--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about the movies. Specifically, we're talking about how the pandemic has changed the way we watch them.
--:-- Noel King: That's right. And we're joined by Vox film critic Alyssa Wilkinson to talk about it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, Alyssa, I miss the movies. I miss going to the AMC or the Regal to see whatever Fast and Furious installment has come out. I miss having a good cry watching the Mr. Rogers documentary at the Independent East Street Cinema here in DC, and everything in between.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah, I do too. But the good news is the movies are coming back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's right. And now you can risk it all to see Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Vox film critic Alyssa Wilkinson is here today to tell you whether it's worth it, and also to delve deeper into what was lost along the way.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to start back in March because March was the last time many of us went to the movies. What was it for you, Alyssa?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think my last movie theater was Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What was even in theaters other than that?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Oh, yeah. The Invisible Man was in theaters. With Elizabeth Moss. Really good movie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The movie First Cow had just come out like maybe two days earlier, which is quite a lot.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's about a guy and a cow. Two guys and a cow, actually. True. Baking things on the prairie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I remember the Vin Diesel movie came out and Vin was like, "We're going to bring people together to celebrate movies in a movie theater." And I was like, "But Vin, that's what you don't want to do right now."
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: We were at the premiere watching this movie with people because what we're realizing in this time is how much we love to be amongst other people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know it took a while for a lot of people to figure out what was actually going on and that the virus wasn't scared of our bravado.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: What was that movie called? I don't even know. Do you remember?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bloodsport or something like that.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: No, that's not it, but it was something to that effect. Let me find out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bloodshot. You're close.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah, I did not see Bloodshot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happened to the movies after Bloodshot?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: All across the country, movie theaters basically shut down within about a week in mid-March, basically because state governments didn't want people gathering in an enclosed space where they might pass a virus around, which seems pretty reasonable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, movie theaters in the best of times are maybe not the cleanest places in the world, maybe not the greatest fresh air exchange rate. People eating and drinking.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So theaters shut down. And that also meant that all of the movies that were slated to come out started to get pushed off the release calendar, especially blockbusters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because of course, if you've shot a movie for hundreds of millions of dollars, you need people to buy tickets to it in order to recoup your cost.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so people thought, well, this thing can't last more than a few months and we'll just release it later.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So one movie that got moved pretty quickly was the new James Bond movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And then some movies were rescheduled for, say, June, and then June kind of rolled around and it became clear that this was not a thing you could do, really, because theaters are still shut down and cases are spiking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the Wonder Woman movie got moved. Another, and probably the most visible one, is Tenet, Christopher Nolan's Tenet.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Okay, we'll get to Tenet in a minute, but let's talk about how the movie's adjusted to a world in which, you know, they couldn't come out in theaters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It wasn't just American Pickle, right? American Pickle is a great example. It's been 100 years. The pickle brine preserved him perfectly.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: You know, that one's on HBO Max, or, you know, I think one of the best movies I've seen all year is Driveways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hi. I'm turning nine, and I wanted to invite you to my pizza party on Thursday at the roller skating rink.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which practically nobody saw, but it's a great small art house indie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And it's just kind of a quiet drama that would have done pretty well in sort of your small local independent theater.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But almost nobody I've talked to has heard of it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And of course, First Cow, everyone loves First Cow when they see it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Such a great movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I sort of saw it last fall and then I saw it again this summer and then I immediately baked a clafouti, which is a French dessert in the film that's kind of significant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It actually turns out it's not too hard to make.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But Alyssa, we didn't talk about Bill and Ted 3.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so Bill & Ted 3 did actually get delayed, I think, by a few weeks, but it's just opened.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And it is currently in theaters and drive-ins, and you can rent it or buy it digitally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I loved it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Excellent!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What have we learned along the way about how willing people are to support this industry from home when you take movie theaters out of the experience?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's honestly, and this is funny to say six months in, but it's still hard to tell.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, for instance, Trolls 2, Trolls World Tour, did end up releasing on digital platforms.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And this was very early, like maybe the end of March.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because of the timing, parents were desperate, cooped up with their children who've watched every episode of who knows what show on Netflix a thousand times, or they're just like tired of Daniel Tiger or whatever it is that they're watching.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so of course, you know, we're all cooped up, we're sad, we're going to rent Trolls World Tour even if it costs $20 or whatever it costs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the movie made a healthy sum of money.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Like how much? Like well over a hundred million.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Which is comparable to what it would have made in the theater.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, at that point, everyone who watches the industry wants to say, "Oh, that, that proves that people don't need theaters anymore."
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And I'm not so sure it does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, on the flip side, lots of other movies came out that people didn't watch because they're watching The Office again on loop or they didn't know it came out or they think, "Oh, I'd like to see that someday, but then they don't see it, right?"
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Because there's billions of hours of Netflix to watch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The lesson we have here is, first of all, that we can't take lessons from anecdotes, that different movies have different kinds of circumstances around them.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And that's always true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If Hollywood had figured out how to make a surefire hit, they'd just be doing that constantly now.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And then on top of it, I think the impetus to watch a new thing probably isn't as great as it is when it's tied to an event.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, oh, we're going to get friends together, we're going to buy tickets, and we're going to go to the theater and, you know, have popcorn.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Or maybe you go to a fancy theater and have a cocktail, and it's like a cheap night out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That does seem to drive the way that some people watch movies.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So while we've been at home watching Trolls 2 and Friends and, you know, the entirety of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on HBO Max, what's the fight to reopen movie theaters been like in the United States at least?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's been pretty wild.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: One challenge we have in the U.S. is that we have 50 governors who decide these things for 50 different places.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even then, you have a very large state like California.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's sometimes hard to know how the north is different from the south or whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's been a challenge because there are theater owners who've been really upset that they can't reopen their theaters when maybe they had like two cases this entire time in their county because they're in northern Maine or something like that.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And on the flip side, there's been people who've argued that, well, if we're in a state where a church is allowed to open, why can't we open a movie theater?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then to make matters worse, even if you were to open your theater or you were allowed to open your theater, you might not have any movies to really put in it because the studios have moved all the summer movies into the fall or into 2021.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so what you end up with is a situation where you could open your theaters. I believe as of a month ago, you could open theaters legally in 80% of markets in the U.S.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But most of those markets still didn't have theaters open because the cost of opening the theater, paying the staff, you know, just basic operations costs were never going to be balanced out by how many tickets you could sell in a theater that you could only fill to maybe 30% capacity.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so until there was stuff that they knew people would come and see, a lot of people just elected to stay closed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But like in New York City and Los Angeles, you can't have a movie theater open.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Those are two huge movie-going markets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you can't have a theater open in those two cities, then Hollywood is not usually going to open a movie at all.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That's changing right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the big way that it's changing that we can tell is that Christopher Nolan's Tenet, it eventually opened in Europe and across the world last week because theaters have been open in the UK and across Europe for a while.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: What you're saying that like countries that did a better job of this can go back to normal life?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As it turns out, that's true.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Imagine that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that movie has opened already, but it is opening in the U.S. this week in some places.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's not opening in New York.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not opening in Los Angeles because there's nowhere to open it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But it's opening in Pennsylvania.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's opening in Connecticut.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's opening in Virginia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's opening in states where theaters are open.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And in some cases, it is literally opening the theater.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or maybe they opened last weekend to show Bill and Ted and make sure that things are in good working order.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Is it an accident that Christopher Nolan, who is this, you know, devotee of cinema as an art form and movie theaters as the ideal place to see his work, this guy who's committed to shooting for IMAX with the right cameras and the right technology and the right teams and the right effects is somehow bringing movie theaters back?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is not at all an accident.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think, you know, early on, Nolan wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post where he basically said, "Movie theaters have gone dark and will stay that way for a time."
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But movies, unlike unsold produce or unearned interest, don't cease to be of value.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Much of this short-term loss is recoverable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When this crisis passes, the need for collective human engagement, the need to live and love and laugh and cry together, will be more powerful than ever.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think he's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But also, he is a known pedantic person about theaters.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: He specifies many things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He cares very deeply about how his films are seen.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I remember seeing Interstellar in theaters, and there were no trailers before it started on the IMAX screen, which is so rare that you see zero trailers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, he really thinks of it as a kind of all-encompassing experience, which is honestly a very old-school way to look at films that is adopted by some of the directors we think of the most today, like Quentin Tarantino is that way as well.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: They're very committed to making films that many, many people want to see, but that also are up to very exacting standards.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Christopher Nolan really doesn't want you to see Tenet on an iPhone.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think as David Lynch put it a long time ago, when people were starting to watch movies on their telephones, I believe he said, "Now, if you're playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film."
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll think you have experienced it, but you'll be cheated.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Get real.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Still good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nothing but respect to David and Quentin and Christopher.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But is there a chance that we're not ready for this gift of communal movies?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It feels like there's a chance.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So there is a chance of that, but it's hard to predict.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, certainly epidemiologists have talked a lot about whether movie theaters are safe.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And many of them have said no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, on the other hand, we have gyms opening this week, which to me, a movie theater seems safer than a gym.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if people in, you know, the northern parts of Vermont want to see Tenet, should they be allowed to?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Or should they not be allowed to because Iowa is a mess right now, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, these are the questions that people are asking, and it's very complicated to answer.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But the fact that theaters are open abroad suggests that a movie like a Christopher Nolan film, which was going to make a ton of money worldwide, maybe shouldn't be held up by America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Have you gone and seen Tenet in a movie theater yet, Alyssa?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How is it?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's, uh, it's okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's very technically competent.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Many reviewers have said that it is very confusing, and I agree with this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, would you, Alyssa Wilkinson, risk it all to see Christopher Nolan's Tenet?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: No.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wouldn't risk it all to see any movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I find, you know, I've been reading stories about people who are like flying to other places to see a movie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I just I write about movies for a living.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But every movie ever made is basically available to people right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And waiting a month is not going to be a problem or three months or whatever.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: No movie is ever worth your life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But on the other hand, you know, I think a lot of people with a Nolan movie in particular are worried about being spoiled on it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And I can, I think, say that this movie is basically spoiler-proof because the plot is so kind of backwards and upside down that describing it won't mean anything until you see it on screen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm thinking like it'll be on one of the services by Christmas and that's when I'll watch it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alyssa's got a theory that the hiatus we took from going to the movies this year might forever change the American summer blockbuster.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That's after a quick break.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alyssa, we're going to get Tenet, but what have we lost along the way when it comes to the movies?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah, I mean, one thing we've lost for sure is some movie theaters. Some are never going to be able to reopen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Another thing that we may have lost is some of our illusions about Hollywood's place in the world.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And we also, you know, we have literally lost a lot of movies that might have been made that now are going to get pushed out of the way for bigger budget films at the studios.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And all of that really pales in comparison to actual human life lost, obviously, but it's sobering.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's another indicator of what we've experienced over the last six months.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Surely, yeah.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Well, let's talk about some of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what movies or productions have we just for sure lost forever?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Well, you know, it's hard to say because they just don't exist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think what is true is that it is more expensive to make a movie now than it used to be because there are extra precautions that now need to be taken, whether it's sanitation or it's testing people every day or two on set.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And those costs rack up and they're going to go towards the big ticket items.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're going to go towards the Jurassic Worlds and the Mission Impossibles.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so studios may be hesitant to then put out extra money for a movie that would be more of a risk or maybe more of an artistic film that they're not really sure is a surefire hit or an original story that doesn't have a built-in audience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you would see the arguments being made in the before times that studios are more risk-averse these days.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: They just want to do tentpole, summer blockbusters, sequel, adaptation type fare.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're not interested in original movies about people dealing with human things.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And you're You're saying that's going to be even more so the case now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think in nearly every case, what the pandemic did is accelerate some trends that were already there and make it more plausible for people to get away with accelerating those trends.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And this is probably going to be one of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How about movie theaters? Do we have any idea how many theaters in the country across the world have permanently shut down?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Like, it seems like the big chains, the AMCs, the Regals are still around, yeah?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the big ones are still around.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And right now it's still kind of hard to tell because there were a number of maybe smaller theaters or smaller chains and even the big ones that stayed afloat on loans from the government or on money they had saved or donations from the community that they serve.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so right now it unclear who will close.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: We still have months to go if not years before we start to really see the full impact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about that other thing you mentioned, which seemed a little more amorphous, that Hollywood may have lost some of its footing in the world.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: How do you mean?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, I started thinking earlier this summer when it became clear that there would be literally no summer blockbusters about the history of the blockbuster.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And you know ever since Jaws came out in the early 70s Hollywood summer blockbusters have been kind of a big part of the movie going experience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of our big big exports to the rest of the world whether it was a movie like oh I don't know Armageddon or Independence Day or Men in Black right or any Jurassic Park Indiana Jones all of these movies right and They all kind of follow a similar pattern, which is for the most part, they're pretty apocalyptic.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Like the world is going to end in some way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those are always the stakes.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And they're usually solved by like heroic Americans, whether those heroic Americans are like ordinary people or scientists or the president who's like going to lead a charge against a flying saucer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're fighting for our right to live, to exist.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Or oil drillers who are going to go to the moon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's this nationalism or this patriotism to the Hollywood summer blockbuster, and that's very calculated.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: The idea is you go to the movies and you see yourself, and then you get kind of excited and inspired by it, and you feel like, yay, we're going to save the day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I lived in Chile for a year once, and my host father, whenever we'd watch a movie, he'd say, "Siempre los gringos salvan el mundo, siempre!"
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Exactly!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which one's Spanish for always the Americans gotta come in and save the world.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Let's hear it for Captain America!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yep, and that's because those are the stories we want to tell ourselves about ourselves.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And they're super fun.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that has held right into the comic book era, where sort of the twin heroes of the Avengers movies, among all the other heroes are literally Captain America and Tony Stark, who stands for American innovation and capitalism and all this stuff.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So that story kind of concluded last summer, literally, with Endgame.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I am... Iron Man.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And now we're in this sort of strange period this year where we didn't have those movies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you were lucky enough to go to a theater or a drive-in and see a blockbuster this summer, it probably was Jurassic Park.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Really?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Highest grossing film of the week was a movie from decades ago about dinosaurs.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I'm simply saying that life finds a way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It does feel like some sort of poetic justice that the year that America literally sort of not only failed the world, but also just failed itself, failed to save itself from a global pandemic, is also the year where we kind of didn't have this sort of American myth so pervasive in our movie theaters.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah, it's certainly possible for people to tell themselves a story in which we're still the hero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I don't know how easy that is to do if you're actually looking at the facts.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That being said, I mean, the Yanks are still trying to get to Mars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Yanks are still building electric cars.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: The Yanks are still going to have drones deliver that toilet paper to your house in like an hour or whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're still doing okay in some measures.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Is there a chance that this is just the year that the Yanks tanked and then next year we'll be back to save the world?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, what you're suggesting is, does this sequel to this year put us back on a high note?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the franchise of America, does the new sequel leave us more like Endgame did where, oh, we fixed it, right?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: There's another generation coming.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right, exactly.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And I mean, who knows, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess we're waiting to see.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: We're certainly sitting wondering what's going to happen in November and certainly far beyond that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it also is definitely true that blockbusters aren't going away from Hollywood.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I think people will keep watching them if we keep making them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think I would point to Black Panther.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That is an African story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Made by Americans.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That's a good example of a movie that, honestly, the industry did not think was going to do very well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And instead, it just was a massive success.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Billions of dollars worldwide.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everyone went and saw it.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And there's a lot of possibilities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I felt as a person who writes about movies for a living, that the blockbuster had gotten very stagnant for a long time and very predictable.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so perhaps we'll discover that this summer was actually an inflection point where we started doing something new.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's hope so.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: R.I.P. Chadwick Wakanda forever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, someone did mention to me yesterday that, um, I don't know anything about comics, but I guess his sister becomes the Black Panther at some point in the comics, so.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Oh, that's an incredible idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Oh. Right?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So surprised my little sister came to see me off before our big day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You wish.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I'm here for the EMP beads.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've developed an update.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Update? No, it worked perfectly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How many times do I have to teach you?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Just because something works doesn't mean that it cannot be improved.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You are teaching me.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: What do you know?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More than you.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Alyssa Wilkinson. She writes about the movies for Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find her writing on summer blockbusters at vox.com.
--:-- Noel King: We're off Monday for Labor Day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Back Tuesday for Today Explained.
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