Midweek Mention... Colossal

Colossal

Reegs: needs

all his

Dan: Hold on writers, one more time. French kissing in the USA.

Sidey: this is the start of Big Week. Yeah, it's huge,

Reegs: big stuff.

Sidey: bigger than that, yeah, it's massive. And this, this one is called Colossal.

Dan: No.

Reegs: yeah.

Sidey: Had anyone seen this

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: Did you?

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: I hadn't, but I have seen a Colossus. And that's the sole reason of me chipping up here. Because I didn't watch this movie. So I'm interested to see how you guys thought it.

About it

Cris: Have you ever seen this

Sidey: this before?

Yeah, and that's what I'm

Dan: you've seen a Colossus movie? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Well, I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I was in Thailand just innocently enjoying a nice family meal and there was lots of extended family around with us as well. We had all the kids and went to this restaurant and it was quite a local place and we were in this same place for about a week so we would

Sidey: That's a long mail.

Dan: yeah it was a long meal a long meal

we

saw this guy and he was the Colossus he cast a shadow wherever he went honestly he was huge one of the biggest guys I've ever seen

Sidey: Was

he local Seven? like I say, we, we

Dan: never, but he was as wide as he was big tall. He must have been seven foot

Reegs: Yeah, and He Was what, coined the Colossus

Dan: we coined him the Colossus and I, when this subject came up and this film came up I did text that extended family and I just said, I wonder what the Colossus is doing now. And we, that was about four years ago that holiday, but they knew exactly who I meant.

You don't forget your first colossus.

Reegs: Well, this movie isn't about that.

Sidey: No, not as such. No, not at all. It is.

Cris: It is partly in Asia, though.

Sidey: But it's Kaiju. That's what I wanted to focus

Dan: on. So this could be about the Colossus,

Sidey: the Colossus. Sol.

Dan: well,

Sidey: Salt to salt, yeah. It's, yeah, it's I knew the premise that it was kind of Anne Hathaway, who in some way, shape or form was also a Kai Jew.

Yeah. And that's as much as I knew. So I was

Dan: she's really small,

Sidey: that. Yeah.

It starts

Reegs: Jason Sudeikis as

Sidey: I didn't know that he was gonna be one.

Reegs: And also, he, in the context of it, he'd only done sort of good natured roles, sort of, so it's quite a

Sidey: a departure

Reegs: this role. So yeah,

Sidey: starts off with a young girl, and she's looking for her doll, which she's dropped on the floor somewhere, and her mother's saying, oh, just fuck it off, you know, we'll get another one, or whatever, you shouldn't have lost it.

Dan: what all good mothers do say, isn't it?

Sidey: It's subtitled, so it may be a little bit lost in translation, but, yeah, that was the gist of it. And she does find it, and then as she picks it up and turns around, there's an enormous fucking kaiju on the Skyline. Yeah. Of

Reegs: there's like a flash of lightning,

Sidey: then it says 25 years later.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And, sorry, you say

Kaiju,

is that a

Sidey: it's the term for those big monsters.

A

Reegs: giant

destructive Monster.

Dan: I didn't know that. Right?

Sidey: Yeah, and then it's yeah, 25 years later, and this is the introduction of Anne Hathaway coming home. She's a pissed head She's she's arriving back in the apartment. You can tell she's a bit the worse of where she puts her stuff down. She walks in

Dan: I like that. In a woman

Sidey: and a Boyfriend is less than thrilled because

Reegs: it's Stan Stevens as well. Hot looking. Hot.

Sidey: it seems to be a bit of a habit of hers and she's unemployed and she's just kind of like

Reegs: She watches TV all day, she's not looking for a

Dan: dream girl, doesn't she?

Reegs: Well, she comes home drunk, it's not really clear what she's doing, And, and crucially, she's not always remembering what she's doing as well.

So, yeah.

Sidey: So he tells her to get fucked

Reegs: Basically, yeah. He tells her to pack up her stuff,

Dan: What a loser, he doesn't know when he's got a good thing.

Reegs: And she just kind of sits there in disbelief and then all these people come in to start the party again. So then I think we cut to her out in the middle of nowhere. She's gone to her parents house. I think her parents are dead?

Sidey: Yeah, I think they've left her the house or something, because it's an empty lot, if you

like.

Reegs: lot. So, she's walking along the road with an air mattress when Jason Sadeckis, Oscar sort of comes. He's driving past and then he stops. And then reverses back. Oh, is it? You know,

Dan: That's Ted Lasso, isn't

Sidey: Yeah, it is,

yeah.

Cris: The one And, only

Reegs: and you know, sort of hinting that they were childhood friends, but also straight away, like she doesn't recall some stuff that he's talking about.

She goes, Oh, how's your mother or whatever? And she's like, Well, he was like, Well, no, you were at her funeral. And so, maybe not quite as close as he wants to sort of pick the relationship up. But he invites him her back to his bar, which he owns.

Sidey: Yeah, it was a family run thing. Now it's just run by him. He's got this bar and eventually after some talking, she sort of reluctantly admits that she's just unemployed and she's a bit of a bum and she sort of, Had to come to town to kind of sort her life out and see what she's gonna do. So he says, oh well if you're looking for some work, just want to tide you over, how about you do some hours at the bar?

Which she forgets the next day.

Reegs: But she is obviously an alcoholic and she's like, you can see her sort of, she struggles to a degree But then suddenly this is the only thing that's on offer.

There's a, she meets some of Sudeikis's friends Joel and Tim Blake Nelson, who is also a recovering addict who keeps sneaking off to the toilet to do lines and coming back a bit

agitated

Sidey: to the toilet to do lines and coming back when they're agitated.

She's immediately

attracted

Reegs: but you know. Really early on a bit of a problem, but you know, that whatever that life is continuing on there also having fun and all this shit one night as she's stumbling home after it. She walks through a playground and like all the sky sort of darkens and there's lightning and stuff.

And she sort of stumbles off home. And then when she gets up in the morning, there's like this. Everybody's like, Have you seen the news? You haven't seen the news? There's been a monster attack in North inside in South Korea. And here's the video of it. And

Dan: right.

Sidey: great. It happens at the same time. Every time.

Dan: The

the same time of night.

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: It's 8. 06 in the morning.

Reegs: 8. 05 in the morning. Actually, if you look in that footage, when she watches it the next morning in disbelief and like, she's phoning everybody, have you seen it? In fact, that's when she talks to her boyfriend, she's

Cris: Yeah, it's like, yeah, it was nine hours

Reegs: was nine hours ago, where the fuck were you?

But so, but it's like.

Dan: she's drinking at the bar, she's not doing like a Ted Danson where she can handle it. She's getting hammered every night

Sidey: They stay, they just drink after hours. They just all stay there and get pissed.

Reegs: stay there and get pissed. And she keeps

Cris: And she keeps

falling asleep. This is where I was initially very confused because she keeps falling asleep in like random places.

She wakes up a couple of times on the bench in the park. She wakes up, she falls asleep trying to inflate an inflatable mattress, but she falls asleep

Sidey: Next to

Cris: to it just like that

Reegs: like that. The guy brings her a telly

Cris: The guy brings her a telly and he's like, oh, I brought you a telly.

She's like, why

Reegs: brought you a telly. She's like, A friend

Sidey: A friend of mine, a friend of ours, used to have one like that.

The old cathode ray is

Cris: On wheels, like, with the stand and, yeah. How

Sidey: So yeah, he's like, well, we talked about it yesterday. I was like, oh, and she just can't, anything that happens like 24 hours before, she forgets it because she just gets so pissed.

You just can't fucking remember it all. But they,

Reegs: hours before she forgets it because she just gets so pissed and just can't fucking remember it all. Doing it, basically. Like, it's unmistakable. The rubbing of the top of the head. And so she gets this, like, idea that she decides to test out.

Like, she sort of works out on a map where the monster's been appearing and all this stuff. And she tests out her theory that she is, in fact, walking through the playground and connected to this monster.

so she's

Dan: like the voodoo doll of the

Sidey: Basically, yeah.

Reegs: Yeah,

Sidey: yeah.

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: but also obviously the monster itself is a manifestation of her addictions and alcoholism come to find out, but

Dan: that's

the Well, I

Reegs: Well, I mean, it's, it's there straight away, right? Yeah. So, so she does a few tests, doesn't she? She like does one, she like stands there with her arms out.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Like

Sidey: And it's just one in the air and

Reegs: in the air or whatever. And then watches the news back and

it

Sidey: standing there not attacking anything and there's just people watching like, what the hell is going on?

Dan: is still very much a shared experience with everybody else.

Reegs: Not

yet. She, it's only her who's noticed

Sidey: now that she

Reegs: out but now she has deduced it. Yeah.

Sidey: The only people she knows in town, she goes to town, she goes, guys, I've got a secret. I've gotta tell you. You can't tell anyone.

Reegs: she goes, yeah. She goes, come to the park.

Sidey: think I'm mad

Reegs: at five

Cris: Because they stay all night drinking all the

Sidey: time.

And so they, this is the thing. 'cause they, they. They're having a good time, they're still all getting on they're having a good time and they start taking the piss out of Oscar about how he dances, specifically points to his dick, and does his hand around his dick, and does his movements, and then she goes, right, come on, I've got to show you something, and they're, right, she's like, watch me, and watch the news, and, so you get, they do it almost like a, you know, picture in picture, where they get the device on the, they're looking at

Dan: live

Sidey: and they're like, they're like looking across, they're like, And then she's doing the dance move that they just all had lulls about like pointing it of crotch and all

Reegs: the monster

Sidey: and it's clearly, you know, it's and they're like,

Dan: Monster starts doing the same. But she is seeing this and they are all seeing this as well.

Sidey: now

Reegs: As rather Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's definitely actually happening.

There's no, yeah, yeah. Don't, well there's none of that happening. So, she starts getting, like, obviously, the South Koreans are a bit, like, miffed because the first time she turned up, obviously she didn't know what she was doing and caused a fuckload of destruction and stuff. She's living with that guilt that she did that as

Sidey: well.

Yeah, we killed

Reegs: Killed people and all that stuff, like, a few hundred or whatever. So, they start firing, like, missiles and stuff, which does actually hurt her. And

Cris: and I think she, gets

Reegs: she accidentally punches one of the

Cris: Yeah, and that's when Sudeikis goes and kind of appears in the thing as well,

Reegs: she falls over, doesn't she?

And he steps in to go and kind of save her and then it cuts. And you know, we, we'll find out that that fall killed like thousands of people from her. Her accidental fall.

Dan: Oh, right. Her fall.

Reegs: The

Dan: I. e. the monster fall kills, just flattens tons of people.

Reegs: but also a giant robot. Turned up.

Cris: Sudeikis also is part of the

Reegs: manifestation of something.

So when Sudeikis stepped in, suddenly this giant robot turned up in South Korea as well.

Dan: this whole town seems to be connected

Sidey: Yeah, now, now he's,

Reegs: Just

Cris: only in the

Reegs: just these two people in

Cris: only in the playground and only at 8

Reegs: And because what we haven't really said is there's been interspersed sort of shots of flashbacks of a chart of oscar and and gloria as

Sidey: With a sort of diorama.

Reegs: Yeah, sorry

Sidey: They're walking, I guess, to school, but it gives you a little snippet every now and then. It doesn't fully

Reegs: She's made this diorama of soul,

Sidey: But you're thinking, well, this is the origin.

Reegs: carrying this little

Sidey: This has to be the origin story, which is gradually going to get revealed.

It's just, they do it in piecemeal.

Reegs: Yeah. Throughout the movie. Yeah.

Dan: in piecemeal. I don't know, you didn't like

Reegs: I dunno, you didn't like it, did you?

You, you, you already said you hated this movie. Did you hate it as well?

Sidey: No.

Reegs: Alright. Okay. What did he, so sude is fun, isn't he?

Sidey: Yeah, because it's playing against type, you don't really expect to be kind of affable, and you know, the good guy or whatever.

So what happens is, now Anne Hathaway and

Cris: Joel.

Sidey: Joel.

Yeah.

Start

canoodling.

Cris: Which is a friend of

Sidey: So he, he gets, he gets a green eyed monster. Yeah. He's, he's well gel.

Dan: Ah.

Reegs: he feels entitled because he's been in his, you know, he's given her a job, even though he knows he's enabling her alcoholism. He's given her all this stuff that he's promised her when she's been blind drunk. So he feels entitled and that will sort of, that's basically manifesting itself as this giant robot as well.

So, um.

Sidey: So he starts,

Cris: being a dick,

Sidey: starts really being a fucking arsehole about it.

He's, he threatens,

Reegs: He drunkenly insults everybody at the bar, like he really belittles

Dan: is he? Or

Sidey: He's not far off because he, she tells him you need to stop fucking drinking every night.

You need to just go home. When the bar shuts, go home.

But he's like, no, I, now

Dan: Yeah, which

Cris: which is also rich coming from her, but

Sidey: she can see the problem, but it's also

Reegs: He starts to exercise power over her by He's

Sidey: He starts to be a real bastard about it.

Reegs: He's like, I'm gonna go and fuck shit up as a giant robot if you're not gonna, you know, be with me, basically.

You know, it's

Cris: Or at least come to work and stay here

Sidey: Yeah, he's just massively controlling. It's like, you're going to be here every morning. You're going to come to work. You're going to do all this stuff, because if you don't, I'm going to fucking, I'm going to like level the town.

Reegs: But then, I mean, it's not, it is a little bit more nuanced than that because the relationship fluctuates a little bit. A couple of times he makes apologies after these like sort of semi abusive outbursts. And you think, oh, is there something redemptive in him? But no, later on, he'll do something a little bit worse.

But you it's the I suppose it's the classic abusers curve.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: so yeah, he, he, he starts, you know, assigning her like a bunch of degrading shit at work. And he Oh, her boyfriend, Tim. Is that his name?

Cris: Yeah, I have,

Sidey: why not? The

Dan: the

Reegs: The English guy dance to it. He turns up as well because he's actually worried her.

It's, it's, it's under the guise of work, but there's no work out there. It's just because he's worried about her, the ex boyfriend and he. Has this horrible sort of showdown where he's like,

Sidey: He's like, what's the most irresponsible thing I could do in this bar? And he sets off this enormous, like, illegal firework and basically almost burns the place down. And he's like, she's just seen me do that. To the ex boy, he's like, she's just seen me do that completely irresponsible thing and she still is not going to leave with you.

And he's like, what do you mean? And he doesn't get it. But he's like,

Reegs: It's just being, he's just humiliating and controlling her, basically. It's really horrible.

So, anyway, I think he fucks off, doesn't he, out of town, and

Sidey: yeah, he fucking

Cris: Well, she says, I'm gonna leave with you, and then she doesn't.

Reegs: He's not allowed, he doesn't

Cris: Yeah, but she still leaves, though.

Reegs: Yeah. It's when she starts remembering about the

Sidey: We get a bit more of a flashback, don't we, yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. So the, where the playground was, it hadn't always been a playground. It was a building site before. And as kids, they'd been walking through there her and Oscar. Yeah. And he'd thrown her dire armor in there and they'd gone to retrieve it and he'd, she'd seen it, he'd told the story the whole time that he'd gone to go.

Help her and retrieve it. And he's actually just angrily smashing it up there because she was,

Dan: He was jealous.

Reegs: He was jealous. And there's been a thing as well because she's escaped the small town and he hasn't, he's, she, she's a sort of aspiring writer. She's written some stuff and left and gone to New York and he's like pulled her back.

So there's

Sidey: But there's also.

Something in the sky. Yeah. It's it's sort of fancy lightning bolt or something and when it fully plays out, we see it hit her and that's where the scratch comes from. She's got this wound,

Reegs: wound.

that how it ends? She kind of figures out that

They

Dan: happening.

Hmm.

and is that how it

Sidey: No. She kind of figures out that they can't they can't

resolve it when they're both in the playground.

Dan: No,

Sidey: Because Well, she can't physically take him on

Reegs: There is a bit,

Sidey: is a fight, but he batters her, She's,

had this thing about, she keeps slapping him, like a little slapper.

Dan: city, this,

Sidey: But this is not a metaphor, this is a literal Like, he fucking leathers her as hard as he can, breaks her eye, she's got like blood vessels and stuff in her eye, and she's

Reegs: stuff in

Sidey: So she's like

Reegs: eyes.

Sidey: need to do it differently. So she just disappears and they're like, well, what, you know, what's going on? But she fucks off. She goes to Sol. Sol to Sol, yo.

Cris: and and meanwhile, he actually commits to his threat and goes into the park and starts stamping on things in Seoul.

Reegs: left,

Dan: And she's there. Yeah. While he's doing

this.

Sidey: Everyone's fleeing, but she's going through the

Reegs: walks right up towards where the robot

Dan: Is that a good shot? It sounds like a good shot.

Reegs: It's pretty cool, but even slightly better than that is, at that moment, she materializes as a kaiju, where he is in the

Dan: What? She just goes

Sidey: she flipped, reverses it.

Reegs: No, her kaiju

Sidey: appears in, in the small town

Reegs: they've had this thing about, they're connected at points in the earth, and it's manifested, so the kaiju is there, and he, she picks him up, and like,

Sidey: She mimes picking him up in Sol, which, which controls the kaiju back home to grab him

Dan: Okay.

Reegs: And picks up the robot in where she is as well, don't yeah, anyway. And he starts to apologise and say, I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry, and then he just says, you bitch, and so she just fucking

Sidey: I assume she just murdered him.

Reegs: him? Yeah, sure.

Dan: him into the sea.

Reegs: I, well, he looked like he'd been thrown into space, I mean, it

Cris: different universe.

Sidey: Yeah.

he's gone now.

Dan: Wow. Yeah. And

Reegs: and the robot as well is also thrown because something, something, something. All of the physics of the rules of the movie are broken down now because it's just pure metaphor,

Dan: then they throw a big parade for her in Seoul?

Reegs: in Seoul? No, they don't really, well, they are pleased, right?

Because they'd already worked out that the kaiju was friendly. We missed a bit where she wrote, I'm sorry, in the ground and,

Sidey: I never meant to hurt anyone. I think she put something like that.

Reegs: Yeah, so, she goes, everybody's running away and they're sort of pleased because the monster's gone and the kaiju's gone and she walks into a bar and she says, oh, you I'll tell you a story and the bartender says, do you want a drink?

And then she kind of just looks at the camera like, so even after the end of the day, you know, you're still an addict. You're still an alcoholic.

Dan: Well, that won't go away, will it? But it's just a case if she says yes or no.

Reegs: Exactly. And you don't know.

And

Dan: And you don't know, because she doesn't

Reegs: I think she probably will drink because that's her, you know, her cycle, but we, but hopefully getting better and better, right?

Dan: That's, that's the kind of message then, is it?

Cris: Yeah, I also hope they'll never have to make a second one out

Sidey: Well, they won't because this was made for $15 million and it didn't get anywhere near that. Right. Less than five it took. So I think this is,

this is

Dan: five of the two. So I think this is, this is done.

Cris: I

think she was one of the producers as well. No, I'm pretty sure I've seen her in the credits at the

Sidey: Possibly. It's

Dan: end

Reegs: a really neat idea.

Dan: a really unique

Reegs: and Sudeikis is really good playing a sort of quite a nuanced villain. You know, and it's, you know, it's all about addiction and toxic relationships and all

Dan: a

moustache?

Sidey: It does

Reegs: kind

Cris: a beard. Yeah, like a full. He's good. He looks

Sidey: the mustache is more dominant.

Reegs: looks great,

Cris: He looks good. Like proper American.

Dan: I, I could see him pulling off somebody a little bit.

Sidey: He does it well,

Dan: know,

Reegs: clever, I, you know, I like the central idea, I think the conceit is neat, and I think they did a pretty good job of executing on it, to be honest.

So,

Sidey: I, so I think I'm gonna be like in the middle. I, I like the idea. I just didn't. I don't think that the idea was strong enough for like the whole film after I was a bit like, let's get on with it.

But I do like that whole thing, you know, the metaphor because that's why I like Buffy and all that sort of stuff is exactly that, you know, puberty in that case. But yeah, the idea just kind of was a bit thin for me.

Dan: Right.

Reegs: It

just maybe drags a little,

Cris: The writing was, there was a couple of things that when they just kind of, the dialogue and the way they filled it, it was just so fucking, oh, is this ever gonna finish?

Dan: Was that a long film?

Sidey: Hour 40,

Cris: yeah, it's about an hour and a half.

It's not too long, but it's just,

Dan: Felt longer for you?

Cris: felt longer and I don't know. I didn't really, it could have been done better. The idea was actually quite good. And with the whole, you know, it's not when she discovers the fact that there's a direct line between New Jersey or wherever she is and Soul and all that.

It's not even, it's not detective work. She kind of does a little bit, then she gets drunk, then

Reegs: It's really just window dressing for the idea of the movie. I mean, how far do they really need to go to explain the plot? Because, like, like I say, by the end of it, all of the logic of the movie breaks down for the finale, but it makes, like, a kind of thematic sense.

Sidey: So,

I didn't particularly care for the design of her kaiju either. His was much cooler.

Dan: Right,

Cris: Yes. Yeah.

Sidey: was like a kind of Pacific Rim type. Kaiju.

Reegs: It's not really a lot of kaiju action. It's mostly, you know, metaphor and like a relationship drama, really. And about abusive relationships and addiction, which I always

Sidey: might be, might be similar vibe to the main film that we

Dan: Okay, well, you'll have to, if you're listening to this

Sidey: I think it's a unanimous strong

Cris: Very,

yeah, strong, strong recommend.

You have to watch

Dan: Okay. Even from those that haven't seen it.

Sidey: Yeah.