The Weekly Planet - The Green Hornet - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

You'd think with the combination fo Seth Rogan & Evan Goldberg the minds behind The Boys, Superbad and TMNT Mutant Mayhem, director Michel Gondry from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and the cast of Christoph Waltz, Jay Chou and Cameron Diaz that The Green Hornet 2011 would not be terrible. But it is. Thanks for watching our Caravan Of Garbage review!SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret. The other, a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca.

Welcome back, everybody, to Caravan of Garbage, where we're wrapping up our series on movies that are vaguely connected in some way. Our Tommy Gun series, except for this last one that doesn't have a Tommy Gun in it. But it's got Tommy Gun vibes, sort of. It does. I can get four.

Like, I can link four of them. Four of them were created in the 30s, except the Rocketeer. Four of them have Tommy Guns, except this one. Four of them are bad, except the Rocketeer. That's right.

Now, you said, James, if any of the viewers of this video can find a confirmed through line through this, you'll send them $1,000. I did say that. And put it in the comments. Unfortunately, they didn't know. I've had a look and it's just blank there. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, wow. So what do you do? Maybe if you leave a like, I'll have another look and you'll get $1,000 potentially. Nice, nice. Because you never know. It's like playing the lottery. You're guaranteed to win as far as I'm concerned. Just leave a comment. Agreed.

So we're talking about Green Hornet 2011, which was a bad year if you made a green superhero movie. Oh, yeah. Oh, was this the year of Green Lantern also? Certainly was. My goodness. A movie we have also looked at. And looking at who's involved in this,

what a fucking waste. Yeah, so it's Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script, who have since gone on to produce Preacher and The Boys and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem. And also made a bunch of really good stuff before this. Bearing in mind this was their first kind of big budget thing. And we'll talk about Seth Rogen in particular, his feelings towards the making of this on the back end, but

just squandering talents. Seth Rogen, of course, is in this. He stars in it. Jay Chow, Cameron Diaz is in this. Christoph Waltz is in this. David Harbour is in this. Surprise! David Harbour is in this. James Edward Olmos is in this. Tom Wilkinson is in this.

You know? Edward Furlong's in this? Yeah, he's in this. I gotkinson is in this. You know? Edward Furlong's in this? Yeah, he's in this. I got a bit of trivia about that. Well, yeah. And it's, of course, directed by Michelle Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind, probably other movies that I like.

Yeah. Anyway, I hated this. How did you feel about it? It's upsetting. It's upsetting. I felt like, and this is a low bar to clear, but I felt it was insulting my intelligence, my very minimal intelligence.

And I'll tell you why. It starts off on a real sour note because there's a moment in this. Christoph Waltz, who has come off, he's back in acting. He did an amazing performance in Inglourious Basterds, and he's clearly taken whatever check is available and who could blame him? He's a an amazing performance in Inglourious Basterds, and he's clearly taken whatever check is available, and who could blame him?

He's a hot property. Get that cash. Get that superhero cash. Anyway, he plays like a gangster, and he controls all the crime in this city. But then another gangster starts up a nightclub without his permission, so he goes into the nightclub, and it's James Franco. And he's like, RIP.

Oh, yeah, no. We miss him, don't we? Thinking anything good about him. That's right. Because he sucks. And Christoph Waltz is like, listen, you've got to give me all, you've got to give me the deed to this nightclub. I'm taking over this nightclub.

And James Franco's like, you're old news, old man. Get out of here. You're not going to take a, we're the new game in town, buddy, or whatever. And then Christoph Waltz just pulls out a big gun and shoots his henchman and james franco's like what the heck i'm flabbergasted he brought a gun in here well this guy that controls all the crime in the city he didn't just bring in any kind of gun it's the biggest gun i've ever seen it's the biggest hand gun i've ever seen it's two guns it's two guns welded together. And I went back because I thought to myself.

He found it? It was on the floor in front of him? Well, I'm like, they haven't even contrived a way that like he snuck it in or whatever. Like one of his underlings, you know, snuck it in a side corridor and gave it to him. Or maybe he was piecing it together. Man with a golden gun style. Maybe it was a series of innocuous objects and he put it all together. No, it's the biggest gun in the world that you could not possibly conceal upon your person. Is it a swimsuit?

They don't even pat him down. And I feel like that sets the tone for the movie. You know what I mean? I don't disagree. I do like the idea of that gangster looking for like an aesthetic or an edge because people keep telling him that he's kind of a boring standard gangster and he's like what if i had a catchphrase what if i wore a cool suit what if i had a like a red trench coat what if i was red trench coat yeah i don't mind any of that but

it it doesn't really go anywhere and also he's not in it that much and he doesn't play off the lead characters like at all there should be more scenes with those three together yeah just like interacting and not just running down a corridor shooting at each other with weird guns yeah well let's talk about because we're going to take it back because as we know every one of these properties we've looked at is from the 30s that's correct and that's the definitive Yes. What is the backstory of these characters? Well, the real world backstory. Oh, yeah, I don't care about the fiction.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the real world backstory of these characters is that there was a Detroit radio station called WXYZ. Lucky they got in there. Get in there early. WXYZ. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had already had a success with the radio play version

of The Lone Ranger. And they were like, let's do another one, but let's do an original one. And so they put together a little masked hero. This is in 1936, so this is pre-Superman, which explains the look. Sure, yeah. Just guys in suits with masks. No powers, et cetera. They've got a car and a gun or whatever.

Yep, yep. Totally fine. They went through, much like in this movie, they went through a bunch of ideas as to what to name the character and what his whole deal was. I think at one point they were going to be the Hornet, but there was already a Hornet, so they tossed around just a bunch of colours.

At one point he might have been the Blue Hornet or the Pink Hornet. Okay. Couldn't do that these days. Why not? I don't know. Because people would be like, oh, like the Green Hornet. Oh yeah. And we hated that. Yeah yeah good point. We hated that movie. Yeah yeah. And it was a big old

big old hit. Well and then it had a revival in the 60s. Oh yeah of course. With uh look with some guys the Green Hornet. Van Williams is his name. But most notably it had Bruce Lee as Kato. Yes. And uh I guess if you've seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood more recently,

a movie that Quentin Tarantino went out of his way to make Bruce Lee look like a fucking moron, that is on the set of The Green Hornet, the fight he has with Brad Pitt. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I think it's got a really interesting backstory. I like the aesthetic and the idea, I guess, of these two characters. And they both bring kind of different ideas to it. Yeah. But I think what this movie does in terms of missing a trick is

they're not a great duo, are they? No. I feel like they don't bounce well off each other. Well, they're all just bad characters. So when we talked about Dick Tracy a few weeks ago, one of the problems I had with that movie and that character generally is he's just a guy who fights crime because that's his job and the green hornet like traditionally in the radio series and the tv series and etc he's quite similar to that he's just a he's just a guy he's

like uh you know he's the he's the he's the young newspaper publisher and he's like i think i'll fight crime at night or whatever yeah and you know and it's and it's you know there's hard it's it's difficult to kind of like find a human angle to to jump in on that and clearly with this as with some of the other you know versions you see in like uh you know in comic books and stuff like that they're like let's give him a backstory let's give him a reason to fight crime and it's awful yeah he's just a he's just an awful guy he's stupid and he never learns anything and not in a fun way. No. And I think Seth Rogen... He's rude? He is rude. And that's the thing. He's sexist?

Yes. And you couldn't do that these days. You couldn't do that these days. Because they'd say to be done in the Great Hornet 2011. I think also Seth Rogen is good at playing like obnoxious and irritating characters. But the difference is that they're funny. and you like them.

Whereas this guy, I don't like him. He sucks. And not in a way that that's funny. He's not funny. He just sucks. He's just mean and he sucks. There's a point where he meets, he's hiring a new temporary secretary and he gets,

he hires Lenore, played by cameron diaz and in like the span of about 20 seconds he talks about how hot she is to her face and then she's like but you're all so old yeah and like what are you doing nobody in this movie acts like a real person everybody acts like they're just saying the exposition they need to get to the next scene of the movie so in a way it feels like just a really awful comic book from the 60s. You know, where people are saying the stuff they're doing. And explaining things. Explaining stuff, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but here's something I appreciate that they sometimes get right in this. Being a Michel Gondry film, and this was his biggest project by far, he's really good at putting mechanically interesting scenes together. You look like eternal sunshine the spotless mind the detail and the effort to getting like jim carrey in a sink if you've seen for example they built a really big sink there's so many fascinating let that sink in thank you there's so many fascinating things great joke uh within that movie and i feel like you get

glimpses of that with like the mechanics of the car. Coffee machine machine. And there's, I think that some of the action sequences are quite frenetic. Like Cato has a, he has the Arkham Asylum detective vision and he can, you know,

he's got the Arkham Asylum fighting vision. It's different. It's in the same game, but it's different. And he can kind of assess all the threats and then he takes everybody down in a cool sequence. I thought that was quite fun. I think, though, the fact that they really highlight the guns.

I think the fact that they really highlight... Oh, they were trying to talk about the Green Hornet. It's not good, but we need you to keep it down. They really highlight the red gun. It's like... You can pull back on that slightly. I think maybe if your brain does do that exact thing, maybe you should get a CAT scan or something.

Yeah, you have a brain tumour, 100%. Look, I don't know. His origin story in this is weird. You know what I mean? The fact that his dad broke a toy and... Yeah, right. And then he was a bad guy for 30 years and then he does this yeah so his backstory is that the first time we see him as a little child

he's a little lord fauntleroy type in his little cardigan and he's being brought home from school by his dad who's a big media magnate and his dad's like what are you doing getting into trouble at school and rich reed is like oh he's just helping a a kid. A kid was being bullied and I wanted to save him. And his dad's like, well, never do that again. Just be a bad kid for 30 years. I won't be having any of that. And then we see nothing and then he's just like a party dude. He's just awful.

Yeah. And also, Kato's better than him at everything. Yeah. He's pointless. Yeah. He doesn't need to be in the movie. He doesn't make anything. He can't fight for shit. He doesn't have any good ideas. Then he's pointless. Yeah. He doesn't need to be in the movie. He doesn't make anything. He can't fight for shit.

He doesn't have any good ideas. He's then he's, then he gets weird. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks.

Visit heartandstroke.ca. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.

FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind.

So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. ...really jealous about everything. God, he's unpleasant, isn't he? Yeah, he really is. And he only learns about the existence of Kato because when his dad dies, he fires the entire staff.

And Kato, his job was to maintain all Brit Reid's dad's cars and also make his coffee. And then Brit is mad that his coffee's bad all of a sudden? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's right. Great, love it. Origin. That of a sudden? That's right. Great. Origin.

That's a good origin, I think. Oh, yeah, and then he's like, I'm going to cut the head off my dad's statue. And then he just gets a thrill out of fighting crime. He's like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it, yeah. And he does for a bit. What do you think about the idea that they frame themselves as villains? Well, I mean, that is the conceit of the original Green Hornet,

so I guess you have to lean into that a little bit. Sorry, I should say, do you think any of that actually works here and makes sense? Absolutely not. The deeds that they're doing, it's just destroying villains' lairs, but they're not taking over anything or stealing money for their own gains or killing anybody. They are killing people. Or killing anybody. I guess maybe they are.

Maybe it's great. Maybe it's great and I'm wrong. It's completely random. Sometimes they're just beating people with an inch of their life. Sometimes they're shooting people with missiles from their car. Sometimes they're like, well, I've got to use a gas gun because I can't kill. But then sometimes they just drive half a car through David Harbour

off the top of a building and crash him into the ground below, which honestly I loved. I thought that bit was funny. I will say when the half a car gets in the building at the end, there's a lot of broken glass and sliding about. I think all of that is a pretty solid action scene. Yeah, but we shouldn't have to wait that long for a good action sequence. I mean, it's half a car. And I guess there's two cool villain deaths.

There's the David Harbour one that you mentioned, and Christoph Waltz gets, like, stabbed through the eyes. But it's really... And his head just... Yeah. He's just swaying around with two enormous, like, chair legs sticking out of his head. It happens, like, in, like, half a second.

Like, there's no... I don't know. Is that, like, a rating thing where they really just kind of... Maybe. ...speed through that? Yeah, wow. It's a good movie, though. And I want to talk about why it's such a good movie.

But before we do that, Mason, can we do some trivia? Yeah. In a little segment I like to call the Trivia Hornets. Oh, I thought you'd call it Horny Green Trivia. We can do that. Okay, great. It's been rebranded. It's Horny Green Trivia every week from now.

No, no, it won't be. So Nicolas Cage was initially cast as Chudnovsky, but dropped out. He intended to play the role with a Jamaican accent, much to the director's dismay. In his book, Seth Rogen talks about meeting with Cage after the movie got made, and Cage accused him of telling James Franco about his idea after seeing the movie Spring Breakers. Uh-oh. My goodness. A poster for The Lone Ranger can be seen in Britt Reid's room.

And in the original radio program, etc. The things you said, but also the Green Hornet is the Lone Ranger's grandnephew or something? That is correct, yes. Great. The answer there is sometimes because sometimes the Green Hornet

and the Lone Ranger aren't owned by the same company so they can't say it anymore. But sometimes they, you know, sometimes various conglomerates and corporations combine. So they can say that he was my grandnephew or whatever.

The magic of literature, James. That's what that is, yeah. Isn't it just? Now, just quickly talk about who was involved in directing this before we got here. Kevin Smith was attached to direct in the early 2000s. He actually dropped out because he wasn't prepared for making something of this size.

He was like, I'm making smaller things and I'm not be doing this right now. What if the Green Hornet and Kato were trapped in a convenience store? What if they were? And then one of them died in Clerks 3. Spoiler alert. I didn't mind it.

I enjoyed Clerks 3. I was only vaguely aware that it existed. I didn't know it was out. Cool, cool. In late 2008, Stephen Chow was set to direct and co-star as Kato. However, creative differences prevented him from doing so. And it seemed as if that he was going to be on board for this version,

but Seth Rogen stated that the reason for Chow's departure was he did Kung Fu Hustle, right? Yes. Let's check. Okay, great. Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Green Hornet.

Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Green Hornet. Yeah, you did. Okay, great. I got that right, so that means I'm the best. Seth Rogen stated

that the reason for Stephen Chow's departure, who did Kung Fu Hustle, if you didn't know, didn't know i knew that oh yes was that the director wanted kato to implant brit with a microchip and control him with a joystick something rogan wasn't keen on okay i mean whatever may as well yeah it couldn't be worse than this honestly michelle gondry was actually set to direct this for universal back in 1997 which was going to be his directorial debut, and the script was written by Edward Neumeier, and it would feature a villain who ate human hearts. Gondry initially wanted Vince Vaughn for the lead,

but the parts of Britt and Kato were offered to Mark Wahlberg and Jason Scott Lee. And here's an Edward Furlong fact. The actor... Not just Jason Lee. No. Okay. This wasn't a carryover from the Kevin Smith thing.

Well, this was before the Kevin Smith thing. Oh, I see. Right. But yeah, yeah. And Edward Furlong, after the Green Hornet premiere, green carpet, by the way. I love that. I found some pictures, yeah. I love that.

He was actually arrested the next day on suspicion of violating a restraining order, requiring him to stay 100 yards away from his estranged wife. So, you know, there's a fun fact for you, Mason. Now that's horny green trivia. That's right. Now there was going to be a sequel to this that Sony Pictures cancelled because it sucks. Yeah, it was bad.

Nobody liked it. But on a budget of $120 million, it had a box office return of $229.2, which isn't that bad, but not enough to... It's way better than I thought. I thought nobody saw this. And get this, the 3D conversion of the film added another $10 million to the budget. You can see it on the screen.

You'll love it. Certainly can. Every single second of it. I bought a 3D TV just to watch it now. Yeah? How was it? Did it make it worse? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you want that experience, don't you? So then I re-watched it in 2D and it was worse again. I don't understand. Thought I'd made a mistake, so I put the glasses on. it was worse again. I don't understand. Thought I'd made a mistake so I put the glasses on. Became worse again. So here's what

Seth Rogen has said about this movie. This is from an interview with Marc Maron in 2013. Oh yes. I'll read this out for this version but in the video

I'll try and find the audio. But all this we'll find out. Oh yeah. You know how he is basically. Oh you found the audio yeah i found it i do like it while we were making it it was a fucking nightmare and gondry the director is wonderful at smaller scale stuff but i think he did not mesh well it was his first movie that had more than a 20 million dollar budget and this was a 120 million dollar movie and we had never made

an action movie he had never made an action movie it was weird that the risks they were willing to take. The script is under great scrutiny. The lines, the characters, the dialogue. He should have a father. It should be this. It should be that. We wanted to get it made and not waste all this time. And then things like the action sequences, which is really where all the money's getting spent, go under no scrutiny whatsoever. No one looks at it. No one looks at the previews. No one looks at the storyboards. What we spent like literally $50 million on, no one checks.

And that's what's crazy. The way that the money was spent and the way the money is spent on a lot of these movies is crazy. And you can see that because the weakest aspect of this is 100% the dialogue, the story, all of that. Like the visuals don't carry it. I will say that, right? But a script would, I mean, it's basic movie making to be like,

yeah, if the script was better, I think it would be a better movie. But how else do you explain this? Why does his dad, why did his dad get Kato to build the car with the machine guns in it? Why not? There's a line in there where he's like, oh, dad was getting pretty paranoid. Enough to build an indestructible car with machine guns in it?

Yes. And those, like, Ben-Hur spikes that come out of the wheels? Yes. Madness. I completely agree. Give me a better reason. Also, you know what? It's the Green Hornet.

Yes. If you're giving it to somebody, like, creative people like who are involved in this, just let them do it, obviously. Because nobody remembers. They can do anything. Yeah. So what are you getting into the nitty gritty of this, you know? Nonsense. Yeah. So what are you getting into the nitty gritty of this, you know? Nonsense.

Anyway, Mason, a lot of people have said during this series, there's some movies that you've missed that maybe you should have included in this series. That's true. The Lone Rangers come up. I think we're going to do that when we do like Disney flops at some point. Oh, yeah. We'll come back to that. Oh, here's one people have mentioned.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Yes, but we didn't. We didn't do it. It's true. We didn't do it. I mean, I was thinking like if you did like that and the World of Tomorrow. Yes, but we didn't. We didn't do it. It's true, we didn't do it. I mean, I was thinking like if you did like that and The Spirit and the Sin City movies, they're that kind of like. You know it when you say it. Yeah, movies shot in a box.

That's right. Some are more successful than others situation. But yeah, other people said, why didn't Mason watch the Phantom series from 2009? Because he was so eager to talk about it and then he just didn't watch it. I kind of wanted to trick you into watching it. Really? And say why didn't Mason watch the Phantom series from 2009? Because he was so eager to talk about it, and then he just didn't watch it. I kind of wanted to trick you into watching it. Really? And say I didn't watch it.

Well, that makes sense, actually. And now the moment's passed, so I'm never going to watch it. Well, now I have to watch it. That's right. If you're not going to watch it, I want to watch it. That's right. You've got to be the big man who's watched it. You've got to be the big man.

So, yeah, look, if you do have any suggestions for Caravan of Garbage, we'd love to hear it below. And these videos actually go up early at bigsandwich.co. Did you know that? I did know that. Including this one. Here's a hint towards next week. The Hunger Games, Mason. Oh yeah, Hunger Games.

We're doing all damn Hunger Games movies. How many are there? Four? A hundred and fifty. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. There's four. There's four.

Yeah. I think you were including all movies there. I was actually. Yeah. Yeah. I think you might be right. Because in a way, when you're at the movies, it's a real Hunger Games,

isn't it? You're like, I could go out and get a popcorn. But I don't. I don't want to leave the cinema. I would have got it before I sat down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in addition to that, there's bonus video game Let's Plays. There's bonus exclusive movie commentaries. There's bonus podcasts in general,

isn't there, Mason? Yes. That's right. That's nine bucks a month. It's like our private Patreon if you are interested also our podcast The Weekly Planet

where we talk movies and comics and TV shows that comes out there every Sunday Monday everywhere else though Spotify YouTube Apple

you don't have to wait that long you can go on Stitcher it's probably on Stitcher I don't know Stitcher is that still around I don't know is it

wow tell me leave a comment no we left a comment I looked I didn't do it wow they could be winning a1,000 right now. I know.

Easy money. Probably the first person to get in will win it. I think so. Anyways, anything else? What a chore of a movie. I know. What a shame. I know.

I mean, not really. It was the Green Hornet. Yeah, who cares? What do the Hornet heads out there think? The Horn heads. What do they think about this? Were they like, no, we didn't mind it. I reckon they'd be like, this is a travesty.

Yeah. Or are they so starved that they're like, no, we didn't mind it. I reckon they'd be like, this is a travesty. Yeah. Or are they so starved that they're like, no, it's pretty good actually. Aren't there like comics now where they cross over like Batman 66 and whatever? Well, I mean.

And they crossed over in the shows. They did. There was a Kevin Smith one for Dynamite Comics. There you go. No, that's right. There's something

that might be good. Check it out. Might be. And Clerks 3. One of them dies at the end. I won't tell you which. Is it one of the Clerks? Yeah, man.

Whoa. Yeah. All right. Goodbye, everybody. Bye. Grab that gem. We'll see you next week. Bye. and Clerks 3 one of them dies at the end I won't tell you which is it one of the Clerks? yeah man whoa yeah alright goodbye everybody bye grab that gem we'll see you next week bye I liked it though you should see Clerks

I liked it okay great that's great well this isn't a video about Clerks 3 is it? no unless we want to chop out all the

Green Hornet stuff yeah FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.

FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+.