Step inside the whirlwind world of teenage drama and tech talk with us, Anthony and Dakota, as we unravel the legacy of the cult classic "Mean Girls." Grab your Burn Book and sit with us at the podcast table as we contrast the original film with its new rendition and even tip our hats to the sequel that's often left in the shadows. But it's not all pink on Wednesdays; we weigh in on the "Palworld" game controversy, daring to compare it to fan favorites like "Pokémon" and "Genshin Impact."
Flickering screens aren't the only things getting an upgrade; I share my exhilarating leap to fiber-optic internet, transforming my digital universe faster than you can say "fetch."
We close the curtains with a heartfelt ode to those iconic movie characters who leap from script to screen, capturing our hearts across multiple adaptations.
Anthony is also spilling the beans on his ambitious PC build plan, chasing the dream of a seamless gaming and streaming paradise. From movie high school queens to dreaming of our own PC rigs, join us for a vibrant mix of silver screen banter and personal tech dreams.
Twitter handles:
Project Geekology: https://twitter.com/pgeekology
Anthony's Twitter: https://twitter.com/odysseyswow
Dakota's Twitter: https://twitter.com/geekritique_dak
Instagram:
https://instagram.com/projectgeekology?igshid=1v0sits7ipq9y
Geekritique (Dakota):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBwciIqOoHwIx_uXtYTSEbA
Twitch (Anthony):
https://www.twitch.tv/odysseywow
Music:
Eric Godlow Beats: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRpkcYps82PdSo0tK5rEIPA
Step inside the whirlwind world of teenage drama and tech talk with us, Anthony and Dakota, as we unravel the legacy of the cult classic "Mean Girls." Grab your Burn Book and sit with us at the podcast table as we contrast the original film with its new rendition and even tip our hats to the sequel that's often left in the shadows. But it's not all pink on Wednesdays; we weigh in on the "Palworld" game controversy, daring to compare it to fan favorites like "Pokémon" and "Genshin Impact."
Flickering screens aren't the only things getting an upgrade; I share my exhilarating leap to fiber-optic internet, transforming my digital universe faster than you can say "fetch."
We close the curtains with a heartfelt ode to those iconic movie characters who leap from script to screen, capturing our hearts across multiple adaptations.
Anthony is also spilling the beans on his ambitious PC build plan, chasing the dream of a seamless gaming and streaming paradise. From movie high school queens to dreaming of our own PC rigs, join us for a vibrant mix of silver screen banter and personal tech dreams.
Twitter handles:
Project Geekology: https://twitter.com/pgeekology
Anthony's Twitter: https://twitter.com/odysseyswow
Dakota's Twitter: https://twitter.com/geekritique_dak
Instagram:
https://instagram.com/projectgeekology?igshid=1v0sits7ipq9y
Geekritique (Dakota):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBwciIqOoHwIx_uXtYTSEbA
Twitch (Anthony):
https://www.twitch.tv/odysseywow
Music:
Eric Godlow Beats: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRpkcYps82PdSo0tK5rEIPA
Thank you for joining us for episode 68 of Project Geekology. This week, we're going to be covering something a little bit more unconventional than what we usually cover. We're going to be covering mean girls, but I feel like it's very relevant because it is something that was very popular and it kind of blew up and it's an interesting phenomenon and this is something that Dakota and I have seen throughout our lives, so I thought it would be cool for us to actually cover it in light of the most recent version of new girls that came out.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I am one of your hosts, anthony, and joining me, as always, is Dakota and this is going to be very fetched guys, so I hope you are ready to talk about mean girls. I just want to correct you, anthony. You said new girls Did.
Speaker 1:I say new girls.
Speaker 2:You just said mean girls at first. You said new girls later on, so we'll let it slide. Everyone in the chat knows what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Well, it's technically the new mean girls. Like the new girls, though.
Speaker 2:Technically. Yeah, you know, there's new plastics. What's funny is that in the original movie of, you know, the 2004 movie, which is now 20 years old, which is crazy- it's going to be 20 years old sometime this year.
Speaker 2:It's April, like at the end of it in April, okay. So very, very close At the end of it. They have like the new plastics or the new mean girls that are coming into the high school. It's going to be the new alpha mean girls in the school, and so you kind of. I don't think anyone was really expecting a hard sequel to the original. I don't know if there was any straight to DVD ones, but there is there is there is a straight straight to, I think it was like straight to streaming.
Speaker 1:It's like mean girls too.
Speaker 2:I had no idea that, yes, I am.
Speaker 1:I had seen that one. I'm a little like curious, but like it definitely embodies that. Straight to digital energy. Oh, excellent.
Speaker 2:Okay, I will probably never watch that, but I'm happy it exists. I'm happy for you.
Speaker 1:So so we're going to have a mean girls timeline in the future.
Speaker 2:After, you know, after this movie, after the 2024 movie? I do not think that that is possible, because it's literally the exact same movie, just 20 years later and with a little bit more music. But we'll get to that in a bit. Yes, anthony, what have you been up to these past few weeks?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I went to go see the new mean girls and that's where we kind of came up with the decision to actually cover it. But there's this game that just came out and it's been really, really controversial. It's been kind of making waves.
Speaker 2:I know what you're talking about. Keep going.
Speaker 1:And so yeah, the game in question is actually called hunkai star rail. Not up to skidding.
Speaker 2:For those, for those of you none of you are watching my face I reacted like, literally, like what the heck is that?
Speaker 1:That's an actual game, though. I believe you it's. Yeah, it's made by the same people who made a Genshin impact, but I know is that I had to mess up your anticipation. The actual game that I'm talking about is called power world. Yeah, that's the one. So power world it's made some big controversy, mostly because of the fact that a lot of the creatures and it look like Pokemon. It's like arc survival, but with Pokemon instead of dinosaurs, and the gameplay is very similar to, like Genshin impact and maybe breath of the wild. But it's so funny because now a lot of people are trying to defend power world by saying, like well, you guys copied your creatures from dragon quest, which you know, I guess. Like, in a way, like a lot of things are copies of other things, yeah, or homage is whatever, yeah, right. It's so funny, though, like how very similar some of the pals that they call them that, how similar they do look to Pokemon.
Speaker 2:But it's so a couple like there's one that's based off of Anubis, the Egyptian God, that looks just like Lucario, there's one that looks just like Eevee, and there's a couple that are like that, that are just like right.
Speaker 1:There's one that kind of looks like Lodias or Lodios one of those, maybe like a master purpose, but it's really made controversy. I mean there's even people that are going into making it seem like the Pokemon models fit exactly with the power world models, but then it actually was. I guess they kind of found out that that person that made that video actually exaggerated it. It's so crazy. But outside of the controversy, it is fun. I mean, it is also like ridiculous in some instances, because with Pokemon it's Pokemon battling Pokemon, but like you throw out your pals, they're fighting the other pals, but you can go in and just swing on them with a bat or shoot at them with a gun or give pals guns.
Speaker 1:It's so crazy, oh, wow, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. But you know, and you can build structures. There's different things. You can ride on pals. You can even use pals as like weapons themselves, like one. You can get this harness for this, like fire breathing one that you get in the beginning, and kind of use it as like a flamethrower. It's so, it's so crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:I had heard that someone had already modded like Pokemon into the game.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I think that's. I think that's what's hot in a tentative initial like iron.
Speaker 1:Yes, At first they kind of really weren't batting an eye at them. But when somebody actually went in, they did a pretty good job. Dude, they did a fantastic job. They put, they made their character look like Ash Ketchum and then made a whole bunch of piles that look, you know, change them to look like Pokemon. And actually I think he got slammed with like a cease and desist.
Speaker 2:I understand Nintendo is like cease and desist on that, but coming after the game as a whole, based on you know, a couple look alike Pokemon, even though the actual gameplay is pretty drastically different than even if it's homage or, like you know, you gain some sort of inspiration from the Pokemon series, the game is very clearly different.
Speaker 1:Right, and the things that you use to catch the pals. They're called like palspheres or whatever you can actually like catch people with them. Oh, excellent.
Speaker 2:So I'll be downloading this game.
Speaker 1:Dude, it is pretty funny and I mean you could play with friends. You know you can create a server and just mess around with friends and stuff.
Speaker 2:Have you played?
Speaker 1:Have you played? Yeah, absolutely, I had to get in on the controversy. Come on, man, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Before Nintendo takes it down right, right, yeah, we'll see no. I don't think, I don't think they do that.
Speaker 1:I think that'll piss off a lot of people. I think that that would be like a really bad PR move for Nintendo. Oh yeah, it'll put them in, like. I mean it'll make them look like the big kid, like kind of kicking dirt in the face of a little kid, you know kind of like.
Speaker 2:a couple years back, Blizzard was in a lot of like like deep, Deep water. There's still not out of it. If you do that and like the age of social media, where people are very pro little guy, it's gonna be bad, absolutely, we'll have a Blizzard situation happening all over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nintendo and I mean. But think about this like it started off with that thing and then like the ball started rolling and a lot more came to light. You talking about with Blizzard, with Blizzard, yeah, I'm talking about like the whole. There's like the whole like Blitzchung thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm talking. Yeah, they had the whole Hong.
Speaker 1:Kong controversy, hong Kong thing, and then that really pissed off people and then a whole bunch of employees came out and were saying you know that it was like frat boy culture and that they weren't being treated well. So it really just was a ball that just kept them rolling downhill for them. So I don't know if the Tindos got something, that they got a high, but you, I don't know if you want to put any scrutiny on yourselves.
Speaker 2:So the Japanese culture is very different in that respect. Like, coming clean about company policies is just generally not as common, so I don't think it would have that kind of snowball effect. But you know, it is 2024. Who knows what would happen with something like that? True, but yeah, I'm interested in Power World. It does look like a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I'm not somebody that really like gives into the FOMO. I've actually had Power World on my wish list on Steam for a long time, because when they first announced it they're like yeah, it's Pokemon with guns. I said, dude, this sounds absolutely ridiculous. I'm in. That does sound great.
Speaker 2:What else have you been up to? Hit me with the hmm.
Speaker 1:I don't think really too too much like aside from you know watching the movie. You know like normal day to day stuff watching the movie, and then you know hopping in on the controversy of Power Worlds. What about you? I know you've had a lot going on since you were recorded. You were actually kind of in the middle of that process when we recorded the last episode.
Speaker 2:Yes. So for our listeners who don't know anything about my day to day life, I recently moved to a new apartment. It's about 25 minutes away or so maybe 30 minutes from my previous location, and it's a huge upgrade for my wife and I. We got the apartments on the 15th of January. This is currently the 26th of January right now. We had our previous apartment all the way through the 31st, but we finally removed everything recently. We did a big cleanup yesterday in the old apartment and we dropped the keys off today, so we're finally 100% out of the previous apartment that we've been recording in for two years, and I'm now in the new place.
Speaker 2:I have much better Wi-Fi. I was getting download speeds of maybe like 20 to 30 megabytes per minute. Now I have to pay for this now, but it's like 500 megabytes. It's just an incredible upgrade to my online experience, which is a big part of who I am on social media. I would do these podcasts and a lot of times we would be recording them. I'd have a little bit of lag or I'd cut out or something like that. I'm pretty sure it was my end mostly.
Speaker 1:So my internet Send it Bye. I get about like 700 plus megabytes.
Speaker 2:Damn Anthony.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fiber Fiber is the way to go If you're a technologically first person or you're just an online type of person. Yeah, man, fiber.
Speaker 2:We have Verizon Fios, which is fiber optic. We got like the middle package of 500 megabytes instead of one gigabyte. I mean that's still good though.
Speaker 1:I mean honestly no dude.
Speaker 2:It's a huge upgrade from what we had, so I'm totally concerned with it for the timing and it's cool because we can always upgrade or downgrade whatever we need to do later on. But yeah, so that's the stitch. I have moved into my new place. We did get to go see Mean Girls I think it was like a week and a half ago, right before we started packing up and moving, and we had a lot of fun with that. So I'm excited to talk about that. What else? I'm currently working on my next big timeline project, which is like the monsterverse, so Godzilla, kong, skull Island, that whole universe of Kaiju, monsters, titans, whatever. So I'm excited to like get in on that. We just finished Monarch Legacy of Monsters. I don't know if you ever watched that, anthony.
Speaker 1:No, I had never gotten to watch it, but it is something that I'm somebody that has a long list of things to watch. Of things to watch. Yeah, like I said, whereas your thing is movies and TV, mine is like video games, you know that's why you know, while you're watching Monarch, I'm over here playing Power World.
Speaker 2:He's embroiled in a like multi-company controversy.
Speaker 1:I know a real controversy. Nintendo's trying to attack everyone now just swinging wildly. But yeah, no, I really, and it's something that I want to watch. I heard it's actually pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean a little brief review on my end is I really liked the way that it wrapped up. There was a like the first couple episodes are really strong. It has like three or four episodes right in the middle and then the last episode really picked back up again. My biggest complaints is that, without getting into spoilers, is that every character in the show had an episode where they just wanted to quit and then the rest of the team had to be like no, we've gotten this far, we gotta go a little further, we gotta go to the next checkpoint. And it basically was that every episode you know like they would get to the next checkpoint. They get to the new, like I don't know an airport, or like a desert, or they're in like the Arctic, and they just be like I can't do this right now, I gotta go back to school or something. And then the rest of them would be like no, no, we're almost there, we gotta find your dad. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:So it was like that. But for literally every character in the show they each had their little moment of like I don't want to continue. And then the rest of them had to like lift them up or find them or like, save them somehow. Yeah, it was a lot of that, but I will say that the actual timeline of the monster versus films is really well explored. I think that they did a really cool job of bridging the origins of the Monarch organization that like studies these giant creatures, like dating back to the 40s and 50s, when the nuclear tests were starting to happen, and the modern day stuff that happened with post Godzilla in 2014. So that was really well orchestrated and something I'd like to talk more about in the future or show here if you're interested.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, definitely that'd be cool. I definitely would be interested in covering more of the monster-verse stuff. We covered Godzilla.
Speaker 2:We did Godzilla 2014.
Speaker 1:2014,. So I think it would be really cool to be able to actually go back and explore more of that.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you a question. Did you ever see the new Godzilla movie that's out in theaters right now? Godzilla minus one.
Speaker 1:I did not, but I heard it's really good, that's a CG one. Right, it's CG.
Speaker 2:I mean there is computer graphics in it. But like, oh it's live. Like live, it's a live action movie. Oh, okay, I thought it was CG. No, it's a live, because it's all.
Speaker 1:I think it like square enix was involved with it. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know too much about it I haven't actually seen it yet but I've seen plenty of footage from it and I've heard it's probably the best Godzilla movie ever made.
Speaker 1:Really now.
Speaker 2:It's the first Godzilla movie to ever get a nomination for like an Academy Award. Blah, blah, blah. So that's crazy. It's also the highest grossing Japanese movie in American cinemas, in North American cinemas, which is a huge feat. It surpassed like a hundred million gross in America alone on like a shoestring budget, like I think they spent like 10 million on it, 10 to 15.
Speaker 1:10 million Dude, that's tiny.
Speaker 2:And it looks beautiful. It looks beautiful so it's a you know Japanese live action movie, but it's like it takes the story back to World War II, like when Godzilla first shows up, and like it's a war ravaged country. But anyway, I haven't actually haven't seen it, so I don't want to talk and say something Right right.
Speaker 2:And then, just you know, someone has to correct me I'm hoping to watch it this weekend because they're re-releasing it now that it has a little bit of Oscar buzz. They're re-releasing it minus color, so it's Godzilla minus one, minus color, so it's in black and white but like more saturated and it looks like a old film, so it's. I'm gonna probably check it out like that.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice, oh yeah, so something that I forgot to mention, that I've kind of I'm kind of in the works with it. I may or may not be able to do it this year, I hope I can. But something that I'm really like looking to to do is I want to build another PC, like I want to. I think it's time for me to actually like upgrade, go kind of like a massive overhaul. The PC that I have is at seven years old, or it's going on seven years old, and mine. So I mean it still works very, very well, but the age is starting to show. You know it's kind of. You know it's age is breaking through the cracks. It's slowing down a little bit more. It takes a little bit longer to boot up, although let me tell you it's still faster than a lot of like a lot of computers that you know you might use that like work. Mine still like blows those out of the water.
Speaker 1:But you know, now I'm starting to notice that with some of the newer games it's starting to run, some of them on high. Where I, where it used to run an ultra on everything, now start, it's not running on ultra as much anymore, it's running on high at best, usually maybe medium, some games that are a little bit more graphically intensive on low, but it kind of ranges. It depends on how graphically intensive the game is, how old the game is. But I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. You know, games kind of just scale up. I mean, we're, the graphics card that I have is a GTX 1080. We're all the way up to 4080, 4090. No, we're several generations up, and so I've kind of been planning that out. Dude, I use my computer for everything. I know you feel this. I mean, I know that you're more on the Mac, but I guarantee you that if your Mac was starting to slow down it was starting to bog down that eventually you would look into upgrading. You know that's just the nature.
Speaker 2:My next move is definitely to build my own PC because Macs are just way too expensive. Like I'm using an iMac right now to talk to you, If you use that amount of money on a new iMac towards a new computer setup like a PC setup, it's gonna blow the Mac out of the water.
Speaker 1:So tell me the like how much it would be to get an iMac today?
Speaker 2:I'll look it up right now iMac, I think it's 17 inch, 254. Or no, it's sorry, 27 inch, it's 27 inch. Okay, so they're actually not selling the 27 inch anymore, but basically it would be somewhere in the range of 1500 to 2000.
Speaker 1:1500 to 2000,. Yeah, definitely. So I would say between, yeah, you could get a solid, like I would say, mid-high range to high range PC getting closer to 2000. The one that I'm planning out and, like I said, it all depends. You know, I'm trying to budget, I'm trying to shop around. It's not gonna be right now, I probably will wait a little bit closer to income tax time, but it's looking closer to like maybe 22.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's right around what I would spend on.
Speaker 1:So 22, it's gonna give me and that's just because of the build on a build. You could go more expensive with the PC, of course. Yeah, like super, like I mean more like four, five $6,000, but with what I'm going for, you know, like I'm gonna have like 64 gigabytes of RAM in it. I'm looking at a 4070 Ti and they released a new model of the Ti called Super, so I'm looking at that. I'm thinking about going AMD rather than Intel, but I'm still trying to like do a lot of research. I'm looking into bottle necking so that you know I can get the maximum performance that I can get.
Speaker 2:I see, is that, like you're using a lot of acronyms and terms and different names, that I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm like wow, sounds impressive.
Speaker 1:Okay, so AMD is just like vehicle. So you know, a lot of people have heard Intel, they come out with the CPUs. Well, there's one called AMD which is like you know, intel is really good for gaming, they're amazing for gaming. But AMD is like really starting to get in there with the gaming. So they've got me interesting. And then bottle necking is really just, you know, it's like the hardware like you want it to like synchronize as well as it can so that one is not underperforming.
Speaker 1:You know you want them to kind of get as close as you can to perform it, so that you know one's not dragging it down. That's my current thing. And then I'm thinking that that's another reason why, like, I stopped streaming my second time around was cause I noticed that the performance I was like it was okay, but I was like, ah, I don't want it bad. You know, I want it to look a lot better. So I was like you know what? And I always use it, whether streaming or not, dude, I'm always going to use my PC. That's dope.
Speaker 2:Cool man. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for you. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Let me know how that goes.
Speaker 2:We're you know whenever you jump, absolutely man.
Speaker 1:And then I'm bracing for impact for a persona three reload next week.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm bracing for impact for Mean Girls 2024 and 2004 this week, so I think we should probably get on that discussion.
Speaker 1:Oh man, do we really have to? I don't even go here. Right, dude, that was so funny. Yeah, the top end to it. You know our unconventional episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even think it's necessarily that it's like unconventional, aside from the fact that it's not the general type of film that we would normally cover here, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, we should cover geekier things.
Speaker 2:But in a big way. Like you mentioned at the offset, this movie, the 2004 film, is very much a cultural phenomenon, something that has become part of the zeitgeist of our day-to-day lives. In some instances there are some lines that you could say in passing I would immediately connect that with Mean Girls. So I think that's a very powerful thing and not something that most films can ever attain to. The 2004 film was so iconic. I'm just going to read over the cast, just because it's incredible. Lindsay Lohan is Katie Herring, rachel McAdams as Regina George, tina Fey, who also happens to be the same character as Norbury in the new film, amanda Safe-Reed as Karen Smith, lacey Chamber to Gretchen Wieners and Liz goes on, but Lizzie Kaplan is Janice. It was an amazing cast back in the day in 2004. I want to compare a little bit with the new cast. Like what did you feel going into this new movie? How do you feel like the new cast was able to capture the magic of the original film?
Speaker 1:Well, so the new cast. It was really interesting and I guess I'm just going to throw it out there. But what really made this different and I guess that they had to take this in consideration when it came to casting is the fact that this one is a musical. This new one, oh, yeah, yeah, it is. You know and see, dude, let me tell you, I went into this one blind. I didn't know it was a musical, really, I did not know. So they started singing and I was like oh okay, so they went this route with this.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Did you know that it was a musical at the moment they started singing, or was it like by the second song you were?
Speaker 1:like oh, okay, by the second song and I was like, okay, yeah, Okay, cool interesting.
Speaker 1:So the one thing that I'll say about the older one is that Lindsay Lohan, especially in that time, had this with the very basic makeup that they gave her in the beginning, you could tell that she still had this natural beauty to her, so the social awkwardness wasn't as convincing as with this newer girl, whereas even with this newer girl she had her own natural beauty. But I feel like she was able to play socially awkward a little bit easier. Yeah, she had a little bit more of these like plain Jane looks, more so than Lindsay Lohan does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I totally see. We're coming with that. The actors that they cast to play Katie Herron, which is Lindsay Lohan's role in the original film. I believe her name is Angery Rice A-N-G-O-U-R-I-E. I actually did not look up how you pronounce that, but it looks like it reads angry, so if I'm miscorrect, I'm sorry. She's probably best known for playing Betty in the homecoming Spider-Man trilogy.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, okay. So yeah, I looked her up. She did like the announcements and you got to see a lot more of her in like the extended edition of no Way Home. Yes, Dude that was such a funny experience for me. I was like bro, what is all this extra stuff going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's funny about the extended edition of no Way Home is that if you go on to TikTok and look up a Daily Bugle, I'm not sure, but basically like it's a podcast show on TikTok with, like, the actors and they have a whole bunch of little skits that they filmed for or around the movie, like oh, this just happened and this is how I feel, and it's always like J Jonah Jameson, like Spider-Man's in Minas, but they have Angery Rice as Betty, as one of the lead people, so that's how I knew her best going into this. But I think she did a phenomenal job of playing that plain Jane girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think maybe I need to watch it again, because it's been a little over a week at this point and I will say that this is a movie that you're probably going to have to watch twice, because, especially if you're like an OG, mean Girls fan because it kind of feels like a fever dream a little bit in the sense that, like some segments, some sequences are definitely fever dream.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. There's whole sections of this movie that I actually like almost barely remember and I think that, like a lot of the musical aspects, like midfilm, I feel like I just totally I'm like slipping in my mind and I think so much character development happens in those moments that I feel like I really need to watch this again. But I'm excited to do so and we got so.
Speaker 1:In the new movie, the actress that played Janice also did the voice of Moana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ali Iqorvajo, she's so, she's amazing. Her voice is incredible too.
Speaker 1:That's definitely a clue in for the musical. I mean she sings so.
Speaker 2:Yes, it turns out she's an incredible actress on screen and behind the mic, because she did great in Moana and I don't think that I've seen her in anything outside of her work in Moana, so this will be a first for me, but I think she did a really good job of playing Janice.
Speaker 1:I do. I would agree, like she did have kind of like that angry vibe that Lizzie Kaplan has. I mean, lizzie Kaplan is a lot angrier than Ali Iqorvajo, but I still think that she does a really good job. Yeah, she made it her own.
Speaker 2:You know what character I felt was pretty drastically different in terms of, like, the way that the character was portrayed, was actually Regina George. I think in the original film it's not played super straight, you know, like it's played a little bit more like a comedy. The original film made it, allowed Regina George to have more slider, like emotional takes or like smaller moments that like made her character more relatable and I feel, like Renee Rapp, who did Regina George in this film, made her a lot scarier. Like there were like whole scenes where, like she was like yelling or like Do her songs.
Speaker 1:It was a villain song. It sounded exactly like a villain song in like a Disney movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know you were like. It reminded me of the Scar song from Lion King.
Speaker 1:You know what's insane is like I don't know why, like that popped up in my mind too, like I don't know, like it was nothing like Scar, but it gave me scar vibes, I think, like the sinister, like it's not like, because like Scar is not the in your face villain, it's, he's like a behind the scenes, like tactical kind of thing, and that's what like Regina George really is, like you know, you know manipulating and kind of just creating her, just you know, honestly hurting everybody Like she's the.
Speaker 2:they have that scene early on where just after Katie meets the plastics, janice and Damien are kind of explaining like no, no, no, you don't want to date. What's this guy? I'm guys named Aaron. I think that's the guy that she's into because he was an ex of Regina, so you don't want to get involved with that. And like she's like, well, how bad could it be. And then like they have that whole musical where like everyone's acting like animals outside of the school yeah, she is basically corralling everyone. She, queen of the Pride. What?
Speaker 1:do you call it the Gretchen Weeners? Like her love interests oh my God, I forgot his name. But he was kind of like with another girl and then he was like picking through her hair like a monkey and Regina like gets rid of her and it puts Gretchen there, like you know. Like oh you know you're not going to be doing that to my friend, type thing. But yeah, it was really interesting seeing this movie in that light as a musical. But I do feel like I mean, isn't there a mean girl's musical? I feel like there is. I feel like that exists.
Speaker 2:Well, it does now.
Speaker 1:I mean, but I mean before that I feel like it exists.
Speaker 2:I didn't even know there was a direct to film or direct to streaming sequel, so that's news to me. But I really liked Regina George. One thing that I noticed throughout the film is that she really committed to the role of Regina. She was actively gaining weight throughout the movie.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I definitely like. By the end. It's like when she gets hit by the bus. You could see this. She's like a good 10, 15 pounds heavier than she was at the beginning of the movie, if not more, and that takes a lot of like for a young actress. That that's got to be really hard to like. You know, commit to, you know, because you have a whole diet that you've had your entire life or whatever it is, and then you just drop that to eat Calteen bars.
Speaker 1:Right and cheese fries. I was really impressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and cheese fries, yeah.
Speaker 1:Although that was her thing before the Calteen bars.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I was really impressed with Renee Rapp. I also like her voices is crazy, like it was just. She had them very like soul tree, like velvety voice. It was really cool.
Speaker 1:Another, I feel like she slotted in well with that role of Regina. When I was looking at her I wasn't trying to look at her as Rachel McAdams, but more of like the character role as itself, and I feel like she really did perform that very well. You know she played her part well the queen bee in the school just as Rachel McAdams.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I'm really pleased that they were able to get her for that, because, I don't know, I think she did a really good job with it. Gretchen Wieners is an interesting one, because I don't think I liked her as much as I liked the original actress, but I think that's because it was a musical. So one thing that like happens when you have a musical is that you devote so much of your runtime to song that you don't get the smaller details or the smaller moments that like are like interpersonal or that kind of like flesh out a character. And they did try. They did try to do it with some like. There was that whole scene in Regina's closet where she opened up like the song box or like the music box and there was like a nice little moment there where I really wanted actually to no more about what that whole side story was with the music books.
Speaker 1:Right. There was a lot of emotion in that moment.
Speaker 2:But it never really got captured past that point, if that makes sense. I never felt that it was. Fully besides the fact that it made you understand that this is a person who is obviously feeling inadequate about their lot, with Regina as a best friend. You know, you obviously felt bad for Gretchen throughout the film because she's trying to live up to a standard that she can't, but yeah, I don't know, I felt like the original film did that a little bit better. I will say, though, that Amanda Saferi's character of Karen was magnificently adapted, and this new one with the actress's name is Avantika Vandanapu, when she's playing a character named Karen Shetty, who's just extremely vapid Borderline, borderline, like 50 IQ, if that and it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she does play that character very well, it's very and dude. Let me tell you I was belly laughing, dude. I was like how is it in the theater? Like I don't know how she does it, but she has this blank expression that it looks like there's nothing going on in her head at all and you could tell she's just like it's very, not robotic, but very absentmindedly. She's so good at it.
Speaker 2:Obviously, amanda Saferi, she made the character original, but this one she really dumbs down this character, but that's what that character is yeah, there was the scene where she's doing her makeup and she's eating a grilled cheese and then she accidentally puts grilled cheese on her face and it's like a little grease spot.
Speaker 1:She's just like oh hey, that looks good. Yes, for the Halloween. I was belly laughing.
Speaker 2:What was the line in the song? It was so funny that the song that she was talking about femininity being able to be whatever you want, but sexy and the scene that I love it was just like oh my gosh, basically it was just something that she could cure with her sexy feminine powers, and then they were like that's not a thing and she's just like I did it.
Speaker 1:Was it like sexy cancer or something like that? And it's like-.
Speaker 2:Sex cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, something like that, and I think Gretchen was like that doesn't exist and she's like I did it, dude, that was fun, yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah, she played that character very, very well. I will say that the newer Gretchen Wiener, I do feel like she was definitely the middle ground when it came to Rachel and Karen. I don't, and I always noticed this with the first one. Regina was always the smarter one of the group, more conniving, right, right, right, and Gretchen was always kind of in the middle, like sometimes she was smart, but then also a lot of times she'd be very dumb. And then Karen was all just full on throttle, just dumb. So it was varying levels of intelligence and so I felt the same thing with it and she, I mean, she played that character in this new what's her name? The new Gretchen the actress, yes, Her name is.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at the cast list right now so I don't know this on the top of my head, but her name is Bebe Wood. Okay, Bebe Wood.
Speaker 1:I still feel like she does that character well, even though it's the newer ones and musical, and I think they tried to do more with her but I guess for the sake of time they just weren't able to. She does get that. You know, the kind of caught in the middle, that jealousy when everything kind of starts to come to head and Katie Herron is kind of it's seeming like she's edging out Gretchen for best friends, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:Another character that we haven't spoken about yet is Janice's friend, Damien, the one that Katie first. Be friends, Janice and Damien. Damien is just like this, extremely flamboyant, like the gay friend, you know. That is just so classic in these movies and so funny. The original cast had Daniel Franzisi. I think that's why you pronounced this last name as Damien. What's great about this new one is that they reuse so much of those original lines Like she doesn't even go here.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, there were so many lines that were reused. But I think it's a double edged sword in that you know, like you kind of want something a little bit different. You know, at a certain point in the movie I was kind of hoping that it would like veer off and do its own thing, kind of like we had with Scott Pilgrim recently. You know, like we thought that we were getting an animated redo of the Scott Pilgrim movie with the original cast, but it turned out to be entirely different. Like Scott Pilgrim literally dies in the first episode and then it's about, like you know, the rest of the cast trying to figure out what happened to him. You know that was really cool.
Speaker 2:That was a really cool you know like redoing of Scott Pilgrim, and I was kind of hoping a little bit of that would have led into something like this being gross 2024 redo. But it was literally like beat for beat these episodes.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and so I think in some ways that's what helped its score but also hurt it a little bit, because it was very close to when it comes to the reviews, at least on Rotten Tomatoes. It got very close to the original as far as review, but like just a little less, and that's probably why is that. Maybe some people were hoping for a little bit more, but it definitely it wasn't a one to one, obviously because it was a musical, but there was a lot of story beats that it was almost like I mean not almost, but it was the exact same thing. I do like that they expanded a little bit more about Katie's time in Africa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that. I like that. They actually did show her, you know, spend a little time, even if it was just a couple of minutes in the beginning of the film of her time in Africa. So it was a little bit more believable than just very beautiful Lindsay Lohan showing up. I'm from Africa, but yes, so, yes, I agree with what you're saying, like the musical did add enough of a difference where this was worth it.
Speaker 2:But I was hoping for just a little twist. You know, I think that would have been really like by the end of it, where you know she wins, like the spring fling queen thing, and she's like breaking off pieces and handing it and throwing it into the crowd, like that was literally. Like at that point I was just like man, this is beat for beat, literally everything that happened in the original movie, with certain changes. Like there's some really good changes in this that I think are good for the times. Like in the original the burn book, regina like Xeroxes all the papers and makes copies of all the pages of the burn book and releases them into the wild. But in this one she just drops the actual burn book and has people you know disseminate all the photos within it amongst themselves, like people would do today, you know.
Speaker 2:I think, that's a very clever way to redo that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the fact that everything was current with the time you know, with social media, the TikToks and everything.
Speaker 2:What was up with Megan Thee Stallion, like showing up a couple of times randomly Like I was so confused. Just like she doesn't go.
Speaker 1:They just needed that one random rapper in there.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, I mean, I was telling my wife the other day like it seems like Megan Thee Stallion will say yes to everything because like she's in so many commercials she's in so many little things. She was in She-Hulk for that one episode.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, she's just kind of everywhere.
Speaker 2:So I think it's funny. But anyway, yeah, I digress. Ultimately, I think I really liked the movie. I left the movie with a smile on my face. I was just hoping for a little bit of a different story than you know, the one that we're all very familiar with if you've ever watched a beatbox music.
Speaker 1:Right, which a lot of I would say a lot of people have. Something that we didn't even like talk about is, like you know, our experience with Mean Girls, because 2004, you know, you and I, we weren't teenagers quite yet, we were pre-teens. You know, this movie is out of our wheelhouse.
Speaker 2:We were like what 12? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I know that I'm fairly certain that this isn't a movie that I saw in theaters. I don't know about you Like when. I don't think I did, yeah, I don't think I saw it. Honestly, to say to you, do you even remember when you first saw it? I remember seeing it at a young age and it might have been at your house.
Speaker 2:It probably was. I remember having the DVD.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, we watched it together. I think you were like oh yeah, let's watch this movie. It's really funny.
Speaker 2:I think I had seen it and I introduced it to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it had to have been, because I'm like this is definitely out of my wheelhouse. I either saw it sometime on TV or Dakota showed it to me. I was like I was trying to contemplate on the drive home. I'm like dude, when did I watch this movie? I remember watching it years ago, when I was younger. Like I remember seeing it before high school. So what would you say? Mean Girls, we've seen the OG, we've seen the musical. What makes this movie so successful? Why has it lasted this long?
Speaker 2:So technically it's considered an SNL movie.
Speaker 1:I mean it wouldn't surprise me because it was written by Tina Fey, who is an alum of SNL, and Amy Pollard is in there. So you know, I mean I know they're friends, but they're both SNL alums. So okay.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if it's exactly an SNL movie, but I would consider Mean Girls among that. I don't know if it's actually produced by Lorne Michaels, so I can't actually say. But I will say that it has that vibe to it where the writing is very much in line with that, maybe a little bit more serious than a lot of those movies, but not by much.
Speaker 1:It plays the story straight and it plays it kind of like an early 2000s rom-com, but it has that DNA that's very much like SNL based and I think that's what is like the magic sauce of the film itself, right and the thing, because I feel like that era, you know the early 2000s, we got a lot of teen movies, man, so many high school movies, so many college movies, like I mean, like everything all the time was high school and they were all raunchy. This one wasn't.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it had like moments of it, had moments that edged into that, but it was more in your window than anything.
Speaker 1:Right, like it wasn't you know it wasn't sex craze, and I think what it does well like to me personally, what gave it its staying power, is its interesting look into the teenage life, the teenage mind, high school.
Speaker 1:Because while it is very humorous, let's be honest, like the teenage mind is insane, and that's a lot of this movie tracks so well with that. You know, we blow all these small things up into proportion, like at the end of the day. I mean, aside from a lot of the bullying, a lot of the problems were not like really there were just typical teenage problems. You know, like it was just typical, you know, the teenage life stuff, and it was, I guess, stuff that a lot of people could relate with, but it was also something that we could kind of laugh off. So I think it's like, you know, if you're younger and you're watching this, you're like, oh my god, like this is totally true. But then if you're an older person watching this, you're like, yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe. I really like I felt this way when I was young too.
Speaker 2:This is ridiculous, you know, like it's it is funny because it captures a moment in time a little bit.
Speaker 1:It does too.
Speaker 2:High school experience, even though it's a little bit more dramatized or a little extra. You know that there were clicks, whether it was like, oh yeah, vocalized. You know whether it was vocalized or not. You know that you don't sit at that table, you sit at this table. You know that's just the way it was.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, dude, it was always always like, no matter what like it was, you know the drama kids would always hang out with each other, the band kids, because they're all in classes together, you know so it's. Or like you had the self-made clicks, kind of like what Janice and Damien were, where it was just you, you know a group of friends, that you guys weren't specific to any group it was. You guys were just your own group, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think more often than not that like I was in those clicks where I just kind of like fell into a group of friends, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Yeah, for me I was never that person that really had subscribed to that, because I hung out with the nerdy kids. I also kind of hung out with some of the skater kids you know I had. You know I had some like like drama oh not drama classes, but I had like a stage craft class. So I got connected with some of the drama kids. So it was just kind of like I really just connected with who I viped with rather than who they were as far as social hierarchy. But I still dealt with my stupid ridiculous high school stuff though Homework and whatnot and failing stuff, not on purpose, but I tried, but I was just lazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like.
Speaker 1:I just feel like the staying power was its interesting look at high school and obviously exaggerating it a bit and making it humorous.
Speaker 1:But I guess it works, because a lot of the times we exaggerate our problems Not saying all the time Some of them are real problems that should be dealt accordingly, but some of them we kind of blow up in our own minds and that kind of does this in that way. You know the way she visualized everybody like as if they were animals in the jungle. You know, katie Herron, that's what I thought was really interesting and I thought it was cool that you suggested to cover this because, like I said, while it's not, like you know, marvel or Star Wars or books within the normal wheelhouse, it was a big cultural phenomenon. It really grabbed a whole group or like a time period or a group of people, and I'm pretty sure that there's still younger generations that are watching it and it does capture a time because I mean, look at the technology man, look at the phones they had, look at the things that they use. So it was really cool looking back and seeing all the flip phones and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting little time capsule. I love stuff like that because the high school experience has changed in certain ways pretty drastically, like all kids nowadays use a laptop in class.
Speaker 1:We weren't allowed to have that in class. Yeah, so if you had one.
Speaker 2:So it's just a different world nowadays, and it's cool seeing how this exact same story can be told 20 years later with a whole new generation.
Speaker 1:Right, you know what it fits. So it kind of shows you how things kind of don't change. The technology and the world around us can change, but a lot of the problems that we might face are similar, you know.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. I really like that actually. Yeah, it's a cautionary tale of how being a mean girl isn't very nice.
Speaker 1:Well spreading rumors, bullying. It's a double-edged sword, because not only can you harm somebody else, but it can backfire. You damage your reputation by being that person, the one to talk about others behind your back, so it just doesn't do anything for anybody.
Speaker 2:One interesting change or not necessarily a change, but like some new bit of mean girl lore that they introduced the lore. The lore, we're bringing the lore. Mrs Norbury, tina Fey's character is married in this one to Principal Duvall.
Speaker 1:I was surprised.
Speaker 2:That's actually something I was just like oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Because I mean there was, because he was, definitely it was a little chemistry in the first movie. In the first movie, right, she had just actually divorced that summer prior. She actually like they had come back from school. In the original they came back from school or they came back to school from the summer and she actually had gotten divorced that summer. So, yeah, Not by him, no, no, no, no, not by him, but he was definitely interested, Like you know. Hey, you know, like you know if there's anything that you need you know I can be there for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's definitely like interested. He was put on the wrist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely so yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh my gosh, like they actually made them. They were actually married this time, Because like when he hit her with the I love you.
Speaker 2:I was like oh okay, so they're together. That was interesting. Yeah, I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was cool. I think that they were like you know, instead of them being separate, they're going to be married this time, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's one of those organic things that you have to like accommodate, for. When you have something like musical, where probably like 40% of your runtime is eaten up by song, you have to make some necessary cuts in terms of dialogue. So probably Princess or Princess, principal Duvall's comments or the idea of him hitting on the teacher had to be cut. So they just got rid of that and changed up their dynamic as a whole to accommodate the new time constraints that they might have had. That's just my own personal theory, but I think what was really funny there were certain lines where I'm just like I was surprised by how much they kept from the original movie when the math elites did that like rap dance in the talent show. It was the exact same song. It's funny, though it is so funny.
Speaker 1:I was laughing. I watched the original recently and yeah, dude, it's so funny.
Speaker 2:What amazed me was I haven't seen this movie in probably over a decade. It's been a very, very long time since I've seen main girls. So watching this movie and hearing that song from when I was a kid basically watching the original main girls and I was just like that's literally. They got away with bringing back the exact same rap. So I thought that was really funny.
Speaker 1:Talking a little bit back on Principal Duvall, they actually kind of scaled him up, like when he talked about his time in teaching and the old one he had been an educator for like 14 years, but in the newer one it was like added time. So I think it was like he had it was like 20, it was either like 24 or 30 years or something like that that he had said, like you know, I had been an educator for this amount of time for this to happen. And then they changed his line when he went to go break up all the girls fighting. In the original he said I didn't leave the south side for this, but in the new one he said I didn't leave grad school for this. So it's like he kind of improved himself in that period of time, like he went to grad school.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool. There was one line where I noticed or I think I noticed I might be incorrect here when they had the math elite tournament and Lindsay Lohan was like the conductor, that was a surprise. That was nice to see her. Yeah, wasn't that crazy. When they had the sudden death thing, she said this has only ever happened once before. In the original, if I remember correctly I haven't seen in a while. You might have to correct me or someone else might have to correct me I believe in the original they said this has never happened before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is like it's never happened before.
Speaker 2:So this is obviously, like it can't possibly be the same timeline, but like it's clearly.
Speaker 1:They make nods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they make nod to something that happened in the past, so I thought that was really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely been. So in the newer one there were some homages to the previous yeah you go Clint Coco.
Speaker 2:Alright, we should wrap this up. No man, I'm actually having a fun time talking about this.
Speaker 1:I know, I know it's so wild because, you know, coming into this movie I'm like man. What can I really talk about this? To recover on hours worth of podcast. But it's crazy because once you start talking about it, just so much starts to flood your mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was honestly really impressed for the most part for all the songs that they would push out. I think that they really did a fantastic job with set design. Everything felt very real. If I had one comment, that was like a super negative but could have been better. I think they miscast Jenna Fisher as her mom. I just didn't feel like it was that much chemistry between the two actresses. Katie Herron's mom is Jenna Fisher.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:But other than that I think I liked everything. I really enjoyed the film. I can't wait to see it again.
Speaker 1:Do you think that, like you just have her Jenna Fisher so stuck in your mind as Pam Beasley? I think a little bit. The other thing is her character was very similar to like Pam Beasley.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was very demure, very like cuddling in a way. Yeah, yeah, I could see Pam Beasley still in her performance. Maybe that's what I was thinking. It's got to suck for actors and actresses who get typecast.
Speaker 1:Yes, you can't break out of it, though the boy showed that you can. Robert Pattinson, yeah that's a good point. Daniel Radcliffe has to had some pretty good moments outside of Harry Potter too.
Speaker 2:Emma Watson has probably had the best career of the three of them in terms of like getting big roles. I don't want to throw any dunk.
Speaker 1:Any last words about Mean Girls old, new both.
Speaker 2:I think this movie would have done better if people realized it was a musical. Hollywood has learned kind of the wrong lessons when it comes to musicals, since the greatest showman underperformed.
Speaker 1:Which is sad, because I actually really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:It's a good movie, but it's because of that trailers are no longer advertising that this is a musical, like the Willy Wonka one that came out recently with Timothy Shalamey. How's the young Wonka is also a musical. It's not advertised as such, but it is. So it's interesting that we kind of live in that time where, like, certain truths are suppressed to try to boost box office viability. But I feel like those truths would probably boost this movie a little bit better. I don't know, I might be wrong. I'm obviously not like an analyst in that respect.
Speaker 1:I get what were you talking about. It's funny that you bring up the Wonka, though Like I feel like going in to see Wonka you should kind of expect it, because the original Willy Wonka the chocolate factory had a lot of music in it. There was a lot of singing in it.
Speaker 2:This is much more of a musical.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I know that that one's much more than much more of a musical, but it works really well. And when it hits at a point of the movie where, like you hear peer imagination, like you were just waiting, you're waiting for it. I haven't seen the new movie, dude, you got to, you got to. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty good. I really think that Shalamey does a really good job at playing a young kind of bright eyed Wonka.
Speaker 2:I have to check it out. Anthony, do you have any last words about Mean Girls?
Speaker 1:October 3rd, but not really.
Speaker 2:That's another line that I was just like. Oh wow, they actually used the October 3rd. That's Mean Girls Day. I love that part.
Speaker 1:You know I'd like keep it. I love that the song and the newer one that Katie sings about Aaron Samuels, and then there's just like that moment where she's like being pushed to the swing in the middle of class. You know what I'm talking about. But honestly, if you're a fan of the old one and if you're somebody that enjoys musicals, I do think that this movie is worth checking out. It does obviously do things to make it current with the times but, like Dakota and I have been saying all episode it follows pretty much the exact same beats as the original.
Speaker 2:So it's hard not to like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, some things it gets better, some things it doesn't get just right. But you know it's very much Mean Girls. You know, if you like the first one, you're gonna like this one. Yes, alright, guys, thank you so much for listening to us here for our 68th episode of Project Ecology. We'll see you in the next one, alright, bye.