Yeah, I love you two more time. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And that fourth Harry Potter boy. Oh boy. Speaking of Harry Potter, Roma and children and men, let's talk about annihilation.

It's not the same director here on Frank. I'm just getting us rolling. I look at my crew. Welcome to frame rate. The show where we rate frames. Yeah, um, including Quarro and frames someday. Mm-hmm. Hopefully not today. Today we're talking about annihilation last year.

2018 one of the guys Michael slaying on the other guy a beppers and we have with us a very important third guy. Hey third guy. Hey, it's me third guy Jack O'Brien.

Thanks for having me guys. Jack O'Brien.

She himself. Yeah, all the agents of crack chief superlatives. Welcome to the show. Right. Definitely all apply. Mm-hmm. Welcome to the show. Yes. Let's all use this cadence for the rest of the thing. No, let's dive right the fucking because I know Abe's wanted to cover annihilation for quite some time. And it's one of those nerd movies.

Like he just came that has the mobi dick levels of shit to unpack. So we better keep going. Mm-hmm. Jack as a vaunted guest. Yes, pillar of the podcast and community. Please kick things off just because you chose the movie you had. I did it before. I hadn't. I haven't even seen X-Mark. You know, I guess. Oh, it's like. I think I want the first garland. We won't discuss that in depth then. Well, no, you should because I know what happens in action. Do you ever watch Sunshine the Danny Boy?

Yeah, he wrote that. I am anyway. As a person with kids, I don't get to see movies anymore. It's terrible. So why'd you kick annihilation? What do you want to do? What was your initial reaction? It just always looked interesting to me. And I know he's an important filmmaker, even though I haven't like seen. I hadn't seen either of his movies. And X-Mark, you know, wasn't on your list. Right.

Well, you have your pulse on the zeit, guys. This is literally your job. Right. You're aware of things anyway. Yeah, exactly. I keep up. Like I still follow the weekly box office reports, even though I don't get to see the movies. Oh, man, keep that one in the old memory bag for when I have free time again.

But yeah, this was, yeah, it just looked interesting. And it also seemed like one of those ideas that had or one of those movies that has a lot of ideas in it, or like that's the sense I got. And I wasn't disappointed with that.

Did you feel is that the film as a whole was too heavy or was? Did you? I don't think glimpse. It was trying to drive. Did you leave with any level of confusion? Or did you have a full interpretation that made sense to you the first time through?

I don't know that it all co-heared for me, necessarily. I just, but I don't know that my favorite movies all like inherently co-hears like one, you know, that's a lot of interesting things.

Is that end to questions, not answers? Although I would say because this is only the second time I ever watched it was in preparation for this. And there were also interestingly, there was a lot of pushback from studios throughout the process.

What we saw is a negotiation between because on one level, it's a story about incomprehensibility and the limits of human knowledge. So Alex Garland, of course, being a sci-fi buff and the writer wanted to push it even further.

The studio being the studio thinks that audiences are dumb and wanted it to be way more clear and concrete, but we got navigated both polls. But I would say upon a second viewing, it's way more clear and concrete to me than I expected it to be.

I actually now decoded, I think pretty much everything and I'm like, oh, I totally get it. Yeah, I feel like I totally get it. And it's very helpful on a second watch just because the time just disjoints, like going and knowing that she had the affair, all the flashbacks, you can decode on the fly and know exactly what they mean.

So I think some of the coherence just comes from watching it a second time. And people, if you liked it, I urge you to watch it a second time. There's enough ideas there that I got just as much out of it watching it again.

Yeah. And by the way, the producer that you want to give credit to for that fight back because he had Final Cut was Scott Ruden. All the other, forget what studio did this, but all the other, I think Paramount, all the other producers were like, don't even like that it's ambiguous at the end and don't like that ending Shimmer shot in Lena's eyes and stuff like that.

We want her, we want it absolutely to be, she survived, she killed her doppelganger, she's back. The real one. And Scott Ruden was like, nope, and not going to explain why because I have Final Cut side with the director.

What I mean is also if you give it the focus and attention it deserves, it's explained why it's clear. There is enough information in the film to know everything that happened.

Exactly. Some of more just so squeak by that it's like, you'll catch one of them and then they'll put you into a thought chain that will be like, maybe this is true, but if you catch all of them, it's undeniable what's happening.

To the teams, to the personal experiences, what Oscar Isaac is, what his point is in the movie, all of those things seem to collapse.

So let's start asking and answering some of those questions. What do you think are the top level of themes in the film?

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