 El Camino is the Breaking Bad closure that some fans wanted, but didn't actually need. Let's talk about it. Breaking Bad is my favorite TV series, Full Stop. I think the characters are so well written, I think the story is just so different from everything you see normally on TV. Even the way it's filmed is very cinematic but creative at the same time. Plus you have these amazing performances from Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, it just everything works. You cannot watch the movie and not have seen the show from beginning to end. It will make no sense and even if you had seen the show from beginning to end, it's still a little hard here and there to kind of dissect what's going on where things are falling in the timeline because the movie does a lot of these flashback elements, which I was assuming it was going to do just based on the characters that are still alive. It's like we're not going to get much play here if we don't have some of these people come back in flashbacks. This is a movie that's made specifically with the fans in mind and it does feel like there's a bit of pandering to the audience going on. Maybe that's not the right word, but there's this like nostalgicness to it that I feel is kind of disingenuous like characters pop up here and there as almost just a tip of the hat or a wink to the audience instead of really driving the story. It doesn't seem like they're organically put in. It just seems like, hey, remember this person? He's in the movie for five minutes. In the intro of this quick review, I said that this is the movie that some fans wanted but didn't actually need. And that's because this breaking bad film, if you want to call it that, takes place directly after the events of the final season. Walter White is dead. Pinkman's on the run in his car. And we are uncertain as an audience if he's going to get caught by the cops or if he's going to make it to Alaska, which is where he kind of dreamt of being and it was alluded to that he might go there and actually start a new life, be a better person because he does have all the chances in the world. He's still young. He doesn't have cancer. I loved the Breaking Bad ending because of this. They did such a good job of wrapping up pretty much every storyline that it was nice to have one little, not even a cliffhanger, just an imaginative ending that the audience gets to dream up for the hero or the anti-hero, whatever you want to call Pinkman. It just works so well because you can look at it and say, as a realist, he's probably going to get caught by the cops, go to jail, do whatever. He's going to have a miserable rest of his life. Or you can have the more Hollywood fantastical approach and think, you know what? He's in Alaska. He's got a little woodworking shop. He's made a name for himself. He's made a new life for himself. I go back and forth on which way I wanted it, but now this movie robs us of that. It really, and it's not a bad movie. I just don't think it's that great either. It's just such a nonsense film. It's kind of like, you know, once again to bring up The Joker, it's the movie I didn't need, but it did a good job of being whatever it was. It's just I didn't really need it or want it, and I wasn't that entertained during it. This Breaking Bad movie is a very slow burn. It feels more like an episode of Better Call Saul than it does of Breaking Bad, I think. And that's because there isn't really much of substance that takes place. The things that Pinkman has to do don't have much meaning behind them. There isn't layer to them like the show used to have. It's just really him spending two hours trying to get out of dodge with, you know, well, the movie's two hours long. So it's really an hour, hour 15 of him trying to get out of dodge in another 45 minutes of these flashback scenes that are, you know, they're new. The characters have come back to reprise their roles. I won't say who they are if you haven't seen it. And that works sometimes and sometimes it's just a little like, eh, you didn't look like that. You know, you gotta stretch your imagination a bit. They're not doing any CGI to make these people look younger or thinner. Meth Damon's back. I don't remember his character name. I always just called him Meth Damon because he looks like Matt Damon. He does meth on the show. And he, he looks like the actor gained a solid amount of weight, but he's supposed to be the same weight, you know, supposed to look the same as he did back when the show was going. That was a little bit jarring for me, although it has been a while since I watched Breaking Bad, but I feel like he was quite a bit thinner at the time. Aaron Paul also, he's older. It's like Legolas and the Hobbit. You can clearly see that they're, you know, they're more adult. They have their adult weight on them. They're beefier. Same thing if I did and went back and tried to reshoot some of my stupid old movies with my buddies, I would just look completely out of place. On the other side of things though, because I do love Breaking Bad so much, it was nice to watch more of it. Just any of it, you know, it's like when the Hobbit came out because I love The Lord of the Rings so much, even though the Hobbit movies aren't near as good, and you can arguably say they're bad, I enjoy them. But that's just because I enjoy Middle Earth and the characters that inhabit it. And I joke many times with friends saying, I could just watch, you know, Legolas eat a bowl of porridge for two hours straight, and I'm fine. I'm good. That's entertaining to me because I just like the character or Bilbo Baggins just, you know, walking the countryside. That's kind of where Breaking Bad is if this was not a Breaking Bad movie, if it was just its own thing. This film would not appeal to me at all. I would think it was boring, kind of just has a lot of unnecessary elements to it. And really, the story is so small and so, I guess, not meaningless, but it is kind of meaningless. Once again, it's like Rogue One. We didn't need Rogue One. The title crawl gave us the plot of the entire film. We didn't need a two-hour-plus movie to tell us. That was right before New Hope. So this is very much just an extended ending of what most people already assumed would happen with the character. One of two, there was one of two things. And that was Robbed. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I would recommend this. It doesn't feel like a movie. They call it a movie, but it's really just two more episodes of the show. There isn't that level of cinematic quality or music. There really isn't a whole lot of music in general outside of maybe one kind of funnier scene involving Meth Damon driving. Otherwise, yeah, it's just more of the show. But think of it more as Better Call Saul than Breaking Bad, level of kind of intensity and whatnot. This is on Netflix. If you are paying for that subscription, you have it there already. I do think it did open in some theaters, but I can't imagine many people are going to go to it there when most people have a subscription. This reviews all over the place like my car sides are. They're not structured. I'm just out doing some chores. So I thought I'd pull over and just review this quick for you, give you a few of my thoughts. Not a bad movie, just an unnecessary one. It's great to see these characters again. It makes me want to go watch the original again. And yeah, I don't know. I'm just torn on it. I think that something better could have been made. I just don't know what that is. Maybe just do more of the show somehow. I don't know. It sucks. Hollywood, dammit. I'm going to put this in Worth the Stream, but it's a cautionary Worth the Stream. If you are 100% satisfied with the end of Breaking Bad, you don't really have a desire to see more of it, then I wouldn't even watch this. But if you want a little bit of a walk down memory lane, and you want a little bit more nostalgia, there's some fun flashbacks. There's some good characters that show up. And I will say Aaron Paul is doing a fantastic job doing his character again. He pulls out all the stops. There's lots of great emotion from him. There is some intense flashbacks that make you really see what he went through with his time with those terrible individuals when he's caged up. So yeah, if you want to see more of him just kind of getting beat in and kicked around, then this is the movie for you. Thanks for joining me in the car. I'll see you next time.