November 11, 2018
EP. 265 — 9 Movies That Forgot To Prove The Villain Wrong
Imagine a genie gave you one million dollars to make a movie. You’d immediately go into Working Your Ass Off Mode, right? After all, if you’re spending one whole million U.S. dollars, you’d want to make sure the script and production were as perfect as they could be. Now here’s the next version of that thought experiment: what if you got to spend FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS? What if you got to spend it making an Avengers story that tied together ten years of filmmaking? And here’s the scary part: what if your story forgot to make it clear that the villain was, ya know, on the wrong side of the conflict?
On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writers Chase Mitchell and Ben Joseph for a look at how some of the biggest movies of all time forgot to prove that their villain was in the wrong. And if they’re lucky they’ll find a way to explain how films from ‘The Little Mermaid’ to ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ to ‘Avengers Thanos-stravaganza’ screwed up the basic building block of “good versus evil” without audiences noticing.
Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-movies-that-forgot-to-prove-villain-wrong/
Recent Episodes
January 26, 2020
Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/
January 19, 2020
How’s your local shopping mall doing? Have you checked on it lately? Swing by sometime, because its department store might’ve turned into a call center or a hospital or a go-kart track. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by the one and only Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace, Make Me Smart) for a look at surprising, strange, and shocking stories from all over the U.S. economy. Discover an international pig flu, a 26-word statement that built the modern Internet, and more amazing ways cash is ruling everything around you. By the way, if you’re an American listener, you spent the past few years funding an astonishingly huge bailout. Surprise! Listen for details!
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think
January 12, 2020
Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/