'WWW' on 'No Such Thing': Why Are There so Many Twin Films?

Hi, Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin.

“And this is no such thing, the show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research.”

On today's episode, we're getting to the bottom of the twin film phenomenon. [ Music ] Okay, we're here to talk about twin films and why they happen so frequently.

But first obviously we have to know what a twin film is.

So we're talking about a pair of movies that have extraordinarily similar premises. [ Laughter ] And that release within a year of each other. There are some outliers with this. Like there are some twin films that come out more than a year apart.

And there are some outliers that have to do with the plot as well. Like there are some movies that seem similar at first, but then when you watch and they're not really that similar. We're dealing with that right now with Guillermo D'Otoro's Frankenstein. And this movie coming out next year from Maggie Gillin Hall. I think it's called the bride.

Sometimes both of the twin films are popular, like finding Nemo and a shark's tail. Yeah, well. >> I forgot about a shark's tail. I was a finding Nemo home, so we didn't want to have a shark's tail. Finding Nemo was definitely, I think, the more popular one. Yeah. That's a shark tail. >> Shark tail is a classic, like, so-so-to-teacher.

“Yeah, that's like I remember renting that, I think, renting the DVD or something.”

Yeah, you weren't going to date with that, but you know, finding Nemo we had the tip.

Yeah, you own that. And we'll Smith delivers a masterclass in shark tail. And my man's shark has just begged me not to murder lies all y'all up in here, all right? Now I might listen to him, but they cannot might not. And that depends on an individual behavior of all the individuals in here, individually.

And other instances, one twin film is just way more popular than another one. To the point where you might not have even heard of the other one. So one example is Madagascar, we all know and love. Yeah. There was a Disney movie that came out the same year called The Wild, which was the same plot.

Animals from the Central Park Zoo end up in Africa. Oh, and it had, like, a real cast. Though wild. Have you ever heard of this movie? No.

No, I need to see it. Let me see some imagery.

It just, it looks like a generic, like a less stylized version of Madagascar.

But in the cast, we had key for southernland, eddy lizard. Richard Kindles in there, William Shattner. And it's like the same animals, too. There's a giraffe. Who's the zebra?

There's no zebra. There's a giraffe in this one. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. There's a giraffe. Who would have thought making a zoo movie there?

There would have a giraffe in the line. There's no, yeah. But of course, the most referred to example of Twin Films is, of course, Armageddon. And Deep Impact. We're going to save that one for later when we talk to the, what went wrong, folks.

“But for my recollection, I think, like Armageddon was like the big dumb loud one.”

And Deep Impact was supposed to be the higher brow. Smartly right in one. We'll see if that holds up. But before we get into, like, why exactly Twin Films happens so regularly? With so much frequency.

What are some other ones that I'm missing? Like, what are some big Twin Films? There was the like, rom-coms of no strings attached. Oh, yeah. And then friends with Benefits.

That's right. I'm a doctor. I worked 80 hours a week. I need someone who's going to be on my bed at 2 a.m. Who I don't have to eat breakfast with.

I'm emotionally unavailable. I'm the most in the amage. You know what I said? No motion. Just sex.

Those came out around the same time around, you know, like friends who are love interests or artists. Yeah. You were the two. It was the same culture. And who's his wife?

Oh, Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman. And then the other one was Mila Kunis. And Timberlake. Just Timberlake.

And that's funny because Ashton Kutcher is married to Mila Kunis. They should have just had them in the same movie. Yeah. I don't know if they were married at the time. I don't think they were.

I'm probably not. I'm going to show together, which is definitely a movie. I thought it was a movie, man. Since then. You told me to tell me more than.

Oh, you're thinking. I'm wrong about someone. Someone looked this up.

Jamie. Not now. Yeah. What are some other ones? Like one I remember is Dante's peak.

Yeah. I was just saying that. In the tone of Dante's peak. Oh. Of Alcano is turning nature into a nightmare.

Which was Pierce Brosnan, like disaster movie that takes place in the Pacific. Northwest. You know, they're escaping from the volcanic eruption.

“And this was an example of one that was way more popular than the other one I think.”

Because I hadn't even known about this movie volcano with Tommy Lee Jones. It is city where anything can happen on April 24th. Same year or within a year of each other and same exact plot. But just I had not heard of that one. Have you guys been a volcano?

Yeah.

But definitely Dante's peak was like always on, like, yeah.

TBS. Yeah. TBS is one of those, like, constantly. Another classic one that's more recent is Olympus has fallen in the White House down. Yeah.

We're talking about the safety of the President of the United States. Which is funny because they also both have black presidents in them. Hey. What's funny about that? We had a run.

All right. People forget. There's been one. We did have one. Yeah.

It made sense. Yes.

“I think Morgan Freeman is the president and one of them and Jamie Fox is the president.”

And he's really fine. I'm pretty sure. Oh, I would be sure. And you know, whichever one that is I need to do. Yeah.

That's crazy. That's my president right there. That's like he's young. The Olympus has fallen is the Gerard Butler one. Yeah.

Okay. And Channing Tatum's in White House down. I think so. White House down will be Channing Tatum in Jamie Fox. These Jamie Foxs are president or is he just a president?

Yeah. President James Sawyer. Oh, wow. And before any Olympus has fallen heads, send me angry emails. I should clarify that Morgan Freeman's character is only technically acting president.

The elected president is Aaron Eckert. But of course, there is one pair of twin films that the three of us have spent a lot of time debating way back starting in 2016. And that is a bug's life. For the colony and for oppressed bugs everywhere. Versus ants.

He's willing to live for the colony, to fight for the colony, to die for the colony. This guy is crazy. Now, the reason we've been debating this is that Noah and I feel like ants is the obvious better movie. And Devon thinks that we're crazy. Yeah, of course.

And I actually want to break the differences between these movies down for the listeners.

Because I think understanding the differences between these movies might actually be useful for us in terms of trying to figure out why twin films happen in the first place.

So let's start with the plot. Both movies are about ants that spark a revolution of sorts against their oppressors. In a bug's life, the oppressors are grasshoppers, evil grasshoppers. They're not really dynamic. They're just evil.

They just come and bully and eat everything. So where is it? Where's my phone? It's a little more interesting in ants. The ants are in a war with these termites that are encroaching on their territory.

But the war general for the ants is like sending the ants that are loyal to the queen, off to war or on a suicide mission. So that he and the remaining ants can enact a coup d'état. The termite colony, sir. That's suicide. Exactly.

You have the list I asked for. Yes, general. These are the units loyal to the queen.

“So Devin, why don't you tell us a little bit about why you're wrong to think that a bug's life is better and more interesting than that plot?”

Well, first of all, both of these are supposed to be kids movies.

That's true, allegedly. Okay. So a bug's life is Pixar universe. Basically a bug's life looks like, I don't know if there is some sort of like Easter egg. It looks like it's a toy story.

Yeah. It's got that style. It's a very very similar style. You zoom in on one of Andy's toys in the grass somewhere and you saw a bug's life happening. You like this makes sense.

Right. All right. So toy story iconic a bug's life iconic. Okay. They live in the same world.

Just remember that. The thing that I love about a bug's life is it has so many memorable scenes. We did it back to backwashing of a bug's life in ants. You know, I had not watched this film since. I don't love was a child.

The long time ago. That tracks. And I had remembered scenes from a bug's life, which is crazy.

All these years is not something that really comes up.

You know, pop culture or anything that you're like, you know, and I was like, oh my god, I remember the rain specifically that rain scene, where to answer running for their lives because the rain drops are like, they dropped this. Yep.

And it is a thing that like, from my childhood to now, I thought about. And I didn't realize that I was thinking about it because of a bug's life when it rains. And I'm out of time. I see bugs. I thought like, oh, shoot.

It's about to go down. Yeah. And then when I just watched it more recently, I was like, oh, it's because of a bug's life. And that I think is when you think of childhood movies.

Yeah. Those scenes that stay with you, that changed away you view the world. Wow. Okay. This is beautiful.

That is why we make films. That's all you made. Okay. And when we watched ants, it felt like some weird Woody Allen nightmare. Okay.

Yeah. Well, it wasn't weird. It's very moody.

It's just like, I'm like, what's this is not for kids?

It feels like some adult was going through something. And they're forcing their kids to sit down and watch it. It feels like divorce dad energy.

“A bug's life is certainly more colorful and easier on the eyes.”

And it's funny. A bug's only for Celarius. Seeing the scene. Every line is a joke. I'm watching ants.

I'm like, what? Nothing. It really is not funny. It's kind of the person. What's funny because there's a man.

There's PTSD. It's funny. It's kind of muckab. You know. It's funny that the ants have trauma.

I'm sorry. I don't think trauma's funny. But you know, some of us, some of some of them are there. So let's go cast for cast here. You've got Kevin Spacey, obviously, as the villain hopper.

So he's playing the proper role. Yeah. Kevin Spacey, the villain. A badass. Exactly.

Great casting if you think about it. Yeah, but this was way before he was like, hey, they knew. There's something dark in him. Yeah. Julia Louie, drive his plays, Ata.

Yeah. Good love interest. Hayden Penny Tier is a dot. I think the little girl aunt. Yeah.

Richard Kind. You got Dennis Leary. So, you know, it's pretty stacked cast. But let's look at ants.

“Because ants have some fucking hitters in the cast.”

Woody Allen, obviously. Hmm. Woody Allen. It's a voice. Um.

Yeah, your boy Kevin Spacey, you know. No problem. Okay. It looks like we don't need to go there. Both films have problematic actors in them.

Right. That's going to paint. But this is a wash. Yeah. The cancel each other out.

Gene Hackman is mandible. Who I believe is like the war general. All right. Sharon Stone is balla. You got Dan Akroyd.

You've got Danny Glover. Jennifer Lopez plays Azteca. Sylvester Stallone. I mean, this is not. Christopher Walken.

I mean, I'm going to say that the ants cast edges out. The bugs live cast in terms of, you know, real hitters. You know, real hitters. If you just want to put names on the board. Sure.

Yeah. But who's a better actor in the world? Okay. Because you name what have these people did in the movie. Gene Hackman is mandible.

You don't remember him. Jennifer Lopez was. Well, you know, that's true. I don't have a. I don't have an argument against that.

Sly Stallone is in there as a character that looks like him. I remember this.

“And I believe Chris Walken too is kind of.”

Yeah. They do. They do. That's. I think.

All animated movies should do that. No, can you talk a little bit about why you, like, ants, the film better than a bugs life? Yeah, I'm just, I like more mature sorts of things. I like PG movie. If I can get one, you know, I like kind of edgy humor like that.

So, you know, I was, you know, kind of refreshing myself on ants. And, you know, it's, it really is a proper war movie. There's not a stocklips now.

There's, you know, once he never really said that to me, especially on our rewatch was,

there's a huge, real pretty serious battle scene. And then the leader, he's the captain. That's right. Yeah, I remember this. Don't make my mistake, kid.

Don't follow what is your whole life. Think for yourself. Anyway, the bodyless head is, you know, kind of giving his final words. I'm like, whoa, this is, this is wild. He gets a door movie.

Yeah. It's just a little, for me, as a adult watching this, not sharing it with kids. It's more interesting to watch today. I'll grant, I didn't really watch bugs life as a kid. I watched it, but I was never like on rotation for me, for whatever reason.

So, it didn't imprint the way where it's like these certain little scenes. You didn't have a good time on a rewatch. I said, you did. Did I say that? Yeah.

Did I say that? I did not say that. I enjoyed watching both of them. To be clear, yeah. I like, I'm picking one.

That's the prompt. I simply enjoy the more interesting things. We're waiting the pros and cons. And I like you have more fun watching it. There's a little bit more.

I guess they kind of have different goals. And that's what's tough about this. Despite the fact that they're twin films, they're not necessarily one for one.

And I like the kind of ugly garrish art style events.

“Yeah, they looked like something to look at.”

And I appreciate the kind of neurotic criticisms of, you know, the Woody Allen-esque character. Yeah, I think they're very New York. The humor was really interesting. But that's not to say, I just liked a bug's life.

I mean, it's definitely-- Oh, I know you didn't do that in dislike, because y'all are cracking up. Okay. Gagon is the whole time. Again, we didn't say that.

Now, much being said. Yeah, we're discussing on kind of that. We had a lot of work that you think about. We're sitting with one more watching ends. We're taking notes.

I watch movies to be entertained. Okay. You can do both. Ideally, you get both. Ideally.

Okay, so now we know what a twin film is. And we've been through many, many examples. After the break, we're going to chat with the hosts of the What Went Wrong Podcast, the show about the film industry. And see if we can get their thoughts on why twin films

happen so regularly in the first place.

All right, we're now joined by Lizzie and Chris from the popular What Went Wrong Podcast. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you so much for having us. It's an honor to be here.

You guys are so much fancier than us. You have mugs? I know. Yeah. I'm in a closet.

My wife's clothes? My wife's clothes? Very sweet. Yeah. Yeah.

We tried. Before you guys joined us, we were talking about this phenomenon of the twin films. We had just ended a rigorous debate about whether a bug's life

or ants is the better film.

No one I or on the ants on team ants and Devon is team of bugs life. I just curious what your guys is take. Lizzie, you have a strong opinion. Yeah, out of here you two with your ants defending. I am you.

I'm stunned. I'm very interested to I can't wait to hear what your argument was for both sides. But now I'm mad. 100% of life. I would also lean a bug's life.

Although not as hard as Lizzie. I appreciate sharing as the manifestation of Jeffrey Katzenberg in a movie.

“But I still prefer I think overall a bug's life.”

But I have kids that age. I would show my daughter a bug's life. I probably would show her ants at this point. I agree with that. I agree with that.

It's an enjoyable film. It's so much fun. So memorable. Yeah. And it feels like, you know.

I don't have to think about what is Allen marrying his step daughter while I'm watching it. Yeah. You do have to think about Kevin Spacey. You do have to think about Kevin Spacey. I don't have it.

I don't have it. Why? Yeah. I don't need Woody Allen as the romantic lead. And you want to know why biggest problem with ants was that I literally screamed at the TV when I was rewatching it for this episode.

They're human teeth. It's the most horrible. Yeah. Yeah. So creepy.

Horrible. When he's feeling on the plastic, I was like, I'm this is it. I'm done. Yes.

“So Chris and Lizzie, when it comes to ants and a bug's life coming out at the same time, is it true that there was an alleged intellectual property theft?”

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, my understanding is so development on a bug's life began before development on ants. And so John Lassiter was the director of a bug's life who was written by Andrew Stanton Jo Rand. Who actually does the voice of Heimlich in the movie was co-story creator with those two. And this was a well-known project within the animation community.

And I have a slightly different thesis as to why these two movies are both around bugs. Lizzie talked about toy story on our podcast. And one of the reasons that they chose toys was because highly reflective surfaces as a text. Or a lot easier to animate at this point in the technologies like maturation process in the mid 1990s. It's really hard to do hair.

This is why monsters ink and trek don't come until the early 2000s. A bug's life makes a lot of sense because, okay, well, we can animate bugs, right? They have these their exoskeleton. They're shiny, this makes sense. Also, it's ants.

We can make one model and then we can clone it a bunch of times. And it's like Andy and all his friends at the birthday party in Toy Story. So the allegations were that, "Lacitor and Katzenberg had more unfriendly terms." Katzenberg acrimoniously left Disney. He felt he had been owed a higher position by then CEO Michael Eisner.

He was looked over after Lizzie, David Wells or Frank Wells. I can never remember. No, man, I want to say it's Frank Wells, but let me double check. He was the head of Disney who, I'm sure you guys know about this, but he died unexpectedly in helicopter crash.

Frank Wells.

“And it's pretty wild because, you know, we talked about this in Toy Story,”

but the sky dies in a helicopter crash. And then Jeffrey Katzenberg is like, "Oh, he's dead. Is it my turn? Is it my turn now?" What's up with the promotion?

Right. Let's get this going. Oh my God. Katzenberg leaves.

He ends up suing Disney for an unpaid bonus of well over a hundred million dollars.

He also was on, you know, Michael Lovitz formerly of CAA is coming in. It's a very messy time. DreamWorks gets built. And obviously Pixar starts working with Disney for their distribution of toy story and then a bug's life.

And so the accusation is that Katzenberg stole the idea for a bug's life or ants from a bug's life after having soundboard conversations with the ambassador who felt that he could trust Katzenberg. On Katzenberg's side, my understanding is he has asserted, although I've heard also that he has kind of admitted as much that he may have taken this idea from

ambassador. He has asserted that there was a pitch for a movie called Army Ants back in 1988, while he was at Disney Animation. That was about worker ant trying to bestow the benefits of individuality upon their colony. That went nowhere and that that's kind of where the idea originated.

And then he picked it up. My guess, my best guess and you guys can tell me, like, I don't know if we know the truth, but my best guess is there are technological limitations in place.

And there's only so many types of characters that you can do at this point in time.

And Toy Story had already come out.

“And I think Toy Soldiers is maybe around this time as well.”

So really good. DreamWorks is this upstart. We probably don't want to do toys. Okay, we'll do bugs. And we can probably come close to doing bugs. Pixar is doing bugs.

They just bought PDI. I'd also heard that PDI Pacific Data Imaging had a bugs treatment in the works as well. That was also different than a bugs life. So again, my instinct in this could get come to my big unifying theory about twin films. Is that maybe Katzenberg stole it or maybe he was mulling on this.

And he saw Pixar as proof that this was a good direction for DreamWorks to go. Before we get your guys' thoughts and theories about why twin films kind of occur so regularly. Or at least they seem to occur so regularly. I wanted to talk a little bit about Armageddon. Putting a rock on me outside my bed of job.

So we knew this thing from the inside. Ah. We drill. We're bringing the world's best day cordriller. And deep impact.

Two comrades were discovered that on a collision course with Earth. Oh my god. I haven't seen those movies in a very long time. But from what I recall, I want to see if this is accurate. Armageddon is kind of like the big dumb blockbuster and deep impact is slightly more slightly smarter.

Higher brow. Disaster films that right? Am I making that up? No, no, you're right. But here's what's funny.

They're closer than we remember. They are closer. And honestly, so we did this for our live show, which was a blast. We did these two movies. And I went into it remembering the same thing.

I loved deep impact when I was a kid. And I was like, this is the smart movie. This is the movie that carries on science. And I can't wait to rewatch this. And I rewatched it.

And I was like, God, I'm bored. I miss Armageddon. And you watch Armageddon. And it's just insane. It's completely insane.

I loved it. Can you tell us about the similarities and the differences between these two movies? Sure. So you have an asteroid that is hurtling towards Earth.

“And the only way to get rid of it is to blow it up.”

And then from there, from there, it's just the past diverge in the wood. And the how they're going to deal with it is the same. Yeah, blow it up. They're going to blow it up. But by drilling and sticking a nuke in the hole.

Right. And with deep impact, it makes like a decent amount of sense. How they're going to go about this. They're going to use astronauts, which, you know, they're going to space. So that tracks.

And then you have Armageddon where... This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way.

This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way.

This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. This is where Lizzie and I defer in our opinions by the way. They don't know Jack about drilling. They don't know Jack about drilling. I haven't drilling for 40 years.

And then he basically says, "Look, you need less astronauts, more oil drillers."

They send one William Fickner into space and then the rest are all oil drillers. And you know what? They do it, guys. They did it. So they're very similar in a lot of ways. They're very structurally different. What's interesting is obviously Armageddon presents itself as an action movie. Jack is effectively a soap opera. It's a melodrama at the end of the day.

But it is interesting. Both were very successful. Armageddon was more successful at the box office, ultimately.

So when you're dealing with a twin film situation, the key is to come out first.

But the more I looked into it, I don't think that's really the case. The key is if you're the lesser of the two films come out first. You guys must be more important. Meaning like if you don't have the star power, if you don't think you have the marketing punch,

“maybe you don't think your movies is good, you should probably land first.”

That might be good advice. You know, as I was watching, answering a bug's life and also thinking about deep impact in Armageddon, and so many of these other twin films, it does seem to me that the dichotomy is often one of them, as you explain this many, one of them is set up as like, this is the smart movie.

Like this is the one for all the smart people and the other ones like, this is the big dumb one.

This is the big dumb one. And that seems to be true kind of across a lot of these. And I just wonder why. Like is that just how they start to differentiate them as they realize that they're on parallel paths. But I don't know. I'm curious what you guys think. That's a great question, especially thinking about some of the other popular twin films, examples. Like if we were talking earlier about Dante's peak versus volcano.

And talking about how like in some of these instances, one of the movie just becomes way more popular and famous than the other one. I actually hadn't heard of volcano until I was researching twin films movies, but it's not like a no name movie like Tommy Lee Jones is the star of it. So I haven't seen volcano. I don't know if that one is branded or marketed as a dumber or okay. Is it as dumb as Dante's peak? It's dumber. In the sense that Dante's peak is making an attempt to model itself after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

And volcano is, there is a volcano in LA. This is crazy. Yeah, we're going to come from.

“So wait, what is the story behind Armageddon and Deep Impact? How did those come out at the same time?”

Well, this one's really interesting. A lot of twin films are disaster films, not surprisingly. And you know, Hollywood, the peak of disaster films in Hollywood was the 1970s, right? You had airport exclamation point in 1970, which shockingly made a ton of money. Things kind of hit as hit their zeniths with towering in Furno, which actually was competing twin films that came together from two different studios. Or when Alan was the producer behind a lot of these big big disaster movies. And then we're really an exploration of the peak of what could be done with modern special effects.

Miniatures, incredible stage builds, et cetera. That tails off at the end of the 1970s.

You have some attempts at eco-horror, like swarm, and stuff like that. And then we get into like action blockbusters of the 80s. But then you have a new technological revolution with Jurassic Park in the early 1990s. And all of a sudden we have all these new tools in our toolbox that we can play with. And so then you get this new Renaissance of disaster films, you know, Twister with young debons, Titanic, for example.

And obviously, Deep Impact in Armageddon. And so what's interesting is, one of the films has its roots in the 1970s. Deep Impact is, um, Zanik and Brown, who had produced jaws in a number of other films. And they were going to do an adaptation of one world's collide, which was a very famous book about another planet hitting Earth.

“And I think the problem was development kind of spiraled until the disaster film Renaissance had run its course.”

At the end of the 70s, they put the script in a drawer. Early 90s, they pull the script out of the drawer. They kind of stopped working together. But they say, hey, we're going to come back for one last hurrah. They take it to Stephen Spielberg at DreamWorks. It says great. I'm going to direct this. And we have all these brand new technological tools. He's just on Jurassic Park. Like we can actually show an asteroid hitting the Earth.

And then Lizzie, maybe you can talk a little bit about how this idea may have found its way to rival studio Disney in the mid 1990s. This is another DreamWorks in Disney, um, rivalry across these two movies, but so unconfirmed. But there is reason to believe that the screenwriter for a deep impact, one of the screenwriters may have had lunch with Michael Ovidz. We know we have lunch with an unnamed president of Disney. Yes. And we believe it might be Michael Ovidz.

Right. And this is Bruce Joel Ruben. It could be Michael Ovidz. But regardless, they sat down. They had lunch and, you know, he asks Bruce what he's working on. What do you work on? And Bruce is like, well, you know, I probably shouldn't tell you. It's for DreamWorks. He's like, we're buddies. We're buddies here. You know, we're just guys. Just a couple of guys who believe Michael Ovidz formerly Stephen Spielberg's agent.

So maybe he said to him, oh, hey, I've worked with Steve for, you know, 20 years. We're, we're good friends. I'm a safe space. So anyway, they have this lunch. Bruce explains what he's working on. He, you know, gives the full elevator pitch and more for a deep impact. And then, as part of the story, the president is taking notes.

I take notes during all my lunch. Yes.

You're forced to, however, remember what I like about my friends. You know, it's so funny because shortly thereafter, Michael Bay and Jonathan Hensley go in to pitch Armageddon. And they have like the loosist of loose napkin scribbled ideas for this movie. And they go in and the pitch is so fast. Isn't he like, yes, Greenland? Yeah.

It's happening. We're doing it. And by the way, it's called Armageddon. And you're going to be in the theaters in, you know, a year. And the theory is that, you know, perhaps they were already noodling this after that lunch.

“And so when Michael Bay came in and he was like, what about astronauts and oil drillers?”

They were like, done, done. Michael, we love it. Yeah, right. And what's 20 is Armageddon is the production that worked closely with NASA. And so it's the one that they had to have approved by NASA for scientific accuracy. And what is interesting too, Lizzy, you know, as we talked about in our episode,

is there were two other asteroid-related projects in development. So James Cameron's bright angel falling was set up at, I believe, 20th century Fox at the time with Peter Hayams,

maybe set to direct that never went anywhere.

But if you can read the script, I found a copy of it. And it's clear somebody ripped off somebody because between Armageddon so much from bright angel falling or vice versa. And then you also have asteroid, which becomes an NBC mini series that's released, I think in the back half of 1997.

“And all of this isn't coming out of thin air, right?”

Like, all of these movies and TV shows about asteroids were inspired by the news of a comet that NASA found in space. Yeah, the Schumacher Levy comet had hit Jupiter, and there was all of this imagery of it. And we all of the Sun really is holy shit. Outer space is like a shooting gallery.

And there are asteroids flying by us in comets flying by us all the time that we've been unaware of.

And also, you know, this hypothesis that the dinosaurs had been destroyed by asteroid or comet hitting the Earth had been formulated in 1985. But I think had really permeated the popular culture in the early 90s with the advent of something like Jurassic Park. For example, dinosaurs are top of mine. So again, I do think there are a lot of mines in Hollywood and we're all processing the same information at the end of the day. And so it does make sense that these ideas maybe they're stolen from time to time.

But what seems more likely is like asteroids. There are so many hurling past us in any given moment. And what's more unusual is that two studios have the hubris to play the game of chicken and decide to go head to head with developing these movies. And so to me, it's like the way possibly to think about it is that there is actually a lot of potential for twin films at any given moment. And the reason that we don't have them is that studios tend to back away from going head to head with one another with a given film.

Because it's incredibly risky. And I mean, Lizzie and I talk about this all the time. Studios, you know, they move movies off of certain weekends because they don't want to compete with a different movie that may overlap in terms of audience. And so one way to think about it might be less. I'm going to shoot another bullet, you know, with my gun in midair.

And instead say there are so many bullets traveling through the air at all times, I'm actually going to remove my other bullets, you know, from time to time. So they don't interfere with the other studio. I actually really like twin films. I like watching them. I'm not mad at their existence at all because there's such a great example of it's not about the story or the idea.

It's how you tell it. And it's so fascinating to see two completely different directors like Michael Bay and Mimi leader. You can't get more different than those two in terms of Armageddon and Deep Impact. Telling what is a very similar story and yet the movies are so different. And they are individually enjoyable.

And I like when studios plow ahead with this. And like, yes, I'm sure there's borrowing. You know, there's osmosis of ideas all the time everywhere. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing because they're not going to be the same movie if it's different people making them. So what I'm hearing is that to us, it feels like twin films are happening so frequently.

But what you're saying is that actually considering the way films are produced, twin films could be occurring way more frequently than they are. So the way I would maybe encourage people to think about it after looking into this a bit is,

“you know, historically a classic form of twin film has been like the A feature in the B feature, right?”

And so sometimes this has been on the big screen and sometimes it's either the big screen versus the small screen. So like post disaster film Renaissance, you would oftentimes see an A picture in theaters and either a mini series or a television B picture on television.

And the television corollary to the studio is saying, we are going to make our low budget very fast sheep and dirty version of this, you know, tornado versus Twister. The television support mini series of Titanic and 96 versus James Cameron's epic and 97. Because A, we think that if an audience is interested in the big feature version, maybe they'll just watch this because they're also interested in this. But also be, we could capture a section of the mark market that that studio is not going to be able to capitalize on, which are the people that are not going to go to theater necessarily.

The people that are just going to stay home and watch it on television. And this is kind of morphed over time into the mockbuster more recently, which you guys might, you know, the guys who do shark NATO, etc. They do things like trans morphers and paranormal entity. And it almost seems like the movie, but it's not the movie. And that was really born out of 2006's War of the World, Spielberg was doing an adaptation of world. The world's at the same time that these producers who are kind of Roger Corman-esque are trying to do their version of war of the world because it's public domain this IP.

They realize, wait a second, Blockbuster has ordered 100,000 copies of our VHS mistakenly thinking they've ordered the Stephen Spielberg one.

“There's a business opportunity here. And so I think that that makes sense from a business perspective.”

And like what you're saying is the more rare instances to kaiju, you know, going at it in the water, like Olympus has fallen and White House down, for example. And those are rare, I think, again, not because the inception of those ideas is rare, they're actually incredibly common. It's that usually one of the drivers pulls out of the skin and says, like, I don't want our cars to hit head on. Just to kind of distill the reasons why we think twin films are happening into kind of easily consumable explanations.

What I'm hearing so far in this conversation is, number one reason is, you know, literal intellectual theft. Another reason is that something happened in the Zikai set influence to multiple films to be developed at the same time. Example of that would be like Steve Jobs dying and then there's two biopics happening all of a sudden. And then the third reason we were talking about is kind of just like technological limitations or breakthroughs on the breakthroughs.

“I think that's exactly right. I think it's a confluence of those three things and I also just think, you know, it's it's so tempting to think.”

To think you stole my idea, you know, it's something that we've probably all experienced, but the thing that's harder to come to terms with is that. I don't know any of our ideas are actually that individual when you break them down.

And there's there is kind of a collective unconscious pool, I think we're always pulling from.

And I do think that's where twin films come from like, yes, sometimes you go to lunch with your quote unquote friend who's taking notes. But there's other times where it's just asteroids and comets are in the news or it's something people are thinking about. It's something that's in the back of your mind, it's something that's in the back of millions of people's minds and it's something that you realize, hey. I could make money on this and the fact that somebody else has that idea does not necessarily mean they took it from you.

“And I think that we underestimate our sort of common brain a bit.”

There are also, you know, Anniversary's, for example, this would tie into the zeitgeist thing, you know, you have 1492 conquest of paradise, Ridley Scott, you know, Christopher Columbus, nobody saw it. And then you have Christopher Columbus, the discovery from the producers of a bunch of superman films, also nobody saw that movie.

So if nobody was really interested in the 500th anniversary of this month, but it was embraced by a couple of studios to the tune of a hundred million dollars.

Like Lizzie is saying, we are all collectively filtering the same information and looking for stories in a lot of these places, and sometimes it's influenced by twin events inside of other forms of media. So you know, you have like the mid-offs to 2013 sort of YA dystopian future phenomena, right, where you have the Hunger Games, and you have divergent, and you have the maze runner, and these are all based on like literature, there are all literary adaptations. But that's because the literary landscape was very much riddled with YA dystopian novels.

Well, okay, why is the literature landscape riddled with that? Okay, maybe it's because we're in the middle of a recession right now, and all of the, you know, hope and change that everybody said Obama was going to bring. It doesn't seem to be happening all the sudden, and it's going to be the Hunger Games, and so these books are really resident who knows, but I do think Hollywood is very reactionary at the end of the day. We're simultaneously incredibly unique in that the scene to scene differences in these movies could not be more drastic, and yet the big picture ideas that we're coming to are very universal, I think.

All right, exactly. I'll go more problematic. I'll see if I can get, I don't know who.

Kevin Spacey, we're problematic. All right, so we learned a little bit about why twin films happen so regularly, but after the break, I want to return to a bug's life and see why Chris and Lizzy think this movie works so well. Okay, we're back. We're still here with the hosts of what went wrong, Chris and Lizzy. At the top of our discussion, we were talking about a bug's life versus ants, and more broadly, these kind of Disney Pixar versus Dreamworks twin films. I've always felt like the Dreamworks titles were a little more interesting because they were weirder essentially and a little more nuanced, but I'm curious about what makes the Pixar movies click for YouTube.

I feel like the, it's very tempting to call these Pixar, if we're talking about Pixar versus Dreamworks, to call the Pixar movies in particular bugs life, the more sort of simplistic ones. I actually think that they're deceptively complicated. When I watched, because I watched both a bug's life and ants back to back ahead of this and honestly, yes, a bug's life is more geared towards children for sure. However, I think that the sort of the complex, like emotional things you have to wrangle with. In a bug's life, to me, are a bit more complex than they are in ants. And it tells you exactly what it is upfront. You know, it's, we're yelling ant is in therapy. They literally tell him you're in significant. He's like, okay, I get it. And then he's like, maybe I'm not in significant. Maybe we need to start a revolution and the people, and it's like, it's listen, it's fun. I actually, I'm not, I shouldn't crap on it too much. It's a totally fun movie.

“But with a bug's life, it's more like, I think in making something that is easier for children to relate to, but still very smart, they actually explore something that to me has a bit more depth to it.”

And the same in Toy Story, like, the characters are actually very complex. You don't, you know, Woody is the main character in that he's, he's kind of a jerk to buzz. Like, he's a great guy until he's confronted with someone who could potentially use their position. And then he's not such a great guy.

And it's this question of like, having to wrangle with yourself in a way that I actually think the Pixar films explore better than some of the, the dream works interesting.

Yeah, it's like it's taking these complicated ideas and making it digestible for kids is more impressive. You're saying then.

“And this is music to Devon's ears. Is exactly exactly it. The book's life, they're playing around with gender. Remember? Yes.”

So you know, kind of like self love and body image and yes, I agree. It's like, I was laughing out loud through all of bugs life. I got to tell you it's just howling, laughing. I couldn't believe how funny that was. Yeah, it's like in a drama, a line has to work dramatically and a comedy has to work dramatically and chemically, right, if you're looking. A Pixar film has to work for children and adults, an equal measure. And like Liz is saying, that's a, that's a hard target to hit.

“It is. And I think interestingly enough, to me, ants, the characters were less dynamic and more sort of characters versus a bug's life.”

They were very complex. Like, you know, the Julia Louis driver's princess aunt total jerk to Dave Foley. I can't remember any of the actual characters. You guys to know that. I just remember the character's name was Flick. Like, that's such a jerk. And yeah, and she like recognizes that in herself halfway through, which was really nice, because I was like, man, I hope he doesn't just go for her when she's being, you know, such a. She's just nagging him the whole, but she turns it around and I just, yeah, and I loved it. And the whole idea of the bird is so clever and something you would think, sorry guys. I'm really sorry.

The answer is great points. Yeah. Well, something I didn't make it. Something interesting that no mention earlier was that in the dreams, works.

One's like shark tail and an ants. The characters are often characters of the people voicing them, which like, you've got the integrated for walking and like the guys exactly.

I'm not a fan of that. Well, you know, you don't want to see kids that are shaped like Christopher walkin.

“I don't want to see Christopher walkin. Yeah. I don't want to see it's teeth. I. I'm so sorry.”

I'm so lonely. It was awesome. I have to say. I agree.

Um, well, guys, this has been so insightful and useful. Thank you so much for joining us and I hope to chat to you guys soon.

“Thanks so much for having me. Yes, this is great. You guys have a great show. We will be listening.”

No such thing as a production of kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborn and Mengesh Hotticador.

The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman and Devon Joseph, the theme and credit song is by me, Manny.

“This episode was mixed by Fran Bandy. Our guests this week were Chris and Lizzie from the What Went Wrong podcast.”

Definitely be sure to go check that show out. It's a lot of fun and visit nosuchthing.show to subscribe to our newsletter. If you had feedback or a question, our email is Manny Noah [email protected]. Or if you're in the US, you can leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. We'll see you next week.