Adam's gonna slow fade for 100 more episodes, Vite announces their round, what about Docker, playing board games, remaking the same story over and over, and all the good Pixar movies.Want to carry on the conversation? Join us in Discord. Or send us an email at [email protected] | Next Generation Tooling for the WebPricing | DockerBun JavaScript RuntimeHarry Potter TV SeriesThe Last of Us HBO SeriesCreativity, Inc. ExpandedToy Story 1995 FilmToy Story 2 ReviewsToy Story 3 ReviewToy Story 4 ReviewRatatouille Film ReviewsUp 2009 FilmInside Out Film ReviewsInside Out 2Topics:(00:00) - Beauty, eh? (00:26) - Adam's slow fade (01:36) - Vite announced their round (05:25) - What about Docker? (12:36) - If growth continues, what will our competition look like? (13:45) - Hurricane update (19:43) - Playing Risk and board games (25:40) - Keeping remaking the same stories over and over (28:18) - Being too short term minded (31:09) - The Last of Us (34:14) - Pixar connections (40:00) - To be continued...
Why is Canada populated at all? Why are there people in Canada? I don't understand. Long time no talk.
Uh, yeah, I know you skipped last week.
I skipped last week.
Bitch.
So that's funny.
We had to replace you with someone. So I wasn't here talking to myself.
Yeah, that sounds more fun, really. I'm sure people enjoyed that. You're welcome, everybody. I'll skip more. Not really. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I feel like if I threaten that, people are going to freak out. Sometimes I do just think, like, is this the slow fade? Am I not going to disappear? I'm just going to slowly fade out of the internet and all of my friends.
Adam, this is literally the guy that made that bingo card of our podcast. Oh, no. This is one of the things I say. This is one of the things I say. Oh, let's try new stuff.
Should I leave the internet? Yeah, let's try new material. Man, I don't want to go back to the bingo card, but I really do need you to catch me up on lots of things. It's just one of the things I need from you in this relationship.
Has anything happened? I don't know. What's new?
Yeah, maybe nothing.
That's fine.
That's actually great.
I guess the main thing was Veet finally announced their round, which they closed a long time ago, but I guess they didn't go public.
Yeah, so how's that work? I mean, in the sense that Evan... Is doing a lot of things. So Vite is like a company?
Well, they established a new company called Void Zero, and their goal is to make a unified JavaScript tool chain.
Okay.
Which I think if puts them in the same category as Bunn, more or less, I think that's almost... Near overlap. Like computing. Minus the runtime. Bun? I think Bun is a superset in a lot of ways. I think Bun would consider, even if they're not focusing on the same things right now, I think Bun would consider everything Void Zero is doing as something they eventually want to do.
I don't think Void Zero is going to build a JavaScript runtime. I think that's outside their scope.
Okay. So Bun has executed really well. Are they going to have similar business models? Or have either of them picked a business model?
They've both raised money. I went on Prime Stream a bit to talk about this a bit because I'll just give you the spiel real quick. So with a lot of these projects, these open source projects that are very free and fundamentally need to be open source and free, the question of what's the business model always comes up. And that's a valid question. But the point I made was
I don't know if we talked about this already, but these are venture scale companies, very different than a traditional company. The example I gave was if search engines didn't exist and someone invented a search engine today, people would ask what's the business model. And the company would be like, Oh yeah, we'll give you like 10 free searches a day.
And then if you want to go over that, we'll charge you $10 a month. Right. Um, and you would probably make a lot of money doing that, especially if it's as good as Google is. And there was no other search engine. Uh, but it would never be a product that every single person in the world used.
Yeah.
Right. There's natural friction with, with the paid tier. And eventually someone would build, a version that's not paid. Uh, and if you do build the version that's not paid and everyone in the world starts to use it, you now have this opportunity to build a trillion dollar ads business. Right. Which is really, really hard to imagine ahead of time.
Like it's so hard to imagine like every single thing, if we capture a hundred percent market, like what are the business models? Like none of us would have come up with that. Google just serves as not on their own properties, but like across the whole internet and other sites, like, uh, it's like a giant, giant business that came out of this thing. And it feels like really random and unrelated.
So with these companies, it's the question isn't really what's a business model. The question is, do they have a big enough goal? In Bun's case, it's every piece of JavaScript ever executed should happen inside Bun. That's a really big goal. I can see that. I can see that potentially. Same with Void Zero. Like their goal is all JavaScript builds
uh anything like pre-run time building linting whatever that should all run through their tooling um And if they get to that level, there's probably going to be interesting business models that open up. It's going to be hard to invent them. Like there's companies like Docker that got to that level and then like really struggled to figure out how to invent a business model.
But the moment Docker did find something, they went from like zero to 100 million AR in a year. So it's just like that's kind of what venture scale stuff is like. It's really hard to see business model up front. But when you crack it, it's like.
boom so uh to be fair i don't i don't know if this stuff is actually going to work out i'm not saying that it will but uh yeah it's just very unclear right now and but that's like just not the question the question is like can they actually grow to that level
Yeah, I think all that tracks for me if it weren't DevTools. I just feel like the DevTools part is this... I mean, Docker is an example. Isn't Docker struggling? Everybody uses Docker, but doesn't Docker have all these issues and they have to put all these restrictions because of... I mean, the nature of images and bandwidth is unfortunate.
So maybe that's inherent to their type of business or their tool. Yeah. But are they struggling? Did they make it? Because everybody uses Docker.
I think for a very long time, yeah, it's an interesting story. They're actually a really interesting story for anyone who wants to understand. There's like some write-up about their whole business history. And if anyone wants to understand this space, it basically captures every type of thing that can happen. So they did the impossible. They made something that changed the world.
Like every single, like Docker is massively impactful. Totally changed how we deploy stuff. It's everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. But the immediate winners were incumbents. Google Cloud, AWS. All the big cloud just added it. They already had the distribution. They had Docker support. Docker does not see really a penny of any of that. So Docker struggled for a long time.
And then it seemed like they were about to go under. And then they...
just really focused on docker for desktop i think which is like really weird i don't really understand it uh and i just hate it on my mac i just hate docker for desktop so that's why i don't know if it's a good product but it just it was just an angle that they could take uh that the big clouds would never and that's where they made a bunch of money is that like super long-term sustainable i don't know but they did hit 100 million arr with that which justifies you know like billion multi-billion dollar valuation so yeah
okay it's it's hard because i said that they had to do two things right they had to like do the first impossible thing then like somehow capture value dodging all the big giant companies trying to get there before you uh and they did they're always going to get there before you or even if they get there later they're just going to win um like bun for example the same situation like if bun becomes the fault way people do javascript
Obviously, Google, AWS are all going to add support for it. So it's going to be tricky. But yeah, I agree. It's hard.
Everywhere that JavaScript runs, except for the browser, right?
Except for the browser, yeah.
So the browser still is its own thing. But all the back-end JavaScript being bunned and all the local development tool chain, that's the bun goal. And then we're going to have ads in our terminal. I'm just saying. We'll see. Maybe that's not very imaginative of me.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who's to say like the void zero thing, like the most obvious path for them is if they are handling all these like heavy, crazy builds, giant companies need like really, really good caching systems and typically pay for them or willing to pay for them. So they could build like a service that matches that. Again, I don't know if that's a venture scale thing, but yeah,
it's like not totally out of the question that there's there's ways that even now we could imagine what they could do but again it's just not the goal there's no point in monetizing something that doesn't win when it comes to venture scale so try to win first interesting try to win i mean yeah that makes sense i guess i said the dev tools thing and then i forgot sst is also the same
situation yeah so i'm not saying that's why i know it's like it's i have mixed feelings because it's i know how unlikely and hard and difficult it is and how i think the problem actually is that everything i just described i actually don't even know if the founders in this space understand what this is what they signed up for i technically didn't when i joined sst and i understood this a lot better yeah a couple years ago but yeah if you don't understand this then what you're gonna do is like focus on
like the business model too early. And then it turns out like your product doesn't even win. And like the whole thing is a waste of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah. Well, we, I mean, stat music is like consumer. It's a sports statistics website, by the way. Bingo. Uh, like we, we were pre revenue for like five, six years, something like that. But it's like different. Cause it's a consumer website. And I think... It's not different.
DevTools is like very... I would say DevTools is close to B2C companies.
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. There's a lot of developers. Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. But like we were... It was like very fun to be pre-revenue because nobody judged your revenue when you don't have revenue. And we could just kind of keep not having revenue. But I feel like it was very predictable that like we're going to have ads on a website. It's just how it works.
We have a lot of traffic on our website. Now we have ads on the website. We didn't get more creative than that, I guess. Not yet.
Yeah, but I mean, if it works, it works. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. Like, I think there's like a over-rotation on, it's just, I think when you're, when you're observing some of these things, I feel like you get the right conclusion, but not really. Right.
So we had a period of time where there was these like really big blowups of like overfunded companies that just never had a business model and never made sense. And a lot of people witnessed that. So now there's like this thing of like, Anytime they see a company saying something like pre-revenue or we'll worry about the business model later, they're like, oh, it's one of those.
It's going to blow up and fail.
And DevTools in particular had a lot of money. It was a very hot VC segment. So I think there's also tangential but not completely the same blowback on DevTools stuff for that reason. There's venture scale across all the industries everywhere. has its own taint from... Is that a word I can say? I don't know. Is that a bad word?
It's technically a fine word that also has a more intense meaning.
An urban dictionary meaning? Okay. Yeah. Like venture scale as a term and as a concept was tainted by lots of free money. But then DevTools, if you're a developer, you've kind of like soured on some things about DevTools because of... poor usage of venture money or memeable usage of venture money over the last few years. And that still goes on. So yeah, it's kind of a double whammy.
When I hear venture-scale dev tools, I think of all the negatives on both sides.
Yeah.
It's not fair, though.
I mean, it's just easy to remember the negatives and forget the positives because the ones that win become so...
normal that you like just don't ever think about them that hard yeah yeah again docker venture funded uh all the hashicorp stuff venture funded like ghosty technically wouldn't exist unless yeah you know he had a nice exit where he can kind of focus on that it's true all the hash a lot of hash course stuff is really great like like terraform a bunch of things like that so
Yeah, just the ones that are good do the thing that's hard, which is you become invisible because you're just like a default. Yeah, and nobody talks about it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, some of this stuff is really crazy. Like we were talking internally yesterday about like, okay, if our growth continues, what will our competition look like?
Because we start to eat into places that technically are competitive with companies we aren't competing with today. And it is a funny dynamic where... It's only a problem once you start making money, like a lot of money. Otherwise, people just look at you as like, oh, that's a cute project. Even if you're growing a ton and become really popular, they're like, not...
really copy you or try to like stop it yeah so there's a lot of benefit to staying small with your revenue for as long as possible because it catches the competition off guard as we're spending into their markets because like a big established company is never going to be like uh oh this like open source project is getting really popular we need to make sure we clone it there just be like what do you mean like they're not making any money why would we waste time on that
by the time they see it by the time it actually starts to impact them it's like too late um so yeah there's a lot of funny dynamics with being pre-revenue some like advantages or low revenue rather speaking of pre-revenue uh can you catch me up on the hurricane there's a big hurricane hitting today sorry yes i'm known for my transitions yeah it's uh it's funny yeah
No, they keep pushing the landfall time further and further. Hurricanes move slow. Yeah, I think I've caught that. Do you know the speed of a hurricane, like in terms of how fast it travels? No, like across the ocean? Yeah, because you always hear wind speeds of 165 miles an hour, but the hurricane itself is moving at below 10 miles an hour. Are you serious? Wow. It's so slow.
Yeah. Does it speed up or slow down when it gets over land?
So land absorbs a lot of the hurricane's power. So you'll see as it hits land, it weakens. But right now it's still forecast to hit Tampa. I'm not gonna be affected if that's the case.
It's like a category four now?
I just Googled it. It went from five to four to five again. They think when it hits, it'll be a three.
Oh, okay. Well, that's better than a five, right? It goes that direction?
Yeah. It's weird because it's almost like binary. There's just a bunch of structures that are still not able to deal with any kind of hurricane. And when they get a direct hit, all those structures are affected.
It blows my mind actually whenever something like this is about to happen and they point out it's been like a hundred years since Tampa's been direct hit. It's like in the Gulf of Mexico. How is that possible? I feel like hurricanes are like constant in the hurricane season.
There's this feeling, there's like this feeling I wish I can communicate properly when you see all these hurricanes flying around. It feels like you're just like It feels like you're playing dodgeball, and the ball is just flying around you, and somehow they're not hitting.
Like Neo, where the bullets are just dodged.
It's funny, though, because the hurricanes sometimes have crazy pads, right? This hurricane started in the Gulf, which I didn't even know was a thing. It can start from the left side? What the hell? I thought it all came from the right.
Oh, I didn't know that didn't happen. Yeah, okay.
I mean, I guess they do. I just never... I don't even know if it's atypical. I just never realized that. But like the last one, I think it was last year, it was going to hit Tampa, but then I think it went south and hit Naples. Yeah. It came from the right, like hooked around and it came back and then hit.
I think I saw that. Yeah, I saw the path of that one.
Yeah. So it feels like someone's throwing these like crazy trick shots. At the US.
We just had one, right? The Asheville situation's super bad, which is crazy because it's so inland. And it makes me rethink all of my, like, I'm safe from hurricanes in the Midwest. Because, like, Asheville's in the mid... Not Midwest, but it's like... I guess it was like a damn situation.
Yeah.
Like it was like over flooding in the mountains, washed out the city basically.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what's funny. It's like random canals, which are like everywhere. Yeah.
yeah even if you're not by the like by the coast will just overflow and then cause all the all these problems yeah i wanted to look up i feel like there's probably like a list of cities that there's like possibility of catastrophe if a dam breaks like cities that are down river from a dam it's probably way too many it's kind of like when katrina happened so so long ago it's like why do we have cities that like rely on structures to stay out of the sea
Like what are levies and why did we build them? Why not just not build a city there? Like why don't we just go out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, like build a big like tunnel and be like, here we go. Let's put a city here. Why do we do this? I don't understand it. Or did it start out higher above sea level and then it just like the water rose?
I think the reality is historically there was no possibility for any kind of wealth unless you were a port owner. and you could tap into trade. So every major city is just on the water. And now there's like a side effect of that is you're exposed to any kind of water, natural disaster.
Is that why we're so poor in the Ozarks? There's no ports here. Turns out we're all... Maybe.
what major city is wealthy and like technically chicago but isn't chicago port yeah yeah i mean the great lakes are like i don't know but like didn't they use that to trade with like i don't know i'm gonna make some shit up no yeah from canada maple syrup i don't know where like everybody was like stopping around in the canadian woods like trapping yeah raccoons and shit like oh it's funny
Yeah, I guess they probably do have ports in Chicago. I mean, why would they be on the water otherwise?
Like, what's the point? Yeah. And even things like Philadelphia, like, it's on the river, so they could trade up and down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I guess that makes sense. That said, humans, I've always felt... The thing you were saying, like, why did we establish a thing there? I feel this way about the whole Earth in general. Like...
if you look at the whole earth there's clearly places that are way nicer to live where the food's more abundant why are a bunch of humans in the middle of the desert like how did why is canada populated at all why are there people in canada i don't understand we're just like we'll live anywhere and we'll just make it work or not people aren't just like it's true yeah yeah i mean some people just want their space i guess like
They just like, don't want to be where everybody else is.
Even then, like, it's crazy to me that like, there's so many of these crazy cities in the middle East. Oh, I guess there's oil there now, which is what, um, oil built those, those cities, but, but even historically, right? Like, I mean, all the ancient cities, isn't like the original, like Mesopotamia is not like, actually, no, that was on a river. So that makes sense. Um,
But yeah, I just feel like there's like the desert case, but then there's also like the really cold, like Scandinavian, like Northern area. Why did you guys go all the way up there? What were you following?
yaks or something i started playing risk with my uh nine-year-old we we got it out grandma still had it my mom uh risk is so fun have you played risk in a long time because it's so fun is it fun one-on-one Not as fun, but I didn't know this. Growing up, we played one-on-one all the time. Actually, me and my co-founder of StatMuse, we grew up together. And we played Risk all the time.
And I'm pretty sure we played one-on-one all the time. Never did this. But there's like a neutral... You set neutral armies up. There's like a third player, but you both control it. That's how you play one-on-one. And it makes it better. That's how me and my son have been playing. We got to talk the other two into it, though.
My other son and my wife need to just play with us because that would be more fun. But he's five, so he's probably not going to be into it.
Yeah, I think it's challenging. But your wife is a little older than five.
Listen, you want to control a whole continent. Yeah, my wife is old enough. Yeah, we could just stay up late with my nine-year-old. That'd be fun. Yeah, Risk is great. Old board games. Good stuff. Who is it that's really into board? Is Chris into board games? Did I make that up? Somebody, oh, we talked to Matt.
I've met a lot of people recently that are super into board games.
Yeah.
And I want to get more into it. I actually have one here that I borrowed that I need to play.
Yeah, because we go to Target and all of them are garbage. Like, you just look at the wall of them.
They're all bad. That's what's so crazy. Like, I don't know why I never put this together. It's like all the ones that we know of, like even Risk. Like, Risk is fun, but... It's not like someone like tried really, really hard to come up with like the coolest thing ever. And there's like a whole world of that, of people that have tried that hard.
Like they figured out how to make really good board games. Yeah. Like there's board games that take like an hour to set up and you play over several days and you need to like leave it. It's crazy.
Like Monopoly.
I've never finished a game of Monopoly. You have it more fun. Yeah. Monopoly, I feel like... Literally, I think it's actually a very bad game. And the only thing it has going for it is like the money feels so cool and fun. And I think that's the only reason anyone is ever like, oh, let's get Monopoly or let's play Monopoly. But the game actually driven by.
Yeah, no, I get that. The game of life also has money. It's not really as popular. I do feel like there's a certain lore around Monopoly. Or it's just embedded enough into the pop culture. Oddly enough, they apparently knew what they were doing when they did the McDonald's stuff. Because I feel like I like Monopoly more because of my memories of peeling off those stickers off McDonald's cups.
You know what I'm talking about? Collecting. Was that Monopoly paying McDonald's, I guess, to be some promotion? That's a really good question. How did that work? They just were trying to get exposure?
I think McDonald's might have played Monopoly. Paid Monopoly.
Paid Monopoly for the rights? See, it's interesting because that could go either way. When it comes to a deal like that, I could see either side benefiting McDonald's.
But who has... Like, Monopoly's not going to move more. That's what I'm saying.
It doesn't make sense that they would advertise on McDonald's cups so people would buy Monopoly. Because everybody owns Monopoly. Well, that's a great point. They have nothing to gain. They are just IP. But that's interesting to think of Monopoly as IP. As, like, Marvel characters. You know what I mean?
That's true, yeah.
Like, McDonald's is like, hey, you know what would give us some credibility? Monopoly. That's just funny. Yeah. And who owns Monopoly? I guess Hasbro or something. Like there's this one company that owns all the board games.
Oh, that's a good question.
But like who did like a startup create Monopoly and then sell the Hasbro? Like how's that work?
Hasbro has owned the rights to Monopoly since 91 when it acquired Parker Brothers, the maker of the game.
Parker Brothers. I've heard of this. I just started typing in like a live code playground. Parker Brothers.
I just saw a picture of the Monopoly board and just like it just brought back the crazy nostalgia. Yeah.
Have you ever played Monopoly Go?
Oh, is it like a mix of?
It's like a card game. It's like a shorter version of Monopoly. It's kind of got the feel of Monopoly, but it's like, oh, that just reminded me. It's like the Apple Store ad just popped up. Have you ever played like digital Monopoly? That's fun because it's like animated and there's like the car is driving and like blowing exhaust and stuff. Yeah, good times.
There's like a million different monopolies. So they're licensing IP. There's just so much money flowing around when it comes to Monopoly. Monopoly apparently is paying Harry Potter, the franchise, to get rights to their... That's so interesting to me.
It must be like a rev share, though.
Yeah, because Harry Potter benefits from it, I guess. But does, I don't know, with something like Harry Potter, like they're on everything.
Do they need more exposure? No, no. I think it's just ways to sell more. Like if I own Harry Potter, the brand, I'm just going to like partner with every single product maker to slap my shit on it.
So just sell more stuff. Do you ever think about that though? Like you're, you're, what's her name? Who's the lady that wrote? Harry Potter, uh, JK Rowling. Yes. You're JK Rowling. I'm assuming she owns most of the Harry Potter enterprises or whatever. I don't know. Maybe she has shareholders now, but like she has this giant empire that is Harry Potter.
And she's made more money than she could ever need or spend. Do you think she like thinks about like, oh, if we move into China with this stupid product, we could sell, you know, like $10 million next quarter. Does she care? Like at this point, who cares at this point, like how much product they move?
Yeah. It must just be like the Disney machine.
That's just like, she's so good at consumer products. Does Disney own Harry Potter? No, they don't own Harry Potter. They bought everything else. They have Marvel, Lucasfilm.
I'm pretty sure Disney is like their publisher or like the equivalent. Because like... Oh, jeez. So complicated. Oh, is it Universal?
Oh, yes.
Because Universal Studios... Because they have the... It's Universal. It's not a... Yeah. Which makes sense because that's what did the movies. Yeah. I think so. So they are remaking Harry Potter as an HBO TV show. And... We're old enough to remake Harry Potter? I really don't see how this is a good idea because the original Harry Potter movies... Yes, different actors. Oh, no, don't do this.
The original Harry Potter movies were very good. You can watch them today and they don't feel outdated. Still good. They can show them to someone new and they don't feel outdated. Uh-huh. And I feel like this can really only be worse. And it's the same story. And I don't want to, we've all seen this story like a billion times already.
Why do this? This is like when there's a new Spider-Man. Every time I hear there's a new Spider-Man, I know we've talked about this on the podcast at some point, because every time I hear there's a new Spider-Man, it's like, I don't know if it's a continuation of some story or they're like going back to the first one again. It's like every 10 years. It's not, they don't wait that long.
And they're like, new Spider-Man. It's the new actor that everybody knows. And like, look, we did it again. I don't get the whole like... Really, people make fun of Hollywood for like not coming up with new stuff. But it really is true. Like they really just keep remaking the same stuff. And it's kind of cringe. I just used the word cringe in a sentence. That was awesome.
I mean, I've been thinking about this a bit. And I've seen some people in Hollywood talk about it. And it's so funny. It's like the same thing that happens in business, which is... eventually organizations just become crazy risk averse to an irrational degree, right? So if I'm someone that's going to produce, I work at a movie studio, I'm going to produce a movie.
If it fails, that looks really bad on me. But if I attach it to some existing IP, nobody could say that it was a bad decision. Cause like there's like a safety, there's like a perceived safety net of like, well, I wasn't taking some crazy risk. I was just like betting on a sure thing, you know?
So there's been so many cases that I've heard of where there will be a script, brand new concept, new script. They will take the script and attach it randomly to some existing thing, just so it feels like more de-risked.
So dumb. I mean, I know I'm sure I do it too. It's probably like some human nature thing in the right situation. I would do the exact same thing, but it just makes your soul die a little bit. You just want people like it makes us. I think that's why we look up to the people who've taken huge risks.
It's like, yeah, even if they have flaws and you don't like that person, like there's something about, I don't know, real artists, you know, people who step out there. This just reminded me of a thing in the NFL. This is like this whole idea of. uh, just avoiding risk at all costs, even at the detriment, like the, the New York jets, they're like doing poorly. They just fired their coach.
They're kind of in the news. Uh, but before they fired the coach, it's like this year, they're all in on this, this, uh, organization, like the GM and the head coach, if they don't win this year, if they don't do well, they're all going to get fired. They all know they're losing their jobs. Um, So they all just like go for broke and they hire all these really old people with bad injury history.
And it's like everybody knows this is not best for the New York Jets for the next five years. But it's like all that matters is the people making the decisions are trying to keep their job this year. So it's like that reminds me of something we've talked about where it's like the people who make the decision can just completely jeopardize the future because it only matters to them right now.
Is it monetary policy? What is it? We've talked about this.
There's something. Yeah. I mean, I feel this comes up. This comes up a lot. Yeah, it's super annoying. And I feel like this is happening. Like you brought up football. I feel like it's happening everywhere where we're just in this like weird phase of... It's like really short-term minded. And you would think that looks like craziness, but it actually looks very boring.
Yeah, it's very boring.
Yeah, the thing with Hollywood is like turning out sequels and stuff. There has to be some like corrective...
thing that kicks in like at some point do these movies just start doing bad or is it like haven't the marvel movies started doing yes they're definitely past their peak for sure yeah like there is a saturation point where people are like you know what i don't care about ant-man seven like i'm i'm done with the story i don't care and it was kind of a dumb character but did you see what they're doing no and i i will say i this worked on me
Oh, no. So they're like they're like headline thing is like the Avengers movies. Right. And that series ended with like all the famous actors in the last 10 years, like their stories ending and like their contracts basically. So that's what they're kind of struggling now. But they're making the next series of Avenger movies. And the main bad guy in it who's playing it, Robert Downey Jr.,
They just brought him back as a different character.
He was Iron Man. Wait, he's going to play the villain?
Yeah.
Is it like Iron Man became the villain? Or it's like, no, just ignore the fact that this is Robert Downey Jr.
It's unclear. It could be in a different dimension, like Tony Stark went bad, or it could just be he's a totally different person. Oh my goodness. At some Comic-Con, a bunch of these masked... People showed up on stage and the one guy in the front removed his mask and it was Robert Downey Jr. And everyone went nuts.
And I'm like, yeah, like this is like another flavor of this rebooting thing where they're rebooting the actor, you know?
It's so nuts to me. I don't know. I want to care about something. I want to like be into something that's worth being into. Like when it comes to media, I haven't watched stuff.
and forever yeah we've really struggled to um there is still some good stuff and even within the zone of like they're just like doing the ip thing um have you seen the last of us no
I've heard of it. I think I've heard of this.
The Last of Us was a really good video game. Narratively, it was one of the best narratives in any video game ever. And they made two games. And HBO made a TV show. They did one season of the first game, and now the second season is about to come out, I think, at the beginning of next year. Phenomenally good. Really, really good.
Give me the TLDR. What's the setting? Is it sci-fi?
It's a classic post-apocalyptic thing. Some kind of... In this case, it wasn't a virus. It was like a fungus. And it destroyed society. There's some people that are surviving. And if you get even scratched or something, you turn into this crazy zombie thing. And there's this girl that got scratched. So everyone's like, you're fucked. And they usually just kill them right away.
But for a reason, they didn't kill her. And she started to recover. So the story is... This really reluctant guy who's like kind of like he lost his own daughter like way at the beginning, right when everything was going down in a really crazy way. And he's like reluctantly agreeing to take this girl to some research facility like across the country.
So they travel across the country and it's like some of the most intense. like hard to watch situations that they like run into. And the acting is amazing. Like everything is done really, really well. Yeah. And that's technically just like this IP juffling thing, but they did a really good job with it.
Well, yeah, I guess it's not inherently bad to use IP, but like our TV series better than movies now. Is it like, I feel like the good stuff people talk about are like HBO TV series. They're not movies anymore. Did they replace? Cause they're all competing for the same attention, right? Like, I don't view them differently.
If you have two hours to watch something, you could watch two episodes of a series or you could watch a movie. What's the difference?
Yeah. I think the production quality of TVs have gone up. TVs, TV shows have gone up a lot.
Cause that was glaring like 20 years ago or 10 years ago or whatever, like TV series being so much lower budget, like the effects, everything about them, they were limited. They had to almost be like a drama to be any good.
Yeah.
But that's changed.
Yeah, it's changed a lot and it feels like the gap is closed. But if you actually like because there's been some things that have been even like an animated movie, animated TV show that gets a movie, you're like, oh, what's the difference? It's just like a two hour long episode. But they actually look. Yeah, there's still like a gap if you like pay attention.
But like obviously the gap gap is closing. But I mean, now there's some shows, mostly actually failures that like their budgets are like 30 million dollars an episode. The episode is one hour. That's roughly the same budget as like a hundred million dollar movie. Um, yeah. So yeah, the buds are, are, are closing in, but there's still really good movies.
I still think the movie side, there's still really good ones. There's just a lot of junk. Um, it's junk on both sides, I think.
That reminds me. So we still have like a family movie night. I haven't watched any movies just on my own that were good in a while, but we watched like, we go back through the Pixar catalog and all that. We just went through all the toy stories and I have something to say about like revisionist history here, going back to toy story one, all the way through them.
I don't know if you realize how, so I've read like the creativity ink. Have you listened or read that book?
I know the stories of, I like know a bunch of stories from that book. Yeah.
Yeah. So the first Toy Story, not very good. Not just that they weren't there technologically with the graphics. I thought Pixar came on the scene just amazing at the storytelling, all that stuff. It wasn't until Toy Story 3, I think it was 3, the one where they go to the daycare, that the story was like... Maybe it just resonated with me and Casey because we have kids.
But it was like heartstrings. All the stuff you think about Pixar now where they're so good at emotional storytelling... The first two, not so much. It's like kids play with toys.
I can see that. Yeah. Toy Story 3 came out the month that I graduated high school.
Really? Oh, your parents just rip their heart out and stomp on it. Because that's like the whole story is he's going off to college.
Even for us, it was really intense even just for...
Oh, for the kids, like for high schoolers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really crazy.
But I feel like they went several years there, those first couple, where I don't feel like they had the Pixar magic. Maybe they did. Maybe I'm just too critical or I didn't resonate with the stories, but it didn't feel nearly as Pixar as a modern Pixar movie.
I think they definitely got better at that. And I think it's similar to video games where it was such a technological effort at first that like...
also executing on narrative on top of that was really difficult but then you've seen over time that uh they're hitting like like video games are hitting like movie levels of like narrative and acting and i think that probably something really happened to to animated stuff um have you noticed that every pixar movie and a lot of kids movies the plot is we got lost we got to get home that's like the plot of so many kids movies yeah
That reminds me of Homeward Bound. Do you remember those?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yep. That was Finding Nemo. Like, it's the exact story. It really is. Exactly.
Wow. It really is. Huh?
Yeah. And obviously it's the stuff that happens in between is different, but the rough, you start off with your home. Some, some mistake happens. You're not home. Then you have to get back home. Yeah. Well, home alone is fun. Cause that's a reverse. Oh, he was home.
Well, not the New York one. He was not where he was.
He was away.
He wanted to get back home. Okay. Yeah, no, no, no. There's something universal about that. I guess we're just trying to find our way back home. That I tried to sound deep there, but that just sounded really cheesy.
What else? I'm looking at the Pixar movies. Coco, again, he gets lost in the afterlife and he has to get back home. Ratatouille is different. Have you seen Ratatouille? No. Ratatouille is very good. It's the cooking mice?
Yeah. It's actually really good.
Is that Pixar? Uh, yes.
Okay. I need to go through all the Pixar movies.
The little girl seen that gets lost in the monster world and has to get back home.
It literally is the plot of every movie. That's crazy.
Was that the plot of Up too? Like they also get lost in the house.
There's one that I'm trying to remember the whole plot, but I know it's so painful.
Up you just can't watch. I couldn't watch it. It was hard as a kid.
And now I'm getting sad just thinking about it. Yeah.
Yeah.
The mortality. Oh, why'd you have to remind me? I just don't even want to know that that movie exists. That was Pixar too, huh? Stinking Pixar. Just crushing Oliver. Cars. Also, he gets lost and he has to get back. So I can't tell Teej this. I've just not been able to say. I've never seen Cars. And I know Teej has a lot of cars in his orbit. And I've just, I've never seen it.
I have nothing to say. I don't know anything about it.
You should definitely watch the first one. It's a classic. Yeah.
I just forget all these franchises are Pixar. They really are the best at this, right?
Yeah, I think the thing that they do great is it's a kids movie that's really...
entertaining as an adult so it's truly like a family movie it's like there's like two two things going on at once like two storylines yeah yeah and that way you're like not bored as an adult you know yep oh inside out another one i don't know if you saw the latest inside out yeah i did yeah those movies are fun i like i think that metaphor is brilliant and just leads to like a lot of really funny funny things i can do with it i will say we we watched that one and i couldn't uh help but notice that i am anxiety but
Casey and I talked about this it's like oh geez I I'm watching that movie the first half and I didn't realize like oh this is bad you don't want to be like this little orange person I was like this is yeah no I agree you should definitely think through all this stuff that's probably wise yes I didn't realize like she's she's kind of the bad guy like oh this is not good and then it was like oh I let that little person run my brain and I shouldn't got it yeah
That's the moral of the story. Have you noticed that when they zoom into the parents' brains, that a different emotion leads them?
Oh, I didn't notice.
Like for the main character, it's joy, but then the dad, it's anger. And then for the mom, it's sadness or like whatever. Interesting.
Like the joy is not the default leader. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I didn't catch that. The metaphor is so good. They can think through all these little things. Oh, yeah.
I love those movies. They're really brilliant. And the core memories, all that stuff. I feel like I've learned stuff about our brain from watching those movies somehow.
Yeah.
Personality islands. Okay. I really have to pee. Uh, we also really need to record two episodes today. I'm just going to pull the curtain. Yeah. We're going to pull the curtain back. We're going to talk again immediately after this and pretend like it's a new episode, a new week. Yeah.
But they won't get to hear it till next week.
That's right. We're just going to string this up. Yeah. This one has a to be continued. So this story is to be continued. Okay. Be right back.
All right.