iTunes Exclusive Episode Petes Dragon

Greetings, Empire Member and Ormembers.
If you are hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been
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It also means you subscribe to the show on iTunes because this time for another, ah, tunes
a squishy baby.
Welcome, it is the 227th one of these things.
My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer of the clubhouse podcast, and I have a really
vivid imagination that I'm not afraid to say it, tell our role, tell me get down, it's
what I do.
I'm not alone for this particular episode because I very rarely have ram.
Joining me across the desk is a man who, at least at one point in his childhood, believed
in dragons because we all did, he has Chad.
Welcome, sir.
I still do.
But only if there's a game of thrones involved, maybe.
No, not necessarily.
I have a spirit animal, he's a dragon.
Mine's an awkward turtle.
Also joining us is the official fact checker of this show, and a man who may have some
HSOs in this episode.
You may know in this fun, don, go, but it's mom and name him, Don Ford, I'm going to
come Don Ford.
Welcome, sir.
HSOs.
A hot sports opinion.
Okay.
But hey, I believe in dragons.
No dragons.
Come on, dragons.
That's right.
Well, we got one that lives in this house.
It's a matter of fact.
Whatever we do one of these things, it is to review something today is no different.
We're dipping into the Disney well today, kids, because Pete's dragon has returned almost
30 years later, actually a little over 30 years, no, just short, just under 30.
I've really got to get my math skills under control.
As director David Lowry, who did ink them, body saints brings us the remake of Pete's
dragon from the, from the, from our friends at the Walt Disney Company.
First up, before we start this whole thing, we got to think Susan, Jen, everybody,
Susan Jacobs and Disney for the invite.
You know, it was great to see Susan at the screen.
She was sitting right behind us, and they do such great work over there, Jen is so amazing.
We love those people.
We're so excited.
So thankful that they love to get us, but let us, let us do these things.
What is going on with me and talking today?
You're just rushing.
Slow down, and that's been a long week.
Conchegate the verse.
Okay.
So to say this is a remake of Pete's dragon might be a little bit presumptious, because
really, to reimagining.
I would say it's a reimagining, because really the only things these things have in
common repeat in the dragon.
Right.
Oh, they, I mean, I, I've told you this before, but in the Empire now, I haven't
seen the original in decades.
I kind of like barely remember the outside of Star Wars.
Outside of Star Wars, this film owned my childhood.
Okay.
I had the view master.
But it's been a long time.
I mean, do they, so a week we get into this later, but I just want to know later
if the plots, how much are they do really different stuff like that?
Oh, yeah.
They're almost completely different.
It's, in this particular telling, Pete is basically orphaned as a child due to a tragedy,
and basically is living in the woods with a dragon whom he named Elliott.
Six years after the accident, he is discovered by a park ranger, played by the great
Bryce Dallas Howard, whose name is Grace.
She ends up taking him back with her to live with her, and there's all kinds of things
going on here.
She's about to get married to a guy named Jack and Jack's brother, Gavin, and basically
excavating some of the woods, and Jack's not a really nice guy, and then you've got
their daughter Natalie, or you've got Jack's daughter Natalie, who Grace is about to marry
in.
She's the one that actually finds Pete in the forest, and then there's also Grace's dad,
meet him, played by the great Robert Redford.
There's a lot going on here.
It's not suicide, it's quite a lot going on here, but there's a lot going on here.
But it all kind of works out together.
Right.
It's about an hour, 40, which is a little bit longer than your standard Disney fair, which
is fine.
But I didn't really have, I think I was a little worried about the first 10, 15 minute
scene to drag a little bit for me, but once it got its feet underneath it, to me, we were
off to the races.
I mean, you're talking about people like Oaks Fegley, who you might remember from the
last season of Boardwalk Empire, playing the young Eli, Una Lawrence, who you might
remember as the daughter from Southpaw in an amazing performance, great film, West Bentley
plays Jack, Carl Urban plays Gavin, Isaiah Whitlock Jr, who you might remember from a little
thing called the Wider, is in this as well.
I wanted to hate this film, I'm just going to say, I know you did, you did this, this movie
means so much to me when I was a kid.
Like I said, outside of Star Wars, this was the movie.
And then I was seeing trailers for this thing, and I was like, easy killer, something
just beeped.
Was that you?
But that I know it.
I was kind of like easy killer, easy on this.
And then I was seeing more trailers, and I'm going to be called on.
This is not, there's, there's an ill wind blowing here.
Yeah, you were, you were really worked up over there.
I want, to me, Dragon shouldn't have fur.
You breathe fire, furs a bad idea, and we'll get into that.
So I'm even as I'm walking into theater, I'm like, I'm prepared to leave this, I'm prepared
to leave this theater angry, fully prepared.
Now, not, not a cup, angry, but I am prepared to be let down.
So if it sucks, I'm going to be okay because I'm prepared for that, right?
Like how we felt when we saw a whiplash last year.
As I texted you after the film, five words, two sentences, well played Disney, well
played 10 minutes in, and I'm emotionally invested because they hook you click.
They do, they really, really do.
And this, for me, this just worked on so many levels.
Now levels that I wasn't even expecting it to work.
Like the, the, the friendship theme, the family theme, just hitting you in the fields when
you need to be hitting the fields.
It was, whereas the first one, the original from 77, which you have much fonder memories
of than I do.
I was never a real fan of the, as I put in my written review at www.clobastpodcast.com.
Which is our website, that these, that the aesthetic, that the 70s Disney Studios films had,
they all kind of had this pie in the sky, kind of, they were all very 70s, let's just
just, yes, yeah, they were all, they're mostly hokey cornball, but I was, but that was,
I don't, and that, but we didn't know, like we mentioned the witch mountain films, huge fan
of those.
They ever got into them.
You mentioned the Apple dumpling game films, huge fan of those.
So as I'm reading here review, I'm like, not really, you know, not really helping my kids
cause with me because I don't know, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I was trying to set up like
where we were, where we were in the 70s with Disney, with those examples, you don't
to tennis, to where tennis shoes and condo manly, the computer that worked, what did I say?
So the tennis that worked.
The tennis, the tennis, okay, the black hole and, and condo man, we're my two favorites
from this.
Oh God.
So condo or man, I enjoyed the black hole, I enjoyed because I think I was too young
to really see all the drug and do some references towards the end of it, watching it as
an adult going.
Wow.
This doesn't hold up.
Yeah.
And it, like, the abyss ended.
Yeah.
We had this great action film and all of a sudden it became, it became 3,000, yeah, I'm just like,
I have a question.
Yeah.
But they, you know, they all kind of had this look to it and so they were trying to go with
the melding of, of their, of their other worlds in, in animation that they've done
it twice before with Mary Poppins and Bed Dobs and broomsticks, two varying degrees of success.
Mary Poppins was a massive, which we're getting on a remake of by the way, indeed.
And the director of this film is going to be doing, I don't know if you saw what am I
really, they were, they were going to be doing the remake of Peter Pan that Disney's
going to be doing, which is going to of course come after Beauty and the Beast, which
is next year.
Very, and Vossal, very happy to know that this guy's local.
The, uh, represent graduate from, from Irving High School, right, just read from my
office.
So, you know, it's, it kind of does my heart good to see that, but it, to me, this
film didn't seem like it was really ripe for a remake because I don't think it had that
much of an impact outside of very young young kids that embraced it like much like you did.
I think that, if this had been a straight remake, it would have gotten the Charles Barkley
rating.
Yeah, turbo or if they were doing it, the way they did it.
Now, they just done straight animation.
Right.
The animation.
It probably would have put a bit.
They kind of got smart with it because Larry also co-wrote this.
So they were, I think they just had on to it and they're like, look, if we're going to do
this, we have to change the bit.
Right.
And that concern me, of course, going in.
I was released.
But I didn't want the fatally family, but the deeper this thing went, the more relaxed
I got, like, there was on us to God emotion in me as I'm watching this film, just because
of the overall theme, I lost track at how many times I welled up.
Now, we have invented our opinions, I'm going to be over here, biting a piece of metal,
go to the other side of the coin, because even before we recorded this, we already had
our written reviews up at www.theclubhousepodcast.com, which is our website.
So I know what's about to happen, and if you've read the reviews before you've listened
to this, you also know what is about to happen.
Let us say upfront, one thing that we, one of the core values of this show is we respect
each other's opinions.
We do.
That being said, I give down the floor.
Now, first off, we've been with Susan Jacobs for a long time, and they want our
opinion.
Huge fan.
Yep.
And we appreciate that they want our opinion.
I had a couple of problems with this film, and one thing I could not get over is the
Dragon itself.
Okay.
It reminded me so much of solely from Monsters Inc.
You did say that as the film ended, as you were getting ready to leave.
I mean, they're not remind me of a Dragon.
When I think of Dragon, I think of Dragons from like Pete's Dragon.
I think of Dragons from Game of Thrones, and the image of that Dragon just did not work
for me.
Even before the film started, a fellow critic said, we brought up the point that probably
it's furry, because it was getting right next to you.
Yeah, we're gonna rename name, but this critic said, well, the thing if they make it
furry, they could sell a lot more of these at the Disney stores than if they're scaled
and stuff like that.
And I totally understood where you were coming from on that, and I thought I was going
to have that same.
I did.
I just cannot get over that for some reason.
It just did not remind me of what you think of a classic Dragon.
When it was a friendly dragon, they still have scales, they don't have fur, because if
they brief fire, they're going to be burning themselves up, because I was right there with
you.
Exactly.
But the deeper I got into it, it was the weirdest thing.
I just couldn't get over.
Kind of remind me, also like the three-headed dog from the first Harry Potter film, you
know, it just had that look of like it did not remind me of a dragon.
That was one thing that I just cannot get over unfortunately.
The other thing is the film, I understand, I respect you guys as a opinion and everything
like that.
Even for a family film, I could thought the first half, I really kind of liked, but
the last half, I just thought I got two way, way too predictable.
And I think they really tried to press the emotions out into the audience.
They tried to really, you know, you always say the cheap pops of the employee, they try
to do the cheap emotions where they really try to press the emotions onto you and just
instead of letting a film do it.
They try to push the envelope on trying to get you emotional.
I can see how you would say that definitely.
And I mean, there's some great things, acting going be wrong, right?
You know how much of a fan of an oon, I am, and you got red for gnaw, that's stuff in the
CGI was incredible.
It's just that those were the two big hurdles I just cannot get over on.
But I guess for me, I just looked at it through the lenses of this is a kid's movie.
I understand it.
So you kind of have to simplify it.
So I guess that's why it did bother me like it bothered you.
The last time I got, even for a kid's film, I thought it was too predictable.
I just thought myself.
There were moments that I honestly laughed out loud, yeah, you know.
There were moments where I was, you know, fighting back the sniffles a little bit, not
going to lie to you.
I didn't even find it.
I mean, don't worry.
I mean, there's a lot of great things, there's just a couple of things I just cannot get
over unfortunately.
And you know what?
I can watch Bryce tell us how I read the phone book.
I'm okay with that.
Yeah.
And side note, yeah, I still haven't seen the last thing you big movie she did or which we won't
mention on this podcast.
But that's a different issue.
Yeah.
Uh, again, I really enjoyed this.
I adore this film.
It is probably my favorite film of the year so far.
Wow.
So we've both, you and I have both established our top of the list at this point in the
year within the last week, we're last week and a half, really, because we reviewed another
film last week that I am putting at the top of my list currently.
This one right now, I believe still sits in the top 10 with three and a half months to go
in the year, um, there's that, no, yeah, three and a half somewhere around there somewhere
in that neighborhood.
Again, it's a public school math.
We can do.
Go for it.
No, three and a half.
Because we're in August.
So you'll have several October and we're about halfway through August now.
I'm not going to say my favorite film of the year, but right now it is sitting in the
top 10.
Now of course, a lot of room to maneuver because there's a lot of time left.
Yeah.
Yeah, but this is going to be nowhere near my bottom of the list at all and it just
everything worked for me and I'm glad it did because my hope for this film is that there
are kids that are going to feel about this film, the way I felt about the original.
And I think that's what they're going for and I hope so because now you have our generation
who has these kids and in some cases, their kids have kids and you can share that experience
with them because you know, sometimes you go back and you look at those films from our
kid from our childhood and kids are just like, yeah, I got nothing because on a certain
level, they've been kind of spoiled by modern effects.
Yeah, I mean, I tried to read this at the original and I'm like, oh, God, this is an
age.
Well, but the story backs it up too for me, even though Don felt it was like inside
out.
Zootopia.
I love those plots.
They were great plots, loved everything about it for something for some reason this one just
didn't quite.
I hate to say it reminded me of left behind and how they tried to really push the motion
I think they did on this one too.
Okay.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Are we ready to do a final analysis here?
Sure.
The way we do the final analysis on this show is kind of different if you've never joined us
before.
We're not going to give you thumbs up thumbs down.
We're not going to give you stars.
We're not going to give you letters, numbers, anything like that.
Our audience, whom we affectionately refer to as the Empire, they want us to dig a little
deeper.
We're going to dig a little deeper.
There's up to two questions that will be asked in this question number one I'm going
to ask of these gentlemen, is would you see this film again?
If the answer is no, then we're done here.
But if the answer is yes, then I move to the second question is to see it again how far
you're willing to go.
So from the spectrum runs from top to bottom as follows.
Top ranking is I would pay for it at an evening show full price.
Below that we go to Twilight, Matt and A, early morning, second run at the dollar theater,
bedbox, Netflix, table, Chad, would you see Pete's Dragon again?
And I am X 3D, Dolby Atmos, whatever.
And you know what, let's address that for just real quick too.
We did see it in 3D.
The 3D didn't do much for me in this one.
Anything involving flight.
And if you've got a perspective of the person on the, yeah, anytime you take aerial shots,
I love it in 3D because there just wasn't, for me there just wasn't the depth that
normally 3D does.
But still.
So Chad, Chad's putting it on top of the list here.
Dom, would you see this film again?
No.
I'm being on.
Hey, you're honestly, is what we ask?
I mean, we don't have to agree with it.
But I'm being honest with you guys that I probably won't watch this again.
It's just, I just didn't, didn't catch for me, you know.
But I could steal to the families.
I could still recommend it as a matinee to the families.
Okay, you know, but I just personally won't see it again.
First, I felt like this was the film that BFG wasn't for Disney.
I will agree with you on that front.
Although I thought the 3D and BFG was better.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I would, I will definitely see this again.
I will probably own this.
Oh, I will win.
It's available on home formats.
I would go pay for price at a theater.
But I would have to have people with me that hadn't seen it.
Yeah, you know, maybe somebody that's got kids that once ago,
or maybe they don't want to go and their kids do.
And I'll just hop him in the car and let's go.
I'd love to take my daughter to this.
I think she'd love it.
It's, I mean, I really enjoyed it.
It was kind of split in the room.
But that's okay.
I mean, that's why we do what we do.
Yeah, again, before we end this thing,
we got to see this in 3D.
So we got to get him got to think.
Susan, Jen, everybody, it's Susan Jacobs
and the great people of Disney.
They do such a great job.
Oh, great people.
They give us the opportunity to review these films
for the empire in advance of them actually releasing.
So we can give you our opinions.
And hopefully we'll help you make good choices.
Because that's what we try to do on this show.
Again, it is the new version of Peach Dragon
directed by David Lauer, a gentleman.
Let's do the plugs.
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Oh, yeah.
Well, Charlotte?
Good time.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Our normal show every Sunday night at seven Eastern
for Pacific is your one-stop shop for all things pop culture.
So until next time, for Don, for Chad, for the Empire,
I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is close.
Brittany Palmer.
Just working with Bryce Dallas Howard as a park ranger.
I'm telling you.
I'm telling you.