Previously: We fell in love with The Bold Type’s girl power charm.
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Sweeney: Every episode is special to us in its own way, but this one was…a journey – much like the film itself.
Annihilation is a sci fi film based on a novel of the same name that was released earlier this year. The film stars Natalie Portman as she joins a team of female scientists (played by Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tuva Novotny) as they venture into a mysterious “shimmer” that is expanding and has claimed the lives of every person that has so far gone into investigate. (Save for Portman’s husband, played by Oscar Isaac, who was clearly badly wounded by it.) I’m prattling on about the names more than the plot because I’ll be honest and say the names were the entirety of the draw for me, personally.
Our friend Rich mentioned this movie offhandedly when he joined us to discuss the Thor films (which also featured Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson) and we decided to bring him back on to help us make our way through this film. Speaking of Rich: Rich Camillucci is the president of Arcade Audio and hosts two podcasts of his own – Podswoggle & The Blank Slate. You can keep up with his many projects over on Twitter.
It’s pretty common for us to consume podcast content very close to the recording and for this, in particular, that proved an interesting choice, because it’s a movie you maybe need to sit with for a bit in order to decide exactly how you feel about it. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed trying to figure out those feelings as a group. We often say this podcast is like media therapy, and this episode more so than most. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. At the very least, we hope you agree that it’s A JOURNEY:
We’d love to chat with you about this episode! You can leave a comment below, find us over on our Twitter, or you can come talk to us about this episode on the Discord, which you can join by signing up for the newsletter in the bar below this post. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunesor use this RSS feed to subscribe with your podcast app of choice. (And if you’re enjoying the show, please leave us a review on iTunes!)
As always, thank you to Stefan Chin for our delightful theme music.
For those of you watching and reading along, here is our planned upcoming media in the order they’ll be released: A Storm of Swords, Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gravity Falls, Glow, and Sharp Objects.
And finally, our media mentioned:
Boy Meets World (ABC, 1993-200)
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD, 2017) (Mari’s review)
Ex-Machina (A24, 2014)
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)
Arrival (Paramount Pictures, 2016)
“All your Annihilation movie plot questions, answered.”
The Contenders
The Fountain (Warner Bros. Picture, 2006)
The Hunger Games (Lionsgate Films, 2012)
The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle (Ecco, 2016)
Invasion of the Body Snatcher (Allied Artists Picture, 1978)
The Thing (Universal Pictures, 1962)
Freaky Friday (Buena Vista, 1976)
Thor: Ragnarok (Walt Disney Studios, 2017) (Podcast)
A Wrinkle in Time (Walt Disney Studios, 2018) (Podcast)
Doctor Who (BBC, 1963 – present) (Recaps)