Film / The Bubble (2022)

^{Click here to see the REAL poster} 

Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest: Memories of a Requiem is a movie and the sixth installment of the Cliff Beasts film franchise… which doesn’t exist.

Now The Bubble, on the other hand, is a 2022 comedy film from filmmaker Judd Apatow about the making of the fictional Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest: Memories of a Requiem in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The film stars Karen Gillan, Iris Apatow, Fred Armisen, Maria Bakalova, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Leslie Mann, Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal, and Peter Serafinowicz. It released on Netflix on April 1, 2022.

Not to be confused with The Bubble (2006), an Israeli film, or the anime film Bubble, which was also released on Netflix in April of 2022, and lastly not the live-action film, Bubble.

Previews: Trailer 1, Cliff Beasts 6 trailer, Cliff Beasts retrospective

This Film includes examples of:

• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: In-universe. After Howie abruptly runs away from the shoot, the filmmakers cover for his absence by having his character brutally killed off off-screen, with the characters finding his mutilated corpse... which is then picked by dinosaurs and further ripped to shreds.
• Always Know a Pilot: Sean took flying lessons with a helicopter, needed for a scene. That is - he was taught how to lift off and land. He ends up watching a YouTube tutorial, while already in the air, to figure out the rest.
• An Arm and a Leg: Lauren gets her left hand blown off by the security, who took her for a crazied fan. This sends her into a hospital for the rest of the production.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Krystal is barely 18 and there is a generational gap between her and every other cast member. Previously, that was Carol's spot, but she was just few years younger than the other cast members.
• Bad "Bad Acting": The scenes from Cliff Beasts 6 are so bad, they come around as in-universe intentionally awful. This is further contrasted with how the regular acting in the film is done. And as the production keeps getting more complicated and delayed, the acting is hammed up to be even worse.
• Binge Montage: The remaining cast - and their health officer - end up binging with Dieter on his drug stash, being half a year into the production and bored out of their minds.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Carol's Cliff Beasts character, Dr. Lacey, pees her pants when a cliff beast appears near her and roars at her.
• The Cameo:
  • Benedict Cumberbatch appears in a hallucination.
  • Daisy Ridley appears in a different hallucination. She also appears at the red carpet premiere of Beasts of the Bubble and has no idea why she was invited there.
  • John Cena appears in a scene as the movie's stunt coordinator, trying to do the whole thing via Zoom.
  • John Lithgow appears in a scene playing Tom, the studio chairman.
  • Beck, playing himself is at one point brought in to sing a song meant to motivate the cast as the isolation goes on.
  • Real-life TikTok-er Ivy Wolk makes an appearance as a YouTuber calling for Krystal to get cancelled for going to a party in London in the middle of a pandemic.
  • James McAvoy, also apparently playing himself, comes across Carol when she escapes from the movie set; she mentions that the two of them went on a date once, but he clearly doesn't remember this.
• Cabin Fever: The in-universe production is set somewhere in autumn of 2020, in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic. The titular bubble is about creating a lock-down movie set and surroundings to prevent the endless quarantines and other safety regulations due to self-isolation of the entire crew. It goes sideways time and again, to the ever-increasing frustration of everyone.
• Cliché Storm: The in-universe Cliff Beasts franchise seems to be running for so long, it reached the point it's just completely formulaic and everyone, actors included, is just tired with it. This even including reaching toward a younger audiences by hiring a TikToker as a supporting character simply to shake the format even a tiny bit.
• Colon Cancer: The film being made in universe is, again, Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest: Memories of a Requiem. There’s only one colon in the poster above, but still…
• Cosy Catastrophe: Despite a globe virus and the general cabin fever, frustration and boredom, the film crew at least have all their needs provided for by the hotel staff.
• Dead Sparks: Dustin Mulray and Lauren Van Chance are in the middle of their n-th break-up and try to use the production to get their relationship fixed. Also for the n-th time.
• Demoted to Extra: In-universe. Carol becomes secondary to Krystal and is subjected to her lines being cut or just agreeing with Krystal. To add to the humiliation, her only notable scene has her cowering in fear while pissing her pants.
• Digital Head Swap: Once Lauren is removed from the production, handful of scenes involving a stunt double wearing a green face mask is being filmed, to replace it with Lauren's face in post. The stunt double isn't even female.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The "dinosaurs" in the Cliff Beasts series are not meant to resemble any real species of dinosaur, but instead look more like dragons.
• Everyone Has Standards: Gavin might be a bit manipulative and doesn't think much of the actors, but is clearly appalled when the studio hires Mr. Best and his private security force to keep everyone working.
• Executive Meddling: invoked Subverted. For the most part, Gavin and his inner ring are the Only Sane Men. However, their meddling eventually leads to the production going completely hay-wire, despite their best intentions to prevent exactly that.
• Film Within a Film:
  • Cliff Beasts 6, which this film follows behind the scenes, according to all official marketing.
  • Jerusalem Rising, a movie Carol starred in after Cliff Beasts 4 in which she plays a half-Palestinian, half-Israeli woman uniting the two countries to fight off an alien invasion.
  • The ending, taking place two years after the Cliff Beasts 6 shoot, shows that the nightmarish experience was immortalized as a documentary, Beasts of the Bubble, composed of new material and interviews, outtakes from the shoot and video material meant to be released as official 'behind the scenes' content.
• From Bad to Worse: During a promotional interview with Entertainment Tonight, Darren lets slip that the studio is planning to also start shooting Cliff Beasts 7 back-to-back, surprising everyone who is already tired of making the sixth movie.
• Happily Adopted: Zig-Zagged. Rafi might be happy about not being in orphanage anymore, but he absolutely hates his self-absorbed adoptive parents, who are too busy with their filming careers to really care about him in any real way beyond what amounts to being a publicity stunt. On the other side, both Dustin and Lauren are aware the boy has a terrible personality and is using the situation for his advantage.
• Horrible Hollywood: Paula, the head producer behind the movie and member of the board of the studio behind it, combines just about every possible stereotypical vice of a Hollywood exec, except maybe a sex scandal. She's vain, filthy rich, doesn't give a damn about anyone (not just the actors and crew, but people in general), has a horrid personality and seems to be motivated entirely by making even more money, no matter what. And then there is the entire chain of execs above her, who are just as awful as she is. This is further contrasted with Gavin, who's the on-site exec - while at times harsh and heavy-handed himself, he quickly becomes Only Sane Man for the production.
• Hostility on the Set: Invoked
  • Howie eventually is so fed up by the constant lock-down, isolation and recurring quarantines (note the plural), he starts lashing out at the rest of the cast. Ultimately, he walks from the production entirely. Ironically, he has his outbursts before things get really bad.
  • As the production is getting worse and worse with each week, the cast and the crew start to get at each other almost non-stop.
• I Am Not Spock: In-universe, Carol Cobb is mostly recognisable as "Dr. Lacie".
• Ice-Cream Koan: Sean is promoting himself as a spiritual guru outside his acting career, however his "wisdoms" get so convoluted (despite their simplicity), he always ends up mumbling, unable to finish the thought he was covering. Ultimately he admits he's a fraud and his guidebook was ghost-written.
• Irony: While the production is a horrid experience for the cast, crew and even executives, the hotel staff and the outside personel they've got hired to keep their bubble running are having the time of their lives, especially since they are being paid extra for doing their regular jobs.
  [Having a toast together]
  To never stop filming!
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • As egoistic as he's about it, Dustin does make a good point that the script is awful and in desperate need of some doctoring. He's consistently dismissed.
  • Despite being a mole planted into the production, Carla makes a good point about Carol's plan to get a viral campaign started to save herself from the set: she sounds entitled and whinny, while people have much bigger problems on their heads than some movie production that's at the crossroads.
• Jurassic Farce: The fictional movie-within-a-movie is a parody of Jurassic World Dominion, being the sixth installment of a dinosaur-themed franchise. More specifically it's based on that movie's protracted development due to the pandemic.
• Large Ham: invoked Dieter hams the hell out of his character, Gio.
• Mushroom Samba: Dieter gets high on acid and starts to hallucinate about having sex with his digital training assistant.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Darren Eigan is an amalgamation of few different directors. There is Robert Eggers: the name sounds similar enough, and they both went from working as a store clerk to being an acclaimed indie director, known for specific film-making style. Sean Baker and his Tangerine are referenced, too. His disastrous film production mirrors that of Richard Stanley and the production of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) (along with really weird set and prop design choices) - which also got its own documentary on troubled production. Oh, and he looks and sounds like Tommy Wiseau, just because.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Carol decided to sit out of the fifth movie, which has led to 1) her cast mates being less than welcoming when she returns for the sixth, feeling like she abandoned them, and 2) her having trouble living down a movie she did instead, Jerusalem Rising, in which she played a half-Palestinian, half-Israeli woman despite being neither and the film itself apparently being worse than terrible.
• Parody Assistance: Industrial Light & Magic animated the beasts for the in-universe film scenes. They also animate the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park franchise, which the Cliff Beasts franchise is parodying.
• Prima Donna Director: As the production goes into bigger and bigger chaos, Darren Eigan starts to acting the part, being just sick and tired of making a sell-out blockbuster that was intended to be his first big break-through in the studio system.
• Really Gets Around: Zaki, the football player Carol starts sleeping with, turns out to not only be married, but to have had five children with three different women and to have two more on the way.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The film was inspired by the production of Jurassic World Dominion during the pandemic, with the inspiration being made obvious by it being about the production of the sixth movie in a dinosaur-centric franchise. This trope is in force to the point where The Bubble even managed to release over two months before Dominion.
• Romance on the Set: Invoked
  • Carol hooks up with Zaki, a football player that's also "bubbling" in the same hotel. Or at least she thinks this is the case - for him this is just a random sexual adventure.
  • Dieter and Anika are the actual case. However, she first intentionally kept Dieter at a distance, just to be sure it's not just him being horny.
• Running Gag: Sean's bad left knee failling him multiple times either while dancing, doing stunt work or escaping from Mr Best.
• Seen It All: Carla. She spend most of her life on various movie sets due to her parents being respectively a production assistant and a stunt coordinator, so she's completely phased out and used to various hijinks going around. However, she does note that the production of Cliff Beasts 6 is a complete shitshow. Even after she's revealed as a planted spy, she still seems to be through whole lot of productions anyway.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the cast is told that they'll have to go into quarantine for the second time, Howie can't face the isolation again and just leaves the hotel, planning to run all the way to London. He comes back in the end, helping stop Mr. Best from intervening in the escape.
• Sequelitis: In-universe. Whether or not Cliff Beasts was any good to begin with is debatable, but it has obviously gotten progressively worse.
• Spontaneous Choreography:
  • Cliff Beasts 6 involves a sudden dance scene with a baby dinosaur, put there in entirely on invoked executive demand to cash on Krystal's popularity as a TikToker that does a lot of dance numbers.
  • Since everyone involved was high as kite and hallucinating at the time, it's hard to tell if the TikTok video they did together actually happened, or it was just in their heads, given how well choreographed it was.
• Situational Sexuality: Dieter, being a sexaholic, gets really desperate. Up to the point when he outright asks male cast and crew members, just to finally get laid.
• Stage Mom: It's heavily implied that Krystal, at least her official personality, is run entirely by her mother. Whatever business there is to be done also has to go through her mother. One of the dialogues suggests that the girl herself spend most of her life in a bubble of being micro-managed by her mom as far as she can remember.
• Star-Derailing Role: In-Universe. The only reason Carol comes back for Cliff Beasts 6 is that her previous film Jerusalem Rising bombed so hard that her agent all but tells her that her career is dead on the water.
• Stylistic Suck: Let’s be honest: from what the marketing presents, the Cliff Beasts franchise closely resembles something The Asylum would put out. And the actors are perfectly aware they are in a schlock series, but it does sell and keeps them rich, too.
• Time Skip: In the end, after the remaining actors have escaped the shoot, the story jumps ahead two years into the future to the red carpet premiere of the documentary about the production.
• Troubled Production: The production of Cliff Beasts 6 starts in the midst of global pandemic and only gets worse from there, with actors quitting, going insane from isolation or without their limbs. Meanwhile, the studio enforces one reshoot after another, each filled with dumber ideas than the previous one, while crew either crumbles or has to connect with the set via Zoom. Ultimately, the film becomes one of the most infamous cases in-universe, with a documentary about it being an award-winning sensation.
• 20 Minutes into the Past: The trailer put the events of the film around October 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The ending brings it somewhere around early 2022, when the film premiered.
• Viewers Are Morons: Not only this is invoked, but outright justified in-universe.
  Dustin Mulray': Can we play to the top of our audience's intelligence?
  Darren Eigen (the director): No, our audience is down here. (Points around his waist level) They're kids. That's our audience.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The studio forces the actors to film the movie, even when they are ill, leading to the entire cast vomiting after one another. Lauren doesn't vomit but suffers the end of it when all of Dustin's vomit falls on her mouth.
• Wag the Director: Happens in-universe, as various cast members try to push their weight around and affect the production. Most prominent are Dustin's attempt to change the script at least a tiny bit, especially since the studio is doing re-writes almost non-stop anyway.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: In-universe
  • Carol in Jerusalem Rising film puts out what is intended to be "Israeli/Palestini" accent. It sounds like she's somewhere between very bad Russian and stereotypical Italian, but mostly just struggling to catch her breath.
  • Lauren's character, Dolly, is supposed to be from rural Georgia. Good it is brought up in the dialogues, or else you might never figure it out from her accent.
• Worst Aid: Not only as Black Comedy, but in Serial Escalation style, no less. After Dieter ODs, everyone starts to administrate him different treatments to different things that might be going with him due to all the drugs he took. He gets shot with adrenaline, shot with narcan, hit multiple times in an ill-conceived CPR attempt, defibrillated, put in an ice bed, taken out of ice to warm him up and ultimately given adrenaline again, this time directly to his heart.

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