In celebration of Fast and the Furious 62, I grabbed a shirt that looked like something Vin Diesel would wear. That's not a muscle tee. Now that I have the right attire and a great attitude, it's time to review F9, the Fast Saga. Why is it called that?  The gang's all here. Letty, Maya, Dom, Maya and Dom's brother. Wait, they have a brother? It reminds me of sitcoms where they introduce a long-lost brother or twin that we didn't know existed until like the fifth season of the show because they're running out of ideas. If there were any themes at all in this film outside of the threat of family, it would be that the past has a way of coming back again. Whether it's a brother that's never been mentioned in eight previous films or a character who was dead for four of them and then returns. I actually don't know if it's been four films. This whole, this whole thing is a roller coaster. We started out at Drag Racing. Now we're, for some reason, launching cars into space. It's a whirlwind. Let me just come right out and say it. This is one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen in theaters, and I saw Boss Baby. It's so bonkers. It's so nuts. It's so crazy. It's so ludicrous. He's in it. Don't worry. He's back too. Whole gang's here, except for Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham because I don't think they, I don't think, I don't think The Rock gets along with Diesel. That's what I read. Rocks and Diesel don't mix. Physics are inconsequential by the ninth film. They kind of joke about it at one point. They also joke about how they're untouchable.  It's one thing to be self-referential and meme yourself, which this film does multiple times.  I wrongfully in the past compared the Fast and the Furious to that of an Avengers type of an event where they keep getting more over-the-top and crazy that these characters are basically superheroes.  Like the characters all look old. They look miserable. Vin Diesel's just so uncomfortable throughout this whole movie. He's just, he's kind of like this the whole time. His shirts look weird. He's always in a weird posture. His face is never making real expressions. I just, I don't, what happened to this franchise?  And now we're just, we're dodging landmines in the forest. We're traveling to 85 different places, most of which I've never heard of. I know you can drive fast, Dom. And sometimes Furious. Actually, a lot of times Furious. But you're traveling across continents in like the course of an afternoon, and then back again. Shit! You have guys go to space, and then like a day later they're back home having a barbecue. How? How? Nothing makes a lick of sense. There's dudes jumping around from car to car like they're agents out of the Matrix.  I mean, I don't even know how many people died. I don't know how many casualties there were in the final action scene.  There should be blood and guts and carnage all over this road. These are horrible people. Horrible people. I have a very hard time following stories now, and I think I know why. Back in the day, there would be like one major plot, maybe one or two minor plots sprinkled in. That was your story. Stop a, stop a shark from invading the beach. Plus deal with some of the politics of the locals in, such as Jaws. Now, though, it's okay, Fast and the Furious crew. We have retired some of us. We're in hiding out on a farm. We're raising a son that's now ours because other people are dead.  By the way, we don't see him again. I don't really know what was happening with that whole thing. And only we can know about it. This then pinpoints a location to something we have to go get, which leads to other things we have to go get, and then there's a key that we have to go find. Meanwhile, we left our son back at the barn that we saw for five minutes of the film. They don't care at all. Like Dom leaves this kid that he's just so held on to protecting. They don't tell us who he left him with until like 25 minutes later. That's just good writing. So they're going after these two pieces of technology that when hooked together cause the Transformium to take over the world and Decepticons come down and they can wipe out all the computers and Optimus and the gang have to stop them. Meanwhile, a ghost from the past comes back. But how did he survive? Well, let's do a flashback and find out. That's his sister? Well, not really. Let's do a flashback and find out who she is. Wait, Dom has a brother? Sure does. Let's do seven flashbacks and find out how that all went down. These are all stories. These are all full films worth of events. Dom having a brother? That's kind of a big deal. That's probably something that should be addressed more than in a couple of flashbacks. Bear in mind, the flashbacks have two actors that just look bizarre. I don't know if they were doing some sort of a face manipulation or what, but these look like an amalgamation of different people. They don't look like real people and they certainly didn't look like the actors they were portraying. In fact, I thought Dom was the shorter brother for the longest time because, you know, his brother, Jacob, played by John Cena is quite a bit taller than him. But, uh, who cares?  What were you expecting, Citizen Kane? Yes.  That's exactly what I was expecting. A movie with some competency. A movie with some story structure. A movie that's not just a string of random video games meshed together. Yeah, I expect Citizen Kane.    There's only so much I can handle. There's a scene in the film where Dom is in a sewer or something. I don't know, there's chains, there's water, there's stuff.  They're all decked out.  I don't know, where is he at? Where's the kid? Eh, who cares? I got stuff to do. And he fights all these dudes and he turns into the Hulk. He legitimately turns into the Hulk. He's like, run! He jumps down. He, like, picks up a piece of cement and smashes it on the guy. He, like, breaks the dude's neck into a railing. He throws six guys over.   I don't know, it's so hard to describe because I like crazy, loony films. Like, I eat Wanted Up with Angelina Jolie with the curving bullets. It's just preposterous. It's nonsense. Yet somehow, that worked for me. There's this really fine razor line where you can, like, get away with it if you have some style to your films. I think the problem is, Fast and the Furious, there's nobody on this crew that can hold this movie together. There's no, like, Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds, you know? Vin Diesel has no range. He's just so there, you know?  He's like, you, what card do I get in? I should also point out that I liked Fast and the Furious 6. I think the one with Paul Walker, where he was deep faked onto his brother's face or whatever they did, face off Nicholas Cage, that was fine. I mean, I don't know why that one worked and this didn't. I couldn't possibly pinpoint what's different between them outside of maybe that one just had a bit more emotion attached to it because of Paul Walker's passing. So there was just, they had that real-life scenario, playing part in the film. I think that's exactly what it was. There's something to latch onto in that movie. There's something to care about outside of this generic bullshit-were-family nonsense. That's nothing. That's nothing.   That happens. And my favorite part about that is before it happens, Lenny's like, uh-uh, you're not going to do what I think you're going to do. What? How would you possibly know? That's what he was thinking.  The other crew drives on it and as they're going, the back of the bridge starts falling. Like, this is what's supposed to happen. Brrr. That's what's supposed to happen, but instead it's brrr. Like, what? What? They drive up this bridge as it's free-falling. It reminded me of Legolas in The Hobbit when he runs up the bricks as they're falling away. Nothing about it makes sense, although I ate it up because Legolas is like a magic elf. So there's something you can, you know, you can suspend your disbelief there. Fast and the Furious has no excuse. It's just so boggers. I'm giving Fast and the Furious 9 4 out of 10 NOS speed canister things. I don't know what they are. I don't know anything about cars. And neither does this movie. Thanks for watching the video. If you want to hear my thoughts on more Fast and the Furious, stick around because soon I'll be doing a Fast and the Furious 1 versus Fast and the Furious 9 on my movie feuds show. And I'll be a little bit nicer, I think in that one. I'm gonna try to be nicer there because I know people do love this franchise. This is just, this is just my honest opinion on the film. Make sure to like the video and subscribe if you haven't, and hopefully I'll see you around the channel. Take care. And here we are, live, somewhat on time. Hope you're all doing well. I actually tested my audio before going live, tested the video. Everything seems to be, everything seems to be in play. So hopefully that's the case on your end as well. I already took the liberty of pouring myself a Coke. And I'm honestly ready, I'm pumped because we have a celebration today. We have a birthday to attend and the party's right here at my place. And that birthday is for a young female. She's getting older. She's a couple years younger than me but she's starting to push up there. And this birthday is not for a rabbit. It's not for a minx. It's for a fox. A Megan Fox. I think we could all take a moment of celebratory reflection. Kind of think about her catalog, the past films, the past triumphs she's had. Everything she's brought to modern cinema with her grace, her elegance, her charm. Some of the men she's chosen to attach herself to physically, emotionally and spiritually. None of them are me. That's okay. I guess that's okay. She got me through some tough times specifically in the Transformers era. Today we're going to look back. We're going to reflect on Megan Fox and everything she has accomplished. Everything she's brought to us on the big screen, on the small screen. I've taken the liberty to get this all prepared ahead of a time because this is going to be an adventure. An adventure through time and history itself. I want to make sure that everyone's feeling this. Everybody's having a good time. I think really, oh, he said he'll notice. Uh-oh, audio is off.  We can fix this quickly though. We always have to do this. Okay. Let's look. Let's see what we're dealing with. Offset is a 2000. Is it off? That's weird because I did test this ahead of time. Let's just play around with it. Set it and just get rid of it. I've taken it there. Adam, have you ever had a perfect game? No, not even remotely. Oh and many and I never got through the last Zelda game. Is the audio high? Is it too loud? I'm seeing red bars when I talk. Just let me know if the audio is a little too much. Okay, are we good? Do I need to calm the game down on the phone? I'm sorry, not on the phone. I don't actually use my phone to film these.  Okay, they're saying it's good. I'm hearing it's better. Well, what is better? What is good? Is it perfect? I want one to one. I want parody and a thumbs up from James. Much better at fixing it though. Yeah, Master Sergeant, I figured it out. I am really disappointed though because I feel like I got through that opening monologue flawlessly and now people are going to see this and be like, wow, what a jackass. Okay, it lines up. Okay.  Megan Fox has been on a lot of garbage. She's not a good actress in the slightest. She has skated by on her looks and she looks really good. But outside of that, there's no reason why she was ever a thing. And honestly, it's kind of impressive because if I look at the actresses now, the pretty ones, the talented ones, they usually have both. Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, even Anna de Armas was a bombshell in bombshell, but she also did a knockout performance. Gal Gadot might be, that might be as close as we get to a Megan Fox of this era. But Fox was something truly special in the early 2000s. Let's break down what she's done, what she's going to do in the future. I have posters. Let me sit over here. Ladies and gentlemen, what we're looking at today is Megan Fox in her first role. Obviously, she's not in the poster. She wasn't a main character. Holiday in the Sun with Mary Kate, Nashley Olsen. I have notes. The year is 2001. Mary Kate, Ashley, the Olsen sisters who would later become the irrelevant ones thanks to Elizabeth, the Superior Olsen, had a string of hit movies, a TV show, line of clothing, jewelry, condoms, I would assume at some point. But they had a little film called Holiday in the Sun released in 2001. One of the characters in this film, Megan Fox as Brianna. I don't know this movie. I haven't seen it. In fact, I've never seen a Mary Kate or Ashley anything. But here's the plot for those that are interested. Sisters Alex and Madison are whisked away to the Bahamas for winter break, but soon find themselves crossing paths with a man smuggling stolen artifacts. I sense a keeper. I sense a lot of fun. And I sense some Megan Fox in her first role. Good for her. Bet you have no idea what we're going to cook up next. Buckle up. You might not know this, but her next role is I hope this works. Bad boys, bad boys. What you going to do? What you going to do when they come for you? Megan Fox was in it. You might not remember. IMDB does. Her character name in this is Stars and Stripes Bikini Kid Dancing Under Waterfall. That's right. That's right. She wasn't credited for this role. This superior performance in the movie that really elevated the material all the way through. I don't even think the movie should exist without the bikini girl dancing scene. Megan Fox takes everything she's in challenges it to be its best. She did that for bad boys too. I didn't do posters or breakdowns for all of these of course in between what we're going to get to she was in an episode of What I Like About You. The Coke is going down hard. That's an Amanda Bynes vehicle. It was a TV show. Here's an interesting one. Ocean Avenue. I'm not familiar with this show. It's a great song by Yellowcard. I don't I don't know what Ocean Avenue is. This is very bizarre because it said the show ran from 2002 to 2003. So one year but then under episode amount it says 110 episodes. Megan Fox was in 110 episodes of Ocean Avenue in the course of a year. Is this a web series? How is this even possible? I might have read something wrong but I here's the plot. And this seems pretty par for the course and our acting so far. A cop working on the case of a serial killer targeting prostitutes must deal with his own secrets being exposed. I bet that's not the only thing that gets exposed on Ocean Avenue. She would then go on in 2003 to do one episode of Two and a Half Men. I never saw Two and a Half Men because half men scare me. Never saw the show. So yeah she had Ocean Avenue and then she went to oh you know what I didn't put. Hang on. Yeah I did this. Did I put it out of order? Oh I did. Let me see if I can move this up quick without breaking the flow. There it is. She would go on from one train wreck Amanda Bynes to another with Lindsey Lohan in 2004 Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. I didn't see this movie either. So so far I've not I haven't seen anything Megan Fox has done except for Bad Boys 2. I didn't know she was in it but she elevated the material. Here's the plot of Confessions. A teenage girl is convinced that her home city revolves around her until her family packs up and moves to the suburbs where she finds herself competing for attention. Salacious. Karla is the character that Megan Fox plays and I assume she knocks it out of the park. I haven't seen this movie. I really don't. I really couldn't know. Really can't know. I just looked at the chat really quick. Master Sergeant says there's your annex skywalk. He pulls out the there's your there's your annex skywalk.  All right, I got to focus. Let me bring up my notes. All right, from there into this is still 2004. She moves on to bigger and better things with a made for TV movie called Crimes of Fashion. And we know who that is on the cover. That's our Big Bang Theory actress. Kaylee Cuoco. Say that quote. I think that is I think it's Kaylee Cuoco. It's a weird name and stuff to pronounce. I think I knocked it out of the park. The plot of this is very simple. An orphaned hardworking fashion student Kaylee Cuoco discovers that she has a mob boss grandfather and inherits the family business. What? Hygienics are going to ensue for sure. And so is Megan Fox. I'm not sure who she plays. I'm not sure I could care enough to look. All right, now she gets kind of a first big break. This is her first big deal on television. Of course, Oceans Avenue set the world ablaze. But I still wasn't really familiar with Megan Fox. This wouldn't change things for me. But I assume middle-aged women at the time were familiar with this one. I'm of course referring to Hope and Faith. Yeah, that's Kelly Rippa. And I don't know who the other lady is like Megan Kelly or someone. I'm sure I don't know. A couple of blondes that do talk shows. 48 episodes, Megan was on. She played one of the daughters. Here's the plot. Their sisters, Hope and Faith, but blood may be the only thing they have in common. When Faith, a soap opera diva, is killed off her show, The Sacred and the Sinful, she flees the tabloids by moving to the suburbs with her sister, Hope's family. Oh my gosh. Megan played a character named Sidney, Shinowski. I bet there was a lot of head buddy and I bet there was a lot of like, I didn't do, I don't want to do that. You don't control me, mom. But it was great. Speaking of great, we get to the real meat of this whole thing. The reason we're all here today. And that's of course. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. What I've done, it ain't my thing. Lincoln Park. Michael Bay. Optimus Prime. If you didn't see this movie in 2007, borderline and Optimus Prime. Because this movie was peak. This was everything you wanted. Fast cars, faster women. Shia LaBeef. Yelling, Optimus! At the top of his lungs. Amazing soundtrack. Even more amazing audio effects. Sam, put the cube in my chest. It's the only way, Sam. I don't want an Optimus.    That's too late, Sam! That's a one-to-one recreation of that sequence. There's Mountain Dew Machines coming alive. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Shoot and mount Dewcans. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Grab a Dew, dude. And then later they would change to like Bud Light. And then the far right Republicans would ban transformers because they were pro-transformers, right? The Bud Light, so they got rid of that. They were pro-trans and they didn't like that.  And Megan Fox was just phenomenal to look at. She was the definition of a pin-up girl that you lean against an old car. A classic, a muscle car. I don't know what cars are. I was gonna say like a Mustang, but I don't think there's Mustangs in this movie. I'm sure I don't know. It starts with a sequel. I don't know why Megan Fox was kicked up this thing tonight. I can't, I couldn't think of a rhyme on the spot. But transformers, Revenge of the Fallen? Anyone? Yeah, I'll take it. That movie sucked. It sucked bad. It hasn't aged well. But Megan Fox isn't it.  You can kind of see her in the poster. She's got those white pants. The white pants really did it for me. What is, what's it with the white skin tight pants? It's the same with Padme in Star Wars. The Clone Wars, whatever that one was called. It's not called the Clone Wars. Revenge of the Clones or something. Clone, Clone World. Clone of Geden. I gotta know it. Star Wars, The Phantom Menace. Star Wars. I always forget this one's name. Attack of the Clones, Attack of the Clones. I got there. Let's see if we have any notes about this. I don't think so, I'm pretty sure. I did write down a plot for Transformers 1. An ancient struggle between two Cybertronian races. The heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons come to Earth with a clue to the ultimate power held by a teenager. That was Sam Whitwiki in his glasses. He could like see the artifacts and stuff.  It's a whole thing. The character that Megan Fox plays in these is Michaela Baines. I had no idea she had a name in these movies. I truly didn't. Fox would then do like a couple movies I've never heard of. She did How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Kristen Dunst was in it. Simon Pegg, never saw it, never heard of it. Then she did Whore, all caps, W-H-O-R-E. Whore. Never heard of it either. Seems in line. Then Revenge of the Fallen came out. This was a big deal. Sequel, she also did the video game. There was a parent-child thing, the parent movie, then the child video game came out. She voiced. She returned for that. Reprised her role one last ride because after Transformers 2, unfortunately, Fox is out. Bad Shyla Beef with the director Michael Bay. You don't bite the hand that feeds. Michael Bay clearly had an interest in young Megan Fox all the way back in Bad Boys 2. Casted her. Casted's not a word. I get correct all the time. Cast her in these two Transformers films, probably was going to bring her back for a third. And then he even went out of his way to put her back in another set of movies in a little while. We'll get there. But next up on this list is 2009's. Hang on, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Jennifer's body. I'm a simple man. I see a poster like that and I think I want one. There's several amazing posters for Jennifer's body. The marketing was horseshit for this film. I didn't see it in theaters because even though yes, I appreciate the female body. Happily married, of course. It's okay. You can still like the look of other women and men. Not a big deal. Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth. All the Chris's are God's amongst men. Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I might. I might dabble if I had the opportunity. Who knows? Who knows? But Jennifer's body, I need more than a pretty face. I need more than a pretty body to go put down money for a film.  And Megan Foxx isn't a good actress. At least not what I've seen. But then I actually watched Jennifer's body a couple years back for the first time and I was like damn, given the right material in the right direction, she's like okay. I still think a lot of people could have done it better. But this movie was definitely like kind of sculpted around her and the performance that she's able to give. It works so well. I really dig this movie. It's actually pretty fantastic. And a Patreon, which you could be, it's actually just Patreon, but a patron at patreon.com slash Adam does movies requested this film. He also requested Evil Dead 2013, which is the only Evil Dead movie I didn't see for some reason. I completely missed it. I do want to watch that one too. It's between those two, but I think I got to go body. I got to go Jennifer's body because I would like to rewatch it and I would like to talk about that one. Maybe down the road, he requests Evil Dead 2013. We'll see. But I'm not going to say much more about this movie right now because I'm going to be reviewing it in like a couple days. So look for that, please. And it's all down hill from here folks. It's all downhill from here. Jonah Hex, an Eminem slash Rihanna music video for Love the Way You Lie. Not a bad song. Just gonna stand here and watch you burn. That's alright because I love the way it hurts. Just gonna stand- Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, she's in that music video. Then she was in another... I wouldn't say this movie's good. This is 40. It goes on in typical Judd Apatow fashion for about an hour longer than it should. It definitely lingers cranberries. And I just... I couldn't with the movie. It's okay. She, of course, plays... She plays like a young hot record salesman named Desi or DZ or... I don't remember how to pronounce it. Last and probably least, Teenage Mutant Ninja Aliens. Remember when this movie was in production and they're like, yeah, Michael Bay is thinking these might be aliens and not turtles. They came from another planet because that's fun and cool. Megan Fox is in both of these. TMNT1 and Out of the Shadows, which might even be worse than the first one. And I don't know how you screw up so bad because Out of the Shadows had Casey Jones. It had Bebop and Rocksteady and it had freakin' Crane. What are you doing over there? Michael Bay produced those movies? He didn't direct. So again, Michael Bay probably, you know, gave Megan Fox another chance to redeem herself, get back in his good graces. I don't really know what the whole hearsay is with that stuff, but man, what a ride. What a roller coaster. And the last respectable thing that she did is New Girl. Who's that girl? It's Jess. I like this show a lot. New Girl's great.  She's so funny. You got Schmitty in there, Jake. The whole crew's great. And Megan Fox was in about 15 episodes. I scratch my head like I'm thinking about it, but I have it written down and I'm almost positive. I put 15. It's like I'm pretending like I just know off the top. Oh yeah, like 15 episodes. Yeah, she was in 15 episodes. She would go back, let's see, Reagan. Reagan was the name of the character. She replaced Zoe Deschanel, not replaced, but she was kind of the fill-in because I believe Zoe was having a baby at the time. She was preggers. That's what happened there. And thus ends any semblance of a decent movie from Megan Fox. She would go on to do a cornucopia of horrible straight to DVD, straight to streaming films, one of which I sadly saw a couple years back. Wasn't the worst thing in the world. I don't remember the name. I really don't care to look it up. She's trapped in a winter wonderland.  She turned the tables on him. It was a whole thing. Not very good. And sadly, she's recently been announced. Let's bring this up. Let's bring this up. We're done with the posters. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the cast of The Expendables 4, which apparently is still a thing. We got Sylvester Stallone. We got Sly in there. We got Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren. These are all the mainstays. They've been in all of them, I believe. Jet Lee, I think. Was he in the first one? I think he was. But then we have just a smattering of bizarreness. Megan Fox? What? Why? Why? 50 Cent? Andy Garcia. Okay, he's not going to be an action guy, right? He's just going to probably be the lawyer, the attorney, something, the gun guy. Randy Coulter, I never know how to say his name. He's in it. Terry Crews is back again. Steven Seagal, why?  Nobody likes him. He's kind of a joke. Why is he in this? And then Liam Neeson, of course, because he's done 55 Taken movies and he's out of things to do now. And then it's just a slew of new walks of life that I've never heard. I don't know who any of these people are. I assume they're mixed martial artists and UFC fighters and boxers and stunt people. I don't know. Or they're TikTok influencers. Is anybody's guess at this point? Let's see what the audience has to say. Let's see what you guys have to say about any of this. Just a friendly reminder. Super Chats are the name of the game here. I haven't brought it up yet, but Super Chats are always appreciated for these live shows. And with the Super Chat, if you have a question for me, you throw a dollar, you throw 10 bucks, you say, hey, Adam, I love what you're doing. My name is Matthew. Here's my question. It doesn't have to be Matthew. It could be Samuel. It could be Megan, like Megan Fox. Those are the three names that you can have. That's it. Those are the three names you have to have. And then you can say, Adam, what do you think about the color blue? Or Adam, what's your favorite Megan Fox movie? In which case, I would be like, oh my God, I don't know. There's so many to choose from. Let's get to the second and final story of the evening. Really, it was a celebration of Megan and all she's accomplished. So I think we did that. Megan, I salute you. I'm sorry things haven't been great in the film industry for you lately. You'll bounce back though. Expendables four, that's going to be the one. That's going to be one that puts you back on the map. All right, here we go. Our next story is, of course, speculation. No one knows, but they're all going to make articles and pretend. So I'm going to obviously make a video about the article that doesn't really know who's going to be the next lineup in the Avengers movie. The Kong Dynasty, is it the Kang Dynasty? I actually looked this up. I think it's Kang. Kang, Kang, Kang, Kang, Kang. Whatever.  Shitotas trouble. I don't know if he's even going to be the character anymore. Let's look up how to say this. Let me let me look it up just because I'll probably say it a couple more times. Pronounce Kang from the MCU. Kang, okay. I got there. I was there. All right, Avengers the Kang Dynasty team lineup revealed question mark. Every hero rumored for the new Avengers team. This is from Fandom Wire. And then here we have a really horribly photoshopped group image. Just miserable looking. Brie Larson, they went into Photoshop and just did the remove background, paint tool, the bucket tool. Didn't bother to really feather in or anything. So there's really harsh white outline around her.  Completely different tones. I mean, what's going on with Captain Falcon over here? Bucky. No, that's not Bucky.  What's Falcon's real name? He cares. I don't really like any of these people. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently spoke about Avengers the Kang Dynasty and confirm that the film will pack a lot of newness. He went on to say that a whole new set of Avengers will be in play when it comes to Avengers 5. As of now, Marvel has a ton of pre-existing and newly introduced heroes, but they'd have to choose out of the big bunch and divide those heroes between Avengers Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. Not everyone can appear in both of these movies. Okay, based on multiple interviews of Avengers the Kang Dynasty writer Jeff Loveness and the scoop of industry insider Grace Randolph. Oh God.  Okay, Spider-Man. Given that Tom Holland recently signed on a new MCU contract, bigger paycheck. He's going to play a crucial role in this story. Okay, the world may not remember Peter Parker yet, but they do remember Spider-Man who needs to redeem himself. All right. Shang-Chi. Since the Shang-Chi director is Helming Avengers, the Kang Dynasty. It's a no brainer that the Asian hero will show up. All right, here we are. So far. Tom Holland, Spider-Man, fine. Don't think I'm as like enthralled by him as a lot of other people are. He's fine. Shang-Chi. I like probably the most out of the new slate of Avengers characters. He's cool. I like this guy. Captain America, Sam Wilson. That's his name. Samson Swanson. I was way off. Sam Wilson recently accepted the mantle of Captain America and will now be involved in a conflict against the Hulk villain, Samuel Stearns. The Hulk villain, Samuel Stearns. That's not abomination, is it? He'd lead a new team that included Joaquin Torres. Torres, Torres as the new Falcon and fight against the temptations of the super soldier serum. But by leading his new and temporary team, he's gotten the experience to become a leader. None of this is anything. Okay, we're just...  So he's gonna be in it. What's this guy's name? I'm a movie channel. I don't know this dude's name. I forgot it. Sam Wilson, actor. Anthony Mackie. Okay, yeah. Anthony Mackie as an actor has not done anything to impress me yet. Maybe I need to see more movies he's in, but so far I've just thought, okay, you know Wesley Snipes, dude. You don't have that factor that I like from Wesley Snipes. You don't have the cool factor I like from like Denzel Washington. I just, he just doesn't do anything for me. Speaking of Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers, baby. I don't want to read anything with Grace Randolph mentioned in it. We know that she's a leader. We know she's like a part-time Avenger already. Usually she just shows up at convenient instances after she's done fighting off like volcanoes on another planet or whatever she does. We don't really know what her powers are. She's apparently invulnerable to... everything? I can't think. I don't think she has a kryptonite, as far as I could tell. And I'm not really sure. Does she have laser eyes, like Superman? Can she do ice breath? Or is she just a ball of the sun? She just blows stuff up. It's such a messy character. And I'm one of the few people on YouTube that thinks Brie Larson's fantastic. Not as Captain Marvel, but she's just everything about her works for me. Everything about her works for me. So I really do hope that they can make her character work because right now it's garbage. Moon Knight, Jesus. Moon Knight, I couldn't finish the show. I thought it was lame. Oscar Isaac, very, very good in the role. Oscar Isaac solid. That character bored the hell out of me. I didn't get it. Like, it didn't hook me. I mean, I got it. I didn't get why it was still going after four episodes. And so I walked out. I walked off the couch.  Matt Murdock is set to play a huge role in Echo. Daredevil born again and maybe even Spider-Man 4. Okay. Maybe we'll see him in the Kang Dynasty as well. That's exciting. Shuri and Yolana, the lova. I don't know how you say her last name, but Yolana. We know Yolana.  These posters are both awful. Florence Pugh may have become permanent member of the Thunderbolts and she might not show up in Avengers the Kang Dynasty. But while speaking on the phase zero podcast, Loveness name dropped both Florence Pugh and Leticia Wright. I really, here's the thing. I really like Shuri in the first Black Panther movie. In Wakanda Forever, she was very boring because she was mourning the whole time over the loss of T'Challa, which is fair. It's understandable from a story aspect. But from a character aspect, that early on, second movie already being a complete second in the mud. I didn't like that film, so that didn't help. But Shuri, I'm gonna need you to turn around. I'm gonna need you to get back to be an exciting cool character again because right now you as the Black Panther is so boring. It's insane how boring it is. No notes for Florence Pugh. So far, I like Florence Pugh. I don't really care about Matt Murdock. I know a lot of people get a hard on for our blind bandit, the daredevil. I don't, nobody says blind bandit. I came up with that, I think. I don't care at all. I thought Daredevil the series was really good for a season. Season two, kind of a downhill drop. And then season three, I've yet to talk to anyone who's actually watched it. I feel like season two really kind of lost the script. And by three, no one cared. Maybe there wasn't a season three. I think there was. Yeah, I only care about Shang-Chi, Spider-Man, Fine, whatever he's Spider-Man. Moon Knight, man, Daredevil, man, Shuri, man. Namor, what? Namor recently made his MCU debut and befriended Shuri. So he might follow Shuri in teaming up with the Avengers. What? That's nothing.  That's the whole thing on him. Namor, maybe, because he became friends. So Namor, this is unofficial. This is unofficial news that we're like confidently stating is gonna be a thing. That's maybe probably gonna happen, but I don't know, but I do know. She-Hulk and the Hulk. Grace Randolph, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Hulk was completely ruined by the end of Endgame when his story arc was finalized off-camera, one of the dumbest writing decisions the Russo's ever made. The Russo's made a lot of missteps in Endgame. That was one of the biggest ones.  The show was a disaster.  Easy to get through, I thought, because it didn't care about anything. There was no consequences.  I do like that actress Tatiana Maslani. I think she was great as She-Hulk.  The disrespect she gave to her cousin wasn't a fan of that, but I'm also not really a fan of characters kind of getting introduced later on that supposedly had this great relationship the whole time, but we never saw it play out, and then we're thrown into like the ninth movie, and suddenly Dom has a brother that we didn't know about. Doesn't work for me. Yuck. Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Paul Rudd, I'm so turned off now because of how bad this movie was. It's not his fault. Paul Rudd is so likable and charming. Evangeline Lilly was given the worst haircut ever put on screen.  Canceled show, just like Felicity back in the day. You don't cut the hair that short, especially when you're in your 50s or how old she is. That doesn't work. I don't care if it's trying to be comic accurate. Sometimes you don't put on the yellow spandex. Sometimes it doesn't translate. So these two, whatever, nothing to me. They mean nothing to me. The Mabies. Oh, okay. So Namor or Namor or whatever, he's in the probably discount because of this one sentence. He recently befriended Shuri. So, meh. Sold. Hawkeye. I'm going to chalk that up to a no, considering Jeremy Renner almost died recently. And I would imagine they've already been filming this thing. If he's in it, it's going to be a very small cameo. Or he's fully CG. Wong, yeah, this is a nothing burger right here. Wong is in everything. You can blink and miss him in the background of pretty much every show and movie ever. So yeah, Wong will be in there at some point. Conclusion. Why is there a conclusion on this? Thor and Dr. Strange probably won't be in it. Wanda, I think is dead in some, you know, it's a multiverse. So anybody's alive and dead and nothing matters. Nothing has any stakes anymore. Guardians of the Galaxy is probably the last good thing that'll come out of the MCU in a while. But who knows? I'm not bitter about it. All right, well, that is my news. That is, that is what I have for you this evening. If you have any questions, buy your Super Chat. I see we have one right here. $10 powerful Super Chat from Master Sergeant. Such an enjoyable channel. Am I right in noticing that it has been growing recently? I've been getting your older videos from years ago in my YouTube feed. Very nice. That is very nice to hear. Yes, the channel is growing at a solid pace. So I appreciate you bringing that up. And I'm really trying to, you know, make the lives a little bit more polished, obviously failing still with the audio issues. But you know, we're figuring it out sooner. I heard something recently on another podcast that's listening to and the guy said to paraphrase the bottom line is don't push things off.  So like the lighting is not where I want it or the audio is messed up or I don't have the right look and feel. It's not warm enough. It's not, you know, what I'm not acting right. It's not inviting.  Like are people liking this? Are they coming back? Are they subscribing? Are they telling people about it? Are more people engaged than they were last week or last month? Those are the things that matter and everything else is just is just nonsense. You know, you have to actually put stuff out there in order to receive some feedback. So that's really, I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone in that aspect. Like doing lives to me is, that's a nightmare. That's a nightmare scenario. So many things can go wrong and I do like polished presentation. Even if my shows in the past have a lot of errors, have some bad edits, the green screen isn't great, the skin tones are shit, the audio is garbage. They genuinely were the best product I could put out at the time with the amount of energy I had in me with kids and raising a family and doing all that in a full-time job. That was like, I was proud of all that material. So in the last year, yeah, about the last year, last 12 months, changing everything, getting rid of the green screen, doing a more traditional setup, changing the flow of the show, getting rid of movie feuds, getting rid of more of the scripted content and just kind of like speaking to you, but still trying to keep it funny and light and loose. That stuff's all been incredibly challenging for me and it's definitely been a learning curve and a growing experience. But yes, Master Sergeant, the channel thankfully has been growing. I noticed when I put out a new video now, I don't instantly lose 8 or 10 subscribers because they were all dead accounts that YouTube was probably just like filtering out or people were finally seeing my videos show up and they're like, who's this guy? Oh, I'm subscribed to him? No, no, that's okay. That's okay. I only subscribed to you because you did a frozen versus tangled video seven years ago. And there is a lot of that. So subscriber numbers are going up. I'm more interested in views and engagement because those are the important pieces to me. The subscribers, that's all just fluff and noise. Like, oh yeah, I got to 70,000 subs. That's a great milestone when I eventually get there, if it ever happens. But there's not 70,000 people watching the channel. That would be the amazing, you know, that'd be the amazing thing to achieve. But I've seen channels with millions of subscribers and they're only getting, you know, 30,000 views of video. So there's a lot of, a lot of skewed numbers, especially the longer you're in the game for, the worse off you're going to be over time unless you can keep reinventing and finding a new audience or retaining the one you have. It's challenging for sure. Thank you for the question. I appreciate that. Brian Babin with a powerful $15 super, I couldn't even talk because it came in so hot. A $15 super chat, he didn't even have anything to say. He's just like, here's $15.  Speaking of videos, I filmed one earlier that I was hoping to get out today. It's a segment that I'm trying to keep going. Last week I did the little mermaid early reactions and today I saw that the early reactions came out for fast X. I did a video on that as well where I react to the movie, whatever the reviews that came out. That's going to be a funny video. That's going to go out tomorrow. Excited about that. I remember first finding your channel with Avengers versus Age of Ultron and just rediscovered you not too long ago. I'm glad I did. Yeah, I think that's happening a lot because... And so the reason I got rid of the green screen, even though I still have one right there that I can pull down at any given time, well, I did use it. I used it recently on a live a couple of weeks back when I did those skits, which did horrible, by the way, on YouTube shorts and on TikTok. Terrible numbers for those.  Disheartening, but expected, I guess. Anyway, the reason I went to the more traditional format was so that I could put content out faster because when I was doing movie feuds, it would take me a week to make that damn show because I was writing the script. I was sourcing all the videos, trying not to get copyright flags, which was almost impossible every time. And it was just a ton of work. Now it's way faster. It's a lot more streamlined. And I'm able to... The goal was to get content out on a daily basis, at least five out of the seven days. Get a new video out there. Just get something out there that I could still look in and be like, okay, that's a solid video. Not amazing, but I'm happy with how it turned out. There's still some decent edits. There's still some clips. People seem to enjoy it. That's the goal because unfortunately, and it's always been this way, but I've just been too pigheaded to jump in the pool. It's a numbers game. If there's millions of hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, which is insanely true. That's a stat that you can rest your hat on. There's millions of hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute of the day. So you're in competition with that. And out of that millions of hours of video, there are movie review channels. There's movie satirical channels. There's nostalgic channels. There's like, you can cut down a million different ways. So then I have to look at that and say, what's my angle? Am I a movie channel about only sci-fi films or am I a movie channel only about Disney shit? Well, no, I watch all of it. Well, that hurts me because I'm not segmented enough. So then I have to ask, what's the appeal? Why do people come here? Well, it's for comedy and it's for honesty and it's for not having some sort of a, a political skew on everything or trying to like tear people down. Yeah, there's some, there's some jokes. I'm knocking people all over, but I'm self-deprecating too. We're all having fun. I want it to be like a South Park environment, right? So that's, that's the goal. And when I figured that out, okay, it's comedy, it's honesty. That's my thing. That's my angle. Now I need to put the work into getting these videos out so that people are seeing it show up with all the different noise. You watch a movie review by like Chris Stockman or Jeremy Johns.  Oh, I see that this guy over here, he also reviewed this movie. Let's see what he had to say.  He's got a bunch of stuff. Let's dive in. That's the plan. And in order to do that, in order to get in YouTube's good graces, it means putting out a lot of content. That's what I've been trying to do for the last year and it thankfully has been working out. The combination of lives, the combination of shorts, doing more videos, starting the podcast, it's all helping with growth. Not amazing, not amazing numbers, but man, there was several years where I was flatlined or actually losing subscribers. That was a long answer, but I appreciate the question and the support. I'll probably leave with this. I'm in the middle of, I'm actually having an announcement video on this, going on the channel tomorrow, not just this live, but we talked about this, I think a week ago on a different live. Matt, I think, asked me, what's the deal with Water Wars? And I said that I am making them available for $10 patrons and $10 YouTube join members. I have all four of them, they're zipping them up and they're gonna be on Patreon and on YouTube join for those $10 tiers and hire tomorrow. So I'm very excited. Not only do I have the four Water Wars movies that I filmed and did with my buddies in late high school, early college years, but I also am kind of remaster slash cleaning them up. They're remasters, but it's a remaster of a remaster of an upload of a download of an upload of a, they're all over the place.  And they've since been like converted to DVD, uploaded to the internet, then pulled down. But what I do have the ability to do is clean them up as much as possible, meaning bump up the color, fix some of the saturation issues, fix some of the audio issues, cut out some of the poorly paced moments, fix some of the edits. And so you're getting two versions if you are on those tiers.  And honestly, it's been a blast going through and watching these movies and looking at what worked and just the fact that, like I said, 10 minutes back during my ramble, the fact that I actually did it, I sat down, I wrote out these 45 minute scripts for this stupid silly idea I had. I got all my buddies together. We didn't have money, no budget, no pay. And for three days, two, three days, we just all day, dawn till dusk, we're filming these movies.  We shot one of these water wars movies. So I look back on them with pride, even though obviously they're what they are. And it's motivated me to sit down again and plan out a script that I wanna actually try to pitch to a Netflix or a streaming service or at least find a connection to get it in front of. Or maybe even film some of it myself like as a test to show a company. Those are the goals I have.  Finding the time, balancing it with this, my real job family. That's the challenge, but it's one that we can overcome. One shot, folks. We got one shot on this planet. So make the most of it. That's my little motivational pep talk for you. One shot. All right, I got another, Super Chat comes in from King Cold. Have the collaborations helped. I enjoy those. I think so, yeah. The collaborations have helped with Hack the Movies, kinda trying to make that our fast and the furious family. Me and Tony, we seem to have a good rapport. I like his stuff. I like his drive. I like his energy. He's more into the nostalgic side of things, which I'm trying to dive into a little bit more just to give us a little bit more parody, but I'm definitely, and I notice he's also getting more into the more modern movies with his monthly, like breakdowns. I always try to pimp his channel out, so that's Hack the Movies. Tony's the main guy over there. He's been doing this for a short while now. He used to write for Nostalgia Critic. He was part of Cinemassacre. Then he started doing his own channel. Yeah, it's been going very well for him. He'll come back on here at some point. We'll figure some collaboration out. Oh, Brian messaged me and I'll answer this because he did throw a super chat up before. If we went for stuff like Gold, Mythril, etc., do you prefer we use YouTube option or go to your Patreon? You have both, so I don't know. Yeah, Brian, it's a good question. I don't know either. Patreon, I think, takes... I'm not sure how the percentages break down.  There's no breakdown on YouTube. I genuinely don't know when I get paid for the people that follow me over there. I'm sure I do. I hope I do, but I don't know what the YouTube take is. I should probably Google it and figure that all out. I only set up the YouTube join because people didn't want to use Patreon for whatever reason. They had something against them over there, and I don't care why. The option was available, so I was like, okay, if you were wanting to support me on YouTube, I flip a couple switches. I upload a couple perks. We're good to go in both places, so that's what I did. There's nothing more to it than that. I don't have a preference, I guess, is what I'm saying. Patreon seems to be easier for me because if you are at the Mithril level, YouTube doesn't have a chat feature, like a private, they used to years and years ago. They used to have a private chat you could do, but Patreon has individual chats, so if you sign up as a Mithril, you can personally message me and say, hey, Adam, this is the movie I want you to review in the three-month window, and then I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can, which is typically within a day or so. That's what I try to do, sometimes a little bit longer, but I do my best, and we go from there.  Then I have to kind of have conversations with people in both places and then put it in my master list, and then sometimes people are like, Adam, if you haven't done my movie yet, let's change it to this, and then I have to go back, and it gets a little bit hard to handle. My wife, Lindsay, will eventually kind of handle some of that stuff as well. Right now, she's doing the Facebook, Instagram garbage, and that's working out over there, I think. I don't know. I don't have time to deal with it much. I think people like it. The listening fat says yo. Just jumps in with a yo at the end. Theater says Adam is in talks with Netflix about water wars. Yeah, yeah, water wars is gonna get back. Human master surgeon throws out a water world reference. Dry land exists. I've seen it. Kevin Costner, water world. Is that line, do we talk about this? I had this conversation with someone else. Does Kevin Costner actually say dry land? I've seen it, or is that like a paraphrase by Jim Carrey and Cable Guy? Because that's all I remembered from is Jim Carrey saying dry land is not a myth. I've seen it. Kevin Costner, water world. Brian says I'd rather pay through YouTube because it's familiar and easy. Plus, I've legit never once been to Patreon site. Yeah, and that's fine, Brian. That's perfectly acceptable. You're welcome to any support from any site is perfectly acceptable. That's why I have it. That's why it's there. Okay, so the rest of the week I have, let's end here. So tomorrow an announcement video goes out for the Water Wars Saga, I guess we could say. The season's collection since they take place in each of the four seasons. Or, yeah, so that's going out. The FastX reaction video goes out. The FastX review will go out Friday. I saw an early showing with Matt, my buddy who's also, I met through the channel. He lived in South Carolina so we were able to connect and we've been going in movies here and there. It's been a great time.  Terrible film. I don't remember what it was called. It was like, let me look it up. Let me look it up because I can't remember it. Kandahar or Kandahar, something terrible film, incredibly boring, incredibly lame. I'm not even going to bother reviewing it because it's just so lame and I know no one cares to even see a review on it. But we'll put, we have a short that we did at least. I think I had one other video I was going to put out. Oh yeah, the Jennifer's Body review. Let's see what I have on the upcoming review list for members. Did Life Force? Life Force is done. Yeah, Jennifer's Body and then Deadstream, which I have never heard of. No idea what that is.  Those are the three on my upcoming members and then the next week will be the Lobster, Zulu, Wind River and hopefully Cats. Hopefully we can get, hopefully we can get like seven of these done in the next two weeks. That's the goal. Then I have a whole other set after that. Not a lot, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 13. 13's very manageable. We can get through and some of these I've seen. So I'll just need to refresh myself. I don't want to have to like do a full rewatch. Hopefully I won't have to do a full rewatch. Oh, it's a live chat. I apologize. Did you decide, did you decide for Bo is not afraid on your rod and to me to score fresher rod and as an official critic, I didn't actually, I didn't actually put a review up for it. I feel like I missed the window. So I didn't, I didn't put a review up. I can go in and do it now. I would put it as fresh though. If I do put it up, it will be fresh. And I think that's fair. I think that's honest. All right, guys, that's going to be it for me. One final, one final note. I can't remember if I brought this up already. Cringe is coming back for Patreon. $10 tier YouTube. Same thing, $10 tier. The cringe is coming back once a month. There will be a, there will be an announcement video on that once I'm in a comfortable spot with it. I have six videos, six video ideas for the cringe that I have lined up. It's going to be shot the same way as the old show. Green screen is going to be down using that Lego fake house in the background. Khaleesi Grimes is going to be back. I'm excited to do that show. But yeah, that's another thing that's going to be heading over there. We're trying to build up the membership stuff because YouTube payout is trash. So we got to build the community and that means giving away perks. Maybe I'll just be net. I'll just make a Netflix of water wars of movie boss of the cringe of all the stuff I've done and that will just be all housed under that Adam does movies network in here now. Not sure, but I have family that. Okay, so Lindsay's just I guess Lindsay's just damage control or talking to people in the chat. I'm done though. I'm leaving. Feel free to talk with my wife in the chat, but I'm done. So thank you guys very much for watching. We'll be doing another live on Friday. In the meantime, a lot of stuff in between. I'm a busy beaver. That's that's that's the thing people used to say. Now I'm saying it. Take care.


We spoke about, Anders mentioned the presidency of the European Union, next year is also the year where Japan will host the G7 and of course pandemics have been very high on the G7 agenda for the last few years. So maybe Aruka, can I turn to you now? Thank you. Okay, yes. Hi, hello everyone. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity today. So today I would like to talk about more like the security perspective for the global health, especially for the medical countermeasures. So the COVID-19 pandemic is now nearly three years and then its social economic impact has been so significant that it would have become clear that public health crisis like the global pandemic would lead to a national security. So while so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions are of course essential, the game changes are likely to be vaccine diagnostics and therapeutics, the so-called medical countermeasures or MCM. At the same time, the political global security risk of medical countermeasures became clear again. So in general, when considering the value chain of MCMs, the flow can be divided into the three part, the upstream, midstream and downstream part. The upstream part is a surveillance or intelligence function, which is to quickly grasp the information in the event of some infectious disease outbreak. The midstream corresponds to actual research and development, and the final downstream part involves clinical trials, regulatory approval, manufacturing, procurement and allocation of the MCMs. The important point is that such an MCM value chain cannot be completed in a single country. In the past, the semiconductor industry has shifted from a vertically integrated model in which a single major company was responsible for the entire value chain to a horizontal division of labor. Similarly, the pharmaceutical industry is also shifting from a vertically integrated model to a horizontal division of labor in which each process is divided into separate companies and organizations. The horizontal division of labor was also the mainstream in the vaccine production during the COVID-19, and then this type of production structure will continue to be the mainstream for rapid vaccine R&D in the future. At the same time, it is quite important how to establish and diversify a value chain system that can't be completed among like-minded companies. As I said previously, that MCM value chain cannot be completed in any one country. In particular, since access to the vaccine isn't marked as that directly affects the lives of its own citizens, it is very important security matter for any country and geopolitical risks should be reduced as much as possible when securing MCMs for their own citizens. So for example, currently it's a low material for all kinds of medicines that are mainly dependent on China and India. In other words, it is presently quite challenging to complete in any pharmaceutical value chain without China and India. It will become more important to complete a diversified supply chain, taking into account the cost and the environment impact. Also, in addition to the security perspective, in the case of a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, there is an issue of how to prepare the capacity to manufacture vaccines for the entire population on the global scale. Another production of COVID-19 vaccines took place outside of western countries, mainly in India, Africa and the Asian countries. Without the manufacturing capacity of these countries, it would not have been possible to rapidly manufacture and distribute as many vaccines worldwide as it did for COVID-19. And technological transfer is critical during the global pandemic. On the other hand, technological transfer to low-income countries is not always easy, mainly due to the intellectual property rights. In the past, even if western countries developed new pharmaceuticals, the transfer of technology to low- and middle-income countries was limited because they had been a strong stance for protection of intellectual property rights, and then there was an absolute gap in access to pharmaceuticals between high-income and low- and middle-income countries. This time of COVID-19, China has re-returned the power structure. They actively provided the COVID-19 vaccine to countries that traditionally would not have had access to western medicine due to price issues by offering home-grown vaccines at a lower price and actively transfer technologies. So in the field of pharmaceuticals, which is a major industry for many countries, there is a desire to continue to protect the industries with intellectual property rights, but there also moves to restrain rulemaking by China and the sphere. So how 200 IP and technology transfer, especially in times of emergency, will continue to be an important issue to be considered. So in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a trend toward shifting coordination body from the global level. So the status of each region was already introduced by the other panelists, but in the earlier pandemic control, including R&D for new medical countermeasures, is expected to be controlled jointly at the regional level. So regarding the regional level, but it should be noted here that in Asia, where Japan is located, it is a complicated region to establish a single regional body. So for example, the WHO has a six-regional office, but Asia is an only region where the WHO has a two-regional office because of the historical and political reasons. Also, Asia includes larger countries in terms of population size and economies, such as Japan, China, Korea, Australia, and India, as well as in smaller countries with smaller populations, such as in island nations. So while we generally have the coordination by the regional body or at the regional level, how to unite Asia in terms of the pandemic control will be a major issue in the future. So the G7 presidency in the UK focused on R&D for the medical countermeasures, and the Germany G7 focused on the intelligence and human resource for pandemic preparedness. So the G7 in Japan, which will start soon, is expected to focus on the growth of health governance, including the promotion of regional bodies and pharmaceutical R&D and innovations based on the discussion in the UK and Germany, although the full agenda is not yet known. The G7 summit will be held in Hiroshima, and the G7 Health Minister's meeting will be in Nagasaki. For cities, experience in the public health crisis is a different sense than infectious diseases, namely, the health hazards caused by the atomic bombs and the post-sursymbol cities of the peace. So I hope that the Japanese government will actively lead the discussion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities of the peace, on how we should confront the global health challenges, amid increasing challenges that continue to threaten our lives based on our lessons from the COVID-19. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you very much, Haruka, for these perspectives and also giving us already a flavor of the forthcoming G7.


Are you good in the back? Good? Okay, well you're here for a data-driven design for better business, and I am Melissa Dufresne. And basically today I'm gonna help you get to the bottom of why you might be losing conversions on your site and how you can purpose design to not only create a site that performs better, but also has a better user experience for your customers. So I'm a UX and digital designer for Elevated Third. I worked on a wide variety of clients there from Comcast to Sprint, the Denver Botanic Gardens, and a large variety of other nonprofits. This is my first Drupalcon, so I'm very excited to be here. I hope everyone else is. But Elevated Third is a digital agency. We're based in Denver, Colorado, and we basically help organizations solve technology and marketing problems. And I'm specifically there to help with the user experience and design for that. So everybody that is here wants to be here because they want to build a better website, right? And most projects start a little bit like this. The normal designer stock image, everyone's gathering around one computer. You're looking at a client website that you have an RFP out for. It's kind of hurting to look at that website. You're hoping that it'll turn out better in the end. And you get the great news from your boss that you guys won the RFP. You have a new client. The papers are getting signed. This is gonna be great news. It's a brand new project. Everyone in the site is thrilled. So you and the team are pumped. You're gonna create this brand spanking new website, something that's clean, engaging, gonna really help drive conversions. So what do you immediately do? You head over to Drupal because you saw some awesome gradients that you want to bring onto the site. You saw these slick interactions and brand new features that you're thinking are just gonna wow this client. So you start pulling the inspiration for a mood board. You have them saved to your desktop. This is all great, right? You're hitting the ground running and you haven't even had the discovery or briefing yet. You're way ahead of the game, right? No. Please stop. It's amazing that you're so excited about this brand new client, but you really haven't asked yourself the most important question. What is this website trying to accomplish? What are gonna be the metrics for success? So before you start any of that benchmarking or mood boarding or sketches, you really need to figure out what the purpose of the site is. What are the main results supposed to be? What are you gonna measure success by? Whether that's generating sales leads, getting increased signups for your newsletter, maybe getting membership increases as an event site. Everything on the goal, or the main goal of the site should really be some type of conversion. That's the main purpose you're creating the site. It shouldn't just be a pretty thing to look at. So before any of that strategy work can be done, you really need to understand those differences. So you need to understand not only what your user's goals are, but what your business goals are too, and kind of how those two correlate. So the most important thing to remember is you are not the user. Everyone tends to have this problem when they come to the site that they think they know how this should function, but you're not thinking about the main goal of the site is to make that a better user experience. So the way that you use the site is completely different from how your users are using it, and you need to focus on their pain points and what their goals are for the site. So you really need to figure out how you're gonna make this the best and easiest way for them to achieve their goals. So how do we do this? To start with, we use the core model. This was developed by Information Architect, Air Holland, and he was trying to solve this problem and introduce the core model, which he presented at the IA Summit in 2007, but it's still super relevant today. Basically, websites need to be designed from the inside out. The primary focus and the core tasks should be what its users are trying to accomplish on the site. So to start this process, you really need to map out the content and find out what on the site the pages overlap. So there might be business objectives and user tasks that are going to overlap, and that's where you can create those conversions from. So these business objectives should be somewhat measurable, and then the user tasks should be something that they're actually gonna be able to achieve on the site. So there's a wide variety of ways that you can get these potential tasks started to create it. One great way to start is by basically understanding what the company mission is and what the vision is, that's gonna help you understand the business objectives. But a great way to get the user's pain points is to gather the feedback from maybe customer service calls or surveys that they've had in user tests, and you can start to figure out what are the current problems on the site if one exists. Those are what you're gonna try and change on the next site going forward. And reviewing competitors' websites, that's a great place to benchmark your strategies too. See what else is going on in the arena, what's good, what's bad, what do you not wanna do, and so on. You can also observe the differences of who's visiting your site versus purchasing. Is there a reason that they're not buying? Is there something that is frustrating them that they're leaving before they're actually getting the purchase through? Another great one to look at is the audience insights. Sometimes on Facebook you can realize that very quickly what the audience is of, maybe it was a 16 to 30 year old you were trying to target, but actually it's people from 45 to 65 that are hitting the site, and that's a wide, wide gap of your demographic, and you need to know that you're targeting the right people. So basically, once you've determined what these business objectives are versus the user tasks, you can start figuring out the parallels and the differences of what someone close to the organization thinks the site should do versus what your users actually need to do on the site. So as an example, we have a tourism and an event website that we're working on, and the stakeholders of this organization believe that the company history and the leadership and the mission should be the most important things on the site. But is that really what's most important to your customer? For us, we identified that the tourism site's top tasks should be getting pricing for the events, buying tickets, finding out information about how you can attend these events, getting membership discounts. These are all gonna lead to conversions, which is the main reason you're creating the site. You're trying to make money, basically. And those tiny tasks, which might seem really important to leadership, and they're always kind of hard to try and explain to your client that that is important on the site, it shouldn't be buried too deep on the site, but that's not the main thing that's gonna drive the conversions on the site. You really need to focus on what the users are trying to accomplish. So the core method really helps keep your clients and the site purposes on track, and helps those to not derail. And you know, promoting these to the most important, importance on the site is what you want. So from our client example, the business objectives where they're trying to sell tickets, and they're trying to increase their memberships. Those were their two main points of conversion, which overlap with what the user was trying to do of just having a good time, getting tickets. They're trying to figure out how to get to the venue. So you can see that by taking all those top tasks and tiny tasks and trying to figure out where those conversions were overlapping, that's where you're starting to get sales from. So making sure that they're having the most hassle-free experience and everything that's gonna lead to your conversions. So focusing on those user tasks and needs instead of the business objectives is gonna really lead to noticeable conversions. The example I have pulled up right here is from Cisco's website redesign. You know, they originally had over 50 potential user tasks that they thought were relevant to who was coming to the site, but only three made the top cut of downloading software, configuring product setups and troubleshooting. And so from those three, they were able to put more strategy and planning into making what's gonna work the hardest on the site. So what was once a 15-step download process and took about 280 seconds to do, now only takes a four-step process in like 45 seconds and that's crazy. That's a crazy difference. The success rates went up by 30%. So you can imagine those pain points that the customer used to have are gone. They're able to achieve what they were trying to come to the site in a much easier way because we were focusing the strategy on that. So if you can make these tasks work really well, you're gonna be on the right track. But if you get them wrong, the chances are your customer is gonna leave. They're gonna be fed up and they don't wanna deal with it. So now that you've established those core site goals, you can start designing to optimize the best user experience. This is a great quote from Jason Goldberg.  That's not your purpose. Making sure that you're having the best user experience is what you're trying to design for. It shouldn't just be pretty. It needs to have function behind it as well. So to really achieve that high quality user experience, it needs to be a quick and painless way for them to achieve their tasks. So designers really need to create sites that follow web conventions and usability rules. These are the ultimate guides to navigating your site quickly and easily and if you break them, you're gonna confuse your users. So really simple things like having clear navigation, having the sign up in the top right-hand corner, icons that have meaning, having the cart in the top right. These are things that are standard on most sites that your customers are gonna know where they're at and if you confuse them by misplacing them in different areas, you're gonna lose people because they get frustrated. Designing with empathy is also something that we find very important. 15% of the world's population has some form of disability. This can be color blindness, low vision, hearing impairments, but the fastest growing population right now is 60 years of age and older. And so we need to be thinking about how we're designing and making these better experiences for everyone because accessibility really isn't a barrier to innovation. It's just introducing constraints that you can produce a better working website for everyone with that in mind. So as you move into these designs, you should be thinking about some of this stuff. This is a good example that I found that kind of like Snapchat, which I'm sorry, but I don't understand how to use very well. The interactions are really hard to understand what you're supposed to do next. You shouldn't be hiding gestural interactions. There should be a very clear way that your users should know what the next process or steps should be. 50% of site visitors have a less positive perception of a company after one single bad experience and that's huge. That's half of your customer base that you could be losing if they get angry and frustrated with your product. So no fancy amount of animation can fix that. You should really be keeping the interactions in mind and icons that have context and designing with contrast in mind. Also, you should be thinking about mobile first. The growth of mobile is huge. In a recent e-marketer study, by 2009 they predicted that 304 million mobile users will be in North America and that's huge. Like if someone's coming to your site, they're gonna expect that it's on mobile. So you should be thinking about how that's going to translate across mobile. It should be responsive. So it's no surprise that mobile is such an integral part of web design and marketing. So really your mobile experience has to do two things well. You need to consider why the customer has come to your site and also their intent. Users immediately expect things to be easy and on their terms. It's that quick satisfaction that they want and if they get angry, they will drop you. So ensuring success by designing with their context in mind is really how you're not going to sacrifice context or anything like that but create conversions. You also wanna give them just the right amount of choices. So giving them the right amount of filtering options and Airbnb does an excellent example of this. You know what might have been a really laborious task in the past of trying to figure out a vacation rental for a city you're going to visit is actually kind of fun now because they have implemented very easy filters. You can quickly find out if you want a place all to yourself, if you wanna share it with someone, how many bedrooms you need but you really need to create specific filters for those and that's how they've created this really amazing user interaction because they're creating the filters for the most popular categories and really differentiating what people want between the different various items that they have available on their site. So by putting those most important filters at the top they're letting you get down to a lower level and not get frustrated with all the choices that you're given. It doesn't need to be alphabetical or anything like that. The most important filter should be at the very top and then you can create those themed filter categories that are gonna help them find their and make their decisions more easy.  So there's always a fine line between how many filters you implement on site, and you don't wanna have too many or too few because it becomes more confusing. Just making sure that you have the right amount of choices. This one, I'm sure there's some people that are probably gonna disagree with me because I feel like this is a constant designer fight of keeping content above the fold. The Nielsen-Narman group showed that only 20% of people read below the fold but a lot of this has to do with content. Content is always king. You know, if you have really relevant and interesting content, people will continue to read. That's not gonna be an issue. So if you do have that content, you don't have to worry quite so much about that. But really there's no reason why you should be bearing what the benefits are that you have on the site. Have those immediately up on the site and don't hide that key information down the page. And lastly, with your CTAs, you don't wanna have that hard for them to take that next step. You know, why would you hide a buy button or a download button or anything like that? That's the main purpose of landing page that you're creating. You want that conversion for them to take the next step. So these are the things that you should just think about kind of always keeping above the fold but you can still use the rest of the page to have the more diving deeper content and everything to give them more context. You know, it's all about the motivation and how desirable your product sounds. Social proof is another great way to increase conversions. It's shown to be a 34% conversion boost when you're able to put these on your site. So it's kind of the lemming whole ideal that people follow and do things that other people do. You know, once they see that someone's done it, it's not as scary. You know, they're gonna see that it's improved the lives of someone else. So adding those reviews and testimonials makes it really clear that you're the real deal. You know, people trust you. And then having those number of signups and members, you know, when a site, you can see the high number of member numbers, you get that credibility. You know, Netflix does that. They'll put the number that they have in their base camp does that. These are all great ways to show the wide variety of client base that you have. And lastly, using client logos is another great one. It's kind of that they trust us and we trust them. We have the whole credibility back and forth. If you can put your client logos on your site, that's amazing. That's another way that you can get that credibility because you're showing that if your product was good enough for this one person, then it must be good enough for our company too. Personalization is another great way. You know, Amazon, if Amazon's doing it, they've got to be doing something right, right? They've got a ton of sales because I am kind of one of those people that has the one click shopping and that's come to be a problem sometimes when I'm on shopping late at night. But you know, everybody that's on Amazon sees a different version of these pages because it's curating the content based on what you were looking for or what you're buying. So they put a ton and ton of research and money and data behind that because it's shown to work.  You know, an article in Business to Community said that 50% or 56% of consumers were more likely to shop with retailers who offered personalization. That's huge. And they also said that a whopping 74% will get frustrated and leave when they see content that doesn't match what their interests are. So you can see there's a very wide gap there. So if there's any way that you can create personas or create location targeting or some way to tie products with each other, whether it's by tagging or filtering, that's a great way that you can create these relevant products that your users will want. Videos are also another great way to convert. 52% of consumers are more confident about a purchase when they have a video. And I know this is one that's kind of hard because it does require a bit of money. Clients don't always have the ability to pay for a video or have the resources for it. But one thing that I saw in Advanced Auto Parts is that they had how-to videos and it led to visitors staying on the site twice as long and they also visited twice as many pages versus the people that didn't see that video. So it's kind of creating that credibility again that they're seeing how do I use this product and getting those pain points out for you to understand their product a little bit better. Even Netflix is trying right now to remove all their static content on their site.  That's how people want to see their content. They want to know maybe a short five second clip of what this is going to be to make it a little bit more relevant to them. So with all those things in mind, you also need to be thinking about how you're tracking and making small adjustments to your site. We use Hot Jar at our company. We've just found that it's a little bit easier, especially for the design side, for us to understand how people are using our site. And this is an example of a heat map that they have. And it also allows you to see your click and scroll behavior and do user recording. But this is a great way to understand how people are using your site. We actually were using this for our recent new launch of our website. And we saw that about 50% of people were dropping off below our homepage video. That's not good. We don't want that. And then we realized it's because people couldn't see the content beneath the video. So by cutting it by about 100 pixels on the homepage, we saw a drastic change that people were no longer leaving the homepage. They were scrolling down further because they could see the content. So it's little things like that, that you can make these small adjustments to help your site work harder. That's what you definitely just want to keep doing. You know, a website should never be one and done and needs to be constantly lived on and refreshed. And that's something that we try to make sure our clients understand too. So it's these little things that are gonna help you get those conversions all along. So basically, to sum it all up, there are a lot of different avenues. I had to put the cat gif in there. I held out the entire time. But basically, there are a lot of different avenues for you to implement changes on your site. And these are not all of them, obviously. Trying to fit them all in here, but to give you guys a good idea of those that lead to conversions. But the main thing is you should always be keeping your users in mind and their tasks that they're trying to complete on your site. This is what should be driving the strategy of how you're creating your site. Always for your users. Giving them confidence in their actions, which is the personalization and testimonials and videos, those are all great ways to make sure they're confident in what they're about to do on your site. And also making sure that you're just creating a really hassle-free experience for them. Everyone gets so frustrated when there's a site that they just can't get what they were trying to accomplish done. They instead call customer service because they have no idea how to fulfill it. These are all things that you need to start thinking about when you're designing a site to make it cohesive. But the user should always be the key focus. If the user is happy and they feel like they fulfilled their task in the least difficult way possible, you're gonna have a happy user. And a happy user equals a happy client. So, to end that, I just wanna thank everyone for coming to this session. And if you have any questions, please let me know. And come visit our booth. Thanks for the presentation. Thanks. I have a question about the 20% of people read below the fold. Can I get a citation on that? And also, do you know the breakdown between people using mobile versus desktop? Between mobile, you said? Yeah, mobile and desktop. Yeah, mobile's always kind of hard, obviously, just since the images will always be longer on mobile and everything like that. This one was specifically for desktop, so I'd have to find a stat that would also prove that for mobile, because it would be different because you're dealing with a smaller screen size. But basically, if there's some way that you can maybe just have a smaller image on your mobile and have those benefits bullet pointed or something, it might not be as pretty, obviously, as it's gonna look on desktop. But again, you just don't wanna hide that key information and benefits. And the CTA, still, if you have your mobile screen, the CTA should be right in the middle there. It shouldn't be beneath, because on mobile, you're gonna lose even more people, because they get frustrated as easily. But I'll be sure to put the citations in there as well, so you can prove that. Right, right, thanks. Yep. Yeah, we, AB testing. Yep, AB testing, that was one I actually had to cut out because of time constraints, but yeah, that's something that you always wanna test, too. If there's any type of language for AB testing, the CTAs, if those change at all, CTA language we've found, if you just slightly change that, that can make such a difference in conversions as well. So that's always something you should be keeping in mind, too, just those little tiny changes you can make back and forth to see if that helps and track it for a couple of weeks to find out if they made any difference. Yeah, you know Google's everything on Google, so don't explore it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, if only. Yeah, I'm working on a project right now and they did some user testing with people that are low vision, so they're not using a screen reader, but they're zooming way, way into the screen. So instead of putting the call to actions in the right sidebar where they originally had them, they realized if they moved them over to the left side of the page, people could actually see them as they only scrolled up and down with a zoom way, way in instead of putting them on the right sidebar, they'll never make it to the right side. So the placement left to right also matters. It's that whole readability. People always usually read from left to right, so yeah, that definitely helps with the flexibility. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, I'm just like, everybody has to load it, you know. And they did like a wide, wide house and I went to the water and so the most reason


We're at North Saanich Middle School, beautiful new school, it's a $23 million investment, just a fabulous school, it's got all of the environmental features that one would ever hope for, the lighting, the heat, all of that is based on contemporary science. These are like windows built right into the floor and this is helping because as you can see we have a lot of natural light up here but not quite as much downstairs, so this helps take some of the natural light here and put it right down there. I think what makes me most excited is that the kids understand the environmental features, they understand the energy features and they're learning about how these features can affect their lives not only in school but also outside of school. It's important that we're preparing these kids for the 21st century and all of their learning. Samples of solar voltaic energy as well as solar hot water which we're using to heat the gym and we also have a very small little wind turbine which we've named Gusty and Gusty the wind turbine is powering five of the computers in our library. They also have a greenhouse opportunity to think about things like agriculture, so just a wonderful learning environment that's been constructed here and really very much a tribute to all of the folks who contributed to the planning, the construction and certainly a wonderful environment for student learning in this new school.