 Welcome to the Adam Does Movies Podcast. I'm Adam, and today we have a fun one. I looked back, did a little reflection on my favorite movie trilogies of all time. There's been a lot, been a lot of good ones, a lot of disappointments as well. And I want to point out that next week on the podcast, I'm going to be covering just that. Top five most disappointing movie trilogies. So if you're just catching this for the first time on YouTube or on a audio streaming service, please subscribe, follow, do whatever you have to to make this thing become a reality for you in the future. We got some good stuff going on here. It's all movie focused. And speaking of that focus, let's get started with my number five entry. I should point out these aren't really in chronological order. I don't have a specific one that I would say is my greatest, you know, even, even the five I have on this list was a little challenging because there's some honorable mentions that didn't make it such as Indiana Jones. Now, of course, with the passage of time comes, of course, disappointment. And obviously, there are more than three Indiana Jones movies and some people's minds there's not. But we have the fifth one coming out just around the corner. Harrison Ford is like a thousand years old Indiana bones at this point still rocking the dust stories got the hat and the whiff. We'll see how it turns out. I'm slightly optimistic, but not fully convinced, especially with the disaster that was the kingdom of the crystal skull Indiana Jones for. So that one's not on the list. Although I really enjoy the Indiana Jones movies. The number five on here is Star Wars. Again, I don't know if I would say this is in the five spot or it's number one. It's not number one, but it could be a little higher. You could convince me. But George Lucas had a vision all the way back in 1977. I mean, actually prior to that because movies take time to come out. They don't just blink and come out overnight. No, 1977 is when a new hope hit theaters and people were mesmerized all over the planet because this was unlike anything they'd ever seen on the big screen. You saw you saw worlds from outer space. You saw ships battling. I didn't see it because I wasn't even born yet. I was born in 82. So there was a five year gap before I was even there. Is that right? Yeah, I think they did that math correctly. It's okay if I didn't. That's not what I do. I do movies, not numbers. I didn't see the movie obviously until quite a bit later. Actually a couple of the others were probably done. 83 is when the last movie came out. I'm a fresh newborn. I'm one years old. I'm not even walking at this point. I probably wasn't even walking until I was seven or eight, but that's a completely different thing that we don't need to get into. What I found out was that I'm a believer in these Star Wars movies, man. I think if I look back, I watched them for the first time when I was dealing with a sliver situation in my toe. I was outside playing with my brother. Hot summer day in Minnesota. It's a rarity. Don't have a lot of them, but when it's nice outside, you're outside. You take it in for the few months that you have available. I faintly recall brushing up on some tree bark, like trying to climb it, and a sliver went into my toe, the king toe, and I was down for the count. I'm inside and my dad, I recall, telling me to soak it in hot water. So I had this little dish on the ground and my foot was in there, nice little foot bath, and Star Wars was on. This is the first time I recall watching this movie, and it must have been a marathon or maybe my dad owned them on VHS. I don't know, you know, the context of the situation. I just remember sitting there with my foot in the bath being glued to the screen. I was so glued that the faint sound of an ice cream truck going by, I didn't care. I didn't give a crap about the ice cream. I cared about Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, taking on the empire, and hopefully succeeding. They had a giant Death Star to blow up. They had Ewoks to save if they even needed saving. I mean, come on, those guys, those guys can handle their own in return of the Jedi. These are a treat. If I were to rank them, I think it's the pretty generic Empire Strikes Back first, the second one, the peak cinematic experience empire. Then I'd go with The New Hope, probably second, and then Return of the Jedi. I go back and forth though, honestly. Return of the Jedi's first half is incredibly solid. The, the whole Han Solo breakout section with Jabba's Palace, Boba Fett getting his ass kicked, thrown into the Sarlacc pit. That stuff's all solid. It's the second half when they kind of do a full retread of A New Hope, where they get back into their, their X-Wings and they take out the Taiyafighters, do another freaking channel run on a Death Star 2.0. It was a little, it was a little familiar, a little too formulaic. However, that final showdown with Luke and Darth Vader, who turns out is his dad, which is revealed in Empire Strikes Back, freaking amazing sequence, where Luke becomes the hero a lot of us couldn't. He forgives in the moment. Sure, yeah, he takes a, he takes his dad's hand off, that's fair, that's fair play, but he doesn't go for the throat. He's got the Emperor whispering into his ear the big bad who was revealed in Empire Strikes Back saying, Luke, just, just let it overcome you, let that hate soak in. Be a sponge for this. And Luke doesn't. Luke says, yeah, no. And, and then Darth Vader, his dad, complete 180, gets up, picks up the Emperor, throws him to his death until he's inevitably resurrected in the disastrous sequel trilogy, 30 years later, whatever it ends up being. But I have a soft spot in these movies and a lot of the stuff on my list, yeah, nostalgia feeds into it. I think it's fair that you recognize that when you make your movie list. So much of it has to do with where you were in life, what you remember about the time, and the impressionable nature of everything. And just, I mean, come on, when you're a kid, things just look better. They look grander in scale. In Star Wars, man, that was grand. Plus you have Carrie Fisher in that, that mesh wire bikini thing. I mean, you can't go wrong there. Now Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Harrison Ford, it was just, it was such a great set of characters. The chemistry was impeccable. And that's why Star Wars remains to this day as one of my favorite trilogies. I can still watch it with the kids as the battle at Hoth takes place on that ice planet. I watch with my children, laugh as those dumb little Ewoks are fighting, throwing rocks, and then get sad at the same time because we see actual Ewok bodies on the ground getting dragged away. It's brutal. It's brutal stuff. C3PO, R2D2, of course, fun for the whole family. Yeah, I don't have a bad thing to say. Have they aged? Of course. The effects are laughable at points. That first movie when Obi-Wan's battling Vader, it just looks terrible. He does a little twist and a kiss, a little spin hit. Best of the best here, folks. It's pretty embarrassing. But this is what they had to work with at the time. This was all new territory that they were traversing. So respect, a lot of respect for Lucas. And he only directed the first movie. The second two different directors, it let Lucas focus on the writing, focus on the effects, which is where he shines. And give a little bit more competency behind the camera to film these things. I think that's why Empire is just such a stellar movie. And the fact that it was darker left on a dire note. It's really the playbook for so many movies going forward. Things are constantly still referencing Empire Strikes Back when we're talking about complimenting something. Like this is the Empire of the franchise. This one gets it right. It's the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy. We still hear it today and for good reason. Let's move on to the next one on my list. And for this, we gotta go back in time. I don't know. Is that Huey Lewis The News? I don't know if that is, but Huey Lewis The News is the first back to the future movie. I love that song that they play in there. You're introduced to Michael J. Fox, Marty McFly, blowing out the speakers at Doc's little workshop, jumps on a skateboard. He's late for school. Huey Lewis playing in the background. That's the power of love. It's so good. It's so good. This whole trilogy. Here's the thing. This is what's interesting about Back to the Future to me at least and probably only me. The first two movies feel like one big movie. Because we're bouncing between the past and the future. It all feels very connected. Then this third movie feels kind of like an ugly duckling. Still solid. Not, I don't think it's quite as good as the first two. Where they're back in the western world. The wild western times. What's interesting here is Back to the Future two and three were actually filmed at the same time. The first one was done completely separate. You could have easily convinced me that Back to the Future one and two were filmed together. But that's not how this goes. And I say that because in Back to the Future two, Marty is interacting with the other future Marty who's interacting with past future Marty, past future Marty. So there's three going back to the same scene that was in the first Back to the Future. Whereas number three is really just its own thing in the wild west. There is some connection but it just doesn't feel like it's completely part of this trilogy. Here's a synopsis just because it's been a while since I've seen these and it's nice to give a little clarification as the plot of these films. Here in this 1980s sci-fi classic, small town California teen Marty McFly is thrown back into the fifties when an experiment by his eccentric scientist friend Doc Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd of course, goes awry. That means bad folks if you are an idiot. Traveling through time in a modified DeLorean car, Marty encounters young versions of his parents, Crispin Glover and Leah Thompson. Fun fact, Crispin Glover is replaced in the sequel. I believe it was a dispute over... I don't even want to say. I think it might be money. I'm not sure what the reason is or they might have just not invited him. No, I think Crispin Glover actually sued because they didn't ask him back and they got a likeness for his character since it was such a small scene in the second movie. So he actually sued for them using his likeness. Interesting. They did a damn good job because it looks a lot like Crispin Glover in the sequel. Anyway, they travel through time in a modified DeLorean. Marty encounters young versions of his parents, Crispin Glover and Leah Thompson. Leah Thompson is a treasure by the way, a smoke show. She's fantastic in these and must make sure that they fall in love or he'll cease to exist. Even more dauntingly, Marty has to return to his own time and save the life of Doc Brown. That's right because early on in this picture Doc Brown is gunned down by some terrorists because he stole plutonium from them, which is what fuels the DeLorean. Later the DeLorean will run on a... it's a more eco-friendly version. It runs on garbage. So he gets it right. He figures it out. For now though he needs plutonium and that's going to pose problems when they're back in the 50s. So in order to get back to the future, hence the title, they have to rig up the the big clock tower, wire it to the DeLorean so that when this bad boy's traveling at a specific speed, it hits this wire and boom gives it the jolt that they need to get back to their time. This film is incredibly clever because it plays with time travel a lot. It has rules for itself. Doc Christopher Lloyd's character is so completely aloof and unhinged and brilliant at the same time. It works so well against Marty's 17-year-old rebel self. Tons of jokes, tons of great action moments, and it holds up incredibly well. Now as for the sequel. In this zany sequel, time traveling duo Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown return from saving Marty's future son from disaster only to discover their own time transformed. In this nightmarish version of Hill Valley, Marty's father has been murdered and Biff Tannen, Marty's nemesis, has profited. After uncovering the secret to Biff's success, a sports almanac from the future, Marty and Doc embark on a quest to repair the space-time continuum. A sports almanac is a big deal. This is what Biff finds earlier in the film and he uses this to basically make a bunch of bets that he already knows the answers to and makes him a millionaire. He's got this Trump-like facade. He lives in a giant tower. He's taken Marty's mom as his bride to be. It's just, it is a complete hellscape. Marty's dad's dead. Doc is unhinged. I mean, again, you know, he's Doc. That's what it is. But this is a very dark sequel to a much lighter affair the first time around. I love Back to the Future 2. I really do. I still think Number 1 is a little better. I go back and forth on these depending on my mood, I guess at the time. Back to the Future 1 is just so iconic. So I think it really goes 1, 2, 3. But overall, these are really, really good movies. And then the plot of the third is this. In the final chapter, Marty McFly obtains a 70-year-old message from the time traveling Dr. Emmett Brown, in which he informs Marty he has retired to a small town in the Old West. Marty then finds out that Doc was murdered shortly after sending the letter. In order to save his friend, Marty will have to travel back in time, disentangle a love-struck Doc from a local schoo—school—school marm? School marm? I've never heard that term in my life. Okay, a local school marm and repair the DeLorean all while avoiding a posse of gunslingers, one of which, of course, Biff Tanner's relative. These guys are the worst. That family sucks. This one gets a little zany, and we're talking about a movie that features hoverboards and 3D sharks dropping out of the sky. This one, once they do the DeLorean train, and Doc's got a litter of kids, Steam Brenner, whatever her name is, Mary Steamberger is his wife. It's fine. There's some good callbacks. The manure thing always plays a part where Biff's getting shit literally dumped on him. There's a fun showdown, the whole yellow belly chicken thing. Marty hates being called yellow. That comes back into play. It all is very connected and cohesive trilogy for sure. I just, uh, yeah, I don't really have any negatives. It's nice that they tried something new, I guess, is the takeaway. It just was a little too disconnected for me at the end of the day, but overall a very solid trilogy, one that I highly recommend. So far our trilogies have spanned the late 70s, 80s, and 90s, and now we're in 2014 with The Guardians of the Galaxy, written and directed by James Gunn. This trilogy is pretty much perfection all the way through, at least of course in my humble opinion. What we have here is a sci-fi action comedy with a ragtag group of misfits. These are your, these aren't your first in class. These are, uh, I mean I guess depending on what you look at when you're looking for a first in class. Gamora of course is top of her game as far as killing goes, but when we're looking at well-rounded, well-adjusted individuals, you're not going to turn to The Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter Quill, played by Chris Pratt for instance, was kidnapped or, yeah, child-napped when he was just a little boy and his mom died of cancer. He was sucked up a pirate ship, commanded by Yondu, played by Michael Roker. This whole, this whole crew by the way, all these actors and their characters are fantastic. Chris Pratt as Peter Quill is the leader of this group. He's the driving force. He's funny. He's charismatic. He's emotional. And by the third movie, which I'm not going to spoil at all by the way, if you want to hear my spoiler thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, please check out the channel Adam Does Movies on YouTube. I have a spoiler video. It's 17 or so minutes long praising the film up and down. If you enjoyed the movie, highly recommend watching that because I very much like that one. Vin Diesel as Groot. He can only say I am Groot. He's cashing the easiest paychecks of his life. And this is a guy that's in all the Fast and the Furious movies. So Diesel has a very easy career for him in acting. My god, what a great life he's got. Then you have Bradley Cooper actually putting in work as the voice of Groot, or I'm sorry, as Rocket Raccoon. Bradley Cooper is putting in a performance here. He's not just using his own voice. It's voice acting, gentlemen. Actors out there, you can actually do something different with your voice when playing a character. For the most part, it seems like now when, you know, so-and-so is cast as whatnot, they're just talking normally. It's really annoying. Scarlett Johansson is the snake in the Jungle Book. Ooh, let's see what kind of cool, slithery accent she puts on. No, it's just Scarlett Johansson's voice. Anyway, let's move back to Guardians of the Galaxy. We have Zoe Saldana as Gamora. Zoe Saldana, talk about a nerd's fantasy woman. She's in some of the highest grossing films of all time. Avatar and Endgame, Avengers. She's, she's cash in checks. But unlike Vin Diesel, she's putting in a bit more work. She's constantly having to be painted up blue and green. She puts, she has accents to her characters. She has different styles. She brings to each performance, putting in some good work. And Gamora is a great character who Zoe Saldana gets to play different ways as these movies progress. In the first one, she's pretty rough around the edges. By volume two, she's fully part of the crew. She's embraced them as a family and she's softened up a lot. But then by the third, she's back to being this kind of horrible individual who's out for herself, doesn't want anything to do with the Guardians. And that's of course because in Endgame, the original Gamora was killed, and we have this other version of herself from the past who hadn't met the Guardians yet. He doesn't have that family, that, that bond that the others do. Dave Boutista's Drax. This guy is great. Every movie he gets better. And that's, that comes, that comes to a peak in Guardians volume three. And not just because Boutista, as Drax, is hilarious, but also because physically, he's a beast. I never really thought they gave him justice in the first two, but by the third Guardians, he's chucking guys all over the place. He's taking body shots and not flinching. The guy's in full effect. Then we have Karen Gillen as Nebula. This character has as much growth as Loki does from Thor. These two characters, the anti-villain turned hero by the end are how you write great compelling character arcs. Nebula, just as hardened as her sister, even more so as she was experimented on, her entire life by her dad Thanos, pitted against her sister, will become infused with this team and become one of their lead characters. It's compelling stuff from a superhero cape movie, which is very nice to see. Last but not least, we have Michael Rorke as Yandu. This is the guy that brings Peter Quill under his wing when Peter Quill is kidnapped as a child in the first film after he watches his mom die of cancer and runs away from his grandpa's arms out into a field. And that's what starts his entire journey in space, where he will leave Earth behind forever and he will become family with a bunch of misfits, ragtag group of individuals from different walks of life who will come into his purview because they're all after the same thing in the first movie, which is a MacGuffin really. It's one of the stones, one of the infinity stones that Thanos is after, the power one, I think. It doesn't really matter what it is. We just needed to get these guys together as a team to fight off a bad guy. In this case, it's a generic villain named Ronan. He's uninteresting, but these guys have enough charisma and enough energy going for them that it doesn't really matter what's going on in the villain side of things for once. Typically, a villain can really elevate a movie. It's rare when we have so many fun heroes to work with in one picture. Dardens of the Galaxy Volume 2 for some is a big step down. Some people don't even like it because it does get a little too colorful, a little too silly, undercuts some of the drama, and those are all fair criticisms. I felt that it still had enough going for it to even exceed Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1. This team really feels more fleshed out and together. They're not fighting each other this movie. They're actually working as a cohesive unit, and there's just a lot of different elements in this movie that work from the music that's gotten even better since the first. This is one of the things James Gunn brings to all his movies is really fun music that gets he in the mood, gets he in the moment. They're brought into these movies so well because Peter is into music. He's got his tape player and he's got his mixes, so they really go with the films completely, and they play off the emotions of the character. By the time we get to the third movie, it opens up with Rocket playing a song, and we get into his headspace as he's walking around the Guardians of the Galaxy campus. Music is such a major part of these movies, and they're implemented well every single time James Gunn should be commended for giving us the best MCU trilogy out there. I think it's hands down easily the best. Some will look at something like Captain America, but Captain America has no consistency. Winter Soldier is a far cry from the first Avenger. First Avenger is kind of corny, intentionally campy, has a pulpy serial vibe to it, and then Winter Soldier is like an espionage spy game type of film. It's gritty, it's directed by the Russo Brothers this time, it's more frantic and in your face, and then we get to Civil War, which is essentially a glorified Avengers movie with a lot of cameos. None of it feels connected outside of Bucky being one of the primary catalysts in all of them. They just have such a different tone and style, whereas Guardians of the Galaxy from beginning to end feels very connected. Nothing but praise for this franchise, nothing but praise. Let's move on to the fourth on my list of trilogies out of the five, and this one more than any of them might be a little a little controversial, and even I myself kind of take pause when I think about what I put on here. And that's the Matrix. We're headed on the precipice of 201999. The Wachowski Brothers at the time would create, whether they stole it or not, the idea doesn't matter. What we have on the screen is what I care about. They can deal with those consequences later. I think they did, I think they were sued by someone that had a script or a story idea that was similar to the Matrix. All I know is that teenager Adam, seeing this movie with a bunch of family the first time in theaters in, I believe, Elbert Lee, Minnesota, was an experience like no other. Warner Brothers had brilliant trailers for this thing, gave away nothing. You didn't know what the story was. It's very hard to even convey to people through a trailer what the story is without witnessing it, kind of like what Morpheus says. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You've got to be there. You've got to see it with your own eyes. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and why would I even try to be like Lawrence Fishburne? The guy pulsates coolness. He reeks it. He's the epitome of cool with his shades and his black leather jacket. It was the style at the time. I remember seeing the movie, though, and around 40 minutes in, after Neo has had his mouth CGI wiped away by Agent Smith, and then he's got his head shaved and he's getting pulled by a giant claw machine from Toy Story that goes up into the Nebuchadnezzar or whatever the hell the name of that ship is. I know I said it wrong. I butchered it. And he's in a new place called Zion, and the real world isn't real at all. It's a virtual reality land created by machines, and the real humans are sleeping in pods and used as batteries. Because at some point in time, in the distant future for us, machines rise up and they use humans as cattle. They use us as nothing more than glorified energy, batteries in a field, giant fields of us, and we're living in our fairy tale world. Everything's, you know, white as rain, and the machines grow. They thrive in this new world that they run. But there's a hand-picked few of believers out there that can wake up from this dream and start to fight back against the machines. Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, who was like the 9,000th idea, the 9,000th pick for this. I think they went after Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, basically any A-star at the time, they approached. And then Keanu Reeves is way down here, and the Wachowski's eventually landed on him. And man, that was the right idea, because Keanu Reeves is freaking awesome in this movie. And of course, he would go on to have several resurgence over time. John Wick being one of the most recent. Everybody loves Keanu Reeves. The Matrix was just one of many different, you know, Marathon runs for him. He went way back to Bill and Ted's excellent adventures. And then you have Carrie Ann Moss as Trinity, sex symbol like no other. She was really a newer generation Carrie Fisher, that tight black leather, the cool shades, she's diving in and out of buildings. There's so many moments from the Matrix that I quoted with buddies, we'd run down a hallway sideways, we'd pretend to dodge bullets. Trinity, help. The sound effects in these films is like no other. It wouldn't be until the Michael Bay Transformers movies where I would listen to all these sounds and be like, oh my God, what am I hearing? This is amazing. I mean, you can knock Transformers all you want, but that sound design, amazing, amazing stuff. The Matrix soundtrack was great. You had the lobby shootout scene. They're diving into helicopters in slow motion. Buildings are blowing up in these cool, wavy motions. Everything has a surreal vibe to it. It's a slow burn that continues to amaze as the movie goes on. And Agent Smith, I'm going to say it is my favorite villain of all time in movie history. I'd love to do a list of that too, favorite villains in movies. You put Dr. Evil, of course, up there as well, Hans Gruber from Die Hard. Agent Smith, oh my gosh, the deadpan delivery, the just cold as ice mannerisms that he has. It's fantastic. And I am, of course, because I'm doing this on the fly live, blanking on the actor's name. And I got to say it because I want to give props. Hugo Weaving, of course. Hugo Weaving will be in the next movie on my list as well. And saying that probably gave it away to people, but this isn't supposed to be like a, you know, what's behind the curtain situation. If you know me, you already knew what my number one pick was to begin with. The Matrix 1 very well could be and probably should have been a one and done situation. That was the goal. I don't think anyone thought it was going to blow up the way it did. So of course they had to fast track sequels. And this is fun because the Matrix Reloaded and the Matrix Revolutions came out only six months apart. Much like Back to the Future 2 and 3, Reloaded and Revolutions were filmed at the same time back to back. In tandem, they promised bigger scale effects, some of the coolest CG you'll ever find. And while they did deliver on some of it, there's also some stuff where it's like, I don't know if that's quite as nice as you think it is, such as the Burley Brawl, which is a madcap fight sequence outside where the Oracle had just left with Surf, her right hand man. Neo is left in the park. And we see Agent Smith come up, Mr. Anderson, followed by a dozen more. We get a stellar hand-to-hand fight scene with a lot of extras, a lot of body doubles. Keanu Reeves put it in the work. Then we transition into a very Looney Tunes-esque CG fight with hundreds of Agent Smiths. I freaking love this fight. I don't care how fake it looks. And it has an excuse because technically we're in a simulation. So the fact that it doesn't look real, there's an excuse for that. It isn't real. That's my excuse. Regardless of how the effects look, let's keep in mind, even when it came into theaters it didn't look the most realistic, but it was still badass. It's still one of my favorite action scenes, full stop in a movie. And that's just one of several in Reloaded. Reloaded is really light on script. The story is all over the place. We're introduced to a bunch of new characters and settings. Zion becomes the focus of 2 and 3 instead of freeing minds from the Matrix, which I think is the biggest criticism of these films. The first movie was about waking up, fighting the machines. 2 and 3 are about saving this god-awful Zion, which is a hole in the ground where all the real humans live. This place sucks. Outside of the occasional dance orgy, what's there to live for down here? I think I agree from Cipher in the first movie. Give me some steak, make me a celebrity, and I'll live blissfully in the Matrix instead of eating what appears to be goulash breakfast, lunch and dinner, trying to fend off a bunch of sentinels from ripping a hole in the wall. I'm trying to sleep down here. I'm working here. Matrix Revolution's easily the worst. I don't know if I just have grown up a little bit and gotten a little wimpy when it comes to criticism, but I recently rewatched Revolutions not that long ago. I found myself still not loving the film, but definitely being a lot softer on the movie. It still has that epic rain fight between Smith and Neo, and I think that is one of the cooler ideas they came up with later. The whole yin and yang situation, the scenario where if there's a Neo, there has to be an anti-neo that's just as strong on the other end to balance things out. These movies have always been about power and balance, and left and right, and right and wrong, and it's always been a binary zero and one, which, again, very appropriate. And I do realize, and I pointed this out earlier, that time heals wounds, but time also opens up new ones. Heroes become villains over time. And what has happened is we have a fourth Matrix movie that we pretend doesn't exist because it is complete garbage. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen, as far as major property movies are concerned. And in fact, just in general, it's a freaking horrible film. So that movie doesn't exist. It's got awful trash. This trilogy is tight. It's a good trilogy. A lot of great characters. Is it resolved at the end? Kind of. It has this kind of surreal resolution, and it does get a little messy with the Oracle because the actress died in between filming two and three, which sucks because they were filmed at the same time. So at some point during the process, she passed away, and they had to give her a new quote on quote shell or skin. And for some reason, this program continues to use elderly wise black women as the vessel. They could have maybe had the program use a different looking skin to maybe make it less obvious that the actress died and is being replaced, make it like a little Chinese boy or a little white kid, something completely opposite of an elderly black woman be like, yeah, I'm the Oracle. I changed skins because they tried to delete me and I came back as this fresh youthful skin. But that's like such a petty criticism, though. And the actress that plays are still fantastic. Yeah, I love these movies. I really do. They hold a special place in my heart. And I watched, again, I watched them not that long ago, really loved them. And speaking of trilogies, John Wick, of course, just has fourth movie. I don't think that John Wick is as great as people say. And I do really enjoy all of them. But John Wick one is a solid beginning, middle and story, kind of like the matrix is even though the matrix does have an open ended ending in the first, it's still kind of like a I'm coming for you, but we don't need any more. Like, okay, he's the one that's the end of the game. He's going to go on to free minds and blah, blah, blah, we can fill in the blanks. John Wick, though, is so much more closed up, it's so much more buttoned up by the end that two, three and four really don't have much of a story at all. It's just nonstop action sequences, which I love, of course, but they do feel empty. They feel like you're just having fast food, instead of a steak dinner, which I do think the first movie is because it really does have the heart and emotion, whereas the later ones are missing all of that. And it's just cool action scenes. That's one of the reasons it's not on the list. Let's move to the number one. Again, not really a shocker, I don't think for anyone knows me, but it's the Lord of the Rings, directed by Peter Jackson, of course, based on the the token books. These are perfect. As perfect as movies can get, Lord of the Rings is there, all filmed at the same time over an eight year span. This is absolutely unheard of. I don't think another movie has done this outside of the recent avatar. I believe James Cameron has been working on two, three and four, maybe even more than that at the same time, in different aspects of pre-production, post-production, writing. I know he's touching a lot of different things in these movies at once, but Lord of the Rings, one, two and three were all done beginning to end within this eight year window, and they released one year after another, day in day release, just perfection. I'm trying to see when did the first one come out. I wrote it down. Where in the hell, where did my notes go? I had notes and other, okay, here we go. Lord of the Rings came out in 2001, two years after the first matrix, and it ended by 2003. So yeah, eight years and $280 million for the whole shebang. The new Fast and the Furious movie, and I know inflation's not in play right now, but the new Fast and the Furious Fast X cost $350 million for one stupid ass movie. Peter Jackson did all three epic four-hour Lord of the Rings movies with a $280 million budget, 12 hours of movie, 12 hours of traversing Middle Earth to cast the ring back into the fires of Mordor. I mean, come on! This is legendary status. You have some of the greatest casting of all time. Let me bring up the, let me bring up the sheet here. We got Elijah Wood as Frodo, Frodo Begans. He and his best friend Sam are the ones that are going to be cursed with this, I guess, honor, but really it's a burden at the end of the day. They have to take the ring. They have to take the ring under the eyes of Sauron and Saruman. So it's so confusing. Why did he name these people like this? Sauron's the all-seeing eye. He is the owner of the ring, a ring that was created to basically capture the powers of all the other rings created by men and dwarves and elves and whatnot. This ring rules all of them, and Sauron was thankfully defeated back in the Diz. He was slain, taken out, the hand fracture, the ring fell into a cavern, where it was then discovered by Bilbo Begans and Smeagol at the time. Smeagol lost the ring, Bilbo got it, and he's been holding on to it, and that's where the movie starts up. Bilbo's got this ring hidden, Frodo comes across it, and all bets are off when he is being hunted down by these men in black riding these horses, they work for Sauron, it's creepy, it's scary stuff. Gandalf, who's a wizard, super wise, Gandalf the Great, he's not the greatest wizard, which also makes him interesting. He's solid though, he's been around the block enough, he's got some tricks, he's got some skills, he's gonna tell Frodo he's gotta get out of here, he's gotta run, this is now a burden he's gonna have to carry at least until they get somewhere safe, which is gonna end up being where the elves live. I should point out that Gandalf's played by Sir Ian McKellen, McKellen is fantastic as always, Magneto, the man himself, he's just a treasure, he's just a treasure. Then you have Orlando Bloom making all the ladies swoon in this film, Bloom makes the ladies swoon, he made me swoon as Legolas, the greatest elf of all time, the dude can skateboard down mammoth, mammoth trunks, he can skateboard, he skateboards a lot, I know, skateboard's down shields on steps in the two towers, picking off guys with his amazing archer ability. Then you have Sean Bean as Boromir, he's gonna be corrupted by the ring in the first film, gonna turn into a bozo, but Sean Bean is so lovable, even when he's kind of a dick, he's still a great guy. Sean Austin plays Sam, that's Frodo's best friend, he's a hobbit just like Frodo and Bilbo, they live in the Shire, it's a small little quaint village in Middle Earth and they keep to themselves, they don't really know much going on outside their little merry area and speaking of merry, we have Mary and Pip, who also will be going on this adventure, so you have a bunch of little hobbits who are going to be having second breakfast on the run. There's so many amazing actors in this, Christopher Lee as Saruman the White Wizard, you have Kate Blanchett as the Lady of the Wood, a Galadriel I believe is her actual name, there are amazing voice, amazing characters coming and going throughout this thing, Sean Bean is Boromir and I have a hard time even deciding which of these three movies is my favorite because Fellowship is fantastic, you have the cave troll sequence where they fight in the underground where the dwarves live, then there's the ballrog that comes out, Gandalf is killed, he sacrifices himself for the good of the Fellowship and then we go to Two Towers, which is a slow burn to an epic 45 minute battle sequence, it is tremendous in scale, it's so visceral, you feel like you're there with these people trying to fend off this army of dark creatures from Middle Earth who've risen up from the ground to fight them, goblins, ghouls, things of that nature, things created from the earth itself that hunt them down, then Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White now, he has ascended in the wizarding world, he's leveled up, he's powered up and now he's back, better than ever, he's got a white steed, it's just all around such a tremendous undertaking that we get to see, it's a thing of legends folks, watching the Lord of the Rings movies on the big screen back in college is one of the best things in cinematic history that I was able to witness, they do not make movies like this very often anymore, so you have to treasure them when they come out, and Return of the King of course, just a feather in the cap of this franchise, as we get to those final moments where Sam is carrying Frodo up that hill, Frodo who is absolutely corrupted beyond all repair from the ring at this point, Elijah Wood in these movies is just so damn good, so likeable, you feel for this kid, he didn't ask for this, he just wanted to live his quaint little life, but he takes it on, he knows he's the only one that can withstand the ring for as long as anyone can humanly take it on, and so yeah, climbing that mountain, getting his finger ripped off by Smeagol slash Gollum who is, you want to talk about beyond saving as much as Frodo tries, there's just no way this thing was ever going to make it out unscathed, and he of course is married to that ring, and at the end he gets to wear it one last time, one last ride as he melts away into the fiery pits of Mordor's volcano, it's amazing, and then the movie doesn't end, then we have another 20 or 30 minutes of closure, and I remember critics and people bitching about this, I could have watched a couple more hours of things just getting sent off, and I don't think people talk about how like truly sad the ending of this movie is, it's heartbreaking stuff, when Frodo goes on that ship with Bilbo at the end and some of the elves Gandalf is with as well, they're gonna go to that great beyond, they're leaving Middle Earth to go to, I can't remember the name of the place I apologize, but wherever the elves go beyond Middle Earth to find peace, it's basically like their heaven, and basically it's elves only and people of a higher regard, it's like it's an elf plus one sort of invite situation, because of the burden that Bilbo and Frodo went through, they're giving access to the gates, they get a free pass, and Frodo it's so tragic because he's so young, because he doesn't have that life to live, it was cast out along with the ring, there's no coming back from what he went through, thankfully Sam does get to come back, he gets a family with that hot chick from the first one that he had eyes on, he's got some kids, it's a happily ever after for Sam, but Frodo not so much, although it's nice that he gets peace in the beyond, just a tragic story, it's incredibly well told, I love it, I love every minute of it, and of course I watch the extended versions that are four hours long, you get a little bit more insight in some of the characters, you get to see some of the stuff that the movies took out, like how Saruman was defeated, I remember watching the third one in the theater thinking, so Saruman dead, what exactly happened, because in the original they don't even show it, they might mention it, I'm not even sure if they do that much, you get the mouth of Saran that shows up, it's a great scene, it's just all around, I mean more is more in the case of Lord of the Rings, and I even like the Hobbit trilogy, that's how much of a fan I am of these things, Rings of Power however, no thanks, I really tried, I tried my damnedest to get into that show, couldn't even finish it, it was so bad, if you like it that's great, I wish I envy you honestly because I really wanted to, and it saddens me that they're redoing the Lord of the Rings, they're gonna try to make it a TV series, obviously for cash grab purposes, it's a massive franchise, they made tons of money, hugely successful, I really do think the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, they're lightning in a bottle films, they got the acting right the first time, they got the music impeccably well, they got the look of it nailed to a tee, these were passion projects, these were love letters to movie making that I think the cynical side of me doesn't see Hollywood making anymore, at least not to the scale these did, which it's great to see that James Gunn got to see his vision with Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 because we see less of that now, everything feels so manufactured for profit, it feels less about the art and more about making money, now this ran long, this ran very long, hopefully it was entertaining, it was fun talking about these movies and I want to remind you once more that this is a podcast that comes out every Monday, next Monday we're talking about the five most disappointing movie trilogies, movies that could have been phenomenal third acts to a trilogy but ended up dropping the ball completely and ended up ruining the franchise as a whole in some instances, there was a lot to choose from so narrowing that down to five, the curse of three is a real thing folks, so when we get that third movie right it really is a special thing, really is, look forward to that, please subscribe and follow on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you listen to this hopefully it's there, I do my best to spread the love around, also I appreciate your support so share this if you can, if you really like what I'm doing I even have a Patreon at patreon.com slash adam does movies, there's a one dollar tier, goes up to like a hundred bucks a month, I don't expect people to do that one but it's there if you really like my stuff, a lot of it's pertaining to YouTube side of things, so at 30 bucks there's a mithril membership where you can request a movie for me to watch, I review it and give you a shout out on a YouTube video, that's a really fun time people seem to be liking them, regardless whatever you could give I appreciate and I'll talk to you real soon, take care