iTunes Exclusive Episode The Last Witch Hunter

The following is a sooner orgator production.
Go on.
Go on, Bernie!
Jump.
Stop.
Are you ready for the jam?
I said, are you ready for the jam?
Yo, G.
Kick it.
Run or flee!
Jump.
Jump.
Go.
Go on.
Jump.
I said, I already for the jam.
Jump.
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Empire member and or members.
If you're hearing this sound of my voice right now, it means the following conditions
have been met.
It means at least once in your life you have listened to the clubhouse podcast, your
one-stop shop for all things sports entertainment, live every Sunday at 70's from 4
Pacific.
It also means you subscribe on iTunes because it is time for another.
The 146th one of these, welcome.
My name is Rob by the Executive Producer of the Clubhouse podcast, and I own a broom
but I've never tried to ride it anymore.
I am not alone for this particular episode, also joining me across the desk is my co-host
and a man who october is his favorite time of year for multiple reasons.
He is chat.
And indeed it is sir.
Also joining us for this particular episode is the official fact checker of this show and
a man who again, we will neither confirm nor deny the number of pumpkins on his front
porch.
You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mom and even don't want to call him, don't
for the welcome sir.
I got 3-16 of him at your boy, so I'm saying negative sir, that's your boy.
Whenever we do one of these, it is usually to review something and this is no exception.
We are here to review a bit of negative, we are here to review a film today, the latest
from director producer, Breck Eisner.
You would know him directly for some things like Sahara and the remake of the crazies.
His latest directorial effort is called The Last Witch Hunter.
Before we get on this whole thing here, sir, we got a new friend of the show.
Do we?
Julie Fister?
Yes, we do.
She's not a new friend of the show.
She's just a new friend in their current station and also in a new capacity, but we
got to think Julie and Candace and her band, Breck, for this thing, and also some entertainment
for releasing a movie too, so Julie, I will look forward to a long relationship.
Thank you so very much for the invite.
So, The Last Witch Hunter stars Vin Diesel.
He is a guy by name of Calder, which he actually took from his old D&D character, God bless
him.
And many, many, many moons ago in the 12, 1300s, the dark ages, let's just put it that way.
He is out with some friends of his hunting down a witch queen.
They find her, called her defeats her, but in doing so, she passes on to him the fact
that he cannot die.
He is immortal.
So he spends 800 years wandering the earth like Cain and Kung Fu, except he's wondering
a lot longer.
That's true.
Fast forward to modern day New York, where he is still doing what he does, and through
the centuries, he is accompanied by a priest they call the Dolan.
All of them have that name.
And the 36th Dolan is played by Michael Cain, and when some auspicious things happen to him
and another Dolan comes in, the 37th Dolan played by Elijah Wood.
They go looking for answers to questions that maybe don't quite surface early.
Also featured in this film is Rose Lesley, who you might remember from Game of Thrones.
You know nothing John Snow as E. Grant that is her.
We talked about Elijah Wood also in this Rita Owen and others, I'm going to kind of stop
there because I don't want to go too deep into the cast, but Chad, let's start with you.
This thing runs about an hour 43.
How was the story for you?
It seemed a bit disjointed to me.
Okay.
Fair enough.
How so?
Well, because like you said in the opening that the first, what would you say 25 minutes
or so?
Maybe not even that much.
Probably that first 20 minutes of the most takes place in the dark ages.
And then they just...
That's not what happens when I lose my power.
And it just kind of leapfrogs into the 21st century.
Indeed it does.
But I really feel like the story would have been served a little bit better.
This is just me.
I don't know if either one of you will agree with me on this, that the story would have
been served a little bit better.
Had we gotten to no colder in his original element?
Okay.
Got to know his family, got to know his fellow witch hunters before we just fast forward
into modern day New York.
That's just me.
That's just me.
I do have a statement, but I'm going to hold on to it for just a moment.
What I put up my written review at the clubhousepodcast.com.
That's our website.
Basically, I can put on this the plot I really like the first half of it.
And then after that point, I think they just dropped the ball big time.
And how I kind of put it on the review is like they probably start the script with some
real experience Hollywood writers.
Okay.
And then they said, okay, we're going to take a quick break here right now.
And then what we're going to do is have some intern come in and finish the rest of it.
And this intern has no experience and he's high on the red bull high on the red bulls.
He had kid with the clothes in the air.
Yeah.
It was that just that of a turn at the horse of a ending.
I just got too confusing to did make sense to what that what is going on now.
Please just shoot it and give it to get itself its misery for the first half I loved.
I loved the first half.
For me, I guess I didn't see it as badly as you guys did.
I thought it was paste well.
There were plot holes.
But we found out just shortly after they wrapped principle photography on this that they're
going to franchise it.
So I guess my question becomes, if you're going to franchise it, why don't you assassins
Creed this thing.
Have the first film take place in the dark ages.
He becomes immortal and then the sequel you could move him through history.
Exactly.
You got to take hundreds years to work through it.
I just it seemed like they were in such a rush to have it take place in in the modern
era that they squandered a lot of their opportunity.
Do you think that might do a prequel that's that's something that I put in my written
review at the clubhouse podcast.
That's our website.
Well played sir, so glad you enjoy that.
I do.
It's a simple thing.
I mean, maybe that is their ultimate goal.
I mean, I know that we saw a similar film in this vein earlier this year of the 7th
Sun, which I mean, it's based similar of the first 20 minutes.
Well, yeah, I mean, they're dealing with similar subject matter.
And I know that I know that that movie didn't care very well at the box office, but
I know that that had nothing to do with this film because they were at principal photography
on this thing back in December of last year, indeed.
So this was their plan all along, apparently.
And I really do hope that they do a sequel and set it back in his in his formative years
when he's learning his craft visually.
It was great.
Yeah, look for some great visual effects here.
This will maybe those special effects like when they're in that bar, which is four basically
witches and you see those drinks going out and they have that like floating smoke above
them and all that or and stuff, those were in beautiful shots.
I was really into those kind of scenes like that.
So I thought they're very good at that.
I thought the visuals were great here and for the non-magic parts, I thought it was fine
for the non-magic parts show New York at night and stuff like that.
I have no problems with it.
I also liked one of the plot points here is that the witches are allowed to exist
because of a truce between witches and what they call the the Axon Cross, which is
who the doughman's work for.
And whenever, whatever color catches a witch, he has to bring the witch in front of a
council and the council will sentence them accordingly.
I thought a lot of those scenes looked cool like when the witch was was sentenced because
I had this fear of the hell sequences in spawn.
But I never saw that.
The visuals looked good here.
The Sentinel they used to dispatch, that was pretty cool.
Said convict to their breach of punishment is pretty dang impressive.
I mean, there was never a point where I was like, ooh, probably could have done that better.
Visually, I thought it was cool, like when you actually saw the person, that was awesome.
Some of the dream sequences I thought worked really, really well.
Performance wise for me, my favorite performance in this thing was Julie Engelbrecht, who
played the witch queen.
She was just awesome.
I just wanted to like to have seen more of her person.
Indeed, indeed.
They did, they did.
It's an inside joke for people in the Empire.
I thought, well, go ahead.
My thing would Vin Diesel and I like Vin Diesel.
I'm not a Vin Diesel here, like a lot of people are.
I think the first one, you know the guy loves him some of him.
Let's just be honest.
But he has fun with it.
I mean, if you've ever seen some of his videos on Facebook, they're absolutely hilarious.
But for a character that he owns basically, so he's going to star in the thing.
I just didn't, I didn't get that vibe from him in this.
I thought it was a bad choice for him because he's still kind of had, even though he's
from medieval times and had the English accent, all of a sudden now, he has a Vin Diesel
swaying accent from the fastness of furious.
I thought, well, I didn't think it would.
I didn't think it would.
But that part of it for me was just him adapting to the time he was in.
Yeah, I mean, but if you could compare this to anything, something like Highlander,
a guy that's been around fighting a magical force for centuries, and he didn't, he
doesn't hold on to his old Scottish accent, he doesn't speak an old English, you know,
you know, I was spudnier.
Yeah, let's not go down that road, particularly, but you know, you don't expect him to
keep acting the way he acted, you know, 800 years ago.
He's got to adapt.
But it might be a depth better than most people.
My problem was I don't know who I would cast in this role, and it's been kind of
racking my brain.
I, it's not that Diesel did a bad job, he just didn't fit the role for me, but I can't
really tell you who I would cast in this role.
If, if, like, like you were and I were saying earlier, if he had given himself a chance
to develop this character, and we had gotten kind of a grown a sense of attachment to him
through a series of these films, rather than starting where they started, I think it would
be better served.
I really do.
I mean, it's not that I didn't buy him in the role, and I don't think that he's necessarily
a bad choice for the role.
I just don't think the script was developed well enough to where we can care about this
guy or the people that he cares about.
And I see your point, but what they try to do is all those flashbacks, so you learn more
about the, the family, when the, when the, but how much did we learn this happen?
No, I mean, I know, I get what you're saying, I just, I think what we're saying is, if
you're going to franchise the thing, you kind of, I've tied your, your own hands behind
your back.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, we, we, we're only reason that we feel his pain is because
it's kind of shoved down our throat, and in, in, in small little bite-sized pieces with
these flashbacks that he has, show us the whole story, give us, give us his backstory
in the first film, and then set him off on his journey in the, in the, in the, in the
circles that are rumored to be following it, I didn't, it just felt like they tried to
shoehorn so much in just so they could set it in modern, modern day, New York.
It just, I feel like they just rushed it.
And then they're always going back to see what happened that day, being spoiler free
of course, but that didn't work either, I thought, no, no, because we, I mean, we really
don't know what happened that day, you know.
They kind of tell you, but it just didn't work out like I said, it's an intern probably
finished the last half of the day.
And I think the first half of it probably could have been rearranged a little bit better,
too.
Does it feel like something that just suffered from a rider strike or something?
Yeah, like I said, it was like they took some of the scenes into the shell game with
them.
Yeah.
It's like they just kind of played with it in the editing process and just, I think they
put a couple of scenes in the wrong spot, but this hero has put that there, okay, it's
been the bottle.
Okay, we're going to put that scene in there now.
It's a franchise that has potential, but with this first effort, it just seemed like they kind
of missed them.
So it's not a real solid.
No, not a real solid.
It wouldn't have filmed that I, that I did, that I just liked.
So that was my thing.
It's like I did not like it, but I couldn't give it a full-on endorsement because there
was, and that's so many flaws.
It's like the line from Bumble Bob Brain, but any bad, have bad, have good, you know, it's
just that, it's that weird gray area.
And unfortunately, I didn't really have some huge standout performance, which is odd
me in the film.
There's a note, there's a note, don't want to give me a shout out, too, and that's
fair enough.
Michael Kane is Michael Kane.
Yeah, but most of the time.
He was barely there.
Yeah.
And it was weird that he and Diesel just didn't have great chemistry because they didn't
have enough scenes together on screen.
You know, you really didn't get to see him build a relationship with this guy.
Again, something that could be resolved in a, obviously, prequel, because there's no
way they can do it in a sequel, indeed, because we've already established it.
I don't know, it just, it just seems like a lost opportunity to me.
Anything else we want to do before we get to the final analysis?
Yeah, I think we're good here.
All right, the way we do the final analysis on this show is we don't give you thumbs-up
thumbs down.
We don't give you stars.
We don't give you number rankings.
We don't give you grades.
Our audience whom we affectionately refer to as the Empire is a better than that.
We're going to ask two questions.
Question number one, would you see this film again?
If the answer's no, then we're done here.
If the answer's yes, it becomes how we're far you going to go to see this film again.
Would you watch it in first run?
Would you go for a price?
Twilight, Matt Nay, early morning on the weekend.
Run into dollar house?
Would you venture away from your house and watch it in a red box?
Would you stream it on Netflix?
Would you wait for it on cable?
Done.
Would you see this film again?
Uh, a bear?
A bear?
Yes.
So you're barely on this side.
Yes.
How far are you rolling the go?
Something like the ilk of TV.
HBO, something like that.
Okay?
Which is kind of, you know, by the bottom there because I still would like the first half of
the film and how that all mixed.
But the last half just baked kaboom and then some of the magic shots and everything the
look of the film and a lot of those scenes that that was really cool.
So I'll say HBO.
All right.
Chad, would you see this again?
I might.
How far you want to go?
Not very.
Well, you've got to put it.
I mean, yeah, I put it.
Definitely.
Red box.
Watch video.
Right about where Don said.
If it's on a channel that it happens to be already on, I'm not going to go out
of my way to seek it out.
Unless I'm just trying to find some clarity and things that might have been muddled the
first time I saw.
It's it's nothing that I would highly recommend.
I'm going to throw this out there because I can.
Oh, usually when we see a film, uh, Don will actually say to me, what do you
think of it?
And more often than not, I will give him my opinions.
But in this case, I purposely did not because I kind of wanted to save it for us being
here.
And what I mean by that is I really kind of think I hit the nail on the head here.
My personal feeling on the way this is, you could franchise this.
This is a perfect series for TNT.
I agree with you.
I absolutely agree with you.
You could do this kind of what I did with Blade the series or a lot of the things of
its ilk that they've done on TNT.
I think that works.
Yeah.
I do too.
And if it's right in there with the fallen skies, library and crowd, all right, then how
would you recommend it to the Empire for the film itself?
I would say, because they deserve, they deserve to be there.
No, you're right.
You're right.
I would say, catch it at the dollar theater.
Okay.
You know, if you're out running around and I got that going on, you want to spend a
much cash, just a dollar theater.
If you've got to choose a Halloween movie to check out, if you're not watching Crimson
Pete, because I know that gives people the absolute TV team out, I'd see this over Goosebumps.
That's kind of apples and oranges to me, but, you know, I hear just on a personal level.
Just out of the two that I've seen, I would choose this over Goosebumps.
Anything else we want to ask?
Yeah, one thing again, we got to think our new friend Julie, or in a new role, Julie at
Merock and Candice at Merock, and if it's a good deal, it's a nice, nice people and
everybody at some entertainment for, I'm going to see this thing.
So thanks again, guys.
Hi, boys.
Do the plugs.
Right?
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Follow this show on Twitter at Clubhouse Show.
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I'm at Fondongo and you can email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Email Don for information on how we can come to a live remote show in your particular
establishment.
Just like we did, the weekend before this was recorded for Dallas video fest 28, had a blast
out there.
You can email me if you'd like questions, comments, concerns, tell me to go pound sand.
I am Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.
I'm chat at clubhousepodcast.com.
Show a parkour is on Pinterest because we are morally obligated to say that and what
did you want me to think?
She was kind of in the same boat with me.
There, no, no, no, no.
What do you want to add?
Happy birthday to my nephew Landon.
It's a birthday today.
Happy birthday Landon.
Happy birthday.
I'm all the best to you, sir.
So until next time, for Don, for Chad, for the Empire, I'm Rob, clubhouse is closed for
me Palmer, working the witch thing, I'm saying, I'm just saying, the preceding was a
sooner or later production.