Upstream - S4E11.5: The Mission [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

This is a preview of a bonus episode! Find the rest on our increasingly reasonably-priced patreon! ----- The year is 1750. The Guarani people in what is now southern brazil are stuck between various factions of Europeans- the Portuguese, who believe they are functionally animals and NEED to be enslaved, the Spanish who broadly agree but have better PR, and the Jesuit missionaries, who believe that they're something approaching human, but only in as much as that means it's an absolute necessity that they be taught about Jesus and not jacking off or whatever. The Treaty of Madrid has ceded spanish colonial land to portugal- but will the jesuit missions continue to be protected by the pope, or will the portuguese get to kill and enslave the Guarani living in them? It's the latter. Sorry ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. As you well know I've been working with a few gazan families to raise money for their daily living costs in the genocide. We're putting all our energy into this one campaign as we have a real chance to get Ahmed and his family out of Gaza. Please, if you can help in any way, be that by donating yourself or sharing the link with friends and family, it will mean the world to me. https://chuffed.org/project/124906-help-ahmed-and-family-evacuate-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com  

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I'm November Kelly, joined as always by my friends Abigail and Devon. Hello. What's up? I should have done like another religion theme fit there, you know, Cardinal November joined as always by Abigail Cardinal Thorne. What did Catholics say like, peace be upon you? What's the Catholicism? And with your spirit, Catholics say a lot of things, I think. Blessings, listeners?

Yeah, sure. Blessings, yeah, upon all of you. And we're, dearly beloved, we're gathered here today to record a bonus episode of Kill James Bond that's still in... Oh, that's what it is, it's inomni, what is it, Padre Fili, it's Spiritus Sancti, it's Podcasti Commensium. Bismillah. Sure.

Yeah, expelliarmus, etc. podcasty commensium. Bismillah. Sure. Yeah, expelliarmus, etc. Opposite of expelliarmus, we want them to listen to the thing. So, it's still religion season, it's still God season, and it's Abbie's turn, and Abbie, you have picked a beautiful movie for us. What have you picked for us? It's called The Mission. It came out in 1996, stars Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro as Jesuits in South America.

So once again, we're doing like a Jesuit, a Jesuit bunny cop movie. Not surprising. The kind of Jedi is the thing. Yeah. Yeah, this is what the Jesuits were up to. This is kind of a rogue choice. It's not something I would normally have encountered, except that my AS level history teacher was a bit of a movie buff. So he showed us this. We never studied the Jesuits or South America or this time period, but like shout out to

Mr. Greenhouse for showing us this and also Mississippi Burning, which is a banger film he showed us when we were studying the American civil rights here. You're a teacher. You can just do whatever you want. I think that's true. This was just one day he didn't want to teach, so he was just like, fuck it, I'll show them the mission, brackets 1996, there we go. Yeah, two hours, bam, that's two periods, done. Easy. Don't have to think about it, and they've given the kids an episode for their podcast

in a few years. Yeah. Perfect. I'm still thinking about the Jesuit thing as well, because if you tried to do it for non-Jesuit religious orders, that's a different kind of movie. If you tried to make the Dominican movie, no one wants to watch two hours of a guy yelling at you, right? What flavor was in The Name of the Rose? That wasn't Jesuit, that was a different...

That was Franciscans. That was Franciscans, yeah. Franciscans being the kind of sandal hippie bird perching on fingertip kind of thing. Right, right, right. being the kind of like sandal hippie bird perching on fingertip kind of thing, being turned to a detective novel. Okay. So, no, we're still in Jesuit season, and we begin with a title card that tells us... Well, first of all, it makes a big claim, it says, the historical events represented

in this story are true. But number one with a bullet. This happened. This happened. As written. with a bullet, this happened. This happened. As written. Exactly as written and as shown. Yeah, Robert De Niro was there. We're in Paraguay, it's 1758, so it's almost dinnertime.

You can have a drink if you want to, because it's past five o'clock. And the mission, which is not, as I assume, a prequel to Mission Impossible, Ethan Hunt will not be appearing in this film, it's like an extreme prequel, like 250 years before Mission Impossible, we just have the mission. Mm-hmm. It really sets the scene. You've got to go really back to, to understand Mission Impossible. It has a deep lore, you know, way deeper than just the first one. Back to just before they stopped letting you be a Jesuit. I, I mean, I'm, I'm looking forward to when we do the Mission Impossible films, which will be after Tom Cruise dies filming a Mission Impossible film.

Mm-hmm. They're only gonna do one more, which I think they're already filming? Well, it's gonna have to be that one though. Yeah, well he takes his life in his hands every time he does one, so I look forward to us getting the news that Tom Cruise has been, like, crushed at the bottom of the Marianas Trench filming the final mission impossible. SONIA I think it's got the buff girl from Love, Life, and Speeding in it, I think.

ALICE Hell yeah. SONIA I mean, I'm gonna watch it, I didn't say I wasn't gonna watch it. ALICE Yeah, so, 1750s. SONIA But we can't talk about that until it puts money. SONIA 1750s. So we open with our framing device, which is this guy, Cardinal Alta Marina, who's been sent to Paraguay by the Pope, he's writing a letter to the

Pope saying, as you know, you're the Pope, I'm a Cardinal, which is one down from that. And his- The blown conclave as well. His what's the deal is in this movie. The deal of this movie is, Jeremy Irons is here, and he's trying to convert the Guarani Indians to the teachings of Catholic. ALICE Yes. And there have been these Jesuit missions, right, so like a community organized around the church that are providing a refuge for the Guarani against the Portuguese and

Spanish slavers who are coming in to, like, kidnap them into slavery and to steal their land. Yeah. We see these missions don't always go desperately well. No. So our first introduction to the Guarani is with the double-09-brackets priest. No, it's not! Who gets an all-time double-09-ing. Our first introduction to the Guarani is one of these successful missions where they're all being

kind of taught the violin by a barefoot priest and Alton Marano speculates that like, oh they have like musical souls these people, right, they're so like very easily swayed by music. Then we go to father 009, get a confession from father 009, you're like, bless me father, and he just gets shot three times outside the confessional, falls through the screen. Yeah, he's not responding, you open the door, he's already been shot. You're confessing to the sin of murdering him through the fucking, whatever the barrier is, that would be a cool sin. Patent pending, write that down. Yeah, that's good, write that down. Difficult confessor, father 009.

What is it, looking very, like,, hairy, trying to get away from stuff? Well, it's not gonna go well from this time, because the Guarani up, who's still living in the jungle, they have tied Father009 to a crucifix, and then they throw him in the river, and he goes over the waterfall, the Iguazu? Iguazu Falls? Iguazu Falls, yeah. Yeah, one of the greatest dummy work of all time, genuinely. oh, that's some great dummy work in this movie, like, dummy over the waterfall, so good.

like, three to five different people have to go over the falls, and every time I lose my shit I howl like a banshee, because this guy, he like wakes up in the river tied to the cross. this is filmed with not very much like weight versus the crucifixion, something like silence. Because partially, because he looks fine. They haven't done anything to him. They've just bonked him on the back of the head or something and like tied him to a cross and then put him in the river. It's quite a scientific response to a priest being told, well this guy got crucified and he came back from the dead and they just go, prove it. Well let's check this out.

Yeah. You guys love this s**t. The Iguazu fools you may remember from Moonraker as well. Oh yeah. So Father009 therefore has a terrible rafting experience. Like he goes down the rapids, he goes over the thing, and you get some outrageous dummy work. Because of the nature of waterfalls, if something goes over the waterfalls they tend to pin

it to the bottom, so those dummies are still gonna be there. Yeah, they just littered, effectively. This is very expensive act of littering. You only confuse some people like 20 years down the line when that floats by. It's also quite a grisly thought, because I actually, a friend of a friend jumped off Niagara Falls, and probably still there, along with a lot of other people, which is a grim picture, but there you go. That's troubling.

But so, from this we learn two things about the Guaraní, right? One, they love- One! Don't fuck with them! No, that's the second thing. First thing, they love music, right? Second thing, they'll kill you. Which is an interesting way to establish, not a character, but like a people. NICCOLE Yes. And as we know, with the benefit of

hindsight, historically, this is an objectively correct decision to make. ALICE Those historical events represented in the story are true. NICCOLE Shaking hands mean between the Guarani Indians and Mark David Chapman. ALICE Loves music, will kill you. I mean, it was a bad Indians and Mark David Chapman. LOOOL. Loves music, will care. I mean, it was a bad time when Mark David Chapman pushed John Lennon over Eggwazoo Falls, but you can't say he didn't deserve it, so... Something else that we will notice is that none of the Guarani language in this, if that

is what these actors are speaking, is translated. None of it's subtitles, which I know is a particular bugbear of Devon's. No. None of it's subtitles. No. Which I know is a particular bugbear of Devon's. That's right, we'll get to this. I also cannot hear without my subtitles, and I had a particularly bad experience with this one because, and this is the sentence that made a friend of mine who I said this to, like, forcibly install a Plex server. I bought this on YouTube, it was the only place I could find it, I was too lazy to torrent it, and

the YouTube one not only is a very bad print, but it is also insanely quiet in the mix with no subtitles. So I have the volume like banged up to maximum trying to listen for any of this and I could barely tell that this was untranslated dialogue so I did the rewatch. Um. November Kelly, I also watched this on YouTube. Oh my god. I mean, this is the thing. You two need to learn how to pirate movies.

I know how to, I just don't want to. I can't be asked. But so, even when it's more work for me. It's a point of principle. No, no principles at all. I got it for free though, I will say. But so, yeah, I mean, I have this thing of like adverse conditions movie club that I've been trying to make a thing. The conditions were fucking adverse on this one. I'll tell you that. Like, Jesus Christ, I could not hear.

The conditions are also pretty adverse in the fucking jungle. That's true. That is true. The death of father 009 means that father 007 has to be assigned to the case. Which is Jeremy. Sadly. Jeremy Irons. It does, yeah. Jeremy Irons and his boys go to the base of the falls.

They create a little memorial. His boy is one of his boys. One of his boys in profile, unmistakably Liam Neeson, but he was so young I had to wait for him to start speaking before I would write it down. FETAL Liam Neeson. Like, clearly Liam Neeson. He looks like a hurler.

It's incredible. Yeah, it's un-fucking-belief. Pre-pre-pre-taken. Still here. Fan-fucking-tastic. Yeah. Very, very young Liam Neeson. You know what I'm gonna say.

If you wanna listen to the rest of this beautiful, premium episode of Kill James Bond, you're gonna have to tithe me. Huh? With at least £5 a month over on patreon.com slash Kill James Bond. All one word. Sign up today.