Why big K-pop stars mattered for the film

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the global phenomenon that is KPop Demon Hunters. Discover how this animated film shattered streaming records, topped charts in over 90 countries, and sparked conversations about culture, faith, and the future of media.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone break down the movie’s surprising Christian themes, its unique approach to female characters, and why its message of personal responsibility and self-improvement resonates with audiences worldwide. They compare “K-Pop Demon Hunters” to Disney classics like “Frozen,” discuss the impact of K-pop stars in the film, and explore what Hollywood can learn from its success.

Whether you’re a fan of K-pop, animation, or just looking for a fresh perspective on modern storytelling, this discussion is packed with insights, humor, and cultural commentary.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to discuss a movie that will likely change the way films are produced globally. And because it accidentally snuck a bunch of Christian themes and very intentionally, a lot of people are like, oh, it’s accidental that Christian themes got into this.

We’ll go over it. It’s not accidental that Christian themes got into this. Nice a lot of anti DEI themes. Into the most, like the biggest movie phenomenon of all time. Mm-hmm. And I say, they say all time, you might be like, oh, you know, K-pop demon hunters was cute, but like how big was it exactly in in the last three months?

It has gotten more streams on its songs than Frozen has gotten on its songs in the 12 years since it was released. No significant margin. Oh my God. What? No. K-Pop. Human hunters shattered expectations to be the most watched original ever with 325 million views. [00:01:00] Eclipsing red notice, 236 million views in squid game season 1, 260 6 million views.

Wow. Top the charts in over 90 countries. The sound trek went platinum debuted at number eight on the billboard of two hundreds and made history as the first. With four simultaneous top 10, a hundred global hits. Deserve, though they’re, they’re catchy tunes. Was was golden number one. So good. It had your idol number four.

Oh yes. Soda pop, number five. Oh, love it. And how it’s done. Number 10. With. Golden alone. Top charts in the uk with over a million units sold in a sing along theatrical version grossing 19.2 million. Now that’s, that’s not a big a deal. But hold on, I wanna, I wanna compare it to frozen here.

So, since it’s released in, in terms of the number of streams that it’s songs have gotten, they’ve gotten around 3.5 billion streams. Okay? Frozen has gotten 2.5 to 3 billion over the past 12 years.

Simone Collins: 12 [00:02:00] years. Oh my God. If

Malcolm Collins: you’re talking weekly streams, the absolute peak for frozen was 50 million.

The peak for demon hunters was 141 million.

Whoa,

not moving Close my my mind. Monthly listeners for demon hunters, it peaked at 40 million for, for frozen, it peaked at 20 million. And, and the reason why this is so interesting to go over is because. A lot of people like are individually like, I like K-pop, demon hunters.

It was pretty cool and based. Yeah. And then but it doesn’t feel like a frozen, right? Like, no, it’s delightful. It’s fun. There’s, there’s conflict, there’s issues, but frozen’s just like. Culturally, we don’t feel like we’re in a frozen moment. Like the fact that I can compare K-pop demon hunter to something like frozen, and I’m like, this completely smashed frozen’s numbers.

You can hear that as a person and be like, but I thought I, that was like my thing, like, [00:03:00] like my private weird thing that I Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. Everyone thinks it’s like their little niche, like, oh, it’s this, this Korean anime thing that I watch. Yeah.

Speaker 4: , the only ones dying tonight are your, I’m sorry. What? They’re fans. We’re at your fans. Oh, no, no, no. Thank you. No, no, no. Not our fans. When you mess with our fans, we need to make it hurt.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. And like when, when you and I had to like. We had to, to sneak into my, my dad’s Netflix account, ask him to give us temporary vacation traveling access.

Yeah. And then just like, I thought it was, it was gonna be like, oh, like listed front page top 10, like, here’s our most success. No, we had to search it. It wasn’t even listed in any of the, like, suggested for you listing wrote

Malcolm Collins: this. So deep cut, but it’s not. And, and no, this is a movie that doesn’t have a single black person in it.

Like in terms of like anti, it doesn’t have a single white person in it. It doesn’t have a single white person in it either. And I’m not complaining. That doesn’t, it shouldn’t have a single white person. No, it’s Korean. You go to South Korea, you don’t see that. [00:04:00] You don see many white people in Korea. I lived there for a while.

The, the other thing that well we felt bad walking down the streets ‘cause we were just bringing down the average attractiveness. Somebody told me that

I know what,

of what the people who we were invested in actually told me that I know. I’m, I’m not, you’re beautiful. They said, I, I broke up the social harmony by looking like non, with your ugly western face.

We just can’t, we

Simone Collins: can’t hold a candle. I don’t know what to say. Like, Korean people are just so beautiful

Malcolm Collins: if you, if you go to streams per track. So, for, for K-pop demon hunters, it was 300 million. With versus a hundred to 200 million for frozen. If you look at like individual songs here if you look at Golden which was their, their top one.

Yeah, of course. You get, get around 1 billion cumulative strings. Oof. If you compare that with Let It Go this is, this has gotten 800 million. So it, I love that dude, because Let It Go

Simone Collins: is all about victimhood narrative. Bed rotting, giving up we’re shirking responsibility and Golden is about [00:05:00] reaching your potential.

It’s about becoming the best possible of yourself. I don’t point

Malcolm Collins: out was let it go because this, this like actually Let It Go, gets me as a song because it was the perfect song of the Tumblr Arena. It was. It was like, I don’t need one. I have been constantly vilified by the outside world when in reality her, she was from a wealthy family who was pretty supportive of her.

Mm-hmm. And she was the one who victimized herself. Mm-hmm. Her sister didn’t force her to stay in that room. Her sister, I mean, there’s even a song like, let’s Make a Snowman.

Speaker: . I never see you anymore. Come out the door. . I wish you would tell me, come on, do you wanna build a snowman? Snowman. Okay, bye.

Malcolm Collins: Like Let’s, yeah. You know, about her rejecting the people who were reaching out to her about her self victim hurting people. And the way that self victimization hurt the people around her who was the real [00:06:00] victim, her kingdom, her entire kingdom, her sister, her kingdom.

And then when she lets it go and indulges in her worst impulses, she ends up causing everyone in the kingdom to suffer and starve. Like mass famine and everything like that. Yeah. Her sister to be scooped up by this creepy guy. Like the, the message in frozen is like. Incredibly bad. Yeah. They, well, the message people took from it, the actual message is that you shouldn’t be that type of person.

And she’s also is a pretty vile person. Yeah. One

Simone Collins: would’ve hoped.

Malcolm Collins: So, so you’ve got that. And then we’ll talk about the themeing in this. What I will note is I’ve got three, because I was just looking like, what do, like, mainstream Christian blogs, because when I saw the thing that kept hitting me when I saw was like.

This seems like explicitly weird. There were like weird moments in it where I was like, this seems explicitly Christian in its narrative. And for people who don’t know South Korea has the largest Christian community of any, anywhere in Asia. It’s, it is got a, [00:07:00] it is like a, a, a mainstream, very mainstream religion there.

Simone Collins: Yeah, my, my one south Korean friend in. High school was also the only super Christian person I knew.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. No. I’ll note we’ll get to this narrative as well, that we have this narrative that, like this, Sony sold it for like nothing, and they sold the streaming rights for like nothing. And they, they’re not so crazy.

This is incorrect. It’s, it’s not real. Oh, really? No. Well, so what really happened was, is Netflix through Sony. Did a deal where they would handle the funding of various projects. Okay. If they got exclusive rights to stream them, this project was, was greenlit and funded under this scheme. There is no way it could have gone to anyone but Netflix and there’s no way it could have gone out under any terms, but the terms that Netflix negotiated with selling.

Okay. This makes sense. ‘cause this is

Simone Collins: how the, all the di, various production firms that are. Shopping around content about [00:08:00] us or doing it where like, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: because we have, they have the concept and then they

Simone Collins: go to the premium streaming platforms and they’re like. Pay for, pay us to produce this and you’ll get exclusive rights.

And so that, that makes sense. That seems to be how it’s done these days. Yeah. And,

Malcolm Collins: and so like what people are, are acting like is, like Sony was sitting on this gym, they could have chosen to go to the theaters, wizz and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And it’s like, no, from the moment it was a concept. Netflix bank rolled it.

Under a scheme with Netflix. Okay. The a hundred million dollars that went to the funding of this, ‘cause that’s how much it cost to make was given by Netflix at the outset. Like how did it cost, how does something cost that much Netflix, because it had a bunch of K-pop title like top K-pop people involved in it.

Oh, okay. So the singers are actually famous.

Simone Collins: K-pop stars. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: A number of them are actually famous K-pop artists. Oh my gosh. Oh, I didn’t know that. The, the voices are great, so that makes sense. But Well, and some of ‘em are famous artists from other types of music as well.

You know, that’s just the way movie music industry is.

Wow. But like, Christians are recognizing this so. There’s a, there’s an [00:09:00] article on like, why this is so good from Christian parenting. There is the Christian movie Review was like, this is really good. The, my, the Miss Pilgrim did a review of this that’s, that’s, that’s like, oh, this is really good.

You should watch this. And in terms of the explicit Christian influences, which, which have been cited by people in the, in the creative process, oh, really? Somebody who go, Sarah Lee, who goes by EGAE is the she, she wrote some of the songs for it. K-Pop, demon Hunters, including Traps like Your Idol, the one that you liked

.

She said she was inspired by her Christian faith. She also provided the singing voice for the main character Rumi. And, and she collaborated with some teams, so her grandfather’s , shin Yung. Kun is a renowned South Korean actor and film producer who has starred in around 96 movies. But he is also a devout Christian who runs the ye Chong Dong Entertainment Church in Seoul.

And he’s, he’s around a hundred years old. So he is a very famous Christian Guy who runs their church. I saying they

Simone Collins: [00:10:00] made the characters look a lot like their voice actors. Like the, the guy who, who voiced gnu like that, that smile the same, the eyes look a little different, but the smile’s that

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

And, and they’ve admitted this as well. So if, if you look at interviews she’s had, so in an interview she had was variety. In June, 2025, she said specifically about the song Your Idol. As a Christian, I have always been mindful of the biblical warning against idolatry, making gods out of people or things and k-pop, we literally call our artists idols and that can be an unhealthy obsession in worship for fans.

I wanted your item to suddenly caution against that, reminding listeners, true fulfillment comes from facing God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Literally the like, like literally the, the parts of the plot structure and songs were inspired by Christianity. And where I started to realize that myself as I was going through it and people can be like, well then why not do a song that’s like specifically about Christianity or something like that, or a movie that’s explicitly about that.

And I would point out that that’s. Actually idolatry many Christian face [00:11:00] historically were very against. And I, and I think rightly so, against literally acting out Christian iconography. Mm. And so I, I would argue it’s actually a, a more faithful rendition to acted out with, what’s the word here?

Sort of metaphor. When, so when I was watching it, the thing that got me when I first noticed it, and I had mentioned this in another episode, I was like, wait, the demons are bad. Like, I have got, I, it’s, well, they don’t even like being demons. That’s, that’s what’s so crazy. Well, this was one thing that got me is in so many things like the demons.

Are given power in hell based on how bad they were on earth. Like you murder a bunch of people like it, husband hotel has this system. And I’m like, that’s horrible. Like, so like it learned, like it is like one of, you know, Satan’s top generals. So they’ll say something like that and I’m like. That, that seems like the inverse of the way we would want to work.

This

Simone Collins: means that if you’re gonna do a bad thing, you need to do the worst possible bad thing. So at least when you get to hell, you have like a decent upper middle management position. Yeah. You know, you don’t wanna be a peon. [00:12:00] Like if you’re just kind of bad, then you’re like. Frontline service position in hell.

You don’t want that. You know, or you’re like at the webbing post. I don’t know. Like, yeah. Lemme do whipping. At least this

Malcolm Collins: goes for an alternate direction with this, which is most demons are they do not appear to come from humans. But that demons that do come from humans that are bad really do not like their existence.

Yeah. Like, this is, this is a very unpleasant thing for them. Yeah. But in addition to that. They are also bad. Yeah, like legit

Simone Collins: bad. Like actually, oh my gosh, bad. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The like, okay, so people who don’t know this, if you see a spoiler for something, it statistically increases your enjoyment of the movie watching experience.

Yeah. Try to tell

Simone Collins: that to your brother.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Try telling this to my brother. But this is a study that’s been done so you could skip like 15 seconds if you don’t wanna hear a spoiler. Malcolm’s

Simone Collins: brother, if you’re listening and you haven’t yet watched K-Pop Demon Hunters first, what are you doing? Second

Malcolm Collins: Spoiler alert.

The subversion that you find out is the character who you think [00:13:00] is you know, going to turn on, on the demons. And who actually has a good side to him? He was just lying. He was actually bad.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. He lied about his, he lied about his background and kind of pretended that he was trying to like save his mother and little sister and no.

No, he just totally screwed them over. And they probably died. Totally. Left them to die. It’s implied that they died. Yeah. Starve to death while he became famous and wealthy and everything else. Everyone, he lived in

Malcolm Collins: the palace and everything like that. Mm-hmm. And then he, he, he, he does have a, a last minute turnaround to try to, you know, save the heroin.

But it’s not like a. Oh, and he’s secretly been good all along. He has the last minute turnaround in, in the, in the context of a movie was in a system that. And this is true of the, the, the, the plot lines throughout the movie. That it’s a movie that is very much about confession.

Yeah.

And owning your sins.

Yeah, you’re right. And taking responsibility for your sins. Yeah. Rather [00:14:00] than about shirking your sins. Mm-hmm. And about attempting to. Hide the things that in your life that you think make you sinful or bad from other people instead of taking responsibility for them. Mm-hmm. That’s like the central themeing of the movie.

And then the themeing of the powers of the movie is idolatry. When you give your attention to things that are only designed to consume your attention, that these things end up producing negative externalities.

Yeah.

And we got an email from a fan that I thought was, was pretty fun about this where he just goes over like a number of base things in it.

So I’ll just read it. So, zero diversity not one character, not in one single frame, even at Zoe’s Burbank High School, who isn’t ethnically Asian. Maliciousness and disguised cynicism slash infiltration from hostile groups is actually bad. In fact, saline and rumi’s motivating fear is that Rumi will be mistakenly perceived to be a [00:15:00] hostile or outgroup infiltrator.

Now this I also found pretty interesting and somebody pointed out as well. That one thing that this did really well is women where they’re like, I was so shocked at the beginning of a movie that women were like doing makeup and like gossiping and being girly. Like they’re doing the whole fighting thing, but in more like a totally spies type of way and in like, oh yeah,

Simone Collins: they’re being badass, but they’re, yeah, they’re brushing their hair, they’re putting on makeup, and they’re also like.

Speed eating noodles. Yum.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So they’re being like burping and everything like that. Like they’re being sort of like a gross and everything like that, but also authentically female and I, and you can be like, well, isn’t this bad? And I’d contrast it with the western female hero archetype that we’ve seen, which is you know, yare from whatever her name is, like, who’s a lady from Star Wars that they put in?

Oh, Keller’s. The, the, the bad guy who’s, who’s the woman from Star Wars. Ray Ray and like, [00:16:00] you’d never see Ray doing her makeup. Oh yeah. No, she

Simone Collins: would never, you know Yeah. Be like choosing outfits and, and putting makeup and also like ogling six packs on guys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Ogling guys or like, you, you just wouldn’t see that.

But it’s, it’s shown from the very first scene when they’re in this like airplane and they get into a, a fight with demons on the airplane and they jump out of the airplane and are like doing their makeup while they’re like, they’re, they’re, they’re portrayed as women, like very, very feminine in a way that Hollywood has clearly gotten.

Speaker 9: Okay. Nails, nails, blade, mascara. Sit, check. Need to beat my face. Make it cute inside. B***h Mi ramira on my phone. Who’s the baddest us? Hello?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they, they

Simone Collins: like to look pretty. They, they love cool clothing. They love food. Yeah. In that classic like anime, beautiful woman way where they eat a ton of food but never get fed and they find hot men hot.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

Simone Collins: my [00:17:00] gosh. No, but what’s

Malcolm Collins: what’s cool about this is it isn’t a subversion of feminism. It is a subversion of the form of feminism that just wanted to make women look better than men and perfect.

Mm. It’s saying we don’t need morally

Simone Collins: superior.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We don’t need to hold women to this standard of. You know, they never burp. They never eat. They never have any flaws. But that doesn’t mean we need to strip them of character and strip them of, you know, wanting to preen themselves and wanting to look pretty and wanting to be girly.

They can be girly and fight, and they can take pride in the ways that they’re girly while they are still like impactful actors in society. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. They always wanted to do like a spa day.

Malcolm Collins: But

Simone Collins: he doesn’t wanna like totally

Malcolm Collins: things together. It was very, yeah. So then the next thing he says here is, every single authority figure in, in K-pop demon hunters is earnest, well-meaning and legitimate.

There is no enemy within no good guy who we find out is really working [00:18:00] for the bad guy. Bobby is 100% on side without question. So Mira, Zoe and Rumi don’t have a quote unquote rebel, rebel against anything. There’s no white man in charge, no secondary in league was the bad guy who has to be found out and overthrown.

And this is really like weird, like I’m not used to this. I’m not used to like, there’s no corporate evil guy. It’s not that the K-pop industry is destroying these people. No. Their, their, their manager is, is never anything but like chill and helpful to them. Yeah. It’s

Simone Collins: not that capitalism is bad, which also is.

So common in everything that comes out of Western media now.

Malcolm Collins: And they could have made it like men bad, right? Like, but, but because, and they didn’t. They could see it that way given that the male boy band is the bad boy band. But a few things to note about that. They made their manager, like their direct boss, a guy who’s.

Sweet and helpful. Yeah. And it’s in the movie for I think, more talking scenes than the bad guy boy band. Yeah. And the bad guy boy band is also not like so often when you [00:19:00] have like the men, right, like the men of Barbie or something like that. Right. They are depicted as in, in woke shows and you have evil male group.

They’re depicted as like incompetent or wanting to victimize women because they’re women. Or, you know, any of those things. And you don’t, you don’t have any of that here from No, from one first time they meet them, they’re like, this, these people it’s even like a, a whole joke scene is like, oh, they’re, they’re actually quite good and catchy and, and I like what they’re doing.

Right. Yeah. And, and it’s never like, oh, they, they, and like gender never even comes up. Like even though it’s an all girl band versus an all boy band, that’s more just along the tropes of K-pop. Not along, like, anything like that. But anyway. Okay. So I, I thought that was an interesting point. And then he says, note here, while out on the street, demon shopping, the three different individually, rescue a man or boy, we only put in rescuing women and girls.

Mm-hmm. And he says, run it back and see for yourself. They obviously save the whole world in the end, which includes everyone, male and [00:20:00] female. But it’s still an interesting choice. Something about not wanting the three to come off as emasculating. That’s model in Hollywood. It’s always under appreciated girl bossing and dous male lead.

And so. That’s also really important here. I will note his thing about no authority figures being bad, there is one authority figure who’s seen as bad who’s, who’s sort of, the person who thinks that she just needs to hide all of her sin. Her

Simone Collins: mother or, well, her adoptive mother. The pre her, yeah.

Her adopted

Malcolm Collins: mother who thinks she needs to hide all 10. And I’m like, yeah, but that’s also not like, you know, I don’t see that as, as, as like necessarily a bad message there to being like, well, you, you should. Opt to this stuff. And she also explicitly rejects that world. Like, she’s like, I don’t want to be part of a world where I interact with people and my friends through.

Covering up the things that are bad about myself. I want to confess to those things and overcome them. But in no way in this is [00:21:00] sin ever seen as a good thing, right? Like in, in, in the show, which I thought was very interesting because that’s so rare. You watch our view about which I actually think the great one about turning red, which is like literally about being a prostitute.

Like, and I, and I mean like it is. If you haven’t watched Turning Red, it is, it is shocking to me. So, so the movie, it is very clear, turning into a panda is about her sexuality. Like this, this reference is drawn very explicitly. It’s about going through puberty and previous generations of Asians. This is almost like an Asian cultural things have learned to suppress their sexuality.

And she doesn’t want to. And so what does she do? She, comes up with a system to see a boy band where she sells pictures of the thing that represents her sexuality, and then eventually sells her sexuality to the boy who she hates most so she can get the money for the boy band. And this is all played as like a good thing.

And I was like, whoa. Disney, what were you thinking with this? Like, [00:22:00] this is explicit man. So I, if any points out here, which I hadn’t thought about, but he is right here, he says, note how Rumi never defeats genu. This is the male villain who ends up turning good at the end that we were talking about.

He rescues her twice, but along the way, he never submits to her, obeys her, or follows her. He passes on all of her s tests where talks about a senior. She says, watch yourself and note how it. Therefore feels right to us that rooming is increasingly fascinated by and concerned for gin. Gin moves skillfully and consistently not obeying.

Rumi draws them together. Oh, he says he likes how Malcolm constantly interrupts, corrupts Simone to correct. Simon, I don’t interrupt you. I do, I do. I, I guess I do.

Simone Collins: The audience is, is very split on this, like half are like, why would Malcolm ever interrupt Simone? The other half is like, Malcolm needs to interrupt Simon.

Malcolm Collins: So he goes into the no gay or tranny stuff, which is true. Like nothing in this is remotely. And they could have gone in that direction, right? Like if this was an American thing, it’s three [00:23:00] girls working together, one of them is gonna have to be gay, right? Like they, they just would have to be. Right.

Like I, I would be shocked if they weren’t so, so that was very noticeable in the story. He goes on here about how, like, this is a continuation of 500 years of Asian history and they do a good job with this of, of, I think, capturing both Korea’s Christian roots and its. Traditional. This is the other thing is Hollywood has been going out there for ages and being like, look, we can’t make something new every time we try to make something new at bombs.

Look at ELO or whatever, where they tried to make a 12-year-old boy gay. And I was like, oh, is that so creepy?

But anyway, like why did you, was that the gay made one? ELO was the one in, in space. You’re thinking the Bruno,

I was thinking of Luco here.

Malcolm Collins: where like the characters also have like super gay vibes. The

Simone Collins: mermaid one.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s Bruno ELO is the one, or Elliot or something?

I don’t know. Yeah, it’s, it’s the one that just came out about space and just completely bombed and everyone’s like, well, you have to go see it because it’s like novel. And it’s like, [00:24:00] no, like they, mm-hmm. They tried to do something creepy with this and like everyone involved with that. Like, I, like, I’m not against gay people.

Anybody who watches this channel is, I’m not against gay people. I’m against depicting a 12-year-old is gay. Like that’s.

Simone Collins: Okay. You’re, you’re against gay 12 year olds. We see your bigotry now. It’s plain for all. See, I just

Malcolm Collins: don’t think that sexual Oh yeah, no, you just,

Simone Collins: you just hate gay 12 year olds. I get it to

Malcolm Collins: be a major part of a plot about a 12-year-old

Simone Collins: Uhhuh.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, all before the movie came out, and everyone’s saying that’s why it’s so bad. Oh. Because they, they cut like a central theme of it out. I was like, no, it was obviously gonna be bad. Anyway, if you thought that that was an interesting plot line what we, what I was interested in was the aliens and stuff.

Right. But the point is, is, is you get into this and immediately again, from the beginning of it, you can see that it is. New, but actually new, right? Like you look at Elliot or whatever this new one is, and everyone’s got bean mouse. It’s all the cow owl art style. You know, this American style.

Simone Collins: What is bean mouse?

Malcolm Collins: Look up bean mouse mark or, [00:25:00] or cow. I think it’s cal something style. Art. It’s the art that you have in Steven Universe. It’s the art you have in that it’s the art that you had in turning red.

Simone Collins: No, I did. I loved the unique styling of K-pop demon hunters Two, that it didn’t, it didn’t actually feel like they were copying anyone.

It felt. Like its own thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it felt well, it felt very pretty. An inspiration. Looks so pretty. But even if you think about like the designs of the monsters, you immediately see these monsters and you’re like, oh, this isn’t like monsters I’ve seen before. It’s, it’s building on history, but I hadn’t like that’s unique and interesting and they’re also very

Simone Collins: memorable.

There’s already been amazing cosplays of the monster cat. So great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But so, so immediately I see the way that they’re stylized, I’m like, this is unique. Mm-hmm. I see the way that the, the art style is done and I’m like, this is unique. I see the way that they’ve tried to like world build to not have the typical, oh, you know, the whatever, betrayal scene and everything like that.

I’m like, oh, [00:26:00] this is unique. Yeah. You know? And they actually, there must

Simone Collins: be some German word for that unique feeling of like both. Stress and boredom that you feel when you kind of know the plot point of a movie and you’re like, oh, I don’t wanna go through this one. I don’t like this one. You know what I mean?

Of like, oh, there’s gonna be this betrayal or this, this tension, and here’s a, you know, love triangle, and you’re like, oh, I don’t wanna do this. You know, that feeling this didn’t have that. I love that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I, I, I thought that this was one. Like, is Hollywood gonna learn from this? Like, is Hollywood going to change what they’re doing in relation to this Is Hollywood?

Like, what’s, what’s your take? Do you think that they have the capacity to look at how, I mean, Disney is basically going, I, I guess I can already answer. Yes, they will. Okay. And here’s how I know they will. Okay. Because yeah. Friend of friend of the show obviously, ‘cause we’ve had her, her little sister on a few times.

Suzy Weiss is, is, is a friend of ours Barry Weiss who used to run the free press. She recently took over CNN right? Like C-B-S-C-S Oh CS. Like [00:27:00] that to me shows like, oh boy. Like a

Simone Collins: deep recognition that the old model and the old ways are failing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like we need to, I mean, Barry, if you don’t know Barry Wise, Hasina is like a demon by these people now.

She’s the lefty. She’s like a lesbian. Manhattanite Jew, right? I think she

Simone Collins: lives in la

Malcolm Collins: Oh, she lives in la I thought she lived in Manhattan.

Simone Collins: No, she lives in la.

Represses, but

Malcolm Collins: She’s also questions the trans narrative and questions. DEI culture. Yeah.

Simone Collins: She falls into that like centrist heterodox zone, which is where same people sit and she, she

Malcolm Collins: produced the what was it, the witch hunt of, of JK Rowling.

Which

Simone Collins: trials of, yeah, yeah. The, of

Malcolm Collins: JK Rowling. Mm-hmm. Which I, I thought, I thought was, was great. It, it, this was also true was the contract. But so. I can go over a little bit if you’re interested in the, the streaming rights issue. I, I don’t really need to go over this. Basically what happened is, is that during the pandemic Sony signed on this to get a stream of continued revenue for its [00:28:00] movie department.

So K-Pop demon

Simone Collins: hunters began production during the, the pandemic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Wow. So this took a long time to make.

Malcolm Collins: Or that’s when the deal happened that led to its creation? Oh, that may not have been when it actually started. Oh, hold on. I can just come up when it, because I, I, I, I noted here it was in 2018 when it was first pitched

Wow.

In, in the woman who did it the last week she had done was the Lego Ninjago movie. So, you know, her career Ninjago. Ninjago. Yeah. The Lego Ninjago movie just exploded outta nowhere. That’s, that’s fun. No. So a bunch of people’s and, and by the way, people are like, well, Sony got nothing for this. Sony still, oh my God.

Simone Collins: Do you remember that Lego restaurant we went to in Seoul? Oh yeah, that was cool. I gotta find, well, we, I, I’ll, I’ll see

if I can find pictures so we can put them up. Gosh, Korea’s so great.

Malcolm Collins: Aw. But Sony still has the rights to this. Well I also saw like the designs of the outfits of the male [00:29:00] villains in like the last scene when they’re in the traditional Korean outfits.

Mm-hmm. It was really on point. I was like, that is. It looks good in villainous. The other thing that’s also interesting about the, the sort of character that’s portrayed as like Satan in this is, it is not humanized. It’s a very clear, whenever you see it,

Simone Collins: it’s a distant voice. You’re not meant to like it.

You’re, it’s not meant to be funny or cute. It’s just

Malcolm Collins: bad. It’s not funny, it’s not cute. It has no redeeming qualities, but it isn’t bad in the way that di Disney makes demons bad. You know, so consider like Hades, no. Disney.

Simone Collins: Disney honestly makes de the, the, the, the naughty characters in Disney films are largely.

Treasured and loved and, and, and they become beloved characters. People dress up as, and they buy the merch. You don’t buy merch of this. Big, bad. Yeah, yeah. Bad, bad guys are bad guys. Instead of like, Ooh, bad guys, maybe. [00:30:00] Maybe good or,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, he’s very flashy and fun and, and, and, and like, mean to his underlings.

You know, you, you have that whole trope of like the, it almost sort of belittles the character, I call it like Captain Planet syndrome where like if you consider Hades the way he treats his underlings, like kicking them around and everything like that, is very you know, like, I think it sort of belittles him as a character.

It makes him look like incompetent and like evil is not actually competent. Evil is not actually something that is going to be tempting to you. We’re in, in this, the big bad is way closer. If I was gonna give it to, to a, a Disney villain way closer to the original Enchanter from us. Which, which one is that?

The one where she’s just, the chara turns into like a crow or whatever. She’s just like bad. She’s not like, funny, bad. She’s snow white

Simone Collins: where she turns into a witch. Oh, I think it’s,

Malcolm Collins: and then a dragon. Was there one before that? Yeah. Maybe Snow White is what I’m thinking of. Yeah.

Simone Collins: [00:31:00] Maleficents pretty bad, but she’s also one of the most beloved.

Oh, she’s, she’s a really great she’s a really great, bad character. In, in, in, in Disneyland, like the best character actress in the Disneyland parks is Maleficent. Oh really? She, she just walks around insulting people and it’s amazing. Yeah. That’s that’s fantastic. Yeah, she, she like, and like you have to be really smart to be her character actress.

‘cause people will like, try to shout and like heckle and she’ll just burn them. It’s amazing. Yeah, that is, yeah, that’s the thing is like in Disney again. Yeah. They, they elevate and make them fairly beloved. And yeah, that’s, that’s not, well, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, you see this more with recent digital, I mean the, that recent, what’s I wanna ask

Simone Collins: you, like, did, is Netflix not like, intentionally not emphasizing this show like that really confused you?

So they

Malcolm Collins: didn’t they didn’t know it was gonna become a success like this. And now the algorithm sort of handling itself, right? Like. I, I think that the, the, the next iteration of this, it may have a lot of Hollywood meddling. We’ll see. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, obviously they’re gonna make sequels.

[00:32:00] Sony still owns a sequel rights, so they can, they can make a sequel if they want to. I’d also note here that like we see the messages coming out of, of a Hollywood and Disney getting like increasingly bad. I didn’t wanna do a whole video on it, but wish has like the worst message ever. It

Simone Collins: is. Oh, you mean the moral, the moral imperatives presented by movies.

The, the, the moralization.

Malcolm Collins: In Wish, if you haven’t seen it, which is one of the recent Disney movies. No, I’ve, we’ve given up on Disney Park. They’re supposed to be like their Tent pal movie that like it’s where the song Make A Wish comes from, from like the Disney parks and everything. Right? Oh,

Simone Collins: they were trying to do that.

Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They were trying to like, make that the central song of the show to make it like the Central Disney thing. And it was about a kingdom that a magician created. And you could come to the kingdom. It was completely, you know, up to you. And what you had to do is you had to give him your wishes and then he would may give you your wish back later in life.

Right? Okay. But he didn’t give the wish back to everyone. And [00:33:00] when confronted about this, he’s just like, and, and everybody like clearly likes this kingdom, like is a clearly functional good place. And it’s even mentioned in a song that he houses them all for free in this kingdom. Right? So, okay, so once his big thin is that he thinks that giving everyone every wish that they wanted would be irresponsible.

Yeah. Which is accurate. And this is worse. Like deposing him and ruining his life and everything he built. That is, but it’s such like a progressive message. Give me whatever I want now, or I’m gonna destroy your, your life. You know, affirm me for whatever I wanna believe about myself, affirm whatever, wanna crazy thoughts I have.

Like that’s obviously super, super toxic. It was funny about the movie. If you look at the wishes that he’s holding back, right? Like, they are, what are the

Simone Collins: wishes he’s holding back? Like,

Malcolm Collins: One looks like it was somebody like conquering something. Now you don’t know if he’s conquering a mountain or another country, right?

Like another, the grandfather’s wish, which this story hinges around, is he wants [00:34:00] to be an inspiration to the kids, but an inspiration to do what? Right? Like it is like, oh, he just wants

Simone Collins: to be witnessed, basically.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. It’s basically witnessing. He just want, he does, the grandfather does end up inspiring the kids through wanting his wish to rebel and overthrow a benevolent kingdom.

Like clearly that’s not a good wish, right? Like, I think that the Wow and it’s a fairly selfish wish as well, you know, to the witness. Me wish. You know, I, I think that very obviously not all wishes are good, right? Like. I don’t even understand. Like this is something that like media and like back to like Bruce Almighty or whatever, like granting all the wishes and then it causing all these problems, right?

Like I’ll just grant all prayers, like white list all prayers. There’s the reason you don’t do that, right? Like mm-hmm. And. Socially and through media, we used to understand this, like this was delivered to us. And we would see these things and we’d be like, ah, well that’s like the story of X and that’s why you can’t just grant everyone’s wishes.

And Disney [00:35:00] is like literally no, no self-control at all. Everybody get what they want. Now. It was also really interesting about Wish and about a lot of Disney movies recently is, is people have analyzed this in more detail and I may aswell there isn’t generally a single good. Straight male character they’re all depicted as potentially willing to back stab you or, or dos Yeah.

Douses or in some other way. Villainous. Right. And it’s just shocking to me that you could have that, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s. That Hollywood could have gotten away with this for this long, and I really hope that this wakes up the industry and we see some systemic changes in the industry in relation to this because now they are actually hemorrhaging.

It

Simone Collins: should give us hope that people are turning to a movie that has hopeful. Self-empowering, take responsibility kind of message of like, I’m gonna reach my potential, I’m gonna own my faults. I’m not gonna hide things. I’m gonna work hard. That’s, that’s good. I mean that, that, that market driven [00:36:00] forces are showing that people are leaning into messages that are not so toxic is a great sign.

And that that goro go woke, go broke is a pattern, is also a really good sign that people don’t, they don’t buy into those more toxic moralization that you’re talking about. And I would say that the movies that have done well, that Disney’s put out also don’t have as toxic of moral stories. Like, I don’t actually remember what the Moralization of Encanto was.

It was kind of the opposite. It was like, well, you don’t get your wish. ‘cause I don’t think she ever came away.

Malcolm Collins: No. And Encanto was a fairly, I just said Encanto with a good movie across the board. It was, it was

Simone Collins: delightful. And it was one of, it’s the only Disney movie I know of that, like a lot of our friends that we really enjoyed.

And it, it, it didn’t have. Like any super toxic moralization. It also didn’t have any strong male characters that weren’t doosies. I mean, Bruno was just a sort of screwed up mentally ill person. Her dad

Malcolm Collins: was always getting injured.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it had problems, but also it, it was one of the less toxic ones.

So what I’m saying is, in the end, [00:37:00] as much as, as progressive culture has taken over Hollywood and other really powerful institutions like academia. People in general are, are reasonable and like inspiring messages and, and, and are, are leaning into. Healthier narratives, and

Malcolm Collins: I appreciate that. This is the thing that gets me about this, and I think it’s one of the most shocking things about this, is you watch the movie.

Like, I watched the movie and I was like, yeah, that was a good solid movie, right? I didn’t, I didn’t come away like being like, oh, that was the movie of the century, or anything like that. I was just like, you know what, sometimes

Simone Collins: we just need to have

Malcolm Collins: fun. Malcolm’s interesting about this and I, because my kids have really liked it, like they like watching the songs.

They ask for the songs. Thank goodness. Yeah. Yeah. But I had thought of it as just to our family thing. Right? Like, and I didn’t realize that this had captured the public to the level of something. Oh yeah. No. So

Simone Collins: I was the one, I had, I had seen a bunch of YouTube commentary already on K-pop Demon Hunters, and I was [00:38:00] like, Malcolm, you, you’ve gotta watch this.

Like we have to watch this for cultural literacy, which is why I struggled so. So much to get Netflix account access without paying for it. But you were like, oh, I heard this bombed, I heard this, and you thought it was a complete failure of a movie that no one’s ever heard of. And so yeah, that really, that’s telling.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I mean, even after seeing it, the point I’m making. Is like Hollywood, you don’t need to make the greatest thing ever anymore if you just make something that’s based and interesting. You, you’re, you’re gonna get a lot of viewers, right? Like the, the thing is, is we you know, we were looking at doing a documentary and we, we probably blew it up like the one that we had with the major studio.

‘cause we were like, I will not work with this director. ‘cause she was so woke it was just like completely intolerable. And I knew that whatever she make was going to Bob. Because she clearly couldn’t connect with, with like average people, right? Like she could connect with like award shows and stuff like that, but it was clear she wasn’t going to be able to create something that would perform in the current media environment.

And I was like, I don’t wanna make something if it’s gonna bomb. Right? [00:39:00] Like, I don’t, I don’t need to do that. Right? And I think that, that you just need to have like the most basic level of competence. In terms of putting these things together to create like one of the greatest hits of like the past decade, or, I mean, technically ever for a streaming site, right?

Yeah. Like, and it shows how starved the public is. And so, you know, get out there and make based media guys. Please. Yeah, let’s do it.

Simone Collins: Oh, no, I, I think this is great. This is also an indication of the, so if I, if I have takeaways from this, basically we’re seeing. Another sign of a surge in more traditional based and Christian culture as indicated by the rampant and amazing success of K-pop demon hunters, which has Christian messages and generally pretty like based plot.

And that’s good. Yeah, I like

Malcolm Collins: it. Well, I love you to death, Simone. I’m so excited for the bull Goki tonight. Speaking of Korean Bullock,

Simone Collins: Bullock,

Malcolm Collins: [00:40:00] Bullock, Bullock, we’re doing Bullock tonight. And if you haven’t had Bullock, I would suggest it.

So yeah,

Simone Collins: Bullock is, is basically, it’s, it’s, it’s Korean fire chicken.

I, I mean, so here’s the problem, is there’s, it’s gonna confuse people ‘cause it’s also like Bullock sauce, like it’s just spicy. So what, what we’re making is basically it’s

Malcolm Collins: Teki,

Simone Collins: no, not te, no teki is a totally different Japanese dish. It’s to. Tobo, it’s, it’s those toki, it’s those thick Korean rice noodle things.

Yeah. Sauteed. And then you add to it basically chicken, heavily marinated in gochujang sauce mixed with sugar and a couple other spices. And then to that, Malcolm also prefers that we add in oki mushrooms. All of that is then broiled in an oven under a layer of mozzarella cheese. So it’s almost like a spicy chicken crust pizza.

Oh. And it’s delicious.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well if, if, if you’re comparing it to a pizza, the the fried rice sticks. Take the place of the the dough.

Simone Collins: [00:41:00] Tio boi. I don’t, someone tell us how to,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Tell us how to tally. They are fantastic when compared to, well, you, you don’t get the same crunch you would have with a pizza.

But you get a lot more sort of uniformity throughout the dish. And I think that the flavor is. Well, so it’s also a little sweeter and spicier than a pizza. Yeah, because I think

Simone Collins: you add like, at least the recipe that I use, I think has both honey and brown sugar in it. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s actually, it’s sweet and spicy, but then the cheese on top, I think also you, so that what cuts through the sweetness and the spiciness is the mozzarella cheese on top.

It’s all melting. And today we’re gonna try

Malcolm Collins: and give us half cheddar because we’re out of mozzarella.

Simone Collins: Well, we’re low on, we’re extremely low on mozzarella, so we’re gonna be, yeah. Half cheddar. Half half. Who knows though? I think the cheddar could be interesting. I

Malcolm Collins: think the cheddar could be really good. I mean, I prefer cheddar to mozzarella.

I always think of mozzarella as being like very, you know, not, not quite spicy. And so we’re doing Korean when, when the Koreans are gone, we will eat some of your food. You know, when you’re extinct. We’ll, we’ll be like, this is what chorea was like before they went extinct from low [00:42:00] fertility rates.

Simone Collins: So does that. All right, I’m gonna go get the noodles and start the the Bullock. I love you very much.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: Okay. Oh God. Gonna hit end recording. Excuse. Alright. I was listening to the songs from this again and I, I love the. The demon one where they’re trying to be evil because I just hear it and it’s so romantic of like there’s a lyric of something like I’m the only one who loves your sins and that is so romantic. ‘cause it’s what you do with me, you, you not, she leaves, I love her

Malcolm Collins: failings, not her actual sins.

You

Simone Collins: love my sins. Well yeah, my, yeah, my feelings. But then you’re like, harness, you harness my demons and you turn them into like. She dogs color artistic,

Malcolm Collins: not like actual flaws, but the thing society judges her for, that she shouldn’t judge herself for in they were always frame

Simone Collins: to me in my childhood is things that I should try to hide and be ashamed of and mask.

And you were like, no, let’s use [00:43:00] this. And I love that you’re like, let’s UNH holster your autism.

Malcolm Collins: I, well, what I love is you don’t wanna have any actual like flaws. Malcolm, you,

Simone Collins: you know, I, you don’t have any actual, you used to deal with them all the time, but you’re just being the perfect cousin right now.

I mean, it’s

Malcolm Collins: actual fit. You’re not like drawn towards sloth or you know, sexual, I don’t have like a gambling

Simone Collins: habit at least or something.

Malcolm Collins: No, but like, of like sins. You, you, you don’t have any addictions. You don’t, you’re not a spiny person. You’re not a I’m addicted

Simone Collins: to our kids. I’m addicted to you.

Malcolm Collins: Idolatrous person. You’re not a, yeah, you’re just like, you’re very dedicated to your family. You had all these things that you saw were bad about yourself because everyone had always told you that they were bad. And I was like you know, maybe we could just lean into that, like FF everyone else. I don’t mind that you, you know, weigh all your food.

I, I want skinny. A skinny, hot wife. Okay. I know other people said that’s weird to do at a restaurant, and I’m like, well, we don’t have to go to restaurants anymore, sweetheart. [00:44:00]

Simone Collins: Oh, I’m so glad we got, don’t go to restaurants anymore. I, oh gosh. I have to share with you that video on how, basically Cisco provides a ton of restaurants and you’re eating the same frozen food at a bunch of different restaurants across the United States, be it in Nashville or Alaska.

So it makes so much sense. It explains so much.

Speaker 11: Hey, we got this nail. Got this,

Speaker 10: let’s.

We gonna go here

[00:45:00] away.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe