DAC Episode 435 - Masters of the Universe (2026)

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A white guy with floppy blond hair and bondage gear in front of an undefinable CGI background. It might be a forest. Who cares.

whatever.

Masters of the Universe, a film that trades on the audience’s nostalgia for a cartoon and its line of toys from forty years ago, has one joke. That joke goes like this: Isn’t Masters of the Universe dumb? Isn’t this shit just, like, completely fucking ridiculous?

Or maybe the joke goes like this: A 21st century human being, gifted with free will and the miracle of incarnation, capable of scaling the heights of imagination and sliding along the ellipses of planets, presses play on a chunk of intellectual property whose sole purpose is to capture two hours of viewing time and prop up shareholder value. You’re the human being.

So listen below, or find us on your podcaster of choice, as we laugh and laugh at the joke. Oh, what a time we have, laughing and laughing. We will never stop. We will laugh and we will laugh. Heh.

DAC Episode 435 - Masters of the Universe (1986)
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DAC Episode 434 - Ice Pirates (1984)

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Some old people, along with a young man in the background.

old dogs in the time funnel.

Look: if you’re going to talk about Battle Beyond the Stars one week, it seems only right to follow it up with that movie’s slightly disgraceful cousin, Ice Pirates. Originally conceived as a serious bit of space opera, it ended up as a mildly raunchy farce with a faint air of Mel Brooks comedy. Listen below or find us on your Podcast Herpe of choice.

DAC Episode 434 - Ice Pirates (1984)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 433 - Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

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A middle-aged white man in a cowboy hat and a plaid shirt. Not pictured: space.

see ya george peppard

Star Who? A New What? Get in the back of the Falcon, G. Lucas, because why would you watch war among the stars when you can experience a battle… beyond the stars?

Seriously, this movie rules. It’s got George Peppard as a space cowboy, Robert Vaughn as a jaded mercenary, Richard Thomas as the guy from IT… and it’s got a whole pile of low-budget space battles. Adam and Aidan had a great time with this one. Listen below or find us on your podblaster of choice.

DAC Episode 433 - Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 432 - Project Hail Mary (2026)

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A little guy made of rocks.

a live rock.

For this week’s episode, Adam and Aidan turn their backs on the past to discuss Project Hail Mary, the big sci-fi blockbuster of 2026. In the near future, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is stuffed onto a space ship and sent eleven light years away to see about saving the Earth from tiny sun-munching microbes. There he meets a sentient rock with the same mission. Cuteness and feels ensue in the vast dark vault of Creation.

What did we think? An astute question. Aidan found it extremely entertaining, if a bit cloying. Adam had some issues with the adaptation because he’s full of “book reading” criteria. What did you think? Throw rocks through our windows with your opinions carved into the igneous surface of your crude missile (igneous rocks only, please. Get out of here with that sedimentary shit*). In the meantime, listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice.

DAC Episode 432 - Project Hail Mary (2026
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 431 - Baby Assassins (2021)

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A young Japanese woman wearing a maid outfit with cat ears, holding a gun to a man in a blue jacket.

live dog, cat ears.

Set in a world where more people need assassinating than a John Wick spinoff, Baby Assassins is pure joy. Yugo Sakamoto’s first installment in the BACU (three movies and a series so far) follows Chisato (Akari Takahishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa, who also has a career as a stunt artist), two aimless slackers who are just as happy laying around on the couch as they are murdering a building full of goons. They end up on the wrong side of a yakuza boss and things go predictably awry. Our advice: go watch this film, then come back and join in as we babble about it. Listen below or find us where podcasts play mobile games and eat oden.

DAC Episode 431 - Baby Assassins (2021)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 430 - Vampire's Kiss (1988)

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an undead lion

Can someone explain Nicholas Cage’s accent work?

DAC Episode 430 - Vampire's Kiss (1988)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 429 - Tootsie (1982)

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1982. The year that brought you E.T., The Thing and Blade Runner also brought you Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie. What do these movies have in common? They’re all going to be remade by Lee Cronin in 2027. Listen below as Adam and Aidan break down the script and examine the remarkable technologies that gave us Dabney Coleman’s moustache. And more!

Also, why do I keep typing Tootise instead of Tootsie? Is this how Lee Cronin plans to get around the rights issues? Lee Cronin’s Tootise (2027)?

DAC Episode 429 - Tootsie (429)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 428 - Now You 2 and 3 Me

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Seven people lined up in front of a library backdrop.

seven live lions. ruffalo hologram not pictured.

Are you looking closely? Well that’s a shame, because you’re looking at one of the steepest downgrades of a franchise whose greatest peak could best be described as “foothills”. 2016’s Now You See Me 2 introduces Lizzy Caplan in place of Isla Fisher, which is a delightful addition (it also gives Woody Harrelson more to do with the introduction of a twin brother, and to that I say, more please), and a plot that I had trouble remembering within seconds of the movie ending. Maybe I was hypnotized? Maybe the movie was a gigantic illusion? A fun and worthy sequel to a fun and forgettable first film.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, on the other hand, is an intermittently enjoyable but largely lousy follow-up. The Gen Z kids grabbing the magic mantle from the original crew is fun (Dominic Sessa? Justice Smith? Ariana Greenblatt? We love it), but the budgetary cuts and the Hulu streaming-grade cinematography and direction robs the film of its predecessors’ charms. But hey, we get Isla Fisher back along with everyone else! That’s fun. Listen below to our musings on the whole affair below, or find us on your iTuner of choice.

DAC Episode 438 - Now You See Me 2, Now You 3 Me
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan

DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

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what is going on with ethan’s hair in this movie? It’s not the crewcut-adjacent trims of 1,3,5 and 7. it’s not the gorgeous flop of 2,4 and 6. this shaggy deal looks like it’s trying to integrate both sides of the hunthair persona. pick a lane, hunt. a solomon lane.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is unhinged. It insists that it’s a separate entity from Dead Reckoning Part One but spends most of its runtime answering the questions posed in its predecessor. It wants to be a genuine finale to the franchise but leaves the door wide open for more installments. Its prologue is a full 30 minutes’ worth of flashbacks within flashbacks that serve to explain things that are also happening in the prologue? The pacing is an absolute mess, the dialogue is agonizingly self-serious, and the final aerial action sequence is upstaged by an underwater action sequence from earlier in the film.

But here’s the thing: if you watch this with Dead Reckoning (Part One!) fresh in your memory, it’s good. It’s good, actually! I never thought I’d type those words. But here we are. Also, the underwater action sequence with Cruise swimming through an abandoned submarine? One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in a movie. Seriously.

DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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