Why Did We Watch This

Halloween is over and Christmas approaches! As we now find ourselves in the time of year the French call “le petit Halloween,” (note: check to see if this is true) we decided we might as well do another horror movie. And one that’s also a game adaptation! Really, we could have slotted this into a couple places this year. Anyway, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris are watching 2014’s Ouija, the movie that takes the vague starting point of “board that talks to the dead” and then bogs it down with confusing things like “mouths getting stitched shut,” “magic viewfinder planchettes,” and “Daren Kagasoff.” On the other hand, we have a lot of good things to say about this episode’s cocktail.

It’s Halloweek, baby! And since we already shot our wad as far as Halloween episodes go, we decided to do one on theme and try out some ostensibly Halloween-themed snacks. However, capitalism continues to disappoint us all and there weren’t too many exciting options this year, so we’ve only got some really vague tenuous treats to try out. Alas! To keep the vibe going, we also talk briefly about the movie we’ll be doing next which is ALSO a horror movie (and a board game movie, so really you could have slotted this one in to a couple of places this past year). And the drink. It will necessitate a lot of drinking.

AH-HOOOOO WEREWOLVES OF (and tangentially around) LONDON. As Halloween approaches, it’s time for Leigh, Brendan, and Chris to dust off a poorly-received horror movie for our annual Halloween Spooktacular, and continue our “90s updates of classic Universal monster movies” series while we’re at it. As such, there’s no better option to turn to than Joe Johnston’s 2010 flop The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, and the sensible delicate scenery-chewing of Anthony Hopkins. Audiences at the time stayed away from it like it was a silver bullet, but is there something here that actually works? Is it maybe actually almost kind of… GOOD??? Well… maybe! Listen and find out, won’t you, as we also enjoy a cocktail utilizing the classiest of all childhood beverages, Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider. Sophistication, thy name is Why Did We Watch This.

It’s almost the spooky season, but because we’re not QUITE there yet, we’re gaming instead. One of our constant challenges is summarizing the plots of movies effectively when left to our own devices, so we though we’d see how accurately we could recap the movie we’ve covered when given a ticking clock. Are there any movies we don’t really remember? Can you summarize The Truth About Charlie by just filtering the plot of Charade through a French New Wave filter? Will Leigh want to talk about The Apple? What post-90s Universal Monster will we actually be discussing for Halloween? Listen up, won’t you, and find out!

Must Romeo die? Must he??? Well, ironically, no, according to 2000’s Romeo Must Die, which neatly sidesteps the whole tragedy issue by pointing fingers at actual villains, and then using an x-ray effect to see Jet Li breaking those fingers. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris’s mob family as we discuss both Jet Li and Aaliyah’s first major film and try to determine if the pair have actual chemistry, why we spend so much time dealing with an attempt to bring a new football team to the Bay Area, and how much of this movie actually maps onto the Romeo and Juliet story (spoiler alert, very little). But hey, there’s some fun action scenes at least! And there’s also some bitter orange cocktail to slurp down along with this early 2000s melange.

Oops! We had an actual mini episode, but then due to technical issues, it was lost. So, uh, sorry. Try to imagine adaptations of games that we’d pitch, you’ll probably really enjoy it. So, instead, here’s the basic information you need about the full episode coming in two weeks. Hopefully that will go more smoothly!

Our Summer of Games draws to its inevitable conclusion with Peter Berg’s 2012 megaflop Battleship, a movie that somehow manages to be less engaging than just spending two hours watching someone set fire to $220 million. Hoist anchors with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the multitude of problems that thoroughly sunk this would-be blockbuster. Is it the (mostly) flat acting and unengaged cast? The choice to make aliens the enemy, in a futile attempt to make the whole thing a little more interesting? Peter Berg’s incessant naval-gazing [sic]? Or maybe none of this was the best way to just make a movie based on a board game where two people just say combinations of letters and numbers back and forth for twenty minutes. Maybe! Anyway, there’s all this and some slushy cocktails, too!

We wrap up our Summer of Games: The Good Ones series with 2006’s Silent Hill, an adaptation of parts of the classic video game franchise directed by that guy who did Brotherhood of the Wolf, Christophe Gans. Despite a fairly unfavorable critical response at the time, Silent Hill is in retrospect looked on as a pretty faithful adaptation of the material. Does that make it actually good, or is the bar just that low? Well, we’re… mostly receptive to what it’s doing, at least! Listen along as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss the source material, the adaptation itself, and what it manages to do successfully (or at least interestingly). Look, in comparison to our next movie, this one is a ding dang walk through the woods of Centralia (pre-unending coal fire). But at least we’ll have a slushy cocktail to make our final game adaptation (hopefully) go down a little easier.

Ah, the bad one! Our Summer of Games sinks to a new low with 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons, a cheap, misbegotten adaptation of the classic role-playing game- an intellectual property with nearly endless possibilities to draw from, and somehow we ended up with this. Journey along with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we try to make sense of what source material this is pulling from, why Thora Birch is so shockingly awful as a fantasy empress dishing vague platitudes about equality, and if Damodar’s ice blue 90s lipstick is supposed to be a fashion choice or an indication of naturally blue lips or what the hell is going on here. On the plus side… it was a good drink! Will this be a new nadir for our Summer of Games? Boy, we hope so!

Ah, the good one! Continuing our Summer of Games where we devote a mini episode to a movie based on a game that actually worked out, we’re watching and discussing 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the rare game adaptation that’s actually pretty great! Join Leigh, Brendan, Chris, and Jarnathan as we talk about the many things this movie does right- casting, tone, direction, writing… it’s mostly all working really well! Why can’t they all be like this? Why didn’t more people see this? Why must we watch the much worse movie adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons next episode? Because we’re gluttons for punishment, that’s why. But hey, at least we enjoyed this movie!