Big Budgets

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGrure, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing whether Amazon spent too much money on the rings of power. Nick, I know nothing about the rings of power. Tell all, please.

Speaker B: 00:00:32

But it's awful, is it? Can I talk about economic theory first? No. It's very important. So you might not know this, because most people think that economics is about unemployment and inflation and that kind of thing. Let me tell you what I think it's about. Okay, go on. What do you get on the first page of every economics introductory textbook?

Speaker A: 00:00:51

I think economics is about limited resources and motivation.

Speaker B: 00:00:56

Yeah, right. I mean, you don't even need the second bit, maybe. But the first bit is what they always say, it's the study of scarcity. Yeah, 10 out of 10. Thank you. Absolutely brilliant. And the key observation really is that resources can never make things worse. And the reason is, if you can't be worse off with a billion pounds, then you are with a million pounds. You can't be worse off because- Straight away, I want to disagree, but keep going. Because you can pretend that the rest doesn't exist. You can't pretend, you can't pretend. We'll get to that. Maybe we'll get to that. So that's the economics theory out of the way, so remember that more money, more resources is always meant to be good. Should always be a good thing. So the Rings of Power is a TV program made by, curiously, a delivery company called Amazon. I don't know if you've heard of them, but they've decided that they are also a TV company and they've made this thing based on Lord of the Rings. Obviously, we've got the fantastic films of Lord of the Rings, so this is all the kind of back material that Tolkien spent a long time generating, all the kind of histories of Middle Earth and- And it draws upon that material? In theory. Oh, okay.

Speaker C: 00:02:05

I think it's mainly based on the appendices to Lord of the Rings, or at least the first-

Speaker B: 00:02:10

And you think, well, that's not very much. No, they're enormous, they're about the same length as Lord of the Rings. So there's loads of stuff in there. And it's really bad. And I like Lord of the Rings.

Speaker A: 00:02:22

Why is it? Tell me why. I'm just interested to know why it's bad.

Speaker B: 00:02:24

I'll give you my diagnosis. Chris will no doubt have his own.

Speaker A: 00:02:28

Is it, actually, just out of interest, is it based before it, during it, or after it?

Speaker B: 00:02:33

A long time before, but actually an important time, because it's when the rings of power were created. Yeah, yeah. It's thousands of years before. The one ring of Lord of the Rings fame.

Speaker C: 00:02:43

The second age, I believe.

Speaker B: 00:02:45

In fact, the rings which are mentioned in the title of the book, Lord of the Rings, this is supposed to be about where they came from. But it's not really. They don't really cover that. They spend most of the time concentrating on a load of boring side characters. So why is it so bad? Right. Well, so if I had to pick one thing, the key thing would be the writing, among a few other problems. The main one being that the writers, I think, lack a theory of mind. They lack a theory of mind about- What's a theory of mind? An understanding that other people's minds are different. And that's in two ways. One is that they don't understand that the characters they're writing have their own thoughts and feelings. And secondly, they don't understand that the audience doesn't know what they know. Right. Because they know something is important for the plot, they make the characters act like it's important, even though the characters have no particular reason to think it's important. And because they know why characters are doing things, because they've got in their heads, they don't really bother explaining that. You know, like Galadriel is going off trying to hunt Sauron. You don't really know why she thinks he's anywhere in particular. You don't know why they all go off to the Southlands, which is an important place. Like, you don't really know why that's supposed to be important to them. It's important to the story that the writers want to tell. So the characters think it's important. And then so what that means is the characters are acting on the basis of no consequences that exist for them, really. They seem to be acting on it because they can bring about things the writers want to happen. Seems like really basic screenwriting to get this stuff. That's the that's the weird thing. It is basic. It's very basic. I mean, and they would spend a lot of money. There would be a team of writers, I'm sure. A few, I think. But the point is, it's genuinely inept. It's not it's not like, oh, I think they could have done better. It's really inept screenwriting. Then there's a few other things like I think the acting is variable. There's about three or four really good actors who unfortunately, as a result, stand out because you notice that this person actually seems like a realistic character. And you and then a lot of the other actors seem to be I've said it's sort of CBB style, children's TV program style acting. The CGI is is is pretty good. And the kind of CGI generated sets look good. But a lot of the story feels very ephemeral as though it's addressing modern day concerns. And the world building is is hugely weak. Like there are things in there where you think they haven't they don't know why. Why? How does the economy work in this city? Why is that one got a king and this one's got a chancellor? Why do these people believe that? Why is that a village? Why are they there? What are they doing? You know, why are these people migrating? Why is that important? They don't you can tell they haven't really got answers to those.

Speaker A: 00:05:33

But also some of the things you're getting into there sound a little detailed. However, I suspect it's one of those things with you don't get the big stuff, right? The basic stuff, right? You start sort of questioning more what's going on and you start seeing holes everywhere. Whereas if it's racing you away to somewhere with this wonderful story writing, you can overlook the fact that other sort of these are the inconsistencies or deficiencies.

Speaker B: 00:05:56

They don't need to tell me the answer to those things. But I need to know they have an answer because then I believe it. But I don't. I don't believe that they have an answer to any of those questions. So you're probably thinking you're thinking, well, what is this crappy low budget TV program that Amazon have made? And yet let me tell you something. It's the most expensive TV program that has ever been made at 700 million dollars. Now, I've worked that out. That's about a million dollars a minute. And I haven't I've yet to see a minute of it where I've thought that was worth a million

Speaker A: 00:06:29

worth any more than 10 quid or so.

Speaker B: 00:06:30

I mean, it's really difficult to work out how the hell they've managed to spend a million dollars a minute on this incredibly mediocre, badly written TV program.

Speaker A: 00:06:43

So before I feel we're on the on the on the on the cusp of in our own brilliant storytelling, by the way, which I'm by the way, you can hire me for less than a million quid an hour. Right, a minute, a minute. Sorry. Yeah, but I feel we're about to pose our question. We've almost got to that point. But just before you do, it just makes me think a little bit about House of Dragons, is it? Yeah, which I gave up after three episodes or so.

Speaker B: 00:07:09

What I do want to say is I don't think I've given away any spoilers. Apologies if you haven't seen Rings of Power. I don't want you to kind of lead you into thinking it's not very good, but I definitely I don't want to start expanding the potential spoiler window to House of Dragon. Yeah, the dragon. I will say, having seen the first episode of it, though, that I thought it was just way, way beyond this in quality. Oh, really? That's fantastic.

Speaker A: 00:07:35

Because also just because they get that stuff right. Yeah. OK, well, I know there's an aside and aside is I started watching House. Is it what it's called? The House of the Dragon, right? Yeah. Are you a Game of Thrones fan? I am. Yeah. And so I watched the first three and I thought, sod this for a Game of Thrones. For a Game of Thrones. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I wonder if Game of Thrones is as good as I thought it was at the time. And so it prompted me to go back and look at that. And like 10 episodes in, I was, you know, after a day, I was like, oh, wow. You know, so it just gripped me in a way that this didn't. It was just so plodding and tedious. Anyway, I digress. Yeah. We're almost at the point of our question.

Speaker B: 00:08:13

Did Amazon spend too much money on it? Is it rubbish because they spent too much money on it? And I think we want to talk about whether in what ways having too much can make things worse.

Speaker A: 00:08:25

I've got a saying that I invented. OK, I've come up with. Right. Necessity is the mother of invention. Right. What does that mean? Well, you know, we need to get in touch with Amazon about this, right? You know, so therefore, I mean, definitely want to ask Chris what it did. Did Amazon spend too much money on this? But just before we do at the beginning, when we were talking about economics and in theory, too much resources can't be a bad thing. But I mean, I refer you to my little homily that I've come up with and that it definitely can't be. And this feels close to that one we did about. I was talking about friends being overwritten or stuff being overwritten. Do you remember that? I'm sure we'll come back to this. Chris, did Amazon spend too much money on the rings of power?

Speaker C: 00:09:19

Well, I think what they did was they spent the money on the wrong things. That's what they that's what they did. So the rings or the wrong things? The wrong things. Yeah. If they'd spent them on rings that gave you omnipotence, then that would have probably been worth it. But instead, they spent it on mostly on CGI. And the point there is, I mean, like some of the some of the cinematography when they, for example, they're following these migrating people called half that's like little half like they're like hobbits basically across the wilderness. And they sort of, you know, they zoom up and they have one of those epic kind of landscape shots. And you look at I mean, Nick said the world building is poor. That is true, apart from on a visual level where the world building is actually pretty spectacular, like their rendering of the world. Numenor is quite incredible. That was the one thing I thought, oh, OK, like you in Lord of the Rings, they constantly hark back to Numenor, you know, central to everything. And you kind of think, I wonder what that was like. And actually, they present while the mechanics of the world are plodding. When you look at it, you go, oh, that looks like a great place to live.

Speaker B: 00:10:42

Yeah, but it looks like a nice little Mediterranean town. The scale is off. It's supposed to look like the hub of a sort of mighty, a mighty civilization. I think.

Speaker C: 00:10:50

Yeah, I think. Anyway, anyway, they spent clearly lots of money on the visualization of the world. And I and I suspect they they I mean, there aren't any really well-known actors in there. There are some good actors in there and there are some very, very not good actors in there. But but and that was probably a conscious choice. But, you know, they didn't go, let's get the six best, you know, Hollywood actors and ship them in, which could also have been a nightmare, of course. But they didn't spend the money on the acting is is let's cut to the chase.

Speaker A: 00:11:31

So it sounds like, you know, here's a couple of billion quid or whatever it was to make 700 million. I don't know. Here's a whole chunk of money to make something right. Where where did it go wrong? What should they have done? This sounds like a decision making thing. Yes, I have interest. What would it look like for half that money for a quarter of that money? Yeah, it feels like it's in the decision making process because there must be certain things that make and you would want one would imagine the people responsible decision making know what it what is needed to make a successful however one defines that program. What happened? Where was it when? What was the.

Speaker C: 00:12:08

Yeah, well, so so I think I mean, one of the one of the things they did spend money on was the rights. OK, I believe they spent something like quarter of a billion on buying the rights from the talk. Is that included in the state? That's what I don't know. Either way, that is a really hard to work. That is a huge, huge sum of money for rights. I don't know how much was it. Quarter of a billion. Wow. And that goes to the. Yeah, I don't know how it's but but it's Simon Tolkien. The grand the grandson was a was a a an advisor on it. But but yes, there's obviously a an estate which receives those.

Speaker B: 00:12:45

My granddad was a farmer. If if someone took me on to advise them on how to farm. I don't think that would be a good thing to do. No, that wouldn't be a wise choice.

Speaker C: 00:12:55

No, no, quite. I mean, Christopher Tolkien, his son at least, was involved in the in in the sort of writing of the books as a, you know, a kind of sounding board. But but yeah, the grandson, not so much anyway. Right. So they spent money on the wrong things. I think the reason what what does this tell us? You know, why did they make the choices that they made? And I think the other thing that it tells us, which which is, you know, sounds obvious, but but I think needs stating at this point is that money may or may not be a necessary condition for success. But it definitely isn't a sufficient condition for success. And that really did prove, you know, prove the case here. But I suppose what happens when you have money that offsets your decision making? What is it that makes you get things get things wrong in a way that they did? Because I think while we can all agree, it's really difficult to make an excellent TV series, right, or an excellent film or an excellent anything. It's not it's also quite really difficult to make something very bad. And I would say this was close to very bad. So, you know, they they they kind of made a lot of wrong decisions. And why is that? And does money increase your risk of doing that? And I think there are a number of reasons which we can start to unpick that mean it probably does have an effect on ability to make decisions. I think the first of those things is is hubris, that if you have money, you have been successful and that if you've been successful, you're more likely to believe you will continue to be successful. Right. And if you look at like, I think it's worth unpicking the idea of hubris, because if you look at if you think about examples of hubris, it's like if you think of someone like Icarus, you know, as a as a good example of a bit held up as hubris. It wasn't that he couldn't fly. Right. It was that he tried to fly too high. That was that was the problem. And I think this is Amazon's issue. It's one of overextension. They're they're obviously a great logistics delivery company. They've started making television and they've had some success in television. And they've now gone, OK, you know, we can we're really good at thing.

Speaker B: 00:15:21

How hard can it be?

Speaker C: 00:15:22

How hard can we? We're really good at thing. Therefore, we're probably really good.

Speaker B: 00:15:26

Saatchi, right.

Speaker A: 00:15:27

This is what happened with them.

Speaker B: 00:15:28

What did they make an ill-advised move into the into the ice cream business? Well, into everything. Right.

Speaker A: 00:15:33

So Saatchi and Saatchi in the: 1980

Speaker C: 00:16:11

Well, no. So I think there's two types of hubris is that there's the type of hubris which we're talking about here, which is I'm good at thing A, therefore I'm good at thing B, which, you know, conflating two different sets of skills. But I think there's also a second type of hubris, which are also a little bit guilty of, which is I'm I'm really good at thing A. So they've started moving into television and, you know, that's not an easy thing to do. And they've had some initial success. So therefore, I'm infallible at thing A and, you know, I can just pour, you know, do this and, you know, that's the classic overextension, you know, the sort of way, you know, you see it constantly throughout history. Like I always think of Tony Blair and his wars of choice, you know, of Sierra Leone, great Kosovo, better Iraq, not quite so good. And this is a sort of example of that. You know, they've made some TV programs that had initial success and then they've gone kind of all in on something and made a bit of a pig's ear of it.

Speaker A: 00:17:17

A couple of things. We talk about hubris that tends and we're talking about Amazon if it's as if it's a person. Right now, of course, it's an organisation. And I think maybe there's an element of that going on there where it's not really one person making decisions. It's a whole group of people. And you guys must work with this kind of stuff all the time. Where how does an organisation operate? Because they don't operate like individuals or do they?

Speaker C: 00:17:41

Well, interestingly, I did read something that said Jeff Bezos had been told by his one of his grand. No, he's got grandchildren, some some young relative, maybe one of the child slaves. He keeps it. Who who basically said this is really important. Don't mess this up, you know. And so he was sort of trying to say this to say, I understand the the import, the import of what I'm what I'm doing, the legacy that I'm potentially quite hands on with it. So it's quite personal. So so, yeah, it sounds as if he you know, I can't even a company as big as Amazon. I can't imagine decides to, you know, expend a billion dollars on a on a TV show without him having some. Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker A: 00:18:31

So I want to bring in Nick. So but before I do so challenge. So the world cannot purely be seen through the lens of economics. It you know, as you said, so if economics is about anything to you can't have too much resources. Seems like well, maybe you can.

Speaker B: 00:18:52

tally different Avengers from: 1998

Speaker C: 00:23:29

Yeah, but I'm but I'm wondering about the demographic of the type of person who puts a crowd rating.

Speaker B: 00:23:33

Yeah. So I was interested in that. And but it's very hard to get that data. And it's also quite interesting looking at like the Rotten Tomatoes have this audience score.

Speaker D: 00:23:43

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:23:44

And they have the critics score. And I'm very often on the side of the critics in general. Right. Normally, I'll trust the critics with Rings of Power. It's like 35 percent audience score, 85 percent critic score. When there's a disparity, it's always for an interesting reason. And I don't I can't explain this unless Amazon have paid critics to give it a positive write up because because whoever those critics are, they need to look at themselves in the mirror. But so in terms of costs, like if you're making a film, apparently on average, only about five percent goes into script and development. And I would imagine that's much, much lower for Rings of Power. Yeah, it can't not be because everything else is so much more expensive. Production costs apparently. How much does it cost to make a film as a percentage of the spend? The actual making the film? Does this include promotion? No. So this is filming stuff. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:24:37

But I mean, is promotion included in the whole budget of the film?

Speaker B: 00:24:41

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole budget would be everything you spend on that film. Every dollar you have to spend. So this includes CGI, all that kind of stuff. That's all production. Yeah. The actual making of the film. What percentage? I'm going to say 50 percent. I'm going to say 80 percent. Twenty five percent on average. Where does it all go? Forty percent is marketing on average. More. The marketing budget for films is higher than the average production cost, but which I mean, there you go. I'm not going to. So I'm not going to sit here and slag off marketers. But the point is, I think the big story here is that budgets do not actually help make better films. They might. They lower your probability of making a really terrible film. And in fact, low budget films have higher profitability on average anyway, as you'd expect, because like the costs are lower. So you you make, you know, every pound you make is a higher return on investment. So so why? I mean, there we are. Yeah, that's sorry. That's so that's a kind of sweep through what data I could find about films. It doesn't exactly tell me what I was looking for, which is does a higher budget at some point make your film worse? So but what it does, it definitely says that a higher budget beyond a certain point will make your film worse if it was going to be good. If it was going to be a good low budget film and now it's a high budget film, it will probably be worse. But if it was going to be a terrible film, the big budget might well help it. That's not totally me. Sure. The way I presented it.

Speaker A: 00:26:15

But a few random points. Yeah. Just say there is a we've talked about this for ages ago. There is a little bit of data out there about this. There's a book which you might call visualizing data, something like that. Have you seen that? Yeah, yeah. They've got a section on exactly this, which I should have mentioned before. What's the story? I can't remember other than it was a really interesting matrix where you've got, you know, budget.

Speaker B: 00:26:41

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:26:41

High budget, low budget, and then measured against financial success and critical. I can't remember quite how it all fits in and kind of, you know, the films. Yeah. It's very rare, actually, to get a low budget film that's massively successful. I'm sorry, that's critically appraised and financially successful. I think what it all if I remember correctly, you're better off spending more money if you want to make a bit of money. So, right. So it also goes back to sorry to one thing I think, you know, which you'll be pleased to hear about aims. I mean, if you're a studio, what's your aim? Do you want a critically successful film? Right. But probably only in as much the critical success only in as much as that might help it be financially successful and future projects be financially successful. So what's your aim? Yeah. One final thing I was probably wrong before when I said that Amazon should be more risk averse. Maybe that's the problem here is that with more money, more is at stake. And this is what people talk about. There's no risk taken in films anymore because it's so much money at stake. And so, therefore, they're too risk averse. And so you get these bland sort of films.

Speaker C: 00:27:47

But that in itself is a risk, right? Yeah. Right. But anyway, coming on to your point about what are you what are you actually trying to achieve? What's the goal of the purpose? I think there's quite an interesting thing here in this context. Right. Because Amazon is not primarily a TV production company. Right. It's a broad brand that does a lot of stuff, most of which is selling you things. Right. And I think there's a there's a case here that actually as a strategy, they weren't necessarily that bothered about whether or not they made a good TV show. Right. It was more the I think there's a potential here that what they are signalling is that they were creating a white elephant. Right. And I don't mean in the sense that we use the phrase. I mean, do you know the origin of the term white elephant? No. So it goes back to the monarchs of sort of Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and they would keep albino elephants, which were very rare. Right. And these were sacred creatures. So you sort of, you know, demonstrated their divine power in some way having these things. But the point is you they weren't allowed to work because they were sacred things. So to keep a white elephant cost you a huge amount of money. In fact, the king of Siam used to give them to courtiers he didn't like as a bit of a curse. Had to keep them. Yeah. They then like, oh, great. I'm not going to have to bankrupt myself keeping this white elephant. But the point is, it's about a demonstration of wealth that has no purpose effectively other than to demonstrate the wealth itself and say, hey, I can sustain this white elephant in my back garden. And while I don't think they will have deliberately set out to make a bad program, I think the aim was probably not necessarily let's make a massive hit, but let's demonstrate that we can spend a billion. We're a presence. We're a presence. We can spend a billion dollars on a TV show. There you go.

Speaker B: 00:30:11

k by Fred Brooks from the mid: 1970

Speaker A: 00:33:43

Right. And also the budget and the more money you've got can be a problem in itself. If let's say, for example, I presume they would have run this in front of a test audience or test audiences. And hopefully some of those people would have might think if we're right, let's say we go, oh, my God, this is awful. Right. So let's say they did that. Well, if you've I mean, just to be fair to try and defend Amazon, not that they particularly care what I'm going to say, but it can be difficult when you're really close to a project to know like this, to know if it's any good or not. Right. But that's why you have test audiences partly. Yeah. And but the problem is, if I make my five minute film that cost me 500 quid and someone goes, well, this is a load of rubbish and I still have faith in the project. Well, I can I can work with that. But if I've got this behemoth that costs hundreds of millions, how does one grapple with that?

Speaker C: 00:34:26

it sank roughly after sailing: 1300

Speaker B: 00:36:36

Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think what we're saying is the the unmeasurable bit, which is, let's say, how good the Russian army is or how good this the Rings of Power is quite similar things in a way, you know, in that is not something we can measure. But if you're a manager, you sort of do get sucked into thinking the things I can measure the important things. And this is an example of one of them. I mean, yeah. So there is a similar phenomenon, I think, with and I think, you know, what we've been saying is you if you want to make a really successful film, you are going to need to start with some several millions of dollars and up to a certain point. The constraint is money. And if you keep adding money at some point, the constraint stops being money. Money stops being the thing stopping your film getting better. But what that is and when it happens is very hard to spot and how you fix it is not something you might notice. So, yeah, sorry. Just one final thing. There is an analogy with happiness, life satisfaction. The data is a bit mixed on this, but there is this kind of consensus that it helps to a certain point. Yeah, exactly. Like the constraint with you being happy is money up to a certain point, and then it starts being slightly harder to deal with things like, you know, your your friends and your environment and, you know, and your human and social capital and these other things which which money is no longer going to start fixing. Brilliant.

Speaker A: 00:38:13

I like that. I feel we sort of what I liked about that is is how we started to sort of get our tentacles into other things and how it spread out there nicely as it should. Super quick question. Choose one or both of these. Favourite low budget film. Favourite high budget film that was a critical disaster. Choose. I mean, maybe that second question.

Speaker B: 00:38:41

I mean, I can certainly do that.

Speaker A: 00:38:43

I can kick off with my favourite low budget film. I think I mean, there are so many, but maybe it's just because I saw a documentary about it about a month ago, which is Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels. Yeah, I don't know. Is it that one or Snatch? Which was the second one he did?

Speaker C: 00:39:04

Snatch. Snatch was about the diamond.

Speaker A: 00:39:07

Yeah, I think that's a great film. Pretty low budget on that. I mean, be a few millions. But that's got Brad Pitt in it. It's got Brad Pitt in it. And actually remind me the name of the director. Guy Ritchie. He was saying actually, you know, the pre-production was well underway. It was all kind of written. And then because of Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels, I think Brad Pitt rocks up or says, hey, I want to be in your film. And at which point they go, oh, OK, let's find a part or something for Brad Pitt to do. And actually, often that can be a recipe for disaster. In this case, I thought it was really good. A lot of people say that is Brad Pitt's best performance. Yeah, well, yeah, I think Brad Pitt's a very good actor, actually. But but actually, interestingly, I believe initially they wanted him to have a London accent that he couldn't do it. So they had to sort of write it as a sort of as an Irish traveller sort of thing. That's probably a great low budget film. Of course, there's so many out there. Favourite high, you know, crappy film that's high budget. Can't think.

Speaker B: 00:40:09

Well, I think we've established there probably aren't crappy ones. But you're looking for one which is like you like perhaps more than the average person.

Speaker A: 00:40:16

But can't I mean, I can't think off the top of my head. So anyway, I think it is hard.

Speaker B: 00:40:20

Well, I my favourite, my favourite low budget film is probably also my favourite film, which is With Nail and I. With Nail and I, yeah. And very dark that film, like physically.

Speaker A: 00:40:30

I mean, I'm often fine peering at it.

Speaker B: 00:40:31

Did you? I mean, he I think it's Bruce. Bruce Robinson, isn't it? Director. I think he used a lot of natural lighting, for example, which is why so when they go up to the he wasn't a professional filmmaker. I mean, or rather he was really inexperienced when he made With Nail and I. And for this scene, when they arrive at Monty's cottage and they managed to find a candle and with With Nail going around looking at oh sorry Marwood, the eye characters looking at the photos on the wall and Bruce Robinson was like, well, why do we need lighting? Like he's got a candle. Can't we just use that? And he did. And it looks great. Wow. So, you know, things like that. Well, the received wisdom is you need to heavily light this scene to make it look dark. And he was like, no, we'll just use the candlelight.

Speaker A: 00:41:22

Yeah, good. Yeah. My only problem with that film. I mean, the first time I saw it and I couldn't work out whether it was meant to be set in the 60s or the 80s because lots of it does look quite 80s. But of course, it's set about 69 or so.

Speaker B: 00:41:33

But yeah, but of course, yeah, the difference between the 60s and the 80s actually is only about 12 years. So I know what you mean. But anyway, and we've talked about it in another thing. I like, I think, apparently a lot more than a lot of people is Alien Resurrection. So a lot of people, especially Alien fans like me, really look down on it. And because it's very off piste for Alien. OK. But I think it's great fun. It's got some really good scenes in it. It's campy and hammy. And I really enjoy it. So I think that would be my big budget film, which I like a lot better than most people.

Speaker A: 00:42:12

Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:42:12

t football hooliganism in the: 1980

Speaker A: 00:43:07

I think Time Bandits was probably quite good. Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:43:11

Terry Gilliam's famous for not being able to control his budget. American Werewolf in London. Again. I'm not sure that's low budget.

Speaker C: 00:43:20

Anyway, well, yeah, I mean, I think that would define some of the best special effects of all. And Children of Men. I don't know Children. Clive Owen, isn't it? Yeah. It's about a plague that befalls humanity. Chris likes things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But I will tell you, I can't tell you a high budget film which nobody else liked. But I did. But I can tell you a high budget film which everybody liked or lots of people liked that I unbelievably loathed. Right. Titanic. Yeah, I just.

Speaker A: 00:43:59

I thought you were going to say Forrest Gump. Anyway.

Speaker C: 00:44:00

No, I'm not a big fan of Forrest Gump. But Titanic is the one that really drives me to all sorts of. Yeah. Yeah. Just just. You need to stop watching it every week. Yeah, that's right. But yeah. No. Yeah. I was just glad when it sank and it was all finally over.

Speaker A: 00:44:22

I mean, I think a nice test is you might have seen it once. I've seen it once. Haven't seen it again. No. With Nell and I. How many times you've seen that, right? All right. Let's stop there. That was fun. Thanks, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.