Just 12 years ago, Scott Cawthon was making mildly successful Christian videogames. Now, he’s at the helm of the biggest horror box-office hit of 2023, and what is sure to become the next big horror franchise.
This week, we couldn’t resist discussing Five Nights At Freddy’s, along with the video game series that inspired it. Despite negative critical reviews, it seems to be a hit with audiences. How many of you have played the games? If you’re a fan of the games, how did you feel about the film? Let us know, because it seems like there will be at least two more coming down the pike.
Five Nights At Freddy’s (2023)
Episode 370, 2 Guys & A Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well this week we are back with, uh, another new movie. This one is fresh off the grill. Five Nights at Freddy’s. Maybe one of the first PG 13 movies we’ve done in a while. You think? Maybe, I don’t know. When was the last PG 13 movie we did?
I have no idea.
Well, um, you picked this movie, right, Craig? What made you decide to do Five Night at Freddy’s? Suggest it for today. Well, I kind of picked
Craig: it. I just, I like doing new movies and I like seeing new movies and I like talking about them and I feel like when something just comes out, you know, it’s on people’s minds.
People are excited about it. They’re going to see it. They may want to talk about it or listen to us talk about it. Yeah. So last week when we were talking about what we were going to do this week, I just said, you suggested something, a tribute or something, I think. And I said, well, there’s a bunch, there’s a lot of new stuff out.
Right now and I just started listing stuff off and as soon as I said five nights at freddy’s you were like, oh, let’s do that So I didn’t so much pick it as as uh Suggest it but I was excited because i’m not even really sure why I think it’s just because I Have known i’ve been aware That, um, they’ve been trying to make this movie for a long time.
Like since 2014, 2015, something like that. It’s gone through different studios. It’s gone through different directors and stuff. And I remember reading, you know, all the times that it was supposed to happen and it just, things fell through. And then, so when it finally happened, I was like, Oh. Well, I’ve been hearing about this movie for years.
Yeah, right. There must be, there must be something to it. And I know that it’s based on a video game, but I’m hoping that that’s where you can inform me more because I know nothing about. Ah. And I know that it’s not just a video game. Now it’s like a whole world of
Todd: video games. Yeah, there’s like nine main video games and a bunch of smaller ones that are offshoots and some fan ones that…
Have kind of been funded by the author of the original game. So you you’ve never played it. No Actually, this wasn’t even on my radar I also knew it they’ve been talking about pretty much ever since the game came out and got popular I never imagined that it would ever come out I mean, I figured it would probably come out eventually because it’s become such a Infamous video game and kind of a cultural touchstone.
I feel like even people who aren’t into gaming at least have heard of this at some point. I think people are
Craig: familiar with the imagery. Yeah. The images of those animatronics. Um, I’ve seen it around. Like, I feel like It’s in the pop culture zeitgeist and I think that you’re probably right that some people don’t even know where it’s from But the imagery is familiar
Todd: Yeah And I didn’t even know this movie was finally coming out until I was in Thailand a couple months ago And I saw the the previews for I was like, holy crap Where have I been like I didn’t realize it was actually happening the video game has a very interesting History behind it.
I remember when it came out in 2014 because I’m a bit of a gamer and yeah What happened was basically there’s this guy named Scott Cawthon, a devout Christian, was actually making Christian oriented games Founded a software company to do it. It was kind of a one man show more or less Uh, I think he had some friends from time, time and time again, but mostly all on his own.
He was making Christian themed RPGs and things, not really making enough to pay the bills. He, he kind of went to just doing real quickie, like mobile games or flash games and stuff online. But they’re all family oriented and, and um… had this kind of message behind it. He came out with this game called Chipper and Sons Lumber Company, which was about a bunch of beavers and some different characters and I think it was sort of a a resource management game where you’re trying to like harvest lumber and build things or something like that.
Sure, sure. But that game got a little infamous because people picked up on the character designs. You know, he did all this himself with like, some 3D rendering tools. And this was 2014. You know, if you’re not so good at it, maybe you’re, you’re a one man show. Uh, the results may be less than stellar. And people commented about how freaky these beaver characters looked in his game.
And so it was being laughed at, like this game is scary. It’s supposed to be this cute, funny little kid’s game, but these characters are freaky. So he actually was very depressed for a little while and then was like, well, then. I’m going to make a horror game, you know? And so he used these characters and he came up with this concept, which I think is pretty smart.
And I’m kind of surprised nobody’s done it before. At least the idea that they’re, now they’re these animatronics that come to life in an old sort of Chuck E. Cheese style pizzeria family fun center. When the game came out, he, like I said, he just repurposed those models for the game, said alright, I’m just gonna embrace the creepiness of it, and really amp it up, and it came out in 2014, and uh, was posted on Steam, and instantly became popular because YouTubers were playing it, you know, it was like the let’s play type videos, and so they’re like laughing and freaking out, the game is really all about jump scares, you are a guy who’s sitting in a chair, you don’t move around, it’s just You know your point of view and you’re confronted with a bunch of screens in front of you surveillance cameras And the idea is you have to survive five nights as a night security guard in Freddy fazbear’s pizzeria It’s it’s just a Chuck e cheese type knock.
Yeah, the idea is that you have limited electricity For some reason and these animatronics come to life for some reason like initially the explanation is well They need to be allowed to be sentient because if they just sit there their servos, you know go bad So they need to be allowed to move around but then if they get homicidal and so for some reason There’s very little electricity in this building throughout the night And so you’re sitting there and all of your controls are basically you look at all the monitors and you can decide to turn the lights on and off in different rooms and you have Two doors that lead to your security thing, but in order to keep them closed and locked, that uses electricity.
And so, you’re just basically staring at these monitors, and uh, watching your electricity go down, so then you turn off the lights in a room, and you turn off the lights in another room. But you know these things are walking around potentially, so you turn on the lights in another room, and suddenly, them’s missing.
Or you turn on the lights in another room, and suddenly, like, one of them’s staring up at the camera, and you can see it’s getting closer, and so, you know, with kind of a map in front of you, you can see where they might be, based on their security cameras, and know when to close and lock your doors.
Otherwise, there’s a jump scare. One of them will get into your room and just go, ARGH! Kind of right in front of you, and your face on the screen. I’ve played it a couple times. It’s not my cup of tea, because it’s really, really hard. Really? Yeah, it’s really difficult. I mean, I think if you were dedicated, you were like, I want to really…
figure this game out you could sit down and have the patience to kind of sort that out but otherwise I lost interest after about 20 30 minutes. I was
Craig: gonna say like the way you described it I said that sounds really fun for about five minutes but like what happens like I don’t get it like aside from the obvious it wouldn’t be a very fun game why wouldn’t you just Keep the doors locked all the time,
Todd: like because keeping the doors closed runs the electricity down, and once your electricity’s run out, the doors open.
Okay. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, you’re totally exposed. Yeah, so as a game, I think it was kind of middling like the mechanics of it, but. It really resonated with the public, uh, the gaming public and the YouTube public as far as its jump scares and the craziness of it. And so, he immediately made sequel after sequel and then started adding actual lore to it.
And I think another thing that has made the game so popular is that within the later games, he’s added minigames. Yeah. Which are referenced in the credits to this, to this movie. And, um, When you beat those minigames, you’ll unlock little hidden bits of the story, like of the backstory, and so it’s been one of those things where there are easter eggs he’s put in there, and little minigames he’s put in there, where he doesn’t make it clear up front, even if you play through the whole game, like what all the little Backstory details are like, why are these things, you know, who made them and what’s the whole, you know, and so it just, you know, it makes it more interesting.
It gives people some more to do some more to talk about online, something to make YouTube videos about. And so it’s gone on for nine official games and there’s a number of side games. He’s written some books, some novels on it, trying to get this movie made for a decade and finally it happened. So here we are today.
Highly anticipated Five Nights at Freddy’s movie.
Craig: Right, right. And I want to talk about it, but my lingering question is, like, for those nine main games, is it, does it remain sit behind screens? Or did it, did it evolve to, like, an RPG or something?
Todd: I’m not an expert, but I did kind of, because I haven’t played them all, but I did kind of walk through them a little bit while I was, uh, preparing for this.
Uh huh. I think the sequel is very similar. Most of the games you do not move from where you are. But you might not be in that room. One of the games, you’re even in a bedroom. Like, the concept is that the characters have followed you home, or have been sent to your house. And so you’re in your bed, and, uh, you know, they might be coming down the hallway, or coming through your closet, or something like that, and you have to do some kind of management there.
I’m not exactly sure how that works. One of the games in the series, I believe, It opens up the, the ductwork for the player to actually move through. So you can move from room to room only through the ductwork. But most of them are, yeah, just kind of more simple. Sit in one place and… Is it a PC game? Oh, it’s available for every platform.
It started out as a PC game and once it got popular, uh, you know, it was remade for every, every console platform you can think of, including your phone. In fact, I’m pretty sure the version I ended up playing it on. Was an Android version. Gotcha.
Craig: Interesting. Interesting! I really, I didn’t know any of that, I just knew it was a video game.
Yeah. And I, I liked the imagery. I think it’s a cool idea to, you know, because this movie was in limbo for so long, and there were multiple directors, there were multiple scripts, two other movies came out before it. Clearly based on the same premise. Like, Uh, the Banana Splits movie, they based on the Banana Splits show from like the 1970s, I think.
But it’s the same exact thing. It’s just, you know, animatronics coming alive and going on a murderous rampage. And then, Nick Cage was in another one. Yeah. Willy’s Wonderland. Willy’s Wonderland, which we’ve talked about before. Yeah, we have. We’ve talked about doing it and we just
Todd: haven’t. I’ve been wanting to do it because I looked at it and I was like, Oh, that’s basically Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Why isn’t it? Five Nights at Freddy’s, you know, like I
Craig: just think it’s because this one took so long to come out. In fact, there’s speculation that the Banana Splits movie is based on a script that was supposed to be Five Nights at Freddy’s, one of the scripts that got rejected. Well,
Todd: since we’re talking about this, there is a Reddit thread that Scott Cawthorn, the creator himself, who wrote the script for this movie, along with a couple other people, he posted where he outlined very briefly all of the different scripts Ideas that they went through.
Do you want to do you want to hear him real quick? Sure, so the first one he called the F screenplay The basic setup was that they’re a group of teenage troublemakers who break into Freddy’s and chaos ensues That’s your pretty typical sure Yeah or a movie trope thing and any he and he writes the problems with that that like although it was a pretty basic setup there Were a lot of odd choices in there that only got weirder as the story continued And it ended with the protagonist in a secret underground animatronic factory that was designing robots for the government.
Ooh. And he was like, yeah, I mean, it just strayed a little too far from the source material. And so they tossed it. Then there was the plushies take Manhattan screenplay. Literally, they just take Manhattan. Okay. There was the random Charlie screenplay, where Charlie and his friends sneak into Freddy’s after hours to retrieve a lost toy.
And I think Charlie is a character from the game series. Okay. And he said that although the, the characters in here shared the name of familiar characters with the Saviors, they really had nothing to do with the game and book counterparts, so it felt just like it was a little too loosely based. So they, they strapped that.
Now, the fourth screenplay they were looking at was called the Silver Eyes screenplay, which was based on a novel that he wrote. I think it was his first Five Nights at Freddy’s novel, called Silver Eyes. And they worked it up over the course of a year, trying to find the right approach. to the story from the first book.
But then, um, he said he just was not very experienced at writing screenplays, he didn’t do a very good job of it, it suffered from his inexperience, and even though he had help it just, it just couldn’t save it. He decided at that point to focus on making a screenplay from the games, and not from the books.
The other screenplay idea was called a pawn shop screenplay, where a kid who watches after a pawn shop… Finds trouble when an animatronic is brought in and it turns out that Freddy’s has been robbed and the animatronics were taken to different locations for sale And they all sort of come to life to retrieve that one That’s the pawn shop and then that kid and his friends all get roped into the adventure.
Okay I could see that one. Yeah, and they said that was not enough horror. It was more after school adventure. And then there was the Cassidy screenplay. And I don’t know, there’s My god, how many of them are there? There’s, uh, there’s a few more. I’ll just I’ll make it quick. Okay. The Misfit Kids screenplay.
Single mom brings her kid into a new town. Kid finds Freddy’s hilarity insane. It wasn’t a bad setup, but he said it just didn’t work. The problem was just having a reason for this kid to go to Freddy’s and keep going there to have his misadventures, right? There was the Ghost Tracker screenplay where a group of amateur ghost hunters sneak into the abandoned Freddy’s, which is also another common setup, right?
But, again, like, how do you give these characters a connection to Freddy’s? And too much of the story went into their backstories, basically. Then there was the insane screenplay, which he calls it. This was another Ghost Tracker type variation, but this one involved the Funtime animatronics. underground ball pit tunnels and a marionette out for revenge.
And he said, as, as some of the other screenplays ventured a little too far into adventure, this one went too far into action. It was just too all over the place with too many characters doing too many things. Finally, after all this, they came to this, what he calls the Mike screenplay, which said, He said it made so much sense that he doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before.
And he felt like it had the best pieces from all the previous screenplays, with all the right stakes and motivations and characters and things, with a good central story and scary enough, so. There you have it. There’s the background of, uh… What took so long to get this movie going? You know, I think about, that’s kind of fascinating, right?
Like, we never see this sausage being made. We always hear about it, but you never hear about, like, this writer was brought in, and then he got canned, and then this writer was caught into, then they scrapped that script, and two guys other, and then they reworked a script from another movie into this. You know, you always hear those things.
It’d be interesting to hear more of the details, you know? What did it start out as versus what it became? So, it was really nice of him to post that Reddit thread, I thought.
Craig: Yeah, that, that’s cool. I mean, it’s, it’s cool history. It’s just interesting that they, I don’t know, they, those all sound nutty, but like,
Todd: this movie’s nutty too.
It
Craig: is. It’s, it’s real. The script really is a mess.
It is a mess. I just, I kept thinking it so many times, like, Why is this happening? Like, why? Like, they, like, it’s probably, what, about halfway into the movie that they realize that The animatronics are sentient, and they keep going back there!
Todd: Yeah! What are you doing?
Craig: The choices they’re making are
Todd: fascinating, and then it almost seems like the animatronics are
Craig: okay.
It’s just, it’s just bizarre. Well, they have, they have fun, they have fun, sometimes they like build forts and lay down and take naps together, like, it’s, it’s very strange. Bizarre. And the backstory is very strange. Gosh, here’s the thing. Like, I wanted to really like this movie. I thought that it had a lot of promise.
I was excited about, I love the look of the animatronics. I love the design. And I thought that it could be really scary. I was surprised. Because I didn’t know much about it. I, you know, I just pulled up the IMDB page so I would know the actors names, uh, and characters names, and, uh, it was PG 13, and that really surprised me.
Mm hmm. And I was like, that’s okay. You know, uh, there’s lots of good PG 13 horror movies. I’m not mad about it, that it’s PG 13, but I really think that they, they could have gone a lot farther and a lot gorier, and I think that this type of story kind of calls for that. Yeah. Otherwise… It feels a little cute.
You know what I mean?
Todd: It’s a little cutesy. I just wrote down a sentence when I was done watching the movie. I was like, this movie is really just a big, silly, convoluted piece of ridiculousness. That’s kinda how I felt when I was done with it. Yeah, it
Craig: is convoluted. The backstory is convoluted. We can go through the plot because it won’t take long.
Um, because it’s pretty simple. But there’s this whole backstory involving a multitude multitude multitude Of murdered children whose bodies were chopped up and put in those animatronic costumes. Yeah. And nobody ever looked in there because why would you? That’s what one character says, like, nobody ever looked in the costumes because why would you?
Why would you not? I know. Like, if you’re looking for kids! Oh my
Todd: god. That was my big lingering question. I was like, as, as, it just seemed to get crazier and crazier the more the backstory I read. And I think it’s probably about as much a convoluted mess as the games are. Mm hmm. Because as I was reading a little bit of the lore from the games, I was like, oh, well, this is why.
This is the lore from the games. It might even, it even seems to be a rather simplified version of the lore from the games, and you know what that’s like. You’re, you’re writing one, you write one thing, you don’t think you’re gonna have a sequel, then you’re making a sequel, you don’t think you’re gonna have a third.
The Saw movies get insanely convoluted because, you know, nobody mapped this shit out. When they made the first one, you know, and so I forgive the guy for, I mean, good for him for like trying to put some story in his game and really make, give it a really rich and interesting mythology, but it sounds like it’s convoluted as hell and that this movie just takes it.
But
Craig: if I were a fan of the games, I would think that those things would be really satisfying because even if they were convoluted, you would still feel like you were like building. A lore like building and, and, and you would feel like I’m constantly finding these new Easter eggs. I’m constantly learning new things.
I think that that would be really satisfying, right? Just throwing it all at the wall in one movie. I’m kind of like, what? All right. So the movie is about PETA from the hunger games. What’s his name? Uh, Josh Hutcherson. Yeah. Josh Hutcherson plays Mike, a grownup. Josh Hutcherson can’t play a grown up.
Todd: Yeah, right?
That was the first unbelievable thing about this movie. It was
Craig: very strange. Okay, so, and, and then I’m like, Wait, he has like a 11 year old kid, but it turns out it’s, it’s not his kid. It’s his
Todd: sister, which didn’t make sense to me. God,
Craig: it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how detailed we want to get to it, but like, okay.
So his parents apparently are dead and he is fast. Oh God. Just thinking about how to retell it makes it so convoluted. Like what details do I include? Like in the beginning, they make a big deal. Out of the fact that he’s like, studying dream theory, and he believes that you can remember every single thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, it’s just some of it’s repressed, and you can bring it out in dreams, and if you can remember it right, You can change things?
It’s weird. Is that what
Todd: he thinks? Well, initially, what he seems to think and what he seems to be telling people is there’s some detail about this incident. Basically, when he was a kid and his family was camping, his little brother ran off and he was supposed to be looking after him. He ended up getting taken and never found.
So, abducted, basically, by some guy in a car that drives off through the woods. And, uh, and this has been troubling him his whole life. And so, like you said, he keeps intentionally… Dreaming to relive this very same experience night after night, like he has cues. They camped in the wilderness of Nebraska, he’s got a poster of the Nebraskan wilderness above his head.
He puts on the sounds of the nature and everything in his ears and, and, and, uh, everything so that he will dream this dream over and over again. And initially it sounds like he’s At least, it’s some character he explains this to. It seems like he’s trying to remember the detail of the person driving the car.
Yeah. But then later in the movie, the ghosts accuse him of actually thinking that he could change it.
Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s weird. And it’s sad. I mean, that, that whole, that, that’s a kind of gut wrenching scene when you see his brother being kidnapped and looking out through the back windshield of the car at him.
It’s horrifying. It’s, it’s scary. Um, I, I had, I had a recurring nightmare when I was a kid that I was with my parents somewhere and… We were leaving and I got in the back seat of their car and the car started pulling away and I looked out the back like that kid was and I saw my parents looking for me and I was in the wrong car.
Todd: Oh shoot. Are you kidding me? Yeah. That’s like you were his, his brother Garrett in this movie.
Craig: Oh my gosh. And I, I remember waking up so scared and that’s it. That was the end. Nothing else happened. Just. Just being driven away and seeing my parents looking for me, but it was super scary. So he’s a security guard
Todd: somewhere in the shopping mall.
Craig: I guess I think they said some sometime later, somebody says you were a security guard at a convenience store or something. I don’t know, but he’s in a mall and he has a security guard shirt on and he sees. A little kid kind of standing by himself, and then he sees a grown man kind of sternly and bruskly grab this kid and whisk him away, so he chases this kid, this guy down, attacks him, like, tackles him into a fountain, and beats the crap out of him.
Beats him brutally. Little… Baby Josh Hutcherson. Yeah, and of course, this is before we’ve even seen the dream, so we’re like, what is happening? But it’s all just a setup so that he’s now unemployed, and he has to go to the unemployment office because he has an aunt that wants to take custody away from him.
The aunt is played by Mary Stewart Masterson, who I… Love. I absolutely love her. She’s brilliant. She was, uh, edgy and fried Green tomatoes and a John Hughes movie that I can’t think of right now, but she’s fantastic and I love her. And she’s off, not in terms of her performance, but her character is just awful in this movie.
She just plays this hard, she’s
Todd: cold bitch. She’s almost. Cartoonish in this movie really and she is cartoonish. That was one of my criticisms is I wasn’t sure what they were going for Tonally here because she’s cartoonish. She’s got this cartoonish lawyer with her who walks around goes with in a day
Craig: That was weird Like he was always like in a trance like she was constantly having like snap him out of a trance
Todd: And I guess, were we supposed to think it was funny?
I don’t know, it was just, that was weird. And then, this guy, who attacked and brutally, brutally attacked this guy in the shopping mall, for what turns out to be no reason. Right. Where are the consequences? I, I guess, I know he got fired, but like, I was expecting
Craig: to see him like, in jail for a little while or something.
Something, like, having to deal with
Todd: this through the court system, like, one more complication to add to his life, you know? But it’s just, no, okay, now, now you’re unemployed, well shit, now I’ve gotta find a new thing. So then he goes to a career counselor. Yeah, Steve. Who apparently he’s been to before, right?
Craig: They, uh, I think so? Yes! Then, like… The guy, it’s Matthew Lillard, who I also very much enjoy, you know, uh, super famous from Scream, but he also, um, played Shaggy in all of those, I only saw one of those movies, it was cute, and I thought that he was a great cast, um, as a live action Shaggy.
Todd: It was like his dream to play Shaggy, and he’s been playing Shaggy both in live action and voice for every single Scooby Doo thing that’s come out since.
Yeah, good for him.
Craig: Get that check. Right. Um, but it’s fun to see him here. It’s, again, it’s so odd to see people our age. Like…
Todd: Old? Yes! I know, right? It’s like… I almost didn’t recognize him. He
Craig: looks great. He looks like his age. He just… Yeah. He just looks older. But he’s the career counselor. And he’s shifty, and it seems like they know each other, like, it seems like he’s like, Oh, you’re back again.
Yes! Like, he goes through his whole file, and he’s like, You’ve had, like, five jobs in the last nine months, and he’s always getting fired, um, because of his temper or something, I don’t know. But then, he’s like, Okay, thanks, Mi Like, he’s looking at the file, and he’s like, Thanks, Mike… Mitt? And there’s this weird, like, Some weird realization like he didn’t know this guy’s name even though they know each
Todd: other.
Yeah I think I know why now.
Craig: Yeah, now I know why but but it’s just
Todd: No, I don’t buy it. I’m sorry. It doesn’t make
Craig: any sense. I don’t buy this This odd coincidence. All right, anyway. Okay. So then before that, before he saw the name, he’s like, no, I don’t there’s no way you can get a job you’re terrible. And then he sees his name.
He’s like, wait a minute. I do have one job. I can just see him like twiddling his fingers in front of his mouth. Like, I do have one job available. And he’s like, the pay is crap. And the hours are terrible. But it’s the only job you can get, and Josh Hutcherson’s like, I can’t, cause I can’t work nights, cause he’s got…
This kid. And, uh, like, there are so many details that ultimately don’t matter. Like, this kid, like, has special needs. Like, she, I don’t know, she doesn’t talk very much,
Todd: and Like a little autistic maybe? Somewhere
Craig: on the spectrum? I, I guess, but If that’s what they were going for, oh god.
Todd: It’s a very light,
Craig: yeah.
Right, like, she’s mildly autistic, like, I don’t know. She just likes to draw a lot. Right, and they never say, they never say autism, they never say anything like that. They, but, she struggles in school, she struggles socially. Mary Stewart Masterson, like, confronts I don’t know, a judge or something, and it’s like, Uh, Mike is not a fit parent, and she has special needs, and I would be much better.
And she comes in like a cartoon villain, threatening to take custody away. And that ultimately really doesn’t matter, except for Mike feels like he has to get a job.
Todd: Which he would need anyway. Right,
Craig: exactly, which he would need anyway! I mean, they, I don’t know, I mean, both of their parents are deceased, which is also very vague.
He says something like… After mom died, dad just couldn’t take it. And that’s it. Like, it’s never explained any further than that, but… So he initially turns down the job, but then, with the threat of losing his little sister, he calls Matthew Lillard back, and he’s like, Is that job still available? And Matthew Lillard’s like, Yeah.
And then, he explains it, You have to go guard this place, which is Chuck E. Cheese, but it’s called something else. What is it called? Freddy
Todd: Fazbear’s.
Craig: Pizza. God, there was, um… What’s the one I just said? Chuck E. Cheese. There was another one, too. Showbiz. Showbiz. Did you go to those places
Todd: when you were a kid?
Oh, dude. Dude, do not get me started. I Ugh, if we start talking about this, this could be like an hour and a half episode. I have so many great fond memories of going to those places. I I was in love. With Chuck E. Cheese, and Showbiz, and the idea of those places. I loved the robots. You know, other people, like, they wanted to play the video games, and they wanted to ride the rides and play in the ball pit.
All of which I enjoyed doing too. Sure. But I would jump up as soon as a show was going on to run in there and watch those robots do their thing. Yeah. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. And I, I think it was Chuck E. Cheese, maybe it was Showbiz, also had seats, like stools, by the stage. Oh.
They would go up and down. Oh, I vaguely remember that on the wall they had like, uh, you know, like mounted trophies, like an elephant’s head and a elephant’s hands and things like that that would like move and clap at the end. I mean, it just felt to me like the room would come alive and I just thought the robots were as cool as hell and even when the robots were not on, they were still moving.
Like, they purposely had the robots just randomly, like, jitter a little bit, or like, blink their eyes, or like, shift every now and then. Oh, yeah,
Craig: that’s funny, because I was th You’re right, they did. They would still, like, blink. They would move just a little bit. Mm hmm. They would be mostly stationary between shows.
Like, I feel like they would do, like, a five minute show every… 20 minutes or yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was totally into the show. I’m looking right now at images Oh, I was thinking in my head. I think I remember liking showbiz more.
Todd: Well showbiz had the cooler robots They had the
Craig: cooler robots and look I’m looking at them now.
They’re creepy as heck now It’s
Todd: like everything, like you know, like these things get warped over time. When we were kids, we didn’t think they were, I didn’t think they were creepy. No, I thought they were awesome! When I was a kid, I didn’t think clowns were creepy, you know? But now it’s kind of part of the zeitgeist, like clowns are just inherently creepy, these things are inherently creepy.
Chuck E. Cheese, they had the sort of half creepy. It was like waist up, and they were way up in the air. And then below them, kind of in the wall underneath the robots, they had a cheese maze that you could crawl through that was also really awesome. Oh, I don’t remember that. The showbiz was like a full on stage where the robots were full size.
And, fun fact, I don’t know if you know this, but Chuck E. Cheese was started by Steve Wozniak, who co founded Apple. No, I didn’t know that. As soon as Apple took off and, and, and he kind of took a backseat, he really wasn’t comfortable like actually participating in the company, but he was just getting the checks.
His next venture was to create Chuck E. Cheese, and then one of the guys who helped design the robots split off and, um. Created showbiz pizza. There was some kind of split there. And so that’s why the robots are kind of similar because they were more or less designed by the same guy I think This guy kind of ended up providing robots to most of these people and at one time This was a full time massive production gig for him He had giant warehouses where he was churning these animatronics out left and right for these places Including some stuff for disney and some other places.
It doesn’t surprise me Really interesting, actually. Man, years ago, I really got down a rabbit hole learning about this guy and that whole operation, because I was fascinated with it. I loved that place so much. I still wish they were around. I know they’re still around, but they are a shell of what they used to be.
Craig: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I haven’t been to one in forever, but there was one in a nearby town. Um, I think I took, well, my sister and I took my niece and nephew, and it just… Yeah, it was not the same, but those places like, yeah, for me coming from a small town where we didn’t have one in my town, that would be like a destination type thing.
Like when we would go on vacation or we would visit other cities, we would go to Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz and not all the time, but you know, it was like a fun treat and I absolutely loved it too. And that’s what this is. So he gets this job as the night security guard at. A deserted Chuck E. Cheese, whatever it’s called, Freddy’s Fazburger, or whatever it’s called.
A Furburger! Fazbear! Freddy Fazbear! I don’t know. Okay, and, like, even the premise doesn’t make any sense. Like, this place? Has been deserted for 40 years, but they, they hire somebody to guard it every night. Just so nobody comes in, that doesn’t make any sense. What he
Todd: says is something like, well, the owner just can’t let it go or something like that.
And it is so transparent to the point where I figured, well, it’s probably supposed to be transparent, right? That. This guy is the owner. Like, that’s the only thing that makes sense. The way he kind of cackles, you know, when he sends him on the gig. Some of the little things he says to him as he’s sending him off.
And then he goes, uh, I’ll catch you on the flip side. Hopefully.
Craig: Yeah. Well, I was
Todd: just like, all right, well, this guy’s shady as hell. And so of course, like he’s the guy, right? We didn’t, I mean,
Craig: we didn’t talk about the cold open, you know, there, there is a cold open where the security guard at that place gets chased around by an unseen thing and presumably killed.
Todd: And strapped to some like saw type table. I didn’t get that at all. I don’t either. He gets chased around by these animatronics. He gets hit on the head or something, he wakes up, and then suddenly he’s in this table or something? It’s a
Craig: it’s a chair, but it’s got like, iron
Todd: manacles. Which just close automatically over him and his wrists, and then an animatronic face.
Whereas the inside is like, all spinning blades and shit. Yeah. I don’t, it doesn’t make any sense. Being lowered onto his face, uh, I don’t, I still don’t understand that. These
Craig: costumes don’t make any sense. The animatronic costumes are literally saw death
Todd: drafts. Yes. Well, this is the funny thing. The animatronics are one thing, right?
In these places, there are animatronics. They’re full on robots, but then they would have like a Chuck E. Cheese character, you know, just a suit that a guy would walk around in and interact with kids. It’s just a suit. It was not a half animatronic suit. No, no, no, no. And I don’t even understand how this would work.
But apparently in this, in this instance, there are also… Suits that people would wear to interact with kids that have animatronic insides?
Craig: I don’t know, but we can’t let it get away from us. We need to talk about the animatronics because they were made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It’s not CGI. Most of it is animatronics.
There are some times when the the animatronics rarely walk. Yeah, they’re usually stationary. But you do see them walk every once in a while. One of them, Foxy, they all have names that correlate to what they are. Foxy is a fox and he is kind of like a Terminator with a little bit of Foxy.
Todd: The most where
Craig: he’s got that spooky, like decaying
Todd: animatronic look that works so well for Terminator.
Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty, but the rest of them are, they look like, you know, they were almost like, like they were made yesterday. They, maybe they’re a little dusty. That’s about it. And
Craig: they’re cool. They have the, I mean. If you’re unfamiliar with the design concept, just Google Five Nights at Freddy’s and they’re very faithful to the look of the games.
I thought they were awesome. I loved them. I thought they were great and I thought that, uh, it was a good job because there are sometimes when they move and those were people in suits, but they were believable. But the whole concept of it doesn’t even make sense because the first night that he’s there, there’s.
A training video with his name on it, and he watches it, and the woman explaining it from the 80s is like, they’re animatronic, but we also had to kind of make them sentient so they could walk around on their own. What? It didn’t, it doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. But, his first night there goes fine. Yeah.
Like, no problem. It’s fine, no problem. And he comes home and he relieves his babysitter, who we’ve seen a couple times, seems like a nice girl. She seems like she’s just helping out. Mm hmm. And at this point he’s like, uh, I promise I’ll pay you someday. And she’s like, don’t worry about it, it’s fine. She seems super nice.
Turns out, she’s a spy. For Aunt Mary Stewart Masterson. Oh, God. And it’s so convoluted. She’s a spy. She’s trying to She’s supposed to find something Evidence that he’s an unfit parent. But She tells Aunt Mary Stewart Masterson, She’s like, There’s nothing. Like, he’s fine. Like, he sleeps a lot. But, like, he’s nice.
She’s a good kid. No problem. And her dopey brother Uh, is like demanding more money. They’re like, like you said, like cartoon villains discussing over a table. What they come up with is, oh, well, he needs this job. So, his job is to guard the place and make sure nobody gets in. So… babysitter’s brother and a bunch of his goons will go break in and tear stuff up and then he’ll get fired from his job and then he’ll lose custody.
Todd: While the lawyer continues to try to get up from the table, but she makes him sit down, like she’s some kind of Cruella DeVille type, uh… Yeah, it’s, it’s really
Craig: bizarre. And they’re sitting in a restaurant and she berates the waiter, like the waiter comes over and is like, Hey, what can I get for you guys?
And she had a great line, she said something like, um, Are you paid by the word or can we have a moment? I love that line. Bitch, you’re in a restaurant! Like, you need to order something! This isn’t a conference room!
Todd: Apparently that waiter is a YouTuber. He’s one of the YouTubers who made, um… Who made the game famous.
Oh! I didn’t know that. In his line that he left with, I don’t remember what the line was, was is a catchphrase of his on his YouTube channel, so… Oh! Fun. I think, Craig, honestly, this movie is probably filled with way more inside jokes than you and I understand. Oh, yeah, it
Craig: must be. Yeah. I don’t know. There’s just, like, there’s really no purpose.
For that aunt character at all and she comes back for five seconds later only to be killed off screen like yeah It’s weird And so these thugs break in to Freddy’s when Josh Hutcherson isn’t there and they tear stuff up And steal all the money out of the games that are, this is a 40 year old arcade that is still mostly fully functional.
Like you, you talked about how electricity is a big part of the games. It’s, it’s kind of a big part of the movie too. Like the electricity is kind of wonky or something. Matthew Willer said, you just have to flip the breaker and it’ll be okay. Whatever. Okay. And so then. This girl cop who has showed up earlier.
Oh, and the second she showed up, I’m like, who are you? This is dumb. I don’t even remember. Oh, she just showed up randomly in the
Todd: place, right? Yeah. I mean, later we kind of find out why, but. At the moment, it, I was just like, why is this cop here? It’s like she’s just doing the rounds or she just learned that there’s a new security guard there or whatever.
I don’t know. She shows up and she talks to Mike and It’s just too obvious to me. Oh, they’re trying to set her and him up to be love interests or at least Who is she? Why
Craig: does she care? Vanessa. Obviously there’s some reason. She’s gotta be connected to something, right? Yeah. Why is she just lingering around?
And she like, introduces him to the animatronics. Like they’re people. Yeah. And she tells him a creepy
Todd: story. She was like Exposition Girl. for a while. Well, well,
Craig: does she even tell him the story or does she just allude to it? Like, it’s a
Todd: basic one. She says, Oh, some kids went missing back in the 80s.
Craig: A bunch of kids went missing.
Todd: She tells him hires never last and he’s going to quit. Just a word of advice to you. Don’t let this place get to you. Just do your job and everything will be fine.
Craig: His dream is now infested with these ghost kids that have come out of nowhere. And his sister, you know, has these imaginary friends and. God, it’s all so convoluted.
But ultimately These guys all die, first of all. Well, yeah, the thugs go in, they tear stuff up, the animatronics come alive and kill them all. And very, like, this movie is not graphic or gory at all. PG 13 is the completely appropriate
Todd: Yeah, it is appropriate. There was one scene I was kind of surprised by, when one of the, I think it’s the babysitter character, right?
Yeah. She’s the last one to die, and while she’s walking down the hallway, you see one of those kids from his dream, one of the ghost kids. Yeah. And he says, hey, follow me, and so she kind of walks after it, because why wouldn’t you? Right. Uh, into a, uh, The back room, I guess it’s where they repair the animatronics, or it’s just a storage room.
Yeah. She sees Freddy Fazbear just standing there, and she goes up to look in his mouth, cause he’s open and he’s kinda chattering, and this kid’s hand reaches out of the mouth, and then we see a shadow on the wall. of the hand grabbing her, pulling her into his mouth, but then he chomps down on half of her body, basically, and then we see half of her body fall to the floor.
That was pretty graphic. Like, up to a point, I was thinking But you only see it in shadow. No, not the body fall. You see the body fall full on. Oh. You see all everything up to that point in shadow. Totally, it was just, oh, I just kind of wish they went one way or the other, you know? Either make it a goofy kind of kids movie, or try to make it like a scary, gory kind of movie, like, frankly, I was expecting.
It wasn’t either. No, it
Craig: wasn’t scary at all, no. And, and, it is very strange, totally, because, um, then, the babysitter doesn’t show up. To babysit for her next shift, because she’s dead and bitten in half. And so, Josh Hutchinson has to take his sister to work with him. And he sets up a little, like, uh, fort, like a little tent for her to sleep in.
And says, whatever happens, don’t leave my office. Um, and he falls asleep, and she gets up to go to the bathroom, and she leaves the office, and she sees the, uh, animatronics, and she’s like, I know you’re in there, you may as well come out, and they, like, light up, and they start coming out like it’s kinda scary, and then he wakes up to her screaming, and he goes in, and she’s like, Ha ha ha, they wouldn’t stop tickling me!
And they’re all friends. Yes, but like Isn’t this the point where like he’s obviously the
Todd: fort and Vanessa comes in but I think
Craig: is that the same night? I uh, I thought that like that they came alive and then he’s like we have to go and they left And then they came back!
Todd: Yeah, you know, you’re right, it’s the fourth night,
Craig: yeah.
It, like, he knows now that these things are, like, sentient and move around of their own free will, and…
And yes, because they go home and he talks to her about it and he’s like, uh, your friends. And she’s like, uh, they’re ghosts. And he’s like, yeah. He’s like, duh, how can they make the robots? How else would they make the robots move? So now, not only does he know that these robots move around on their own, but he also knows that they are inspired by the.
Souls of dead children, and he just takes her back there!
It’s true, it’s the ghost children possessing robots,
Todd: which I think probably in a video game that you’re really invested in, you’re probably just gonna go with, but in a movie it just like, whoa. But Vanessa then shows up, and she also… Knows about this and yes, she she also shows up at his house at one point and takes him for a little walk like, you know Apparently they haven’t found or nobody has reported missing nor does anybody care that these five thugs including his babysitter Who for the third night now, he hasn’t been able to get old of right are gone It’s just dropped as quickly as him beating up that guy in the beginning Right.
That would really bother me. I’m like, cause, cause you expect there to be some investigation, you know? No. And there’s a cop involved. Yeah, and it’s
Craig: the only cop in town. Right. And, and, and then they’re all there together and she, like, it’s just kind of shrugged off. Josh Hutcherson’s like, you knew about this all along.
It’s like, yeah. Yes, I did know about the ghost children. Anyway,
Todd: Oh my God. There’s a musical montage, a musical montage
Craig: with the robot. Where they play and build a giant fort and then they all lay in the fort together and everything’s fine. The
Todd: rabbit falls backwards and gives him a high, a thumbs up when they ask if he’s okay.
And
Craig: then Josh Hutcherson and Vanessa go… Talk, all alone somewhere, and I don’t remember what they talk about.
Todd: He confronts her, why do you know so much about this place? And, uh, he thinks he can get Abby to get the ghost children to tell him what happened to Garrett. Right, right. Because they’re invading his dreams.
So suddenly, somehow there must be some connection. And she’s being shifty, and when they go out to the main room, they’re Abby is having a dance party with the robots. But then she reaches out to touch the guitar, and this must be a part of the mo of of the games. Right. Because Vanessa seems to know that this is going to be a problem.
She’s like, no, no, no, no, and it shocks her. Like electrocutes her. Everything’s fine though because it’s morning and Josh’s, uh, Mike is walking Vanessa out and for no apparent reason, almost as though there were scenes missing. Yes! She just suddenly says, You can do
Craig: whatever you want with your own life, but if you ever bring Abby back here again, I’ll shoot
Todd: you.
That was
Craig: so crazy, because they had just been having a lovely time. Like, it’s not like she was trying to get them out of there. It’s not like she was trying to dissuade them from interacting. She was totally chill with it. And then all of a sudden, she just flips. It was nuts! And so, then, like, Mike talks to the ghost kids and says, um, Can you help me remember who took my brother?
And they’re like, the blonde one, is like, Well, what if we did? What would you give us? And he says, anything you want. And so then more movie happens, and then he talks to the ghost kids again, and the ghost kids, he’s back in his dream, but the dream is different. Instead of his brother going off, the brother stays, and they’re all, like, his whole family’s just sitting there eating together.
And, uh, Mike’s like, wait, this isn’t right, this isn’t how it happened. And the ghost kid’s like, no, but… It can happen like this. You can have this every night. You can be with them again. Which seems like kind of a lame offer anyway. But then the ghost kid’s like, But remember you said you’d give us anything you want.
And Mike’s like, What do you want? And the kid’s like, We want Abby. And he’s like, No. No, I could never do that. And the ghost kid’s like, Come on, and he’s like, okay. Both laugh.
Todd: Yeah. What’s the deal, like, they start running around, they cut him up, he wakes up and he’s strapped to that machine. Who is f ing strapping this guy to this machine? The animatronics! What does it
Craig: do? I, right, I don’t know. Like, I didn’t know if it was like going to make him one of them or something like that.
It really just s
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