The Plotaholics Podcast: Movie Reviews · Shane Wilson and Bryan Tann

The World's End

·57 min·2 clips

Hosts realize they're rooting for the aliens over the protagonist Gary

Shane and Brian start in their usual rambling mode before they ever fully lock onto the movie. The show feels like two hosts riffing together, not a polished review desk. Once they get rolling, the film becomes the center of the whole conversation. They frame it as a genre-parody movie that keeps turning the expected shape inside out. The big point for them is that the alien invasion setup is not typical. They keep comparing that move to Hot Fuzz and what that movie does to its own genre. For them, the fun is in the subversion itself. It is not just the plot; it is the way the plot keeps refusing to behave. They also talk about how original the film feels in a sci-fi landscape that has gotten pretty repetitive. That sends them off into a side rant about gigantic blue cat people, comic-book sameness, and the same movie being made over and over. Brian throws in The Mandalorian season 3. Shane goes right with him, especially on the weird feeling of a show about one guy when he is barely in it. The MCU comes up next. They call it increasingly formulaic and a little exhausting, except for Black Panther and Wakanda Forever. From there they snap back to the movie. Their read is basically that it is refreshing because it does not play the sci-fi lane safe. They are also not shy about saying they are kind of on the aliens' side. The drunk guy who talks everybody into leaving gets absolutely no mercy. The conversation stays warm, quick, and a little messy in the way good buddy movie talk often does. If you like movie reviews that wander, joke, compare notes, and still land the plane, this one has the right energy.

As heard by us

A sharp sci-fi review that treats genre parody as the point.

Shane Wilson and Brian Tan spend most of the episode on genre subversion, treating the film as a playful sci-fi parody rather than a routine recap.

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Why you'd press play

Want two hosts digging into a sci-fi twist they call one of the most original sci-fi films they've seen in a long time?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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