 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday night. Everybody has gotten out for a great beginning of your weekend and you're having a great time and pursuing your goals and your career and everything else. Anyway, today I thought we'd have a fun program. We'll see how many movie buffs there are out there. Who knows if a show like this is popular or interesting. Anyway, there's a lot to say about James Cameron so I'm kind of excited to share my thoughts about him. I've been watching his movies for a long, long time. We'll look at his body of work. We'll basically go over all his main movies since 1984 and I'll be commenting on all of them. I'll just start by saying I think James Cameron certainly is one of the most successful directors of the last 40 years. He has done a number of blockbusters, particularly Terminator 2, Titanic, and Avatar were huge movies. I think this Avatar sequence is also doing quite well. He is incredibly well regarded. He is considered one of the premier directors in Hollywood for the last 40 years. What I find interesting about him is the journey he has taken and I think what I want to present to you is a journey, a philosophical journey, an ideological journey. I think James Cameron is I think the most philosophical director of all the directors of the last 40 years. At least of all the mainstream, mainline directors. I'm not going to say they're not independent directors out there that are super philosophical. But he is I think incredibly philosophical. I think his movies all have, all of them have philosophical deep themes and we will review those and we will look at the trajectory and maybe what is behind the trajectory, what is causing the trajectory and how that trajectory plays out. So he definitely comes to movies with a very particular view of the world or did and I think he's changed. And I think the change happened between Terminator 2 and Titanic and we'll talk about that and certainly from Titanic to Avatar. So I think that's what makes him interesting and worthy of talking about. Now, remember, you know, objectivism believes that art and movies are certainly art. Art is a recreation of reality, a selective recreation of reality based on an artist's metaphysical value judgment. What are metaphysical value judgments? Well, they're the answers to the questions like, you know, the nature of reality, what is reality like? But also, what is my attitude towards reality? For example, is reality knowable? Is reason efficacious? Are my senses letting me know about the real world? So can I succeed in reality? Is success possible? Or is reality lined up against me and determined to suppress me? Art is not primarily political. That is, while there might be politics in arts and we'll talk about the politics that comes through in the various movies and certain attitudes towards political issues that comes across in the various movies. In great art, that is not the essential. The essential is something much deeper. The essential is metaphysical, the nature of reality and the nature of man. Man's attitude towards reality is really towards his ability to know reality. And his ability to cope with reality is ability to thrive in reality, to begin with, to survive. And some of these movies are certainly about surviving in a very hostile reality. And how all that plays out. So take that into account as we go through the movies. You know, we are going to look at exactly that at the kind of world that Cameron creates, the essential conflict that he brings to the forward. And then how do the heroes, how do the people at the center of the story relate to that world? Is it a world that they can deal with? Is it a world that they have control over? Is it a world that they can manage? Is it a world in which they can ultimately thrive or they believe they can thrive? And what is the tool for them to be successful? All right, that is kind of the context. Movies, let me just say one more thing. Of all art forms, in my view. And again, everything I'm going to say here. This is not objectivism. This is your own book. I didn't see any James Cameron movies. I don't know that Leonard Peacock ever did and I don't know that he'd like any of them. And so this is just, this is my views about movies and about these particular movies. In particular these movies. And my views about how to analyze movies, how to look at movies and so on. So take that into account. I lost this, so what did I want to say? Yeah, also take into account the fact that I haven't watched any of these movies in quite a long time. So these movies, I mean I've watched them many times, at least up until Titanic. Titanic I've only watched once and Avatar I've only watched once. But all the other movies I've watched, I think at least three times each one of them, but a long time ago. And so some of this is going to depend on my memory. If I miss a character, if I, you know, don't quite get the plot right. I apologize in advance. I think I'll get the big picture right and so on. Catherine's going to be disappointed because Titanic is one of my least favorite movies of all time. And we'll get to that and we'll get to why in a little bit. But we're not going to start with Titanic. We're going to start with Terminator. So oh yes, I want to say this about movies. Movies are the most complex of all art forms. They require so many different levels of artistry. There is storytelling. There is just a story like there would be in a novel or short story. There is acting. There is cinematography. And remember that movies are primarily stories told through images. Dialogue is important, but a lot of this is about the imaging. And I think one of the things that makes Cameron so successful as a director is his ability to really... He writes the movies, direct the movies, but he's also, I think, crucial to the look of the movie and the cinematography of it. So there's acting. There is cinematography. There's writing. There is coordinating all that through director. And of course there's music. Music plays a huge role in movies. You know, I'm not sure who wrote the music in these, but in all of these movies the music has been fantastic. If you look at all of it, even the ones I hate, even in Titanic which I hate, the music is fantastic. The music adds to whatever the theme is. It adds to the drama. It adds to suspense. It adds to conflict. It adds to heroism when there is a heroic. And then, of course, as one of Freeman said, there's sets and clothing and makeup. And makeup can be pretty amazing. And then there's special effects, particularly if you take a movie like Terminator 2 and The Evil in Terminator 2. There is amazing special effects that go into creating the illusions. And one of the things, if you look at Terminator 1 today, you'll kind of notice that the special effects are kind of dorky because it's like watching the old Star Wars movies and they seem kind of silly and ridiculous because the special effects were so used to amazing, stunning special effects that those just 30 years ago, 40 years ago movies, look, just don't live up to kind of our modern standards. So take into account that all of those factors, and I'm not going to get into all of those factors. Again, I will say one of the things that makes James Cameron a particularly good director is you can take actors who are mediocre or worse and make them pretty good. A lot of the actors in these movies were not A-list actors. I mean, the Abyss has some really good actors and they already established aliens. Sigourney Reaver certainly was already established then. But the Terminator movies, Anna Schwarzenegger is not a good actor. And yet, he does very well in the Terminator movies. It's perfectly suited. He's well directed and well coached and he does very, very well. And the rest of the actors, the child actor and Terminator 2 and the others are very good. So one of the signs of great direction is the ability to direct up, to take actors and make them better and improve of them. So that's also something I won't be talking about specifically in the movies. But all of these movies are well made, well directed, well crafted. The cinematography is beautiful and amazing, but we'll talk about that a little bit in Terminator. And actually, all of them. And there's a story. And there's a story with an arc and there's a story with a plot. They all plot movies. They all have plots. And there's real conflict. Sometimes the conflict is just between good guys, but there's often real evil in these movies. It's good versus evil. It's the other aspect of Cameron's pre-Titanic movies. It's always good versus evil. In Titanic, there's also good and evil, but he flips them around. And yeah, so let's jump in. I'm getting a bunch of stuff on the music. James Rona, who is a very good music director, was part of this. I guess there were others. So let's start with Terminator, because Terminator was James Cameron's first success. It was really, it wasn't his first movie. I think there's a movie called, he directed and wrote Piranha 2, The Spawning. I never saw it. Not interested in seeing it. But the first real movie, in a sense of a James Cameron movie, a movie that is his and that was, is identified with him or was successful. He made a sequel, is the Terminator. So let's start with that. And I'm assuming most of you have seen the Terminator. The Terminator basically is the story of a world in which, it's the current world, the 1980s and 1980s, where two men appear from the future. One is a cyborg that is there to kill a particular woman, Seracana. And the other is a man there to protect Seracana. And the idea is that he is there to protect Seracana, but Seracana because, and a cyborg is there to kill Seracana. Because in the future, a AI computer, a digital intelligence computer developed by a particular corporation, SCINAT, an intelligence defense network, actually goes, becomes conscious. And SCINAT basically musters the resources of all the computers in the world and attacks human beings and destroys human civilization. This is the fate of chat GPT. It's kind of a stupid SCINAT. But SCINAT basically takes over the world and tries to annihilate human beings. And in the future, there is this war between SCINAT and the survivors, human survivors. And in that war, there is a crucial, you know, a crucial commander who SCINAT deems as the key, the only chance of the humans winning is through this command. You know, John, it turns out he's John Connor. John, who's in the future and what is happening here. And look, remember that time travel movies are always filled with contradictions. So don't start on the contradictions with me. This is full of contradictions. All the Terminator movies are. It's silly in some way. This is why time travel is silly. But you just have to buy it. It's a movie. It's a story. And the movie and the story are telling a bigger story than that. Anyway, the cyborg is there to kill the mother before the child is born so that if John O'Connor is never born, then SCINAT is going to crush human beings and take over the world and succeed. Why exactly it wants to crush human beings and do all this? Who knows? But that's it. So start with a pretty pessimistic projection about future technology. And in every one of the movies with the exception of, with every single one of the movies with the exception of True Lies and The Abyss, there is a future in which there is horror to be found. Something really, really, really bad is happening in the future. And often that something really, really bad is technological, it's tech, at least that is the case in the Terminator movies. And human beings are fighting that evil that is in the future with whatever tools that they have. We see that in The Abyss, we see that in Terminator, and we'll get to see that in Aliens and Terminator movies. So basically this movie is an action movie. It's a survival movie. It's Sarah Connor and the soldiers come from the past, from the future to try to save her. They are combating this cyborg. And this cyborg is almost indestructible, almost indestructible. And when he kills somebody, he can take over that person's voice so that any communications via voice only, he can fool you. And obviously he kills without thinking. There's no thinking. He's a machine. He's there to do one thing and one thing only. And Anatoly Schwarzenegger plays the cyborg and he plays it really, really well. The movie is shot directed in a way that this is relentless. You are really worth Sarah Connor trying to survive and this machine is coming after and after and after. And no matter what she does, she blows him up and shoots him. And the soldier shoots and all this stuff, it keeps coming and it keeps coming and it keeps coming. And in that sense, it's a bit of a horror movie aspect to it. And it's dramatic and exciting and thrilling and scary. And you just wrapped up in it and it's hard to not watch and it's completely engaging and it's just a good movie. And it's really an action movie and it's a good action movie. It's just a good, simple action movie. What you start to get in this action movie is two things. One is this real conflict between technology or aliens or some evil that exists out there. Some conflict and human beings. And then in this movie and in almost all of James Cameron's movies again until he gets to Avatar, human beings can't survive. Human beings are competent, able. I mean Sarah Connor is just a regular lady. She's just a regular person. And yet she rises to occasion. She becomes heroic. She becomes a woman of action. Kairi teaches her how to do this and she embraces that. She is a fighter and she is determined to survive and ultimately have this child. And she will face up to the cyborg and destroy it. And we're not going to give the ending away, but I don't think it's a mystery. And she fights and she uses her mind. Not as explicitly as we'll see in Aliens, but Kyle and her are constantly thinking. They're constantly planning. They're constantly figuring out how to evade the cyborg and ultimately how to destroy it. That is not as explicit as it becomes later on in later movies. But we already see a signature of Cameron's. That is the efficacious hero. The hero of action guided by a mind and guided by values, life being the primary, but the life of a child as an added value. So Sarah is a valuer. She's rational. At least she becomes rational. She becomes more competent. She becomes more able, all driven, all focused by the values that she discovers and as she discovers the strength within her, in herself. And this is all done while the suspense is amazing and the pace is relentless and it's exciting and interesting and challenging. There's always this overlay of a little bit of kind of pessimism. You know, the future is bleak. The future for which Kauris has come and in which John Connor is a hero is bleak. Can that future be changed? This movie doesn't answer that. But there is this idea that there is real evil out there. Things can go really, really bad. Bad stuff, really bad stuff can happen. But human beings can and will deal with it. Human beings are competent. The world, and again, the world is knowable. Human beings have the ability to survive within it. Humans have the ability to be heroic, heroic in it. And to rise to the occasion, to rise to the challenge. All right, let's see. Any Terminator 1 movie questions here. Michael says, Terminator 1 is one of my favorite movies, even though he copied from Holland Ellison, also one of the best love stories in my opinion and thoughts. Yes, I mean, it's a very good action movie. It's one of the best. It starts a whole genre of movies like this with the suspense builds and builds. You think you've killed the monster and he keeps coming back. And it's brilliantly done. And he plays with the time travel as well as you can play with time travel. And then there is a love story embedded in it. Again, I'm trying not to give it away. I'm trying not to give the whole plot away. But there is a love story embedded in this. Importantly, Sarah Connor at the end of this movie is driving off into the desert, pregnant, basically with the idea that she is going to train her son in survivalist skills. She's going to train her son to be the man he's supposed to be, to be the man who can fight Skynet. And maybe she can figure out how to prevent the future from happening. But that's Terminator 2. That's for the future. But it's a terrific love story. It's a fantastic action movie. And it's got, I think it was just Terminator, and that was it. Then you'd say, yeah, good action movie. It's got some good themes, but nothing special. But then when you think of it in terms of James Cameron's movies, it gains more philosophical meaning in terms of man's efficaciousness and his ability to defeat evil. Cameron made Terminator 1984. In 1986, he made Aliens. Now Aliens is a sequel. It is a sequel to Alien, which was made a few years earlier. Alien was made by... His name has just slipped my mind. Somebody out there will tell me who Alien was made by a famous director who has a particular style, also one of the Ridley Scott. Thank you, Ridley Scott. It was made by Ridley Scott. It was also a phenomena director with a particular style, much, much darker than James Cameron, at least again, pre-Titanic. Alien, the first one, the Ridley Scott Alien is very dark. It's very depressing. It's evil as out there. Maybe human beings could survive, but not really. This is overwhelming. It's overpowering. You can somehow eke by. Everything is dark. The set is dark. The way its film is dark. Everything is depressing. Sigone Weaver is depressing. Alien is one of the most oppressive, claustrophobic, scariest movies ever, and it ends with no kind of positive resolution. Aliens, which is the sequel, is the same basic story, but much more philosophical and much more positive. So the fundamental story here is there's an alien that's occupying this planet. The alien is one that basically the way... I mean, this is brilliant in terms of evil, but this is not James Cameron. This is Ridley Scott. But the alien implants an egg inside its victim's stomach. Therefore, the victim now becomes, you know, basically is fertilizing the egg. And then when the egg kind of... When the egg matures, the new alien bursts through the human stomach or whatever the host is. So this is an alien that is parasitic. Anything parasitical has a certain real evil to it, a real malevolence to it, because it's using your body to harm you, right? And so it's particularly scary and I think particularly effective as an evil force in a movie and is very, very, very effective, I think, in the alien movies. It's a very long franchise. I don't think very many good alien movies were made after the second one. James Cameron's one. I think the first and second one are definitely excellent movies. Anyway, the second one starts going to Weaver. She starts in the first one. She starts in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, I think as well. But in this one, she's going back to the planet with a crew. She's going to this planet with a crew. They think the aliens are gone. There's a girl, I guess. I guess there was a station on this planet. There's a station on this planet with humans and they have gone dark. So they go in and what they discover that this planet is infested with the same aliens that Sigourney Weaver encountered in the first movie. Now, what this movie is is just a horror action movie. Basically, the aliens are constantly chasing this team around, trying to destroy them, trying to use them as hosts for the alien. And they're these horrific scenes where this is happening. And if you don't have a strong stomach for gore and violence, Aliens is probably not a good movie for you. But it is incredibly effective. James Hona wrote the music to this. It's really suspenseful. It's really exciting. It's one of the most exciting movies you'll ever see. You're at the edge of your seat. Bill Paxton is great. Sigourney Weaver is great. She's really good in this. And, you know, let's see. Yeah, James Cameron again directed this. He also wrote it. He wrote the screenplay. This is a great movie making. This is how you make a suspenseful, exciting horror slash action movie. Sci-Fi. Of course, it's sci-fi because they're out in space. But what makes this movie stand out is the characters that surround Sigourney Weaver. Every one of the characters that surround Sigourney have a different attitude towards how to deal with this alien. Every one of them has a different attitude on how to deal with reality. Everyone brings, if you will, a different epistemology to the story. This is, by the way, a theme you'll see again in the abyss. In Aliens, every one of the people around her have a different view. So there is the greedy corporate guy, right? The greedy corporate guy who just wants to, he wants to catch this alien. He's sure that if he brings it back to corporate headquarters, they could make a fortune out of this. They could figure out the secrets of the universe from this. They could discover all kinds of things. And he basically evades constantly the sheer evil that this alien is and its power and its strength and its ability to evade human beings and detection and the guns and how dominant this thing is. And he's going to take it on a spaceship and he's going to take it to a new planet where he can lay eggs and human beings again and he's a complete evader. He's the first character in a James Cameron movie who is the corporate guy who represents that corporate evil, the evil of corporations. James Cameron politically is clearly on the left and always has been on the left and we'll see that morph into full revelation with Titanic and Avatar. But he is a man of left. He's suspicious of, he's definitely suspicious of corporate power. Remember, Skynet was created by corporations and I guess the military industrial complex. And in aliens, it's a corporation that's going to weave in. It's never clear what the goals are, what the purpose is. And the guy who's trying to bring the specimen back is a complete evader. Complete evader. Ash the android was the first in alien, I'm not sure the first what. Yes, Ash, there's an android. There's also this thing in aliens about whether you can trust an android can be good and in aliens he is, so he's trustworthy. So this is kind of a little hint at Cameron's optimism about technology. Once in a while it comes through this positive view, this optimism about technology that comes through in his early movies that certainly comes through here and in the character of Ash, in the character of the android. So you have one character who's a corporate evader who's just a pragmatist. The essential characteristic of this guy is a pragmatist. We just need to solve this little problem right now here. We can't think in principle, we can't think long term. We can't really take into account all the facts. Who knows? Then you've got some of the troops around Sigoniweaver. One of them is just panicking. He just goes into hysteria every time the alien comes close. He dies very, very quickly. Others clearly can't think. They clearly are confused and distracted and maybe they can follow orders but they don't know whose orders to follow and they're just not focused and they're not good thinkers. They die pretty early. By the way, everybody in the movie who dies, dies because of an epistemological flaw. All of them. I mean that's one of the great things about this movie is all the bad thinkers die. The one soldier who survives is the soldier who recognizes that Sigoniweaver is the only real leader here. That Sigoniweaver is a manifestation of rationality in the face of complete disaster. Sigoni is constantly stopping and thinking, planning, strategizing. In the face of horror, in the face of massive uncertainty, in the face of just the most evil force out there, she is constantly thinking, weighing, judging, trade-offs, figuring out best alternatives. She is one of the most heroic characters you'll ever see in a movie. Just amazing. I mean she's not particularly, you know, this is not a movie in which the hero is cheerful or happy or successful or anything like that. The hero survives. That's the only point of it. And at some point they discover a little girl who survived and a lot of this is about the attachment of Sigoniweaver to the little girl and Sigoni, you know, fighting not only for her own survival, but for the survival of the little girl, similar to Interminator, the mother fighting for the survival of the unborn, the child that's yet to be born. The scene is amazing. Again, it's exciting. The nature of the alien as a parasitic alien makes him so much more evil than just a monster kind of clawing at you. He doesn't want to kill you, this monster. He wants to keep you alive so he can hatch his eggs inside of you. I mean, can you think of anything more disgusting than that? And then of course Sigoni is this epitome of heroism. So amazing. And again, you can see that James Cameron admires rationality. He admires reason. He admires competence. He believes that human beings can survive in this world, can achieve in this world, can overcome unbelievable odds, can overcome unbelievable problems, unbelievable evil in this world. In that sense, again, I think Aliens is an optimistic movie, a positive movie about human ability, human capabilities in the face of the most horrific of evils. All right, that is James Cameron in 1986. In 1989, Cameron makes the abyss. Abyss is an interesting story. It has a terrible ending partially because the ending brings out some of the obvious political ideas of James Cameron, which have always been best unsaid. It's just a clumsy ending. He didn't know how to end it. There are like three different endings. The first one is just confusing, and the ultimate director's cut ending is not confusing, but it's pretty bad. All right, so there's an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean. They send a U.S. search and recovery team that works on an oil platform. These are deep, deep divers. They're trying to get the American submarine before the Russians do. It has advanced technologies. We remember this in 1989, so it's still the Cold War. So they are down in these massive depths. The team that's down there is primarily the team that's been working on this oil rig. These are oil rig guys. They are experts at what they do. They are the best people in deep sea diving, but they're hard-nosed, reality-focused guys. And then a Navy SEALS team is sent down, but on the way down, the Navy SEALS team, something happens, and you get the sickness. If you descend too quickly, you get the sickness. They can affect you. And the lead of that team clearly gets affected by this and becomes, as we'll see, somewhat paranoid. In addition, joining them in this expedition is the ex-wife, I think, of the Ed Harris character, who's the lead, the guy who runs this team. She's an excellent actress who I don't think we saw enough of in the 80s and 90s because she was really good, so too bad she didn't act in more movies. Mary Elizabeth Mastrandtonio, who's a really good actress, she is kind of the scientist. She's the brains behind the operation. Now, again, every one of these characters brings a different epistemology to what they're doing. Now, at some point during the attempt to salvage the submarine, they encountered an alien, an alien being underwater. And this is what makes, I think, the movie so interesting, is that every one of the characters views this alien differently. They all have fundamentally the same facts. They're all seeing the same thing. And I think the character of Mary Mastrandi is the only one that actually touches the alien, but they're all seeing the same thing. They all have the same data. And everybody comes to different conclusions about it. The woman, the scientist, she again represents reason and rationality. She is curious. She recognizes this as an amazing thing. She recognizes this as world-changing. She recognizes this as something she wants to investigate. She wants to know more, and she wants to discover more about it. She's curious, and she's open. She's open to all possibilities. But she also makes the case that, look, if this was a hostile being, it would attack them, and it hasn't attacked them. It hasn't shown any signs of aggression towards them. And Harris' character is a little bit more skeptical, but also is smart enough, rational enough to respect her judgment and to respect rationality and to be rational himself. And therefore, he is definitely on the side of, yeah, this is exciting. This is filling. Let's figure this out. Let's understand what's going on here and why, what it's doing, what it's capable of, what is happening exactly. And his character is really interesting. He's a kind of a rough O-Rig operator, but also really smart and incredibly courageous. And a number of things that happen underwater. It's, again, there are no villains here in this movie. There are characters that are wrong and mistaken, but there are no villains. There's no evil in this movie. Everything is positive in this movie. Well, I mean, there's conflict, but there's no evil. And the amount of drama and suspense is breathtaking. I mean, and it's claustrophobic because it's underwater. So instead of being in space, it's underwater, brilliantly made until the ending and beautifully made and exciting. And again, every character, different, every character. So you've got another character who is a conspiracy theory nut and everything's a conspiracy. There's aliens, some kind of conspiracy related to the submarine and the Russians and something there's going on. And others, they don't trust this thing. It's going to kill us. It's going to do something with us. We need to destroy it. We need to annihilate it. But they are also hard-nosed, fact-based, reality-based kind of oil platform guys, right? And they're not going to rush to anything. They want more evidence. They want to study. They want to figure it out. And they respect their character, their Mary character and Harris' character. They respect them. And they are willing to, you know, so they're open. They're open, right? Both of those. But then you have the Navy SEAL. Now the Navy SEAL has become paranoid. And the nice thing about the movie is the movie doesn't make him out to be a bad guy. The movie makes him out to be, in a sense, a sick guy. He's got this diverse sickness and now it's made him super paranoid. And he is convinced this thing is a danger. Communication is broken. They can't communicate with the outside world. So they have to make all the decisions themselves. And this is a Russian plot. This is an alien that's going to destroy human life. And there's no time. And ultimately he attempts to destroy the alien. Sam Harris, you know, goes out to save it. And that's where things get complicated with the plot. But Sam Harris, sorry, not Sam Harris. Harris' character is super, super heroic. One of the people said it's the Benz. Yes, decompression sickness is called the Benz and that's what he has. This is a really terrific movie. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It's well made, again, very suspenseful, very exciting. Again, philosophical. Clearly the heroes of the movie are the rational scientists and the rational diver that Harris portrays. And they are the good guys. And what makes them good is the thinkers. Again, this notion that human beings can't survive. They can't thrive. Aliens don't have to be monsters. Aliens don't have to be against us. At the end of the movie, the aliens turn out to be here to help humankind. They help us. But there's a whole section there about how bad human beings are and should the aliens destroy us because of how bad we've been. And they choose to preserve us because they identify some, I don't know, love or sacrifice. Actually, I think it's Eddie Harris's willingness to basically commit suicide in order to save the alien that I think convinces the alien that human beings are worthy of surviving, something like that. That's why it's kind of a silly ending. So I think it's an excellent movie, again, without the ending. And a portrayal of human beings is efficacious and rational and competent and able. And I think that's ultimately the theme of the movie. All right, so that's the best 1989. In 1991, Cameron probably makes his best movie and the movie that kind of defines that early part of his career, that wraps it all together. And that is Terminator 2, Judgment Day. Terminator 2, Judgment Day is a story of Sarah Connor and now her son who's, I don't know, what, 12, 13, something like that. Maybe younger, maybe a little older, I'm not sure. Sarah Connor is trying to convince the world that Skynet is going to destroy the world, that Skynet is going to go live, that Skynet, and she's trying to convince people and they all think she's crazy and they institutionalize her and she's gone nuts. I think the beginning of the movie with her being nuts is probably the weakest part of the movie. There's no indication at the end of the first one that she's going to go crazy or that she will do something rational, I think she seemed to be doing to try to convince people of this. But it's somewhat understandable that she's doing this because she is so frantic about what she knows is going to happen, what she knows human beings are driving towards this unbelievable fate and nobody will listen to her, nobody will take her seriously. She, at the same time, again, two people, not people, two cyborgs come back from the future to her time. Now this is, again, her son is a young teen. One is Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back. But this time, Arnold is one of the good guys. Arnold is a cyborg programmed by John Connor in the future to go back and protect the young John Connor and the mother and make sure John Connor survives so that he can go on to lead the assault on Skynet in the future. But Skynet sends back a much, much, much more sophisticated cyborg, Robert Patrick. And I think part of the genius of this movie is the special effects that make this particular cyborg so menacing and so evil. If you think about it, the most evil thing you can think of, not evil, the most frightening reality, the most frightening thing you can think of is something without reality, not without reality, without identity. Something that can become anything, something that can be anything, something that cannot be destroyed, something that takes any shape possible. And that's what this new cyborg is. It has no, in a sense, moving parts. It's made of liquid. And this liquid can take any shape, can take a human shape. It can become a machine. It can become a half machine, half human. It can take on anybody's appearance, not just now the voice, which the Schwarzenegger could do in the first one. But now it can take on any identity. It's the closest you can get. Of course it has identity, this liquid. But it's the closest one can get to, it's the closest one can get to something that lacks identity. And it is scary. And it appears to be indestructible, because it can take any shape possible. And it can survive. One little drop of this liquid can survive and reform and come after you. So again, in a sense, it's a chase movie. On its Schwarzenegger is not protecting Seracana. Now there is the kid involved. And there is this much more sophisticated, much more evil. In its, I mean, it's not evil, it's a machine, but representing evil coming after them. So in that sense, it's very similar to Terminator 1. And it's an incredible action movie. It's got some fantastic scenes. It's got some great car chases. In every respect, it is one of the great action movies of all time. One of the great sci-fi action movies of all time. And it's beautifully made movies. I mean, everything, every aspect of it is fantastic in terms of moviemaking. But what really sets it apart is the theme of the movie. It's not now, if you will, just reason and rationality and the ability of human beings to survive and overcome. Suddenly all of that is there. But now there's the explicit recognition, the explicit recognition of free will, of choice, of one's ability to shape one's future, of one's ability to change the future. It is a complete repudiation of determinism, explicitly stated in the movie. So it's not just left for implication as it is in all these other movies. Any time you elevate reason, you're elevating in a sense. Human free will. Any time people are in a position to make choices. But here, it's literally, Sirocana has to deal with, can I change the future? If I can change the future, how can I change it? Part of this is finding a scientist, a programmer, advanced programmer who's programming Skynet and convincing him that this is the path. The path is disaster. And that he can change that path. And his willingness to change, his willingness to accept what Sarah's telling him and to change the path. This is by far the most optimistic of all of James Cameron's movies. Not only in terms of the human being's ability to survive the evil, to destroy the evil, but also to change his fate and to change the future and to set humanity on a path for success, on a path for avoiding the worst evil. Again, this anti-corporation hints it's there in aliens. It's even in the abyss. Representatives of the corporation are always pragmatists. And it's here, in Terminator 2, the corporation is building Skynet no matter what, but it's also an attack of the government that is helping build Skynet no matter what. So, it really is a terrific movie. One of the few movies where the theme is free will, in that sense it's a, you know, I think all of these movies of Cameron's, of romantic movies, romantic in the sense of expressing the idea that people have choices that they can, they shape their own future. The big differences in what makes Terminator better is that in Terminator, Siraconic is guiding the action. In Terminator, in the first Terminator movie, it's all about surviving this threat. The threat is guiding the action. In the second movie, in Aliens, it's again, the threat, as you're going to move, is surviving it. And the threat is really determining the action, the actions. The abyss, it's not much of a, it's not really a threat, it's more the wonder, you know, what a beautiful world, what an amazing world, and how do we deal with it. But Terminator, and there, it's kind of this appearance of an alien that's guiding the action. But here, the hero, Siraconic, is driving the action. Now, it's in the face of a threat, but it's in the face of a global threat, and then this particular threat of the cyber will come to kill her. But there's this global threat now. And she is trying to change it all. She's driving, she at some point feels like she's constantly playing defense, and then she goes on the offense. Is her changing the terms? It is her taking her own life into her own hands, the world into her own hands and saying, no, we can change this, we can guide this in a different direction. We can have an impact here. We have free will. This is not determined or destined to happen. And then she goes and she finds the scientist. She now is driving the action. And in that sense, all of these early movies of James Cameron are romantic movies, and anyway, they're all romantic, and they all respect human choices, human ability to think, human abilities to change their fate. I think those are James Cameron's four great movies, and those are all positive philosophically, and all, you know, I think they're terrific movies, and I highly recommend them. The fifth movie is True Lies, which was made in 1994. You know, what is it? When was Terminator made in 91? So this is three years after Terminator. This is a fun project more than anything else. It's not a serious movie. It's kind of a comedy. It's a movie that a couple where, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays, he's a spy, but he's this boring guy in normal life, and then he turns out that he's a spy, and then his wife discovers this, and there are Muslim terrorists out there, and it's just an action movie. It's a ridiculous action movie. It's an action comedy. It's funny. I think Jamie Lee Curtis is terrifically sexy in this movie. She's not usually sexy, but in this movie she's quite sexy. Tom Arnold is in the movie. Bill Paxton is back, and Arnold is terrific, and it's just fun. This is just a fun movie. It's benevolence, and the good guys win, and Arnold is efficacious, and so is his wife, and yeah, she is in a fish called Wanda II, that's right. So I recommend this movie just for fun. There's no deep theme here. It's a comedy. It makes fun of, I think, funny things, of the silliness out there, and it's just a, so just go and have, go and enjoy it. All right, so now we come to Titanic. So Titanic is made three years later, and it's as if, you know, James Cameron wants to make a serious movie, and he wants to make a movie that is not part of this genre that he has made. It's not sci-fi. All the other movies were sci-fi. It's not action. You know, True Lives was action, but this is like a serious drama, and it's about a story he's obviously intrigued by, is interested in, which is the Titanic wreck. You know, he actually shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck in 1995. He was interested in the story. He's interested in what happens there. But this is a movie that where James Cameron is now bringing to the forefront, rather than this deep view of what human beings are capable of, this positive view of humanity. Now he's starting to turn pessimistic, and he's starting to turn negative about humanity. And he's also, he's also letting his politics override all else. And this becomes a really a political movie, because in a sense the story is set. There's not much you can do with the story. The story is a story that's a Titanic. By the very nature of the way he's telling the story, it's going to be a tragedy. That is, the hero, the kind of hero that we have here, who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, you know, is probably not going to survive. But the movie is one of the most explicitly and visually Marxist movies I've ever seen. I mean, it's up there with some of the movies of, what's the name, the guy who did Wall Street, who's an explicit Marxist, and it does Marxist movies. I don't know that James Cameron will call himself an explicit Marxist, but it comes across there's some default pessimism, resentment of capitalism, and resentment of wealth that comes across, other stone, thank you, that comes across in this movie, in Titanic. What's the story? The story is, you know, rich people are taking the Titanic on a cruise. There's some poor people who've managed to get on, and the Titanic is built in a way as the rich have the upper decks, and then as you go lower down, you get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and then at the bottom, at the very bottom, other people shoveling the coal into the fire to keep the thing going. And it's a very Marxist imagery. It's a pyramid, there's a shot in the movie where it's cross-sectionally going through the ship. And it's very visually and viscerally the rich exploiting everybody beneath, and everybody's exploiting these poor workers who are actually shoveling the coal. And of course they're going to be the first ones to die when the Titanic sinks. And of course the people who do survive are the rich who get first dibs at the lifeboats, and of course they're not lifeboats for everybody, but they're not lifeboats for everybody. And that's why Leonardo DiCaprio's character has to drown, because he has to die, because he represents the poor here, he represents virtue, virtue that's sinking, virtue that's dying. The Titanic more broadly represents kind of the death of the 19th century. It represents man's arrogance before nature, man thinking they can build an invincible machine, and nature defeats it. Think about all the other movies in which men overcome horrific aliens, horrific machines, Skynet, they fight these unbelievable odds, but then in Titanic it is an iceberg that defeats men, and defeats the greatest machine they had ever built to that point in time. It's exactly flip of the philosophy of all these other movies. Here human beings are impotent before nature, they're incapable of dealing with disaster, and I think what he's attributing that impotence to is this kind of exploitative world in which they live. There's a love story. Leonardo DiCaprio is a poor kid, Kate Winslet is a spoiled rich girl, and they fall in love. And of course Leonardo DiCaprio is a good guy, she's the spoiled rich girl, and DiCaprio is trying to teach her about life, she knows nothing about life, so he's teaching her about life, and of course poor people know about life, rich people have no clue about life, particularly rich kids, they don't have any clue about life. So he's teaching about life, and one of the scenes that I find really despicable is a scene in which the thing that DiCaprio teaches Kate Winslet is how to spit, and a big deal is made out of he's teaching her how to spit, because real men, real people, people connected to reality spit, that's what they do, and rich people are not connected enough to this world. It's just the whole setup, the way the wealth you're portrayed, the way they're portrayed as the boat is sinking, the way they're portrayed as getting on the life boats, the way they're portrayed before that, just the kind of atmosphere, the life that they're engaged in, all of that is so horrible, and so pathetic, and so anti-man, and anti-life. And again, man in the 20th century, sophisticated man, the men who built machines and built tools like the Titanic are defeated by an iceberg, that's what the movie is about. So I think Titanic is a horrible movie. I didn't enjoy it at all, I didn't like the DiCaprio character, I didn't like the Kate Winslet character, I didn't like this Marxist, the visuality of it, I didn't like anything about it. I thought the love story was cliche and mediocre, and nothing special and nothing unique about it, about the love story, it's the same. That love story, like a hundred times in previous movies, much better done, nothing really interesting about it. Again, elevating poverty, over wealth at every opportunity, and elevating nature above technology at every opportunity. That's what Titanic represents technology, the iceberg represents nature, nature destroys technology every time. Nature beats it. Exact opposite of aliens, exact opposite of terminated, opposite of their best. People here are helpless. Yeah, they try to save this, they try to save that, you know he saves the girl, the girl survives, he dies. At that point I was just wanting everybody to just sink and shut up. I really, really, really, I mean it's not that I, yeah, a good movie didn't like, I really hated that movie. And I really think it's not a good movie, and it plays on every cliche and drums at the heartstrings, and plays the love story, and it's got the famous Titanic, you know, at the front of the ship, and it's got the amazing music. Who wrote the music to this? Yeah, James Horner, beautiful music. I mean, I hated it, I found it boring, and I found it annoying, annoying. I mean, beautifully made, beautiful music, you know, pseudo-romantic, no choices here, because there are no choices, there's icebergs going to hit the boat, and the boat's going to sink, we all know that, we know that from the beginning of the movie. So choices don't matter. I mean yes, the Capio sacrifice in order to save Kate Winslet, but every guy would do the same thing. There's nothing, oh yeah, there's Celine Dion. It's just trivial, drivel. Sorry, not a good movie. But the next movie that James Cameron makes makes Titanic look like, you know, the greatest pro-humanity movie ever made, because the next movie Cameron makes completes this complete reversal of his philosophy, of his ideas, of his approach to reality. I mean Avatar, which was made in 2009, is in everything anti-man, anti-humanity. It is a movie that portrays human beings and human technology as inherently destructive. See, when you make a movie, you make choices. You choose a particular story. In this case, a story about human beings not carrying one iota about other sentient, conscious, cognitive beings, ignoring them, ignoring their life and their conscious and their knowledge. It turns out that there's knowledge there. All in the name of destruction. All in the name of, quote, greed. All in the name of pragmatism. There's a single human being in Avatar, human, other than the one hero, and we'll get to him in a minute, who is worth the title human being? They're all scum, all of them. Again, movies are not about politics. You can be a libertarian and have a wrong sense of life. You can be a libertarian and not understand movies. You can be a libertarian and be attracted to schmaltz. It doesn't mean you have aesthetic values that, you know, again, art is not about politics. Art is not essentially politics, but I will tell you, both Avatar and, what do you call it, Titanic are about politics. And they're very anti-freedom. They're very anti-capitalism, very anti-capitalism. In Avatar, all the characters that can be considered human are pragmatic, short-term, don't think, don't care, destructive, homicidal, nasty, horrible. That is a choice of direct domain. You can choose to have some character's good, some character's bad. You can choose to have, like James Cameron did in his early movies, a range of characters that represents a range of human behaviors and a range of human views about the world. But no, here, there's only one characterization of human. And then the one good guy who's trying to see the value in this new civilization and try to bridge the gap and try to do this thing, what choice does he make at the end of the movie? He makes the choice of rejecting his humanity. He makes a choice of not being human anymore. This is worse than dancers with wolves and worse than Pocahontas because at the end of this movie, the human being rejects his own nature and joins the Borg. He becomes something non-human, better than human beings. Avatar is a movie that reflects the hatred of man. The hatred of man's need to change his environment or to survive. The hatred of man's need to progress, to advance, to enrich himself, to become better all the time. This is a portrayal of man as unthinking and as I said, homicidal and destructive and pragmatic and uncaring, unjust. Nothing good, nothing good about humanity in this movie. No recognition of man's reason. No recognition of how he got to space. No recognition of what allowed him to survive in space. There's no Sigoni Weaver here. There's no Ed Harris here. There's no Syracana here. There are no heroes here. There's no hero that, again, the one human being doesn't want to be human. The whole point is to get out of being human. The characters are two-dimensional. The alien good guys are mystical purposefully. They're trying to be affiliated with Native Americans and Native peoples and colonizing and destroying them. But it makes it into caricature. It doesn't have an historical parallel. So this is the movie in a sense where Cameron is given up on human beings. He's given up on life. It's all negative. It's all dark. It's all downhill. There's no upside. There's no redemption. There's no heroism. This is James Cameron completely embracing the fatalistic, deterministic, anti-human climate change, catastrophism of the environmentalist movement that we're worthless human beings. We should all die for the sake of some other species. So Avatar was awful. I can't stomach going to see this new one. If you guys told me it's completely different than the old one, a completely different theme and philosophy and direction. But what I wanted to show you here is how Cameron's philosophy evolved. How it went from being positive and pro-reason and the world is knowable and values are achievable. Two were all rotten. Values aren't achievable. And if they are, it's not worthy because we're human beings and we're flawed and we're detestable. Now, like all those other movies, it's beautifully made. It's amazing. Special effects are through the roof and everything's amazing about it. That was true of Titanic, that's true of this, but those two movies are just horrible movies that portray a completely different sense of life, a completely different set of metaphysical values than the metaphysical values in his youth. In the 80s, James Cammo was an idealist, a pro-human idealist. But he had this flaw, obviously, his kind of, where does he, his leftist politics, his environmentalism, his anti-copperations and anti-capitalism, and I think that over time that gnawed at him and gnawed at him and gnawed at him until that became the dominant part of what he is and what his movies represent. But you can see the power of movies, the power of art to project a deep and comprehensive view of man, of the world, of life. And this is why I love movies, I love stories, I love art. It can really inspire. I mean, I think watching Aliens is not only suspenseful and just fun, rollercoaster kind of fun, it's inspiring. The character of Sigourney Weaver is inspiring. It should want, it should inspire you to be heroic in your life. The same is true of Terminator, the same is true of, I think, their best. The characters are inspiring, they're rich, they're interesting. And there's a real sense of the world that says human beings can be good, they can survive, and to be good and to survive in all those four movies, you must use your mind. You must choose to use your mind. All right, I hope you enjoyed that. A little different. And I think hopefully some of you haven't watched these movies, there weren't too many spoilers. And, you know, you can go. Anyway, let's see. Let's look at the $20 questions, but I'm looking for ones that are about this first. All right, this is related somewhat. How do you think Marvel's popularity speaks to the desire for heroism that has been missing from art? I recently tutored some kids' teens who instead of their political art assignments only wanted to draw Japanese magna heroes. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, kids have the strong desire for heroes. It's because kids are idealistic and they want models and they know deep down they have a sense of their own capabilities as human beings and they want models of greatness. They want something exciting in their lives. They hate boredom. They hate just, they have aspirations. They have a future. It's what adults lose. And art gives them a model for that. Art projects to them what's possible. Now, sadly, the only kind of romantic vision of heroes that exist today for kids is superheroes. Now, I don't particularly like superheroes primarily because they're super and as a consequence of them being super, they're outside the actual experience of these kids so the kids cannot aspire to be Superman. They'll never be Superman. They can't fly. They can't do the things that Superman does because he's a different being. What kids really need is old-style adventure stories of kids doing amazing things. Normal kids, not superhero kids. Kids being detectives and discovering murderers. Kids doing, going on adventures and discovering new or Robert Henlein's novels for kids which were kids going into space and having adventures in space and all kinds of things like that. Harry Potter, but again, Harry Potter was a magician and these kids can't be magicians. There's an element of, you have to have, you have to have normal humans become heroes. Normal kids becoming heroes. That's the best kind of literature for kids because then it's a real model. It's not a made-up, mystical science fiction model. Now, it's true that even superheroes act in this world and therefore the kids can learn from that. They certainly, I think that's why Harry Potter was so successful because it had parallels to their own experiences. The bullying, the bad and good teachers, a lot of this stuff. Yeah, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boy is a good example. But headlines, yeah, they're books for teenagers. Teenagers are still kids. So I think there's definitely a real lack of romantic stories for children. And I think that, I don't know much about Japanese magna but at least in the West it's filled by comics and superheroes but I don't think that's good enough. I don't think it serves enough of a function. We are about $270 short of our goal. Let's not make the James Cameron show the one way we miss our goal, right? Andrew Trigger says, is there a parallel between Roy Snyder's approach to dealing with the monster and Jaws and Sigourney Moeva's and Aliens? How do you regard Jaws in general? I mean, Jaws is good. I mean, it's interesting. It also identifies the evil of pragmatism, the pragmatism this time in the local politicians. Jaws is less menacing than Aliens. It's a lot less scary than Aliens. The challenge that he faces is a lot less than the challenge Sigourney Moeva faces. And there's something about Sigourney Moeva and the way it's scripted and the variety of different characters around her that is richer than I think Jaws. I think Aliens is a better movie than Jaws. And I think again what James Cameron does both in Aliens and in Abyss is presenting these different characters with different epistemological views of the world. If I'd watched the movie earlier today or a week ago, I could have actually given you all the different categories that these people had, all the different types of approaches from the paranoid to the conspiracy theorist, to the skeptical, to the confident in reality in his own senses, to the curious, all the different views of how they're interpreting the same kind of evidence. And I don't know any other director who's done that in that way where literally every character is unique in that sense. And I don't think that's quite as consistent in Jaws. And I just don't think that it's as menacing or he is as heroic as she is in Aliens. Now Aliens is also more of an action movie than Jaws is. Alright, Tessie says, thanks for this, I love movies, favorite is Alien and True Lies. I used to like Titanic as a kid, but now I cringe at it. Isn't it funny when you grow up, your values solidify and life changes, your taste changes? Absolutely. I mean your values are going to change, your taste is going to change. You get exposed to more art, you learn more about the art, you learn more about what's possible. You learn more about your own values, you integrate those values, your emotions and our more consistent with your values. All of it is connected and interrelated. So yes, hopefully your taste changes as you mature. It should because you should be more integrated and your values should be better integrated with who you are, with your soul. And therefore your emotions should be different. Sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in big ways. Okay, John says, do you think the aliens in these movies could be stand-ins for things like immigration and other things like opposing ideals or cultures perceived as threats to weak-minded individuals like nationals? I don't think so. I think there are actual aliens. I mean you could create, you could associate them. You know the alien in aliens is a parasite and you can certainly think of parasites in the world in which we live and the danger of parasites. But I think that's reading too much. I think what's important for the movie is how menacing they are. And again the shape shifter in Terminator 2 is, I mean we all know shape shifters. We all know personalities, the shift and how horrible that is. So it does have applicability in a variety of different ways. But again, one of the things I warn you of with movies and art generally is don't politicize them. That's what the left does. The left believes all art is political. Art is metaphysical. It's about metaphysical value judgments at the interaction between you and reality. Politics is way up there somewhere. That's essential. Even political movies are fundamentally metaphysical. Titanic is right of its Marxism. The fundamental of it is man's impotence in the face of nature and man's impotence to escape his own class, his own fate. It's the opposite of Terminator. There's no free will really. And the kind of exploitation which is inevitable in every aspect of that movie, in every place that that movie goes. So I don't think you should think of movies as reflecting things that are happening politically. There might be some parallels. There might be interesting to think about. But that's not the essential thing about an artwork. The essential thing about an artwork is the relationship between you and... Let's see, Slavok Zizik. J.J. Zizik says, in a documentary he narrated about politics and philosophy in movies, presented Titanic as a Marxist fantasy. He's right. It was my first exposure to this idea and heightened my awareness of the underlying philosophy in the film. I didn't know that about Zizik's. I did not take this idea from Zizik. It is so visually obvious. Because of just that shot where he goes cross-section into the boat and you see the wealthy lazing about doing nothing, all the way down to different classes of people, all the way down to the people, making their lives possible by shoveling the coal into the fire. Zizik is a smart dude. I mean he had some smart things to say about Ayn Rand as well. He's wrong in so many ways, on so many things, but he often makes some really good observations. It's similar in that sense to Jordan Peterson, just from a completely different perspective. Richard says, I wonder if directors depict anti-business characters and themes because of their struggles with the studio budgets and marketing pressure thoughts. No, again, it's deeper than that. It's a sudden view of what making money necessitates and implies. It's not just the experience of this particular budget or this particular thing. Not at all, I don't think. It's something much deeper than that. You can see it ultimately manifest in Titanic where he's an out-moxist, which is deep and philosophical. John, do you think creatives like James Cameron hate businessmen so much because they only experience with these types of managers to fund their movies, act as creative black holes who rely on formulas and conditionality? No, no, no. I think it's because they think that making money, that the process of business, that the process of making money necessitates pragmatism and necessitates a rejection of values. Many artists think this, even artists that don't interact with business. This is the consequence of taking ideas seriously. The ideas of the culture, the ideas of altruism, the ideas of, you know, again, of altruism. And businessmen are egoistic. Egoistic means what? Line cheating, stealing, thieving. And artists get that. They see the necessity of it because that's what they take morality more seriously. They think about morality more seriously than common people. So it's not because of their experience with particular people or particular system. It's because of their deeply held beliefs. About the nature of man, about morality, about what the purpose of life is and what is represented by the people who seek profit for themselves. And that's self-interest and selfish. And they, the creatives, even though James Cameron is a very, very wealthy man, they didn't do it for the money. They did it for the art. And they, you know, money makes you do horrible things they believe. That's what altruism teaches them. Hop a Campbell. When the terminator asked John, John, Connor, why he can't kill anyone, John replies, because you just can't. This intrinsic floating abstraction justifying the human value, the value of human life that cannot be perceived by reason is infuriating. Yes. I mean, there's definitely that kind of, I don't know, pacifism underlying some of this that undermines a little bit the character. But, you know, pacifist for the sake of it. But of course, what he's telling him is you can't kill human beings. Don't kill human beings. That's a good thing. He just can't explain it. You also have to say, yeah, but he's a kid. I mean, he knows it's wrong to kill people and he can't explain it. So it's not too shocking. It's not too shocking he can't do it. What's more shocking is that, what is it, Batman or Superman or both of them are not allowed to kill even the most evil people around? They won't kill evil people. That's really shocking. That's pathetic. Jennifer says, when I was a kid, I like books that were supposed to be boy books, stories about boys building rockets and going to Mars and their own. Yeah, I mean, those are the kind of books that I think kids should be exposed to and love because they project what's possible. What's possible to us as human beings, boys and girls. Adam says, I consider the best book for and about teens, Steinkoosts, I can't pronounce it, through the desert and jungle. I don't think I read it. A great romantic writer, ordinary teens become extraordinary. There was a borderline one in the 50s, but a great one remains to be filmed through desert and jungle. You guys should go get it. Adam highly recommends it. Sounds terrific. All right, we are short about $200 now, so $10, $20 questions or maybe somebody can just do $200. All of our whales have kind of disappeared, a bunch of whales have disappeared more recently. Michael asks, how would you compare James Cameron to Steven Spielberg? I mean, Steven Spielberg is a great filmmaker. He knows what he's doing. He's a master at the art. His films, I think, are all over the place. Almost all of them beautifully made, fantastically made, but they don't have consistent themes. I don't find them as engaging as Cameron. They're not as deep philosophically. I think Steven Spielberg's E.T. is one of his best movies that he made. E.T.'s this wondrous, benevolent, fantastic story. I just saw it recently. They republished it. What was it? The 50th anniversary or something? We saw it at the theaters and it was fantastic. It was so much fun. It's got this amazing benevolence about it and it's the wonders of the universe. Steven Spielberg has the ability to capture that wonder, particularly in his kids' movies. I think as he becomes a more serious director, serious in a sense of adult director, I think it was the 40th anniversary. I think his movies, he knows what he's doing so he can manipulate your emotions really, really well. I think I've told you I didn't particularly like, was it something private Ryan? I hated Schindler's List even though it's amazingly well made. I thought it was very emotionally manipulative. Maybe that's what he wanted, but it wasn't instructive and it wasn't particularly heroic even though there's a hero in the movie. It kind of downplayed his heroism. I didn't like Saving Private Ryan. I don't like Schindler's List, but I understand why people like it. It's just I don't like it. It was too difficult to watch. I like almost anything he brings out but it's always, I like it. It's fine. The first four movies of Cameron were exciting movies. We're thrilling movies. I've seen them three, four times. How many of Steven Spielberg's movies have I seen three, four times? E.T.? You'd have to give me a list of Steven Spielberg movies right now so I could look at it and figure out how many of them I've seen many times and what I think of them. So I think Spielberg is obviously a master and very good at what he does. I just think he's less of a deep thinker unless his movies are less important. Now, granted, most people don't think James Cameron's movies. Don't see what I see in James Cameron's movies. You're going to have to watch them to see if you agree with me or not, but most people don't see what I see in that. Most people just go see an action movie, but that's the nature of art is that I think the powerful messages are implicit. They're not a lecture. You're inspired by them. I think people are inspired by Cameron movies in the 80s. No, I don't want to answer that right now. Let's see. James Taylor said, would you say Terminator 2 is one of the greatest films of all time would I in Rand have liked it? I don't know. I don't like to make those kind of statements. It's one of my favorite movies. Probably my top 20 or something like that. Would I in Rand have liked it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what her attitude would have been to it. I don't think she was a fan of action movies, but I really don't know. I shouldn't really talk about what I in Rand would have liked or not. I have no clue. But I certainly liked it. It's one of my, certainly makes my top 20, maybe top, maybe all four of them make my top 50. Certainly my top 20 of the last 50 years since the 60s. I think it's one of the better movies of what I consider modern times. There's so many good movies of the 30s and 40s and 50s that it's hard to rank them all. Let's see. I'm looking for questions that relate to the movies. And then I'll get to the more general ones. I know there's a lot of them here. Let's see. Michael H says, even when I was a kid and saw Avatar, I felt bad that the humans lost. Not to mention he copied another crappy movie called Dancers with Wolves. Yes, but this was a lot worse even than Dancing with Wolves. Dancing with Wolves was bad enough. Okay. What do I think of Star Wars? I've never been a big fan of Star Wars. The movie is very shallow. There's not a lot of depth to it. It's kind of interesting that the evil guy is the father of the good guy or something like that. But it's just fun, action, swashbuckling. But there's no real depth to Star Wars. It's not that interesting. The characters are pretty two-dimensional. Again, fun. But very two-dimensional. There's no depth. There's no elevation of reason or what it takes for human beings to survive. What it takes for human beings to be successful. Harrison Ford is just a cynic who becomes a hero. That's like in every second movie out there. I mean, Harrison Ford is great because he's Harrison Ford. But it's just not that interesting. I watched him. It's fun. But is there any character there? It's like, wow, that's an interesting character to build up. And they have had hours and hours and hours to create interesting characters and they haven't. The characters are shallow. I thought the series that was on now, what's the latest series on the Disney Plus? Not Avatar. What's it called? Anyway, maybe one of you. The latest Star Wars kind of series within the big picture. I thought that was quite good. It was very well made. Andor. Andor I thought was quite well, because the characters were interesting. Because they actually developed characters and the characters were interesting. Their motivation was interesting. They weren't caricatures. They weren't shallow. They weren't two-dimensional. Yeah, I mean, yes, somebody says Harrison Ford is much better in witness than in Star Wars. Absolutely. In witness is a fabulous movie. Fabulous movie. Whoops. What did I do there? Undo. How do cameras movies compare to your favorite, such as This Land is Mine? Oh, God. I mean, that's not really a fair comparison. I mean, This Land is Mine is one of my favorite all-time movies. You know, I think I get a lot more out of it. It's because it's not an action movie. It's because it's an intellectual movie. It's all about character. It's all about how a character changes through the movie. I mean, there are some changes in the characters in Cameron's movies, but not really. This Land is Mine is, I think, one of the greatest and best stories ever. And the power of it is Charles Lawton. Charles Lawton's just genius acting. But his, Charles Lawton's capacity to use his body and his face, he's not a heroic type. He's a big fat slob, right? But to transition in his posture, in the way he talks, in the way he holds himself from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie when he becomes a hero. It's just mind-boggling. It's just the kind of acting you just can't imagine. It's not Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? So it's just a better movie because it doesn't rely on action to drive your attention. It relies on characters, and I think that's much more powerful. And of course, it has beautiful cinematography. This is Jean Renoir, one of the great French directors of the 30s and 40s. This is Jean Renoir. The cinematography is amazing. The story, the acting, it all comes together. It's much better. So this Land is Mine is top five. As I said, Cameron's movies are top 50 all time. Still great movies, but not in the same league, I don't think. Let's see. J.J. Jigby says the Slavic Zizik documentary I refer to is called The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, which despite outputting title is actually quite an enthralling film. I want to see that because I actually find much of some of what Zizik says in a crazy way interesting. He has interesting observations about things. So thank you, J.J. Jigby. Daisy says, also, don't you love how James Cameron has these great female action leads? They drive much of the narrative while everyone calls them crazy. Yes. I mean, Sarah Connor, Sigoni Weaver's character and the character in The Biz are all amazing female characters. The exact opposite of the female character in Titanic, which is a nothing empty, nothingness. These three characters are heroes who drive the plot, who drive everything in the movie. The action thinking Ripley is the name of the Sigoni Weaver character. But yes, I mean, great female characters, some of the best female characters, certainly in the realm of action out there. All right, we've got a $100 question from John. Thank you so much for this episode, Iran. Have you seen the movie Parasite or Snowpiercer? They're both by the same director, but I don't remember his name. I think Snowpiercer is about feudalism. The main character fights his way to the front of the train that contains all that's left of humanity, but then discovered that it's just the back of the train. That's all it is. That it was all a plot. No, it's all a plot that moving up to the front of the train is just a game. It's not real and that he has to go, he goes all the way to the back. It's all the one big conspiracy. Yes, I've seen both Snowpiercer and Parasite. They're both philosophically horrible movies. It's really, really, really bad. Parasite, and I can't remember the theme of Parasite. They did a whole show on Parasite, so if you're interested in my views on Parasite, just do it on YouTube. I did a whole movie review of the movie. I can't remember the theme, but inequality plays a big role in this. Again, there's beautiful shots of where some people live and where other people live, and the poor in Parasite live underground and, of course, in the house the guy lives in a secret basement underground. So there's a whole place. It's a very well-made movie. Parasite is very well-made, very clever, but at the end of the day it's a horrible philosophy. It's also guys that die at the end. I wish I remembered my analysis at the time, which you all thought was quite brilliant, and it had a really interesting theme that went way beyond inequality in terms of Parasite. But Parasite is fundamentally an anti-man, anti-human being movie, and so is Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer is an awful movie. It's a movie about, again, a kind of deterministic movie about the futility of life, and Parasite has a similar theme of the futility of life. You can like it. I'm just telling you what it means, what the theme of the movie is. It's not a dark comedy. I mean, it's a dark comedy, but it has a profound meaning to it, and that meaning is very match, represents a particular attitude towards life. It's very deterministic. What are your favorite love movies? God, love movies, love movies. Queen Christina is definitely one of my favorite movies, generally, in love movies. I'm really bad at this unless you give me a kind of a list. I need to see a list of movies, and then I can categorize it. Yeah, Queen Christina is with Greta Galbo. Almost silent, not quite silent, but almost, black and white. Chopra on the Corner. I mentioned that as my favorite Christmas movie. It's certainly a love movie. Chopra on the Corner. Yeah, I'm looking at movies you guys are recommending. Yeah, I don't have a list in front of me. And I've never categorized movies as love stories, because I've got a list of my favorite movies in different genres. One is, I'd have to look at that list. I don't have it right in front of me. I should have opened it. But I could probably pick out the love movies out of those. All right, I never saw La La Land. You've got mail that's cute, but the original is much better. Chopra on the Corner. All right, we've got a bunch of additional questions, and we have made our goal for today. So thank you guys. These are unrelated to movies. I'm going to go through these relatively fast, because we are 9.45, so we're an hour 45 minutes in, and it's late over here. Here's another movie question. Thoughts on movies like Hack Show Ridge that are despite being religious a very pro-humanity. I've never seen Hack Show Ridge. It's unusual. Somebody asked me about a movie that I haven't seen. I haven't seen Hack Show Ridge. J.J. Jigby says, I love movies. Have you seen Brief Encounter, early David Lean film, Absolute Masterpiece? I have, because I've seen pretty much every David Lean movie, but I can't remember. It's too... Yeah, I just can't remember. Sorry. It didn't leave, obviously, a super strong impression, for whatever that means. J.J. Jigby also says, Treasure Island is a masterpiece of children's adventure literature. Lewis Stevenson is generally great. Every kid should have a copy. I agree. I agree. Lewis Stevenson is great. Three Musketeers. That's another one that's really good. Yes, I answered the $200 question. Yeah. Have you seen the movie Parasite of Stopeia? So that was the $200 one. All right. All right. Non-movie questions. God, this is going to be hard. Shift mindset. Yeah, but that's the thing about the Iran book show. I don't know any other show, really. I don't know any other show which covers the range of topics that we cover here. I think that's a virtue. All right. Anyway, tonight I'm working for... I'm working for the super chat. I'm working for it. All right. Michael says, How do you have so much patience for dishonest question statements during debates? I recently re-watched a debate with Sam Seder and the superficial nonsense he threw at you was nauseating, but you didn't lose your call. Yeah. What's the point? I mean, what's the point of losing your call? You don't care about the person you're debating. Obviously, the person you're debating you disagree with. You don't like. You think they're wrong. You're trying to impress the audience. You're trying to get a point across the audience. You're trying to convince somebody to change their mind. Not the guy you're debating. So you're going to the debate with a mindset of it's not about the person I'm debating. I don't have a problem insulting them. I don't have a problem arguing with them. I don't have a problem disagreeing with them. I'm not going to get too excited by them. I want to convey to the audience that they have better alternative ideas and to come follow me. Michael says, Also, all the leftists attack you in the comment section. Only left one sentence long comments is as if they're incapable and willing to think deeply and have been trained to get triggered and attacked when command. Yeah, but again, they're not the audience. The audience is people who are open to having their mind changed. And every one of those debates, somebody comes up to me years later and tells me that changed me. Every single one of those. Can you help end a holiday dispute explaining how Milken got railroaded and defended defending junk bonds? Look, the best way to do that is to buy my book, Mallcase for Finance. My book with Don Watkins explains that in detail. It's so hard to do something like that in kind of on one foot. Michael Milken was a great innovator. Junk bonds are just high yield bonds. There were way to raise capital. The reality is that the entire telecommunications industry in the United States, all of it, from the first fiber optics cable into the ground to the first cell phone companies to every aspect of the cell phone business was ultimately funded by so-called junk bonds, by high yield bonds that were issued by Michael Milken. The hostile takeovers that these high yield bonds were used in order to raise the capital, to take over conglomerates and split them up. Increased efficiency of the American economy, increased our wealth, made us all richer, made us all better. Milken was railroaded by Giuliani and the people who followed Giuliani. From the beginning of Giuliani's term he was after Milken. They did everything they could to try to catch him. And in the end they made up charges against him. Some of them he probably committed but they're so minor if he was anybody else by Michael Milken he would have got slapped on the wrist. But he got 10 years in jail for them. Literally to make an example of him. Michael Milken is one of the great heroes of the 20th century. Second, one of the two greatest financiers in history maybe. Him and J.P. Morgan. Certainly in America. And if you want to ask, I mean that's, I could do a whole show. So if you really want to get into it, ask me again when there's more time and we're more on topic so that my mind is there. How do you cultivate a desire for curiosity and truth-seeking in a brain-dead culture? Once truth becomes a category for most people, becomes a category for most people, objectives can latch on until then it's like trying to administer medicine to them. I mean this is why you have to get people when they're young. You have to get them when they're teenagers or when they're early 20s. They still care about the truth. They're still somewhat idealistic. They're still going out there and trying to discover what's real. They're open to ideas. This is why it's so important to get the youth. Because exactly that. Once they give up on the truth, forget it. What do you make of Canada's new assistance, suicide law? CMD's socialized medical systems are looking to cut costs by making it easier for terminally ill and mentally ill patients to choose suicide as an option. I mean I haven't looked carefully at that law but generally I am favorable towards medically assisted suicide. I wish it was readily available in the United States. I think there is a danger of combining it with socialized medicine and therefore an incentive to kill you off in order to save costs. But in a private system it should be readily available. It should be completely legal. As long as it's clear that it's a choice. Suicide should be easy for old people. I mean the fact that we've extended life so much but not always have we managed to extend the quality of life for some people. I mean it's just horrible the kind of life some old people live. And they know it and they would want to die but jumping off a building or jumping off a bridge. It's hard and some of them don't have the physical capabilities of doing it. If they've got dementia they can't do it. It would be great if you could go to your doctor when you're 80 something. When you're just on the verge of getting to that place of desperation and take a pill and die. I mean it's just to me seems so easy and obvious. The only objection to assisted suicide in my view is religion. There is no objection if you know people in their 90s. I mean some of them are great but some of them are really struggling and it's really hard. And they don't have it out. They don't have an easy out. And if you take pills you have to take enough pills and then if you don't actually die it screws you up. It's just horrible. This should be just a pill that you take and you die. Well cyanide capsules for old people. It shouldn't be illegal. Andrew says thank you $50 really appreciate it. I felt the font head was dark on first read a hero in pain against the world but Rand said it was the least morbid book ever written a clue. I was missing something a better sense of life which improved with a stronger sense of individualism. Yes I think that's right. You projected that dark sense of life onto the book because the book is a heroic achievement of what we are achieving and while he is struggling he never lets it get him down. He's laughing. As he's kicked out of college he's laughing. So yes great observation. It's your values that change and therefore you can now more objectively you can now better respond to what's in the book. Thank you guys thanks for the support. Okay short answers to short questions. Harper says are Jews more influenced by Aristotle? God big historical questions for five bucks. Are Jews more influenced by Aristotle while Christians and Muslims are more influenced by Plato? Yes but it's complicated because Jews are only influenced by Aristotle post Maimonides. Maimonides was a huge influence on Jewish culture and Jewish learning and he was an Aristotelian. There were Aristotelians among the Muslims but they were basically discredited and shoved to the side by later generations they weren't religious enough so they were abandoned. And of course in Christianity you have Thomas Aquinas so there's a certain sense in which Aristotle has a huge impact on Christianity certainly in certain stages and among Catholics and then there's a repudiation of Aristotle because he is associated with Catholicism and the Reformation is kind of a rejection of Aristotle even though there's some senses in which well I mean the Reformation is Protestantism is a mess but there's certainly a repudiation of Aristotle because of his association with Catholicism. Harper Campbell is rationalism more dangerous and prevalent among today's intellectuals is empiricism. I think among objectivists is certainly rationalism among I think in the culture it's more empiricism. Harper Campbell says are you glad Biden's president because he won't do anything nutty and buys us time? I'm not glad he's president I'm glad Trump isn't president put it that way but there could have been a not nutty Republican who could be better than Biden there could be a Democrat who's better than Biden. So I'm not particularly happy with Biden I'm just happy it's not Trump for that reason. James Taylor says how much dollars is the condo you want in Austin it can be too expensive. I assume Texas is relatively cheap it's not I'm in hat condo. The condo I saw the building condos the cheapest condo is going for $4.1 million. That I think answers your question. Michael says would you ever review American History X? It seems like a good movie you would enjoy examining it deals with racism and Nazis. I surely would you know I'm not particularly motivated right now but for 500 bucks I reviewed idiocracy I certainly will review other stuff as well. Liam says how does it how does it make you feel when people tell you you have changed their lives? Is it a burden or relief? Why would it be a burden or relief? It's invigorating it's invigorating it makes me happy it makes me it makes me have a positive view of of the world of our chances of to win. All right Armin comes in with a with a song request. I know I'm way behind on songs and music and I've got a whole album I'm supposed to do and I'm way behind so I apologize. But Baraye could you review the song Baraye yes. If I if I just Google the song it will come up I assume but yes I will do that thank you for the $100 really appreciate that. All right Michael what percentage of people who call themselves objectives today don't actually understand the philosophy you haven't deeply integrated into this psyche. I don't know 80 majority. Upper Campbell have you ever been fired from a job? What would make you quit a job? Yeah I was basically fired from being a professor. I wasn't I wasn't given tenure which is basically being fired. What would make me quit a job? Lots of things not liking it on enjoying it not like my boss not but I've never had a boss. I've never well I had a boss once. I haven't had a lot of jobs in my life where I've had bosses. I've usually been my own boss. It's most of my career has been enterprises that I've partnered with other people to create and to build. I've run a I've created a bunch of different oh small little businesses. Nothing you know no big tech startups but I've never actually worked for somebody. Not really except for my first job as a construction manager where I worked a full time where I worked for a guy but he treated me like his partner because do only the two of us. Michael says aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been. That's kind of yes I think that's right but also your body starts giving way. That's the sucky thing about aging. You're like you have all this wisdom and knowledge and capabilities and yet your body is not quite keeping up or actually deteriorating. Harper says the most important thing I discovered for my invent is that philosophy is not just moving words around and try to win arguments. It's about winning life. Yes. Excellent. J. Jigby's can you speak on the park where young Connor orders three Terminator the Terminator not to kill. Oh yeah I said I he said not to kill human beings. Human beings in that story are not the enemy. Why would you kill human beings? Now he can't explain why he can't explain to the machine what the value of humans to his life is. But he tells him not to kill because the human beings they're not the enemy. The survival is not being threatened by human beings at this point. There's no reason to kill and Connor young Connor respects human life. I think it's a I think it's good. It could have benefited from a better explanation a short explanation or even explanation that cyber couldn't have understood but something Ryan said cannot watch tonight. Thanks for all the great shows lately. I appreciate it Ryan. Jigby says sorry for the typos you're on typing on my phone. No problem. John says my dad is a Paris. The dad in Paris I gave his son this whole speech about not desiring more in life. Is the attitude of the dad basically that of the Stoic. I don't know enough about stoicism. I think so. I'm going to have Aaron Smith on at some point to talk about stoicism. And we can ask him that question but yes that's part of the theme of the movie is don't strive. Don't try. And it's not pro the poor because the poor are portrayed as scumbags. It's not pro the rich. The rich are portrayed as scumbags. It's not for anybody. It's just life sucks kind of do you like some Mel Brooks Brooks Mel Brooks Mel Gibson's early work. I love Mad Max the first and I mean I love all three really even the more modern one. I love Mad Max movies. I think the terrific the first one's hard. But but they're all good. Mrs. Suffol. I can't remember the year of living dangerous is excellent Gallipoli is excellent. The bounties excellent the river is good. Tequila sunrise is fun. Yeah, I like I like Mel Brooks's early movies. Absolutely. They were you know really good dramas you have living dangerously is really thoughtful drama. Mad Max is a really clever science fiction. End of the World you know dystopia movie. I think those are breakthrough movies as well in terms of the way they were shot the way they were made. They were the beginning of something the three Mad Max movies. They were new when you saw them you'd never seen anything like them. They were truly breakthroughs. Yeah, all those movies I enjoy so I definitely liked Mel Gibson when he was young. All right two hours two hours and three minutes. Thank you everybody. I really appreciate it. I remind you that on December 31st we're having a big show. You're in review looking forward to next year. We've got a a match a super chat match. I've got I've got a anonymous contributor who will match every dollar we raise up till 10,000 up until $10,000. So it'll be it could potentially be the biggest you know super chat night ever in your own book show history. You know I think the biggest night we've had a $6,000. So we're going to go for $10,000. It's going to be a long show. It'll be two three hours long easily. So come prepared bring your wallet and why anonymous because they would rather stay anonymous. For a variety of reasons and but it's real. I'm not making this up. It really is a person. You'll have to believe me $10,000. So 31st. It's a Saturday. We'll be starting at 2pm Eastern time and going for as long as it takes. Well, we probably won't go more than three hours, but as long as it takes to get $10,000. So please join me then in the meantime. Thanks guys. I appreciate the love. Appreciate the support. Hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Don't forget to do all the things that help the algorithm and I will see you tomorrow morning.