<music>
- "They're he-re!"
Nick From Akron, Ohio, This is episode two of "On the Tropes". I'm your host, Nick, and today I'm joined by
Kyle Kyle and
Cir Cir.
Nick Today, the trope that we are talking about is the MacGuffin. So, "MacGuffin". Cir, tell us a little about what it is.
Cir Scottish fellow, about yey high, probably about two bills. And he works as, uh, um
Nick All right, enough.
<laughter>
Cir The MacGuffin is when the plot of the movie revolves around finding an item or thing or person that is completely interchangeable. It could be anything else. So, Pirate gold that all the characters try to find. It's a key, and noticeably useless character, that all the characters are trying to catch, or find at the end.
Kyle Basically, my reading of what a MacGuffin is, it's just a red herring, which is a logical fallacy, it's something that distracts or detracts from the real issue at hand. So maybe the characters want it, but it doesn't have any true significance.
Cir Right. It doesn't really do anything.
Nick Which, from the way we're describing it, it doesn't sound like it would appear in very many good movies, but it does find itself in a lot of pretty well-known and well-respected movies.
Kyle I think the way that many movies and other stories use it is, on the surface it looks like it's a heist movie, or "we have to find the so-and-so" , but when you look at it on a more deeper level, a more metaphorical level, that thing that they're searching for falls by the wayside and winds up not being important at all.
Cir You end up with a false theme that way. The characters, they thought they were after tha bag of gold, but really they were after the confidence of completeing the mission, or they were after the love of the whatever.. Some other important hidden theme.
Kyle Yeah; Indiana Jones, he's looking for all these artifacts, but really , he's just on the road for excitement. It doesn't really matter; he goes from one thing to the next, and nobody knows what that golden statue is.Who cares?
Cir Like Kyle pointed out, there are so many movies that, really, the thing could be anything, and yet they still manage to be great. I felt like, reading the list, my list, it's one of those tropes that people make fun of a lot. And a lot of movies directly reference their own ridiculous MacGuffin, and yet, they're so popular, these movies. It's something the audience can always jump on; I mean, who wouldn't want a huge bag of gold?
Nick My favorite director of all time, Alfred Hitchcock uses these in so many of his movies. He uses it in Film/Notorious. He uses it in North By Northwest. In regard to The Thirty Nine Steps he referred to this trope as essentially , as "What everybody onscreen is looking for but the audience don't care."
Cir Right
Nick It doesn't matter what it is.
Kyle Guy Ritchie uses them a lot, too.
Nick Snatch.
Nick The car doesn't matter.
Cir Yeah, Snatch is a good one. The MacGuffin is actually at one point
Nick It's eaten by a dog. Daisy.
Kyle I loved that; "Get it out of the dog." I love that there are so many different kinds. This is one trope where there are so many variations. There's the one where the MacGuffin is so dangerous that it has to be destroyed.
Nick Like in spy movies, espionage-type things.
Kyle Yeah, maybe this weapon is so dangerous it shouldn't be.
Nick Or it's, I think it's Skyfall — see, I don't even remember, and that's part of what makes a MacGuffin a MacGuffin, is that they're forgettable — I thnk it's a code of all the aliases for the spies who are out there.
Cir That's one of them. That's the first part.
Nick So they can be that type of thing, government secrets or super-weaponry that will lead to the destruction of the entire world. A lot of the time it's just money.
Kyle I like the ones where it's just "an amount of money". It can change depending on what kind of character you're dealing with. $20,000 maybe, for a small-time crook, or, there's a movie that came out recently, Killer Joe that had a certain amount, it was like 50 grand or something, and then there are movies where the amount of MacGuffin cash is like 3 billion dollars or something. Something ridiculous.
Nick One Hundred Thousand Dollars!
Kyle I can't think of one where it's 3 billion, however, 50 million dollars. You know what I mean.
Nick I think in
Kyle And it doesn't really matter at all.
Nick I think in Ocean's Eleven it's an 8-figure number, but then in some other heist movies, it's 20,000, 50,000.
Kyle It's always funny thinking of "what would I do with 70,000 dollars that I have to split between three criminals?"
Nick Or, "these people are getting killed over two diamonds?"
Kyle You could buy a really nice car, you could put some away for savings, nice chunk of change.
Nick You think about the amount of time and money they must invest in this heist to get all this fancy weaponry, guns,
Kyle It's not worth it at the end.
Nick No. They're probably netting like about 12 bucks an hour.
Cir Right.
Kyle And I love how sometimes the MacGuffin is one of these things that either, it's really powerful and they get t, or it's suppose to be really valuable, and they find out that it's ... crap.
Nick Yeah, or it's — There's a very very famous, classic example, that'll make my top five list, but there's a classic example of a MacGuffin that ends up being... it ends up being nothing.
Kyle I like the one that is so powerful that it , it almost can't even be used. Marvel Comics has a great one in The Infinity Gauntlet, that is actually <SPOILER ALERT> showed up in The Avengers, for those who are watching, it is in Odin's collection of captured weapons that he has. And The Casket of Winter is in the Thor movie. I think it will show up in the Avengers too. But the Infinity Gauntlet is this — if you wear it, you can control reality, basically. And it's a huge MacGuffin, because anytime a character actually has had it, it essentially cancels itself out. It does nothing.
Nick And a MacGuffin isn't always a thing. It can be the pursuit of a person
Cir An event. Or a person.
Nick I guess you could almost say, in a way, like The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The whole "losing his virginity" is in a way, a MacGuffin, which is basically just a backdrop for hm becoming, going form a friendless nerd to a multi-friended nerd.
Cir Yeah, because it could just as easily have been him trying to get ... a brand new car.
Kyle Everything I had on my list, I just started changing out the objects, and if I could change it out and not change the movie, then...
Nick Yep. Or if it's incredibly forgettable, like in Old School. Do you know what the plot of Old School is? 'Cause I don't; I haven't watched it in the last few months.
Kyle They're trying to keep their house.
Cir Their frat turf. Fraternity house.
Kyle They're trying to keep their licensing.
Nick Ohh, yeah, because of what's-his-name.
Kyle 'cause of an evil Dean
Nick Piven. The guy from Entourage. But you see what I'm saying. Really it doesn't matter
Kyle Normal people wouldn't know the plot of Old School.
Cir Exactly.
Nick We just like that movie a lot.
Kyle I like how MacGuffins can be definitely varied from objects, to people, to events. In a lot of action movies, it's weapons, like the Green Destiny in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or in Despicable Me it's the moon. He really wants to get the moon. He gets the moon in the end (spoiler) but it doesn't really matter to him because these girls are really more important to him, so it's kind of cool how that ends.
Cir I'm thinking of Jason and the Argonauts
Nick The Golden Fleece.
Cir I like the Argonauts, too, because it's like a supergroup. If you read the list of guys who are in it, it's these guys from ... Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, all these different gods and stories.
Kyle It's like The Expendables of mythology.
Cir Right. And it's so cool because back then, those were all local gods. Theseus was to a certain place, Hercules was
Nick They were hipster before they were big.
Cir Right, and it's every town's, people's, ethnic group's god or specific hero are all in this big story that you can imagine them trading in the little mercantile centers and such.
Kyle It's such a great MacGuffin, this Golden Fleece. I was thinking about that the other day, how much it would be worth, a fleece made of solid gold.
Nick I think that the MacGuffin is used, in terms of the way it influences the story, it's useful in prety much any genre of storytelling. It gets used in action, it's used in comedy, it gets used in fantasy, it's used in drama.
Cir Yeah.
Kyle It's used in movies like Avatar, where they just wanted an excuse for them to be on the planet, or it can be used in a great movie, like No Country for Old Men where the money in that is the motivation for everybody. So there's a very broad spectrum of
Cir I like it because— you point out a very good point with "No Country", because to say the MacGuffin is useless, it still does make you think, though. It's almost the writers' duty to show why these characters care about it, because sure, it could have been any amount of money for the audience to watch it, however, to those characters, that amount of money os everything in their lives, and it's up to the writer to show "why does your character need 20 grand? Why does it not have ot be 50 grand? What will make the difference in your character's life if he gets this huge safe instead of a ... golden ring?" That's where a movie can be good or bad dealing with a MacGuffin.
Kyle I think one of the examples on the TV Tropes site is whether, in a heist movie, whether or not it's the Hope Diamond versus the Mona Lisa. It doesn't matter, you switch-out one for the other and who would blink? The audience will never know the difference. It's not like the outcome of the movie is going to be different because you switched one for the other. It's all about the way that certain thing influences the personalities of the characters. The way it affects their drive for this heist, or whatever it is. Forwarding the plot.
Cir Exactly.
Nick So that is the MacGuffin. Join us in our next segment where we talk about our Top Five MacGuffins, ever.
- My desert island, all-time, top five, most memorable break-ups, in chronological order, are as follows: Allison Ashmoore, Penny Hardwick, Jackie Alden, Charlene Nicholson, and Sara Kendrew. Those were the ones that really hurt. Can you see your name on that list, Laura?
Nick Welcome back to "On the Tropes". This week we are talking about our top five favorite MacGuffins Ever. Cir, what is your Number Five MacGuffin?
Cir My number five MacGuffin is Goldeneye. The Bond Movies use all sorts of MacGuffins, but this one is my favorite because who ever remembers anything about the Goldeneye Key? I saw the movie, like three or four weeks ago, randomly, and I'd completely forgotten there was even a key, there was even a thing having to do with finding it. All I remembered was essentially Onatopp. Natalya. Natalya Onatopp and something about a rogue agent. So that's my number five. I think it's a great example because nobody remembers it. Kyle?
Kyle My Number Five is the stapler in Office Space, only because in that movie, when you have someone quote that movie, next to "PC Load Letter", the stapler and Milton's character is the next biggest part of that movie. It's not — his story is very side-story, but it is his motivation in that entire movie is getting his stapler back. He never actually uses it in the movie, he just wants it really badly. And when they bring it back at the end, when the whole building is blown to smitereens, and — ah, not blown to smithereens, it burned down, and his stapler is recovered, it just kind of sums it all up. I think it's a good MacGuffin.
Nick He doesn't have a pressing need for stapling.
Kyle Yeah, he's just kind of weird.
Cir Does he ever use it?
Nick I don't think so. All right, my Number Five is the titular Maltese Falcon from the book and the Humphrey Bogart movie The Maltese Falcon. They say it's "The stuff that dreams are made of".
- "What is it?"
"The uh, stuff that dreams are made of."
"Huh?"
Nick Ultimately, the Maltese Falcon ends up being of little to no value, even though all this drama and all these murders have been committed because of it. Cir, what's your Number Four?
Cir Number Four is from the hilarious British Television show, 'Allo 'Allo!. It's about a French cafe owner resisting the Nazis that aired on PBS in the Nineties. Did I say it's hilarious? Few parallels in America. Each season revolves around a MacGuffin that the characters try to find. My favorite being an art piece, it's usually like an art piece or a bomb or a secret list. My favorite was "the Madonna with the Big Boobies" which was forged, reforged, stolen, restolen many times to no effect, no bearing on the outcome of anything. Kyle?
Kyle Ah, my Number Four would be the baby in Juno, I don't know, just because the whole movie is about her being pregnant, and the baby that she is going to have singlehandedly breaks up a couple, it kind of ruins her entire life for the most part, and it's the driving force behind the entire movie. It's not really about the baby, it's about her and how she reacts to being pregnant and everything.
Nick I don't think we ever see the baby itself in the movie.
Kyle I think we might at the very end, I think what's-her-face, the woman, is holding her, but maybe I'm wrong. But yeah, the baby is a very little part in that movie, but everyone wanting it, and so, yeah. What about you, Nick? Number Four.
Nick My Number Four is the briefcase in Pulp Fiction that Marcellus Wallace sends Vince Vega and Jules to obtain. We don't ever see what's inside the briefcase. We know that it glows; some fan theories say that it's Marcellus Wallace's soul. I don't really buy into that fan theory at all and Tarantino himself has said "I don't know what's in the briefcase, and I don't care what's in the briefcase." And I think that's a great example, a great distillation of the soul of what aMacGuffinis. Who knows, who cares?
Cir and all the fan speculation in the world... you can say "It could be this, and it did have a green glow...'', however, it doesn't matter.
Nick One of my favorite quotes about movies is Tarantino said, "When I make a movie, if a million people see it, I want them to see a million different movies." So, Cir, what about your Number Three?
Cir My number Three is from the movie Ronin (1998):
- "How did you know it was an ambush?"
"Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt. That's the first thing they teach you."
"Who taught you?"
"I don't remember. That's the second thing they teach you."
CirThis movies has so many blatant tropes, it's almost like a deadly-serious parody. And theMacGuffin in this case is, again, a briefcase with some ridiculous sum of money in it. My favorite scene is when one of the villains runs around with the case, just shooting people and causing mayhem. This movie is so over-the-top with a straight face and it seems like one of those movies that had a twinkle in its eye the whole time that you're watching. Kyle.
Kyle My Number Three is the ring in The Lord of the Rings. Earlier we were talking, I don't know if it was being recorded or not, if it was off-air—
Nick It was probably off-air
Kyle about the ring not being a true MacGuffin. But I think it is, if only because we're going by the rule of "you can replace it with anything and it still makes the movie." Because the movie isn't really about the ring. It's about a journey and the ring is said to be so powerful and dangerous, but it's never really portrayed inthe movie as being so powerful or anything, it's just some jewelry that's around this little person's neck. It's really the driving force of the hobbits' story, but there's so much going on about war and all this other stuff that, it's strange that the whole series is called "Lord of the Rings" but I feel like it has a very little part.
Cir Lord of the Rings is famous, to me, for having so many various powers and themes and vague things. The characters are, Aragorn, for example, is a very powerful character, its hinted at that he's more than just a person, however. His aura is powerful. You know, they never explicitly state that Gandalf is that much... where he comes from, they never lay out what his powers are, you just know that he's that much more effective. And the ring, even. It "rules all the other rings", and you're like, so, does it rule them by when you put the ring on it can control your mind, or is it that you'll be influenced to do what the wearer says? You never really know. You only know that having the ring makes you "win" and that, to me, is the perfect MacGuffin. It's so vague.
Nick I think what would discredit it from being a MacGuffin is anyone who is really interested in the history of the story. Because I know there's The Hobbit book and everything,
Kyle The Silmarillion
Nick and, I'm sure Tolkien's written a bunch of other sort of stories about the history of it all, but from the movie standpont, they don't really — they have a short cutscene of some guy wielding it, but it really does not show how powerful it is in the movie itself, and, I don't know... I think the ring is a very good example of a MacGuffin.
- Gollum: "We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious! They stole it from us."
Kyle What about you, Nick?
Nick So, my Number Three, the Coen Brothers, we talked about them a little bit earlier, they use MacGuffins a lot; the money in No Country For Old Men, money in Fargo, money in Blood Simple, and in The Big Lebowski, there are a few MacGuffins, there's money, there's the kidnapping of Bunny Lebowski, but my favorite MacGuffin from that movie is The Dude's rug.
- Walter Sobchak: "That rug really tied the room together, did it not?"
The Dude: "Fuckin' A"
Donny: "And this guy peed on it."
Walter Sobchak: "Donny, please."
Nick So there's Jeffrey Lebowski; he's unkempt, disheveled, probably unemployed, pretty much all he does is bowl, drink White Russians, and smoke joints. But when his rug gets peed on, he goes out of his way, like the only time in his life he's ever made an effort at anything, to get this rug replaced, for the sole fact that it tied the room together.
Kyle Which most rugs do...
Nick This one really did. So then he goes to Jeffery Lebowski's house and he goes out of his way to lie to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character, steal a rug, and that's the end of it. You never see the rug again. It would be nice if you see him at the end of the movie and it gets tied up with a nice ribbon and he's sitting on his couch admiring this rug. But they just completely ignore it the rest of the movie. So that's my
Cir That's one of those movies I feel will come up
Nick a lot on this show.
Cir One of the great ones. Lots of tropes.
Nick Well the Coen's are such geniuses. That movie is full of complete silliness, including The Dude's rug.
Cir I love that scene that was referenced on a previous project of ours when they walk in and ask him what his bowling ball is. and he says
Nick "Obviously, you're not a golfer." All right, Cir, what's your Number Two?
Cir Numner Two is from the show Highlander. Well, the show and the movie. I'm a big fan of the show, partly because of how big and ridiculous the MacGuffin is.
Nick Cir, you're going to have to pick one or the other, Because there can only be one.
Kyle "There can only be one Highlander!"
- "There can be only one!''
Cir More the show. The plot of Highlander, for those too young to remember, is "a bunch of immortals fight over this mystical prize that one will receive after killing all the other ones." And it is just as vague as that synopsis is. There's a few different continuities going on, in the overall franchise, and some of them have different what the prize actually is. And I just like the idea of a MacGuffin that the writers, they don't even know what it is. What could there possibly be for immortal characters to want that badly? It's not money. It's obviously not immortality. One of the guesses was that it's "an end to immortality" which is, c'mon, not everybody wants that. So it could be anything. This mystical prize that everybody wants; it's an excuse for grown men to sword-fight each other in the streets.
Nick Which, who doesn 't want?
Cir Right.
Nick Kyle.
Kyle My Number Two is the brick in Brick, which refers to a brick of heroin and is pretty much the driving force of the entire movie. It's the reason why the movie is taking place. The stolen brick of heroin, but it really doesn't come up until the very end of the movie, and the motivation of Brendan's character is not because of the brick, but — I don't know how to explain it, actually, I'm doing a terrible job. The brick is the reason the movie happens but
Nick He's trying to solve his ex-girlfriend's death.
Kyle Yeah, but you don't find out until late in the movie that that's why. I think on TV Tropes it's actually referred to as a Title Mac Guffin, where theMacGuffin itself is in the title of the movie.
Nick The Maltese Falcon is another one.
Cir Goldeneye
Kyle Dude, Where's My Car? What about you, Nick? Number Two?
Nick My Number Two is from Greek mythology; Helen of Troy. So, a little bit of background on Helen of Troy. She's the daughter of Queen Leda. And Queen Leda was impregnated — Zeus found her, was attracted by her (the god Zeus),
Cir He took the form of a swan
Nick yeah, he took the form of a swan and
Cir I'm a big mythology fan.
Nick So this woman is being seduced by a swan.
Cir Europa being seduced by a bull is ridiculous.
Nick Zeus was a filthy man
Cir Filthy bastard.
Nick But you take the beauty of the Queen and the majesty of a swan, and of course you are going to get a child who will grow up to have 'the face that launched a thousand ships'.
Cir Sounds legit...
Nick Yeah. So, Helen grows up, marries Menelaus, and then, depending on your source material, is either seduced by, or raped by, Paris. I thnk that the artists tend to side with the rapes and the writers tend to side with the "seduced".
Cir It's funny, because myths are filled with examples like that, where it's like sedu-rape. Old time, seduced. Modern times, it's rape.
Nick Yeah, it's either a love story or a horrible, horrible torture-porn. So, Helen of Troy, she ultimately gets taken away from Troy by Paris and Menelaus and the Spartans wage a war which is also the Trojan War, which we see in Literature/The Illiad and then we see the end part of it in Virgil's Aeneid
Cir She launched 1000 ships?
Nick Yeah. But she doesn't really play a big factor in it after that. We focus more on Hector, Paris's brother; and Achilles. He kills Hector, and defiles his dead body, I think at one point Achilles fights a river and the gods get involved in the fight and it's chaos and who cares about this woman at that point?
Kyle At that point, it doesn't even matter. I think in the the most recent movie, in Troy, didn't they allude to her being almost an excuse for
Nick Probably.
Kyle them to wage war?
Cir I've noticed that a lot of times, modern movies will take a MacGuffin that was an older story like that , they'll make a movie out of it, and they'll kind of add something. "This is is the real reason."
Nick Yeah, and that's really what Helen is reduced to.
Cir I like that it's like a living MacGuffin. Some of the best MacGuffins are Living MacGuffins, I think, because it instantly gets the audience involved. Like in Taken, where the hell is my daughter — kidnapped. Or Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman.
Nick Are you comparing Helen of Troy with Taken?
Cir I might be. A little bit. Just a little bit.
Nick Classic. Classic movie.
Cir We're going to talk about Taken first.
'Nick Yes. Yes. Cir, what is your Number One?
Cir My Number One is, agin, MacGuffin in the title; The Dark Crystal, a MacGuffin Escort Mission. Some really great Muppets seek to rejoin a shard from a magical crystal that it broke from, and when you watch the movie (I guess this is a mild spoiler alert), by the end, when the Dark Crystal is rejoined with the shard, it causes some characters to, basically, transform in a way, to change. And really, it could have been anything. It could have been a message telling them to do that, because it's their natural process; it could have been a magic spell, it could have been a secret herb. Those are some of the earliest ones I remember seeing. But it could have been anything in the story.
Nick Kyle?
Kyle Speaking of "secret herb", my Number One is "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle''.
Cir<singing> "Legalize it, yeah, yeah"
Kyle This is the first movie that I thought of when we were told to bring up our MacGuffins. I don't know, just going for those really mediocre cheeseburgers. They're not that great.
- " There used to be a White Castle right here in this location. Where is it?"
Cir I want to point this out that — when was the movie? 2007 or something like that?
Nick Ohh, before that!
Cir early 2000's
Nick that rekickstarted. I guess it didn't rekickstart, it kickstarted Neil Patrick Harris's career. 'Cause I think that was prior to How I Met Your Mother.
Kyle Way prior.
Nick or ''Dr. Horrible
Kyle It's funny though, because it's their driving force the entire movie. They go to really crazy lengths; they ride a cheetah at one point, and at the end of the movie, it's almost underwhelming when they finally get their burgers. They're eating these regular hamburgers and they could be anything, but they happen to make it White Castle burgers, which I'm sure White Castle got so much publicity from that.
Cir I wonder whether it was good or bad? I guess the burgers
Nick They wanted them.
Kyle They did want them. What about you, Nick? Your Number One?
Nick So, my Number One is "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane, often regarded as the best movie ever made. The movie: Charles Foster Kane, media mogul, dies, and reporter Jerry Thompson goes on this journey to discover what his final word of "Rosebud" actually means. He goes on this trip of Charles Foster Kane's past, from humble beginnings. Welles uses just ridiculously innovative camerawork. There's good acting throughout the movie. But the search for Rosebud itself is never actually fiulfilled by the main character of Jerry; I think by now, most people know what Rosebud was, and that it ends up being burned in a fire at the final scene of the movie. But the audience sees what it means and while you might try to prescribe it as maybe this is Kane's nostalgia for his past, or regrets about his actions as he's risen through the worlds of business, media, newspaper. I think that the end of this movie actually summarises what a MacGuffin is better than Maltese Falcon. They say that it's the stuff dreams are made of, but I think Citizen Kane does it better in some of the final lines of the movie:
- Female Reporter: "If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything."
Kyle I love that she thnks it would have explained, and he's just like "Nope. Nope, I don't think so." It's perfect because that is exactly what a MacGuffin is. It's something that's so laughably inconsequential that —Nope.
Nick I think that it is a perfect example of what a MacGuffin is, and the way it can propel a movie through out its entire course, for something that ends up being really unimportant.
Kyle I like how we put Citizen Kane and "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" on the same level.
Nick Both at Number One.
Kyle Yeah, both at Number One.
Cir They're very similar.
Nick So, listeners, check out our Facebook at Facebook.com/OnTheTropes; you can vote for what you think the Number One should be. Join us in our next segment, where we introduce what is called "The Beast Duel"
- "Gentlemen! Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!"
Nick Welcome back. This week we're doing a segment we like to call a Beast Duel. Now, Kyle, what is a Beast Duel?
Kyle A Beast Duel is, we take two or more elements of popular movies, and we throw
Cir Popular culture
KyleYeah, I guess popular culture. In this case, it's movies, but popular culture, and we kind of throw them into a pit and see, ahhh,
Nick Sometimes it's a battle to the death, sometimes there's an objective that they might accomplish. So it's any situation, we put a few characters into a battlefield of sorts, whether it be a fight to the death or they have to accomplish
Cir a certain mission
Nick A mission
Cir having to do with the trope. And we decide
Kyle if they're successful or not, or who wins or not.
Nick Soon this week's Beast Duel, we are pitting Indiana Jones, The Maltese Falcon's Sam Spade, and Harold and Kumar's Harold and Kumar, all MacGuffin-seekers, to seek out and dispose of The Ring, from Lord of the Rings.
Kyle The One.
Nick So, who treks to Mordor to throw it in the volcano?
Cir They all start at the same point. In wherever — the elf city.
Kyle Do we have to say who would survive through that all or
Nick Or if they would be successful, because
Cir It's just basically "who wins and what happens to them?"
Cir My guess for this one — I see, I see Harold and Kumar, as funny as they are,
Kyle failing miserably.Cir I see them dropping out pretty early.
Kyle getting distracted
Cir Because on the path to the one ring, there were balrogs, dire wolves
Kyle dowel rods?
Cir "Dire wolves". Wrong show; there were wargs that are like giant, evil wolves; there were all kind of things, and Harold and Kumar are two stoners.
Nick I think they drop out even earlier than that. I thnk they live very successful and fulfilled lives, from their viewpoint, because they end up with the hobbits, who, from what I know, live in a world in which they eat multiple breakfastes, multiple lunches,
Cir "second breakfast" they have.
Nick Yeah. And they're very fond of a certain leaf that is smoked by Gandalf and the hobbits. What's it called?
Cir I don't remember.
Kyle Harold and Kumar would just be so entertained by a bunch of small people
Cir They'd get sidetracked smoking that mysterious herb that shows up in every single movie.
Nick But that might actually give them the advantage, because we don't know if Sam Spade and Indy are making to the other end. We don't know if they're getting to Mordor, to the top of that volcano.
Kyle At least Indy is.
Nick They might not. So Harold and Kumar might be the only ones who actually survive this thing.
Kyle Sam Spade, I think has a disadvantage, because he's used to a world a lot like ours
Nick Black-and-white?
Kyle A world filled with women who constantly betray him, and it seems that if he were set in the world of Middle Earth... swordfighting skill? Can he even ride a horse? Whereas Indiana Jones, I have no doubt Indy can ride a horse; he can probabaly fight with a sword, if he can use that whip; he has a cool hat.
Nick It is a very cool hat. Sam Spade — we don't ever see him kicking much ass
Kyle We also don't see Samwise Gamgee kicking much ass, either.
Nick Spade kicks his fair share of ass.
Kyle If Sam was successful in getting the ring, we can directly compare
Cir Just because their names are both "Sam"?
NickSamwise Gamgee is in Lord Of The Rings.
Cir What?
Kyle Their names are both "sam". Sam Spade is
Cir What?
Nick No. Lord Of The Rings.
Cir I just mean even though a hobbit named "Sam" could do it, that doesn't mean Sam Spade could do it.
Nick Oh. Yeah. But I think that that specific Sam could do it. Sam Spade could probably do it.
Cir Yeah, I guess. But it wasn't just Samwise alone, though.
Nick He might be out of his element
Kyle Could Sam Spade trek from — wherever the elf city is —
Nick On just a few pieces of dry bread
Kyle All the way to Mordor? I mean, no-one just walks into Mordor.
Nick Do you guys remember the episode of Seinfeld, where George doesn't have sex and he becomes a genius? Maybe that's all that's keeping Sam Spade from becoming a superhuman. Without any Femme Fatales around, who knows what that man could do?
Kyle You may have a point there. However, is he more capable than Indiana Jones?
Nick No.
Cir No.
Kyle Indiana Jones is a PhD, a professor. he's, again, got a pretty cool hat.
Nick The coolest of hats.
Kyle The coolest.
Nick speaks multi languages; he's already proven himself with
Cir The Ark Of the Covenant.
Nick Exactly.
Cir That's a pretty dangerous MacGuffin.
Kyle The crystal skull? I mean. C'mon.
Nick Yeah. Its crystal.
Cir I got to say, I think Sam Spade gets knocked out early on this one, because he can't —- I don't know —- we don't know that he can't ride a horse, or even get to the ring without the aid of another character. Harold And Kumar? I see these guys showing up, smoking some leaf, chilling with the hobbits and watching fireworks.
Nick But we also have to keep in mind Indy's corruptability with power. If he was given power, would he want to dispose it, or would he take it and sort of...
Cir That's a really good point.
Nick use it.
Kyle I don't think he would. I think what would happen was — and this leads us down a different rabbit hole — I don't think he would use that power for evil, but I think instead of throwing it in the volcano, he would want to put it in a museum.
Nick He would.
Cir Yes, possibly.
Nick which is possibly an awful idea.
Kyle which might be worse.
Cir Does that make him a loser or what?
Kyle Whereas Harold and Kumar, I think if faced with the power of the one ring, they might decide to put the ring in the fire, and hang out with hot elven babes and smoke more sweetleaf.
Nick I think they would, which leads to an astounding conclusion of this Duel.
Kyle I didn't think this would happen, however, it really looks like Harold and Kumar find the one ring and beat out Indiana Jones and Sam Spade. Is that what you guys
Nick In their fried minds, I think that they get away with it.
Cir I think they do.
Nick I think they pull it off.
Kyle Wait, what are they pulling off?
Cir They find and destroy the one ring.
Kyle How would they have the attention span to destroy that ring?
Cir Well, think about it; they're so friendly with the other characters that everybody else would want to help them.
Kyle But they're
Nick But the other characters fail and don't get there. How would they interact with them the entire way?
Cir Harold and Kumar could probably hitch a ride with the hobbits, 'cause they're friendly.
Nick I thought you said that Harold and Kumar drop out early?
Cir That's what I thought would happen originally, but now I'm like "I don't know..."
Kyle There have been new developments.
Cir Yes, new developments.
Nick They drop out early, but I still think that the team fails as a mission, because Indy wants to put it in a museum.
KyleThey'd be working against each other.
Nick I think they fail —- whatever —- the mission is failed because the person who would go the furthest would just want to put it in a museum.
Cir I'm saying Harold And Kumar.
Kyle I think Harold and Kumar have the best shot.
Cir Yeah.
Kyle I think they stumble their way into it, whereas Indy
Cir I agree
Kyle Indy could pull it off
Cir I agree with Kyle that Indy get corrupted.
Kyle He gets corrupted by the Smithsonian or wherever.
Cir And Sam Spade; I don't know if he can even ride a horse, so I don't know
Nick What are the odds that Harold and Kumar fall into the lava themselves
Kyle Pretty good.
Nick while destroying the ring?
Cir It's good, but I think it's low, because I don't think they would get close enough, due to general stoner
Nick How would they handle Gollum at the end?
Kyle Probably take another hit. They wouldn't mind having their fingers bit off. They're too high for that.
Nick They throw some mini-jalapeno burgers from White Castle at him. He's safe. He's taking a burger nap. A meat nap.
Cir So,
Nick Interesting.
Cir Harold and Kumar. Find the one ring and win the first duel.
Nick I did not foresee that. Not at all.
Kyle I thought it would be Indiana Jones for sure.
Nick So did I.
Kyle I thought this was going to be pretty uninteresting, but I like the way it turned out.
Nick All right, so that, that is what a Beast Duel is. If you want to hear more of those, you can email in your suggestions
Cir And let us know what you think, who you think should have won.
Nick So, email us at Onthetropes@Gmail.com; you can find polls and some bonus content at Facebook.com/OnTheTropes; and check out our Twitter at #OnTheTropes. So, as always, I have been Nick, and
Kyle we have been
Cir Cir
Kyle and Kyle.
Nick And we will catch you again next week when we again get stuck On The Tropes.
- "Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico? "
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