S4 BONUS: Visions of Sugar Plums
episode description
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays! In this special Christmas bonus episode, Conor and Caroline are making Caroline's birthday that much sweeter with a (largely) unedited, gut reaction to her very first viewing of 2018's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Dance your way into the lands of snowflakes, sweets, flowers, and amusements as they go beat-by-beat through what in the this film is en pointe and what may need to head back to the barre. Rally your nutcracker soldiers and grab every sweet treat you can find because you're invited to a Christmas party you won't soon forget!
transcript
Conor Perkins: 00:47
Hello, happy holidays, and Merry Christmas. Welcome to Poor Unfortunate Podcast, where Disney is what we do... it's what we live for! We're the two besties you never knew you needed. I'm Conor Perkins.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:00
And I'm Caroline Aimetti. This is a Disney podcast for grown ups because we believe magic gets better with age. Listener discretion is advised.
Conor Perkins: 01:09
Welcome to all of our returning listeners and viewers. Thanks so much for joining us once again. And welcome to any new listeners or viewers. Thank you so much for joining. Please make sure that you hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. And if you're on YouTube, opt in for notifications so you don't miss out on anything. And then once we get to the end of the episode, or right now, if you're feeling it, hit five stars, leave a written review, and leave a comment wherever you're watching or listening to the podcast. It's one of the best things you can do to help us get seen in search results, help the podcast get pushed to other people, and we would really appreciate it. But there's another reason why you should really do it, and that's because today is Christmas Eve, which is a more important holiday here at Poor Unfortunate Podcast. And that is the birth of our Lord and Savior, Caroline Aimetti. Happy birthday, Caroline.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:60
Thank you.
Conor Perkins: 02:01
This is our first video uh birthday celebration with you.
Caroline Aimetti: 02:06
Just trust and believe we have been wearing these sweaters every Christmas bonus. You just wouldn't know.
Conor Perkins: 02:10
You would never know. But we always wear these for the past, like, what is it? Is it five years ago?
Caroline Aimetti: 02:15
Yeah, yeah.
Conor Perkins: 02:16
My mom got them for us in 2020. In the pandemic. In the pandemic.
Caroline Aimetti: 02:20
Come on, Walmart. Come on, Walmart.
Conor Perkins: 02:23
But yeah, happy birthday, Caroline.
Caroline Aimetti: 02:25
It's so this is like one of my favorite things that we do. Me, honestly, me too. And it's so nice to spend it with you, Conor, and with all of you listening and watching. Um, and yeah, if you could leave a little review for a birthday present, that would there's that's honestly the only thing I actually genuinely want at this point, anyway.
Conor Perkins: 02:42
Yeah, that and then send this to a friend. Like send this episode or an episode that you think that said friend will like. Yeah, do that as a lovely little birthday gift to Caroline. She would appreciate it.
Caroline Aimetti: 02:53
Yes.
Conor Perkins: 02:54
Uh, and Caroline, what have you been what have you been doing? How did you ring in uh this birthday? What are you been doing it the right way, right?
Caroline Aimetti: 03:01
Yeah. So I decided there's no better way for it to turn midnight on my birthday than to be sitting in a theater watching Wicked: For Good for the fifth time.
Conor Perkins: 03:10
Fifth time. So you finally caught up to me.
Caroline Aimetti: 03:13
Yes. Yes. Especially because it's coming out, it's coming out on Prime soon. So I was just like, I gotta get one more movie theater viewing in there.
Conor Perkins: 03:21
So yeah, I've got I think two more in me that I gotta get.
Caroline Aimetti: 03:27
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 03:28
So Caroline spent the beginning of her birthday doing it the right way at Wicked: For Good. And so now we're going to spend it with you all doing our annual holiday Christmas bonus.
Caroline Aimetti: 03:40
And I got a special gift this year from Conor.
Conor Perkins: 03:42
She's got a special gift this year. Tell them what it is.
Caroline Aimetti: 03:45
This year, for the first time in forever, we don't have to play our game of yes and no... of 20 questions.
Conor Perkins: 03:54
Which I know so many of our listeners. So many of you love.
Caroline Aimetti: 03:56
And you know what? I'm sorry, it's not your birthday, it's mine. She just wants a break this year. I just need a break. That game was pushing me to the edge of my sanity in so many different ways. And I needed a break. So we're doing something different this time, and I'm actually really excited for it. So, can I tell them what we're doing?
Conor Perkins: 04:14
Tell them what we're doing. Because you're kind of in this era right now.
Caroline Aimetti: 04:17
Oh, yeah. We'll talk about that too. So, much like we did for we did a birthday bonus for Conor where we did a D-Brief of a Disney movie he's never seen. Um, and so we did A Goofy Movie. And so this time we're doing a D-Brief for me too of a movie I've never seen, but that Conor and I have talked about at length before I ever even saw it. And that is 2018's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
Conor Perkins: 04:43
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 04:44
Heard of it?
Conor Perkins: 04:44
Heard of it?
Caroline Aimetti: 04:45
Maybe you don't even remember it.
Conor Perkins: 04:47
It happened.
Caroline Aimetti: 04:48
It happened. Did you see it in movie theaters?
Conor Perkins: 04:50
No.
Caroline Aimetti: 04:51
Oh, I thought you did. Okay.
Conor Perkins: 04:52
Okay. No.
Caroline Aimetti: 04:54
Okay. Yeah. I remember at the time being very, I think I remember seeing the trailer and looking at the aesthetic, and I was like, yeah, I want to go see that. And I just never did. And it's taken me this long.
Conor Perkins: 05:05
So yeah, for Caroline's birthday, we are going to be talking and doing a full D-Brief of Nutcracker in the Four Realms. So obviously, spoilers are ahead. If you haven't watched it, it's available for you to watch on uh Disney Plus. So you could watch it. Or if you don't want to, you can just keep listening.
Caroline Aimetti: 05:24
Listen to us talk about it.
Conor Perkins: 05:25
But if you want to take a pause and watch it for yourself, we'll take a little break right now and we'll be right here when you come back. And welcome back.
Caroline Aimetti: 05:34
Conor's gonna give you background information as we always do, but one thing I just wanted to note before he does that is that I am approaching this from a very interesting place because I'm like having a very strange, strange nutcrackery Christmas this year because I watched this for the first time. I just saw with my family um the Trans Siberian Orchestra live, which was like um a drug trip. And I'm also reading, I'm also reading the sluttiest nutcracker. I'm reading the sluttiest nutcracker right now. I'm reading A Court of Sugar and Spice, and uh I'm obsessed with that. And the craziest thing is like it is just so taking over my brain that like I'm trying to keep the versions of these characters from from like this and that streaking. Let's be very clear.
Conor Perkins: 06:22
Clara's a child in this. Clara's a child.
Caroline Aimetti: 06:26
Yeah. Oh my god. So yeah, uh, I'm very much in my nutcracker era. I've but I've always loved it. Like there was there were other versions of it that I loved as a kid too. Like there was the Barbie Nutcracker, there was, I don't know, there was something else that I used to get from Blockbuster, a version of an animated version. So yes, in my nutcracker era.
Conor Perkins: 06:46
I was a big nutcracker kid. Me too. Big nutcracker. We would watch Nutcracker on Ice.
Caroline Aimetti: 06:52
Oh my god.
Conor Perkins: 06:53
Oh, Nutcracker on Ice. We had that VHS that was super good. That was on NBC when they like broadcast it on NBC.
Caroline Aimetti: 07:00
I remember that.
Conor Perkins: 07:02
So we had that, I would watch that, and then when I was in second grade, we did like a little nutcracker in school thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 07:09
Lucky.
Conor Perkins: 07:10
And we picked parts out of a hat. We put our names in the hat for the character, and I was pissed because I was like, that is not how we should be doing this. I'm like, I want to be the nutcracker prince. And I didn't get it. I was furious.
Caroline Aimetti: 07:23
We when we did my church Christmas pageant, we pulled names out of the hat. And what happened was there were two categories of kids. There were like the older kids who would have the parts, and there were the younger kids who would be like the sheep. And my birthday's on Christmas, and I was right on the edge. And I'm like, I'm absolutely not gonna be in the ensemble of this. Like, I'm going with the older kids. And then my name gets pulled out of the hat to be Mary. And I was like, fuck yeah. And the other kid, the girl who was ended up playing Gabriel was pissed. And she was like, She is not the right age for this, but I I figured it out and I was Mary.
Conor Perkins: 07:57
And that is the main character energy that we are claiming in this next year around the sun. That is the main character energy we are claiming in 2026. Be like little Caroline, making sure that she gets put yourself where you feel like you belong. Yeah, go get Mary. Well, I put myself where I felt like I belonged, and I still got shot in the ass. So, but no, I was a huge, huge nutcracker kid. And this for the past couple of years, our holiday decorations at our house have all been like I love that theme.
Caroline Aimetti: 08:25
I think it's cute.
Conor Perkins: 08:27
It's all like sugar plums, like land of sweets and everything.
Caroline Aimetti: 08:31
We'll talk about it more when we talk about the movie, but that aesthetic is it's good. It's it's good, very cute.
Conor Perkins: 08:37
It's good. So yeah, we're both we're both coming from a deep love of the nutcracker and I'm not nutcracker. I remember when they announced this film, I was super duper excited for it.
Caroline Aimetti: 08:46
It really has you and I kind of written like on paper, written all over it. Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 08:50
And it's also like an obvious choice. Like, of course, Disney's gonna tackle the nutcracker.
Caroline Aimetti: 08:53
No one else has really I agree. Yeah, I agree with you.
Conor Perkins: 08:56
Gone for it. Like gone for it, gone for it.
Caroline Aimetti: 08:58
I agree.
Conor Perkins: 08:59
So, as we usually do, we are going to give you all some background information.
Caroline Aimetti: 09:04
Thank you so much.
Conor Perkins: 09:05
The Nutcracker in the Four Realms premiered on October 29th, 2018, in Los Angeles and was released in theaters on November 2nd, 2018, the United States. I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of people who worked on this film, and I am going to be crediting some of their other things just so that you can see that like serious people worked on this film. So it was directed by Lasse Hallström, who directed What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, Casanova, and almost all of the ABBA music videos. And it was directed by Joe Johnston, who did Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, and Captain America: The First Avenger. He was also an industrial light and magic designer behind the designs of the Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett. Those are our directors for this film. It was produced by Mark Gordon, who did The Day After Tomorrow, The Patriot, and the new Hercule Poirot films, starring Kenneth Brannaugh, and Larry Franco, who did Batman Begins and Jurassic Park 3.
Caroline Aimetti: 10:03
Wow.
Conor Perkins: 10:03
It was written by Ashleigh Powell. This is, I think, her first screenwriting credit.
Caroline Aimetti: 10:08
I did look into her and I didn't see anything else. Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 10:10
I didn't see anything else. Yeah. It's based on the Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffman and the Nutcracker Ballet by Marius Petipa, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The cinematography is by Linus Sandgren, who is the Academy Award-winning cinematographer for La La Land, No Time to Die, American Hustle, Salt Burn, and the upcoming films of next year, Wuthering Heights and Dune: Part Three.
Caroline Aimetti: 10:35
I was wondering if you were gonna say Wuthering Heights.
Conor Perkins: 10:38
Oh shoot!
Caroline Aimetti: 10:39
Wow.
Conor Perkins: 10:40
The production design is by Guy Hendricks Dyas, who did Inception and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The costumes are by Academy Award winner Jenny Beavan, who was the Academy Award winner for A Room with a View, Mad Max, Fury Road, and Cruella. She also did costumes for 1995 Sense and Sensibility. And gave us the Drew Barrymore ball gown with wings in Ever After.
Caroline Aimetti: 11:06
Okay.
Conor Perkins: 11:07
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Aimetti: 11:08
Okay. Serious people on this film. Okay.
Conor Perkins: 11:13
The music was adapted in part from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and featured new original music by James Newton Howard, who is one of my favorite composers. He did The Village, the entire Hunger Games series, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight alongside Hans Zimmer, and Maleficent. But also James Newton Howard and I, we share a birthday. So Gustavo Dudamel conducted the London Philharmonia Orchestra and appears in the film as the conductor with Lang Lang as the piano soloist. It features the original song "Fall On Me", performed by Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo Bocelli.
Caroline Aimetti: 11:51
There's a really, really long-standing inside joke between us about this that we couldn't even get explained now, but it's it's still No, we I'm gonna take the moment.
Conor Perkins: 12:00
You all deserve to know. I don't know if we've explained it on the I don't think so. Okay, if we have, I apologize. But so when this song came out, I was really super into it.
Caroline Aimetti: 12:10
I was like, We were both you introduced me to it, and we were both like, oh my god, this song is gorgeous.
Conor Perkins: 12:14
I'm like, it's it's stunning. And Caroline was like, Who is it by? I'm like, it's Andrea Bocelli, and it's actually his husband, who's much younger. And I'm like, it's like kind of like his nurse, I guess, sort of someone to take care of him in his old age, but they love each other. And I had to say, Oh my god, okay, that's beautiful. She goes home to her mother, God bless Lori Aimetti, and she was like, plays the song for her mom.
Caroline Aimetti: 12:37
I'm like, did you know that?
Conor Perkins: 12:38
And she's like, it's it's it's a duet between him and his husband, and she goes, That's his son, and then calls me and goes, What's wrong with you? You're sick. That beautiful song is between that man and his son.
Caroline Aimetti: 12:57
Oh my god. So fall in the world. So now every time I see the video with it, I think about the imaginary nurse husband of Andrea Bocelli.
Conor Perkins: 13:05
Lover nurse. Everyone, everyone deserves a lover nurse in their old age.
Caroline Aimetti: 13:09
Just the fact that you add it in nurse. I can't. I'm gonna lose it. I'm gonna actually lose it.
Conor Perkins: 13:16
Okay. The budget for this film was $120 to $130 million, and the box office was $174 million globally. We're gonna get it together. It stars among others Mackenzie Foy as Clara Stahlbaum, Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Jaden Fowara- Knight as Captain Philip Hoffman, the Nutcracker, Helen Mirren as Mother Ginger, Morgan Freeman as Drosselmeyer, Eugenieo Derbez as Hawthorne, Richard E. Grant as Shiver, Matthew Macfadyen as Clara's father, Benjamin Stahlbaum. There's a little uh Pride and Prejudice reunion moment happening in this. And Misty Copeland as the ballerina.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:01
Beautiful, beautiful.
Conor Perkins: 14:03
And let's talk about some reception here. Yeah. Now we're gonna have our own opinions about this, but I think it is important to note some of the context of this as a whole.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:11
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 14:11
So this was considered a box office flop with Disney losing over 65 million dollars on this film when all was said and done. It's blamed in part by its release date, which is two days after Halloween.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:23
Right. I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, what are we doing?
Conor Perkins: 14:26
They didn't even wait until after Thanksgiving.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:28
So silly.
Conor Perkins: 14:29
A huge budget, and then just sort of like a general lack of interest in the nutcracker concept.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:34
And I think I read this online too, and I have to disagree with that. There is interest. Maybe I'm talking about us.
Conor Perkins: 14:40
I think the general lack of interest also kind of goes in part with the timing of it. People aren't really looking to start doing nutcrackery type things two days after Halloween.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:49
Absolutely not.
Conor Perkins: 14:50
A week before for Thanksgiving, maybe sure.
Caroline Aimetti: 14:54
2018 was also Mary Poppins Returns around the holidays. So I think therein lies the problem. Yeah. Yep.
Conor Perkins: 15:01
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 15:02
Too light, like live action, you know.
Conor Perkins: 15:04
Yeah, I think they just they overstuffed the schedule. Yeah. I I think they should have held off on this one, actually.
Caroline Aimetti: 15:10
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 15:10
Uh the film received largely negative reviews for the most part, calling out the story and Keira Knightley's performance in particular, while giving some praise to the visuals and the overall aesthetic. Currently has a 32% tomato meter score and 36% popcorn meter score on Rotten Tomatoes. With an average rating of 5.1 out of 10. Cinema score gave the film an average grade of B.
Caroline Aimetti: 15:34
Oh, that's not so bad.
Conor Perkins: 15:36
Well, that's an average. Uh typically, typically, Disney films seldom go under A minus.
Caroline Aimetti: 15:41
Okay, okay.
Conor Perkins: 15:43
So yeah, I have a plot synopsis that I have pulled from the Disney Wiki. And so we're just gonna go through the plot and we're just gonna sort of talk about things like as they come up.
Caroline Aimetti: 15:51
So my God.
Conor Perkins: 15:53
Before we get started, first initial thoughts, impressions. What what what did you what did you what did you think?
Caroline Aimetti: 16:04
You know, you know, I put this on the other day. I started it the other day. I was like in a Christmassy mood. I I uh I my appetizer was Muppet Christmas Carol, and then I was like, and I'm gonna roll into Nut cracker in the Four Realms after this. I'm in a Christmassy mood. That was a choice.
Conor Perkins: 16:23
Um you need to reverse it.
Caroline Aimetti: 16:25
Yeah. You know, I think I am a little bit influenced by when I when I hear like, you know, scores in the 30s, I'm like, I'm not sitting here saying that's incorrect at all. However, I think I'm just like, I I guess this comes from me being a true, like I'm a big nutcracker fan. I I am I really enjoy Christmas material that is more, I guess, like classical in nature. Like, I don't need everything to be like Frosty and Santa. Like I'm usually looking for a little something else. And so when this opened and I saw these visuals, I was like, you know, I'm gonna like this. And also like Mackenzie Foy, like I was a very I was like, I think she's a great Clara.
Conor Perkins: 17:06
I think she's a fantastic Clara. Also, her dialect work is amazing. I did not know I did not know that she's British. I thought she was British as well. Yeah, and I'm like, more of that, please. We can do British.
Caroline Aimetti: 17:17
We can. Thank you, Mackenzie, for holding it down.
Conor Perkins: 17:20
Thank you.
Caroline Aimetti: 17:20
I guess first of all, if we're talking about overall, one of the things that I take issue with is like, yes, we need to we need to say nutcracker in the title so people know what it is. But my God, the nutcracker was sidelined majorly. And I remember, I remember seeing the promotional stuff for this back in 2018. And I'm like, oh, like, you know, they're the same age. We're gonna do a little. I get that she's a child, but I'm like, we're gonna do a little bit of like a child-like romance. Because yes, in the in the ballet, he can be older and she's younger, and he's just like more of her guide, and you know, that's that.
Conor Perkins: 17:51
I thought there, I always thought that there was a vibe.
Caroline Aimetti: 17:54
But I know that I'm me, and I think there should always be a vibe between them. And so then I saw these two actors, and I'm like, oh, nice. Like, we're gonna have these two people who are the same age, we're gonna have a vibe. We didn't do that.
Conor Perkins: 18:05
And I thought their chemistry was like it was good. It was good.
Caroline Aimetti: 18:09
He didn't get developed enough.
Conor Perkins: 18:10
No, there wasn't enough for him.
Caroline Aimetti: 18:12
He, I don't what do you tell? I couldn't tell you one thing about him.
Conor Perkins: 18:15
Yeah, it felt like sort of overall, uh it felt like they didn't want to lean into the romance, like the romance aspect, but there is a level of romance there is like not uh not lowercase R romance, but like capital R romance of the movement, like exactly that is involved in the not crack.
Caroline Aimetti: 18:34
And we're sampling pieces from the Tchaikovsky score, like it's yes, like you said, it's inherently romantic.
Conor Perkins: 18:39
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 18:39
Okay. But I think I just think overall, too, I think that applies to like my god, this cast is so stacked, but that's what you did to Morgan Freeman. How dare! And and Drosselmeyer is such an interesting character.
Conor Perkins: 18:54
That has always been what I have aspired to be as an uncle and godfather.
Caroline Aimetti: 18:58
I'm like, give me an eye patch, give me a cape, let me have fantastic, semi-magical parties, parties, and toys and inventions.
Conor Perkins: 19:06
Like, absolutely. And okay, you know what? We're gonna we're just now gonna start going into it because yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we're kind of getting there.
Caroline Aimetti: 19:13
But and not to and not to spoil my book that I'm reading, but like it gets revealed very early on. If you're trying to read A Court of Sugar and Spice, cover your ears. And I'm saying you should read it. Um, he I think there's just a lot to be minded in that character because he's the villain in that. And I think it's possible because he's an interesting dude.
Conor Perkins: 19:30
Yes, there is like a there is like a little bit of a there's a weirdness, like there's an edge to him. He has an eye patch.
Caroline Aimetti: 19:35
He has an eye patch and he has huge parties, but he's like a reclusive like inventor. Like, tell me more.
Conor Perkins: 19:41
Slash bachelor. Slash bachelor. Gay.
Caroline Aimetti: 19:44
Gay.
Conor Perkins: 19:45
Gay.
Caroline Aimetti: 19:46
Okay.
Conor Perkins: 19:47
Uh all right, so yeah, tell everybody about the biggest. Let's dive into the into the plot synopsis. So in Victorian England, as the residents of London prepare for Christmas Eve, Benjamin Stahlbaum gives his children Louise, Clara, and Fritz, Christmas presents. To fulfill his wife Marie's dying wish. Clara receives a handcrafted egg-shaped box, which she is unable to unlock. In the package, she discovers a note from Marie that states that the inside of the egg is all she would ever need. So we open, we've got this, and I'm just gonna say right off the bat, I was really kind of upset with the way that this film opened and all of the use of the heavy CGI in the episode. Oh, I was gonna say the same thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 20:28
The peo- the CGI people.
Conor Perkins: 20:30
The CGI people, because because here's the thing. And I I'm gonna take this. Uh I I saw this quote from Alonso Duralde, who was writing for the rap in his review of it. And he said, "' the child travels to a magical land and learns thing' trope has been the basis of many beloved stories from The Wizard of Oz to The Phantom Tollbooth to The Chronicles of Narnia, but it's not a foolproof device, particularly when the magical land in question never makes much narrative sense. Besides, how can the four realms be magical when the London where Clara already lives is so obviously a cartoon? Both the real world and the fake one are ugly, overdone, and lacking any visual connection to gravity, let alone reality." Now, I don't agree with all of this, but I can't see anyone who would not fault it where it's like the reason that a child would need to escape to a magical world is because the one that they're currently living in is lacking, or from their perspective, it is lacking. And so they need to go somewhere else to learn things that then they can bring back and see their world in a different way. And we know that a magical world that's the land of flowers, the land of sweets, the land of amusements, and the land of snowflakes.
Caroline Aimetti: 21:45
Snowflakes.
Conor Perkins: 21:46
We know we're gonna be CGI heavy in that world. Why are we not hyper, hyper realistic in the real world? And I think to open with CGI was just such a was such a a waste. And I know it's because they wanted to give us some of the music and the sweeping shots of London and everything, but I don't think that that really helps where Clara is supposed to be. She's supposed to feel like her world is small and stifled. And I don't think we needed to see as much of London as we needed to like feel more like Clara. I like that we got the little like introduction of her as an inventor in the attic. We got to see a little mouse, little nods here and there.
Caroline Aimetti: 22:30
Oops, yeah. The CGI of it all and the tone. It's so funny. This feels to me, in a way, I feel like the flop of this like marked the end of this era of like the 2010s, where a lot of family-oriented, fantastical period pieces looked exactly. Exactly the same. It was all feeling like it was coming down from the Alice, the Tim Bird and Alice in Wonderland. Maybe a little bit of Narnia. All of those films are like, you know, studios were like, that was a success. We need these family-friendly, sweeping tales of like a period setting, and then the main character goes to this fantasy world. And this feels like the end of that in a way, because I can't really name a lot after this that are that feel like they are part of that that lineage. And it was just so interesting because I was like, yeah, this is what every time, and I would always get drawn in by these because I'm a big period piece kind of gal. And I was like, Yeah, I remember when so many movies looked like this. And now, as much as I love it, when it's as much as I love like, you know, the aesthetic of Drosselmeyer's party, the beginning, like you said, in the CGI of it all makes me remember why it needed to be over.
Conor Perkins: 23:42
Yeah, the CGI was just like really rough. And I and I was just, it was so disheartening because I'm like, the Clara's house, the the interior, the production design of it all, it was so beautiful.
Caroline Aimetti: 23:54
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 23:55
And but at the same time, I'm like, I saw there was like a darkness to it. Like things were kind of muted. There was a lot of shadow.
Caroline Aimetti: 24:02
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 24:03
So I'm like, all of those things are present already in terms of you know making us feel like Clara, feeling like she's kind of overshadowed by this feeling of grief at the passing of her mother. All of that's there. And it, I think it would have been so much stronger to just like put us there and then let the big sweeping stuff let that be in the fantasy world. We don't need that in London. Or maybe we get that in London when she comes back out of it. She's finally able to see her world a little bit clearer. I don't know.
Caroline Aimetti: 24:39
Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about this later as well. But when she comes back, I think that's part of the issue as well. Yes, I I understand part of it is like the odds of it all of like you had it within you the whole time. And it's so obvious that it's like, yes, of course, that's what they're trying to say. But beyond that, I'm kind of like, what changed for her in this journey? I guess she came back and she saw her father in a new light, but I don't really know why.
Conor Perkins: 25:03
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 25:04
Um, so just I don't know the the what she got out of this whole adventure was lacking for me.
Conor Perkins: 25:10
Yeah. So after that, we go to the Christmas Eve ball. The family heads the Christmas Eve ball, which is hosted by the children's godfather and skilled engineer Drosselmeyer, refusing to dance with Benjamin. Clara scurries from the crowd to ask Drosselmeyer how to unlock her egg. He then reveals to her that it was a creation of his that he gifted to Marie when she was younger, and that her wish was to bestow the gift to Clara. So we get this really interesting. There's also this owl.
Caroline Aimetti: 25:40
There's just this owl.
Conor Perkins: 25:42
There's just this owl.
Caroline Aimetti: 25:43
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 25:43
That's there. Uh I do enjoy that they have given Clara's mother the name Marie because Marie and Clara are both names that are used interchangeably in the Nutcracker story. So you can go see a ballet, and sometimes Clara is actually referred to as Marie. Uh, or there's short stories.
Caroline Aimetti: 26:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Conor Perkins: 26:06
And yeah. But uh these these scenes of the young girl sort of like pushing against the boundaries of the world that she has inherited, it's hard to not make them all feel the same. Like, so much of what I was seeing in this was the scenes with Alice in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland.
Caroline Aimetti: 26:30
Some of the shots were like the same.
Conor Perkins: 26:34
And I'm just like, how is Clara not Alice? I'm like, that's what I want to know. And she was an adventure. I'm like, that's great. But you also just like Disney, you recently just gave all the invention stuff to Belle in Beauty and the Beast. So I'm like, it doesn't really feel like Clara is her own figure. And this scene with Drosselmeyer.
Caroline Aimetti: 26:54
There's so much potential to be, you know?
Conor Perkins: 26:56
She absolutely does. And I think everything that Mackenzie Foy is doing, she's trying to find that. She's trying to show us that. But I think it's just sort of like baked into the script that there's a lot of these tropes that Disney has been sort of like putting into the mill and like churning out over and over again in these films. And Clara has become the sort of like amalgamation of like a little bit of Alice, a little bit of of Belle. And it's like, yeah, but who is Clara? And this scene with Drosselmeyer is our opportunity, I think, to see who she is.
Caroline Aimetti: 27:27
And she's got a really I this is lower on the importance scale, but she's got a really beautiful, potentially iconic look.
Conor Perkins: 27:35
Costume. That costume is gorgeous. That purple.
Caroline Aimetti: 27:38
That dress. That's why when you said that the that the designer did Drew Barrymore's dress in Ever After After. That is one of the costume in Ever After.
Conor Perkins: 27:46
Yes. Like that is one of those dresses.
Caroline Aimetti: 27:48
This has potential.
Conor Perkins: 27:50
This I love this dress. There's actually many costumes in this film that are beautiful. Actually, a lot of Clara's looks in general. The the ballet look is incredible.
Caroline Aimetti: 27:60
Coronation, whatever that was at the end.
Conor Perkins: 28:01
At the end is beautiful, but I also love her in the soldier outfit with the ponytail. I'm like, this is her looks are fantastic.
Caroline Aimetti: 28:10
Her looks are great. Yeah. Yep. 100%.
Conor Perkins: 28:13
And I'm just like, it it just felt like we had a bunch of pieces. We had an actor who could do it. We had costumes who knew what they were doing. We had so many things all working together.
Caroline Aimetti: 28:23
We had fantastic source material that just like other successful film, and I understand this is live action, but other successful films, such as The Swan Princess, such as Sleeping Beauty, can be based on these classical ballet scores and just be really good. It's good source material.
Conor Perkins: 28:43
We had all of these people ready to rise to this character and doing that work, but we just didn't have that character fully formed.
Caroline Aimetti: 28:52
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 28:53
Which and and see, you know what? I don't even fully blame the screenwriter because this feels like Disney. This feels like this feels like producing.
Caroline Aimetti: 29:03
Well, I did wonder when I read a little bit about reshoots happening. I'm like, it feels like something was going on behind the scenes that we might not know about, of just like the story and the idea and the arc of this film getting messed with a little bit. And I'm wondering if that's part of what this is.
Conor Perkins: 29:19
I'm I would not be surprised if maybe this was more of a romance and then they took the turn to try and make it something else. And I and maybe it strips of it because if Clara was a romantic, that is actually something that we're missing from these heroines of this in the live action period of Disney in this time. We don't have young heroines who really fall in love in this.
Caroline Aimetti: 29:44
Yes, and I I understand that I'm always very pro-romance, but I think it would make sense for her story of like she always felt like her mother really understood her and she understood her mother. So it would be her journey of finding that maybe you can you can find that in another person, someone who really understands you. And I'm wondering if, because of the title of this movie, I'm like, if this had been successful, would this have been the beginning of a saga? Of like we see Clara age, and then it's like the nutcracker in this, the nutcracker in that. Like it that's what it feels like to me almost of like this was supposed to be the beginning of something and it never happened.
Conor Perkins: 30:19
So returning to the ballroom, Clara gets scolded by Benjamin, her father, for not dancing with him. She calls him self-absorbed and obsessed with his family's image since Marie's passing. A scene that plays out very similarly to Alice and her mother at the like engagement party, after which Drosselmeyer announces it being time for children to receive their gifts. First off, this ballroom put me there. I want Drosselmeyer's house.
Caroline Aimetti: 30:47
You know, I wrote that in my notes. I was like, drop me inside the aesthetic of this ball because this is this is the vibe.
Conor Perkins: 30:53
The orchestra placed inside the swan carriage thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 30:59
Absolutely.
Conor Perkins: 31:00
A stage with like classic spinography.
Caroline Aimetti: 31:04
This is a dream. Yeah, this is my dream Christmas party. This is my dream Christmas aesthetic. This is it.
Conor Perkins: 31:09
It's so the the That's why we started in such a great place.
Caroline Aimetti: 31:13
I was just like, yes, the vibe is right, baby. Like lush, luxurious, classical Christmas.
Conor Perkins: 31:20
And listen, we're gonna probably go in pretty hard on this film if we haven't already. But I will say, having watched this now, I think three times in my life, it was not as bad as I remember it being the first time.
Caroline Aimetti: 31:34
It's not like it's the the rating it has online is like this is absolute garbage.
Conor Perkins: 31:39
This is just like forgettable.
Caroline Aimetti: 31:40
It's just forgettable and not fl not a fleshed out story, is what it is. Yes, it's which is upsetting again when the source material is so good. It has so much potential. Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 31:49
There's yes, that's the thing of this film. The frustration that I have for it is the wasted potential.
Caroline Aimetti: 31:55
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 31:56
The wasted potential of the source material and the wasted potential of all of these incredible people and artists who are working on this film. 100% feels it just feels like studio hands.
Caroline Aimetti: 32:05
None of these iconic award-winning actors are used to their potential, like even close to like half of their potential. And that is a crime. It's a crime. No.
Conor Perkins: 32:15
So Clara goes to receive her gift. She goes outside to this like beautiful Christmas tree, and they do this, the they do the thing where she finds the string with her name on it, signifying her gift, and she follows the string all throughout the house.
Caroline Aimetti: 32:30
I don't want to go to the realms, I want to stay here. But I guess again, maybe that is in the source as well. Because the Drosselmeyer's Christmas party is always lit.
Conor Perkins: 32:37
Yeah. So as part of like Marie's dying wish, he's sending Clara into the realms that Marie escaped to in her childhood and in her life.
Caroline Aimetti: 32:48
Yeah, a little unclear, but we'll talk about that later too.
Conor Perkins: 32:51
So this scene is actually like I kind of I dig this. Like she goes through this hallway, and the wallpaper has the owls, and then the owls shift to mice.
Caroline Aimetti: 33:00
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 33:01
Super duper cool.
Caroline Aimetti: 33:02
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 33:03
And then she keeps following the string until she is in the Christmas tree forest. Uh and she like comes out.
Caroline Aimetti: 33:09
Still beautiful, still beautiful.
Conor Perkins: 33:10
Very beautiful. She comes out of like sort of like an uprooted tree. Like she's coming out of like the roots of a tree. So she is now in the Four Realms. She's in the this Christmas tree forest in a parallel world where she sees the key, the key that unlocks this egg that her mother left her. But before she can grab it inside this like Christmas tree that's sort of like illuminated by lights, fairies, fireflies, unclear.
Caroline Aimetti: 33:35
That we never see again.
Conor Perkins: 33:36
We never see them again. A mouse snatches it, and unable to reach him because he crosses a little frozen lake, Clara approaches Captain Philip Hoffman, who is a nutcracker charged with guarding the entrance to the fourth realm.
Caroline Aimetti: 33:54
Okay, wait. I just thought of something. Okay. Cause I was gonna say, listen, part of the fun, I understand that the fun of some of the of adapting some of these stories is like, what's what's the new way of looking at this? But I'm like, a lot of the fun of the nutcracker is that in her world, he's a nutcracker, and in this world, he is her friend.
Conor Perkins: 34:17
But we didn't see him in the real world in a split second. Stop. No, Fritz receives a nutcracker soldier and comes up to and he's just like putting it in.
Caroline Aimetti: 34:27
Oh god, you're right.
Conor Perkins: 34:28
He's putting it in Clara's face. And if you the lighting is a little bit strange. So you can't really tell that it's like a it is a black nutcracker.
Caroline Aimetti: 34:36
Okay.
Conor Perkins: 34:37
That is our only that is our only clue.
Caroline Aimetti: 34:40
Okay. Damn, right. I forgot about that.
Conor Perkins: 34:43
The nutcracker is gifted to Fritz, not right.
Caroline Aimetti: 34:48
I was gonna say it's not Clara's. And also there's no establishing at any point the connection between like a la, you know, any of these stories, but like Wizard of Oz, the movie, you know, things from the real world being different versions in the fantasy world. So I guess it doesn't matter, but at the end of the day, we're still calling this the nutcracker.
Conor Perkins: 35:06
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 35:06
And he's never really a nutcracker, but okay.
Conor Perkins: 35:09
Yeah, she calls him a nutcracker soldier, and that's the only way that we would know that he is a nutcracker soldier. Is she?
Caroline Aimetti: 35:14
Yeah, he just looks like a soldier. And he has like a like a lip liner on that I'm like, is it supposed to allude to like a nutcracker's mouth? I don't know.
Conor Perkins: 35:22
Uh so Captain Philip Hoffman, he identifies Clara as a princess and follows her orders uh when she demands that he lead her across the bridge into the fourth realm where the mouse ran off with the key. Uh they are unable to obtain the key from the mouse once they get into the fourth realm, which is like a creepy, creepy, sort of like broken down, like haunted looking forest. And they get chased away by the mouse king, which is realized by all of these mice in the realm, sort of like coming together to create this sort of like beast figure. Cool concept, very cool concept. I really liked the way that that was realized. And I was reading some stuff about like how they arrived at that because they were like, Yeah, in some of those stories, the Mouse King is identified as having like seven to nine heads and things like that. And they're like, how do we do that and not make it terrifying, terrifying, but still scary and intimidating? And I'm like, I think they did a really good job.
Caroline Aimetti: 36:25
Because also, I'm like, when the thing is holding her and the mice are just like running over her, it was oh, I was like, at first, especially because at first, never having seen this, I fully expected a la the original that the rat this formation of mice was gonna be the villain in some way.
Conor Perkins: 36:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 36:41
So I was like, oh my god, I'm that's what's interesting. I don't need everything to be exactly the same. However, I don't know. I feel like that was another thing that was like established in a cool way and then went nowhere. Like, yes, the mice slash rat king, whatever ended up help being super helpful and heroic in some ways, but it's just it's this concept that then we just ditched.
Conor Perkins: 37:02
There's a lot of like really, really great ideas. And they go like nowhere.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:06
Nowhere.
Conor Perkins: 37:06
We're like, throw this in, this and and I'm like, no, these are great, but let's follow the the thread. And how are they connecting back to one another? And if they're not connecting back to one another, maybe we don't need to do it in the first place.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:17
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 37:18
But then we also get to see this like really creepy, like mother gingering, like metal thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:26
Hated it, so scary.
Conor Perkins: 37:28
Also, I thought it was like kind of cool.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:29
I was Oh no, no, no, like loved, but hated because I was like, this is horrifying. It's horrifying. It's terrifying.
Conor Perkins: 37:35
But I'm like, this is a this is another really cool way of realizing the mother ginger character from the ballet where all of the children come out of like under her skirts and everything.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:44
So smart. Yeah. Again, word work, we've got good ideas.
Conor Perkins: 37:47
Yeah, it's a mother ginger metal big top.
Caroline Aimetti: 37:50
Yeah, I'm into it. Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 37:52
So Clara and Captain Philip, they manage to get away from this Mouse King conglomeration of mice and escape the fourth realm, but they can't get the key. They weren't able to get the key. So now she's like, I don't really know what to do. And he's like, We're gonna go to the palace and we're gonna, you know, see what's up. So he guides her to the palace where she meets the three regents of each land. So we've got Shiver, who is the regent of the land of snowflakes. We have Hawthorne, who's the region of the land of flowers, and we have the sugar plum fairy, who is the region of the land of sweets.
Caroline Aimetti: 38:28
And at this point, I'm still I'm still with it. Yeah. I'm like trying to track when they uh when I when I lost it, and I was still with it at this point.
Conor Perkins: 38:35
The costumes are super awesome and the thing. They're what you would want.
Caroline Aimetti: 38:40
And this like fantasy, sweetsy, wintry, yes, all good, good, good. Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 38:45
So the regents tell Clara that they are at war with the land of amusements, which is now only referred to as the fourth realm. And Clara imparts the information that the people have not received that her mother, Queen Marie, has passed, which they all sort of are devastated by because they have been anxiously awaiting for her to return to their world. Uh, so Clara now is being tasked with being the new leader, the new queen of the land. And so she watches a ballet that tells the story of their world's creation and the sugar plum fairy region of the land of sweets. She explains to Clara that Marie created this world as a young girl. And then later in the film, Clarifies it like she animated everyone with a machine that can turn toys into real people.
Caroline Aimetti: 39:35
And so that's it should have been more clear.
Conor Perkins: 39:39
Yeah, it wasn't super clear that like the sugar plum fairy was a toy.
Caroline Aimetti: 39:42
It wasn't. It wasn't clear that it's like everything that has manifested here was like a toy or like a suite or a something from her world.
Conor Perkins: 39:50
Because and I think it's because some of the like organic stuff feels so organic.
Caroline Aimetti: 39:54
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 39:55
Where I'm like, it would be interesting if it like she took a flower and then the flower. Like almost. Yeah, it's almost like um like honey I shrunk the kids kind of yeah yeah yeah it's kind of it's an interest it's a really interesting concept but I'm like I think I need to introduce a little bit sooner but before we move on also she eats her hair which is she eats her hair hilarious let's talk about the ballet yes this is I think like the strongest portion I think like of the film in general for me it's beautiful yeah because it is such they've realized kind of like the perfect homage in film to the Nutcracker ballet right and it starts with even referencing other things that Disney has done with the Nutcracker where we see the conductor walk out and in silhouette which is a reference to Fantasia where they do the Nutcracker suite and it's animated. So I'm like we've got references to Disney and the Nutcracker. It's so smart. And then you have Misty Copeland who is oh my god just one of the most beautiful performers just performers in general that I've ever seen absolutely the aesthetic of the dance of the the the stage that she's dancing on creating the flowers and the snowflakes and the sweets under her feet as she's on point.
Caroline Aimetti: 41:18
It's beautiful.
Conor Perkins: 41:19
It's beautiful.
Caroline Aimetti: 41:20
It's also just a great device for giving us backstory on this because this is a pretty short for what we're trying to do here. This is too short of a film. And I think even more so this could have provided some actual backstory for us of like had it or I don't know how it was create how the land was created how it all fell apart.
Conor Perkins: 41:40
Like that's that's kind of the thing is like we get sort of the bare bones of it where it's like Mother Ginger she wanted to rule the realms for herself like that sort of stuff. But it's just sort of like your mother created this world and I'm like no one's asking how right right I don't know Clara also learns that time moves differently in this world when Sugar Plum takes her to the clock and turns out that they are like inside the clock of Drosselmeyer's home. She gets this little right moment where she sees her father sitting in the corner sad and it's kind of like a moment where we see I'm like okay here we're trying to track this character arc moment of her having more sympathy and patience with her father that other people you know experience grief differently.
Caroline Aimetti: 42:27
There's just like so many things that she has to like for but also not enough.
Conor Perkins: 42:32
Right, exactly exactly sugar plum fairy's costume her aesthetic love it love yeah love it I love it like I remember when the first images for this film came out and I saw the three regents and I was like this is the shit. This looks sick it looks so good. I mean if I was younger I would want a doll of the sugar plum fairy I mean she looks amazing until you see the sugar plum fairy in action and the character and some of the choices that happen it just it's not all meshing together. The scripts the character the the realization maybe the direction as well it it's just yeah it it feels she feels very outside of even this world that we've created in a way that like Shiver, Mother Ginger and Hawthorne feel very grounded more grounded yeah in this world sugar plum fairy feels like she's doing something else which maybe that is intentional maybe that is a choice to like make her feel that but I maybe there's another way that we could have done it.
Caroline Aimetti: 43:35
I think the trap is almost that the Sugar Plum Fairy in the ballet is like the big feature like she's like the ultimate like princess role of the ballet and I understand sorry we're this is a spoiler jumping ahead into the plot which we're gonna talk about in a moment anyway but like turning her into the villain I get it you want to do this a bold change. You want to make the big princess character into the villain fine.
Conor Perkins: 44:01
But then I think I think there is some the the dance of the sugar plum fairy is always like a little bit eerie the the music itself so I'm like okay I can see where you're pulling from to try and do that.
Caroline Aimetti: 44:14
Yeah yeah I just think the pre-villain sugar plum we get needs to be so much more alluring. Like she needs to be like the ultimate like you just want to like be around her you want to talk to her you want to like she's got to have that pull and that's not what this character was.
Conor Perkins: 44:31
Yeah she was very saccharin like from the beginning which I'm like I I get where it's she's from the land of sweets like I kind of get it but it's like I don't know the sugar plum fairy needs to be like a sweet that you want another hit of again and again. She needs to be like Queen Frosty yeah yeah where like there's a little bit of mystery to her something like that.
Caroline Aimetti: 44:53
She's yeah and she can certainly be sweet but it felt like almost sugar plum was trying too hard which I mean again again I think then you're supposed to be like oh I see it in hindsight that she was trying too hard because she's evil but she's trying too hard because she's evil or she has attachment issues and that's what got her into this situation in the first place but I'm just like I'm just like I don't think that's the strongest choice for sugar plum fairy and I think I think that's the strong choice for her if her arc doesn't end up being the villain. If you want to just have her be this like comical sweetie girl I'm down with it. But then she can't become the villain.
Conor Perkins: 45:25
I I agree I agree with that. So after the ballet Clara goes with Sugar Plum Fairy and Sugar Plum Fairy explains that her mother used this device that would turn toys into real life people and that they can use it to defend the other three realms against Mother Ginger, the regent of the fourth realm who is set upon claiming all of the realms for herself. Clara notices that the keyhole that runs the machine matches the one of her egg and is missing and that that's the only thing that's keeping them from using this machine. So she's like okay we need to go get this key not just for my egg but for this machine to save the world so in order to do that she's got to go to the fourth realm. She and her soldiers she assembles them all they all go suddenly she knows how to lead a regiment. She just suddenly just like and ride a horse so she leads them all across the bridge which another thing this palace I love the palace. Yeah you know it's something new like that I think that's also what I look for in like a fantasy castle I'm looking for something new and like having all of the Russian influence to it but then also that it is on this like peak of a waterfall perpetual waterfall. Clara she leads this regiment over into the fourth realm.
Caroline Aimetti: 46:52
And I think this was the point where I was like oh because I I checked the time left and I was like crap I literally think the rest of this movie is just going to be about the engine and the key and that just feels a little meh to me. Like I get it it is a major conflict it's the realms against each other going to war. Yet at the same time it just felt so small. Well get the key feels so small to me.
Conor Perkins: 47:19
And I think that's also the the trap of it you're calling it Nutcracker and the Four Realms but it's not a she's she spends most of her time either in the castle or in the land of amusements in the fourth realm. This isn't a journey through all four realms it's just like we only see her visit the the land of snowflakes, the land of flowers and the land of sweets in at the end in that like well in a quick little montage moment during the ballet where it's like oh she's like getting her presentation but they're really like blinking you miss it sort of moments.
Caroline Aimetti: 47:48
Oh my god lost that that's all happening during the ballet too that's a huge part of the story that would make this feel bigger which is like she's getting presented as the new queen of all four realms like what is that like and like but they smashed that into into the ballet montage that is so strange. Just like at the I noticed and I you know what that happened so fast I didn't even clock it but at the end she had this very very two second long coronation moment and I was kind of just like well what happened there like and then she leaves she leaves and then she's like bye thanks for the thanks thanks for the kingdom bye bye God you know you know the trauma that you have of my mom leaving you and then going off and dying go ahead and do that.
Conor Perkins: 48:34
I'm gonna go ahead and do that for you real quick.
Caroline Aimetti: 48:38
All right so she gets they go over into the fourth realm they have this like creepy battle in the woods nope everything that I hate about Alice in Wonderland was starting to happen in this and I was like oh no no we get Mouse Rinks the Mouse Mouse Rinks Mouse Rinks and I'm kind of just like why the name of the mouse honestly like why can't he be the Mouse King and then the formate he makes a formation of a giant mouse but like why couldn't he just be called the Mouse King I don't know because again why was that thing called the Mouse King he's not the king and also there is a queen he's not the king and like his name wasn't even Mouse Rex which I'd be like oh Mouse Rex Rex being being king but no it's like Mouse Rex.
Conor Perkins: 49:24
It's like Mouse Rex or something it's it's why is he the Mouse?
Caroline Aimetti: 49:26
Why is that formation of mice the mice the Mouse King that he's not the king everybody there is a clear structure of leadership here.
Conor Perkins: 49:34
He's not a king in any way shape or form yeah they kind of feel like more of like a commune yes yeah so they're doing this sort of like battle in in the forest in the mist and everything and Clara continuing to look for the key sees that the key goes into the creepy run down of amusements of all these like rusted amusement rides and carnival stuff.
Caroline Aimetti: 49:58
Which I don't dislike but again is it over kind of an overdone aesthetic the broken down carnival I've kind of seen it before yeah it doesn't feel super creative to me.
Conor Perkins: 50:06
And I'm also just like how did it all get broken down? Right because it's just like supplies have been cut off to that realm I suppose of magic who knows I'm like what what keeps the things oiled and clean and how did mother ginger get her face crack her face crack face crack of the century. Yeah so Clara goes into the Mother Ginger big top she sees the like Punchinella uh yeah bloop bloop bloop bloop funny funny clown thing nightmare fuel she goes like up this little staircase thing stairs that thing was cool invention I'm like I would ride it would ride and then she comes face to face with Mother Ginger. So she sees Mother Ginger Mother Ginger has the key and they sort of have this little like face-off moment and then Philip comes in causes a distraction she grabs the key and hustles her ass out of there from motherfucking I don't even know how that happened let me let my want my mind wandered a little bit I was like oh she's out with the key okay literally Mother Ginger like Philip comes in he starts battling the clowns on the ground floor mother ginger looks away she grabs the key and then she slams herself into the little seat little swirly seat and then she goes all the way back down they run out.
Caroline Aimetti: 51:24
There were too many battle sequences in this and I again I get that's actually in the source material but for me it was in favor of plot development. So it was just like half of the movie I felt like I was watching the sword fights and I just not interested in that.
Conor Perkins: 51:37
Yeah I almost kind of wish that like she didn't go into the fourth realm that she hadn't already been in the fourth realm.
Caroline Aimetti: 51:44
Agree.
Conor Perkins: 51:45
That if this was the first time like if if when she was with the nutcracker he took her straight to the palace and we skipped it.
Caroline Aimetti: 51:52
Yes we didn't need any of the rest of it anyway completely agree. Yes. And I almost wish that then we could cut out these little clowny guys it would almost be cooler if she's walking I mean even though I do love the gigantic Mother Ginger thing and I wouldn't trade it. If it's like Mother Ginger is just like in the woods and they just like come face to face like two women just like walking on foot and it's like she's surprised to just like see her walking around like a normal person.
Conor Perkins: 52:20
You know like so that it could be more of a personal that feels very Oz the great and powerful too where it's like you think that the bad witch is Glinda and you meet her in the graveyard and everything.
Caroline Aimetti: 52:30
Yes. These are all sorry I forgot to mention that film at the beginning too of like all the things that feel like they're in the same line Oz the Great and powerful is in this line too.
Conor Perkins: 52:38
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so they escape from Mother Ginger and Clara and Philip they go off and she's able she's got her key and she opens up her her egg and it turns out that it is a music box and it's disappointing to her and it's it's playing the the sort of like love theme between the nutcracker love theme. It's the first it's the it's the duet that I love that that the nutcracker and Clara dance after he's been transformed into the prince.
Caroline Aimetti: 53:13
Yeah like this is a Disney movie. He's a prince I was gonna say it's a Disney movie where we have a prince transformation and we're like nah let's not okay what? Okay.
Conor Perkins: 53:24
So Clara's disappointed she's like I don't give a fuck about this this key anymore just take it back to sugar plum and everything and and Philip's like no you should you should come back too and everything and Clara's just feeling all down about herself.
Caroline Aimetti: 53:37
She's constantly like I'm kind of gonna leave all the time.
Conor Perkins: 53:40
Yeah it's it's it's constantly kind of gonna leave it's constantly I'm a piece of shit it's constantly I'm not my mother which is okay like then we really just have to like fully make that her thing because then she's way too confident leading these troops.
Caroline Aimetti: 53:54
Yeah yeah because I'm like no no you were acting very much like a queen it was working for me it seems like you can do it but her whole thing is like I can I'm not my mother but she's doing it she's doing it.
Conor Perkins: 54:05
Yeah yeah yeah that that arc wasn't mapped which needed to be if that's the if that's the theme which it is the theme that they're going for of her lesson to learn that like you have a menu. Yeah and your mother always was like you are the greatest thing ever like yeah uh so she goes back to the castle gives the key to sugar plum fairy who uses the machine to turn some tin soldiers into life size ones that will obey her every command because they don't have anything in them. Phil I thought that was an interesting line that Philip points out he's like he's like they're made of tin they're hollow and she's like exactly they'll do everything I want and they'll obey her commands including the one to attack the fourth realm. Mm-hmm and now we get the reveal that Sugarplum is actually the one who wants to rule the realms and why is not very the why behind that is not very solid to me. It's just like I miss Marie she told us to play nice and I don't want to it's just it seems it seems like it's coming from a place of sugar plum believed in Marie with everything and she was abandoned and she was like I don't want to follow any of the rules I don't want to be beholden to any leader because they just let you down.
Caroline Aimetti: 55:25
So I'm well when you describe it that way I'm like that's solid but it wasn't clear. I know it just felt like chaotic for for no reason.
Conor Perkins: 55:34
Well because also the script has really weird things happening that feel very out of place where she's like hello boys and she's like I was just gonna say what and she's constantly like she actually says the line like she says hello boys and then she was like a man in uniform and these boys. She refers to them as boys too.
Caroline Aimetti: 55:53
It's weird it's so strange. It's very out of place I think even in this world yes the villain who says that is a villain who was like jilted by a lover or something and that's not her I'm like is she attracted to these tinge soldiers I don't yeah like she was just constantly like sexualizing them in a weird way it was so strange.
Conor Perkins: 56:12
Also she's a sugar plume fairy and she only flies two times and one time she opened up her wings I was like I was like uh so sugar plum reveals that the machine can also turn this world's people back into toys and that she intends to do that to the other regents and that she had lied about Mother Ginger. I'm like but they're not they don't look like toys okay and Mother Ginger with her people of the land of amusements had resisted against Sugar Plum Fairy's plan and that's why she made sure that she was on the Alps Clara is like this shit ain't happening this is fucked and Sugar Plairy is like fine I'll throw you in prison. So she puts Clara Philip Shiver and Hawthorne into prison which is like the attic it's like very beautiful rooms it's beautiful ver.
Caroline Aimetti: 57:08
Verdi for and this could have been the moment before Shiver, Shivers whatever and Hawthorne arrive this could have been again even if we're not gonna lean full-fledged romance this could have been a really beautiful connection scene between Philip and Clara being like it's us we're gonna do this together like I got you but now we've got these two older men who are also present for it. And it's just kind of like slash also I think they wanted to not even have that be in our minds so they give the moment like if it's not all of them it's Clara by herself and that's when Clara opens her music box again and she discovers that the top flips to reveal a mirror illustrating that she all she needed was herself which we all knew from the get yeah yeah so she and the other prisoners escape using physics cool scene and I'm like again my brain turned off I'm like yeah they got out I don't how I don't know it's it's taking too long there's no plot I don't care about these action sequences please I'm truly my mind wandered I don't even know what I was thinking about.
Conor Perkins: 58:20
So they're escaping prison and she's like I gotta stop this I gotta set this right I gotta stop sugar plum and so she is trying to make her way back into the the room where Sugar Plum's making all this shit meanwhile Mother Ginger has sent mouse ricks mouse rinks mouse mouse mouse mouse mouse the mouse the big mouse head mouse a rink mousy she sent Mousy over to the castle to be like shit's gonna go down keep an eye on it and now Philip's like oh mousey you're my friend and he's like we need to the romance was truly between the two of them the way that Mouse A rinks like cuddles him at the end of the movie I was like they're in love. They're in love.
Caroline Aimetti: 59:04
They're in love. Which you know sure I mean if you want to give me that version of the story the Mouse King and the nutcracker maybe that is book two of the sluttiest nutcracker it's uh it's the in this it would never work that way the mouse in this book the mice in this book are disgusting oh disgusting I was gonna say heated rivalry has nothing on the nutcracker the nutcracker is beyond horny for Louisa so it's never gonna happen Louisa yes never heard of her the sister Clara is busy with the sugar plum fairy but I digress sugar plum fairy's a man but he but he is very very bi who does he get with every everybody do you get a by scene um do he well I'm only halfway through the book so who knows who knows but he tells her but he tells her about like he's been with everybody he has pink hair he has Black nails, like it's over. So, all this to say, I'm very much not against people taking these established characters and doing something new. You gotta build it for me, and I will come. I mean, that's added wrong.
Conor Perkins: 01:00:26
Thank you for joining us on Poor Unfortunate Podcast. This is our final episode.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:00:35
Get me out of here, okay?
Conor Perkins: 01:00:41
I cannot believe that happened.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:00:42
I can't. I I can't go on. Okay. My brain is Patreon nutcrackered out, okay? I just don't know what's going on anymore. But yeah, so what I'm trying to say is do something different with these characters. I am I am not against that, but you have to like you gotta have some character development behind it.
Conor Perkins: 01:01:03
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:01:04
I gotta know who they are. That's it.
Conor Perkins: 01:01:06
Okay, so Mousy is like, okay, I'm gets Mother Ginger. Mother Ginger and Sugar Plum Fairy like are preparing for battle. Sugar Plum's invading with all the tin soldiers, and Mother Ginger has all of her mice.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:01:21
And of course, she's become a mad, a mad ruler now because her hair is a mess. Like some also I'm like, this woman would never have a hair out of place, but never, but whatever.
Conor Perkins: 01:01:32
Uh so the land of amusements, the people of the land of amusements are like fighting them off.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:01:37
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 01:01:38
Meanwhile, Clara, she is sneaking back into the machine room. She stops the like flow, the factory flow with water brain turned off.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:01:52
I don't know. What was happening?
Conor Perkins: 01:01:54
And surprise, Mother Ginger was hiding in one of the little like Russian doll type of.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:01:59
Oh my god, when when Helen Mirren pops out of that, I was like, oh my god, stop doing this to Helen Mirren, please. The way that she had to like jump.
Conor Perkins: 01:02:06
But also, like Mother Ginger, I love Mother Ginger. I'm like, she was she was badass. The makeup was sick.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:02:13
The outfit is amazing, like the like the vest and the pants. The like whip was super cool. Absolutely.
Conor Perkins: 01:02:18
I was like, I was into I was into Mother Ginger.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:02:21
Helen Mirren is Mother Ginger, yes. That sounds exactly right.
Conor Perkins: 01:02:24
And then when her aesthetic changes when she's a region at the end of the film again, I love more than her region outfit was exactly right.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:02:31
I was like in the flow. Yes.
Conor Perkins: 01:02:33
It's flow.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:02:34
The costumes were telling a story and very little else was.
Conor Perkins: 01:02:38
So Mother Ginger comes into the room. Clara enters the machine room. She shuts down the machine while fighting off the soldiers. Mother Ginger, she comes to her aid. The sugar plum fairy ultimately figures out some shit's going back down the machine room. So she flutters her little wings. And the only the second time we ever see her wings ever. She comes back and then she's like, stop, no, don't. And then please.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:03:06
Um, and then I'm a fairy now, but I'm just gonna go.
Conor Perkins: 01:03:11
So then she gets she basically traps Mother Ginger and is like, I'm gonna turn you first back into a damn toy.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:03:19
Right.
Conor Perkins: 01:03:20
Meanwhile, Clara has been doing this little reversal on the machine to make it do something else.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:03:27
I mean, your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea what you're even talking about, and I watched it today.
Conor Perkins: 01:03:31
Well, she changes the thing so that it like the direction, the direction, which is like an allusion to the when the swans were moving in the beginning, in the beginning when she fixes the thing in Drosselmeyer's...
Caroline Aimetti: 01:03:43
Very kind. Sure. I guess so. I don't know. Okay, I'm looking, I oh my god. Yeah, okay.
Conor Perkins: 01:03:48
Yeah, so uh Mother Ginger is like about to like get it, and Clara comes out, which I like this little moment where Clara she doesn't let Sugar Plum like just go ahead and do it. She tries to get Sugar Plum, she gives her one last chance to like stop doing it on her own. She's yeah, she appeals to her and she's like, Don't do this. My mother would have wouldn't have wanted this. And uh Sugar Plum Fairy is like, I don't care, she's not here anymore, she dead.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:04:14
And then she abandoned me. Uh uh.
Conor Perkins: 01:04:16
She pushes the button to zap Mother Ginger back into a porcelain doll, but instead the machine tilts upward and zaps sugar plum, and she gets turned back into a doll. And yeah, uh Mother Ginger is saved, and all the tin soldiers magically.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:04:36
Yes, I was gonna say, how convenient, right? Like somehow they're connected. If if you are connected like that to all of the beings you have created, then we've got a whole nother set of rules in this world that we also haven't followed in other ways. So it doesn't work.
Conor Perkins: 01:04:49
Because in that case, they all should have died when Marie died.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:04:53
Yeah, thank you. Yes, Clara would have walked into a world full of dead bodies. It would have been terrible.
Conor Perkins: 01:05:00
Actually, that kind of would have been your favorite movie, too. That the little the little girl staring at the dead body in the haunted mansion would have been like, ah, take me there. Clara and the Four Realms of corpses.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:05:14
Yeah, so very convenient, but it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.
Conor Perkins: 01:05:17
So, Mother Ginger, she's she's saved, peace has been restored to the realms. Clara promises to visit them in the future, and then she returns back to London, where time has hardly passed at all since she left.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:05:28
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 01:05:29
She approaches her father, apologizes for her earlier behavior, and asks him to dance. He accepts and she opens her music box when he becomes emotional. And the song plays what he says is the first song that he and Marie ever danced to.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:05:45
So I'm like, Are you the nutcracker prince?
Conor Perkins: 01:05:47
Yes. I was like, wait, are you the nutcracker prince? And she took you out of there, but he's not.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:05:52
No.
Conor Perkins: 01:05:52
Because we don't believe in love in this.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:05:54
Okay, listen to me. That could have been interesting. Where the she's disconnected from her father in the real world, and is he's the nutcracker prince in this other world, and suddenly they're like buddies and adventure pals, and that's what helps her connect with her father when she comes back. Um I can get into that.
Conor Perkins: 01:06:10
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:06:11
That would be a that's good.
Conor Perkins: 01:06:12
Yeah, I think it if they wanted to tell that story, but then that story is not the same as like her finding herself. Then it's a father, it's a father-daughter story. But I think that actually would have been really cool. Is it would have been cool. Like she goes into this, into this world and like something happens, and then all of a sudden, like her father, like is like, I know where she is, or like he he's getting memories back or something like that. Like very kind of like Hook-esque, like Peter Pan getting his memory, like memories back, like not having a recollection of this at all. Then he is using it as a way to stay in touch with her mother, where he's been like avoiding grieving the mother, where it's like, no, you need to embrace it.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:06:52
Or it's like, yeah, that's the thing they that was a land they both were in touch with in some way, and he can't bear to like go there now that she's gone, and Clara is the one who brings him back there. Which also, you know, if we're going with the the the source material version of like the nutcracker is usually older and Clara's a girl, it works out perfectly. It's like her alternate father.
Conor Perkins: 01:07:13
Yeah, and and then we could have we could have done something with like a mouse steals the key or whatever, and then the mouse king like captures her and starts pulling her into the realms, and you could have a battle between like her father and the mouse king, and then that's when we are realizing, oh, father is the nutcracker.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:07:32
Yeah, I think and then that leaves a lot of potential.
Conor Perkins: 01:07:35
Matthew Macfadyen as a nutcracker would have just been like baller.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:07:38
Take my money, yeah. That would have been fantastic. And then we could have played around with the Sugar Plum being something else really interesting. Who knows what? But yeah, it just opens up it opens up the options. I'm into that.
Conor Perkins: 01:07:52
And so then they just they dance, and then the movie's over.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:07:55
Yeah.
Conor Perkins: 01:07:56
I love the end credits of this film.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:08:01
Oh, great.
Conor Perkins: 01:08:02
We get another, we get another ballet sequence.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:08:05
Yes, I even love the animations once we get to the actual credits rolling. I'm like, I love these, but these are from a different movie, as is "Fall On Me." "Fall On Me" has promised me an entirely different movie.
Conor Perkins: 01:08:19
Well, "Fall On Me", again, the song is a duet between a father and son.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:08:25
Right.
Conor Perkins: 01:08:26
It's it's a duet, and Clara's story has been pretty much a solo one. I think "Fall On Me" would make even more sense to be associated with a story between a father and a daughter.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:08:41
Absolutely, because then it's also like they're they're both people grieving, and it's like, fall on me, I'll fall on you. Like we we'll get through it together. Like when we feel like we can't go on through this, we will together.
Conor Perkins: 01:08:53
I would not be surprised if Ashleigh Powell, who wrote this, was like, Yeah, no, I wrote this as a father-daughter um thing. And then the studio was like, No, we need a we need a strong female character, like a like put Clara at the center.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:09:09
We're still gonna have the nutcracker, quote unquote, look at her longingly enough that I was like, okay, they're trying not to do a romance, but I bet you he's gonna grab her hand, he's gonna kiss her hand or kiss her on the cheek. Nope. But I'm just we just had him stare at her, and I'm like, I know what you're trying to say, so just do it. Have him do it. Even if she's not interested, he can still have feelings for her, because he clearly does.
Conor Perkins: 01:09:32
And and I'm just like, they could have solved that issue if that was something that they didn't want to do, if they didn't want to go into the romance route, they could have solved that issue entirely by making the Nutgregor her father. And maybe he's confronting like having left the realm and realizing that he's doing the same thing with his children, where he's like leaving them in their time of grief.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:09:57
And the heart of the whole story is like a transformation, and like I feel like that's like a lot of what grief is, and she's transformed in the way she views her father. So it's just a very clean connecting line between those things.
Conor Perkins: 01:10:11
You could even do a thing where like he slowly is starting to turn back into a nutcracker, and he needs to go to the to the realms in order to like restore the magic.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:10:22
That's what happens in my book. He's constantly like going back and forth between uh, you know, his real form and a nutcracker, which is a very interesting thing.
Conor Perkins: 01:10:31
Yeah, it reminds me of like once upon a time, because that's one of the things that happens with Pinocchio is Pinocchio is like he's starting to turn wooden again as the magic is like leaving.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:10:41
And but but we've completely ignored the nutcracker of it all in this, so it doesn't even matter. And it's in the title, yes, because they had to tell because at first I was like, call this Clara and the Four Realms, but nobody would know what it was, and I don't think it mattered anyway. And "Fall On Me", yes, I love it as like this is this this is the end credit song about this father-daughter story. I'm in 100%, but again, it's another thing that inherently is romantic, it's romantic sounds romantic.
Conor Perkins: 01:11:06
It's why I thought it was between Andrea Bacelli and his young lover nurse.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:11:12
I I didn't know, I know I think you did you say at one point you're like, this could totally be a candidate for a song at my wedding, and I was like, I'm on board with you.
Conor Perkins: 01:11:20
Right now, it is like literally, if I ever marry, "Fall On Me" is low-key, like a major contender for a wedding song for me.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:11:28
Yeah, so the end credits, there are there are just pieces of this whole thing. I think this is a good, that's perfect way to sum it up. It's like there are just pieces of this, and we'll never know. There's some hidden thing here with reshoots. There are pieces of this that feel so right on the right track, and then they just get completely muddled. Yeah. And it comes out in dribs and drabs in these like glorious costumes, in this use of the score from the ballet, in this beautiful sweeping and credits music. It's just like, what movie is that? Because I want to see that movie.
Conor Perkins: 01:11:60
In the like concept art, the production design, the images of it all.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:12:03
And even the trailer. But again, it's a different movie. It's a movie about a about a girl making figuring out who she is and blah, blah, blah.
Conor Perkins: 01:12:11
And I'm just like, we did that. We did that with Alice in Wonderland. And Alice and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, we are gonna talk about this at some point because it's been on my list for a while to talk about this film.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:12:21
I know, yeah.
Conor Perkins: 01:12:22
Because I thoroughly enjoy Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and I think it was executed really, really well. And it just feels like this is trying to be that. And I'm like, we don't need to because we already did it.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:12:32
And where this falls again in the timeline of Disney is right around the time when folks started being like, Disney has abandoned romance, Disney doesn't want to do romance anymore. And that feels like that's what's happening here. And it's sad because a Disney sweeping, adventurous, romantic, fantastical version of the story of the Nutcracker is completely 1000% something I want to see.
Conor Perkins: 01:12:56
Yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:12:57
Like that the that article that I also read the same thing that's like, oh, maybe it was because of a lack of interest in the Nutcracker property. I just don't see that being the case. I think ballets are excellent source material for animated films, Disney films. It's a it's a it's the choice. Well, because it's a great choice.
Conor Perkins: 01:13:15
Because there is no there there is a story, but there is no like dialogue or anything. So you really can do whatever you want with it. Because it's dance and dance is interpretive. There are a million different ways in which you can read even the same story or interpret it through dance. That's why choreography changes. It's you you can change moments just in the way that people are dancing. So it it feels even more so than writing a story down more universal because it's it's not contained by language and letters, it's it's contained by movement. It's a different thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:13:52
Yeah, this just makes me want to maybe on stage, maybe a book. I don't know. Ma wants me to make this happen.
Conor Perkins: 01:14:01
Yeah, honestly.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:14:02
I really want it to happen.
Conor Perkins: 01:14:03
Honestly, I'm I was I was kind of surprised that Disney did not attempt to make an animated feature of the nutcracker as source material.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:14:11
Yes, I totally agree. It's kind of obvious to me. I even think about my god, the steadfast tin soldier is one of my favorite things like on this actual planet. Beautiful, all on the planet. I love it so much. And it manages to like be the story, be kid friendly, but also is so poignant and heartbreaking. And I feel like a Disney version of the Nutcracker could be all of those things. And I really think that Disney kind of needs something like this in the lineup that's actually good because there's a lot of there's a lot of Christmas, but again, it's either like it's like frozen when we love this, so maybe I'm biased, but it's like frozen version of Christmas, or it's the Santa Claus, or it's like prep and land.
Conor Perkins: 01:14:50
There's nothing living in this world, and I think Disney needs to fill in this gap in the Christmas programming that is this where it's like this is a story that takes place around Christmas, but is not about making the holiday happen. The holiday just exists. This is a story that takes place at this time of year, yeah, not about this time of year.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:15:10
Yep, a hundred percent. Is this I know that I am always putting my romance agenda on things, but this it's just it's all it's already and and I think again, what you were saying earlier was so great. The capital R romantic applies to a potential father-daughter story about grief. Yes, which I think is beautiful, beautiful.
Conor Perkins: 01:15:32
Because you know what? And I think there's a perfect example of this in musical theater. It's bonkers, but something that takes source material that is not about this and turns it into it being about this is Beetlejuice, the musical. It takes the story of Betelgeuse, the film, and turns it into being all about the relationship between a father and a daughter around grief and yes. And I think that's kind of the way that you gotta do this, where it's like if we're not doing the nutcracker, what other story are we telling with it? And it has to be about some sort of relationship because Oh, yeah, this isn't about a relationship. Even the original nutcracker, it's the relationship between Clara and this nutcracker. Like it is about this love for, like the story ends with like Clara saying, like, she would swore to protect this nutcracker until the day that she dies.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:16:27
And it almost feels like it's some in some ways, it's almost about her and Drosselmeyer too.
Conor Perkins: 01:16:33
And I think that they've tried to just be like, we're gonna strip it all away, and this is just about Clara. But then that's not the nutcracker. That's a Clara origin story.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:16:42
It's Clara and the four rows.
Conor Perkins: 01:16:44
Or it's just Clara, but like you're not telling the story of the Nutcracker, and if you're telling the story of Clara that is not Clara and the Nutcracker, the events of the Nutcracker have to take place as we know them. Does that make sense? Where it's like if we're doing sort of like an origin story, like a character study of a particular character, yeah, the thing that we are we are leaping off from in order to tell that story, we need to maintain as it is as a reference point.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:17:13
Yeah. Yep.
Conor Perkins: 01:17:14
So if we are telling a Clara origin story or something like that, it has to be that the events of the Nutcracker take place as written in the fairy, like in the fairy tale, in the story, in the ballet, with all of the romantic things involved.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:17:30
Or if you want to give me a Clara origin story, let's say we're doing that and we're playing around with it a little and the events of the Nutcracker ballet as we know them haven't happened yet. So we're just focusing on her origin story in some way. I guess then we're not going to the fantastical world. So it's canceled out, but just go with me. Then we can make this more of a series and have her age so that you feel more comfortable once the events of the nutcracker happen, having it be a romance because we've seen other aspects of her character first. We have her origin story. We've established what we're trying to do with her here, which is her being a strong young woman and like, you know, and see, and if you want to break the rules, then maybe the nutcracker events, maybe she has been there before. Maybe she's just never met the Nutcracker Prince. I don't know.
Conor Perkins: 01:18:10
And see, that's exactly why Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is so good, is because it is referencing Alice in Wonderland. The events of Alice in Wonderland as we know them have taken place. Alice just has no memory of any of it.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:18:24
100%. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Conor Perkins: 01:18:25
So it's like we we now have, we now have a vocabulary. We have a common language of this world because we already know how it is, because we're using things we bring to it. We can't really bring much to this nutcracker world because we don't know who the nutcracker is.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:18:43
We don't know we don't there's nothing because we didn't even get to see any of them as toys in her real life. No. Because then we have at least a tenuous connection to them.
Conor Perkins: 01:18:54
And I will say, you know, a lot of people have have claimed that this is sort of a trap of trying to adapt this story in that these realms, the the land of sweets, the land of flowers, the land of snowflakes, the land of amusements. They when you look at like the ballet of the nutcracker, basically all of the action takes place in like the first act, and then they get into the land of snowflakes, and then it's just like a whole bunch of dances as the court is presenting themselves to Clara. Right.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:19:20
And then which is the what happens that like people think about they think about Swan Lake and they think about Swan Princess the movie, but so much of Swan Lake is a bunch of different nations presenting themselves to Prince Siegfried. Like that's just what it's a ballet. What do you want?
Conor Perkins: 01:19:37
Like And it's like we want to, yeah, we want to show off different styles of dance. We want to show off different styles of music.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:19:43
And we did that, and we shoehorn that into Swan Princess with the ball, and but it was perfect.
Conor Perkins: 01:19:48
Princess is on parade, princess is on parade. We've got it. Oh my god. But the trap of this is that it's very loosey-goosey from the beginning, these realms are all. Kind of they are kind of weird and disjointed, and so a lot of people are like, Well, this was always going to happen because of this, but I don't think it's a good thing.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:20:07
But you can make the you can make the rules, it's your mo it's your adaptation of it, it's your film, you can make it less loosey-boosey.
Conor Perkins: 01:20:13
You can I'm like, we can find a through line between snowflakes, flowers, sweets, and amusements. There, yeah, if those were the four things that originated within the original story, clearly somebody saw something that connects all of them together. If if anything, it's just it's Christmas that brings them all together. Snow, flowers, some beautiful garlands and things like that. Suites and amusements.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:20:40
Right.
Conor Perkins: 01:20:40
Those are like the four principles of a Christmas party. Sure. It baffles me, I think, when for as imaginative as our industry and our business is supposed to be, yeah, how much of a lack of imagination there is.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:20:56
Very interesting. Yep, especially with such strong source material.
Conor Perkins: 01:21:01
I feel bad for Ashleigh Powell because I don't necessarily think that this film is the story that she wanted to tell. It just reeks of studio involvement.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:21:10
We might have to get her. We need to talk to her. I would like to talk to her. I actually would really like to know.
Conor Perkins: 01:21:15
Yeah. Well, now you've seen the Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:21:18
Well, listen, in the in the moments when I turned off my brain and I stared at it, I mean, I had a good enough time. You know me. I love a vibe.
Conor Perkins: 01:21:26
And hey, it's another nutcracker story. Yeah. Because there aren't that many mainstream versions of the nutcracker that are narrative in a way that like isn't just the ballet.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:21:39
This might be the jumping off point for me. I might have to take this into my own hands.
Conor Perkins: 01:21:44
I kind of was hoping you would say that. Because as someone, listen, listen, y'all, as someone who has seen, heard, and read, like read Caroline's writing and style of writing, the Nutcracker is so perfectly your aesthetic. Write that down.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:22:01
Is today the day?
Conor Perkins: 01:22:02
And then you can you can say, like in your history of like how it's happening, you'd be like, I was radicalized after watching the Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:22:09
And reading a Court of Sugar and friggin' Spice. Happy. But I'm glad we it's I mean, it's been long enough. Every year at Christmas, you're always like, have you watched watched it yet? And I'm like, no, I haven't. This was this is when it needed to happen, and we needed to be able to hop on and talk about it directly afterwards. So I'm so glad that we did. It was fun to talk about it. It was fun to talk about it with you. Because this wasn't the kind of thing where I was like, oh, I abhor this. It's just like, oh it's like the kind of thing that you and I love to dissect. Yes. So it was fun.
Conor Perkins: 01:22:40
And and there's something like even when I was reading like the negative reviews of this as I was prepping just the loose background information, everything, I was feeling very protective of it. I was just like, no.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:22:51
And when when they were like Because this very much could have been our thing. Like it has us written all over it.
Conor Perkins: 01:22:55
When they're like, there's no there's a lack of interest in the nutcracker. And I'm like, that's not wrong.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:22:60
Incorrect.
Conor Perkins: 01:23:01
I'm like, that's not like how can you say there's a lack of interest in the nutcracker when every fucking year every ballet company across the United States is producing? I'm like, everyone is looking for the nutcracker.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:23:13
It's another fairy tale for us. People, it's still a fairy tale.
Conor Perkins: 01:23:16
There's interest. It's a Christmas fairy tale that's not Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus, or Jesus.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:23:21
Right. Like, right, thank you.
Conor Perkins: 01:23:24
Yes. Because those ones we we know them all. We know those ones really, really well.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:23:28
My fingers are itching. I might have to do something about this. Stay tuned.
Conor Perkins: 01:23:33
Stay tuned.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:23:34
It's gonna keep me up tonight for sure. Thank you for doing this.
Conor Perkins: 01:23:38
Thank you all so much for joining us. We really appreciate you being here. Thank you. If you liked this episode, make sure that you hit follow or subscribe wherever you're getting the podcast. Opt in for those notifications on YouTube. And then this is that moment. Hit five stars, leave a written review, leave a comment as a happy birthday present to our dearest Caroline, who may or may not be embarking on redoing an entire Nutcracker story for posterity because it needs to be done and she's probably the one to do it. So, and then also make sure that you share this with somebody. We hope that this episode has kept you company for a little bit over the holiday season and maybe exposed you to a film that you really never thought that you were gonna ever watch.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:24:23
Exactly. I hope that somebody stumbles across this somewhere and they're like, I was kind of hoping somebody would talk about this. I think I watched that once. That's why we're here.
Conor Perkins: 01:24:31
And people talking about who aren't just gonna like sit there and bash on it the whole time and talk about what could be good about it. So share this with somebody who you think would enjoy that perspective. And while you're at it, we have also created a playlist of all of our holiday themed episodes. Yes. So you can go to our website, poorunfortunatepodcast.com, click on listen, and the playlist is curated for you right there. Or you can head over to our YouTube channel and it's a playlist on our on our YouTube. So yeah.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:25:00
So if you miss the game of yes and no, we have a bunch for you.
Conor Perkins: 01:25:04
I can guarantee you probably will you will not remember.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:25:07
I would I would play that. I could play that fresh today. I wouldn't remember a damn thing. That's what we should have done.
Conor Perkins: 01:25:12
I could just read, I could just give it.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:25:14
You could read me the same ones, and I'd be like, I have no idea what this is. Amazing. And another great birthday present for me, if you have not done this yet, would be to follow us on social media. We are at @PoorUnfortunatePodcast everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, threads, blue sky. We would love to talk about Nutcracker and the Four Realms with you. So, like, leave us a comment, send us a DM. We'll make some content around this to get the conversation going. And it's just the way to grow the podcast these days. As we bring more opportunities to you all that we hope you've been enjoying, people want to see who's looking at our stuff. So it just goes a long way. It's a free way for you to help us out. And so we thank you so much for that. And if you want even more Poor Unfortunate Podcast in your life, please join either our private Facebook group or our Discord channel, the Poor Unfortunate Fam. So that is where our listeners gather to talk about the episodes, talk about a range of other subjects that we've all found we have in common, which is so much fun. And it's just a fantastic way for Conor and I to find out who's out there listening and what you're interested in. So we can keep bringing you what you love about Poor Unfortunate Podcast. So we hope to see you there.
Conor Perkins: 01:26:24
And if you're looking for merch, the Poor Unfortunate Shop is open, poorunfortunatepodcast.com/shop. And as I always say, it does take us a little bit of money to keep the podcast up and running and coming to you. We do have a PayPal account linked in our episode description and in the website links in our social media accounts. Anything you have to spare goes a long way for us. It could be a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars more than that. One time donation, monthly donation, it all just goes right back into the podcast, helping us keep it free. And to all of our monthly donors who have been donating to this all year long, whether you've been here for a month, whether you've been here from the beginning. Thank you. Thank you. We are not able to do this without you. And uh I hope that some of you who have been enjoying the podcast thus far will consider in the new year if you have a little bit extra that you might be able to throw our way. It helps us so much. It helps us so, so, so much. So thank you very much for that. Thank you. All right, we hope you have a happy and safe Christmas and holiday season.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:27:27
Happy holidays, you all. We love you.
Conor Perkins: 01:27:30
And Caroline, happy birthday.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:27:33
Thank you. I have a feeling it's gonna be a really good birthday.
Conor Perkins: 01:27:37
Yeah, this one's gonna be a good year. It has to, right?
Caroline Aimetti: 01:27:41
Yeah, because I'm writing the nutcracker.
Conor Perkins: 01:27:43
There you go. Stay tuned for this time next year. We'll we'll see. Uh maybe, maybe we'll we'll do a maybe our Christmas movie.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:27:52
Yeah, fantastic. See you there. Or that'll be on the Patreon five days.
Conor Perkins: 01:27:55
Yeah, that'll be on a Patreon. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. All righty, thanks so much for joining us. We will be back soon with another episode.
Caroline Aimetti: 01:28:04
And until then, beluga sevruga!