Imaginary Worlds - Have You Watched....?

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

The writers’ and actors’ strikes have disrupted the pipeline of new shows and movies. We’re going to run out of new stuff to watch soon. Our listeners can help with that. They want you know about their favorite unsung gems of sci-fi and fantasy. Some of them were cult hits. Others underperformed at the box office or in the ratings. Maybe it’s time to give them a chance. In this episode, we hear about The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Odyssey 5, Spaced, Erik the Viking, John Carter, Centaurworld and Wendell & Wild. Our guests also recommend The 13th Warrior, Jerimiah, Babylon 5, and the Syfy mini-series Alice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Eric Malinsky. We have been living through the era of peak TV, where there is too much out there for any one person to watch. And it seems like everybody has a favorite show that they love and can't believe it hasn't gotten more notice. So we asked you to tell us about your favorite sci-fi fantasy shows or movies that you think are unsung gems. And because of the strikes in Hollywood, we're going to need some new stuff to watch pretty soon. By the way, this episode has a few spoilers as people discuss why they like these movies and shows. The previous episode was about shows that were canceled too soon,

and several listeners suggested the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance for that episode. The show came out on Netflix in 2019, and it was canceled after one season. I also considered putting it in the previous episode because I was upset when Age of Resistance was canceled. previous episode because I was upset when Age of Resistance was canceled. But Dawn Fancher suggested it for this episode. She liked the show, but she thought one season was enough, and I was really curious to hear why. The Netflix series is a prequel to the 1982 classic film The Dark Crystal, which was a passion project for Jim Henson. The 1982 film takes place on a planet called Thra. It's ruled by these repulsive vulture-like creatures called Skeksis. Ah, gross nebri, my favorite. Nebri, I want the rarest. By the way, it's worth watching the movie

alone just for the puppetry of the Skeksis, which was really cool. The Skeksis had wiped out a society of small, elvish characters called Gelflings, and there were only two Gelflings left in the world. To be honest, I thought the Gelfling heroes in the original film were kind of bland. And because of that, I never found the story in the original film as compelling as the visuals. But the prequel takes place when the Gelflings are thriving. They have this rich culture with competing alliances. It's almost like Game of Thrones with puppets. And most of the Gelflings are slow to realize that the Skeksis mean them harm.

I heard you and that thing. His name is Law. Conspiring to end Skeksis rule. What happens to the Gelfling if the Skeksis fall? What happens to Mother? Is it Mother you're worried about? Or her crown? By the way, if you're sick of CGI, this show is beautifully handcrafted.

They do use CG, but very subtly for added realism. That's what got Dawn into the show. It's such a beautiful world, and there's so many little creatures and puppets. Like every time they like, they're walking through the wilderness and every time there's a shot of them walking somewhere, there's like two or three little critters to look at. And it's just, it was just really gorgeous.

I had a friend who his main, he liked the show, but his main problem was he thought it was unbelievable that the Gelflings would be so naive to think that the Skeksis were really like these benevolent rulers that it would have taken them so long to realize they're being duped. And I was like, really, you found that unrealistic, that part really? I'm like, that would never happen in the real world. That's another thing I liked about it, actually. Yeah, it was because it is really unsettling because a lot of us grew up with the Skeksis being these clear

villains, you know, like people would do Skeksis impressions at parties in college, you know, like it was just a couple words in the voice and like, you know, you know, that's a villain. just a couple words in the voice and like you know you know that's a villain so to see characters who you relate to worshiping them and saying of course they have our best interests at heart is really off-putting and I'm pretty sure that was done deliberately it really is like what are we accepting as normal that isn't normal so I thought that was a very nice little subtle touch that they did to really make you uncomfortable for a little bit to see people being like, oh, no, of course, they're great. Yeah. So I was I was thinking that this would be a gone too soon, but I thought it was really interesting in your email that you made the argument that it's OK. It didn't get a second season that, in fact, it's not worth continuing the timeline up until this genocide, that this

is actually a good spot to stop. I thought that was a really interesting idea. How come? Well, I kind of did want more. And like in rewatching it again, there was more like hints of like maybe a second season than I remembered because, you know, I watched it a few years ago. I mean, I don't know because I don't know what story they had. So I didn't know what had come up to here. But I didn't feel like some other kind of gone too soon things. You do feel like there's a cliffhanger that the story is incomplete. The way they crafted this story, and maybe it was done intentionally, I don't know. It felt like that there was probably that this was a good stopping point.

And that if they, you know, maybe there's more story, but there would be a number of stopping points. You know, it's kind of a story of the resistance to the Skeksis that you know is going to go to this really dark place before you get to the original movie. But I feel like it told the story of unity and how they get to a place where they're going to have to go through a dark time. But what about the idea that we know that this is going to fail? We already have knowledge of the future that it's going to fail. They're all going to die. You know, that there's something about ending on an earlier point in the timeline that you feel like kind of spares us from that to some degree or makes the story about something very different. You know, it makes the story about

how we treat each other and how it matters to do the right thing, even if you can't stop an apocalypse that's coming. I guess it's nice that it spared us. You know, I don't need to have all my media bathed in sadness just to make it serious. But I do think it's more the second thing for me about why this is a good point to stop, because, you know, we've got global warming. I just my community was just devastated by floods, you know, a month ago, i just my community was just devastated by floods you know a month ago even though you you you watch this knowing that that they're gonna like lose basically at least temporarily they're gonna lose pretty badly the story is still about them coming together still about them deciding that they need to fight that there is something to fight

and that they do want to fight for themselves and for Thra, the planet. They don't know that they're doomed, right? But we do. But we're still rooting for them. We're still rooting for them, even though we know they lose, because how they fight and their decision to fight is important. What we do and how we work together still matters. And we still care about those characters. We still want good things to happen to them, even though we know they're not going to win as far as saving their species or preventing like an ecological devastation. But we still care about them, which means we should still care about ourselves. We heard from another listener about a show that could have gone into the category of gone too soon because it was canceled after one season.

And the show that he suggested was also about characters trying to stop a planet-wide extinction. Odyssey 5 was a Canadian show from 2002 starring Peter Weller. It aired on Showtime in the U.S. The premise is that a group of astronauts were orbiting the Earth, when our planet is suddenly destroyed by something mysterious. And then an alien shows up and takes them aboard his ship. The alien appears to them in the form of a human, so as not to freak them out. And he says the same thing happened to his planet. He's been going around the galaxy trying to find survivors who can help him

stop whatever is destroying these worlds. I pick up radio signals. I follow them to their source. But when I arrive, the source is always gone. I'm always too late. Like this time. Yes and no. The alien sends the consciousness of the astronauts back into their own bodies five years earlier so they can figure out how to stop this apocalypse. Mike Shaw has been thinking about Odyssey 5 lately because the show dealt with AI. It's interesting because they never put that forward as the premise. They don't talk about, or they didn't at the time, because AI was total science fiction. So the idea that AI was somehow practical and accessible and widely understood in the population

wasn't there. So it's not as part of the premise. But once they get back to the present or their present, which is 2002, the driving villain seems to be AI. And throughout the series, there's only one season, but throughout the season, they come to discover that not only does AI exist, but there are different kinds of AI and they have coalesced to a point where they are sentient. And there are different entities scattered across our nascent internet. Are they the ones that destroyed us? Where did they come from? And the

themes of AI that we think about today, like the issues, like will it take over jobs? Can it replace humans doing things? It's interesting because like the Matrix came out about three years earlier, and that was like the computers got smart and killed us, you know, or turned us into batteries. This seems to be a much more subtle nuance. It kind of reflects the debates that are happening now where people are like, is this good? Is this bad? Like we don't, you know, there's different AI, like, like some of it we already use, we don't realize it, we like it. And it seems to be like in that kind of murky place.

Not only that, but what one thing the series never resolves, and I will get into spoiler here, because this is where it kind of clicks in your brain when you've learned this. When you get to the end, there's a cliffhanger. And there this implication that, wait a minute, there's a group of humans that are also working on AI. They discover, the protagonists discover that the AI they've been fighting against might have actually been extraterrestrial. So is AI the enemy or is alien AI the enemy? And human AI is good. You know, they even meet what they call ascensions, an AI that gives itself form. And they meet one and he's like goofy and funny and it's a comedic

episode, but he's like a good guy and he's an ally. So it came out in 2002, right? Yeah. Post 9-11 sci-fi is really interesting too, because it deals with some really heavy stuff in a way that people are having trouble sort of like trying to grapple with a lot of like really dark, big ideas, world shattering ideas, you know, fringe. I think 28 days later, you know, in The Walking Dead, I just think that people are going to look back and see a kind of interesting, introspective weight to that kind of early 2000s sci-fi. Not only that. So it's interesting you say that because the other show that I think about when I hear post 9-11 is I think of Battlestar Galactica.

Right. Because that was super heavy on the post 9-11 stuff. Like it hits you over the head with it. This show came out about the same time. And what's fascinating is that if you watch this show, Odyssey 5, and if you're watching Battlestar Galactica at the same time, you will actually hear musical echoes. And it is heavy on like the oboe and the strings that it sounds eerily similar to Battlestar Galactica. But do you find now that when you try to recommend the show to people, they look at you like,

if it's so great, how come I never heard of it? Well, so I think one of the things that you had said when you had talked about this show is that how we've been in this era of peak TV and now with the writers and actor strike, there's going to be not much produced. Just the idea of being in peak tv people know that there's stuff they haven't heard of before so i actually maintain like a list on a site where i

have a list of all my shows that i recommend to people so i call it oh my god you haven't seen this exclamation point and i just share that there's like 50 or 60 shows on there i always tell myself when i retire i'll have all this show to watch, all this TV to watch till I die. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection.

Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. There are also classic shows that many of us haven't watched yet. Like if you've never seen Twin Peaks, if it came out before you were born, it's going to be new to you. Tone Vantaputa wrote us from Belgium to recommend a classic comedy, Spaced. The show was created by Simon Pegg, who went on to star and co-write the movies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End. Spaced ran from 1999 to 2001 in the UK.

It was a cult hit back then. I was introduced to it by friends who worked in the animation industry with me, because the show was all about being a geek. Simon Pegg is playing a character called Tim, who lives an unglamorous life in middle-class London. He and his roommate deal with all sorts of mundane things, relationships, jobs, friends, annoying neighbors. Borrow a teabag, only if you bring it back. You can have a teabag, Brian, you can't borrow one. Because their lives are so unexciting, the characters often space out and imagine that they're in a movie, a TV show, or a video game.

When Tone first discovered the show, he definitely related to it. So that sort of thing where your life is really mundane. You have a job, you have an apartment that's actually quite expensive to pay on your own and that sort of thing but in the little things of your life you start you inject all the stuff that you learn from from geek culture or from from references there's an episode where they uh where their dog has been abducted by a vivisection lab and they break into it it's it's a whole heist movie episode thing which in itself is already a nice reference every one of their friends gets uh gets a code name like like you do in a heist movie they're named after Star Wars characters sound off Luke oh Chewie I mean Leia yes Jabba Jabba the princess yes okay like today I think today everybody would know that Leia is the princess book.

But in the 90s, knowing who the princess is in Star Wars was a pretty nerdy thing to be. Yeah. And like you're saying, too, is when you love these this particular genre, this the stuff that you love, it's always the end of the universe or life or death in every movie in every episode. And the stakes are so low in your life that there's a part of you that kind of wants to live in that other world but you know it's almost frustrating because you if you have an active imagination you feel like you're almost halfway there but you know you'll never get there yeah yeah yeah and it's it's only when i was like 20 or something i didn't have that imagination that i think spaced is one of the reasons that I started to develop that sort of thing to insert, you know, like Scotty references or Star Wars references in everyday life situations.

Tone in another recommendation, the movie Eric the Viking from 1989. It's not exactly Monty Python, but it's Python adjacent. Terry Jones wrote, directed, and appears in it. John Cleese is in it too, but the main actor is Tim Robbins. It's about a Viking who just isn't into pillaging and fighting. He doesn't see the point. So he goes on a quest to ask the gods to end the age of Ragnarok. Nobody's ever crossed the rainbow bridge to Asgard. We'd be the first. You mean we'd be dead No, we would be the first living men To set foot in the halls of the gods

And at one point in the movie The characters go to an island called High Brazil And the thing with High Brazil Is it's enchanted If a drop of blood is spilled on the island It sinks beneath the waves Very interesting Climate change metaphor,

I think. Of course, that happens. The island, because there's Vikings on the island, murder happens. And the island starts sinking. And the inhabitants of the island, they're very nice to each other all the time. Because they can't kill each

other. They have to avoid any possibility of violence. But how do you take revenge? How do you punish people? How do you defend yourselves? We don't have to. We're all terribly nice to each other. But then the island starts sinking

and the inhabitants of the island don't believe it's sinking. They just keep saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have things in place that that this cannot happen it can't happen but it is look i've already appointed the chancellor as chairman of a full committee of inquiry and in the meantime i suggest we have our sing song all up to the point where they're they're all underwater and they're all gone do you find it hard to convince people to watch spaced or eric the viking yeah because they're old gone. Do you find it hard to convince people to watch Spaced or Eric the Viking? Yeah, because they're old.

Today, being a geek is really mainstream with the MCU and Star Wars and everything. It's the easy part. It's not watching the really weird movie that's old and that's strange and that doesn't fit with

commercially produced content of today you have to feel a bit like an outcast to enjoy it I mean I don't want to exaggerate but you do have to have this feeling of being not normal to empathize with the characters in that sort of content

and Eric the Viking is an outsider in this violence ruled Viking world similarly Tim in this violence ruled Viking world. Similarly, Tim in Spaced is a bit of an outsider in the adult world. You're talking about the other stuff too that's more accessible. In those things, the fantasy is you're one of the Avengers.

You're one of the Jedi. It's different. Yeah, true. You're the hero. You're the big, shiny, famous person. Yeah. But some movies that are supposed to appeal to people who want to You're the hero. You're the big, shiny, famous person. Yeah. Yeah. But some movies that are supposed to appeal to people who want to imagine themselves as the big, shiny, famous person, they don't always work out either. Drew Meyer is a podcaster.

I've actually been on his Doctor Who podcast several times. And he wrote to us about one of his favorite films, John Carter from 2012. It's about a Civil War veteran in the 19th century who gets transported to Mars, which has futuristic spaceships, a feisty princess, armies at war, and aliens of all shapes and sizes. Save your body, man. If you come with me, stand behind me. This might get dangerous. The movie was based on the classic series by Edgar Rice Burroughs from the early 20th century. In fact, the John Carter books were some of the first science fiction books ever. When Drew was a kid, he loved the John Carter books and the comics as well. But the movie... It was the single biggest financial bomb in movie history.

No, it was that big? Yes. Wow. Yeah, almost $300 million loss. Wow, I gotta go big or go home, I guess. Well, there's a... Personally, I think the movie's financial failure sort of informed a lot of the negative reviews

that we got around the movie. Well, what did you think of it? I loved it. I absolutely adored it. I absolutely adored it. So what did you love about it? Okay, so here's the thing. Part of what I loved about it is nostalgia of seeing something that I loved in both literary form and in a graphic novel form on the big screen being realized with modern technology. I thought the voice acting was great. I thought most of the acting real people was great. I thought the world building was fantastic. I thought the designs were fun. I think the realization of the Martians, they're supposed to be like 15 feet tall and, you know, massive four armed creatures. And and yeah, I know that they're like eight or nine feet and the actors had to be on stilts. But I think the realization of that is truly spectacular. Just that the world,

a giant city on mechanical legs barreling down the desert on its way to mine more resources from the dying planet. I mean, all of this stuff is so imaginative and it was a romp. It felt pulpy and it was exciting. Let's face it, the biggest change they made from the books for the movie series is people are wearing clothing, which is not the case in the original book. So I think that was probably a smart choice on Disney's part. Nobody was wearing clothing, which is not the case in the original book. So, you know, I think that was probably a smart choice on Disney's part. Nobody was wearing clothing? Yeah, there's a lot of naked folks in the books. Yeah. So, okay. So somebody's listening. They're like, oh, well, maybe this was misunderstood. Maybe I will see. I'll watch it on Disney+. Do you think it definitely holds up for somebody coming in cold,

not knowing anything about John Carter? I think folks coming in, just listening to this, give it a chance. You don't have to know anything about it. Just know that there's going to be a lot of fancy names. You don't really need to worry about that. The plot might be a little confusing, but again, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Think of it as a big summer blockbuster popcorn film.

There you go. I think that one of the problems is like i know people who had never seen star wars as a kid and they decided to finally watch it and because star wars has been strip mined by everybody else when they watch star wars it seems like the most derivative movie they've ever seen in their life because everything they've seen in star wars they've seen somebody else do it since star wars does john carter have a similar problem because it influenced so many things and almost feels like it's derivative of the things that it actually influenced? That is 100% exactly accurate. Yeah. I think the directing job was originally offered to Zemeckis and Zemeckis is like, nah, now Lucas has already stripped everything

he needed to out of this film. You know, they've got they got master characters called Jeddaks that are running around in this desert planet with large howling bestial characters and, you know, dark lords who control people's minds and can shoot lightning. And I mean, all of this stuff was taken from these books. It was inspired by like these little kids reading science fiction at a young age. Everybody read this. It was a hugely, hugely popular pulp science fiction story. I like these films that people don't seem to love. I don't know if it's capitalism or what it is

that people just assume that the quality of a film is how much money it made. Listen, you and I both like films that didn't make much money. There are movies that just aren't out there for everybody. To me, the fact that John Carter was a flop and the planned franchise never happened actually makes it more interesting. These days, I've been feeling franchise fatigue. I'm hungry for something new, something weird, something that swings for the fences. Sarah Harker wrote in to recommend a show that might fit that description.

Centaur World is an animated series on Netflix. The main character is a war horse who gets separated from the warrior who's riding her. Stay with me! The horse, whose name is just Horse, seems to be falling off a cliff, but she snatches a magical medallion in her mouth, which transports her to a world of centaurs. Her initial goal is to reunite with her rider.

But is her learning how to be dependent upon a community? But it's Horace also telling that herd that they do not have to be so isolationist in their community that they can go out and explore and see how the world has changed. So how would you describe the tone of the show? Because I think it's interesting that it seems like it has over-the-top humor. It has lots of sincerity to it. But then it could also deal with like dark weighty themes is that right i would say it is a light-hearted deep dive into trauma and culture and it is about change and growth and community and there's also like a whole song about being incompletely anxious and your coping skill is to breathe in a bag. You can breathe in a bag.

Just breathe in a bag. Yeah, Centaur World is a musical. Like the whole series. The other thing I will warn you is that I watched this show in 2021 and I still turn to my partner and go, guess which Centaur World song stuck in my head? Some of them are very simple, but there's also these beautiful layers. They do a great job with leitmotifs in it.

There's a bunch of Broadway actors in it because it was made during COVID and they couldn't be on Broadway. So they just did this weird show. Because you made it to Centaur World and nothing better represents our world than this colorful collection of singing and dancing show. Another thing that Sarah likes about Centaur World, it tells a complete story. It stops. Like it comes to a natural conclusion. They didn't drag it out. It feels like they understood that Netflix was only going to give them two or three seasons, so They didn't drag it out. It feels like they understood that Netflix was only

going to give them two or three seasons, so they did two seasons. The characters are wildly different and also make this beautiful ensemble. There's like one song where everyone's like, we don't know where food comes from in Centaur World, because you can't just go eat grass. The grass is grass, Tars. Leaves are are leaf tars. Like everything is a centaur. I don't want to be a dumb dog. I'm just hungry and I want some information, Mr. Please. Where does food come from? There's a character called Comfortable Dog who is the, at the admission of the show, the most sexual attractive character you've ever met. And he has a song about becoming himself, becoming Comfortable Doug. You know, I used to

be called Comfortable Doug because that's my name, but now I am Comfortable Doug and all of you can be comfortable too. But one of the lines of the song is like, I've never found a husband or a wife. And it's just very casual about like, like sexuality is never explicitly discussed. Not like, ooh, I identify as bisexual, which I do. But like characters are casually queer. Like one of the characters is coded as being trans.

Again, these conversations don't really come up in the show because it's about war and trauma and musicals and becoming comfortable with yourself and being willing to embrace who you are. It is such a good show that I was so hesitant to watch. And then because it was 2021 and there was a huge surge, a lot of my friends ended up getting COVID. So I'd write them cards saying, hey, feel better. Here's some like my media recommendations. If you would like something to do while you're stuck in your room for two weeks. Also Centaur World, please join me in hell. Please join me in like just being like breathing it back, breathing it back. She's right. I have not been able to get these songs out of my head.

I've been walking around the house all day today singing, I'm comfortable, Doug. I'm comfortable, Doug. So far, we've heard from people who are fans. But what happens when you work on a film or a show that gets lost in the flood of content? Caitlin Martin works in stop motion animation. She was very proud of the work that her team did on the film Wendell and Wild. The movie is on Netflix. It was directed by Henry Selick, who famously did The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, and it to the land of the living. Why would I do that? Because we'll give you whatever you want. Huh. Only thing I want is my parents.

And they're dead. Uh-huh. Come on, friends. We can't raise the dead. Well, we do know how to lie. I like that plan. My previous experience before joining Wendell and Wild was only in pre-production. So when I got to join Wendell and Wild, it was the full momentum of, you know, we have

35 stages running at the same time. And this is what it looks like to have camera team and the ADs and lighting and scenic. Everybody just kind of like mad little ants running around and getting it across the finish line. As we got towards the end of the shoot, they tagged me in as Puppet Wrangler, which is a person part of the team who helps move puppets from the fabricators. So they're doing costume hair, tensioning the armatures to make sure everything functions well, and then getting it into the hands of the animators for the shots. functions well, and then getting it into the hands of the animators for the shots. So when you're working on the film, was there a lot of excitement among the crew of like, given the talent involved that you were working on this film?

Oh, yeah, it was huge. There were folks who were part of the crew who had worked with Henry during Nightmare. Some folks had been there since Coraline. So there were some people who have been part of Henry's team since the beginning of his career and his work. And there was a lot of history there. We had folks on our team who were fresh out of undergrad. So this was, you know, their first film out of school, a lot of passion, a lot of excitement around getting it off the ground. Wow. So when the movie was released, did it get the kind of attention you're hoping? It was interesting because, you know, we, Did it get the kind of attention you were hoping? It was interesting because, you know, no one understands how the Netflix algorithm works. And so for us, we were, you know, this was the project that we'd been working on every day for many, many years.

And then you don't really have control over how Netflix distributes it or how their algorithm works or really what that looks like. So we got a very limited theatrical release. So there were some theaters that showed it in, I believe, LA, New York, a couple in Canada, and we had a local release for all the artists to get to enjoy, bring friends and family and get industry support from other stop-mo people here in Portland. But when it came to looking for it on the Netflix homepage, for folks who didn't work on it and people who might not be plugged into the stop-mo scene, I don't know if it reached them. So we'd be like, oh, Wind on Wild just

came out. And I don't know if it landed with that impact to people who didn't know that it was being made. I think for anyone working on a movie or a TV show, no matter what you're doing, it's going to be frustrating if the project comes out and you feel like it's not seen enough. But I feel like with stop motion animation, the word people often use is painstaking to describe it. I mean, so much of it is about like putting in the time because you know there's going to be a payoff in the end. So does that feel kind of extra frustrating with something like this? Oh, I think so. And very much as a labor of love, you want as many people to see it as possible.

I think Henry Selick obviously has a huge cult following. And for us to contribute to that body of work was incredible. And you also yearn for why a cult following? Why can't we have the greater world championing this painstaking labor of love? What have you found in terms of when you start pitching it to people? Have you found like, okay, this actually kind of hooks them? How do you describe it? Yeah, I would describe it as it's a lot of the classic ingredients of Henry that the audience has come to know and love. It has a very specific

visual style that he also developed with Pablo Lobato, who is the character designer who did the illustrated passes of Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key as Wendell and Wilde. Henry wrote it in conjunction with Jordan Peele, and Key and Peele are two of the main voice actors, so you're getting their comedic sensibilities plugged into it. And then that's paired with the protagonist, Kat, who, you know, she's gone through incredible hardship in her youth that has impacted how she has grown. Now in her teenage years, she is trying to find her direction and navigates coming of age in a very profound and grabbing life by the horns kind of way. And all of those intersect for a really wild ride.

There's not going to be much of a fall TV. There's probably going to be hardly any bit of a fall TV season. People are looking for stuff to watch. This is perfect for like, you know, the Halloween time, October. Yeah, absolutely. I know last year when it came out, it came out, I think, a week before Halloween. So we didn't get a lot of lead up into getting to get the momentum going for Halloween. But this year, yeah, absolutely. There's there's demons, there's monsters, there's spooky undead souls, fake blood, you know, all the good stuff you'd come to love. One thing all these movies and shows have in common, they took creative risks. Those choices may not have always paid off in terms of the box office or the ratings, but they still went for it.

And fantasy genres have so much room for creativity if people are willing to go there. AI wouldn't know how. Happy watching, everyone. And take your time. It might be a while. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Don Fancher, Tone Vantaputa, Drew Meyer, Sarah Harker, Caitlin Martin, and Mike Shaw, who, like me, is originally from the Boston area. But unlike me, he still has the accent. You know, what's so funny is I lived in Beijing for 11 years, and the Beijing accent is the exact opposite of the Boston accent.

So we drop our ahs, they add our onto words. There's actually a guy from the Boston area who moved to China to do stand-up, and he had this great joke. Boston lost all their ahs and they just went to Beijing. In the show notes, I put a list of everything we've recommended and some of the stuff our guests recommended that I wasn't able to fit into this episode. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. The best way to support Imaginary Worlds is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free Imaginary Worlds stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has the full-length interviews of every guest in every episode.

account, which has the full length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can also get access to an ad free version of the show through Patreon, and you can buy an ad free subscription on Apple podcasts. You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.