Does modern writing actually suck?

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]Do I have any opinions on Doctor Who? So many. Too many if anything. I've only really watched the Eckleston and Tenant era. I'm not really up to date on my Hoovian law after that.

[00:00:17]Worst doctor. I I don't really know. I don't think any of the acting was bad. I think the stories were badly written for the actors.

[00:00:24]>> Like I don't think that Peter Kapowi was a bad doctor. I just don't think he got the best stories. I think Christopher Eckleston did a really good job with it.

[00:00:32]I honestly do think that Christopher Eckleston very much got the the depth of the fact that the Doctor does have a dark side to him. I think a lot of the modern Doctor Who stories cast them as like a bit of a a silly, goofy, zany person that isn't willing to do horrific things if they need to. Like I think the moment that I lost real interest was when Matt Smith said the line, "I wear a fez now. Fezes are cool." And I kind of thought, "You're literally just doing that to try and be weird." It's not that fezes were or weren't cool. It's that it felt a bit too tumbler to me.

[00:01:17]It felt a little bit too Katy to Penguin of Doom holds up spork lol random raw means I love you in dinosaur. You know I'm weird now. I'm going to have one of those mustaches tattooed onto my finger.

[00:01:30]So I hold it up and everything I have is going to be bacon flavored. You're replacing your personality with outward representations of quirkiness instead of inward understanding of what your quirks mean. I that was what I kind of didn't really care about as much. Whereas I think that the Doctor or the moments that I've watched of Doctor Who and I'm not an expert. The Doctor to me was always at his most interesting when he was doing things that he knew were on some level evil and wrong, but he was doing it for the right reasons.

[00:02:05]Or he had to contend with doing things that were right that he knew would come back and bite him in the end. Plus, Christopher Eckleston had to kind of take the new reboot of the Doctor and do, you know, take a brand new idea to it. John Hurt, the war doctor. There is a great episode where it's the one of the Betarian things. It was a Peter Capaldi episode where he's talking about the negotiations between two of races and says the the line is this is a scale model of war. How long is it going to take until you all do what you were meant to have done from the very start and sit down and talk to each other, which is just what a great line. The Zyons, that was it. Now, the Betarians are from either Mass Effect or um Next Generation. That one, the when I close my eyes monologue, that was beautiful. Mass Effect, that was it. It wasn't a Matt Smith episode. It was definitely a It was definitely Peter Kapaldi doing it. I guess the reason that I pushed away from the quirkiness was I think it was trying to appeal to the nature of people who wanted to be weird and different instead of exploring the the the tough difficult questions. I mean, one of my favorite YouTubers, JXie, has still has the quote. Now, that's what I call an inner conflict in of big I think they've still got it on their banner on YouTube, which was great, but that was a line that who was the who was the female actress that played Doctor Who cuz she was a fine actor. I just think she got given bad scripts to work with. A good script would not require the character to say, "Now that's what I call an inner conflict." Jody Whitaker, that was the one. Again, I thought that she did a fine job of acting. I just don't think she was given the best thing to work with. A character should never need to say, "Now, that's what I call an inner conflict." They should just be given an inner conflict, and you should just as a viewer be able to understand that's what's going on. I think unfortunately that we and this might be what people call the Netflixification of TV because I've had friends that have written for Netflix and they've said that there have been internal documents given to them and the instructions are the old writing adage used to be show don't tell but they know that people aren't paying enough attention so it's no longer show don't tell it's show tell show again recap tell again have a brand new character appear just to recap everything the audience should already know and after showing them the resolution, go back and make sure they definitely understood the resolution.

[00:04:47]Like you do it so much, so so much. It is the quiet part is not only said out loud, there is an entire episode dedicated to what the quiet part should be.

[00:05:00]And I think the final season of Stranger Things was guilty of this when you realize that characters just start monologuing and recapping everything they were doing. I enjoyed season one of Reacher. I didn't necessarily enjoy season two or three as much because there was an entire arc where he just kept explaining what he was doing constantly.

[00:05:19]I'm like, you don't need to explain to the audience everything that you're doing when the audience should really kind of just get it. They're starting to make telly for people who are not actually paying attention to telly. And I feel that a lot of the Doctor Who episodes started to become that. We are all constantly distracted. Yeah. They're encroaching on my territory. They straight up are. I'm the person that should be creating stuff that you're not paying attention to. And I think that the changing nature of TV represents the changing nature of the way that we consume media. We want stuff to be background. We want stuff to be second monitor. But TV writers still want to write complex plots. They still want to write difficult things. Which means a lot of the writers are now caught up in this awkward in between ground where in order to write something complicated.

[00:06:10]They need to accommodate the audience that they know is going to ignore it. They know the audience is not going to pay attention and so they are forced to create work that constantly reminds you of what's actually going on. I think this is what bothers me and when I started thinking about this I thought that I was wrong. I have not played all the way through Dragon Age Veil Guard. I have not played what was the other one? Um what was the game of I just move stuff with my freaking mind. You know the one I've not I've played bits of it. I started it and I stopped. I don't want to just be another go for spoken. That was the one.

[00:06:54]I don't want to just be another YouTuber or Twitch streamer going, "Oh, modern writing sucks, guys. Am I right?"

[00:07:00]Because no, it doesn't. There's a lot of really good stuff being written in the modern day. There's a lot of super cool stuff, a lot of great films, a lot of great books, a lot of great music, a lot of writing is good. But the kind of writing that I push back against, the kind of writing that I think I dislike is when the characters speak and act like the writers. And I think that's where I get irritated and that's why Veilgard irritated me because every character that I came across acted in this aloof we're going to be okay don't worry there's no real stakes kind of nature. Everything had a an anesthetic grip of forced irony to it.

[00:07:48]Everything had to be played not necessarily for laughs but for low stakes.

[00:07:55]Everything was dealt with with familiarity, with friendliness, with support. It often felt like I was watching a team of very welladjusted people try and not ever get irritated at anyone. And that I found really boring. I think modern writing suffers from the fact that they're not willing to let anyone be a genuine [ __ ] They will write characters that can be redeemed. Everyone has a a backstory that explains why they are the way they are. And there seems to be an almost playground friendliness to them. And if there's a playground friendliness, then character progression feels difficult. I don't necessarily want all of the characters to be nice to each other. I kind of like it when there's just like a straightup irredeemable [ __ ] I don't want to feel like I'm watching the second draft of a high school drama play where the characters are talking in modernday vernacular, modernday slang, treating each other with modernday sensibilities.

[00:09:11]You know, I think one of the best written and best acted characters. Ooh, that's a character called Cinderole.

[00:09:17]That might be a named character, right?

[00:09:20]Level 35, Tiger Mastery. One of the best written characters in kind of modern fantasy, I think, is Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Didn't you hate Joffrey? I mean, don't get me wrong, Jack Leon's acting was phenomenally good, but oh my god, what an absolute irredeemable [ __ ] Joffrey was fantastic. That was everything that character needed to be.

[00:09:44]And Bolton, yeah, absolutely. There was some good characters in there. But I think I mean Joffrey was still written 30 years ago. That was the thing. I think what irritates me about modern writing is that it feels like it's trying to be safe in I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase this. There is a level of modern or millennial writing that feels like I'm watching a Dungeons and Dragons game between a group of friends who have agreed that some of them are going to play the good guys, some of them are going to play the bad guys, but they're not going to do anything that upset each other too much. And in watching that, I struggle to invest in it emotionally. It feels like even the characters that are meant to be bad are still following a code of ethics and a code of respect. And I think that there is a pressure from the writers who are trying to outwrite each other instead of the writers who are just trying to make the best possible character for the story. It feels like yeah the writers try to write a character who speak like them. This is why I dislike a lot of the newer Star Trek stuff. That's a great way of putting it. Wham. In a world with no risk, you risk dying of boredom. My one of my old drama teachers, a guy called Jem Kelly. Je was actually in a band called the Lotus Eaters that had a hit called The First Picture of You. I don't know if anyone knows that song at all, but Jem was one of my drama teachers at uni. And his phrase used to be, and I'll never forget this phrase, the anesthetic grip of modern life permeates into art.

[00:11:34]And I never quite understood what he meant until I realized the phrase anesthetic grip does just mean that this safe, numb, painless, riskfree life is being imbued into the art that we consume and create and in doing so not exploring the depths of the human emotion that it could. One of my favorite old episodes of Star Trek is the one where Picard will insist that there are four lights. That is a guy being literally tortured. You know, Litwix, Dragon Age, let's I'm going to read this quote out.

[00:12:17]Dragon Age sold its base a responsive world, then blew the setting up that the loyal fans are created. The game was not created for the fans, but for Destiny players. Conflict that impacted the world state was a large part of how previous games had created tension. when that was cut down to the minimum world state. Have I read the June books? I've not. I have not. I've heard they're good, though. Oh, Chain of Command. That was the one. Thank you for that reminding me of the episode name of it.

[00:12:39]The problem is that there are so many, and this is why I don't want to get lumped in with this. There are so many culture war channels that jump on the lowhanging fruit of modern writing bad. Modern writing is not necessarily bad because there are some incredibly well-ritten modern things. I know that Everything Everywhere All at Once is not the most modern film anymore, but I think it's exceptionally well written. I mean, can you think of I mean, Expedition 33, I think, was one of the most beautifully and brutally written um video games of the last 10 years.

[00:13:18]The line, "You won't understand this now, but this is a kindness, not a cruelty," hits so much harder when you know exactly what that guy means when he's saying it. The fact that the the ending of Expedition 33, I just sat there looking at the final choice for like 10 minutes being like, I have no idea what I meant to choose here. And that was perfect.

[00:13:39]I think that I don't want to get lumped in with the modern writing bad therefore look at me I am very intelligent crowd because that is just a culture war grift but I do think that we are unfortunately seeing kind of the the shadows of modern writing trying to appeal to people that want they want conflict without consequences that's what I think happens conflict means that things will potentially change.

[00:14:11]They want conflict, but they don't want to deal with the harsh reality or the consequences of that conflict. I think the best way that I can refer to it is the well that just happened level of writing. I feel that a lot of writers and in this case I think a lot of kids who are watching these shows and trying to write their own thing, modern writing seems afraid to be genuine. And when I mean when I say what I mean when I say that is imagine having a really heart-to-heart conversation. A character A and character B are having this really deep connected focused emotional conversation. And then what happens at the end of that conversation is the writers are afraid to leave it on a level of depth that is challenging. And so they have to say something like, "Should we talk about something lighter?" Oh my god. Well, that just happened. Oh god. You know, wow, that got a bit too real, didn't it? And it's a way of adding this self-aware irony that removes the emotional genuine depth of it. It lacks that sincerity because it almost feels like it has to be self-aware and self-apologetic for the sincerity of it. Have you ever noticed that? You ever noticed shows that almost feel like they have to reference the fact that what they just did was quite emotionally powerful and being forced to reference it hurts it.

[00:15:42]Right, we've got two more quests we can go and get over here. I would just like there to be a deep conversation that doesn't end with, well, that just happened. I mean, it works in Deadpool at least. Someone mentioned the Deadpool. You know what K people do say?

[00:15:57]Write what you know. uh the the classic instruction of write what you know. I don't always have to believe that because people can imagine a hell of a lot of stuff. One of my favorite books is The Secret Diary of Adrien Mole, age 13 and 3/4 by an author that I think is called Sue Townsend. And Sue Townsend was absolutely not a 13-year-old boy when she wrote that book.

[00:16:18]But she just spoke to a lot of people, asked a lot of questions, and was able to write a really interesting, really compelling, fun story. So I think writing what you know can have a place but what you know doesn't necessarily need to be exactly what you write. I mean for example um Tolken Tolken didn't know elves and orcs and dragons and mer and you know epic fantasy but Tolken knew the indomitable human spirit. Tolken knew the power of a group of different people working together. Tolken knew the value of the journey over the destination.

[00:17:00]That's what he wrote. So write what you know doesn't mean the characters have to talk how you talk. It doesn't mean that the characters have to reference what you understand.

[00:17:12]Sometimes it can mean the characters need to value what you value. I mean Tolken himself served in World War I. He absolutely knew the horrors of war and he wrote that into the book. So he wasn't writing elves and orcs because he knew that. He was writing different societies because he knew conflict. I think modern writers when they say write what you know means what you know is your own personal vernacular, your friendship groups and your constant push toward a a balanced societal system. And so they go for that. to put this into perspective about how I think that modern writing sometimes isn't afraid is is too afraid to let emotions sit. Do you remember in it's either the two towers or return of the king when I think it's is it Mary or Pippen that is asked do you sing master hobbit and he then sings that incredibly heartfelt song while the montage of the final charge is played over the top. Pippen sings it. the final charge and at the end of it you know that something awful has just happened. Imagine if after that he had to do a selfironic self-referential but you know you know you should hear me rap kind of thing at the end. And I'm like you've you've taken this emotional buildup and you've played it for a laugh. You've taken something that was incredibly emotional and heart-wrenching and brutal and you've not had the confidence to lean into it. I think modern writing lacks the confidence to lean into the brutality that it wants to have.

[00:19:06]Lean into the brutality. Don't be afraid to do that. The problem with critiquing modern writing is the first thing you do is get lumped in with the culture war grifters who just want to hate anything that's modern. I don't want to hate anything that's modern. What? I hate things that are modern and using shortcuts to try and be try and be emotional, to try and be uh deep, but aren't committing to doing it because they're afraid of actually having emotional stakes. Yeah. I I just want to dislike things that I don't think are good without people thinking that just because I dislike something means I'm on one side of a culture war or another.

[00:19:43]Like, there are episodes of Star Trek that I think are old and terribly written. That's I'm allowed to do that as well. You don't need to like something just because it represents your team and you don't need to hate something just because it represents the enemy's team. You dislike when modern writing has to be. Yeah. It's you can have you can explore the idea of sexism and racism and classism within fantasy.

[00:20:07]In fact, one of the things that I liked about the first Dragon Age, Dragon Age Origins, was that everyone bloody hates the elves. And you can see that the elves have become kind of bitter because of this. And the first time you meet them, you're like, wow, I get why everyone hates you. You're a dick. And then you start to think, ah, hang on. Or are you just acting like a dick because everyone's been [ __ ] towards you? Which which one kind of came first with that?

[00:20:29]And then you're forced to question, hang on, do people dislike you because of how you are, or are you how you are because of people disliking you? What if this was and wasn't fair? If elves and dwarves didn't hate each other as much as they bloody well do, would the line, "Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an elf," matter the fact that it's then replied with, "How about side by side with a friend?" If that wasn't an actual overcoming of kind of pre-baked adversity, it wouldn't matter if they'd have been ironic friends from the very start. That would have not been any kind of progression.

[00:21:11]Surely the best way to not get caught with the grifters is to just not use the term grifters. Even when grifters try to hide behind reasonable takes l if the words and the terms work then the words and the terms work. If people are going to use them to dog whistle ah but actually we hate this because of this then that's kind of on them for doing that. I just want to point back that I don't dislike the fact because it was written by people or for people. I just dislike the fact that I don't think the writing is good. Yeah.

[00:21:39]Imagine if they were like, you know, how about side by side with a friend? And then instead of Gimly nodding and saying, I I can do that. He's like, you're so lame, Legololis. Oh, goodness.

[00:21:49]We're good chums, aren't we? And Legololis is like, oh, shut up, you. And then they go back to, you know, fighting together.

[00:21:55]The fact they were willing to hold the emotional energy, that's what I respect about that scene. Everything has to be ironically cringe, quirky. One of my favorite lines in the old James Bond films is you guys seen the film Golden Eye. I'm going to spoil Golden Eye for those of you who haven't seen it. Shaun Bean dies. And there is a at the very start there is the classic line for England James and then it's like for England Alec. And then they do the whole film and then at the very end of it there is a line where they fight. they actually finally have to fight and kill each other and he says for England James and he responds no for me and then he kills him but the fact that he had to say for me that was genuine that was like heartfelt he was doing that that was personal if he'd have just been like for England and then he'd have just been ironic with it he'd have shot him like for me shoot him and then been like well I suppose England does benefit and then walks off.

[00:23:01]Like, you don't need to make everything self-reerentially ironic. You can just hold an uncomfortable tension.

[00:23:11]Well, that just happened. Sha Bean doesn't die in sharp, which is the biggest twist. Stop making movies worse.

[00:23:19]I'm trying to just suggest things that would have absolutely ruined them in general. We want the audience to feel something.

[00:23:26]And in order for that to work, you need to be willing to hurt the audience because those movies get remembered. The tears in the rain speech in the first Bladeunner. Yeah, exactly. Don't shy away from being bold with it. And it's okay for characters to not want to help.

[00:23:46]Rudah didn't make up the speech on the spot. He curated it. If you guys have seen the original Bladeunner, the original speech that Rudgaher got handed, the tears in the rain speech was much much longer and actually much more detailed.

[00:24:02]But Hower himself edited it down and he basically said, "Look, this is what would matter. This is the core of the speech. If the emotion doesn't come across in this bit, adding stuff ain't going to help." and they let him do the curated version that he did.

[00:24:23]It was Ridley Scott, wasn't it, that I think did was it a Ridley Scott film?

[00:24:28]Blade Runner? I think it was. Another example of modern writing that I think people forget is that it is difficult to make a character that is meant to be existing in one fictional time period use words from the modern time period.

[00:24:47]And one example that I think someone showed me was that there are almost no uses of the word or phrase okay in a lot of older fantasy stuff because okay is a much more modern phrase. And hearing a character say, "Okay," in, you know, older fantasy settings would feel a little bit jarring.

[00:25:17]But if you look at a lot of the kind of more modern written fantasy series, they use it quite a lot. I think there was an example of that. They didn't say okay in I don't think they said okay in Lord of the Rings, but they said it almost immediately in it was Rings of Power or it was some of the newer written Game of Thrones. There's a modern energy that it carries it to it. Language and the words you use matter a lot and using the older language helps a great deal. Yeah. For Froto. Okay.

[00:25:53]To be fair, going too old school does indeed feel weird as well. Modern enough to understand, but not so modern that it feels out of place. That's the the balance. I think that's what I dislike about modern writing. I I can't It feels like I'm with This is what it is with a lot of modern video games and a lot of modern fantasy cinema. I feel like I am watching a modernday retelling of old events. I feel like I'm watching a modern-day play about the thing instead of actually being there and experiencing or immersed within the thing itself. That's what gets to me. The quip matters more than the monologue. But do you aim at the modern enough for a 60-year-old or a 15year-old? Because it will be different between the two. Sevie, as long as you ultimately commit to what you're trying to do, that's fine. I also think that as much as I like Thor, both Ragnarok and is it Love and Thunder, I think they have definitely done damage to what a lot of modern people see superhero films as needing to be. I mean, no one abs no one can comprehend old English as it was originally written. It has to be changed over. You would have to change Baleo, if you use an example of Beaowolf, the writing, the words would be way too archaic for anyone to really understand it or get it now. But wasn't there either a film of Bea Wolf or it was a Guy Richie film? Is it called For the King or something? There was a modern retelling of something and it was just god awful. What was the Guy Richie one? King Arthur. That was the one. Oh my god, the King Arthur film. And they were like, "What if we took modernday everything, modernday vibes and just stuck it into a King Arthur film?" Also, Jason Staithm was in a Pathfinder film many years ago. The actual um the the RPG game Pathfinder. I think it was called Pathfinder for the King. It's not a good film. Was it a Dungeon Siege?

[00:27:58]That was the one. Sorry. It was the Dungeon Siege film. Good lord. Did Pathfinder come before the game or after the game? That was a Dungeon Siege movie. I get them confused. The one was fundamentally changed. The terrible Beaolf was abysmal. I haven't seen it.

[00:28:12]Well, I haven't seen it recently. Ray Winston was in it, wasn't he? Not as bad as The Book of Vile Darkness. I have seen all of the Dungeons and Dragons films, including the the D&D original movie. Then there was Dungeons and Dragons Book of Vile Darkness, and then there was another one about a dragon slayer thingy. I've seen it, but it was bad.

[00:28:32]I have definitely seen it. What was it called? There wasn't the book the the third one was the book of vile darkness and the second Dn D movie was there was something else. The one with Marlon Wayans was the first one. That was the original Dungeons and Dragons movie.

[00:28:49]Jeremy Irons was in that and he was he was the only actor that was worth watching in that. Then there was a sequel and then there was another sequel, the third one. The third one was The Book of Vile Darkness. I think it was, but I cannot remember the name of the second Dungeons and Dragons movie. There was a subtitle to it. Wrath of the Dragon God. Thank you. Wrath of the Dragon God. That was the one. And it was absolutely godamn dire. Yeah, I've seen that. The first Dungeons and Dragons movie was It tried. It It really tried. The main actor that they got to play, um, I forget the character's name. He was fine. An effort was made. D and D one was just honestly Jeremy Irons [ __ ] around for an hour and a half. If we could have put Jeremy Irons and R Julia in any D and D film, I would have watched the whole thing. I think R Julia, the guy that played um Bison in Street Fighter. I think he would have made the most amazing Strad. If we were to do a D and D film, Ral Julius should have been Strad. He would have even that role up. You wished for a Monkey Island movie with Zack Braph. That could work.

[00:30:01]If we were to do a Monkey Island movie, who could play a good Guy Brush Threepwood? Because there's choice there. There's definite choice. Tom Holland could do. I don't think I could do it as well as uh some of the other actors. Who was Oh god, I'm forgetting so many actors names. Who played Edward in Twilight? He was also in the lighthouse with William Defoe. I think he could do Guy Brush Three, but Robert Patterson. I think Robert Patterson would nail guy brush 3wood really well.

[00:30:26]Like he'd lose some of the muscle obviously, but I think he's a great actor. I think Robert Patterson is vastly underrated for what he is. A lot of people just see him as this kind of really one-dimensional thing, but just just get Liam Niss to do all of the roles.

[00:30:42]Matthew Lillard could do it. We We stand Matthew Lillard in this chat. Good actor, entertaining actor. I've not seen Patterson in the new Dune trailer. I am very far behind on modern movies. Like very far behind. Don't don't even try to get me to catch up. I am not going to be able to do it. As long as we don't have another performance of Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, that's I'll be happy if that never happens again. As a massive fan of the Uncharted games, that made me very sad. Speaking of acting, have done any fighting action scenes like with swords long time ago. Combat and any kind of choreography is one of the things that takes the longest on almost any film set if you're doing it safely. A lot of respect for people that do choreography stuff cuz I've done fighting before on films. How are movie theaters doing attendance-wise nowadays? I don't really know. I've I'm super out the loop on that. Have I played the FF7 remakes? Yes, I have. But again, I haven't really focused on them.

[00:31:38]Sometimes when I'm playing games for fun, I'm not super focused on them. I'm just enjoying them. So, it's kind of hard for me to then recall them afterwards. Zack Braph could play it. He could play Guy Brush 3wood. I think they wanted to do many Uncharted movies and just never changed the main actor and wanted to go with a younger actor. So, Stardy originally, I think it was who played Sully in the Uncharted movie cuz originally he was meant to it was Mark Mark Wahlberg. I think from what I heard, Mark Wahlberg was originally meant to play Nathan Drake, but it took so long for them to get the movie made and sorted and actually out of kind of production hell that Mark aged out of being able to play a good Nathan Drake.

[00:32:24]And so they got in Tom Holland instead because he was off his uh Spider-Man fame at the time. But there is a fan film, an Uncharted fan film with Nathan Fillian playing Nathan Drake. And honestly, he just nails it. He just absolutely nails it. There is a straightup fan film that casts Fillian as Drake, and he is fantastic in it. I will canonically accept him as Nathan Drake. That fan film was short and fun, especially because halfway, you know, through they actually start doing a section as if it was the video game.

[00:32:55]Nathan Fillian is a hugely underrated actor. Nathan Filliam and William Finchner in a film together would make me very happy. That would be like my ideal casting of any film. Put those two together, I'll be super happy. Yeah, The Rookie is meant to be good. That's Nathan Fillian's TV show, isn't it? We had an Uncharted film. It was called The Mummy. Yeah, to be fair, The Mummy was an excellent film. Brendan Frasier could play a good Sully if you aged him up.

[00:33:18]You should go back and watch Castle. I love Castle. Castle was so bad. It's definitely an accurate representation or reality of police work. Castle was fantastic. It's I love TV shows that have really stupid premises and then just fully lean into them. Like I love the old Airbud movies with the fact that there's nothing in the rules that say that a dog can't play basketball. I'm like fantastic. Let's do this. We've aged out of movies where the hero was a talking dog or cat. And I think we need to return to that. I think there was a beauty in that. We've lost something. Do you guys remember the film Cats and Dogs? No. What? that would not get made because it is stupidly dumb and over the top and silly and I loved it. I loved it so much. The terrible furry one. It wasn't terrible and it probably was a furry one. Yeah, just bring back silly films like Look Who's Talking or Baby's Day Out. Films that they don't need sequels. They don't need prequels.

[00:34:16]They're not part of a franchise. They're just a really dumb idea for a bit. Films like Mystery Men. You know what a great example of a film that just would have been this would be was Shrek be before Shrek became a franchise that was exactly the kind of stupid film that I would have loved and I still like it. I think it's great but Shrek suffered from its own success and suddenly became a massive franchise. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there was a theory online that they were going to announce a new Shrek film. And then someone put up this Twitter post mocking what the film could be. And the mock was basically Shrek and Fiona have had a child and the the young child girl ogre wants to go out into the big world, but Shrek is a bit overprotective as a father and doesn't want her to go. But she rebelss and then goes out and goes on an adventure and Shrek has to go and save her, but actually realizes that in the process she is saving him and showing him what life really needs to be. There was there was a whole Twitter thread mocking what the script could be and then the film got announced as delayed and I really hope it's because that Twitter thread that mock just absolutely nailed what the film was going to be and they were like we've got to rewrite the whole thing now boys.

[00:35:39]They completely nailed the mocking so much the film had to be rewritten. I don't know if it's true but I want it to be. Oh my god. Around the world in 80 days. Isn't that the one with Steve Kugan? What a silly film. I love that. I hope it was just a holy It would really irritate me if the new Shrek film tried to play it to a formula because the entire point of Shrek was mocking the formula. That's what it needs to be. The point of the first Shrek film was literally taking the piss out of kind of fairy tales. That was the point. And now if the modern films are like, "Well, we're going to follow the formula of modern films." I'm like, you've you've forgotten what you were. Winter, do not get me started on that film. Wild Wild West. Jim West. I love that film.

[00:36:29]Kenneth Brer as the bad guy. What an incredible film. Wild Wild West was the film that Will Smith did after he turned down the Matrix. Wild Wild West is one of my favorite films. It is absolutely awful. It is one of the worst films ever made and I will watch it every time it's on and I will make you watch it with me.

[00:36:54]I will make people sit down and watch Wild World Wild World Wild West. Salah was in that. Will Smith. Oh my god, it's such such a fun film. The massive robot spider at the end. We've got a train, we've got each other, and we've got our wits. What has he got? He has an 80foot tarantula as it climbs out over the kind of canyon that they're in. And there's that scene where they've got the the metal braces on their neck and they're buried in quicksand and that flying metal disc is coming to to chop off the head. Remember when they get past the they get past the boundary and it shoots at them? Wild Wild West. It's so bad. Go and watch it. It is a film that I will watch every time it's on telly. I will never even attempt to defend it, but I will have a great time. Like just a straightup fun time. The Will Smith song for the movie was an absolute banger.

[00:37:50]It's a real irony that most Will Smith songs do slap.