All Quiet on the Western Front – MOVIE – Episode 41

Coming in 2023, the Buddies are jumping into the movie game. We’ll watch movies of books we have read, discuss the differences, the good/bad changes, and of course we’ll still be doing stock up/stock down. All Quiet on the Western front kicked things off, it had the Buddies discussing pissing in public, dubbing movies, and the worst possible ways to die. So grab your popcorn, your German dictionary, your raincoat, and join us as we discuss one of the best recent war movies.

Intro: (0:00-2:37)
Stock Up/Down (2:38-22:06)
Favorite Scene (22:07-23:01)
Love/Hate (23:02-32:50)
Listener Email (32:51-36:13)
Book vs Movie (36:14-41:27)
Conclusion (41:28-44:40)

Next Book: THE SILENT PATIENT by ALEX MICHAELIDES
Next Movie: THE HOBBIT (An Unexpected Journey)

Transcript below for SEO purposes 🙂

Alright. Welcome to really Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with mine comrade Keith Gutendog. Brooder schreiser. No, that’s the only German word I know. Really? Or Alam. Alam. Wait, what’s that? I don’t know that one. Whenever I play any World War Two games, you sound the alarm. The Germans would be like, Alam. Alam. So I assume that means alarm. Is that even a German word? And considering it said exactly the same, it’s like when in Love Actually, when they’re having the British guy do all the different words of his accent, they’re like, OOH, say this one. He’s like table. They’re like, yeah, it’s the same. Table is the same. All right, well, here at the Buddy Book Club, we’re bringing out some bestsellers. And this week we’ll be discussing All Quiet on the Western Front. This may sound like deja vu, but this time around we’re talking about the 2022 Netflix film directed by Ed Burger. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or maybe a movie for us to watch, reach out to us. You can visit our website, buddy Book Club.com. Or slide into our dams on Twitter or Instagram. Buddy book Club podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and spotify. So please download and subscribe. Keith, we’re doing something different this time around. US 2023. Why not mix it up, right? Yeah. We’re trying to come into your homes more often. Yeah. Ears. Okay. Ears. More often. There we go. Yeah. So I think we’re going to try to be pushing to do the movies of some of the books we’ve read, and additionally, probably some scatter and some other movies out there. I find the term cinephile to be a terrible term. And if anyone referred themselves to a cinephile, I’d say, get out. It’s like someone saying they’re a foodie. Please, sir, anything with file on it is I wouldn’t want to go by that, especially after that court case. I just don’t really want to have that name anymore. So we’re going to start with All Quiet on the Western Front because, one, it’s fairly new, and two, we just read the book, so why not watch the movie, too? The movie itself, like I said, was directed by Ed Burger, was made by Necklace. This is actually the third iteration of this movie. There was one that was made in 1930, which won two Academy Awards, outstanding Production, and Best Director. And then it was adapted again in 1979 as a made for TV movie. I actually started watching that one, which I think I mentioned on the book Pod. It has the owner from basketball, the guy who dies from choking on the hot dog as one of the characters. I couldn’t take it seriously because of that. Yeah, you can. After that, Keith, let’s jump into some stock up. Stock down. What do you do for stock up? Yeah, stock up. Pissing in public. First off, I’m not even sure why pissing in public is bad or frowned upon. It’s sterile. I understand shitting in public, right? That there’s there’s definitely a lot of things that can be transmitted from that, right? Sure. But you’re out in the woods, you’re out anywhere, you should go piss in public. I mean, I don’t want people whipping their dicks out and doing that, but it should just be, hey, you go off the woods, you can do whatever you want, that’s fine. We let our dogs do it, animals are doing it. I don’t really understand what the big deal is. One, it’s funny that you said pee is sterile because the SGF said that to me maybe two days ago. And I said, okay, if that’s the case, why don’t you drink it? And she said, I’m not drinking that. And I said, well, that’s the point. The reason I know that is only from Dodgeball, right? Yeah, of course. Where the guy goes, I don’t need to drink my own pee, but it’s sterile and I like the taste. I have no idea if it’s sterile or not. I just saying sterile. I don’t even know what sterile means, I’ll be honest with you. I’m just throwing that word out there. Yeah, I kind of need to know what you define as peeing in public. Like, are you saying you’re waiting for a train in the subway and you just turn around and pee on the wall? Or are you saying you’re walking on a hike and you step off the trail to pee in the wall? Exactly. I was going to say golfing. I was out over the weekend and going the football around. There’s no bathroom in sight. I’m at a school and I’m like, I need a piss so bad I go off. Is this about going to lead to that court case you were talking about earlier? Yes, I go and pee in the woods. And I’m like, it’s so ridiculous that if someone walked by here, I’d be arrested and I’d literally be labeled a pedophile because I need to take a piss in the woods. It doesn’t make any sense. But let me get back to the point. The whole book, I mean, this is what the podcast is about, is kind of the differences here. But the whole book and even in the movie, there’s no shame in pissing. There’s no shame in taking a shit next to someone. It’s just desensitized completely. They even have in the movie, which I thought was a great scene, this like heartfelt scene where they’re shitting. He’s like reading from the note. But at the end of the movie, and this is really by only and biggest qualm of the movie, they steal the goose and Cat is in the field and just walks off into the woods. Why? To take a piss. Why? What are you doing? Just pee right there. Take a piss right there. It wasn’t like he’s in a big group of people it’s in the middle of nowhere in his huge field. Take a piss. What are we doing here? So start pissing in public. Yeah, I think your point is if you walk away to pee, then you’ll get shot by you’ll get shot, yeah, exactly. Right. And that’s why pissing in public should be allowed and stock up. I actually think that was the message behind this movie. It was all leading up to that moment, and that’s where the director wanted to take it. So good on you, Ed Burger. I appreciate it. I will now pee ever. You know what’s actually quite enjoyable after buying my own house is peeing on your own property, not in your bathroom. I got a big yard. I just step outside sometimes. Me and the dog will go out in the morning. I’ll be like, I got to take a piss. She’ll pee, I’ll pee. We look at each other, give each other a little wink. Does she defend you while you’re a piss? No, she doesn’t, unfortunately. Luckily, there’s no farms close, so no boys are going to be coming up to try to shoot me. My first stock up is World War I movies in general. I mean, there’s just not enough attention, I feel, by filmmakers to World War I. We have a ton of World War II movies. And don’t get me wrong, I love war movies. I don’t know why. We all do. I mean, they’re usually brutal and terrible. And I was thinking about this. I love watching movies, but I often find that I feel stupid because afterwards, whether I like the movie or don’t like it, I’ll read up on it, just find some reviewer and see, like a smart person, not like someone on Google just reviewing it and see what they have to say about it. And there’s always this, like, way deep meaning that they’re pulling out of it. And I just take it for a story. I don’t know. I don’t read it too much. I’m like, oh, I didn’t see any of that, so I’m an idiot. But maybe we love war movies because the message is always pretty clear. It’s like war is terrible. It brings people together, though. You form these crazy, tight relationships. But on the whole, like, war is hell and don’t get involved with it. Maybe that’s why we like them, but there’s just not enough World War One stuff. We had 1917 recently, which was great. I don’t know how you felt about that, but yeah, I really liked that. Yeah, I thought that was a really good movie. The only other one I can think about is like, Paz of Glory, which is Stanley Kubrick movie. That’s like half courtroom drama, though. Really good movie. If you haven’t seen that. We don’t have enough Role or one stuff. And I’m hoping that with two really in back to back years, maybe they’ll look more into it. Because Dan Carlin, who we’ve referenced on the pod before, who’s a podcaster himself, has an amazing series called Blueprint for Armageddon about World War One. Each episode is 4 hours long. There’s, like, five episodes, and any 30 minutes could be made into a full length feature film. I’m just kind of hoping that they dig more into that because it’s just such a crazy time in history where the technology was so advanced, but the military strategy was was catching up to the technology. The, you know, amount of deaths is insane. The scope of everything, all of Europe was it was in in battle. While there’s media around, like, there’s newspapers and radio and this is all happening. It’s wild. And this is all kind of happening at the same time. I mean, it wasn’t the light bulb or something invented in 1910, and there’s a giant world war, like, less than ten years later. It’s just crazy to think about just step it up with World War One stuff. Did you have any other stock ups? I want more stock up entrance songs. I actually wrote a blog about closer songs and what makes them great. Well, hold on. What’s a closer song? Like, for pictures? Yeah, when the Closer comes out, but they roll through with their squad. And I wanted to ask you because I couldn’t find anything on this, but I’m pretty sure this is the last war that they roll through. They roll through with trumpets playing. They’re like, let’s get them, boys. They’re still playing music. This has to be the last, last war. They actually had musical instruments in the battlefield because I know that was big back in the day. They’d, like, show up with, like, drums and shit, even way back in the day. They do use that to intimidate people. But this has to be the last war with both music and horses, right? No, World War II. Huge tons of horses used in World did it okay. Yeah. That’s why I bring you to the pod. Did they have music playing in World War II, though? I don’t think so. And also, like, World War I at the beginning, at the onset, we’re talking leather helmets, and some French or Belgian military would have their old red dress, not camouflage or whatever the case is. Like, they’d have their red tunics, which is just absurd. But yeah. Edwin Diaz, the Closer from the Mets, little stolen Valor by doing the trumpet song as his entrance song. Come on, bro. It’s been done. That was a World War One thing. Come on. You’re saying for entrance music just, like, entering the battle, or were you talking about the actual music of this film? Just entrance songs in general. I mean, you show up and you get the music going. Yeah, I was ready to jump into that war. Then I saw it. I was like, Never mind, I’m out. I thought you were talking about the entrance of the movie. Like the music at the beginning, really? Like the three notes, but got you. Well, I want to get into that at some other point. But my other their stock up was my second and final, was films that don’t have the US as the main point of view. It’s something that I think we take for granted, being Americans and having our biggest export be pop culture, really, if you think about it, to me at least, that’s our biggest export to the rest of the world. And because of that, because all of the movie making not all, but the big movie making, it’s all in English and it focuses on Americans or Canadians or British people. It rarely focuses on others, especially the enemy in these wars. I thought it was awesome when Clint Eastwood made back to back movies about Iwo Jima. One was from the US perspective, and then the other one was from Japan perspective. It was like, oh, that’s a really cool way to do it. But it’s something you don’t see that often because usually you’re watching Pearl Harbor with Ben Affleck and it’s just this Michael Bay movie that’s amazing. And it just makes the Japanese people out to be like, not that cool. It’s nice to have a different perspective, and I’d like to see more of it. Maybe redo Last of the Mohicans, but flip it and we’ll do it from the French and Indian side. What do you ever? Stuck down. Stuck down for me, pump up speeches, I’m usually kind of a fan of these, but the German that was given the pump up speech in the beginning, that was trash. That was a trash speech, right? I honestly can’t now think of a really good pump up speech that’s motivated me, that ant me up. Unless it’s really in the moment. Like, if you were about to charge a line and give a good speech, all right, I get it. You kind of need that, right? A game is about to start. You need something. But given that pump up speech to go do something that doesn’t make sense, I would never do it’s too risky. Because, know, what happens is every single thing after that point is that person’s fault. So when I’d be in the ditch, like, day one, I’d just be like, that fucking dude gave me that speech. It didn’t matter that it has nothing to do with him. Everything’s his fault, man. Are you talking about when they’re at the school, the teacher gives it the headmaster? Yeah, the guy is giving the speech. Terrible speech, by the way. That guy sucked. But everything’s on him. I don’t care that they weren’t getting the right rations and they had no food. That probably didn’t have anything with the guy’s speech, but it was all his fault. Every single thing is his fault after that fact. You know what I mean? That’s why you don’t give that type of pump up speech right there. So what do you think? Pop about, like, pump up speeches? In sports? Yeah. In game. They’re about to start a game. You need motivation. I get that. Let’s say, like, hey, D man, you got to come out to San Diego. It’s the best. Whether it’s the greatest thing ever, you have to come out. You have to come out. You come out. It’s a shitty time. Everything’s on me. 100% on me. No matter what happens on me, your flight gets delayed. Like, goddamn it, Keith. That’s your fault. That’s completely fair. That’s why you don’t give them pump up a speeches unless you’re willing to risk went to San Diego. The flights are never delayed. I control everything that’s happened to you. That’s my fault. The weather is bad. That’s on me. Everything’s going to be on me after that. I never thought about it from that perspective. It’s a lot of pressure, but sometimes you got to wear it. But this guy miscalculated. That okay. I’m still kind of thinking about that one. I’m going to think about it. You’re welcome. You know what I think about all the time, actually, is when we did that Neil Gaiman book American Gods, and there was the four bad Gods or whatever the case was, where they were like Apocalypse. Yeah, but they were like the ones that were the biker gang that were like trifle bad things. Like, they weren’t really that bad. It was like having a booger you can’t pick or something like that. And you asked me what mine would be, and I drew a total blank. But now I think about it all the time. I can’t get it out of my head. Like, anytime something little happens, it’s like, really annoying. I even thought about it today. I was eating corn chips and like Tositos and sometimes the big ones when they’re like, too big to really fit in your mouth, but you just go for it. You’re like, I’m not going to sit here and break this up. I’m just going to go for it. And then you’re a slob. So you just eat the entire bag and it cuts that’s the side of your mouth. And then the salt gets in there. That’s another one. I was like, this would be another terrible god. These are all blogs on the BBC. I don’t know what you’re doing. All right. My first dock down is dubbed movies. So question. I probably should ask you this off the bat. Did you watch the dubbed version or did you watch the German version? I watched the dubbed version, actually, in one of my hates, I said I noticed that they weren’t speaking English or it seemed like it was off. Their voices were off the time. What’s going on? It seems like their mouths aren’t lined up with what they’re saying. It’s so weird. What’s going on? These British guys actually are wearing the wrong outfits. They’re wearing German outfits. My stock down is dubbed movies, it automatically went to the dub version when I was watching Netflix. You also are like, phone off, paying full attention. You’re locked in 100%, buddy. This is for the buddy book club. We take this seriously over here. Okay? I also can’t read. I’ve read audiobook or listen audiobooks. Get that’s against my whole print different movies for different vibes. Like if I’m watching the aforementioned dodgeball, which I love, I’m half in, I’m half out in terms of paying attention because it’s good background noise. It’s fun to watch, but I don’t need to. It’s also like I’ve watched it a few times. If I’m going to watch a movie for the first time, I’m probably not going to be on social media. But for the dubs, I just find that they’re just not good. It bothers me anyways when your sound is off slightly and you can see that the mouth is moving differently than the audio. So that would take me out of the movie way more than anything else. And I just have a problem with this move to just dub everything. They did it with Attack on Titan, which is a great cartoon, japanese anime cartoon, and they dubbed it and it’s terrible. And the nondub version is way better. And I feel like the same with this because I asked my buddy about it before I watched it. He said, oh, just watch the dub version, it’s fine. And he made good points in that there’s not a ton of dialogue there’s way more like action sequences. Also, it’s pretty dark throughout a lot of it, so the mouth stuff doesn’t really tie in. I felt the German in it more as obvious as that is, considering it’s in German. But you feel like, okay, this is not an English speaking situation. I just don’t like dub movies in general. I’d stop down on them. I wish Netflix would have just put it in the German version. I feel like that would have pushed more people to just go with it and then say, oh, if they want to, they can switch over to the dub version, but instead it auto to the dub. So Netflix do better. That’s all I got to say about that. And the only strong opinion I have is I hate you. Just kind of mentioned dodgeball. I can’t stand subtitles because people a lot of people like watching subtitles now on comedies. You can’t do that on a comedy. You just can’t. The problem with any subtitle is your eyes just get drawn to it. Yeah, but like the joke happens before the joke. Exactly. I just read the joke. There goes the element of a surprise. What else do you have for stockdown? My last one was mustaches stockdown. Oh, don’t tell me you’re going to shit on cats as mustache because that mustache was flake. Oh, let me get into it. But if there’s movie taught me anything, it’s that you don’t trust a person with a mustache. Unless unless it’s a Workings man’s mustache. Like cats. Cats. As a solid, run of the mill, I eat eggs and bacon in the morning and sausage at night type mustache. I don’t know if that means anything. Are you projecting workings class man’s mustache. Now those little fuck boys, frederick with that fucking twirly long mustache and everyone else in between, the longer your mustache was, the bigger dick. That’s where true. That’s a great point. That’s all you needed to know from this. And I will say and we’re not about stereotypes here in this at the Buddy Book Club, but I’ve only met one person with a mustache similar to that Frederick guy. And guess what? He was a huge dickhead also. So if you’re listening out there, you could just guess where he’s from. San Francisco. I’m trying to think of people I know or people I’ve seen of late that have, like, the waxed mustache. And the only person I can think of is Gavin McInnes, who’s like the head or was the head of the proud boy piece of shit white supremacist gang. Yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense. If you’re not doing it ironically, then you’re just completely are. You still an asshole if you’re doing it ironically. If you’re dressing up for Hollywood, you’re doing it because there are certain people that would do that for, like, no shave November or whatever. Yeah, just as a fucking gag. You’re just pulling someone’s chain. You’re not serious with it. People that are serious with it are complete assholes. I’m sorry to all of our listeners out there that have that, but you’re complete we also learned this from Rocky and Bullwinkle and all of the other animated TV shows. We were kids because the bad guys would always have these long, curly mustaches, right? Like, it’s maybe it’s because of this, you know, maybe we have some, like, geo issues because all of those movies or those TV shows came out, like, after World War Two and they just blamed it on on those European people. But actually, no, there’s a lot of that in the US. Too. So yeah, all the robber barons, all the rich fucks, the Aristocrats, they were always had their toilet mustache as waxed up. Yeah, fuck those guys. All right. You’re on the same page. You came around. All right. I like it. As long as you were shitty on cats. This terrible mustache, which was awesome, terrible in its pattern, and just half there, half not there. It looks disgusting. I appreciate it. There’s nothing wrong with not being able to grow a proper mustache or and or beer. Tell me about it. I’m right there. I’m right there with you both. My final stock down was fighting after the war has ended. Let me be clear. If anyone, especially if a fat, waxed mustache guy comes out on his balcony after eating a whole hog and I’m having turn at Fred and he’s like, all right, the war is over, but we’re fighting to get this one town back because we want to have this town. I’d be like, I am out of here. There is nothing. And they kind of made it seem well, they definitely made it seem the captains or whatnot were kind of making sure you didn’t run away. And we’re getting into the attack. But the second the attack started, I would just be faced down in the mud, and I’d say, let me know when it’s over, because I’m not going in there. Well, I think the point is, like, you’re not going to leave your boys behind. Everyone couldn’t do that. So you’re like, well, everyone’s doing it. I got to go. That’s a good point. But at that point, Paul, our main character here, he has nobody left. He probably wanted to die. Yeah, I think that’s probably the case. And it was like somewhat of muscle memory. It’s just like, everything’s terrible, so why would anything be different? And we do know from the book that he didn’t see himself able to reintegrate into normal life afterwards. He was like, I don’t even know how that’s possible. So I think he probably went into that expecting his own death. But it’s just for me, obviously, I didn’t experience all that stuff, but come on, no way. The war is over. It’s like, okay, cool. It’s like, but we’re going to do this one last fight. It’s like, wait, what? And throughout history, that is a thing where the news didn’t make its way down to different places, and they continued fighting until they eventually heard about it. Now they know. The guy told them it’s over, but we’re going to fight, and we’re going to fight for the fatherland. This guy’s just got, like, tiny dick energy. No, sorry, I’m out. You didn’t have favorite scene on here, but I’m just wondering if you did have one. The whole book or the whole movie, rather, I should say, was kind of one big battle. So I think it was all really solid. I really did like the heartfelt scene when they were shitting together. It was nice reading his letters for them. And then you zoom out and you’re like, oh, they’re taking a shit. Which I thought was both funny and heartwarming. Did it make you uncomfortable when after they pooped, they just pulled up their trousers and walked away? I mean, they’re even turn up red. It just goes right through you. I don’t think they need they don’t even need to wipe, really. I was like, come on. You’re in a forest. There’s got to be a couple of leaves, a couple of good naked leaves. Just anything, really, just to get that first. I think you’re not comfortable talking about it just to get that first one. I don’t even care if you got skid marks and whatnot, but the turtle head that’s left you got to get rid of that. You got it. The BBC difference here. Right here. That’s what you’re here. El Chiro. The Western Front. The movie 23. Two Netflix. What do you love about it? We already mentioned him. But Cats, I thought they nailed that character. I loved him from the first scene. He comes on. I’m like that’s cats. They fucking crush that. Yeah, he was just awesome. I thought the whole movie was casted. Well, I mean, we didn’t really get into the characters in the book of everyone else other than Cats and Paul, besides the one friend who well, Tiadan, who ends up stabbing himself in the neck, which was terrible. But they had the one other guy who was like the really skinny one. They didn’t really dive into a lot of the character stuff about it. So I also didn’t really get how the ugliest one of them was getting all the girls. That didn’t make sense to me. No offense. Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, because he did at the Cock and a Walk. You know, I mean, confidence and and putting yourself out there, it’s the you know that’s for all our long, young listeners out there who are like, oh, I’m not attractive enough to do it, you just exude confidence. Not a rational confidence. Stay in your lane, but exude confidence and put yourself out there. My first love is actually kind of a love hate. It’s the unending barrage of carnage in this movie. Like you said, it’s just a two and a half hour battle scene, pretty much. It’s like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan for two and a half hours. It’s effective, and it’s like, holy fucking shit, this is intense. And war is fucking brutal. It’s effective in that way. But I think the downtime, it takes away from a lot of the character development that we have in the book. And a scene that jumped out to both of us was the heartfelt scene, when they’re taking a Poop and he’s reading his wife’s letter to him about their son who had died and not the other 2 hours and 29 minutes of the battles. So they kind of abbreviated the friend who went to the hospital and said, you can take my boots. They abbreviated that stuff. They took out some other stuff, which we’re going to talk about later. But I think that would have added more to it as opposed to just these amazing battle scenes, which were amazing. And the scope was awesome. So that’s why I was in love hate, because it was crazy, but I needed a breather. I do think also that the realness of War can’t really be told over the pages. You can talk about how you’re hungry, but when you see someone that looks like he’s starving, when you see the realness of War, the rain, the coldness, which I don’t think they really covered as much, the coldness was very apparent. I. Was getting, like, freezing watching the movie. Just like, sitting in the rain being like, holy shit, this is brutal. Just the general discomfort. Being like, the biggest enemy that kind of really could be told much better in a movie format, which I loved from this as well. And when they’re all waiting in the little hole while the barrage is going on, and the one guy is just like, I got to get out. I got to get out of here. It’s so stressful. It was just such a stressful. Yeah, I told the SGF we’re going to watch it. She was like, okay, that sounds good. And then, like, halfway through, she’s like, why are we watching this? It’s terrible. What else did you love? All the war stuff. You already pointed out the flamethrower. Anytime there’s a flamethrow in any movie, it’s pretty sad. First use of a flamethrower in battle. I think it was invented for World War I did flamethrower a ton of things. Where the tank, flamethrower, barbed wire. If it wasn’t driven home by that point, how terrible war is. There you go. I couldn’t imagine being someone at that time. And these people walk up with flamethrowers. It’s just like, this is hell. This is like a crazy horror movie to keep these guys in. Like, full, unnecessary it makes no sense. Why you do that? Use a flamethrower? I mean, I’d rather have a guy with like, 15 grenades. Just like throwing grenades everywhere. Like a flamethrower is just like, how do I make the worst death possible? Oh, let me light this guy on fire so he doesn’t die immediately, but just burns. Well, I mean, it’s effective in taking out trenches for sure. Especially because there’s like, little pockets. Yeah, but there are grenades. Very effective in Vietnam as well. Especially because you’re in the jungle. Well, the brush. Yeah, that’s true. I also loved the opening scene, which with the uniform getting like the opening scene, the guy dies. Like, the random person dies. But the whole idea of this uniform going from this dead body getting recycled, the name tag taken off, the horrors of war, and then given back to this young and excited new recruit. So innocent. Oh, I think you’d be someone else’s uniform. It’s like, oh, yeah, here, sorry about that. And just rips it off. I was going to push back on that. I actually think that’s the one thing that was one of my first. Oh, really? Obviously, we know what’s going to happen. But I think it would be much better if it started. And you’re just in through the eyes of Paul and you’re like, oh, man, this is going to be great. There’s to be such a cool experience going to war. I’m going to be a hero. I’m going to run out there and this war is going to be over a month after I get out there. Yeah. And you go from this bright, bright when you’re just following Paul round, everything’s bright, right? Everything’s lit up, everything’s great. Then you go from that to immediately, like the worst thing possible. That would have much bigger of effect. But the first five minutes of the movie are like, this is how bad everything is. It’s like, oh, okay, you just ruined the whole surprise. Maybe I liked it because that was one of those examples of earlier, like, how I never understand messaging. And that was very clear to me. This is just a giant war machine and human lives are just a piece. Well, it’s been good to end it like that. Yeah, no, that’s a good although I guess the war ended, though. Yeah, that wouldn’t make any sense. They could have done it midway through the movie where they didn’t really do the hospital scene, which I’ll get into the next category, but he could have been at the hospital or something, and they’re getting new recruits and they’re getting handed the same thing he saw. But it’s his buddies. Yeah, he notices, like, the same hole or something like that, and they’re just excited and he’s like, oh, well, they also could have just ended it differently without that whole Final Battle thing. And it just been Paul. His uniform goes through that whole process and then is given to some new person because it wasn’t at the end of the war in the book when he died, the war was like, the war is over today. But they had to tie in the whole armistice stuff that was getting signed. So interesting. Interesting. You liked it. I liked it. You didn’t. I get it. My last one is the score, which is what I thought you were going for earlier when you said the entrance music or whatever. Because it has those three notes, like which just, like, rattles your cage and gets you right for it. Christopher Nolan uses Han Zimmer. Yeah. Han Zimmer. I mean, sometimes with a score, like, sometimes I care, sometimes I don’t. In my mind, it can rarely make a movie worse. It’s not like if they start obviously, if they start playing like Cindy Lauper or something during this, it’d be confusing, but the score hits. It makes it so much better. Han Zimmer. In all the Christopher Nolan movies, I mean, Interstellar score is amazing, obviously, Lord of the Ring stuff is so good. But this guy who did it, Volker Bertelman, I thought he did such a good job. Sometimes less is more. And I think about Jaws in this situation where it just like, dead. It dead. It dead. It dead, it dead. It you know, it’s like ever, it’s iconic. Everyone knows what that is. And and Volko does something similar here, less iconic, but with those three chords. Supposedly used a harmonium, which is a pump organ. Slow down, Keith. And put it through an amplifier. And easy enough, you just crushed it. And lastly, the tank scene. I loved that we kind of talked about it briefly when they got the tanks of the flight throwers and stuff. But I just personally love when there’s a new, devastating technology or things that haven’t been seen before happen to our main characters. I’m thinking like grand and Lord of the Rings, the battering rim that comes to ministerials, like holy shit. Or the trex in Jurassic Park. And the people are seeing this for the first time. It’s like, holy fuck. Their fear is palpable. And you can only imagine what it would be like to see something that has never been seen before, and it’s coming right at you. That was pretty cool. What did you hate? I already went over at the beginning scene, and then I already went over. Also, the dubs, the voice. It was weird. Sounds like they weren’t even listening to dubs. It’s so weird. It was so weird. I don’t know what’s going on there. Yeah. My only two hates were the two main characters. Deaths, cats, death. I don’t know why they had to change that. I don’t know why it had to be by this farmer boy when they were gone there. The only thing I can think of well is two things. One is people that had seen the other ones or read the books. Like they wanted to do something different and why not. Or they’re trying to show how war even affects farm boys in France who don’t have anything to do with fighting. It even poisons them. It kind of gave me the City of Thieves feel like it was just so random. Yeah. Yes. Like everything is going to work out. We finally did something good. And then, you know, just the just random things can happen and you’ll die. Like we’re in City of Thieves. He gets shot at the end by his own guy. And it’s just like, Jesus, we went through all this and now something stupid is going to happen to kill me. That’s what it’s a vibe, which I liked. And then Paul’s death, it kind of took away from the title of the novel slash book. Because it’s supposed to be just like Paul’s, just another tally mark that dies on another quiet day on the Western front. This wasn’t a quiet day. It was this rogue general just deciding to fight after. Like that would make the news, right? So it wasn’t a quiet day on the Western front. It was quite the opposite. So I didn’t necessarily love that. I think it could have ended in a more open ended sense. But we knew that Paul had died. Let’s jump into the listener mail. What do you have for listener mail? You’ve got mail, John. From Casper, Wyoming. Our biggest audience size in Casper, Wyoming. We’re huge in Casper. Also a big fan of the Ghost. Friendly. Friendly? Casper the Ghost. Paul stabs a guy in at no Man’s Land and then proceeds to fill his mouth with mud. Is that the worst possible way to die? What would be your worst possible way to die? This has also been a blog topic I wrote recently on Buddybuck Club. Well, I will say that the SGF was shielding her eyes and bawling uncontrollably throughout this entire scene. I was too. It was extremely long. The scene itself was so long and it was so terrible. The closest thing that I could think about was the Jewish guy dying in Saving Private Ryan where he’s like getting stabbed in the chest, and the German guy’s like, oh my God, that was by far. And then I thought I’d never say any worse. And like, this was terrible. It affects you. It’s impossible for it not to. And normally you think you’re going to see something like that in Apostol or something like that, where you’re prepared for it, but this this was terrible. So back to the question itself. Is this the most terrible way to die? Is that the question? Yeah, probably not. Which is sad because it was so horrible. I think there was one saw movie where someone had to crawl through, like, razor blades or something like that. That sounds worse. I think if we if we’re not just talking about, like, torture chambers, just like something that could potentially happen to you tomorrow, I think is the question. I mean, the guy did die in that ten minute scene, so that’s not bad. Whereas there was probably lots and lots of deaths and there definitely was lots and lots of deaths in this war where you have your guts hanging out in your in no man’s land. And just for days. Yeah, just for days. Like it’s not a kill shot and you’re just out there, wounds festering, counting all of your intestines. Rats eating. Exactly. You can’t defend yourself. There’s rats trying to non yesterday’s meal, which is on the outside as opposed to the inside. I think that would be worse, for sure. Okay. No, I like that. I will read you off my three most brutal deaths from a movie scene and let me know what you think of these Saving Private Ryan stabbing scene that you already referenced. Number three. Number two, this is what I think you’ll like the rock, the VX gas where you put the little cube in the guy’s mouth. Yeah. He burns from the inside out. Yeah. And then number one, and I still can’t watch this scene, was Casino, the baseball bat scene. Do you remember this? I still have nightmares about that. That would show it on TNT. They just showed that. They’re like yeah, they edit out all the swears and then they’re like, oh, you’re a ten year old. Yeah, you can watch this movie, but we’re not going to let you see the swears. However, here’s a scene where these two guys get beat up with a baseball bat and then thrown into a pit alive, buried. I’m like, oh, my God, the guy that did the sound effects for that scene should win an Oscar for whatever he did, because the thunk of the batting him is really what I remember. That’s what sticks with me. That noise, that wet thunk. It’s like, oh, good God. All right, let’s get into some recast, rewrite and review. There was a lot of differences between the book and the movie. We talked about some of them. The boy shooting cats, they removed Canterrek, who’s the teacher character from the book, and Himmelstoss, the drill sergeant, Paul’s trip home during leave. They introduced this like, Colonel Clink character, this upper level military guy, and then the upper level military guys negotiating the peace treaty and obviously Paul’s death, which you’re talking about. There’s way more than that. We’re not going to dig into those in general, but they came out somewhat naturally. So if you have anything that you’d want to change from that or you’d want to add in, let me know during this recast, rewrite and review section. First thing, just is, I think the question to you as well, but would you recommend the book or the movie first? Because for me, if someone had to ask, I would say do movie. I think the movie was actually better than the book. And I like the book, but I think the movie, like I said earlier, you can’t really grasp what it feels like to be sitting in a puddle of rain unless you’re seeing it or like you’ve imagined it before, where this is literally visualizing that really, really well. I think this is the perfect movie than book situation. I disagree in that I think the book is better than the movie, but I think it’s a perfect movie than book situation because what are you going to say? Every book is better than the movie, though? That’s my question. If you had the chance to watch a two hour movie or a ten hour book, you’re getting more bang for your buck. What’s the return on investment is what I get it. But what I’m trying to say is that because like you said, the scope and understanding the feelings of what’s going on is so important that you can’t really get in the book and you can definitely get in the movie, watch the movie, take those feelings and those images with you to the book. And because the book is so different in a lot of these ways than the movie, it will seem somewhat fresh. That’s fair. I just wanted to talk about the two changes I would have made to the movie, where I think they should have kept him going back home and the medical leave that he had. And even if they were like quick snippets that really drove home in the book, specifically the fact that even if they win this war, even if the war ends, nothing matters anymore because everything sucks. Like he goes back home. He can’t handle it. The medical situation, if you if you get, like, leave because you’re injured, is terrible. Like, nothing’s good in this this world. It really gives you that feeling of hopelessness where, like, when he dies at the end, it’s almost a relief. I feel like where in this, it doesn’t necessarily feel like that. It’s like, oh, I can’t believe he died. That sucks because he was almost done. But it’s like in the book, it feels like when he dies, it’s like, whatever. That’s good. At least it’s what would you cut? Because it’s a two and a half hour long movie. You don’t want to make it 3 hours. I would have cut some of the battles, although battles are great. Cut that beginning part. I also think you could have cut, like, the scarf. There’s probably some symbolism with that, but I didn’t get that. What was the point? They’re like and they would pass the scarf down. I was like, what? Get the shit with a scarf? That also would have made the Tiaran stabbing himself make more sense. They made it sound like you didn’t really know his character. And you’re like, oh, he just doesn’t want to be crippled. But really, it’s just because he doesn’t want to live in a world that’s like, he’s crippled and sucks after. Yeah, no, I agree with you. The leave home really also drew the whole higher level of the British or excuse me, the French and the Germans getting together in the train car and negotiating peace. I understand how that is important to the greater world in that now we know a lot of the reasons why World War II started, because this terrible deal that they kind of were forced to make that then led to the rise of Hitler. But it doesn’t really have a ton to do with this story. And I would have liked him going home and everyone kind of patting him on the back, being like, oh, how many people did you kill? And all this stuff. And he’s like, holy shit. These people are so out of touch with what’s actually going on over there. I think that would have been a better part of the story than greater big picture stuff. But the treaty thing was good because it’s real. I didn’t realize that. It provides context of, like, look at these fucking dudes eating their five star meals and then their silk pajamas while these dudes are sleeping in mud. When Hitler at the beginning of the war, when he tried to get Neville Chamberlain to come in and basically give him huge swaths of Europe, he had him do that in the same train car that they had signed the peace treaty from World War One as like a fuck you. Because, like a movie like Dunkirk, I’m just ignorant, and I didn’t know the history of that. So you’re watching it and you’re like, so what’s going on? You don’t really have the overarching history where this actually gave you that perspective, where the books didn’t do that, which I thought was cool. Yeah, Dunkirk loved that movie, but I totally agree with you there. I was lucky enough to have stumbled upon this random guy who does a podcast and did three episodes on Dunkirk, so about the history of it. So I had listened to those three episodes previously, so I kind of knew. But I also watched that movie with the SGF, and she was like, I have no idea where we are, what we’re doing, what’s happening, what is done. Kirk, who is this guy? He’s like, a nice guy. He’s done with what? I don’t know. What is he done with? What’s Curt done with? Let’s get into the review section here. What’s your review here? Can you define it? Define what? What review means. Define your your stars. You’re patented the four star, the D man. Four star man. I tend to watch a lot of movies, and I rate them in a four star format, which has actually become a problem lately, because I’m just reviewing these, and by review, I just put stars on them. I’m not writing anything, but I do it on my phone, like in my notes section after I watch a movie. And my buddy sent me this website or this app. He’s like, oh, just use this app and it’ll find the movie for you. It keeps it you can have friends on there. You can see what they’re watching. I was like, oh, this sounds great. Guess what their format is? Five stars. I don’t even understand it. I don’t know how to change. I watched a movie the other day. I was like, oh, my God, what do I do here? So I like, the four star half stars are allowed. We’re not going into decimal places or difference than that. So out of four, three and a half is allowed. Four is the max. One of the reviews I saw that popped up on Google, it started with, now, I’m not a fan of war, violence or really movies in general, and it continues. And that was the first thing that popped up on Google when I Googled this movie. So I thought it was fucking hilarious. I didn’t even read it, obviously. I just saw that and thought it was hilarious. But this movie did get a 91 over on tomatoes in a 76 on Metacritic. Keith, what do you got? I think I would give it and again, and I think you had told me at one point, like, three stars is like, a really good movie, one that you would recommend. So I would give it a three star. I think saving Prior Ryan is a four star. Same. Prior is definitely a four star for me. I think it could kind of get almost into the 3.5 range, but I like it. I don’t think I could recommend it to everyone just because it is overly worn, graphic. So I like it. But, yeah, I think it was very solid. I agree with you. Actually, I gave it a three as well. For some reason, I didn’t put my start normally. I want this fresh, so I do it right after I watch the movie, before I look at anything. Or I don’t want to give a movie, like, two stars and then read some review that tells me all this artsy, artsy shit brands, four stars. I’m like, oh, now I feel like an idiot. And I moved mine up to three and a half because of it. I don’t want to do that. But I didn’t give this a rating beforehand and like, oh, shit. So it was between a three and a three and a half for me, but it just didn’t hit the three and a half mark. There was a lot of like we said with the character development stuff, it was missing out on. I thought the scenes and what I were amazing. The setting was amazing, the score was amazing. Three and a half would almost be like Full Metal Jacket or something like that. Yeah, I would put 1917 above this. You know what? That’s one of the things I was thinking about. I was like, Well, I like 1917 more than this. 1917 isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s a three and a half. Sweet. So we’re settling at three. We’ll put it in there. It’s a unanimous three star. And that’s it for aquatic Western for the movie. And we’ll be coming out in a couple of weeks with our next book. Right. Books next. The next book is The Silent Patient. The next movies. The Hobbit. All right, well, this was fun, and I’ll catch you next time. All righty? All right. Bye.