopes up over the last couple years. I would also say that I don't even know at this point what's best for Hollywood. You know, like, is a Warner Brothers, where, like, David Zaslav has taken like multiple payouts over the last nine months going to be able to function without Paramount at this point? Netflix need to come back in and save it.

Sean Fennessy

Like, I definitely think it would just go back on the board and somebody else would buy it. That would be my guess. I don't think this means this is not going to happen, though. And I think you're right that if it starts going up the ladder, this is just a pause. This isn't even a rejection.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, it's like 14 days for everybody to get their documents in order.

Amanda Davin

It's a cool off.

Sean Fennessy

It's a cool off.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Does seem to be delaying the email.

Amanda Davin

Write the email, but don't send it till tomorrow.

Sean Fennessy

Was a dangerous move. Okay, a few more items of news. Lots of festival stuff still coming down the transom here. So Danny Boyle, the film that was announced to be the opening film of the Venice Film Festival, which we were very excited about last week, was acquired by Netflix. You say what?

Amanda Davin

I say Alberto knows where his bread is buttered.

Sean Fennessy

Yes, Truly. Truly.

Chris Ryan

He's Alberto.

Amanda Davin

He runs the Venice Film Festival. And they are historically, they, unlike Cannes accept Netflix festivals. And Netflix uses Venice very frequently as a launching pad for its glitzier, awards driven films.

Chris Ryan

Alberto is kind of your Galactica.

Amanda Davin

Sure. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Exactly when will you go to the Venice Film Festival?

Chris Ryan

I don't know. I don't really know if that's in my future. You know, I'm more of a boots on the ground guy domestically, but, like, when I go to Europe, it's time off.

Amanda Davin

You said until Toronto anyway, that you enjoy traveling with me. And also we have a travel business to get off the ground. I don't know if you remember this.

Sean Fennessy

Is this something that was discussed?

Amanda Davin

Yeah. He's in charge of the history and the tours and I'm doing the logistics.

Chris Ryan

She does curation and like, you know what?

Amanda Davin

You don't remember this on the walk home from Chinese food, I think I was very drunk.

Chris Ryan

I'm able to really, like, distill. Here's what you need to know about Toronto into like a paragraph.

Sean Fennessy

I was too busy marveling at the Rivoli. That was what I was doing while you guys were on that walk. I just wanted to mention I give Netflix a pretty hard time when it comes to their film slate on this show. But I did take a look at the movies that I think are meant to come out this year from the studio, and it's a pretty cool list and it dovetails a bit with some of this festival conversation. But Cliff Booth, obviously. Brad Bird's long in the making. Ray Gun, which is an animated film.

Chris Ryan

You have this written down as Bard Bird, which I think would have changed his whole life.

Sean Fennessy

That's Travis Scott's film. Yeah. La Bola Negra, which I saw at Cannes, which is one of the big awards contenders this year. Lee Chong Dong's Possible Love, which it sounds like will be at Venice this year in addition to premiering at other film festivals.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. What's up?

Sean Fennessy

Your beloved. Ben Affleck's Animals. It sounds like it's happening this year. Roman Govras Sacrifice, which was picked up at a tiff last year. Greg Kwidar's new movie, Saturn Return. He's the guy who made Sing Sing. Here Comes the Flood we've talked about a few times. The Pattinson Denzel movie.

Chris Ryan

Bobby and Denzel.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Lena Dunham's Good Sex. Peter Berg's the Mosquito bowl, which is a sports drama. Your boy Pete Berg.

Chris Ryan

What is it about?

Sean Fennessy

I think it's a football game. Yeah. And you're also your boy. Janice Metz Peterson's Unabomber biopic is my boy.

Chris Ryan

Janice Metz or the Unabomber.

Amanda Davin

I mean.

Sean Fennessy

Well, what do you think? Could be both.

Amanda Davin

I mean those are all I was going to say. Points were made.

Sean Fennessy

Janet Metz Peterson who directed a lot of episodes of Andor. That's a pretty sturdy slate from the studio is what I'll say. Tiff announcements very quickly. I mentioned possible love. I play Rocky. We were right. We'll be world premiering there. Chris Rock's Misty Green, that's his new movie as a director. World premiering there.

Chris Ryan

What's the word on that one? What's the.

Sean Fennessy

I don't know. It's an A24 film, okay? That's all I really know about it. Ciara Takashi Miike's Bad Lieutenant Tokyo world premiering. Lauren Miller Rogen's Babies which has a star studded cast including her husband Seth Rogen. Your mother, you mother, you mother. The new Mahershal Ali movie. And Tom Corbin's A Talent for Murder which is based on the place Switzerland that I've actually seen staged about Patricia Highsmith late in her life which stars

Amanda Davin

Helen Mirren Opportunity to be. I'm Swiss, did you know?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, well I am.

Chris Ryan

Patricia Highsmith was quite mean towards the

Sean Fennessy

end of her life.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, and very bad politics. You don't want to get into that

Sean Fennessy

play is about that. Yeah, thanks so much for telling us.

Amanda Davin

Much like Switzerland.

Sean Fennessy

How dare you. How dare you.

Chris Ryan

Non.

Sean Fennessy

World premieres of the debut. Look Back, Elsinore, Long Winter, A few other films that we'll end up talking about when we discuss the Venice lineup which is coming on Thursday.

Amanda Davin

That's right.

Sean Fennessy

Some movies are missing so far. Doesn't mean that they won't be announced but. Sense and Sensibility, the Uprising, Wildwood, Clara and the Sun. We've heard nothing of Wild Horse 9.

Chris Ryan

See the trailer?

Sean Fennessy

I mean just festival wise. Okay, we gotta track this stuff on the show. Behemoth.

Chris Ryan

Behemoth. Yeah, you guys have to hit the exclamation point. So you can either say behemoth exclamation point or you have to.

Amanda Davin

I have to yell behemoth. Yeah, they can show me the movie.

Chris Ryan

I feel I don't know her, Tony. She just shows up here every once in a while.

Amanda Davin

Tony, I love you and I want to hear your beautiful dialogue and also. Does Pedro Pascal speak in movies?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I think Behemoth is going to be a Telluride and I'm pretty damn excited about that. We'll see. We'll see what happens. A Place in Hell, the Christmas movie starring Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar Jones.

Chris Ryan

The Chloe Dumont movie, right?

Sean Fennessy

Chloe Dumont. Yes. And animals we have not heard to tell of yet of Ben.

Chris Ryan

Is Matt Damon in that? No, because he's just.

Amanda Davin

Just Ben. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And Kerry Washington's in that.

Amanda Davin

She is. God damn.

Chris Ryan

Let's go.

Sean Fennessy

Should be interesting.

Chris Ryan

It's about like a mayor, right?

Sean Fennessy

Keep going.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, I think it's about like a kidnapping. But it looks.

Amanda Davin

It sounded cool and Ben Affleck plays the mayor.

Chris Ryan

But I thought the Instigators sounded cool,

Sean Fennessy

you know, like, you know, the film the Instigator.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, like when you. When you read about Equity movies.

Sean Fennessy

The Matt Damon, Casey Affleck movie. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Ryan

Was it called the Instigators, right?

Sean Fennessy

Yes, it is.

Amanda Davin

Right?

Sean Fennessy

You said the Instigator and I was like, what is the Instigator? So, yeah, Venice lineup on Thursday. Here's a cool one. Ryan Coogler shot his pilot for the X Files reboot that he's been working on, and he shot it on 65 millimeter, which sounds very cool and very expensive. And that also suggests that the show was shot to be shown on film in a theater and that apparently he is pushing the studio to make that so. However, the show has not been picked up yet for official release. I mean, so is this just a Ryan Coogler movie starring Himish Patel and Danielle Deadweiler?

Chris Ryan

If that's what winds up happening, then that's enough. But this is Disney, right?

Sean Fennessy

I think so.

Chris Ryan

You guys gotta get on board with a winner, homie. Like, come on, put this movie out and then put the show up and be excited about it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, it's a little strange because presumably the entire run of the series won't be shot on film. That would be very expensive and difficult to accomplish. So just this one, I don't know.

Amanda Davin

But also, you know, Coogler gets to do what he wants, as he should.

Sean Fennessy

So, yeah, he does. And shot by Autumn Derald Arkapaugh, who was the Oscar winning cinematographer of Sinners. So fascinating thing. Be curious to see if it actually becomes a show.

Chris Ryan

This is astonishing. And then episode six is shot in Vancouver. And then where's this alien?

Amanda Davin

You're live blogging it. Once again, you're just like, okay, it's

Sean Fennessy

a great point, Chris. I'm glad you're here for this news too. Amanda, no disrespect to you, but this is CR's space. Edward Berger. Matt Damon confirmed that he and Edward Berger have been working hard on a Bourne. A new Bourne film. Not a reboot, not a new trilogy or anything, just another movie. That he wants to make sense in the Bourne story. How do you feel about that?

Chris Ryan

The final Jason Bourne movie was quite poor. The titular Jason Bourne. Obviously, I'm very vocal about my love for the Bourne Legacy. The other rumor that kind of is pairing with this is the one about Zendaya possibly being looked at to take over the franchise at some point. And the idea of what. I don't know if these are two separate strands of development and whether or not the obvious next logical move would be Damon going to save a younger spy and then bring them along in this Jason Bourne world. But Edward Berger is about as good of a choice as you could possibly make for this. And if he's not going to do Bond, you might as well do this.

Amanda Davin

That's my take agreement. You've just completely erased me from my love of the Bourne franchise and the country house and the haircutting. Yeah. Come on.

Chris Ryan

That's so hot.

Sean Fennessy

Is that your favorite one? The first one.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second one has more has Joan Allen, which we know has poured

Chris Ryan

into you and has some great Thailand stuff.

Amanda Davin

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

Second one was Supremacy.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. And then Ultimatum three, which is a little bit wonky, Right. Two ends in Moscow, right?

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

One and two are good.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

It's weird because there have now been four of these movies. Four, five. Five of these movies, right?

Chris Ryan

Three. Jason Bourne and Bourne Legacy. And a show, Treadstone.

Sean Fennessy

Five movies in a show is a lot for this story. Is Bourne Robert Ludlum?

Chris Ryan

It is.

Sean Fennessy

What's your take on Ludlum?

Chris Ryan

I honestly have not read any Ludlum.

Sean Fennessy

No. Shocking. You know, Amanda is no longer reading male writers. I don't know if, you know, if you read that no longer.

Amanda Davin

She made.

Sean Fennessy

She made an announcement that she'd read enough men for her lifetime.

Amanda Davin

That's. That's. That was just a statement of. Of what has been happening, a reflection of unplanned choices.

Sean Fennessy

Who will be the next man story you read?

Chris Ryan

I'll tell you what it's going to be because there's been a lot of talk about birthdays coming up.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And, you know, I turned 49, so it's not that big, but for 50.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

What I think I'm going to do is have many men that I know gather and Amanda is the only person in the audience. So we'll have like, you know, maybe the Disney Concert hall and all the men get on stage and we each read a story from John Cheever's Collected Short Stories. Because it combines men and short stories, which are two of my Favorite things. Yeah.

Amanda Davin

And listen, as long as it's not,

Chris Ryan

maybe M.J. lenderman will play interstitial music.

Amanda Davin

I like M.D.

Sean Fennessy

lunderman.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Wife Repeller is kind of a great name for Achiever Story, now that I think about it.

Chris Ryan

They're all.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Speaking of. Speaking of the female voice in fiction, why don't you break this one down for us?

Amanda Davin

Chris and I were already talking about this. This was also covered on the watch. Rachel Cusk's next novel is apparently a thinly veiled book about Natalie Portman.

Sean Fennessy

And what is it sourced from?

Amanda Davin

From her life.

Chris Ryan

They're friends.

Sean Fennessy

So they're friends. And did she seek permission?

Amanda Davin

Well, she didn't tell us that. We don't know. This broke yesterday. This broke over the weekend.

Sean Fennessy

You make it sound like it's like a new Iran deal. The news broke on Sunday afternoon. A Rachel Cusk novel.

Amanda Davin

I had more text conversations about Rachel Cuck's Rachel Cusk. Rachel Cusk. And I am Team Rachel.

Sean Fennessy

My novel about Rachel.

Chris Ryan

Cuckoo.

Amanda Davin

Her book about Natalie Portman than I did about the Odyssey. So listen, the streets that care about this are alive. And I just. I have. It is real. People have read it. It's happening.

Sean Fennessy

You're not a big Portman gal.

Amanda Davin

Well, that's true.

Sean Fennessy

You know, I love Long is Long Island Forever.

Amanda Davin

Man, I am interested. I thought she was great in May, December. I'm interested to see what this novel.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. And how it comes out. Like, how did she participate? Did she know she was participating? Do you say to Rachel Cus, write an auto fiction novel about me. And it's okay if it's unflattering.

Sean Fennessy

Let me pitch you an idea, you thinly veiled novel of Bill Simmons. Who says no?

Amanda Davin

No.

Chris Ryan

I say no. First of all, I don't think I can write a novel. I'm supposed to write Something that's like 5,000 words coming up. And I'm like, I don't know if I got it in me.

Amanda Davin

Wow.

Sean Fennessy

What is it?

Chris Ryan

Liner notes for some friends who are putting their work out on a box set.

Amanda Davin

Oh, that's so nice.

Chris Ryan

But I was just like, that's daunting.

Amanda Davin

And they gave you the word count of 5,000.

Chris Ryan

They were like, we have to fill out this booklet. You know, we have to. You know, you can't fill it out with drawings. I asked about that. I was like, could we just do a really photograph, maybe Q and A? Regardless, I will not do that. I would never write a thinly veiled novel about Bill Simmons.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, who would you like to Write a thinly veiled novel about you? Yeah, that'd be a good book.

Amanda Davin

What about you?

Chris Ryan

Who would you write a thinly veiled novel about?

Sean Fennessy

Chris Nolan, pretty clearly. Speaking of, let's make a transition to the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a massive, massive, massive success. Just an incredible success.

Amanda Davin

We did it.

Sean Fennessy

$264.1 million worldwide gross. It made $140 million overseas. It made $125 million in America over the weekend in North America, I should say. This is the biggest debut since the Dark Knight Rises when Chris saw it four times in two days. It's the third largest opening of the year though. The two other films that opened in front of it this year are TO and the Super Mario Bros. Galaxy movie. This is a 3 hour R rated movie that absolutely dominated not just the film conversation, but I think a much more general conversation around the country, even around the world. Save the World cup final match. I think this is just about the biggest.

Chris Ryan

They were hand in hand of being like, we have two really exciting things to consume and talk about and think about and get mad about and get happy about.

Sean Fennessy

I saw a, a tweet this morning that tickets for the Odyssey at the BFI IMAX in London are fully sold out from now until September 10th. So there's a long Runway here for this movie. Give or take a Spider man movie to dominate movies for the next six weeks. Which is totally fascinating, seeing it again tomorrow.

Chris Ryan

And my wife was like, why? You just saw it? And I was like, I just want to have the experience of seeing this this way as many times as I want or can because, you know, it'll be like five years or whatever until it gets back into a re release. And this is really special. I mean, regardless of whether or not every part of the movie works for you, I think the experience of seeing it the way it's meant to be seen is really cool if you can manage to do it.

Sean Fennessy

What do you think about the reaction to it thus far?

Amanda Davin

Aside from people behaving badly online, which is always the way and we don't have to acknowledge it, it's really exciting. And I, you know, I said earlier about the comic con of it all and it feeling like this, you know, the fan culture and the gentle insanity around a cultural product has, you know, been moved to something much closer to high art in my opinion than anything that's been released in the Marvel franchise in the last 15 years. And that's really exciting. You know, I think it's incredibly cool that Chris Nolan has turned Nerding out about film stocks and projection to be a pop cultural thing. I think if you can't see the entirety of the helmet, it's fine. You know me. You guys are gonna be okay. You know, I agree. Maybe we should just, like, borrow some helmets and wear them once and then you can see them. But what that indicates is that he has turned it into both a cultural phenomenon and, as your tweets and the box office indicates, like a. A box office, a financial phenomenon. Which then means that the corporations that make movies will pay attention because they think that it's another way to make money. And, like, real movies filmed on film in real places, being a financially lucrative enterprise is just all you could want in life, because that's the kind of movies I want to see.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I. I completely agree. Echo all your.

Chris Ryan

I love all the, like, apocryphal but fun anecdotes of people refusing to leave. You know, like, they're at Lincoln center and they're just like, you're going to have to call the cops. I want to watch it again.

Sean Fennessy

You know, it's funny. So my wife eileen, acquired a 6:00am Ticket this morning, on Monday morning, to see it on 70 and IMAX at CityWalk. And she kind of like, sat in the app and was refreshing to, like, try to find a ticket because she wanted to see it in this format and. But, you know, truth be told, Eileen doesn't care about the format and she's not going to really be able to tell the significant difference in terms of watching it. So she just changed her mind and then on Friday, just grabbed an 11am Ticket to go see it in a Dolby room in Burbank. And she loved it. And it's going to play in any movie theater. You know, it might not be exactly the experience that you want to have in the exact perfect way that you want to have it as intended by the director, but this has been true of movies, you know what, for years.

Chris Ryan

You know what broke me of this fever in some ways was Tenet. Like, you guys watch Tenet in a smoky haze at a drive in. I watched it on, I think on a computer the first time I watched it. It's fucking rocks. We just screened it in Toronto. It rocks. Like, these movies will play everywhere no matter. Like, even if you're like, I want to be able to see the. The full height of these. Of these characters.

Sean Fennessy

Like, you're.

Chris Ryan

You're gonna be okay.

Amanda Davin

Eileen also said something interesting Saturday about the experience of hunting for the 6am Citywalk ticket and sitting in the app. And she said, at some point, I was just looking for the adrenaline of actually getting this thing that everybody wanted. It was sort of whether it's like a Labubu or a ticket to the 70 millimeter IMAX at CityWalk. And I was just like, wow, that isn't. That's. That's awesome. That's an amazing feat of marketing. And I think that normally we. I would be cynical about that in terms of it making corporations money, but in this case, if it incentivizes more people to want to see film and movie studios to make film, then good job, everybody. It's uncanny.

Sean Fennessy

The thing I love about it that is sort of related to the point that you're making about films like this being successful and going into the culture is. So Eileen went to that screening on 11am on Friday, and they gave up posters. So she came home with an Odyssey poster. And then, of course, when my daughter got home from camp, we showed her the poster, and it's the image of the Ligastronians facing down Odysseus Fleet. And Alice was just like, what is that? And then that took us back to the Dallaire's book of Greek myths that Amanda got her for her birthday, whatever, a year or two ago. And now we just spent the whole weekend reading the Greek myths and listening to myth podcasts together. And now she's all into it, and she wants to hear about Artemis and Athena and she wants. So I'm like, this is kind of cool that this went back into the culture this way. Like, this can. This can now. And when you start reading those myths again, I'm reminded of, like, well, everything is based on this. Every story is based on these stories and all of these names, you know, the way that many screenwriters tend to use the names of the gods and the figures from those stories to represent, like, corporations over time. Like how they all are kind of these kind of reclamations of power over history. And it's just because this guy was like, I'm going to make this a movie. This should be a movie. It should be a movie at this scale. And now we can return to understanding what stories can represent. So I find that to be a wonderful kind of after effect. But cr. You know, I don't know. Have you gone on the record at length about your feelings about the movie yet?

Chris Ryan

No. I mean, I talked with you a little bit about it on Bill's show last week, but it had yet to be officially released, so we were pretty circumspect with talking about any specifics from the film, I'll just say also, one of the cool things, just as I'm getting into it, has been, I think people understand when all the cast members who are doing their promotional duties and like, they are so on book about, like, this is what we did to make this movie. This is like, what it meant to us to make this movie. And this is, like, how much everybody kind of gave to this movie. It's rare that, like, people, people will say that about, like, making a Harlan Coban show. It's rare that you're like, oh, yeah, I can tell. You know, I can. I can watch Matt Damon age, you know.

Sean Fennessy

Yes.

Chris Ryan

If you're inside the horse and you're like, it was these guys, it was filling with water and Nolan and Hoyta are in there with them. It feels that way. And he is the. He is really like the only game in town when it comes to, like, it's gonna, it's gonna feel the way it feels for these characters. You're gonna feel like you were on this beach. You were gonna feel like you were on this mountain. You're gonna feel like the cyclo. And it's a. It's a gift that I don't even know how many filmmakers really have it, but it is a really astonishing thing to see. And especially the way it's. It's sort of projected on IMAX 70.

Sean Fennessy

There's a really compelling making of featurette that is available on Peacock right now that you can watch called the Making of the Odyssey. And it, you know, there's a lot of interviews with all the cast members. And it's, you know, it was clearly made during the production of the film. Yeah, Matt Damon looks tired. Yeah, he looks very, very tired in his interviews. And he's giving it his all. And he's. He's been on the major charm offensive of all time the last six months, especially this month.

Chris Ryan

This is like the juxtaposition of him with Pattinson, who spent the entire time in a castle eating. And he's just like, you guys seemed so tired when you got here.

Amanda Davin

He's like, I was at the hotel bar by myself.

Sean Fennessy

It's very true. Okay, Chris, maybe Amanda and I can ping pong off of you as you go through some of your takeaways, but what are the things that you wanted to talk about?

Chris Ryan

First of all, I thought your podcast left last week was fantastic. Thank you. And one of the things that, you know, obviously leapt out at me was when Amanda was talking about How Inception begins and the idea of, you know, this recurring imagery that shows up throughout Nolan's body of work, but also, like, these themes that show up throughout his body of work and the Odyssey being not only, like, this incredible adaptation of one of the central stories of Western civilization, but also, like, a skeleton key that unlocks this director that I think different people have different hurdles to get over at different points in his filmography. So maybe you're not a Batman guy or a comic book person, or maybe you find some of the temporal games he plays with storytelling to be a bit frustrating. Tenet may be inscrutable to you. Inception may seem silly or whatever, but I think this movie can play as, like, the first movie and the last movie in a Nolan retrospective. And the entire thing makes sense. This real, real sense that in a way that even though with Oppenheimer having, like, incredible awards run and some of his films being regarded in the way that they are, I think now it's like, okay, like, this 25 years of this guy. Let's really look at what he wants to say about being a person, how we tell stories and how we see things on screen in a way that I think is, like, pretty amazing. And I. I was trying to think of, like, any comp, like, in a director's career where, like, at this point, we talked about this a little bit on Wednesday, where, like, their 10th, 11th movie, and they make a movie that then makes all the rest of their work kind of come into focus in a different way.

Sean Fennessy

I think it's probably Kurosawa is the only one, because I think he's the only filmmaker who has deftly managed the scale and scope of his storytelling with the hyper personal. And, you know, Ron was an inspiration for this movie, and this. The idea of a great king coming back to power. But it's a short list. Yeah, I mean, it's a short. And I think the names that we reach for, like Kubrick or Hitchcock or, you know, Even Cecil B. DeMille or Spielberg, they're not an even match, I find, with kind of what Nolan is interested in. And you keep saying the personal. I was wondering how you feel about this, too, because I find Nolan's films to be a little impersonal, but I find them to be very much about consequences on the world at large. He's very good, to me about these were the stakes, and if we fail, everything goes belly up. What do you think?

Amanda Davin

Well, I mean, they are great men movies, which we have talked about and in my case, occasionally ridiculed, and I was thinking about this morning. Let's see, this morning I rewatched Interstellar and Part of Prestige and I can't remember what else. But this idea that he is taking on the fate of the world through one person is, I think, both the scale that you're talking about and the personal. And it is. I do sense an identification with the main characters or the person who is trying to keep everything together, whether it's to save the world or to get back to the family or all of the above. So in that sense, they do feel personal or at least, you know, identified to me. But I don't find that I'm reading them for biographical clues necessarily of, oh, this is this person supposed to be, you know, your producing partner? And I, you know, I do think that they all have something to do with the act of making movies. And how could they not when you spend your life doing this and they are all about storytelling and taking on, like, great works and often, like, commanding a large group of people. But I. I don't read them as, you know, pure stand in for, like, this is just about me and how hard it is to make a movie. I don't. I don't think they're even as close as, like, I would say a Spielberg movie is to both biography, for sure, but also, what is it to be a filmmaker?

Chris Ryan

Yeah. And I guess he doesn't really have the, like, hallmarks of Child, of Divorce or I was making films when I was 8, you know, in my backyard. So this has always been my lens through which I. I view life.

Sean Fennessy

He hasn't, like, allowed himself to be narrativized in that way.

Chris Ryan

I drink tea and I'm a good dad, and, like, these are the things that interest me. But I thought it was interesting when, you know, we read interviews with some of the cast members and Lupita Nyong' o and John Leguizamo spoke about, like, this incredibly vulnerable conversation that they had when they did their, like, vibes interview with. With Nolan, when he's like, okay, I'm gonna bring you. We're gonna hang out for a couple of hours, talk, then you can read the script and then we'll kind of go from there. And they both talked about, like, you know, obviously, like, this personal connection that he has to the story, but beyond that, like, his. His anxieties and all these things that he expressed to them. And I think you can start to see that obviously come out in the kinds of stories he's interested in, but also the way his. Maybe his feelings have Changed from say, interstellar, where you see a group of people coming together to save the world, because science can do that, to what he has to say about the world. Maybe with Oppenheimer and the Odyssey. And whether or not he feels a little bit darker about our prospects in

Sean Fennessy

the future, I definitely think he does. I do think since the Dark Knight, maybe even before that, but probably since the Dark Knight he has always been a little bit more of like an elevated political literate filmmaker where he's kind of drawing historical allusions like using A Tale of Two Cities to do Dark Knight Rises.

Chris Ryan

And take him for ducking the smoke of saying what he means with his

Sean Fennessy

thing is he won't ever put his finger on it and say this is what I meant by this. And maybe that's kind of what annoys

Chris Ryan

is Batman activating all cell phones, surveillance devices about, you know, like fisa, I don't know, but like, yeah, you know, it's. I think in this film specifically there are some, sometimes even heavy handed, like, hey, this is about what's happening today, you know, that I thought was really actually like, I think pretty provocative, pretty, pretty amazing to, to. To take that swing as, as brave as anything he does visually is like some of the, some of the inversions that he makes on what we traditionally understand as this story.

Sean Fennessy

Well, one of the things that I think is kind of an inversion of what he used to do is I found that he used to explain plot in a lot of his kind of long soliloquies from characters. And now he explains theme. And there is like a pretty big difference there. The whole explication at the very end of the Odyssey, before the final showdown, that conversation, I guess between Odysseus and Penelope is him kind of being like, here's why I made this movie and here's what I think this story is really about to me. And that's really interesting to me. It might be a little bit too direct and on the nose for your most sophisticated filmgoer, but I found it to be very effective. And I didn't mind it becoming. I didn't mind the theme becoming literalized because I saw it as this kind of attempt to fuse these two people who've been apart for a long time. And it was him essentially explaining to this person that he's been apart from. Spoilers for the Odyssey, by the way, that I had to be away this long. Cause this is something that I did and this is something I'm responsible for. And because I'm responsible for it, I participated in the End of a kind of civilization. And in order to kind of get back, I need to get this off my chest. And I also am happy to explain to the audience what this filmmaker means by this movie. Do you know what I'm saying when I say that?

Amanda Davin

Yes. I mean a couple things there. He's able to do that in the Odyssey because unlike most of his other movies, he doesn't have to spend that much time explaining the plot of the Odyssey because we all know. And it is also. It's very basic, right? It is just this person needs to get home. And then the emphasis on why he can't get home or where he's been or what he's experienced, you know, can be shifted according to the adaptation. So I think you're right. And it does mean then that he has more room to be literal about the themes. But that that speech is paired with an absolutely incredible set piece. And it's the second time you see the sacking of Troy from a totally different perspective. And I think there still is the grand visual element that I felt was really accomplished in Turn of. It wasn't just that they were setting things on fire and dudes were fighting each other. It was very moving and I felt communicated those themes through the actions. So for me, I'm kind of like, if you just want to make room for showing that, like, revisionist Troy scene with some obvious. Not even that obvious. Like, I do think that that and the siren speech are two cases where he is writing the themes and what he feels in pretty explicit voiceover in the voice of Odysseus. But the writing's really good, which is not what we always say about Christopher Nolan dialogue.

Sean Fennessy

But it's also. It's preceded by a moment that you would explain to a person. If you haven't seen your wife in 20 years, of course you would tell her what happened. If you experience something that no one else on that ship experienced by hearing the song, of course, someone would say, what did it sound like? So to me, that's like a great way to set up that expositional style that he usually writes through.

Chris Ryan

Yes. There's also. It's interesting to hear you pair the writing with this sort of grandio. The grandiosity of the visual set pieces that he's able to produce. Because I found myself more often than not with Nolan thinking about the movies and what they had to say rather than remembering what they looked like. And obviously there are these incredibly hall of Fame sequences in his filmography, like the Black hole in Interstellar. And you know, Oppenheimer's Trinity test. And you can go on and on. Every movie has something where you're like, what? What the fuck did he just pull off? But that's not what I think about Tenet. What I think about Tenet is like, I'll either try and solve it or I'll try and figure out why he made the movie the way he did and what the movie is about, actually. And I kind of feel that way about the Odyssey. The things that I've been thinking about while I was blown away by so much of it are all like the turn with the sea people. And what that's about, because that's a Nolan authorial addition to the, to the canonical text.

Sean Fennessy

And what do you think it's about?

Chris Ryan

I mean, I think it's honestly about. I mean, on a. On a superficial and perhaps like headline grabbing way, I think it's somewhat a commentary about the tendency for right wing movements to villainize like mysterious foreigners from coming onto their shores, when in fact the real poison lies within them. And I don't know if he would agree with that. But I don't think it's an accident that like there is like a huge faction of like the English right wing that calls people arriving across, like the Channel boat people. And now we have to stop the boats and we need to like militarize the borders of England. And obviously Nolan has English roots. We hear that a lot here. You know, like it's.

Sean Fennessy

And there's two different moments in the movie. The one when they first take that first island and they pillage that town. And there's the man who's speaking in a foreign language on his knees being held by Himish, Patel's character. And he's trying to explain to them, like, no, no, we're Greek soldiers from Ithaca, you know, we're not the sea people, you know.

Chris Ryan

Also, this is the cool thing about his storytelling style, which I think some people sometimes find a bit clever and some this time I felt worked beautifully is I can't wait to see this movie again thinking about that very scene. It reads entirely differently when you know the end of the film and what happened at Troy. Hemisph Patel seems almost more threatening coming up on the shore and being like, they're the marauders.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, of course.

Chris Ryan

And also like the interactions between Odysseus and his crew read differently when you know that these people just sacked and destroyed a city and did probably much, much worse.

Sean Fennessy

This is what we talked about with casting Daemon, where it's like with Daemon so inherently likable that you're like. But Odysseus is kind of a bastard, you know. Like, he does a lot of things in the story of the Odyssey that is, you know, regrettable at best, you

Amanda Davin

know, And Nolan adds the regret, you know, and that's not to say that some of these themes are not in the text. Like the. So the Greek word for Zeus's law is xenia, which is also where you get xenophobia. So it's like very basic in the. This fear of strangers and how do you treat someone else? Yeah, all they taught me in school was Xenia over and over and over again. And I only put it together like last week. But. So there is at least the societal idea within Homer's text, or at least the translations I've read, but that Odysseus even comes to the realization that he did something wrong, that we were the people from the sea, that we have created this other world that is entirely Nolan's edition.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, we were talking on Bill's show about. He's kind of like the Tony Soprano, the originating Tony Soprano or Walter White or something. The flawed protagonist. But he does give him. He gives him more sympathy, really. By the end of this movie. This movie kind of gives you a satisfying ending of this guy not only returns home to his wife, but he sails on and is free to pursue,

Amanda Davin

I don't know, civilization rising again, or

Sean Fennessy

at least relaxation in Boca Raton, you know, like whatever it is he's going to, you know.

Amanda Davin

Honoring his men.

Sean Fennessy

Honoring retirement. Yes. Which is of course, not how his story ends. For those of you who want to read further in the Greek myths, some interesting fates for Odysseus as well. We can talk about that when the Odyssey 2 comes out. What other things, Chris, what else jumped out to you?

Chris Ryan

I loved it being a story told as stories being told. So Odysseus is working through his memory with Calypso on and off that lotus, you know.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, yeah, the first promethazine.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, exactly. Menelaus telling Telemachus about his father. You know, like this idea that many of the things that we're seeing are actually being told to a character by another character, about a character who's not present. I would love to go back and analyze the reliability of narrators at various moments, but it definitely. I think it made also a lot of sense of, like, why he cast the people he cast in this movie. Because when you think about, like, Wasamo and Bernthal, they have a kind of oratory skill that's like, hey, man, come over here. I'm gonna tell you about this thing that happened in our neighborhood. And it's awesome. And if you were ever gonna confess everything to anyone, it would probably be Charlize Theron on a beach, you know, as she prepared like a beautiful squid dish, you know. Still don't know why he left that beach.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

So you would. Would spend seven years on that beach.

Chris Ryan

And also, just beyond the stories, like how much of what happens in the movie is because of people's fears, you know, and that they articulate. So Cersei talking about, like, he's like, did my men attack you? And she was like, not yet. You know, and the kind of paranoia that's starting to develop in the kingdom and in these islands and everything that's happening in Ithaca being like, we gotta do something because something bad is gonna happen and we can't just keep looming here, you know, like. Like, we have to create a new seat of power, because otherwise, like, whether it's the sea people or the suitors, it's gonna break soon. And this. This place won't function without that. So just the idea of not doing a. Here's the. One of the most notable heroes in all of history. Let's just follow him. Like, let's not complicate this. Let's. Let's John Ford him and watch him.

Sean Fennessy

It's funny though. Cause the movie does complicate the story so much because of the way that. That it's structured through time and pairing it opposite Telemachus journey through trying to find out the truth of his father. So even though, as you. I think you're completely right, that this is such a simple story that doesn't need over explication, but it keeps becoming this story of storytelling because he has once again shattered a pocket watch on the floor. That's the image I think of whenever I think of a Christopher Nolan movie.

Chris Ryan

The top is still spinning.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, I just meant that people are familiar with. With, you know, the basic storytelling points as opposed to, you know, interstellar having to explain all of physics like five times and then being like. But actually in this universe, this is how the physics work. The other thing is that. But that fracture and the stories within stories and people telling things is also in. Is in the text. And so much of what we learn is from either, you know, a traveler's tale or Odysseus, you know, posing as someone else or telling randos who actually did let him into his home. So I. I was just still stunned going back and rereading The Emily Wilson translation, after seeing this movie of just how Nolan the original is, which, like, you know, and he's a very smart and accomplished director, so maybe he knew that it's like not an accident that he picked this, but a lot of it's really there.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

I don't know if this is real, but did you see over the weekend that Emily Wilson was like, I have some notes about this movie.

Sean Fennessy

It was. It was real. Yeah, it was real. She did.

Chris Ryan

I thought she was like, settle down with the dog stuff.

Amanda Davin

Right.

Sean Fennessy

Argus. There were some issues with Argus, which was, I think she basically described it as just like a cheap ploy for audiences that everybody loves a dog in a movie. What were her other notes? Her notes were interesting to me and seemingly fair. Although she strikes me as a wildly unsympathetic storyteller in general, there's a kind of directness in her translation that I find very fascinating. And, you know, he softens the text a little bit. Even though this is one of the most savage stories ever told, it does

Amanda Davin

feel, I don't think her Odysseus is very sympathetic.

Sean Fennessy

Agreed.

Amanda Davin

And you know, again, that's her interpretation of the text. And I can't read the original, but there is a lot more reading into his motivations and just feeling in Christopher Nolan's thank you than there is in hers.

Sean Fennessy

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Chris Ryan

I wanted to ask you guys, you know, one of the. I mean, first of all, some of the memes coming out of this movie are just top notch. Between that and Argentina, like, you know, going like this, you know, like, it's just been an incredible weekend of content. But I thought one of the most fascinating debates, like, legitimately, like, it's rare that this happens. But a conversation that was taking place online that I thought was really cool was to what extent modern audiences would be able to comprehend some of what now would be an anachronistic kind of behavior on the part of any of the characters. So I, you know, like the idea

Sean Fennessy

of a woman having agency.

Chris Ryan

No, but you guys talked about, like the Cyclops scene being different than it is in the text. Because in the text there's obviously there's the I am nobody or no man thing. But it's also like he just can't resist being like, I'm Laertes kid. By the way, he does a real like, Ben Affleck in the town, like 155 Bunker Hill. Come by anytime, you know.

Sean Fennessy

But there is some bravado in Odysseus. I mean, as a warrior and as a schematic thinker, he's always kind of like plotting a scheme that will make him seem even smarter than everyone else. Yes, but he likes to attempt the fates. He likes to poke the Cyclops.

Chris Ryan

And I think that there is like, where the line of how Nolan writes the character versus where Damon plays the character and everything that we bring to a Damon performance versus what maybe is in the script text. Like this rendition of. Of the Sirens. You're like, you cocky.

Amanda Davin

You think? I know, but you're the only one

Chris Ryan

who can hear the song, like, so good.

Amanda Davin

And even just like the glimmer of mischief on Damon's face as he's like timing up.

Chris Ryan

Just don't let me go. Yeah, we'll be good.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And it's like, yeah, you know, like, this is the guy being like, this shit is easy for me.

Sean Fennessy

You know, the thing that struck me on the second watch was how a lot of the culture war stuff was actually right and it was like, wonderfully. Right. Like, every choice that Nolan made in that respect where he was like, I will cast Elliot Page as the bravest person in this film. I will put Lupita front and center and I will scar her face. And she still will be the most beautiful person in this film. The fact that he is. I don't know if he's making a statement, but he's. There's.

Chris Ryan

I will have Chapel Roan perform

Sean Fennessy

so much. Chapel Roan going in my house this weekend. I already told Amanda.

Amanda Davin

Chapel Roan and James Blake on the remix with Travis Scott could see it.

Sean Fennessy

I could see it. I will make Travis Scott the bard. You know, I will give Travis Scott

Amanda Davin

the first line in the Oscars.

Sean Fennessy

Exactly. I mean, these are all. They're kind of light troll jobs, but they're also full of intent. You know, he made choices.

Chris Ryan

He made some choices.

Sean Fennessy

He made choices. And there's something wonderful about that. And I think that the other thing I enjoyed this weekend was sure there were some bad actors online, but most people were like, damn, that movie was good.

Amanda Davin

Or they were big mad about the helmets also. Bullshit.

Sean Fennessy

It's a movie. Come up with a new idea. Make something look different.

Amanda Davin

No, no, no. I meant that they couldn't see that. Not that there was. Listen. Yeah, of course. That they didn't. They didn't have the exact clothes, you know?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, Agamemnon, you know, he had that shit on. That's what they say about Agamemnon.

Chris Ryan

I'll throw out a couple of like, notes of like, dissent about the movie.

Sean Fennessy

Please do.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Chris Ryan

I am not sure that he is a great action director. I found the John Wick scene with the suitors a bit flat, a bit silly. I don't know if that's how it. I can't remember if, like, it's like, dad, wait. And then it's like, pick up the sword.

Amanda Davin

Get the shield, get the shield.

Chris Ryan

I mean, it's great. It's a great dramatic scene for that Pattinson character. But I've all these sort of like faceless suitors getting got by him. And I think that might have been where, like the IMAX camera, ironically, it doesn't work well in these kinds of close up battle scenes, especially after you've

Amanda Davin

been out outside and it's such large spaces for the whole thing.

Chris Ryan

And it just didn't feel as well thought through as every other sequence in the movie felt.

Sean Fennessy

I really liked it, but I do think it is an inevitable letdown after the lead up to Penelope's Challenge, which I think is like, please. Is the most predictable thing. And if you've read it, you know it. But still, it's like the plucking of the bow. It's just such a satisfying movie moment.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. And that was like, the college basketball coach who's like, let's go

Sean Fennessy

awesome in the movie, so. Because you get paid off on that moment.

Chris Ryan

But I got a fight that was consistent with plucking the bow, you know?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Suplexing.

Sean Fennessy

Guys, I think you asked the right question, which is like, is there actually limitation to what you can accomplish with this machinery that you're carrying around? Because you can't be as elegant when you're carrying a gigantic camera and trying to shoot action this way. So I don't know. He's had some thrilling sequences in the past. I mean, the bank robbery in Dark Knight, the hallway fight in Inception. He's shot incredible action sequences before. But I do think that the mechanics of the way that he makes movies now maybe complicates this a little bit.

Chris Ryan

I think I also have to be honest and say that sometimes what happens is Nolan will gesture at great violence but not show it.

Sean Fennessy

Well, no blood, never.

Chris Ryan

And I think that that's, like, appropriate in the case of, say, the. Well, who Athena is being represented as in the movie, the Zendaya character's death. Obviously, you're not gonna behead Zendaya in this movie and have everybody just be

Sean Fennessy

like, oh, okay, Ty West's the Odyssey.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, but, like, there is. Well, Kurosawa would do it.

Sean Fennessy

He would. He would do it.

Chris Ryan

He did it a little bit.

Amanda Davin

A little bit more in Oppenheimer. Just in the. Like, the shot of this skin peeling off. But that's. But that was, like, as far as he was willing to go.

Chris Ryan

It's a good example.

Sean Fennessy

Portrayed by his daughter.

Amanda Davin

Yes. He.

Chris Ryan

Is he averting his eyes, or is he making a concession to the idea that a mass audience is going to see this and they do not want to watch arterial blood spraying all over the place?

Sean Fennessy

I don't think it's. That. This is. We're in the time of obsession, you know, like people like gore. I don't think it's the. I think. I think he's a British filmmaker, you know, I think he is like, I don't show everything. Basically. That's what it boils down. There's, like, a kind of class component to it. Not class, wealth, class. Just like.

Chris Ryan

And I don't want this movie to be casualties of war, but, like, they take the beach and he's just like, and we did terrible things. And I'm like, well, you get to have a little bit both ways when you don't show the terrible things.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, think of Dunkirk versus Saving Private Ryan. You know, like in Dunkirk, bodies are being blown off the beaches, but you never see a limb fly in. The same way a limb doesn't land on somebody's head and then leak out blood onto somebody's face. So it's a different style of filmmaking.

Chris Ryan

Basically my reason I brought that up was because the last fight scene, the Odysseus versus the suitors, winds up feeling very Batman y to me, you know?

Sean Fennessy

You don't like that.

Chris Ryan

You'd prefer he had superpowers. I think I have my more of a Superman guy. I think it should just look more like the Raid 2.

Sean Fennessy

You think they should bring Gareth Evans in just for Nolan's fight scenes.

Chris Ryan

So it's funny you should mention that because people are probably at this point are like, shut the fuck up. But I wouldn't be mad if he gets all of this stuff right. He's like, I got my script, I got all this stuff. And then at the last second, he was like, peter Morgan, would you like to just take a pass?

Amanda Davin

Yeah, sure.

Chris Ryan

And just spruce the dialogue up a little bit bit? Like, he's got a lot of weight to carry through a lot of narrative. You know, everybody's got to basically, Agamemnon is using this as a pretext because of trade routes that he wants to save and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's so fast. But, dude, play a solo every once in a while. Like, get on the sax. Let somebody say something. Kind of like the, The. I think the height of beauty in this movie is the Odysseus's description of what the siren song sounded like.

Amanda Davin

I mean, absolutely transcendent.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, but I would just.

Amanda Davin

But I didn't. I didn't expect that from a Nolan movie. I was just like, whoa, what's happening?

Chris Ryan

I agree.

Sean Fennessy

I found it incredibly amazing.

Chris Ryan

I. I find myself more often than not in Nolan movies extracting cool dialogue out of what might be fortune cookies. Like, well, sure.

Amanda Davin

And doing it in a Bane.

Chris Ryan

You're waiting on a train, you don't know where it's going to take you. And you're like, yeah, dude, that's good. You know, like. But it's. Maybe it's nonsense, you know, and maybe Bane is complete nonsense, you know, I

Sean Fennessy

mean, this kind of ties into my general feelings about him now, which is. I just think He's a much more mature filmmaker and a much more mature writer, and I think the things he's interested in are bigger and deeper than the kind of cool ideas that he was very famed for in the early stage of his career.

Chris Ryan

Pta. Why don't you take a pass on Killer of the Flower Moon? You know what I mean? Like, when it. It's just like.

Sean Fennessy

Well, maybe he does. I mean, he said that he called his brother Jonathan to talk to him about this.

Chris Ryan

He's not the guy I wanted to fight.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. Ever.

Sean Fennessy

He did talk about that, though, and how he brought some things to it. And apparently, Jonathan is the one who is even more into the. The myths and the histories. I believe Delos was the name of the corporation in Westworld, which, of course, a critical part of the Greek myths. So, Yeah, I. I. Look, nobody has been more critical than me of this exact thing.

Chris Ryan

This is more.

Sean Fennessy

Listen, I've really come around.

Amanda Davin

Let's get Peter Morgan back in the paint. We can do open to.

Sean Fennessy

What's he doing right now?

Amanda Davin

They're making a prequel, I think.

Sean Fennessy

Are they really?

Amanda Davin

Yeah, like, of the of. For the crown. But, you know, didn't they make that?

Sean Fennessy

The King's Speech?

Amanda Davin

No, that's the show that they're gonna make. Yeah. Also that happens in season one of the crown, but that's fine. Not the actual speech, but yeah. This would be post Victoria pre Elizabeth. It's a couple of other kings.

Sean Fennessy

Who was that? King James.

Amanda Davin

It was George and Edward. There was an Edward and a George, I think.

Sean Fennessy

King Ronald.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Was he ever a guy.

Amanda Davin

That's him. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

King Jimothy.

Chris Ryan

Don't act like that's stolen valor on your part. You didn't know who Jimothy was before.

Sean Fennessy

If you don't sell every joke I make, you're not on the show anymore.

Amanda Davin

If they checked Jimothy, what's going on with him?

Chris Ryan

We're probably gonna enter a Flocko situation with Jimothy where there's now people going to Seattle to protect Jimothy, but also document him.

Sean Fennessy

But what if it's like a milkshake duck Jimothy situation. Jimothy actually is bad.

Amanda Davin

I've seen a video of him moving. I only looked at pictures.

Chris Ryan

Jimothee is a deformed raccoon. That people are really deformed? Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Is that the preferred nomenclature?

Chris Ryan

A spinal cond.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, he did. Based on what?

Chris Ryan

What. What do you mean?

Sean Fennessy

What are you, a raccoonologist?

Amanda Davin

What are you talking about? Wait, was the first reference to Jimothy on this podcast. Or was it before?

Sean Fennessy

No, it wasn't.

Amanda Davin

I'm sorry. We only learned about Jimothy before recording. While gossiping.

Chris Ryan

Look at her.

Sean Fennessy

We were doing so well, making such a serious episode.

Chris Ryan

I have a couple more.

Amanda Davin

Okay, sorry.

Chris Ryan

Notes of not concern, but just like

Amanda Davin

you brought it up.

Chris Ryan

Topics. The Jen Lame cutting style, which is honestly probably the most significant director editor partnership. Nolan and Jen Lame since Scorsese and Schoonmacher. I mean, you could argue.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I mean, Soderbergh and Mary Bernard, who is him.

Chris Ryan

And also his director of photographer Peter

Sean Fennessy

Andrews, which is him. Yeah. Joel and Ethan Cole Cohen and Roderick Jaynes, who is them.

Chris Ryan

The feeling you get knowing, like, watching movies that she didn't cut versus movies that she did cut.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

It's like an evolution in his style that I think is very significant.

Sean Fennessy

I would say, literally, Quentin and Sally Menke is very similar. Like, whoa, I'm not. And another filmmaker who really messes with time, especially in those early movies where he's like, where are we in the story? Oh, we're here. And that feeling of, like, when you get to the end. For me, the last couple of Oppenheimer movies were like, wow, this fully paid off. Like, that really, really satisfied feeling of every choice that you made led to something. And it wasn't just the tease of a bigger idea. It was about completing an idea. So I'm with you on that and I love it.

Chris Ryan

I, in my mind, was thinking about some of the sequences in the movie and if they had been given more room to breathe or if they had had more of a buildup. And, you know, this is where you get into, like, that movie would be four hours. This movie, maybe this movie could have

Sean Fennessy

been a trilogy, you know, like, of tipped. Tip towards that last week as well.

Chris Ryan

Sirens, Sol and Cryptis. Like lragonians especially, which I think is kind of like, almost devoid of context in the. The movie. It's like another bad island they go to.

Sean Fennessy

It is.

Chris Ryan

Some of that, I'm sure, is just like, I have a runtime. Because, like, IMAX projectors can't show more than three hours. Is that the deal or what is it like?

Sean Fennessy

No, no, I. I think it was more just like, how do we make this legible for the audiences, basically?

Chris Ryan

You know, be that as it may, there's a couple of sequences that I was like in. I would have liked to have, like, built up to this, had it and then celebrated it for a minute, you know, like. And taken a breath.

Sean Fennessy

Just.

Chris Ryan

Not you.

Sean Fennessy

No, just. I'LL ask you both this question. I'm not necessarily advocating for this, but if he had announced that he was doing this as an Infinity War endgame thing where it was part one and part two, and it was two, two and a half hour movies, Liked it, not liked it, would you have balked at it without even seeing them?

Amanda Davin

I always think constraints are good, you know, And I mean. And I think that's part of the reason that the. The gen. Lame metronome that he is so helpful to him. So I think once you expand it to five hours, like, you know, I'm sure there would be a lot more spectacle, but I think that's also room for a lot more dialogue that isn't as polished as the siren scene. You know, like, part of. I think what is so powerful about both of those sequences is that, like, it happens and you've been waiting your whole life to know what the sound of the sirens really is. And, you know, it's everything that you can't have anymore. And then it's out. You're just like, damn.

Chris Ryan

My last takeaway is the Hades scene is like, one of the sickest things I've ever seen. Yeah, it's just so awesome.

Amanda Davin

You've been to Iceland.

Chris Ryan

No, no. Shout out to James Raymore.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I mean, he was. He was an Oppenheimer. This is another person that he is recurring with. He keeps recurring with all of these actors, you know, could have been Tom Beringer, Alaska. I love that scene. To me, that might be the best work that Ludwig Goranson does in the movie that. We were listening to that in the car with my daughter over the weekend. And it's so atonal and strange and experimental and so different from the bronze gongs and the sort of the harmony and musicality of the woodwind instruments on the score that like, it. It feels like Trent Reznor made it. Like, it's very strange.

Chris Ryan

Are you prepared for the possibility that your daughter is going to be in, like, fourth grade and is like, I like John Dielman and Ornette Coleman?

Sean Fennessy

No, no. Because, like, she's still into all the basic kid stuff.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

You know, she's like, I need to watch Tangled. You know, like, that's the best movie ever made. So she's normal, but she's getting some. Some undergirding of taste.

Chris Ryan

I love it.

Sean Fennessy

That's what we're going for. Those were.

Chris Ryan

Those are my huge, big takeaways. Those are my big takeaways.

Sean Fennessy

Anything that you've thought about since. Since we last spoke

Amanda Davin

I've thought about the characterization of Odysseus because I did go back and. And do more Emily Wilson. And I think it's interesting to me that I think in any other Nolan movie, I would have given and have given the. The extra sympathy and the great manningness of a character who gets up to some questionable stuff. It totally works for me. And I don't know whether that's just because I get swept up in everything else that's going on. I don't know whether that's because I think he does more with the other characters in the story to kind of. To balance it out. And he's, you know, Odysseus is not totally heroic. Maybe it's just that it's Matt Dam. When we talk about the other Nolan movies, I think casting really goes a long way in terms of whether I respond or I don't. So I think that's interesting. I also just. It's big year for puppets and shout out puppets.

Sean Fennessy

Could Ryan Gosling have done this part?

Amanda Davin

No.

Sean Fennessy

Could Ben Affleck have done it?

Chris Ryan

Different movie, but yes, it would have been a much different movie.

Sean Fennessy

Can he do, period? He has, but can he.

Amanda Davin

He could do. I think he could do this, but it would be different.

Sean Fennessy

Leonardo DiCaprio.

Chris Ryan

I had this conversation with Bill yesterday.

Sean Fennessy

He baited you right into it and again created a bunch of fake categories to rate whether or not he was

Chris Ryan

like, tomorrow we're gonna talk about Damon versus Leo. And I thought we were gonna be like, is Bill gonna debut? Leo should have been Odysseus. And instead it was kind of like, let's look at the entire body of work and, okay, I guess who wins? I was thinking more along the lines of, like, Fastbender.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, but that's a. That's a very different movie. That's. That's no feelings at all.

Sean Fennessy

He codes rage and discontent.

Amanda Davin

That's. Don't come home, big guy.

Sean Fennessy

That's right. And the two that.

Amanda Davin

Well, yeah, go to Amanda's house.

Chris Ryan

The door is always open.

Sean Fennessy

Swing, Swing by Calypso's beach. The two that are the most interesting to me in the context. Actually, the three that are most interesting to me in the context of the Nolanography is Cillian Murphy, who I think is inherently sympathetic and quite sad as a performer. Tom Hardy, who is violent and rageful and mumbly.

Chris Ryan

But you'd be out there on the ocean and he'd decide he had a different voice for this part of the movie.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that was really strange. And the one, to me, that is really, really, really interesting thing is Christian Bale and is this a better movie? It's a different movie. Is it a better movie with Christian Bale? It's a ridiculous question to ask, but we're podcasting. I'm fascinated by it because he has the physical presence. He has the age. He could play young and play old. He can play a warrior. He can play a very intelligent trickster figure. And he just, frankly, is maybe one of the two or three best actors of his generation. Pretty widely accepted.

Chris Ryan

I, I don't know that this. I, I love what wound up happening with the vernacular of this movie and the, and people speaking in this colloquial American and saying at 10 years on this beach and, and you know, the way that Himesh Patel and him interact. Feeling like a war movie that was made two years ago about Desert Storm or Vietnam. And it's. There's no difference. Bale, God, he would have been good, but it would have been different.

Amanda Davin

I don't think it would be hopeful in any way. In addition to. There would be less sympathy, though. I think Christian Bale can bring a little. But I, I think that Nolan gets away with 90% of the ending up to the last two lines because you, you believe in Damon and his essential goodness and, and you really believe that that person would come back and feel regret and shame and have introspection. And I think Bail would have all of those things, but I don't know whether he would turn it into even the possibility of civilization rising again.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, he's not as inherently a romantic figure. It's just an interesting thing. Cause he's, you know, he's gotten great performances at a lot of leading men over the years. And it's so funny to me that he chose the first daemon leading part in one of his movies to be this guy.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. I think it's been interesting to hear the reactions to some of the central performances. I think especially Holland, who I guess is. Is very good to unremarkable to me in this movie, but that's exactly what he's supposed to be.

Sean Fennessy

So I think if he had been allowed to speak in his native accent, I wouldn't have blanched at it as much. But to me I was just like,

Amanda Davin

the Rs are hard for him. Yeah, Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

I just, I was a little. Just thrown off every time he was speaking.

Amanda Davin

It is true. There is. When he comes back and he enters the hall again, it doesn't have to speak, but he just looks like, you know, the golden boy returned home. And I Feel everything I'm supposed to feel of his casting in that moment. And then he speaks in his American accent again.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Do you think he could take Logan Marshall Green one on one?

Chris Ryan

Oh, I think there's a real reason why they, they saddled Logan Marshall Green with spurs, first of all. Also, can I just say my favorite to the Terror Twins? Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth would love to party with them.

Sean Fennessy

You know who else I really enjoyed who we didn't mention in the first episode is Corey Hawkins, who is playing sidekick to Antinous. And just a lot of actors who really command the screen in this movie in such a great way. There's been a lot of talk of Leguizamo, who I think is amazing and I think probably is gonna get an Oscar campaign for him because he's somebody who's never really been recognized before and has done a lot of things like this where you're like, oh, John Leguizamo's in that. And you're like, oh, of course, John Leguizamo. He feasts on roles like this.

Chris Ryan

I also really liked the guy who's kind of like third on the boat next to Odysseus and Himesh Patel. And the guy's name who's the one in Tenet, he feeds John David Washington. He's torturing John David Washington.

Sean Fennessy

He plays the Ukrainian.

Amanda Davin

Trains are coming in.

Chris Ryan

He's been in a million things, but is a great heavy.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, so we're talking about Andrew Howard, who plays. Is it polites, polities?

Amanda Davin

I don't remember everybody's name.

Sean Fennessy

How do you pronounce the name? You know, I don't know. I don't speak Greek. And who was in fact the driver in Tenet.

Chris Ryan

Feels like he's been in 104 Guy Ritchie movies, perhaps has been in none.

Amanda Davin

I don't know.

Sean Fennessy

He's great. Okay, let's talk just a little bit more about Nolan before ranking these movies.

Chris Ryan

So

Sean Fennessy

I've been talking about how I see him differently the last few movies and I have a different relationship to his movies. Has your relationship changed?

Amanda Davin

Probably, I think because he's moved away from the Jonathan Sci Fi and we have more movies in the, you know, in a row in the back half of his career that are not just mind bent, total mind bending. They have mind bending elements, but they are more in the real world and more real actors doing real things. And I respond to that, but probably not in terms of my assessment of like his competence or even what he does that I respond positively or negatively to. I Think I have been. Been pretty consistent in what works and what does not work.

Sean Fennessy

What about for you?

Chris Ryan

I'm a fan, so it's like, I don't think I. If you had asked me in 2008 with Dark Knight, I think I probably thought of him as, like, the best in class when it comes to IP adaptation stuff. And there is, like, a weird sliding door where man of Steel is like, this giant hit, the Zack Snyder Superman movie, and Nolan is overseeing, like, a DC Cinematic Universe, and that might change the course of modern movie history.

Sean Fennessy

I don't know if he ever would have done that. And, I mean, that's honestly a strike against Nolan that his decision for the Superman movie was to choose Zack Snyder. That's not cool. Like, that movie sucks. I think that movie's evil. So, yeah, that's funny. Do you not agree?

Chris Ryan

I haven't watched it in a very long time, but I'm not gonna get mad at him for executive producing it.

Sean Fennessy

No, not mad. I'm just saying it's a strike against me.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Don't put in the newspaper that I'm ma.

Chris Ryan

I would say that there's something bittersweet about this because he has told everyone now that he is going to take three years off, that this movie took everything out of him. And selfishly, I want more. Like, I want the best filmmakers to be prolific, and I know how hard this is. Although I'm still trying to wrap my mind around doing this in Oppenheimer in the course of three years. Like, it's pretty crazy, but this definitely feels like an end of a phase, an end of an era for him.

Sean Fennessy

I've been wondering that. Do you think that's true?

Amanda Davin

I mean, what else could be bigger? What else can you do at this point?

Sean Fennessy

Where has he not filmed the joke online this weekend? Was Moby Dick.

Amanda Davin

That.

Sean Fennessy

That is. There have been adaptations of Moby Dick, but none that really rise.

Chris Ryan

I think he wants to take a break from the water.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I wouldn't blame him. I mean, Moby Dick is kind of half unadaptable because so much of it is about, like, you know, sailing strategies around that time. But there's few people who can take on movies of this magnitude. What I'm kind of hoping for, personally is that there is a generation of directors who see a movie like this and want to attempt it and can convince studios to attempt it, that we don't just reserve a movie like this to the two or three living people who we know can make a movie like this, and that there are A few more chances taken. Because so much of the, like, CGI rot that we've gotten over the years with movies is. Cause people don't trust people to make stuff like this.

Chris Ryan

Practice. Yeah, And I get it. Cause, like, some of my favorite movies are things like Lost City of Z or Babylon, where you're like, if you were a studio hud, you could be like, I fucking tried. You can't blame me.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Nobody went to see this.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Ryan

You know, it's true. And it's.

Sean Fennessy

They're not easy to make and they're not easy to pull off, and they're not easy to get people to show.

Amanda Davin

And they don't always, always work. Even in our epic movie drafts that we had a lot of the greatest movies ever made. And then we're just like rooting around in the bargain bin for a third biblical epic that anyone wants to talk about.

Sean Fennessy

It's very true.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

You mentioned some of those forebearers. Do you think in 50 years or 100 years he will be studied as one of the great critical filmmakers in the evolution of the art form? This is assuming there are still movies at that time.

Amanda Davin

Time. I certainly, at least from a. A sociological and, you know, and technical point of view that the IMAX camera of it own of it all alone. And what that has kind of introduced in terms of everyone getting freaky with their VistaVision and being like XYZ, you know, I think will at least be worth like one day on a syllabus. Right. But the. The films themselves. Also the role that he played in the superhero, which is, you know, part of 21st century cinema at this point. And box office wise, I think Oscars wise at this point, I think he already has more Oscars than Hitchcock and Kubrick.

Sean Fennessy

He does.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. So damn well.

Sean Fennessy

Hitchcock has zero competitive, and Kubrick has one for visual effects.

Chris Ryan

I think you have to look at it in a larger context than just like, he's a great director and he's in his prime. He's also, I think, like a lung for the movie business and is like his sort of stepping into the void after Covid to like, bring theatrical experiences back. And his last few films, he held

Sean Fennessy

the fucking line on that. And like, I personally will forever be grateful to him for being that person who was just like, this movie's going fucking theaters. I don't care.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And I think imagining a future for movies that doesn't feel like, forgive me, like, but what if it was more AI or what if it was like, we've Rendered this world inside of a new, cool software engine. Like, imagining a way to keep being like, there's a person. This is the real world. I'm gonna shoot it, and it's gonna make you feel something I think is, like a really invaluable contribution, maybe even a bigger one than any one film that he's made.

Sean Fennessy

Just as a counterpoint to the question earlier, is it possible that this is the end of an era not just for him, but for movies, that this actually will be the last movie that is like that because of this, the incursion of this new technology that more and more people are signing up to participate with.

Amanda Davin

I mean, that's Ben Damon's talking point, right? That he said, you know, I took this as my last chance, maybe just because of where he is in his career. And he's not gonna do physical stuff at this level probably forever, though, you know, I believe. And we've made a lot of advancements in, you know, body hacking. And he went gluten free, he said.

Sean Fennessy

Did he?

Amanda Davin

So, yeah, he said that on the New York Times cooking interview.

Sean Fennessy

Couldn't be me. He did a New York Times Times

Amanda Davin

cooking it with Tom Holland. They made pizza. Yeah, The Pizza Kitchen.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I think that's corny, but whatever. Come make pizza with me. You know, this is a movie podcast.

Amanda Davin

What would you put on your pizza?

Sean Fennessy

What would I put on my pizza?

Amanda Davin

Right. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Gosh.

Amanda Davin

You don't make the pizza. Eileen does.

Sean Fennessy

Eileen makes the pizza.

Chris Ryan

High protein, cottage cheese.

Sean Fennessy

You know what I like is mushrooms.

Amanda Davin

Don't tell him about that.

Chris Ryan

I like mushroom mushrooms.

Amanda Davin

You left all the mushrooms on that pot.

Sean Fennessy

Bacon on there. Sometimes. Sometimes, you know, some fun.

Amanda Davin

Like, you ate the pasta out of the mushrooms. Okay.

Chris Ryan

But that was just like. It's like any kind of Bolognese. Like, there's just. The bolognese to pasta ratio is often off. I don't want to just eat a bowl of ground beef at the end of my pasta dinner.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Chris Ryan

And so the same went for this mushroom Bolognese that I had. I had lovely mushrooms with the rigatoni.

Sean Fennessy

We are recording this.

Chris Ryan

I just feel like I've gotten put on blast for this mushroom.

Amanda Davin

Anyway, so I think, you know, Damon has said this. I took this in part because this was the last time I would ever get to do this, and that is a referendum on his career. But also the way that movies are made now, I'm just hopeful that the bonanza that is this movie and. And the bonanza, in comparison with whatever sad Avengers shit is going On Dune

Sean Fennessy

Part three, though, is. Is similar to similar. It has a lot more visual effects work because it's science fiction, but shot in real places, on real landscapes in a way that feels like it's part of some natural world. Right.

Chris Ryan

I think that it's like, maybe. What? Like maybe we won't be able to tell what this movie means for 15 years and we can reconvene then, you know, the three of us.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And just be like, did we see a wave of filmmakers?

Sean Fennessy

Would you want to do that?

Amanda Davin

Sure.

Chris Ryan

Well, I'll be.

Amanda Davin

You'll be 64. I'll be right when I'm.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

You can give me a gold watch.

Sean Fennessy

You can say, thanks for the hours last up.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Will you retire?

Chris Ryan

I want to see where Bill goes. I want to see how Bill does Senior. His, his, his.

Sean Fennessy

Because you'll follow him anywhere or because you just want to know how to chart the path.

Chris Ryan

What's the appetite for an old version? Like a really old version of me being like, ah, you know, this. This succession reboot didn't work for me. I'm 74.

Sean Fennessy

What's the absolute oldest age you want to be while recording a podcast?

Amanda Davin

Is there video?

Sean Fennessy

There is video.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

They're not gonna take video away at this point. I don't think that's on the screen.

Chris Ryan

But you could be, like the Charlotte Rampling of video podcasts.

Amanda Davin

That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Thank you.

Sean Fennessy

What do you mean?

Chris Ryan

Just, like, just showing smoking hot at 70,

Amanda Davin

being like. Nothing else here makes sense. But I still look good.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. If I can look like Charlotte Ramplink, then, you know, age has no limit.

Sean Fennessy

Good to know.

Chris Ryan

What about you, man?

Sean Fennessy

This is it. This is the last episode for me.

Chris Ryan

I'm done.

Sean Fennessy

I just want to get to the Odyssey now. I'm done.

Amanda Davin

Done.

Sean Fennessy

You want to rank the movies?

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

Now, I suggested. Should there be two separate rankings here?

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Which is what? Should.

Sean Fennessy

Should there be my weird scale. And then you guys. But Amanda says she wants to have some.

Amanda Davin

But I also think that this is. We're not, you know, at odds. This is a collective,

Chris Ryan

as we are advocating. Or are we doing three separate. Separate rankings?

Amanda Davin

No, we're doing it together.

Chris Ryan

Okay, great. So I don't have to have, like, my preordained.

Amanda Davin

No, no, no. We're doing it together. And what he wanted to do is that we would team up because we have similar tastes, and then he'd do his.

Sean Fennessy

We have some pretty clear trash. Inside diversions in terms of I'm not gonna trash anything. I don't think anything here is worth trashing. I think this is a very interesting filmography. I think there are ups and downs. Mostly ups, both financially, critically, all those things. You know, I think most people will look at following an insomnia as 13 and 12 in some order. I want to check in with you about that.

Amanda Davin

I rewatched most of it last night. Okay. Honestly, I had a pretty good time. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I mean, it's. You know, if you're gonna put it at the lowest, it's because it is not a screenplay by Nolan. And it is, like, the least Nolan y.

Sean Fennessy

It's such a studio job.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. You can't use it as a text to explain every other movie. But, like, the action sequences are pretty good when performance.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I think it's pretty good. I mean, I remember seeing this in theaters because I love Memento. And I was like, okay, cool. We got one of these guys. And he is not what I thought he would like. He has turned into something I never would have imagined after watching that movie. After watching Insomnia, I was like, okay, so he's gonna be like James Foley or something, you know, like, really good kind of genre, like down and dirty gold kind of thing. Yeah. And he has obviously elevated beyond that.

Chris Ryan

It's so wild. Cause, like, if you watch it, like, you know, if you're in that era and you're going up, up until 2010, if you'd been like, next, Christopher Nolan is going to do James Bond or he's going to revive Indiana Jones, or we're going to give him this. I kind of would have believed you. Like, it wasn't like, now I'm like, you know, like, I have, like, literally no concept of what he. He could make next. But there was a safe pair of hands ness to him back then.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I think it was just that I was like, okay, he's. He's a noir crime director. Because following Memento and Insomnia are all just crime movies in different ways. One's a serial killer movie, one's a con man movie, One's a memory murder movie. But it's weird because following is very remedial. It's got a really great idea. It's made for a very small amount of money, clearly over a long period of time as a de facto student film. But. But there are a lot of jokes about this now, but it's all in there. All the stuff that interests him and the way that he Plays with time and the way that he removes or conceals information and then shows it to you in a shocking way. There's a man named Cobb in the film. There's a Batman sticker on one of the doors. All the stuff is in there. Breaking and entering, slipping away. A blonde, poorly written female character.

Amanda Davin

All of his stand in men who look and speak like Christopher Nolan.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, very much so. All of it suited men, by the way. So it's all kind of in there. It's pretty nifty as a first micro budgeted feature.

Chris Ryan

Or would you still put it at 16?

Sean Fennessy

Well, I guess it's more like. Is Insomnia just a better movie? Even if following is a more critical film for him? So how do you see it?

Chris Ryan

I think think I just enjoy watching Al Pacino, so I would, I would have Insomnia higher than the following. I think Pacino and Robin Williams are kind of like. And that's where he starts to, like, really start to move into, like. I can kind of identify something in someone that people like, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna emphasize it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think?

Amanda Davin

I really like more tyranny. So we can put following 13.

Sean Fennessy

Insomnia. 12.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

I tell you what, if I was asked to sit down right now, I personally would rather watch Insomnia than Batman Begins. I know that's crazy. I'm not saying it's better, but just in terms of what kind of movie watching experience I want to have, maybe that's because there are two other Batman movies I would much rather watch.

Chris Ryan

Is nuts how much more I watch Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises, and I just rarely am ever firing up Batman Begins. And part of it is because of the origin myth of Bruce Wayne stuff where I'm just like, I just feel like I've experienced this so many times.

Amanda Davin

But did you feel that way in 2005?

Chris Ryan

You know what, what I thought in 2005 was in some ways what I thought with Oppenheimer or with Odyssey, which is like, he's moving a little too fast. Like, there's not it. It goes from going to find Ra's al Ghul to Back to Gotham to, you know, like, it's very fleet of foot. But yeah, like, I, I, I am not a huge Batman Begins guy.

Amanda Davin

I was and remain absolutely terrified by this scarecrow in a way that I think it, like, is speaks well of the movie. That is an achievement that I basically don't want to watch it because I just can't see that it's a good call.

Sean Fennessy

He's a good villain.

Amanda Davin

So. So that recommends it. And I think I would probably rather watch any of the Batman Batman movies more than the really hardcore sci fi stuff. But that's just Amanda.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that's the issue is I have Inception somewhat low. You have Interstellar somewhat low. I would rather watch Inception and Stellar, even if they're not my favorites over Batman Begins. It's why I'm kind of throwing it out there this early.

Chris Ryan

I think you could put it at 11.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it.

Sean Fennessy

It's not bad. I think that's not. I don't mean to communicate that it's bad.

Chris Ryan

It doesn't have a villain the way that the other two do. And I think the counterweight of having Liam Neeson's good, but it doesn't have Jared opinion.

Amanda Davin

I mean, it has a rare Katie Holmes performance from this era.

Sean Fennessy

What do you think of that, Rachel?

Amanda Davin

Well, I think it was better for everyone when Maggie Gyllenhaal showed up. Maybe not better for Katie Holmes, but she's a street style star now. So.

Sean Fennessy

Is that what she is, Katie Holmes?

Amanda Davin

Yeah. I mean, she's also making and directing films.

Sean Fennessy

Have you seen them?

Amanda Davin

No, I don't think the new one with Joshua Jackson has been released yet.

Sean Fennessy

Wow.

Amanda Davin

But I'll see it.

Chris Ryan

What is the choice that Batman has to make at the end of Dark Knight? Is it you can either Rachel blows

Sean Fennessy

up, Save Rachel, or Harvey Dent.

Chris Ryan

All right.

Sean Fennessy

And explain to me again what happens. He chooses Harvey Dental, but he thinks he's choosing Rachel and Joker flipped it on him.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, I don't know.

Chris Ryan

It was spoiled for me by us just now.

Amanda Davin

No, no, no, no.

Sean Fennessy

Where's Rachel?

Chris Ryan

Okay, Batman begins at 11. What do you got at 10?

Sean Fennessy

Well, this is where it gets a little hard. I think this is, to me, this is where it gets a little hard. Are you guys going to say that you think Memento belongs here?

Amanda Davin

No.

Chris Ryan

Are you going to say that you think. Think Inception belongs?

Sean Fennessy

If it were my list, Inception comes in around here.

Chris Ryan

I think Inception's a superior film than Momento.

Amanda Davin

I. I do as well.

Sean Fennessy

I completely understand.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Again, this is why I offered the opportunity to have separate lists.

Amanda Davin

Well, listen, we're talking about it together. So if Inception is a no, would you like to offer something else? Would you like us to offer a counter?

Sean Fennessy

Sure.

Amanda Davin

Why have I taken the role of like, because you want to do it together. Yeah, that's.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. You want to do it together. Broker this peace between Chris and I.

Amanda Davin

I just want to heal. I want this guy back. Chris. And I mean, from Toronto, you know, just from the van ride.

Chris Ryan

We've been having such a good time today. I greeted you.

Amanda Davin

I agree. I just want to make sure that it's okay.

Sean Fennessy

Chicken?

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Remembering the good times. Third item.

Chris Ryan

I have a solution here for us. Okay, so we're trying to decide, like, does this. Does inception go at 10?

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Does memento go at 10? What if we put Dark Knight Rises at.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, I think that's right.

Amanda Davin

That's big of you.

Sean Fennessy

Now, Dark Knight Rises, you're the number one defender.

Chris Ryan

No, I am a Bane apologist. I think Dark Knight Rises is often quite silly.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, it is. It is. It's actually kind of amazing how bad it is at times, relative to where he's at in his career at this time.

Amanda Davin

But it's like a really good number 10. I think number 10 is the right place to put it. And then we can say. But honestly, it goes hard.

Chris Ryan

When it goes hard, it basically saves us from having, like, hurt anybody's feelings, because I don't. I love Bane as much as anybody else in his character universe.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Chris Ryan

But the movie itself is, in fact, sometimes kind of bad.

Amanda Davin

I think it's kind of weird.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, it's.

Chris Ryan

It's also so long.

Sean Fennessy

And this came out after Interstellar. Isn't that so strange?

Chris Ryan

It did.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

No, it didn't. Dark Knight Rises is 2012, Interstellar. It came out after Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises.

Sean Fennessy

Thank you. You know, it's kind of fascinating to think that a movie that has as much plot incoherence as Dark Knight Rises is from the same filmmaker as Interstellar who's, like, visually commanding the screen in such a profound way. Okay, I'm good with that. I have to be, like, a little bit of a jellyfish now. Like, you guys have to kind of tell me where you want to go.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

From nine through six.

Amanda Davin

So what you imagine a jellyfish experience

Sean Fennessy

is like, well, don't get too close to me or I'll sting you. But otherwise. Got it. I want you to have. We can have a safe distance. A brokered piece.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Amanda Davin

Your understanding of the ocean is always evolving.

Sean Fennessy

I'm from Long Island. I've always been. I've been surrounded by the ocean my entire life, and you refuse to visit it. I love the ocean. I hate the sand. This is a long standing take. If we can remember the Mediterranean.

Amanda Davin

I have said this to him every single time, and he's like, did you

Sean Fennessy

know I haven't Been.

Amanda Davin

No one would take us on a yacht in Cannes.

Sean Fennessy

It's a real Anakin Skywalker I hate sand situation. I just don't like sand, Okay? I don't like what it does, you know, I don't love the sun.

Amanda Davin

So then you get it. Yeah, it's constitutional.

Sean Fennessy

I get it.

Amanda Davin

We could get a pass.

Sean Fennessy

We could have an overcast, hot day in the ocean. That's the best.

Chris Ryan

An overcast, hot day in the ocean.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

That's what, like, they have when the worst of the worst is happening in the Odyssey.

Amanda Davin

And this is the man who wants to put Inception at number nine. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

You gotta have a strong point of view on things. That's how we get through life.

Chris Ryan

Have you revisited when's the last time you watched Inception?

Sean Fennessy

I watched it during COVID That's not that recent anymore. That's true. 21. Maybe you can, like, check my logs.

Chris Ryan

I'll pass.

Amanda Davin

Never say that to me again. Literally. Or.

Chris Ryan

I have to admit, if I had

Sean Fennessy

a diary, would you read my diary?

Amanda Davin

No. Yes. No.

Chris Ryan

My texting with you is probably.

Amanda Davin

Until I write the novel about you, and then I will use it as. You know.

Sean Fennessy

That's right.

Chris Ryan

I probably text you 8% less now because I used to be like, did you see this? And now I know I could just look at your letterbox, but that seems so impersonal.

Sean Fennessy

You know what? Just come on over to my house, ask me a question face to face like a man.

Chris Ryan

Come to your house?

Amanda Davin

Yeah, that goes really well.

Chris Ryan

PM and be like, have you seen the horror movie the Passenger?

Sean Fennessy

I think that movie is just called Passenger.

Chris Ryan

Sorry.

Sean Fennessy

The Passenger is an Antonio movie. I didn't see Passenger wasn't any good.

Chris Ryan

There's some good stuff in it.

Sean Fennessy

Classic.

Chris Ryan

Two and a half stars on zr.

Amanda Davin

Okay, look, are you always giving stars?

Chris Ryan

No, I only do hearts or no hearts.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Amanda Davin

Well, you just threw out a star

Chris Ryan

rating there, so I know that's like the general, like, review of people are giving it on letterbox. Okay, look, I think Inception is better than Memento. It's fine if you don't. Do you think his Inception is better than the Prestige? Because the Prestige is a Cult of Nolan fandom that I appreciate from afar but do not subscribe to.

Amanda Davin

Yeah, I appreciate it until those people try to say that it's better than Inception. It's like, Prestige is very good. It also just has a lot of your stuff. You know, it has Hugh Jackman and magic. So those are just two things that really speak to you. Right. You know, again, we're getting to some black licorice issues. For me, Prestige is really good, but don't be the guy that's like Nolan. But you know what's really good? The Prestige. I've heard and I'm okay.

Sean Fennessy

Any knowing Bowie is Nikola Tesla.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, come on.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Amanda Davin

He was cast.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that's in the film. It's in the text.

Chris Ryan

Heinz Ward. He's in Dark Knight Rises. I mean, we could just go through.

Sean Fennessy

Heinz Ward is a piece of shit. Fuck him.

Chris Ryan

Oh, that's right. AFC beef.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. God damn it. Stole what could have been a beautiful.

Chris Ryan

Is that what they call those?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, it is.

Amanda Davin

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Gotta bring those back.

Sean Fennessy

You think that'd be good for the NFL? Start severely injuring men on the field? I think the pro forma move here would be to do some combination of that, to do memento 9, the prestige at 8, and then run through the. Figure out the classics from there. Because that's okay.

Chris Ryan

I love that.

Sean Fennessy

Now, that's not what I want, but I will do it for the sake of getting through this podcast.

Amanda Davin

I'm okay with that.

Chris Ryan

I think that this is a filmmaker that. For. Because he's so popular and because he has been popular for a very long time, and because he has raised now two generations of filmmakers, filmgoers, you're just going to get a lot of variance in what people value. Like, the Batman trilogy is amazing. Dark Knight trilogy is incredible. It's not a huge. It's not a grower for me. Like, I think, like, I like it and I admire it, but it's not going to, like, pierce the. I'm not going to have Dark Knight in my top four. People might, you know, I do.

Sean Fennessy

I think I do.

Amanda Davin

I think I do.

Sean Fennessy

I do. It's interesting that he keeps stacking movies that I'm putting over the Dark Knight now as time goes on, which is really exciting. I think the Dark Knight, it's not quite an innovation, but it's a. What I like about it is that it's him taking great tools from older movies and applying it to a new. Like a kind of movie that is very popular at the time and. And making those pieces fit together.

Chris Ryan

Can I make a very strange suggestion? Suggestion?

Sean Fennessy

Yes.

Chris Ryan

Is that while we're doing this list from the bottom up, should we now reverse and go from the top down? Is it. Is it better for us to. Now from the second half of the list should actually be like, let's have the number one conversation. Should we do our own 10.

Sean Fennessy

I'm giving you guys a lot of room to move to me, because to me, I think Oppenheimer and the Odyssey are his best movies. I think they're his best films. So, you know, I'm not sure most people, I don't think feel that way. And sure, there maybe there's some recency bias, but I've talked a little bit about the things that he's doing now that I am connecting to more.

Chris Ryan

May I ask you a follow up?

Sean Fennessy

I would love it if you did.

Chris Ryan

Is Dunkirk in the top three?

Amanda Davin

Three.

Sean Fennessy

No.

Amanda Davin

Okay. I'm with him on Dunkirk.

Chris Ryan

Dunkirk's number one for me.

Amanda Davin

Dunkirk is top three for me. And I think we all, you know, know how I feel about the third hour of Oppenheimer and Interstellar. So we're going to have to start making some real, some, some group choices.

Sean Fennessy

Interstellar, I think is very good. It's. But it's never been a personal favorite of mine. There's. There's some of the sickest craft you'll ever see in a movie in Interstellar, but I find the plot to be very sentimental and it goes on and on and on.

Chris Ryan

Think it's a beautiful, beautiful passage of Interstellar. If you put it at seven, I think it's okay.

Amanda Davin

I also the McConaughey of it when I was. Cause I rewatched it again to try to give it a fair shot. And I know it means a lot to a lot of people, especially people younger than us, you know, who kind of who saw it at the right moment in their career. McConaughey is doing too much for me and it like tips it over too far into the sentimentality that you were referencing. Yeah, that's the movie to me that

Sean Fennessy

is more though about my life spent making movies without my family. And then as we go on and those themes recur, it's more like, well, my family can come with me now to any movie I make because I'm Chris Nolan. But that's almost like him remembering making the Dark Knight or the Prestige or something and being away from a newborn.

Chris Ryan

You want to put Interstellar something.

Sean Fennessy

It's so hard because you guys are going to have to give me more. Or if we're putting stuff, you know, like Memento and Interstellar to me are better than Inception. You know, they're.

Chris Ryan

So let's do. Which one do you like more, Memento or Interstellar?

Sean Fennessy

I like Memento, but I don't think that's a common feeling.

Chris Ryan

Interstellar, Inception, Memento. Is that too high for Memento for you. Because that would put Memento at five.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that's going to be too high for.

Amanda Davin

No, I like Memento. It's the best of the.

Sean Fennessy

To me, Memento is like a 1940s Warner Brothers movie in reverse. Like, it's a really, really sharp crime movie.

Amanda Davin

I'm pro Memento. Memento is, you know, the subhead of the Prestige of people being like, yeah, yeah. Remember before Nolan sold out and he made Memento, I get it.

Chris Ryan

This is my version of coming to meet you halfway. You know what I mean?

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Okay. We'll follow along with your move. So number one for you would be Dunk Kirk, when you say top three, like, literally, what would it be if you were making your own individual list? Because I'll roll with you guys on this if it's that high for you.

Amanda Davin

I think. I don't know whether I have Dark Knight or Odyssey at number one, but I would go with number one because. And I. And then. Let's see. So I. I mean, my top four is Odyssey, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Dark Knight. And I know that Oppenheimer has to be in the top four, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's fine.

Sean Fennessy

Would you put Oppenheimer in your top four? If you wouldn't, then we're going to end up putting it at something like four or five, because then it'll be just me.

Chris Ryan

I go, Dunkirk, Inception, Odyssey, Tenet, Dark Knight, Oppenheimer. I think.

Amanda Davin

I think I also have Inception. I would tie Inception and Oppenheimer. He's so mad.

Sean Fennessy

I'm not mad. This is just a chaotic act.

Chris Ryan

I mean, this is. I don't know where.

Amanda Davin

I don't even know where I am with myself right now. I know that I'm not helping. I know I've brought the spirit of discussion and then I'm just discussing into. Normally I have to be the decision maker. You know, normally I have not in my life. Yeah. And I have to be very clear.

Chris Ryan

We are working on behalf of Dom Cobb, but then I think also Sean and I are working on behalf of. Of men like Robert Downey Jr. Who

Sean Fennessy

I think my rankings right now are from 1 to 5 are Oppenheimer 1, Dark Knight 2, Odyssey 3, Dunkirk, Memento 4, and 10 at 5.

Chris Ryan

And Dunkirk is 6.

Sean Fennessy

And Dunkirk is 6. Because Dunkirk. I just always thought that the structure was a little too cute for its own sake because it doesn't really match chronologically.

Amanda Davin

Cute that all those men were stranded on the shore.

Sean Fennessy

I didn't say the. The events on the Beaches of Dunkirk were cute.

Amanda Davin

It's cute when they were just practicing for the Trojan horse when Barry Keegan

Chris Ryan

gets kicked down the stairs.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, no, I didn't say that.

Chris Ryan

And they're like, peter,

Sean Fennessy

You guys. You guys hash it out. You guys figure it out. Where do you want to go?

Amanda Davin

So Dunkirk's your number one, and yours is number six.

Sean Fennessy

And I'm in the.

Amanda Davin

Well, we're nowhere.

Chris Ryan

So I guess that then we meet

Amanda Davin

where Amanda is in the third hour of Oppenheimer.

Sean Fennessy

No, no, no. I'm saying I'll give you Dunkirk at two, but I can't. I don't think I can do it at one. Like, I can give you Dunkirk at two, but I can't do it at all.

Chris Ryan

Your number one is the Odyssey is Oppenheimer, and your number one is the

Sean Fennessy

Odyssey, and the Odyssey could be number one in six months.

Amanda Davin

Or I could do Dark Knight.

Chris Ryan

Or I could do Dark Knight is not his best movie.

Amanda Davin

Okay, all right. Okay, that's fine.

Chris Ryan

The first hour and a half is.

Amanda Davin

And also. So here's the thing. The first an hour and a half of Darkness Night, Electric, first two hours of Oppenheimer, Transcendent Trinity test, check. Like, absolutely. And then it keeps going. And then all the men are around rooms, and they're just like, you know, having flashbacks to two seconds ago being like, does the treaty say this?

Sean Fennessy

Watch the last 10 minutes of Oppenheimer this morning.

Amanda Davin

Sure. Yeah. It's up on his face, and he's like, what did I do? My genius.

Sean Fennessy

When Alden Eroich is like, boom, gotcha. To Downey and.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. Some senator named Jonathan.

Sean Fennessy

No, not that. That part. No, no, no. When he's explaining to Downey that of course those two men were not having a conversation about him. They were having a conversation about more important things. And then we cut to the Tom Conti Cillian Murphy scene, which is an amazing way to end a movie. And my big hang ups on a bunch of these movies is like, these endings don't work. The endings of the last two movies work so well to me.

Amanda Davin

How does that end? Remember when Rami Malek had a clipboard?

Chris Ryan

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sean Fennessy

He was working on that project with the other scientists.

Amanda Davin

And then he was there in the room being like, it was you, Mr. President, or whatever. I don't know what was happening.

Chris Ryan

Do you know what's a sick scene in Oppenheimer is when Casey Affleck is

Amanda Davin

like, that's so good. It's so good. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

He's like, his. What do you Say he killed Russians with his bare hands. Yeah. Good shit.

Amanda Davin

There's a lot of really good stuff in Oppenheimer.

Sean Fennessy

Should we move Prestige down to nine

Chris Ryan

and Memento back up since we've been

Sean Fennessy

speaking so glowingly of it lately? Because right now, Memento's at nine. Prestige. I would just maybe just flip Memento to eight and Prestige to nine.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Just. Just nine as a salve for me.

Chris Ryan

Then I will give you inception at 6. I know apparently it is more and more of a.

Sean Fennessy

Like, you're saying it's number two for you and it's top five for you, so then that's not fair.

Amanda Davin

Hold on. What are my. I'm just going to make a separate note with my top five. This is going really well.

Sean Fennessy

For the sake of a unified theory of Christopher Nolan, let's make Inception 5, because most people will want to see it in that space. And you guys both really like it.

Amanda Davin

I'm okay with it at 5.

Chris Ryan

Stellar.

Sean Fennessy

I would put Interstellar at 7 if I had to.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

That would be my choice.

Chris Ryan

I don't think we could put your number one movie at six, though. That's not fair.

Amanda Davin

What's your number one?

Chris Ryan

Oh, Oppenheimer.

Amanda Davin

Oppenheimer. Oh, yeah. Because we have all these other. So I think Tenet.

Sean Fennessy

I think Tenet goes at six.

Chris Ryan

That's. And you know what people will like. I think if we had Tenet in the top three, people would be mad.

Amanda Davin

People would be mad. And.

Chris Ryan

Not that I care.

Sean Fennessy

It's not about that. It's about what is just.

Amanda Davin

Tenet is just in the exception 5. I think this is. Right.

Sean Fennessy

And then this means that Oppenheimer is probably going to four here based on your takes.

Chris Ryan

I think Dunkirk's better than Oppenheimer.

Amanda Davin

I do, too. So what's left here? So then.

Chris Ryan

And then it's Odyssey.

Sean Fennessy

I don't feel that at all. It's crazy.

Amanda Davin

Well, we're missing a. What are we missing?

Sean Fennessy

We got. We're like 98 out of 100 in the dark Knight.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

It's actually quite fascinating to me when we depart in that kind of way. We depart that kind of way all the time. There's nothing shocking about that.

Chris Ryan

Dunkirk is because. Because everything with Dunkirk is what he is showing you rather than what he is telling you. And I think in Oppenheimer, it's a lot more of the reverse. Even though obviously incredible spectacle, but, like, it's a lot more of, like. And we had no idea what power we had unleashed. And like, in Dunkirk, it's like you

Sean Fennessy

think that's not important. It's survival to not speak that into the truth of the world.

Chris Ryan

No, but I think Dunkirk is like.

Amanda Davin

Like, I really liked it when he said it in the Odyssey. You know, a third of Dunkirk is

Chris Ryan

silent, you know, or there's no dialogue, you know?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Okay, so you want Dunkirk at what,

Amanda Davin

three?

Sean Fennessy

But then that means Dark Knight's going to two and Odyssey is going to one, which is recency bias. This is a mess.

Amanda Davin

Well, it's fine.

Chris Ryan

No.

Amanda Davin

Then change something.

Sean Fennessy

This is a mess.

Chris Ryan

This is deconsiderable.

Amanda Davin

Do you want to put Dark Knight at 4, Dunkirk at 3, Oppenheimer. I mean, nobody wants Oppenheimer at 1 but you.

Sean Fennessy

And I'm not pushing for it. I'm fine with Oppenheimer4.

Chris Ryan

I don't think.

Amanda Davin

I mean, I agree that this is

Sean Fennessy

a great idea for the episode.

Amanda Davin

It's too soon for the Odyssey to be number one, even though I do think that it is my number one.

Sean Fennessy

He said Dark Knight? No chance. So he's only allowing Dunkirk to go to number one. That's the argument that he is making. Now, you are, of course, a guest of this show and a crucial member of this team and community. So I respect your point of view, but you have to show a little bit more flexibility.

Chris Ryan

I'm being flexible.

Sean Fennessy

You have to tell us what's another film that could be number one that isn't Dunkirk? And you're saying there isn't one?

Chris Ryan

No, I didn't say that. I said Dunkirk is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. I didn't say it has to be at number one.

Sean Fennessy

Well, what should be at number one that isn't Dunkirk?

Chris Ryan

I think that the Odyssey being number one is a little bit cringe.

Sean Fennessy

I agree.

Amanda Davin

We all agree with that. We all agree. But we do have to find other solutions. You know, we gotta find the problem.

Sean Fennessy

Do you live your life worrying about appearing to be cringe?

Chris Ryan

No.

Sean Fennessy

You don't. You don't. I agree.

Chris Ryan

I just mean, like. I meant more like, do you. Let's be bigger than that.

Amanda Davin

No, I'm never cringe, but I do witness it everywhere that I go. I worry about other people being cringe all the time.

Sean Fennessy

I just got the name of my novel about you on the board, which is called I'm Never Cringe, a satirical novel.

Amanda Davin

Because cringe is all about self confidence, you know, and I've got it. But like other people, all those moms at the pool on Friday, that was the definition of cringe. That's what they were like.

Chris Ryan

Jimothy. I don't think they made it to the podcast.

Amanda Davin

Well, I don't. But now I found the word that I was looking for. They weren't mean. They were just really cringe in their own ways.

Chris Ryan

All right.

Sean Fennessy

So much.

Amanda Davin

And they were not confident.

Sean Fennessy

Recently pulling Lore from off mic into hour three of Pause on Mic, because

Amanda Davin

it's hour three, and much like a Christopher Nolan film, I don't remember where I am.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, well, there's just no good solution.

Amanda Davin

Okay, so we're not doing Odyssey at number one because we all.

Chris Ryan

What about the Dark Knight?

Amanda Davin

No, Chris is not doing that.

Sean Fennessy

Chris says no.

Amanda Davin

I mean. I mean, this is how we wound up with Oppenheimer on 25 for 25, which I still feel frustrated about, because there are many other movies made in Star Classic Century that are better than Oppenheimer. It's very, very good.

Chris Ryan

Well, maybe not coming around to the idea that the Odyssey should be number one. And just to stiff arm Dark Knight out and to make sure that, like, the Odyssey is perhaps his greatest cinematic achievement. Dark Knight's his biggest commercial success to date. How about that?

Amanda Davin

Tenant number one, Zag.

Sean Fennessy

Even I can't make that case.

Amanda Davin

Okay. Yeah, we tried in Toronto. Everyone was like, polite golf clap.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, exactly. They're like, you sure, guys, we wish you brought Inception. I don't know what to say.

Chris Ryan

What do you think of this?

Amanda Davin

What else can we move up? What else can we move up?

Sean Fennessy

The inevitable solution to this is that you guys will get to have Dunkirk at number one, and then everything else slides down the spot, and that's. What's. That gets to be the way that

Chris Ryan

Dunkirk would be your personal six.

Sean Fennessy

It would.

Chris Ryan

And it would be your three.

Sean Fennessy

That's by no means bad.

Amanda Davin

It would be my three or my two. It's very good. Good.

Sean Fennessy

Consider this my early 50th birthday present to you 16 months in advance.

Amanda Davin

I would do Dunkirk one, Oppenheimer two.

Chris Ryan

Ooh, I like that.

Amanda Davin

I'm okay with Oppenheimer at two.

Sean Fennessy

Well, now. Now. Now. Now you're. Now you're helping me out. That's really good. That's what I appreciate.

Chris Ryan

We get our way. But also, Sean. Yeah, I think that's great.

Amanda Davin

So it's called confidence and his Dark

Sean Fennessy

Knight going to three and Odyssey and

Amanda Davin

then Odyssey at four.

Sean Fennessy

Or is Odyssey going to three and Dark Knight to four?

Chris Ryan

I think Odyssey three, Dark Knight four.

Sean Fennessy

Personally, I think that's closer to how I feel about his career.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I think that's it. I don't. I got to rewatch Dunkirk.

Amanda Davin

Dunkirk 1, Oppenheimer 2, Odyssey 3, Dark Knight 4, Inception 5, 10@6, Interstellar 7.

Sean Fennessy

The Interstellar Boys are gonna cry that.

Amanda Davin

Listen, they've been. They shouldn't listen to this podcast if you expect us to ever let Interstellar fully into our hearts. That's cool.

Sean Fennessy

I think it's pretty. I think it's good. I'm not saying it's bad.

Chris Ryan

It's not cringe to cry.

Amanda Davin

And there are. Does it make you cry? I feel nothing when I watch Interstellar. I mean, I'm like, ooh, you know, Space. I'm into it.

Sean Fennessy

Is it elevated at all? Because it's early Timothee Chalamet.

Amanda Davin

No. I mean, I'm happy for him, but I kind of forget that he's in it.

Chris Ryan

Is that a Hans movie or is that.

Amanda Davin

It's a Hans movie.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. Hans blacks out with that black. When they go into the black hole.

Sean Fennessy

Do you think you could be friends with a theoretical physicist?

Chris Ryan

Sure. I can be friends with almost anybody.

Sean Fennessy

I've noticed that about you.

Amanda Davin

That is nice.

Sean Fennessy

One of your superpowers. Could you. Sure. I'm a curious person.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I'm assuming he's a good hat.

Amanda Davin

Absolutely not. I don't. I don't have. A lot of physics is just where I check out. I appreciate all the work that they've done in making our planes fly and, you know, other stuff. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Other stuff. Such as?

Amanda Davin

I was not. I, I. My mind doesn't work that way.

Sean Fennessy

So shall I read this lineup? I don't know if this is amazing or terrible.

Amanda Davin

Well, it doesn't have to be. It's not locked yet.

Chris Ryan

I think it is.

Amanda Davin

Okay.

Chris Ryan

And I think it's good.

Sean Fennessy

You guys gotta give me one next time. That's how I feel about this.

Amanda Davin

What does that mean? We gave you one.

Sean Fennessy

No, you got Dunkirk at number one, so you gotta give me one next time.

Chris Ryan

What's next time? When we do the PTA ranking, we have to let you say what?

Sean Fennessy

Well, last time we did that, I told Amanda, stand down. I got this.

Amanda Davin

Yes. I was like. I was just there to haze him when he put Boogie Nights at number three. And I was like, you're not being true to yourself.

Chris Ryan

That's right.

Amanda Davin

You know, you're betraying your own.

Sean Fennessy

You know what might be number one now is Magnolia.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. You've entered that phase of your life. It's really.

Sean Fennessy

I've rewatched it twice in the last two years. It's so fucking good and so free and insane. God. All right, anyway, number 13 following number 12, Insomnia. Number 11, Batman Begins. Number 10, the Dark Knight Rises. Number 9, the Prestige. Number 8, Memento. Number 7, Interstellar. Number 6, Tenet. Number 5, Inception. Number 4, the Dark Knight. Number 3, the Odyssey. Number 2, Oppenheimer. And number 1, Dunkirk. This is kind of like everybody gets what they want, but nobody gets what they want situation.

Chris Ryan

That's what compromise is.

Sean Fennessy

It sure is. If only the United nations knew how to cook like we do, we'd be in a much better place. We wouldn't have to make the Odyssey

Chris Ryan

put us in charge.

Amanda Davin

That's true.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Davin

Yeah. We are the civilization that rose again.

Sean Fennessy

If there were to be something we could literally be in charge of on

Chris Ryan

a national, global level.

Sean Fennessy

Well, he doesn't care.

Chris Ryan

I care.

Amanda Davin

But that's where the best ideas come from.

Sean Fennessy

You know, someone who's totally checked out

Amanda Davin

on something, he just. He brings, you know, the magic sprinkle. We'll make sure all of the important stuff happens. And then Chris is like, okay. And then what if Jimothy runs through?

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. Thank you to Chris Ryan.

Chris Ryan

My pleasure.

Sean Fennessy

For playing along with another silly game.

Chris Ryan

I thought this was great.

Amanda Davin

I'm so glad. It's nice to be back with you.

Sean Fennessy

It was a good discussion. Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Was it good?

Sean Fennessy

Well, I just think these movies bring out the absolute best of this show. I just think when something is serious and big but a lot of fun and everyone is watching it, it is my favorite time to be making this podcast. So I appreciate you guys doing the same and everybody listening along. Later this week, we are doing a mailbag. Big pick. Mailbag.

Chris Ryan

Send your emails in the form of a question.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. Send questions.

Amanda Davin

That's it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Just think of it this way. Jack has to work on this. He has to sift through emails. He is taking out time from his day to bring the best questions to us.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

If you waste his time with long disquisitions on CR's hat choices, then you're wasting our time. Don't waste it. We'll see you later this week.

Chris Ryan

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