That 2019 Movie Called Serenity About a Fish Named Justice - a Spoiler Rich vlog
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- čas přidán 24. 01. 2019
- Clickbait title: You Literally Won't Believe The Twist In This Movie
This movie really kinda defies classification. I'm not sure it's a bad movie, but it's not quite a good movie either. If they had stuck to just the A plot it would probably have been a passible but forgettable thriller, but they didn't, and we have been blessed with the result. Jenny Nicholson's vlog is going to be so much better than mine.
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Twitter: / foldablehuman
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Split is still a bad movie.
I really enjoyed your synopsis on Split. With all the online shills supporting bad movies it is a welcome to see someone with a well researched honest opinion.
@@DamTheKid Eh. It's just how some people do.
@@biashacker By Split you mean Glass right?
@@SuperBradical Yeah you are right I meant Glass...,
Folding Ideas Split is better than Jupiter Ascending.
Also it’s not bad.
"Life itself actually wound up having less of an impact than people were expecting" is a funny sentence if, like me, you didn't know that "Life Itself" was the title of a movie
I mean, life being vaguely underwhelming is arguably the reason we have even have movies in the first place, so your reading isn't entirely out of place
@@katiem304 this is the most awesome pun based philosophical statement I can think of or remember.
Two movies, in fact!
I similarly found this sentence rather brutally relatable until I remembered he was talking about a film
Same
Alt ending: They cook the fish, so Justice can be served
Julia Febos You’re today’s winner of the Internet! Congratulations!
This put a huge smile on my face, thank you!
I wish I could like this a million times lol
it's corny and absolutely perfect at the same time
I haven’t even watched the whole video yet, but this comment is pure shining gold, deserving of acclaim.
a tuna named justice... "I know writers who use subtext and they are all cowards"
Wonderful reference. Gotta preach the gospel of Garth Marenghi.
@@nakenmil thank you!! I knew I heard this somewhere
Matthew McConaughey is slowly getting riskier and riskier about his role choices as a form of rebellion against the years he’s spent playing romcom protagonists and honestly .. we should all just let him wild out and have this specific breakdown
"slowly getting riskier"??? Paperboy might be more batshit than Serenity here
Killer Joe?
I can respect this and he definitely earned the right with all those fucking romcoms but dammit, he’s too engaging to be hiding out in the back of the Sea of Trees trying to figure out what shitshow to do next.
I don't want him to become the next Nic Cage.
@@matman000000 man I love Nick cage and his increasingly weird movie choices.
"Life itself had less impact than people were expecting" sounds so much like it needs to be in a Hitchhikers Guide kind of story.
“Life itself had less impact than people were expecting. Analysts are now quite sure that the force driving the majority of important events in the galaxy was, in fact, the motions of interesting rocks. Perhaps why primitive cultures are so keen on collecting them- it made them feel like they were contributing.”
@@johnnywins7031 YES
My suspicion is that this movie was actually conceptualized the other way around: they came up with this "it's secretly a video game the whole time!" twist and then realized that in order to turn it into a movie there needed to be an actual plot with characters before it, hence all the padding and the fact that the twist doesn't actually change anything in any meaningful way. Which happens very often when a writer builds a story around a twist instead of building a twist that services the story.
It's not a twist when it's spelled out quite plainly half way through the movie
"The Fish Is Going To Be A Metaphor" should've been the name of my intro to literature class
Every time I hear or read somebody talking about this movie, it sounds like they're struggling to explain a weird dream that they had.
That's what the movie feels like.
At least your doing something productive while dreaming something batshit crazy though, and that's sleeping... XD
And just as obnoxious.Why is he talking like he's on quaaludes?
I don't know what's better: "Man getting killed by a fish named Justice" or "Boy scatters his dead brother's metaphorical ashes on the cheering crowd".
I can't help but think this twist would be better served in an actual metanarrative indie game like Super Hot or The Beginner's Guide... Like imagine if it began as a typical fishing sim and slipped in the whole modded revenge fantasy plot a few hours in...
Pony Island 2: Fish of Justice
_Battle With a True Hero plays on the jukebox_
This is the correct way to play Nier.
It's not the same at all really, but the Lewis section of What Remains of Edith Finch basically does this premise better.
@@roecocoa TBH, Nier seems pretty meh after you've played Automata
I love it when Dan is looking all stunned and flabbergasted and frustrated and confused.
In fact it confused him so much he called Hathaway Margot Robbie at one point. :'D
Brb, making a romhack of Bass Pro Shops: The Strike to kill my abusive father with
Bass Pro Shops: Suckerpunch
Grand Theft Pro Shops
Henceforth, this movie shall be known as The Fish of Henry.
"I need to see normal movies again." Dan Olson -2019
This is what Black Mirror would look like if it was written and directed by David Cage.
*shudders*
A fish named Justice? I think you just watched Aquaman while stoned
"A Fish Called Wanda Justice"
Everything I heard about this movie is telling me that M. Night Shymalan secretly released two movies in one week apparently.
Shyamalan wishes. Serenity, however flawed, is far more interesting, unexpected, and technically competent than anything (beyond the level of a credits stinger) than he's delivered in twenty years.
The ultimate twist.
Andrew Klang “Unbreakable” came out in 2000, if I remember correctly, which is less than 20 years, but pedantic nitpicking aside, both Signs and The Village were competent films. And yes, I did like the Village; it’s pretty weak on dialogue and story, but the mood and acting is very, very good, and those parts are the majority of the movie’s runtime.
I liked the after credit scene where Mr Glass recruits Dill
@@andrewklang809 Disagree
Fish Of Justice was my favorite song in that Toby Fox game
I hope, if Dan ever goes back and does a full essay on it, he'll pull a "Fifty Shades Free" and do a "Charlie Tango"-type song entitled either "Fish of Justice" or "A Fish Named Justice."
I don't think this joke works because most people will know the name of one of his games more often than his name. Next time, just say Runescape.
@@cantrip7 That comment really had some layers
DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN! DUNUNUNUNUNU!
Ngyaaahhh! >:)
i just watched you talk about this movie for 30 minutes and i still feel like i have no idea what it's about
"Matthew McConaughey, in the real world, is dead."
Out of context, that sounds like a conspiracy theory.
This is the story of a game desperately wanting a player to finish the main quest line, but all they do is the fishing mini-game.
This is the most perplexed I have ever seen Dan about a movie as a whole
The "sidetextual" contortions were truly something.
When you mentioned the video game I literally screamed what. I saw a trailer for this before Aquaman and all they showed was McConaughey on a boat, Anne Hathaway hires him to kill her husband, and everyone in town knows what's going on. WHAT IS THIS ABOUT VIDEO GAMES
Bioshock infinite lol
Watching you try to explain the plot is an amusing experience by itself.
"The movie has two parts: the real world and the video game world". Well, that escalated quickly.
You said "and then" after the news reel part and I literally yelled "AND THEN?!"
Whenever he said "big fish movie," I kept thinking he meant the movie adaptation of the musical "Big Fish".
I live vicariously through film reviews of these kind of films - specifically those I have no time or inclination to see. Because the criticism/reviews/reactions are undoubtedly more interesting. For instance, the idea of 'Collateral Beauty' is way more interesting to me than I assume the actuality of it is. PS great work on the stream with HB and the contribution to Mermaids. You are all stars.
Ikr!!!!! He did such a good job. I felt so proud.
And they did such good work too. Legends.
Having the game be this symbolic battle with a fish feels like exactly the sort of thing a pretentious writer would make up for an overly convoluted film. I'm no psychologist, but I feel like if a kid was going to make a video game to process/act out killing their abusive father, a real kid would just...make a video game where they kill their dad with a knife.
"2019 is already off to a wild year. Wild year for- Anything can happen, who knows what's coming next."
Well, you can't say he was wrong about thta.
I feel like "pulp noir fishing simulator" is a video game idea with legs though, particularly if you get Jon St. John or somebody to provide grizzled narration. "I force the hook through the worm, its tough flesh yielding to the cold steel. The worm is dead, but it doesn't know it. It twists and it wriggles. It honestly thinks it can still get off the hook and everything will be okay. It doesn't even know about the fish yet. That's all of us - we know we're on the hook, but we spend so much time trying to twist off that we never see the fish - OUR fish - until it's too late."
moodboard:
"bean completely and utterly broken and decalibrated"
The second I read about the twist in that Polygon article I knew this was coming
I found that I have recently become addicted to this channel, fantastic videos
It is truly such good stuff. His old videos are also hot shit.
im luv him.........................
Lord, please save us from movies whose only knowledge and concept of "what video games are" and "how computers work" comes from The Matrix.
As you go on listing movies to compare this movie to, I frowned deeper and deeper. What IS this movie?!
*checks Wiki*
...wat
I did not ever expect in the year of our lord 2019 to have someone refer to The Beach as a comparison to any movie ever. What a time to be alive. Take solace, that is a reference I had quickly available in my mind. I will never forget Leonardo DiCaprio playing real life Crash Bandicoot and drug trip machine gunning tourists on a beach.
You just don't undersand the Beach, maan. Like, Cristo is Jesus because like, Christo sounds like Christ, and he was killed by his community for like, seeing beyond their institutions. And then it's actually about the role of tourism in neocolonialism and cultural hegemony and shit. You gotta watch it. It'lll blow your MINDS.
I am 7 minutes in & this review is the most tense I've ever been in my life
It gets even better.
lmao same i am so confused and nervous from my confusion
It sounds like this movie cracked open your skull, poked around, scrambled something, and gingerly closed it up.
'The Beach is an amazing movie' my inner teenager shouts before realizing I haven't watched The Beach in 15 years
The only thing I remember about The Beach, is that it used a VAST song in the trailer.
The gruesome scene where that poor Swedish dude gets dragged back to the village after being mauled by a shark haunted me for ages. Eleven year old me was not prepared for that one.
It so deep, yo. Like, Cristo is Jesus because like, Christo sounds like Christ, and he was killed by his community for like, seeing beyond their institutions. You gotta watch it. It'lll blow your MINDS.
@@changingyoutubeusernameisn7302 you have so perfectly encapsulated the sound of a bong rip with this comment that I feel we need to frame it
I was honestly hoping the twist to SERENITY was that Justice was a real character, he's a giant kaiju-style fish monster instead of an over-sized tuna, and the film was secretly a giant monster thriller all along. The actual twist of the film is still interesting and worth checking out but as a giant monster fan I would have preferred a secret sea monster flick.
A saw there was a movie named "Serenity" playing at my local theatre and assumed it was the Firefly movie.
Never heard of this before
Sounds like this writer/director was like "I saw Black Mirror once, I could do that."
Also you should go see Destroyer. That should help center you again.
Yes, Dan, yes. Alone, talking to and making eye contact with camera, minimal and supportive editing, and a vague but persistent sense of existential terror throughout. This is the vlog format that I crave.
"making eye contact with camera" - I'm not even sure that that's how eyes work, but I'm certain that it's not how cameras work.
@@HereComesPopoBawa I can't knock it, you make a fair point. Should be, "looking directly at."
I mean this as a completely serious question: what does someone who writes, produces and directs a movie like this 'want'?
Ira Shantz-Kreutzkamp To make something
Lots of word-of-mouth discussion.
What does anyone want? What doth life?
Attention
@@LimeyLassen
#### *_EXISTENTIAL CRISIS_* ####
#### *_STATUS: ACTIVATED_* ####
Ahem...Dill becomes "conscious" that not only that he's in this game, but that there are rules to it. In the movie, Dill is referred as being a good person. At the end of the day, his son wants to see if he has his father's "approval" to kill his stepfather by seeing if Dill actually goes through with it or just continues with the standard rules of the game.
I had the luxury of watching Robin Hood (2018) and then Serenity (2019) within like...two months of each other with my best friend. There hasn't been such a great streak of totally baffling movies since then imo. ALTHOUGH I strongly recommend "Wild Mountain Thyme" (2020). It's not a good movie. It's also not remarkably bad. But the twist is amazing.
I saw it on Friday, making sure to go in completely spoiler free. Annnnnnd then it was obvious from FRAME ONE what was going on, more or less. It was such a ham-fisted execution of what I'm guessing was a decent (if always half-baked) idea on paper. Like, I can see where it would have sounded interesting from a pitch/initial script, but the way things ultimately were cut together scream STUDIO INTERFERENCE. I can only imagine the studio notes. "You should blow your reveal as early as possible in case people don't get it., and then just keep piling on the hints so structurally the whole movie is inert."
I just loathed the execution, and it's what kept it from being "bad good" for me: I was bored during long stretches b/c there was zero tension since it was SO CLEAR it was a damn video game. If they'd not shown their hand so early, it might have worked--probably still been bad, but maybe in a campy good way, because the turn would have actually felt like an actual turn.
Instead, starting with the close up of the kids eye and zooming into the ocean/up to the boat made it immediately clear everything we were seeing was in this kid's mind--it was either going to be a St. Elsewhere-style reveal or what it ended up being--video game. And then all the ridiculous overlay shots w/ the programming code and the kid looking at his screen, him "talking" to his dad in the ocean--god it was all so poorly done. That plus the heavy-handed clues dropped in Anne Hathaway's dialogue when they talk about Patrick... I felt like I was being hit in the head with an anvil. And, then, yet they draggggggged it on to the third act before doing the "reveal."
Also how creepy is it that we're meant to believe that this kid created parts of this video game where his DAD has sex with some random lady + his mom. He made porn of his parents. WHAT CHOICES. (Diane Lane also disappears from the story completely, so shrug emoji)
The actors were trying really hard, and there were actually some decent performances. Man, Matthew tried. It was just an utter failure, all around.
"I need to see normal movies, again."
- Dan Olson, 2019
At first I just heard "Margot Robbie, abusive husband" and I was like *"Excuse me, what???* and then it dawned on me that they were two different people.
Lol @ that glitch in the Matrix
I was confused more by "what, is Margot Robbie in this movie too?", and since I haven't seen the movie I checked the IMDb page and she doesn't seem to be in the cast. Dan probably meant somebody else.
@@DocEonChannel I guess he meant Anne Hathaway
@@andrewmilito2634 all Batman villains look the same to him.
No, the kid decided to represent his stepdad with a model of Margot Robbie to make the experience of constantly watching him more palatable
(Actually maybe this was the one twist the movie needed to get over the top)
"2019's off to a wild start - anything could happen, who knows what's coming next"
Never was a truer word spoken...
I can confirm that Serenity is spoiler proof, because the story is so insane you won't believe it's real, then you watch it and realize "holy shit, they weren't lying."
Despite knowing the twist, despite having seen this video like a year ago, it still feels like it comes out of nowhere
I really enjoy the off the cuff vlogs, I hope you do them regularly.
SAME
I realized six minutes in that you were describing the same movie that my mom described to me in similarly incoherent terms about half a year ago. I think at the time my response was something like "that sounds kinda terrible" and she said "yeah, I guess it was" and then I never watched it.
Two vlog reviews in one month? Dan must have a lot of free time right now
I think it's more about the films he have seen.
Like, none.
It's January, official bad movie month
It’s quite the opposite because he doesn’t have to do much editing for these and no writing
@@DamTheKid Yeah, I enjoy watching him struggle to adequately condense his thoughts. The sighing, the long pauses, the putting his face in his hands; all part of why I enjoy watching these vlogs about terrible, terrible movies.
It feels...honest? Like, if I saw this movie and tried to describe it to a friend this is how I would probably act while doing so.
you forgot collateral beauty!
Also, probably "Wish Upon." It wasn't as bizarre and heady, but was by no means a "normal" movie.
I was thinking that and Winter's Tale
“Now you are dead, at the fins of justice” 😂
Who would've thought that "Fuck You, It's January©" would inspire Dan to film some of his best vlogs
SERENITY NOW!
Insanity later!
good video, [unidentified caller]!
HE SCATTERS MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY'S ASHES OVER THE CROWD
*Gameshow Audience in creepy unison*: "But what's the twist?"
I need a tshirt with The Mighty Fins Of Justice written on it immediately
Or sewn onto it!
Shymalan got out twisted
R.I.P. 😔✊
I saw a version of this with a "Q&A" at the end and the director definitely doesn’t understand video games past that thing my sons so immersed in and you can tell McConaughey knows it’s bad so keeps talking about fishing and how it helped the economy of the small island it was on justifying it’s existence
So I had to stop at your "I need water" moment to find the trailer for this thing I didn't know existed and now I watched the trailer and now I'm confused because it looks like that's not at all the movie you watched. So...I...um.
Speaking as someone who doesn't watch that many movies, describing every part of this movie by just throwing out movies I've never seen in rapid succession makes me utterly bewildered. I mean, I guess that's the theme, maybe? Even when you mention movies I've seen, I don't have time to decode what similarities they might have in time for the next one to already be thrown at me. "Oh, so it's like The Matrix and The Truman Show... so secretly trans trenchcoat gunfighters make funny faces for TV ratings?" The first 7 minutes of this video may as well be in a foreign language.
"We're getting a lot of these, these days -- how are all of these getting green-lit??!"
.
I'm glad I'm not the only one completely baffled by how some things even get past the idea-pitch stage. Let alone all the way to wrap-up-promote-and-premiere... and all without ever evolving from their messy, uncoordinated and unfleshed-out idea-infancy. Seriously, just... how??
I was honestly expecting this to be 30 minutes of Dan blinking hard and staring off into the middle distance.
9:38 ahh, good old municipal tap water.
At some point in the future: the art of storytelling and Serenity(2019).
The Mighty Fins of Justice new band name I call it
You could probably name a whole trope after "a fish named justice". In fact, if I get the chance, that's exactly what I'm going to do
So it's like 'Old Man and the Sea' crossed with Surf Ninjas.
These are almost as great as your film dissections. oh my god “You have been killed by the fins of justice” 🤣
"Jenny Nicholson's video is going to be so much better than mine" is such a mood. Honestly, i can never be a youtuber while she's on the platform. I'll just never compare
To quote the magnificent Barry Burton: "What? What is this?"
The movie that came to my mind when you explained the ending was actually Sucker Punch
This is so upsetting because honestly that plot sounds like a really good black mirror episode that could have been a great film....like this could have been genius
I don't think I've ever been more baffled by a movie trailer in my life. By the end of it, I wasn't even sure it was a real movie. It was like a surreal horror-movie-recut of a fishing-themed comedy movie.
Any other Firefly fans just a tiny bit miffed at the this movie's name?
Yeah! I was extremely happy for a moment there.
@@TheHermesLP And It dang well better stay that way!
@@2nd3rd1st You're not wrong about that.
This movie title should be an actual crime.
Anyone over 14 still liking Firefly need to get over themselves
I got all excited because I read the title really quickly and thought oh good, he’s going to talk about Serenity!! Wrong Serenity. ☹️
I can imagine seeing it nearly immediately after the stream/the associated minimal sleep did not help.
or, the way you're talking reminds me of how I sound after I've been awake too long.
As the video continued I just kept thinking, "Dude...Are you okay?"
I went into this movie already knowing there was a twist, but even if I didn't, I still would have figured it out almost immediately. The "foreshadowing" is more like beating you over the head with a fish named "METAPHOR".
Okay, but can we talk about this being _another_ movie about "the dangers of video games"? It's a story where a child gets so absorbed by their game, they kill a person and then go catatonic and/or suicidal. Haven't we had enough of old people making big productions in order to show how little they like and understand gamer culture?
This is disturbingly like Mazes & Monsters. Except it was released in 2019, when I assumed the world had moved on from that sort of out-of-touch, reactionary thinking.
I mean, it seemed to me that the movie endorsed the kid killing his stepdad, so I don't think it would really fall into that category.
Can we talk about actually understanding what's being said? A simple visit to the wiki page would show you the plot. The children never goes catatonic or suicidal. The child uses a videogame they modded in order to enact the fantasy of having his father (who died in Iraq) killing his stepfather, who's abusive. After the game following the modded script, the child decides, in real life, to actually stand up to his stepfather.
Tom Hanks plays D&D until he tries to jump off the WTC! Remember kids, fun is bad. And sharing is communism.
Gotta love culture panic.
Wait, what the hell? That's Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash in the background!
Oh, good! I began to fear that DiCaprio's The Beach was a hallucination I had.
I'm still debating watching this film, though the moment I read a review in The Guardian I looked for the ending. For what you're saying, it seems both a noir and a film about the imaginary and videogames were wasted. I thought about Wreck it Ralph and Lego: the first for how characters have their lives inside a videogame and the second for its connection between the "film" and the reality of the child playing Lego. And again, we have a magical boy solving his mother's issues for her. Anna Hathaway and not Margot Robbie, lolol.
It seems to be an odd film stemming from an eccentric idea.
And thanks for the returning to this format for the V-Logs. It's much more fluid and pleasant to listen to, at least for me.
Commented on your Split review that you needed to see Serenity like 4 hours ago, I take a nap, and my wish has come true
I'm 10 minutes in the video and have no idea what the movie is about.
Liked anyway.
I remember seeing trailers for this film, now that I'm 10 minutes through the video. They marketed it as some sexy, twisty, revenge thriller drama thing, pretty much only showing the "can you kill my husband please" stuff, knowing now that it's like a video game is the strangest thing ever
I just watched this earlier tonight (literally had no idea this movie existed. Dad checked it out from the video rental)!!! I was so... thrown by the entire experience
Any mention of The Beach just makes me think, "The book was better."
Every time I hear 'Book of Henry,' I think it's 'Book of Revelation' because until I googled it just now, I legit couldn't remember the name of that movie but kept thinking it was 'Book of Henry.'
The two are not remotely similar.
Who are the vegetable people behind you?
Him, Lindsey and Harris? I know Hbomberguy has a picture of himself as a banana on his channel icon.
I believe the centre person is Crystal (who co-streams with him and sang Charlie Tango)
Late to the party by a few years, but I gotta' comment, one could have two other readings of the ending:
The first is that the kid is so lost in his simulation that he's created an NPC of himself and is now living vicariously through that NPC, or did so in order to give Dill the closure he's incapable of having in reality.
The second is that the kid somehow uploaded his consciousness in the game to live out his life there. Which considering he's like, fourteen and made sapient computer programs capable of interacting with him directly? Sure, why not.
Is no one going to talk about how he has a Senran Kagura box just casually sitting in the background?
This is the comment I was looking for. Thank you. I was like "how the hell is no one talking about the fact that he has Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash just casually in the background of this bit?"
I feel like an early draft of this had the kid recreate his dad in a detailed simulation, but a later rewrite changed it to a "videogame" because somebody was worrried about audience comprehension.