Is Angels & Demons still the perfect thriller… or does it fall apart due to a major original sin?
In this full spoiler review, we break down Angels & Demons by Dan Brown—from the nonstop pacing and shocking twists to the real-world science, Vatican politics, and the Illuminati conspiracy at the heart of the story.
We follow Robert Langdon through Rome as the clock ticks down, analyzing what the book gets right, what stretches credibility, and whether it still holds up as one of the most iconic thrillers ever written.
Is this Dan Brown’s best book? Does it top The Da Vinci Code? And does the ending actually stick the landing?
—
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00:00:16
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike.
00:00:20
And welcome back to this week's No Limits the Thriller Podcast.
00:00:25
How's it going today, Mike? Good dude, a bit of a throwback.
00:00:29
This one took me back decades. Dare I say reading Angels and
00:00:34
Demons by Dan Brown. A classic.
00:00:38
Yeah, yeah. I mean, what?
00:00:41
I can't even imagine the first time I read this book.
00:00:45
You know, I thought, I always thought The Davinci Code was the
00:00:48
first book that he wrote, mainly because that was the first movie
00:00:52
that was made. But no, this was, I mean,
00:00:55
obviously we did deception point is that what we did?
00:00:59
Yep, Yep. He wrote those as well as the
00:01:02
the cyber thriller. I forgot the name of that one
00:01:04
Digital fortress yes, before getting into the Robert Langdon
00:01:09
series. But yeah, angels and demons
00:01:11
first introduction to Robert Langdon.
00:01:13
And, you know, I, I'd have to say it, it, it still hits.
00:01:18
I I think it still hits. I, you know, I didn't rewatch
00:01:23
the movie, but I remember the movie vividly.
00:01:26
And I know, you know, we would like to, you know, watch the
00:01:29
movie again and, and talk about that.
00:01:31
So what I think if, you know, we what we can talk about a couple
00:01:34
of things that I remember specifically that are different.
00:01:38
But yeah, I mean, the thing for me though, and I'm sure you
00:01:43
probably feel the same way too, is as a Catholic.
00:01:47
And I know like all of his books, like kind of trigger
00:01:50
Catholics, but to me, I wasn't, I wasn't triggered by the, you
00:01:54
know, the nature of it per SE. I mean, I, I think you're going
00:01:58
to make some comments at least that we texted upon for me, you
00:02:04
know what I think Dan Brown prides himself on a lot is like
00:02:08
research, right? And I feel like most of the
00:02:11
authors like we, we cover on the spot like that.
00:02:14
That's a huge component that goes into these thrillers and
00:02:18
just to get some things that are fundamentally wrong.
00:02:21
Like the first thing that he's like one of the biggest things
00:02:24
is that he states that only a cardinal can become a become a
00:02:30
Pope. And I don't know if he's trying
00:02:31
to do like semantics and and stuff like that.
00:02:33
But but literally in Canon law, it says there's only there's two
00:02:39
qualifications. He has to be a man.
00:02:42
I was. Going to say male.
00:02:43
Male and of like upstanding faith that's it so and what it
00:02:50
says like and you can go back and look at some of the
00:02:53
precedents where they don't have to be a priest.
00:02:57
Like I think there was 1 Pope where he was elected and he was
00:03:01
like some hermit and had to go find him.
00:03:03
And I mean sure, like historically you.
00:03:06
Can find a lot. It's been a cardinal, you know,
00:03:09
like the precedent is there. And maybe that's what he's, you
00:03:12
know, what he's drawing from is this idea that, you know, I
00:03:15
don't and I don't know what this book was written 2000, but
00:03:21
still, he did obviously did a lot of research on the art
00:03:23
history, but I feel like you could have done a little bit
00:03:25
more digging into Canon law, you know, anyways, that that's just
00:03:31
one big nitpick that I had. Then there's some other things
00:03:35
with science that kind of hasn't aged well, but we can get into
00:03:38
it. But still as as a story, as a
00:03:41
thriller story, this is awesome. Like I, I and I to me,
00:03:47
especially after reading Secret of Secrets, I feel like we've
00:03:52
watered down Robert Langdon's involvement, like involvement a
00:03:57
lot. Like in this one, he's freaking
00:03:59
jumping out of an airplane. Like, you know, I and I feel
00:04:03
like we haven't obviously covered Davinci code, but you
00:04:07
know, there's a a lot more of him in there versus where he's
00:04:11
at in Secret to Secrets or even origin that I like this more.
00:04:18
Yeah, and I wouldn't have seen that if we haven't so recently
00:04:21
talked about Secret of Secrets. It's different, Langdon.
00:04:24
And he was hands on. So while I liked it more, I'm
00:04:28
also a bit more cynical of like this Harvard symbologist
00:04:31
professor. Yes, we got his background,
00:04:34
water polo, dive team, swim team.
00:04:36
He's athletically fit, like he's fighting off an assassin like
00:04:40
multiple times and escaping him and using all these different
00:04:43
weapons and like seems to be pretty confident with them.
00:04:47
But at the same time, what really solves problems is his
00:04:49
brain. And so that through line, I
00:04:52
think is there current day Langdon past Langdon that he he
00:04:57
uses his plethora of knowledge, although here I think he misses
00:05:00
some things. It's almost like he's not this
00:05:05
he, he doesn't have all the answers here.
00:05:07
Things fall into place late for him.
00:05:08
It doesn't come to him right away.
00:05:10
So I feel like he's a little weaker on the knowledge of
00:05:14
history, putting the pieces together, actually kind of
00:05:17
fuzzy, getting things wrong here and there.
00:05:20
But he's much better at the action.
00:05:21
Robert Langdon. And then current day Robert
00:05:23
Langdon is like can do no wrong when it comes to historical
00:05:25
questions and trivia and puzzles and facts like that is on luck.
00:05:30
But he's not as involved physically with the different
00:05:32
things. So, evolution of a character you
00:05:34
might say for better or for worse depending on your opinion.
00:05:40
But that's that to me. Is not the most glaring thing
00:05:42
because like you said, the Catholic stuff.
00:05:45
When I read this as a kid, I'm actually pretty sure I read it
00:05:48
in high school. That's when I was getting into
00:05:49
thrillers. I know that's when I picked up
00:05:51
my first Vince I. Read it in high school.
00:05:53
Yeah, definitely read it around then.
00:05:56
I bought a. Hook, line and sinker, right,
00:05:58
Like I, I wasn't, I was, you know, probably questioning
00:06:01
things. Being a punk is all these, you
00:06:03
know, my science classes are probably teaching,
00:06:06
indoctrinating, whatever the the you know, the case may be.
00:06:09
But the same time I was like, it's these are deep questions.
00:06:11
And now I look at them like, no, these are straw men.
00:06:14
Like these are very weak arguments and you're just
00:06:18
putting them front and center to make a plot that almost is
00:06:21
scoring cheap political points where if you were to compare all
00:06:25
the claims being made with Catholic social teaching, this
00:06:28
is not it. Or Catholics understanding of
00:06:30
science and faith versus reason. This is not it.
00:06:33
Like you. You just have to read the
00:06:34
encyclical by JP 2 fetus said ratio faith and reason to know
00:06:39
that it's not face faith versus reason.
00:06:41
And it's not this whole war between the two that secret
00:06:45
societies need to go out there and defend the truth against the
00:06:48
church because the church is persecuting it.
00:06:52
I truth can't contradict truth is another one of those truisms
00:06:55
that comes from the Catholic teaching.
00:06:57
So and there's two paths. Even George Lematur, who is name
00:07:03
dropped here, the the father of The Big Bang, let's call him and
00:07:06
Catholic priest, you know, faith and reason.
00:07:09
There are two paths and he said I choose to walk both of them.
00:07:13
And I think that essentially is what the Catholic teaching is on
00:07:17
science and progress, is that it might draw conclusions that are
00:07:21
not objectively wrong, but they need to be understood within the
00:07:25
context of anthropology, sociology, like the human
00:07:29
condition of understanding how these dynamics will shift our
00:07:33
our understanding of who we are. Not that we deny scientific
00:07:37
truths or artistic truths or emotional truths or personal
00:07:42
truths. You don't deny those for the
00:07:44
sake of our vision of what heaven and earth look like.
00:07:49
No, instead, you realize they're going to have a profound impact
00:07:53
on each other and that nobody is the master of that relationship
00:07:57
and nobody sees the entire big picture.
00:08:00
We just have a small piece of the puzzle.
00:08:01
And, you know, we can't take that piece of the puzzle and say
00:08:04
it unlocks everything there is to know.
00:08:07
You know, we become gods through knowledge.
00:08:09
There's a lot of what, and people might interpret this
00:08:12
wrong, but there's a lot of what the Catholic Church would teach
00:08:14
our heresies laid out in this book.
00:08:17
And I think what Dan Brown does is actually take those
00:08:19
historical ideas that have been debunked and the church has
00:08:22
deliberately moved away from and produce rational argumentation
00:08:26
for refuted it biblically with biblical teachings.
00:08:30
Yet I think Dan Brown props those up and makes or kind of
00:08:34
misleads the reader. I'm I'm looking back and that's
00:08:36
how I was misled when I first read this book as a young person
00:08:39
to believe, Oh, that's what the Catholic Church stands for.
00:08:42
That's what they do and I'm against it.
00:08:44
Well, I would be against half the crap being mentioned in this
00:08:46
book by the Cardinals themselves.
00:08:48
We faith and reason is one of them that the two are
00:08:50
incompatible. And if you simply make an
00:08:52
experiment that undoes, you know, kind of the conservation
00:08:56
of mass or the conservation of energy you can create out of
00:08:59
nothing. Well, we just explained God, not
00:09:02
at all like there's probably scientific lessons to come out
00:09:05
of that should we ever progress to a point where we can do
00:09:07
experiments that seem to indicate that yes, we should
00:09:10
grapple with it. But to me that's not a four
00:09:13
drawn conclusion that we don't need got anymore.
00:09:14
Like right, like there's a relational dynamic to it.
00:09:18
So that and then you also mentioned some actual nitty
00:09:20
gritty, you know, specific details conclave how you elect
00:09:24
both. Like I said, you're making up
00:09:25
making the straw man just so you can tear it down.
00:09:28
But who says that? That's true.
00:09:30
Which? Character says that.
00:09:31
I think it was. I think it was the camera line
00:09:33
ghost. He's an unreliable narrator,
00:09:34
right? So you.
00:09:35
Can't trust him. His his vision of what the
00:09:37
church is and should be is completely misguided.
00:09:39
So yeah. I understand what you're saying,
00:09:41
but I, I feel like in all these novels he's playing up,
00:09:45
obviously the churches had a very checkered past, you know,
00:09:49
of course. And I took a great, great course
00:09:53
in college. I might have referenced this on
00:09:54
the POD before, but it's Saints and Centers, History of the
00:09:57
Pope's Part 1 and Part 2. And just like the crazy amount
00:10:01
of crap that has been, you know, at times covered up now has been
00:10:07
exposed. You know, I think he's leaning
00:10:09
into that, you know, whether or not from now this book was
00:10:12
published 26 years ago, you know, but I do still think there
00:10:16
are fractions that, you know, especially in the conservative
00:10:18
movement that, you know, don't want to would adopt some more of
00:10:23
these things that the camera lingo is is pushing, you know,
00:10:27
and I. That's, I think, a lot of
00:10:28
interesting. Things are Christian.
00:10:30
Just not Catholic. I think there are a lot of
00:10:32
Christian groups who do represent these things being
00:10:34
brought up. I would argue wrongfully, but I
00:10:36
think they push that narrative. I just think it's wrong to
00:10:39
equate that with the Catholic Church for a lot of these
00:10:42
specifics. But.
00:10:44
And maybe that's the evolution that we've had with these past
00:10:47
couple popes, you know? Fair.
00:10:52
What's it fair? Interesting he mentions this
00:10:57
being appointed by Annunciation or being appointed.
00:11:01
What's the actual term? I looked it up, elected by
00:11:06
something and. That's.
00:11:08
That is a thing, but it was banned by JP 2 in like 1988.
00:11:13
Yeah, it was so like, historically.
00:11:15
May have been a thing, but it did.
00:11:16
Yeah. It's not where the church is
00:11:18
now. That's the one where like, all
00:11:19
the Cardinals are chanting and shouting and thereby that counts
00:11:22
as an election of a Pope. Interesting twist at the end
00:11:25
after 18 other different twists in the last like 100 pages.
00:11:29
Yeah, I was going to get into that.
00:11:30
Dude, did you you know this? Obviously your second or third
00:11:34
reread were the twists as good as you remembered?
00:11:40
It's a great question. I'll put it this way.
00:11:42
The story had me bought in for all the elements of plot, of
00:11:45
pacing, of intrigue, of suspense, the some of the actual
00:11:49
like philosophical underpinnings of it, maybe not.
00:11:52
But in terms of the plot pacing along and jumping or, you know,
00:11:55
jumping ahead, I, I was in it again just like I was when I
00:12:01
first read it, like I was bought in.
00:12:03
Did knowing what was coming spoil it a little bit?
00:12:06
Maybe it's just like it didn't recreate that magic of the first
00:12:10
time I found out. Or we got an alternate scene of
00:12:14
the camera Lango inside the office, right where Caller's
00:12:17
there with the gun and who did what with the brand and who
00:12:20
shouted Illuminatus. Like I knew there was more
00:12:25
coming, right? It wasn't like it seemed at face
00:12:27
value. Didn't remember all the nitty
00:12:28
gritty. So it was fun, but not as much
00:12:30
fun as the first time. I will say the child reveal the
00:12:34
camera, Lango being the sun that caught me off guard.
00:12:38
For some reason my mind just didn't didn't put those pieces
00:12:41
together. Completely forgot.
00:12:42
So that one almost was reading it, just like for the first time
00:12:45
being jaw on the floor, you know, shock.
00:12:49
That's another thing. It's a minor point, but
00:12:51
technically like that would still be a sin because you're
00:12:56
not supposed to. Like essentially the Pope would
00:12:59
have had or the previous Pope would have had to masturbate to
00:13:01
give up the sperm. You know, like.
00:13:04
Yeah. Minor quibble with that.
00:13:06
Anyway, it still doesn't. A little more than that, though,
00:13:11
because if the minor quibble was only is it a sin if he did the
00:13:14
deed to, you know, get, get the get the sperm, whatever that I'm
00:13:19
less concerned about. I'm a little more concerned
00:13:21
about it just shows a complete lack of understanding of what
00:13:24
celibacy is in principle. It's like Robert Langdon again
00:13:28
or Dan Brown to score again, these cheap points is I'm just
00:13:31
going to say he wasn't celibate because he had a child and then
00:13:33
he was still celibate because he didn't have intercourse.
00:13:36
We're just reducing it to this very, very formulaic check the
00:13:40
boxes. If you didn't do this, if you
00:13:42
did this, I would say no. I would say celibacy is a
00:13:44
mindset. It's a it's a commitment, It's a
00:13:47
promise to yourself. And in fact, it's, I don't know
00:13:50
for sure, but it's probably more mental than it is physical,
00:13:53
right? Like, it's more about how you
00:13:55
are disposed to the world and how you view your choices.
00:13:59
And I think all that is a bigger picture of you of celibacy.
00:14:03
We're here. We're just trying to reduce it
00:14:04
to did he send check the box, yes or no?
00:14:07
Did they extract the sperm this way?
00:14:08
Did he have intercourse or relationship this way?
00:14:10
The thing is they both decided to procreate regardless of the
00:14:17
means and mechanisms, right? Because we could debate till the
00:14:19
cows come home, we invent a new method tomorrow that ticks all
00:14:22
these boxes. What's the church got to say
00:14:24
about that now? Well, that doesn't change the
00:14:26
underpinnings of their principle is probably about
00:14:29
self-discipline, commitment, celibacy of the mind, celibacy
00:14:33
of your, you know, soul. And so it's like it doesn't
00:14:36
matter the technique of what inventions we make that do this
00:14:39
and that the ground will shift. But as the ground shifts, it's
00:14:43
like there are firm foundations underneath it.
00:14:46
And I think if we just hang our hat on the shifting sands of
00:14:50
time and progress, and everything's right or wrong
00:14:52
through that lens, we're missing kind of the underpinnings and
00:14:55
the core values. Yeah.
00:14:59
Anyway, no, I agree. That's it.
00:15:01
That's it for my rant guys. We'll get back to the book.
00:15:04
I think one of the, and maybe I guess we could dip a little bit
00:15:09
in the movie. I think the, the reason I forgot
00:15:11
about that is because I, I don't think that that is a big major
00:15:15
part of the movie. I think the camera lingo in the
00:15:17
movie, obviously played by Ewan McGregor, big change.
00:15:20
He's not Italian, he's Irish. I think his last name's like
00:15:23
McKenna or something like that do.
00:15:27
They do the family thing. No, I, I, I don't.
00:15:29
I don't think he has this deep, you know, it's kind of like how
00:15:34
we expected it to be, the idea I am your father, I am your son,
00:15:38
like in a different sense, not literally, you know, and but he
00:15:44
still has this, you know, he is mad that the, that the Pope or
00:15:49
his who he thought was his, you know, Heavenly Father or or
00:15:53
earthly Heavenly Father would decide to, you know, embrace
00:15:58
this technology instead of shun it for what he thinks, you know,
00:16:01
it should be. Yeah.
00:16:03
That that's that's a that's a big change.
00:16:05
You know, obviously the the movie has to cut out a lot of
00:16:07
characters because it has a a lot of characters.
00:16:10
We don't, we don't really go to CERN at all.
00:16:14
Or Robert Downey does definitely does go to CERN and we might
00:16:16
like, I think there's, I'm remembering correctly, there's
00:16:19
like an opening scene where we would go to like the Large
00:16:21
Hadron Collider, but we don't get maximum Kohler.
00:16:26
Yeah. We you know, Robert Lane is just
00:16:31
like brought in because he's a symbologist.
00:16:33
He's brought in by I think, like someone from the Vatican police.
00:16:40
They change up who the vet the I remember like still on scarsards
00:16:43
in this movie, right, isn't and that that's like an accurate
00:16:46
thing, right, Because if you're on the Swiss card, you're
00:16:48
supposed to be Swiss, right? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah,
00:16:51
completely. Do they also have, So there's
00:16:53
like Swiss card and then there's also other like Intelligence.
00:16:57
I remember Brad Thor did the whole thing of going into
00:16:59
Lentita. Or was that another author?
00:17:02
I think it was Brad. No, because remember there was a
00:17:04
shootout in the Vatican Gardens, right?
00:17:06
That's. Right.
00:17:07
Yeah. I was getting my like books
00:17:09
mixed up and I was listening to it.
00:17:10
I was like, wait, are we about to have like, no, that's that's
00:17:13
that's another thriller pod book we covered.
00:17:15
No, that happened with me too. And then a couple other Rome
00:17:18
scenes. The Andrews and Wilson did
00:17:20
something with Rome, I think, in book two of the Shepherd series.
00:17:23
So yeah, I'm trying to keep it all straight, but I remember the
00:17:26
movie being faithful to the four churches, the statues, the
00:17:31
architecture, and even the El Pasetto, the the passageway from
00:17:36
Castel Sant Angelo. So I and having lived in Rome,
00:17:39
done my study abroad there. It's funny, I actually took the
00:17:42
history of the papacy class, Saints and centers you're
00:17:44
talking about in Rome. So yeah, we got to go to so many
00:17:48
sites and do so many site visits.
00:17:50
It was it was incredible. I mean, all that stuff I'm a
00:17:53
sucker for and, and this is almost the best version of it.
00:17:55
I, I don't know how you do better in terms of this statue
00:17:58
is here in this church that was built at this time.
00:18:01
I'm not, I don't Fact Check everything.
00:18:03
I don't know. But I mean, I'm buying that all
00:18:05
of that is dead accurate. Now.
00:18:07
Does it follow the path of the illumination laid out by Galileo
00:18:10
and Bernini? That stuff is just your wild
00:18:13
conspiracy beyond your dreams. But I just the fact that these
00:18:16
statues are there and who knows the mindset of the artist and
00:18:20
the patron who you know, who paid for it and and who
00:18:25
authorized it. I don't know, but I just the
00:18:28
layout and going through the streets of Rome is one of my is
00:18:31
still my favorite part of this book.
00:18:34
Yeah, and I, I think that's quintessential Dan Brown.
00:18:37
That's like what we like about each of these novels, whether
00:18:40
it's, you know, going through all the Knights Templar stuff in
00:18:45
the The Da Vinci Code, going through DC in Los symbols,
00:18:50
Masons. Westminster Abbey I remember in
00:18:53
the Davinci code too in London. Yeah, what else?
00:18:57
In origin? Origin sentiment is mainly in
00:19:00
Spain. I don't know if you haven't read
00:19:03
that one yet, have you? No, I didn't finish it.
00:19:05
I remember starting so I don't remember any of the sites.
00:19:08
And then Secret of Secrets was I'm I'm blanking on weird.
00:19:11
No. Vienna.
00:19:12
Prague. Prague, Prague.
00:19:13
Yes, Prague. Now, that book went into Prague
00:19:17
the way this one went into Rome. Yes, and those aspects of it are
00:19:21
10 out of 10. Perfection.
00:19:23
Yeah, and it's got me like Googling, you know, like I was
00:19:27
looking up The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and, and, and fact, you
00:19:30
know, like a little fact checking on, like why that
00:19:32
statue was, was moved. It's funny, like Banksy actually
00:19:35
did, he did a one, one of his like famous things is recreating
00:19:41
that, but then putting right in front of it a a happy meal, like
00:19:46
so that this this idea that, you know, people have ecstasy for
00:19:50
fast food and stuff like that. Material goods, yeah.
00:19:52
Yeah, exactly. And then even the like behind
00:19:56
the scenes of that, it's, it's got to be absolutely true that
00:19:59
the, you know, that statue was. Interpreted as overly sexualized
00:20:04
and had to be moved or banned or hidden or controversy like that.
00:20:08
I've no doubt all of these artists were really pushing some
00:20:11
version of a a hidden message, right A secret agenda in their
00:20:14
art. Was it this Illuminati network
00:20:17
all connected. Yeah.
00:20:19
That I I don't know if I I can go that far, but I, I think all
00:20:22
the little snippets we get of each place and a little bit of
00:20:26
the peek behind the curtains at the historical like the pantheon
00:20:29
was pretty well done. It wasn't really one of the
00:20:31
important sites, but being I think the first one, the actual
00:20:35
like hands on where Robert and Victoria, you know, go on an OP,
00:20:38
let's say I feel like he came on strong, hot and heavy with the
00:20:42
history of that and and and that enticed me from the beginning.
00:20:46
So yeah, all that I'm a sucker for I absolutely loved it.
00:20:50
But then again, if you step back.
00:20:53
There's a few weird glaring omissions which have to be
00:20:57
explained away. It's supposed to be this very
00:21:00
dramatic, like the antimatter is at Saint Peter's tomb.
00:21:05
We've got multiple scenes. Of the Swiss Guard going on
00:21:10
these little exploration missions in underground chambers
00:21:13
and like I understand they were directed by the camera Lango and
00:21:16
it was an inside job. So don't go here.
00:21:18
Don't go there. But like that, that's one of the
00:21:21
most. Obvious places and then you just
00:21:23
try to pull the wool over our eyes of like hidden in plain
00:21:26
sight. I was like.
00:21:28
No, but it's not like Saint Peter's tomb is not where they
00:21:32
had to go down into the catacombs.
00:21:34
No, right. And maybe they weren't on this.
00:21:37
They might not have been running the Scavi tour.
00:21:39
Then yes, you can get tickets. It's kind of hard to do.
00:21:41
We did it once in Rome, Rosie and I, you can go down and I, I
00:21:45
guess you could say, see the tomb.
00:21:46
It's it's a little bit from a distance and it's behind glass.
00:21:49
But yes, you can go into the catacombs and the tombs down
00:21:51
there. And yes, so it's not like right
00:21:53
under the altar, you go under the altar and it's there.
00:21:55
I don't know the extent of how much of that was excavated 25
00:21:59
whatever years ago, but. It's too obvious just to say the
00:22:05
Chamberlain just told Swiss Guard, hey, don't look over
00:22:07
there, just nothing to see here and kept him moving.
00:22:11
I don't know if I bought that the same way I didn't buy Castel
00:22:14
Sant Angelo. It's such a.
00:22:15
Presence a fortress in Rome. You know, everywhere you go,
00:22:19
it's like really heavily visible St.
00:22:21
Michael's up there. And I'm just like, it kind of
00:22:25
just seems an obvious sight as like a little hiding.
00:22:28
Area or like. Some version of police.
00:22:31
Just do a walkthrough over there and see what's going on.
00:22:35
I I don't know. Are you allowed to go inside of
00:22:37
it? Yeah, yeah, you can do tours.
00:22:40
It's it's really common. So, yeah, that's the other
00:22:42
thing, like during this whole thing, the Church of Illumina, I
00:22:45
guess it was supposed to be up like a ways.
00:22:47
So like, you know, maybe out of the so they're but they're
00:22:50
keeping I don't know. Yeah, I mean, if you if you
00:22:53
begin to pick apart like the plot, like it, it can fall
00:22:57
pretty quickly. It can.
00:22:58
But you know, the other thing is like the fact that this is all
00:23:03
done, you know, this all takes place.
00:23:05
He literally arrives in Rome at 6:00 PM and the anti matter goes
00:23:09
off at midnight. Like 6 hours.
00:23:11
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:12
This entire book takes takes, of course, over almost six hours of
00:23:15
time. That's freaking insane.
00:23:17
Yeah. That's why I'm not going to sit
00:23:18
here and nitpick like, can you really get from this church to
00:23:21
that church that quickly just by stealing a Citroen?
00:23:24
Like, OK, I don't know if the robber lying of today is, you
00:23:27
know, just like pulling open doors, pointing guns at people
00:23:30
and being like, give me your car, you know?
00:23:32
So yeah, it was like, oh shit, this is like old school Langdon
00:23:37
the. Biggest sentence stood out to me
00:23:38
on reread, which was weird was the media, the way the media was
00:23:42
portrayed. Yes, yeah.
00:23:44
As these like ruthless, it reminds me of that movie where
00:23:49
Jake Gyllenhaal, he's like, what's the name of that
00:23:54
Nightcrawler? Did you ever see that movie?
00:23:56
No, he's like one of these guys where like he gets a pro bono,
00:24:01
he gets paid to like get footage.
00:24:03
And so he starts like causing like things to happen, like
00:24:07
accidents. So that way he can be there, he
00:24:10
could be there and then sell it back to the yeah, the thing
00:24:13
it's, it's kind of crazy. That's a type, though.
00:24:16
Like it's like a Munchausen's type of, you know, adjacent
00:24:21
thing. Because we had a guy in the fire
00:24:22
service, he would show up at every site that we'd be called
00:24:25
to, like before everybody. And he had the scanners in his
00:24:28
car and all that. And he would take photos and
00:24:30
sell them to the papers. It's just like you're a little
00:24:32
too close to this thing. Like you just are a little too
00:24:34
invested in this, but. But I also like I have a hard
00:24:39
time of thinking like once they tell them like this is and this
00:24:44
bomb is going to come off, like, wouldn't the Roman Cavanieri
00:24:47
like push all those people out? Again, is it one of those things
00:24:53
you want to sit here and nitpick?
00:24:54
I mean, duh. I think once it's common
00:24:57
knowledge there's going to be panic too.
00:25:00
Which. Not everyone racing towards the
00:25:02
bomb like is it be? I guess he was trying to explain
00:25:05
it away because no one believes this new material.
00:25:09
They don't understand it. Like if you had said it was a
00:25:11
atomic bomb, then you know, maybe it would have you would
00:25:14
have elicited a different response.
00:25:16
Yeah, it's interesting because the crowd in Saint Peter's
00:25:21
Square was a big symbol. I felt so Dan Brown saying
00:25:24
something because the line was dropped multiple times and
00:25:28
again, there's one the camera line in.
00:25:29
Saint Peter's. Square, they're singing in Saint
00:25:30
Peter's Square. It's almost like, and I get, I
00:25:34
think it relates to where the camera line goes at of like,
00:25:37
what's the cost and is it worth it?
00:25:39
And you know, if you start saying, look, you've made a
00:25:43
difference, look, you've had an impact.
00:25:45
Look, we accomplished something. We united people and that's the
00:25:48
goal. It's not truth, it's not
00:25:50
goodness, it's not morality. It's, well, I mean, that's,
00:25:52
that's how he justifies away everything, right?
00:25:54
He justifies killing, killing the board, preparity, killing
00:26:00
Victoria's father, you know. Completely but.
00:26:03
But thinking he, you know, sacrificed Robert Langdon.
00:26:06
Yeah, he thought that it it's. Ends justify the means.
00:26:09
It's kind of like this version of, you know, I was just taking
00:26:11
orders. It's like you can rationalize
00:26:14
and in that speech is soliloquy at the end.
00:26:17
He rationalizes so much. He's partially trying to
00:26:21
convince the conclave of why he was on this holy mission, this
00:26:26
jihad. And then he's also, I think
00:26:28
rationalizing to himself. He's just internally going
00:26:31
through every choice he made to go down that path.
00:26:34
And a big part of it is, look what I accomplished.
00:26:36
They're singing in Saint Peter's Square.
00:26:38
So realistically, if you just had the police shoe, everybody
00:26:41
away put. This thing on lock and it's a
00:26:43
lockdown, you don't have that drama.
00:26:45
So a little hand WAVY just to amp up the drama.
00:26:48
There was another line drop which was like, Oh well, this
00:26:51
one has a timer. People know they can just leave
00:26:53
in time so they're not fleeing. They're not bad again because
00:26:57
they know when it's going to go off and they'll just leave.
00:26:59
Then I was like. I mean, none of them leave.
00:27:02
But none of them do. Yeah.
00:27:05
How deep do you want to get into that?
00:27:06
Or how much do you want to be swept off your feet with all the
00:27:09
other, you know, traipsing through Rome?
00:27:12
Yeah, I just, I, I don't know that he portrays the media as
00:27:16
like these these nefarious, you know, could care less.
00:27:23
I mean, maybe it's an accurate betrayal.
00:27:25
I don't know. I just I would feel that, you
00:27:28
know, even the at the very end. How Langdon gets up to the the
00:27:35
top of the Castile San Angelo, he like gets some Australian
00:27:39
reporter to right boost him up with his like, you know, towers,
00:27:44
antennae thing. The only reason he decides to
00:27:47
help him was hey, there's a dead body like back at the Piazza
00:27:50
Navono like, and you'll be the first one to get the scoop of
00:27:53
horse. Trainer.
00:27:55
I feel like that's just, it makes me sick to think that that
00:28:00
that's all the media is. I don't know, maybe I maybe I
00:28:02
have this rosy vision of what what journalism is.
00:28:05
But yeah. Yeah, For me, it's less like,
00:28:08
does it undermine what I hope journalists can be?
00:28:11
And it's more of AI thought it was going somewhere, the way
00:28:15
there's all those snippets of this team that the assassin
00:28:17
tipped off and like Robert Langdon is catching them out of
00:28:20
his eye and someone else sees them again and then they follow
00:28:23
them into the catacombs. I thought something was going to
00:28:26
come to a head with them being tipped off by the assassin.
00:28:29
Like someone will put the screws to them.
00:28:31
Be like, who was this phone call?
00:28:33
They'll trace it. I just felt like we were strung
00:28:36
along for too long with those two reporters getting this drop
00:28:39
and being everywhere. They're like omniscient, you
00:28:42
know, basically they're, you know, they know everything,
00:28:44
they're watching everything. They're.
00:28:46
Well, they're there every time. They allow for the camera lingo
00:28:48
to have exposure, right? He he wanted everything to be
00:28:51
seen. Exactly because he needed it to
00:28:53
be this dramatic story. In the end, yes.
00:28:56
But I thought it would, I thought it would come to a head
00:28:59
and it just kind of fizzled, you know, like they're reporting all
00:29:04
along, got a lot of page time. And in the end, what kind of pay
00:29:08
off was there really? The whole media spectacle of it
00:29:12
towards the end was going to be a media spectacle anyway.
00:29:15
If this guy blows up something above the Vatican and then
00:29:18
magically appears and is glowing and it has his brand on his
00:29:23
chest to give this speech, like if all that was going to happen
00:29:26
anyway. They are the ones who provide
00:29:28
the the film like as they go down into the catacombs, like,
00:29:32
you know, that's all live stream because of them.
00:29:34
I guess that it's, I feel like they were put there as a means
00:29:37
to get something out of it, you know?
00:29:39
Yeah, and I don't know if we fully got there.
00:29:42
It's it was almost like a crude version of knowing the power of
00:29:45
a live stream going live. But having to do with very crude
00:29:49
means, because we don't have, you know, like YouTube, you
00:29:52
know, streaming yet. Yeah, yeah.
00:29:53
Yeah. So you have to use traditional
00:29:54
media like you're going for what can now be done with.
00:29:57
A cell phone with a cell phone, yeah.
00:29:58
I guess and I'm but you had to hijack.
00:30:01
Looking at it, I'm looking at it too much in a, in a lens of
00:30:04
2026. And I got to think back to like
00:30:08
a lens of 2000 where not everyone has a freaking
00:30:11
camcorder in their phone. Yeah, $1000 camcorder in their
00:30:15
phone or. On their wheelchair, strapped to
00:30:17
their wheelchair. Yeah, yeah, I remember those
00:30:21
things like the little and you could instantly like view the
00:30:24
thing. Yeah.
00:30:25
Yeah. I was thinking like a little 1,
00:30:26
like you in your palm kind of thing, little screen on the
00:30:29
back. Or do you think it's one of
00:30:31
those that like flips out? It's like a slightly bigger 1
00:30:34
you strap onto your hand, which has the screen.
00:30:36
I was thinking like a smaller. Miniaturized.
00:30:39
More miniaturized, but it had a screen on it.
00:30:40
So I think it's like, yeah, it's a smaller version of like the
00:30:43
mini, like Sony's that we like. I remember my my my, my dad had
00:30:47
one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:51
Well, I feel like we quibbled a lot.
00:30:53
What else would you say really worked for you?
00:30:55
We talked about Rome, the statues, the traipsing through
00:30:58
the churches, what else really hit just like it did the first.
00:31:02
Time when you read it when you were younger.
00:31:05
You know, I think it's just getting it introduced to this
00:31:07
character of Robert Langdon and you know, this any man can can
00:31:14
do these crazy things and be put in these, you know, crazy
00:31:17
situations. I think in this one, it's it's
00:31:18
taken to the more extreme than some of his other books.
00:31:22
But you know, hell, he jumps out of a jumps out of a helicopter,
00:31:28
you know, puts a, you know, stops a car at gunpoint to to
00:31:32
have it. He even, you know, fights the
00:31:37
assassin like in the in the Piazza Navona client tries to
00:31:43
climb up that the the burning. Yup.
00:31:46
You know, in in the third castle or the third church.
00:31:51
Yeah. It's just it's cool to be
00:31:53
introduced to this guy. You know, it's a different kind
00:31:55
of thriller character. We know that RIT has the
00:31:58
symbology expertise. He's able to rattle all these
00:32:02
things. Obviously he's an art history
00:32:03
guy, art history buff. You know, he's able to bring up
00:32:06
almost everything. He's flawed.
00:32:10
You know, he still needs to, you know, do his research, that kind
00:32:12
of stuff. You know, the him having a
00:32:18
relationship with Victoria, that was interesting.
00:32:20
That's something that's also not in the movie.
00:32:22
And obviously that's I guess that's a theme that Dan Brown
00:32:27
kind of puts him in. And but I feel like since the
00:32:31
lost symbol, it's been changed like because now we have this
00:32:35
like Catherine character, but even even no, because then he
00:32:39
goes to there's another female character in what's the one the
00:32:45
inferno. Inferno, she's different, yeah.
00:32:50
She's actually spoiler alert for the Inferno she's in on the
00:32:55
plot, but yeah, I. Don't know if I differentiate
00:32:58
the ladies as much because actually it's funny when we
00:33:01
watch the movie it it will jog my memory but for some reason as
00:33:05
I was reading for the assassin I was picturing.
00:33:10
The guy who's whipping himself in the back and I'm waiting for
00:33:12
the self flagellation. I'm like, Oh no, that's The Da
00:33:14
Vinci Code. And like Opus Day.
00:33:17
I was like, oh wait, Nope, that's Illuminati.
00:33:19
Or this one's Illuminati, that was.
00:33:20
Yeah, it's, it's, it's easy to get those two mixed together.
00:33:27
And then same for the female characters.
00:33:29
I'm like, I, I don't remember who's who.
00:33:32
The same way I'm kind of confusing assassins or confusing
00:33:34
secret societies. I I feel like I don't remember
00:33:37
the Da Vinci Code women woman and her background.
00:33:40
Well, she is the the Holy Grail. At the end, right, right.
00:33:44
But what's her connection? Is it like a family thing?
00:33:48
Like that's been her? Her uncle is the is the guy who
00:33:51
gets, you know, dies in the very beginning in in the in the
00:33:55
Louvre. It's always like a relative.
00:33:57
That yeah, I forgot about the Louvre.
00:33:59
Yeah, she's related. Priory of Scion and that kind of
00:34:01
stuff, yeah. That's right.
00:34:03
Yeah. So I just don't think I would
00:34:04
have remembered like, Oh no, this one was the scientist.
00:34:07
Like, I knew this book had the CERN stuff in the Collider.
00:34:09
I didn't remember the woman was so intimately connected to the
00:34:13
science of it all, and so that was refreshing to me that the
00:34:16
sidekick was equally as invested because her father was killed.
00:34:23
Like she had personal stakes of wanting the assassin.
00:34:26
But then also, if Langdon can answer a lot of the historical
00:34:30
religious iconography, symbolism stuff, we need her to answer
00:34:36
some of the science stuff exactly.
00:34:37
Then I, I, I don't remember that.
00:34:40
So I was pleasantly surprised that she was a good sidekick.
00:34:43
And I do got to say, I, I, I like the happy ending.
00:34:46
I like to get the girl, you know, I like that.
00:34:50
It wasn't just they sleep together.
00:34:53
It was more of this, let's, let's, let's be a little coy.
00:34:57
Let's build it up. She, she says, you know, you got
00:35:00
something coming. And then it was actually the
00:35:02
food. And they almost have this like
00:35:04
mind connection, this Mensa to Mensa relationship before they
00:35:08
consummate with the physical relationship.
00:35:11
So I just thought all that built nicely and she was a good
00:35:13
sidekick, I thought. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a
00:35:16
common plot device to you put two people of opposite sex in
00:35:22
like a tense situation at the end, you know, it's a it's a
00:35:26
common thing for them to connect intensely over this.
00:35:29
So, you know, it's not, it's not anything new.
00:35:32
But yeah, but also a connection to the mind, the way they're
00:35:35
toying with each other. You can see even here that he's
00:35:39
he's, he's still or he's early on very interested in this, you
00:35:45
know, conscience and this idea of entanglement.
00:35:48
And, you know, so you, you, you could see this, the seeds that
00:35:53
are being played for, you know, that's going to come up in the
00:35:56
next couple of novels. I can culminate with with the
00:35:59
Secret of Secrets. Secret of secrets, how many, you
00:36:01
know, years later, I I really appreciate that drop of because
00:36:05
she does talk about doing a lot of real science that's grounded
00:36:09
in the animal Kingdom. But that might indicate
00:36:12
something we'll consider due to our current understanding as
00:36:15
supernatural, some phenomena or communication method that
00:36:19
seemingly is outside of space and time or is so far into what
00:36:24
we scientifically understand that he he explores.
00:36:28
There's even a part about the brain being a receiver, like
00:36:31
even mentions maybe the brain needs to be tuned to receive
00:36:35
certain messages that seem outside the bounds of science.
00:36:39
But it's just because we don't have scientific understanding of
00:36:41
consciousness yet. Those seeds are planted.
00:36:44
And I didn't see it then, but that's a little something you
00:36:47
write and you're like, maybe that deserves a whole book,
00:36:51
right. Yeah, I like that for sure.
00:36:56
And what else did I like? I don't know.
00:37:00
It's just, it's an easy read. It's, it's propulsive.
00:37:03
The pacing's great. It goes quick for being long.
00:37:06
I know, like when I pulled it up on like, Sunday and you were
00:37:10
texting me like, oh, it's a long 1, you know, And at 1.8 speed,
00:37:14
for me, it was still like over 10 hours.
00:37:17
Like, that's a long book. But yeah, I was able to get
00:37:21
through it really easily. He does a good job ending
00:37:25
chapters in suspense wanting you to turn that page.
00:37:29
Keep going so. Yeah, I think it flies by and I
00:37:35
remember feeling that way the first read.
00:37:37
I feel that way right now, that it flies by has all the elements
00:37:40
of a really well crafted story in terms of gripping the reader,
00:37:44
keeping the reader invested and and moving things along.
00:37:48
So I like that part. What did you think of the
00:37:52
conclave of it all? And let me preface this with
00:37:55
have you watched the Stanley Tucci movie?
00:37:58
Yeah, so having watched that semi recently, I think I watched
00:38:02
it on the plane last year. You know that that movie does a
00:38:07
very good job at at exploring the conclave.
00:38:11
I think this still does a good job, but you know, there's
00:38:15
things that it just doesn't get right.
00:38:18
You know, this idea that the camera lingo can the camera
00:38:22
lingo could not not be a cardinal.
00:38:25
Like that's it. It has to be a cardinal.
00:38:28
So. Even if you are not a cardinal,
00:38:31
as soon as you become camera lingo, you are made a cardinal.
00:38:34
So it really plays out this idea that you know the the current
00:38:37
camera lingo is just this lowly priest.
00:38:41
Again, the the camera lingo, it it says that the camera lingo as
00:38:48
well as the person who is officiating the the service
00:38:52
can't be elected. And that's also not true because
00:38:55
we see that in the conclave that sure, like you're because you're
00:39:01
administering it, you're probably you're self selecting
00:39:04
yourself out because you know, you're too invested or you know,
00:39:08
you know, too much to like to kind of like be part, you know,
00:39:12
they they kind of remove you, but you're not officially
00:39:14
removed, right? You can still be elected.
00:39:17
And that's what happens. Like the.
00:39:19
Well, not not exactly that way, but.
00:39:23
Yeah. And I think you can get caught
00:39:25
up again in in the technical aspects of it of right and wrong
00:39:29
and procedures. Right with these procedures have
00:39:31
been followed. But it's pretty clear we're
00:39:34
breaking procedural bounds when we open the doors and when we
00:39:37
expose the Cardinals to the news and the information and bring
00:39:40
them out in the public. And so, yeah, it's it's almost
00:39:43
like, let's say, get a bunch of procedures wrong or you make it
00:39:46
up. Well, hell, we're going to blow
00:39:48
that one up any second now. So all that goes out the window
00:39:51
of if you were trying to follow proper protocols.
00:39:53
So yeah, you know, I understand that.
00:39:56
The thing with the movie for me was it's probably more accurate
00:40:00
to how it really is in the sense of I was surprised in the movie
00:40:04
if they're just like kind of moving about.
00:40:06
And I say that in the sense of. You know, they were getting on a
00:40:09
bus, they were going to the dormitories, they were going to
00:40:11
get a cafeteria. They were moving about the
00:40:13
chambers and the grounds a bit more.
00:40:16
But I remember reading this for the first time and I was like,
00:40:18
yo, they locked them in that Chapel and they are just like
00:40:21
sitting there doing the work. I didn't think about mealtimes.
00:40:24
I didn't think about sleeping and whatnot.
00:40:26
But the Conclave movie made me realize, OK, they're still, you
00:40:30
know, it's still like a prison courtyard politics going on
00:40:35
during the event. Here I am thinking most of the
00:40:37
time it's like lock the key, they're sitting in their chairs
00:40:40
and they're not standing up until this is over.
00:40:42
So the movie helped me get a wider perspective, which now
00:40:46
going back to reading this, it almost like removed some of this
00:40:48
allure or mystical element of the conclave because I'm kind of
00:40:54
cynical. Just think of the movie.
00:40:55
Another thing I was surprised in the movie, which again, is
00:40:57
probably accurate, but it seemed very sterile, like the the dorms
00:41:03
they were in just seemed more of like a hospital wing like it
00:41:06
just and and I was expecting something more warm like inside
00:41:09
the Vatican. And I remember being a little
00:41:11
surprised by that in the movie, like it almost felt more like a
00:41:14
prison or a hospital feel, which maybe that's what the actual,
00:41:18
you know, conditions look like. But this had much more, I feel
00:41:22
like, of a romance, a mystical romantic view of inside the
00:41:26
Vatican, now that the curtains been peeled back a little, I
00:41:30
guess from the visuals of the movie.
00:41:32
I might be wrong, but I just felt like the idea of conclave
00:41:36
lost its luster. Or it could be what?
00:41:38
Since this book came out, there's been 2 or even 3
00:41:43
Benedict, Francis, Leo, at least 2.
00:41:48
I don't know the exact publication date you said 2000,
00:41:51
but it's been like, we've been through at least two conclave.
00:41:53
So we've seen the footage, we've seen the media, it's been talked
00:41:56
about and I just feel like when I first read this, that whole
00:41:59
idea was so like new and over the top interesting.
00:42:03
And here I'm just like, OK, conclave, let's keep it moving.
00:42:06
Like even the burning of the ballots, right?
00:42:08
The white smoke, the blacks boat.
00:42:09
When I first read this, it was probably when I was learning
00:42:12
about. That as a thing.
00:42:13
You know, or even the statue or the the last the final
00:42:17
judgement, because when we first go into conclave, we're hearing
00:42:20
about there's just dramatic backdrop of the final judgement
00:42:23
by Michelangelo. Maybe I didn't know that at the
00:42:25
time. So that like wet my whistle bit.
00:42:27
Oh, I want to go see it. So it didn't have as much of the
00:42:31
luster and appeal that it did the first time.
00:42:33
So the conclave scenes for me were good, but I remember them
00:42:37
being phenomenal. And this time I was like kind
00:42:40
of, you know, mid on them. Yeah, it could just be right.
00:42:44
It's just because that that is like could be our first, you
00:42:49
know, definitely it was my first foray and like the understanding
00:42:52
the conclave because we hadn't yet I read this in high school.
00:42:54
We had yet like really talked about that.
00:42:57
I didn't talk about that until like probably I took a class in
00:43:00
in college, so. And when did MP-2 die?
00:43:08
2005? OK, so this book I probably read
00:43:10
even before that one, which would have been my first
00:43:12
conclave to follow in the news and read about SO.
00:43:18
Yeah. Oh, it was still interesting.
00:43:20
Like I feel like maybe we're being judged or our perception
00:43:26
is being changed because we got to see a visual format of it in
00:43:29
that movie. Agreed.
00:43:30
And versus this medium where being described to you and then
00:43:34
you can kind of visualize yourself.
00:43:36
I agree. Maybe though the positive here
00:43:39
is I remember the movie when it's like you go into the bed
00:43:43
chambers of the the Pope and like if somebody move this, if
00:43:47
somebody touched that or the crime scene tape, right, that
00:43:49
was on the door. It was kind of cool because that
00:43:52
was how I pictured this one. I pictured this book and like
00:43:55
the Pope being poisoned and you know, who has access to it, who
00:43:59
moved what? I remember in Conclave I was
00:44:02
watching that like, oh, that's exactly what I was thinking
00:44:04
about with angels and demons. That like, you know, the ceiling
00:44:07
of the of the Sistine Chapel with the wax and like the stamp
00:44:11
and yeah. Yep.
00:44:13
One thing I'll say about that movie, though, Stanley Tucci
00:44:18
almost took me out of it because it was a bunch of it was a bunch
00:44:23
of these other old men, most of them European, international,
00:44:26
thick, heavy accents. You know, they really, I thought
00:44:31
we got into the role and then you get Stanley Tucci and I'm
00:44:34
just like, oh, it's you. You're a Cardinal now and you're
00:44:38
so American. It's unbelievable.
00:44:40
And I get the whole point was he's the American Cardinal,
00:44:43
like, he's the American, but he was almost too much the
00:44:46
American. Yeah, I just wanted him to drop
00:44:50
a like, have a little bit more old worldliness to him.
00:44:55
But I don't know if it was a director's choice to clearly
00:44:57
tell him, hey, go into these scenes and just be American.
00:45:00
Talk like an American, Be straight up.
00:45:01
American Be the liberal Pope. You know the liberal Pope.
00:45:03
I know, I get it. I.
00:45:05
Get it right in the room, you know?
00:45:06
Just every time we saw him, I was like, it's a little too much
00:45:10
out of the element. Yeah.
00:45:12
Because I think he even the American Cardinals who go there,
00:45:14
they all know Italian and Spanish and all this and like.
00:45:17
They have to. They most likely are doing a lot
00:45:20
of conversations in that. I don't think Tucci or the role
00:45:23
that he was given really laid into the fact that even the
00:45:26
American Cardinals are still pretty with it.
00:45:30
You know, they they like, they know it how these things go.
00:45:34
Like he just seemed too much of an outsider again.
00:45:37
Just just my take. I recommend the movie though it
00:45:41
was, it was a fun watch. Sure.
00:45:43
And there's certain elements of it with the reveal, the twist.
00:45:46
I won't say much more than that, that echo this.
00:45:50
A hope who has a a storied past might not be what you first
00:45:54
thought. And you as the watcher or
00:45:57
audience and the characters in the film have to deal with that
00:46:01
and grapple with it. And everyone's going to grapple
00:46:03
with it differently. And we could listen and and
00:46:05
observe and see how other people reconcile things and ultimately
00:46:09
decide if you're OK with that or not.
00:46:13
Yeah, these two stories, but those two movies would be good
00:46:17
back-to-back watching. You know, they're very, very
00:46:19
related. Well, I think we're definitely
00:46:21
watching this one for the pod. What do you say?
00:46:23
Yeah, let's do it. I got to find out where it's,
00:46:25
where it's streaming or where we can watch.
00:46:28
It's on one of them, Paramount, I think.
00:46:29
Paramount Plus. Oh.
00:46:30
OK, cool. Yeah, I got that.
00:46:34
All right, before we get into the scorecard and it will
00:46:36
rightfully take us into action, suspense and plot, which was
00:46:40
your favorite preferiti? Which which kill I should say,
00:46:44
or which which church scene It it you take both the individual
00:46:48
like kill the the the method, the gruesomeness, the horror of
00:46:53
it all because those scenes almost read like horror stories
00:46:56
with the lungs and packing the dirt down his mouth.
00:46:59
Like so many of those kills were like typical thriller level
00:47:02
fucked up stuff. And then you combine that with
00:47:04
the historical part, just which one overall?
00:47:06
Hit for you the best. I think it's got to be the fire
00:47:10
one. That one is just so intense, you
00:47:16
know, just the idea of being cooked alive in the description
00:47:18
of like his, his toes burning or flesh bubbling and the fact that
00:47:24
they're they're there. They're like, that's the one
00:47:27
that I guess, I guess he's there the quickest at the the last one
00:47:31
with the water, because he's almost able to save him.
00:47:34
And then in the movie he actually does save him.
00:47:36
Yep, that's the one that becomes.
00:47:39
He's the one that becomes the Pope.
00:47:40
The Pope. Yeah, Yeah, I remember that
00:47:42
change. That's why in this book I'm
00:47:43
like, wait, Langdon's just going to leave him at the fountain?
00:47:46
Like I I thought they save him. Resuscitate.
00:47:49
Him. Yeah, I.
00:47:51
Don't know, I had to say fire. What about you?
00:47:53
I'm going with water only because I love the Bernini
00:47:56
Fountain. And most of the time I was in
00:47:58
Rome, it was under scaffolding. And I remember another time I
00:48:01
went back, it was not. So I finally got to see the
00:48:03
fountain on my second or third visit.
00:48:05
But yeah, the Bernini Fountain, I've, I kind of forgot that he
00:48:10
waits out the assassin by using the air hose.
00:48:13
I thought that was pretty cool and maybe it was one of the
00:48:16
times I was able to buy into it the most because he is a
00:48:20
swimmer, he is a diver, underwater stuff, knowing
00:48:24
movements, kicking his legs this way.
00:48:26
I thought that was like one of the most way easiest ways to
00:48:28
sell that he would go toe to toe with an assassin.
00:48:31
Yeah, be able to survive that by by hiding, right, Yeah.
00:48:34
Yeah, exactly. You can hide again.
00:48:36
You're outsmarting him. Two, if he's going to physically
00:48:39
overmatch him, it would have to involve water because that's
00:48:42
what we've been told is Robert Langdon skill set.
00:48:44
Granted, it's very shallow, I'm sure, but so it's just more
00:48:48
believable because sometimes if you craft a protagonist, which
00:48:51
which we tend to like, I could, I know I speak for myself,
00:48:54
that's a little different. You're not just a trained
00:48:56
assassin or military CIA guy. So if you're going to make a
00:49:00
protagonist who does something as an outsider, an art restorer,
00:49:04
Gabriel LON, Professor Robert Langdon, or you're going to have
00:49:08
somebody who's not really a trained killer, but for action
00:49:12
suspense sake, you have to have a fight scene.
00:49:14
Like you have to have them go hand to hand in some way.
00:49:17
You better have laid the groundwork for it to be
00:49:19
believable. You can't just hand wave like,
00:49:22
oh, I took some classes with a samurai master, so I'm really
00:49:26
good with knives, you know, even though their job has nothing to
00:49:29
do with that. You just drop that because you
00:49:31
want them to use a knife in the scene to equal the playing
00:49:34
field. Here it was.
00:49:36
It was developed well enough, the character development was
00:49:38
done that the payoff for me in that scene was good.
00:49:43
Then I I would couple that how they ultimately end up killing
00:49:46
the assassin, the hash machine is the probably the most
00:49:50
believable thing to me. Like, you know, Langdon's about
00:49:54
to die and somehow I guess, well, they do randomly.
00:49:59
Like, I couldn't remember if they had mentioned this earlier
00:50:02
that she was like some yoga, like the yoga, really good at
00:50:04
yoga, able to get out of her bonds brand, you know,
00:50:08
essentially use one of these brands to brand him to then
00:50:11
force him to fall over the side. Like that's a believable death
00:50:16
scene for the, you know, these people.
00:50:18
It would, it would ultimately be death by some sort of accident
00:50:21
that they were happened to stumble into, you know?
00:50:23
Yeah, yeah, I agree. The the the other one, though,
00:50:28
that I didn't like as much was Saint Peter's Square.
00:50:31
Well, I thought that was pretty gruesome.
00:50:33
I think it was gruesome and pretty cool.
00:50:35
The punctured lungs and he tries to give CPR and just blood and
00:50:38
guts is coming out. So I think that was a good kill.
00:50:41
But what I didn't like about it in terms of the plot and pacing
00:50:43
is we had just gone to a new place, Santa Maria del Popolo,
00:50:49
like across the city. We were totally brought in on
00:50:51
the the Kiji Chapel and it was like it was different.
00:50:55
And that's just like, you know, 180, let's go back to Saint
00:50:58
Peter's. I was like, Saint Peter's one is
00:51:01
going to come at the end, so that's going to be covered.
00:51:03
You're going to clearly have to do Saint Peter's at some point
00:51:07
to just stick it in here. I just didn't feel like at the
00:51:11
timing was right. Like I know you had to have the
00:51:13
cross workout or. Whatever.
00:51:15
And like, that is a Bernini, you know, relief.
00:51:19
How many other ones, gazillion of them, could there have been?
00:51:22
Like for some reason I'm thinking just all these
00:51:24
different churches I've been to and I'm like, it would have been
00:51:26
cool to go here, cool to go there.
00:51:28
And instead we just kind of rehash Saint Peter's Square,
00:51:30
which is clearly already something the reader knows.
00:51:33
The other ones you could have been learning about a new place,
00:51:36
Santa Maria della Vittoria, with the Ecstasy statue and the fire
00:51:41
burning down. That also felt new.
00:51:43
Original Bernini if you didn't know, or Quattro Fume the Four
00:51:48
Rivers if you didn't know Piazza Navona.
00:51:50
That could have felt new. But then Saint Peter's just to
00:51:53
me was not value added where one other church that had that value
00:51:57
added, different flair, historical uniqueness to it.
00:52:03
I think I would have liked more I guess.
00:52:06
I didn't know about the, you know, this idea of Bernini is
00:52:10
was, you know, Michelangelo built the, the church, the
00:52:14
Bernini built the, you know. Colonnade.
00:52:17
The colonnade and you know, there are these Bernini
00:52:22
fountains on the two sides and stuff like that, so.
00:52:24
Yeah, yeah. And then the obelisks, that was
00:52:27
cool take on it too, because the obelisks are all over Rome.
00:52:30
It's like, what's going on with that pyramids too?
00:52:33
Yeah, there's there's another one.
00:52:35
There's A and that and maybe it's a later.
00:52:37
So it could be just a different time period that's completely
00:52:39
off. There's a metro stop called
00:52:41
Piramide which has a huge pyramid and it's like wonder
00:52:44
when that was built and like, could we have done something
00:52:46
cool there? So I guess I could have just
00:52:50
used. One more you're you're a little
00:52:52
bit biased because of how much time you spent in Rome.
00:52:55
Is fair. It's fair, it's fair.
00:52:57
And how much of A Roma fan you are.
00:52:58
Yeah, yeah. And, and maybe they did enough
00:53:01
already. Once you go to an A, a fourth
00:53:03
new church, maybe that's just asking the reader to remember.
00:53:07
Or go to too. Many places, yeah, that's fair.
00:53:11
Like everything on this podcast, all this criticism is entirely
00:53:14
subjective and me just spew and crap.
00:53:18
Definitely that should be our tag.
00:53:21
That should be like our disclaimer for everything.
00:53:24
No limits, the spewing crap podcast.
00:53:28
All right, So what would you give this for action suspense?
00:53:37
If just suspense would be a 10 out of 10.
00:53:39
Yeah, it would be ABS. I mean everything.
00:53:42
The camera lens bad guy, Kohler. Is Kohler the bad guy?
00:53:46
Like, where are we going next? Is this assassin going to pop
00:53:49
up? Are they going to find the next
00:53:51
clue? Can they put the puzzle
00:53:52
together? Suspense is hitting action.
00:53:54
I I had to explain some things away.
00:53:57
The fire action was great. The Piazza Navona action was
00:54:02
great. The Castel Sant Angelo action
00:54:03
was great. So I think it's strong.
00:54:04
I'm I'm going to go 9. You could convince me to go to 9
00:54:08
and a. Half if if that's what you're
00:54:10
going to do. I was going to give it a 10.
00:54:12
I think you. Can give it a 10.
00:54:13
OK, I'll go 9 1/2 then. By pure, you know, like just
00:54:19
getting on the on the helicopter and three minutes to go in the
00:54:23
antimatter. He just goes up, up, up, up, up.
00:54:25
And then you're, as a reader, you're slowly starting to
00:54:27
realize, oh, wait, there's something odd about this guy.
00:54:31
And the fact that, you know, he's like, locks away the
00:54:34
antimatter, throws away the key and says, sorry, there's only
00:54:37
one parachute. Like, you weren't supposed to be
00:54:39
here. Like, you know, that's your
00:54:40
first. Like, I don't know if you
00:54:41
weren't already picking it up earlier, but that's a big, you
00:54:45
know, something something's up with this dude.
00:54:49
Yeah, I'm going down. I'm going to dig it in, in, in
00:54:53
other places. OK, I'll I'll make it up here.
00:54:55
You got me the 9 1/2 then by doing that one.
00:54:58
All right. So what about plot?
00:55:00
Plot and pacing. Plot for me is like an 8.
00:55:04
You know, I think we we, we hashed out some, you know, some,
00:55:10
some things that I felt, you know, and maybe it's just my own
00:55:16
bias of like, you know, all what all of Dan Brown is like, you
00:55:20
know, he's a provocateur in this genre of of trying to elevate an
00:55:27
idea. Like in the next one, obviously
00:55:29
it's with the Opah's day people. And you know, the third one,
00:55:31
it's with the Freemasons trying to expose these cabals, but, you
00:55:39
know, missing some of the research.
00:55:41
Like to me, like maybe I just know too much.
00:55:44
But, you know, that kind of thing is as well as, I don't
00:55:48
know, being over the top with Robert Langdon, like coming out
00:55:54
the gates so hot with him being, you know, this crazy.
00:55:59
You know, I, I felt like Robert Langdon is more like, should be
00:56:03
more like what he is in secretive secrets than what he
00:56:05
is now. And like you said, it could be
00:56:08
just the aging of the character. You know, he's a younger guy in
00:56:11
this one, but I think he's still like 40.
00:56:16
And I'm just, I'm envisioning, I feel like they got the perfect
00:56:19
actor to play Robert Langville. Like I'm I'm envisioning Tom
00:56:21
Hanks the whole the entire time I'm reading this book.
00:56:24
I am too and I wonder what I was envisioning before the movies.
00:56:29
Like the first time I read it and Davinci Code 2.
00:56:34
I don't know what would it have been a Tom Hanks figure?
00:56:37
I think so. It might have been a Tom Hanks
00:56:39
figure with like a tinge of a Clooney or someone like that.
00:56:44
Or like a Don Ham. Someone, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:56:47
Someone just a tiny bit more burly, maybe a tiny bit darker
00:56:52
complexion or, or just a tiny bit more like grit to them is
00:56:57
probably what I would have originally thought, which Tom
00:56:59
Hanks does enough of. But yeah, I don't know.
00:57:04
But when we do the movie, we'll have to talk about the casting
00:57:07
and yeah, and really dig into that.
00:57:09
I I'm curious if this is where I Ding some of the things that we
00:57:13
opened up with the criticisms that the laundry list we went
00:57:18
through in the 1st 20 minutes of the pod.
00:57:20
Is this where you Ding it on plot pacing though or is that a
00:57:24
buy in? Yeah, maybe I'm misconstruing my
00:57:29
my points, but. Just trying to think that
00:57:33
through. I, I think I'm going to put some
00:57:34
of that and buy in because plot and and if I go back to my early
00:57:38
first read, it was a 10 out of 10, but it's looking that way
00:57:42
because I didn't know any better.
00:57:44
But I'm also going to take it on pacing of when things are
00:57:47
revealed. So like really saving till the
00:57:50
very end, the camera Lango reveal through the helicopter
00:57:54
and then through the Kohler recording.
00:57:56
I I think the reveals of knowledge like that, we're
00:57:59
perfectly done. You you think Kohler's the bad
00:58:02
guy right after the initial shootout in the in the Vatican?
00:58:06
Only like the whole time he uses this unlikable character that
00:58:09
you know, he had this weird feeling too, you know?
00:58:11
Right. I think I read him very
00:58:13
differently this time knowing like, wait, I think this is all
00:58:16
going to be pinned on him or wait, he's coming on, he's
00:58:18
coming on tough. But I actually think in the end
00:58:21
he wasn't wasn't a bad guy. So yeah, I kind of like how it
00:58:25
takes you on that journey, right?
00:58:27
You're questioning that throughout.
00:58:28
So because of that, I'm going to give it some props.
00:58:30
And I think I'm actually going to go 9.
00:58:32
I'm going to go 9 buy in. However, for the reasons we
00:58:37
mentioned and and one other thing I'm going to drop a
00:58:40
little. I mean, just First off, to put a
00:58:43
bow on it from the beginning. One of the first times I was not
00:58:46
bought in was at CERN and this was disappointing because my
00:58:50
first read again, if if you one, you don't know better.
00:58:53
Two, you don't think about it too much.
00:58:55
You take it at face value. All the faith first reason
00:58:57
stuff. Why is it that the there's this
00:59:00
very religiously devout man who wants to do scientific
00:59:04
exploration at the highest levels and how do you equate
00:59:07
that with the idea of God or faith?
00:59:10
I think it asked the right questions, but it started
00:59:15
drawing the wrong conclusions, or it started asking what could
00:59:19
be the right questions but on the wrong premise.
00:59:22
As soon as it essentially declared a reading of Genesis
00:59:25
that I wholeheartedly disagree with.
00:59:28
And I think it came on heavy giving you A1 sided
00:59:32
interpretation of Genesis very early on.
00:59:35
That one I disagree with. And if you disagree with it, it
00:59:38
makes it hard to buy into the rest of the plot.
00:59:41
That was basically God created good and evil, God created light
00:59:46
and dark and they they kept pushing this narrative of we can
00:59:50
recreate Genesis because there's a balance in nature.
00:59:53
It's the force, right? We God creates light, God needs
00:59:56
to make dark, God creates evil, God needs to create Satan.
01:00:00
No, that that's not at all in any way the Catholic teaching of
01:00:04
any of that, and in the interpretation of Genesis.
01:00:06
You create the light. Darkness is the absence of
01:00:09
light. It's a consequence of there
01:00:11
being light created. You know, like bad, evil things
01:00:15
are the result of humans having free will.
01:00:17
If you want to give them free will, then you also are going to
01:00:19
have to deal with the absence of goodness.
01:00:24
Same thing. I think at one point it it just
01:00:26
comes off as very Manichaean. This site, you know, this
01:00:30
dualistic, this dualism, right, which can be a slippery slope to
01:00:36
spiritual things, good material things bad.
01:00:39
None of that is, is the teaching of the church faith and reason,
01:00:43
not faith versus reason. These two things go together.
01:00:45
And I think it was so it was an attempt to sell you very early
01:00:49
on to say these things don't go together and so we can make a
01:00:51
good story and have drama audience.
01:00:54
You just have to know these two things shouldn't go together and
01:00:56
the church doesn't want them to go together and the church is at
01:00:59
war with it. It's like, OK, I get your,
01:01:01
you're pushing that to tell a story, but I don't like the
01:01:04
premise it's built on. I think it's the wrong
01:01:05
interpretation because of that, very early on, I wasn't bought
01:01:09
in. I wasn't as invested.
01:01:10
And if I just kind of lied to myself, if I just kind of said,
01:01:13
all right, well, let me accept all that as gospel and move on
01:01:17
with it, It probably would have been a more enjoyable read, but
01:01:21
it would have asked me to make too many sacrifices in my own
01:01:25
faith and reason. So the buy in because of that
01:01:28
off the bat and then a couple other sticking points along the
01:01:30
way, 3 1/2. Still a light Ding.
01:01:34
Yeah, to me, I think like I just kind of, I guess I lied to
01:01:42
myself, you know, from the very beginning to, to enjoy the
01:01:46
story, you know? Yeah, makes the book better.
01:01:50
Yeah, I, I think I'm, I'm around you with like a three, three to
01:01:57
four. 3 to 3 1/2 is really where I'm coming in.
01:02:00
I mean, if you ask me when I first read it, it was a 5.
01:02:03
Sure, I was born. In piano when I first read this
01:02:05
book I like it's this book is like a 50 you.
01:02:08
Know completely I I think in my mind in my late teens, all
01:02:14
through my 20s, I think this was the definition of a perfect
01:02:16
thriller. It really was for a long time
01:02:18
for me. I can see that, yeah.
01:02:21
Yeah, and then Mitch Rapp said. Hold my beer.
01:02:24
Hold my beer, hold my Beretta. Hold my Peroni all.
01:02:32
Right, good guys. I liked them all, I really did.
01:02:39
Yeah, I thought, you know, obviously Langdon, Victoria, you
01:02:44
know, even like the I, I thought the use of the, the, the
01:02:48
different Swiss Guards that we got were interesting showing
01:02:51
like the different, you know, levels of hierarchy.
01:02:53
And although it's very interesting, this the the one
01:02:56
who dies the the Commander Olivetti.
01:03:00
Yeah. He's like, don't like he's, he's
01:03:04
so determined not to break ranks or not, not to like ruin this to
01:03:10
a detriment. And then maybe that's like the
01:03:12
whole point of his character, right?
01:03:14
That, you know, he, he thinks he can control everything and he
01:03:16
can't. It's a good point.
01:03:20
You know, but yeah, I thought the the solid foundation of the
01:03:26
duo of of Langdon with with Victoria, very solid.
01:03:32
You throw in now that you know he's a good guy, you you get Max
01:03:36
Kohler, interesting character. You know, we get a little bit of
01:03:39
his back story with why he kind of like hates religion because
01:03:43
his parents wouldn't give him medicine.
01:03:47
So. And I believe all that, yeah,
01:03:49
that to me, like the the real experience of of people who are
01:03:52
dealing with those who are more maybe fanatical or misguided or
01:03:56
what a lot of churches do preach that I, I think could be
01:03:58
hurtful. Yeah, I, I, I wouldn't deny
01:04:02
that. Right.
01:04:02
Like that to me makes sense as a plot line and as a character
01:04:05
motivation. I might go for.
01:04:11
Yeah, I might because I've been harsher.
01:04:12
I might go 4 1/2 and and make up ground here.
01:04:16
I don't really think I have any criticisms of the cast of
01:04:20
characters and the good guys. Yeah, 4 1/2.
01:04:24
I can go 4 1/2. Robert and Victoria as A tag
01:04:27
team were working for me. Because if you are going to do
01:04:29
one of these protagonists and you know, protagonists A and
01:04:33
protagonists B and they have to team up and ultimately they
01:04:37
couple up, you really got to sell me.
01:04:39
You, I'm not just going to buy that and just say you want to
01:04:41
make 2 characters, put them together and force it.
01:04:45
But this one sold me. Yeah, I liked him.
01:04:48
I like Kohler, I liked when the camera Lango was a good guy as
01:04:52
well. It's like you thought you had
01:04:54
basically the Pope, the one executing the the duties of the
01:04:57
Pope, the office of the papacy. You had the person in charge of
01:05:00
that in your pocket. Cool.
01:05:01
Like that was good asset to have.
01:05:04
Like all that worked. So yeah, 4 1/2 bad guys.
01:05:10
Is there a bit of a Ding to be found here?
01:05:12
And maybe it's unfair for me to be comparing this to Opus Day
01:05:16
and the self flagellation guy in Davinci Code, but for some
01:05:20
reason I keep comparing it to that.
01:05:21
I'm like, I think the Assassin and the Illuminati just falls a
01:05:24
tiny bit short of those villains in Davinci Code, but I don't
01:05:28
know if that's fair. The hash machine is interesting
01:05:32
and you know, just to to think about to compare, I guess it the
01:05:40
what I'm doing is I'm comparing it to other quote UN quote
01:05:43
villain the the the big bads in some of his other books.
01:05:50
And, you know, I, I, I think back a lot to the lost symbol
01:05:54
and like the the revelation that we get there with The Who the
01:05:56
big bad is really intense. You know, he we're not when we
01:06:05
explore a little bit into him, you know, he has this whole
01:06:11
hedonistic side of him. You know, he goes into the
01:06:14
pleasure houses and and stuff like that.
01:06:16
And you know, we're in his head a lot, but I feel like it's not
01:06:20
his plot. Like he's just literally
01:06:23
performing what the camera lingo as Janus, like, wants him to do.
01:06:27
So ultimately, like, he's not that interesting really, you
01:06:31
know? Does that make sense?
01:06:33
No, it makes complete sense. He's really not.
01:06:36
And and the more you say we're in his head a lot, I'm like, but
01:06:39
are we really? You're right, we are on page.
01:06:41
We're aren't we really learning anything?
01:06:43
No. Are we learning anything about
01:06:45
his back story? Or ultimately, is he just a
01:06:47
contract killer? Like a quite a quirky, A quirky,
01:06:51
religiously possibly motivated contract killer for someone of a
01:06:55
lot of means and power within the church.
01:06:58
That's really all it is. If if you were like a hardliner,
01:07:04
true believer of the Illuminati doctrine and we saw him
01:07:08
operating in the Illuminati chambers and churches and like
01:07:12
in a creepy, overly dedicate, overly zealous capacity, like he
01:07:20
was a true zealot for the Illuminati mission, like almost
01:07:23
worshipping these people, like Bernie, we're told Bernini,
01:07:27
Galileo and even the more modern day Illuminati people, right.
01:07:30
If he had like connections to them, I feel like that could
01:07:33
have been a stronger draw. But it just seems he was a
01:07:36
contract killer. Yeah, that's what it comes off
01:07:38
as. They just hired him to go do
01:07:41
these wacky fantasy things. Soon, but for bad guys.
01:07:46
Do you also loop in the camera lingo?
01:07:48
Ultimately, the mastermind behind, you know, all the
01:07:52
killings, the entire plot, very sad ending, you know, in the
01:07:57
sense that, you know, he he thinks one thing, but it's
01:08:01
actually the opposite. But, you know, very pointed
01:08:05
where, you know, he's confused. All these Cardinals are looking
01:08:09
at him. He's expecting, you know, to be
01:08:12
everyone, to be rejoicing and he's praying to the Father.
01:08:15
Yet we're in his head and he gets no, no response like that.
01:08:18
That was deep. Like, that was tough.
01:08:20
Yeah. Even after all he's done, it was
01:08:23
still tough to just see a human live time, having to reckon with
01:08:27
himself in public and in his head and.
01:08:31
In his head, yeah. And if we?
01:08:32
Spend a lot of that time in his head like, you know, he's, he's
01:08:35
is saying stuff in between, but not everything that we we read
01:08:39
is he's is he saying out loud or he's saying it to himself to try
01:08:43
to justify everything. Interesting choice how they
01:08:47
decided just to sweep it all the way.
01:08:49
You know, in the end and and not, I mean, I guess they do
01:08:52
make a point that if you know, sure, we could do that, but
01:09:00
would that make this doubly, you know, worse the fact that we are
01:09:04
we already went through all this turmoil and death.
01:09:07
Do we then tell the public what actually happened?
01:09:10
And then then they really start like, stop believing us, you
01:09:12
know? Which is why we have that great
01:09:14
cardinal, The Who comes on real strong.
01:09:18
I forget his name starts with an M, but who?
01:09:20
Who becomes Pope? It was very fitting to have a
01:09:23
character like that inserted and come in at that moment, that
01:09:26
moment of crisis for the camera. Lango could have been the crisis
01:09:31
the Church devolves into if it weren't for that very solemn,
01:09:38
wise figure who steps in and takes the lead and shows what
01:09:43
true leadership through these turbulent times will look like.
01:09:46
And even takes his ashes to the to the catacombs and realizes he
01:09:51
he may, he may have been Pope, and so he should rest with his
01:09:55
father, the Pope. So I think to have a character
01:09:59
like that step in and fill those shoes was very calming.
01:10:02
And I like the transition from the descend into madness of the
01:10:07
camera Lango and to the ascension of someone who was not
01:10:12
flashy like the camera Lango. Didn't want to steal the show,
01:10:15
didn't want to direct the orchestra, but someone who was
01:10:19
silently ready to step into the shoes, come out of the shadows.
01:10:23
And I, I like that transition of power, if you will.
01:10:27
That's soliloquy scene. Yeah.
01:10:29
I don't know if that's the right word for it because it's in his
01:10:31
head. He is talking, but it's to a
01:10:33
crowd of people. But he's really talking to
01:10:35
himself. He's basically thinking out
01:10:37
loud. So it is in front of a crowd.
01:10:39
So I I thought it was very Shakespearean.
01:10:44
Like. And it it almost did enough to
01:10:47
redeem a lot of my earlier complaints which you've heard
01:10:50
over the last hour and a half. Sorry to waste your time.
01:10:53
It almost justified a lot of my complaints to OK well, we were
01:10:58
just misguided because that the camera Lango was misguided.
01:11:01
He was pushing this world view which may not be that of the
01:11:04
church, which may not be that of Dan Brown, which may not be that
01:11:07
of reality, which may not be that of scientists, which
01:11:11
definitely was not the world view of Kohler or Victoria's
01:11:15
father or Victoria or Robert Langdon.
01:11:18
So you have very religious people and non religious people.
01:11:21
And the camera lingo thought he represented all of them and his
01:11:23
ideas would control all of them. He thought, I understand them, I
01:11:27
can manipulate them, I can get them to see it my way.
01:11:31
And he sold himself so much on that lie it almost felt like.
01:11:35
Have you ever read up any parts of the screw tape letters by CS
01:11:39
Lewis? No, Oh my goodness, it's
01:11:45
powerful. It's a series of letters and
01:11:50
basically I think, I think it's the uncle.
01:11:52
I forget the names exactly right.
01:11:54
Screw Tape's uncle is basically the devil.
01:11:57
And it's almost this instructional conversation
01:12:00
through letter writing back and forth as if the devil were
01:12:06
capturing you. And it just through these
01:12:08
letters issue how easy it would to be sold and buy into the
01:12:12
lies. And this is almost the
01:12:14
unraveling of that. The camera line goes seeing his
01:12:17
whole path has been fake. You know, he it was it was all a
01:12:24
lie. It was all an illusion.
01:12:26
Yet he bought it so deeply that it made him descend into
01:12:29
madness. And I think he ultimately knew
01:12:31
he was psychotic and he had to process through that.
01:12:34
And it was it was tough watching that happen.
01:12:36
And yeah, I think it was it was almost Shakespearean.
01:12:38
It was like Hamlet or Macbeth or something, the way this guy was
01:12:43
going through every little thing and and constantly saying, but I
01:12:46
got the people to sing. They're singing in Saint Peters
01:12:49
and just even more of the psychotic episode.
01:12:52
So really good scene. If if a lot of that is not the
01:12:56
one of the winners of the book, it definitely earns it some
01:12:59
points back. So 4 on bad guys, is it too
01:13:04
high? No, that's what I was going to
01:13:06
say too. Not for the the hashishin.
01:13:08
But no, it's for the camera. For the the camera Lego.
01:13:11
It's for the camera, Lego, Yeah, If the Assassin was a little bit
01:13:14
better or invested, it could have been a four or five, could
01:13:18
have been a 5, but four. Setting do do we need to say
01:13:28
anything? It's five.
01:13:29
It's it's a 5. Can we do the rare 6 out of
01:13:32
five? Yeah, exactly.
01:13:33
No, I think, you know, he gets Rome.
01:13:36
This is like I've been there. You live there.
01:13:41
Just does a great job transporting.
01:13:43
You know that's it wouldn't be a Dan Brown book if it if it if
01:13:47
you didn't get a 5 out of five on setting.
01:13:49
So yeah, agreed, we need to go to Oxford Book for you.
01:13:52
Your neck of the woods, that'd. Be cool.
01:13:54
Yeah, there's probably something out there, probably quite a few.
01:13:59
A Dan Brown Oxford book would be a lot of fun.
01:14:06
All right, we got to pull up the cover.
01:14:09
Yeah, cover. I'm going to imagine there's a
01:14:12
zillion of these things. This one's been around the block
01:14:16
some I go. To Dan Brown.
01:14:21
Speaking of Robert Langdon #1 because as I'm on Goodreads,
01:14:24
which if you guys want to follow along, there's a lot of covers.
01:14:27
So here's how we do this. Goodreads, find the book, click
01:14:31
on show more or book details. That's it, book details and
01:14:34
editions and you get a little section called More editions,
01:14:38
401 editions and now a lot repeat.
01:14:43
So there's always repeats in here, but I think for this book
01:14:46
we're going to have boy at least 20 original different covers
01:14:52
would be my guess. For me, like the book that I had
01:15:00
that I read in in high school, the orange one is is this orange
01:15:03
one? Yeah, same, which reminds me a
01:15:09
lot of like that book that he gets of Galileo in in the the
01:15:15
Vatican archives, you know, but while also putting in the
01:15:19
backdrop this, you know, Saint Peter's Square.
01:15:21
That's the type of river really like that cover.
01:15:28
The I agree that that one is still the one originally I
01:15:31
recall, but I think the the more recent one is the brown one with
01:15:36
the Angel's wing with Saint Michael.
01:15:39
That was on our that's at the top of.
01:15:43
The audio book. The same, yeah, But that, that
01:15:46
is the Michelangelo that is at. That's at the top of the.
01:15:49
Castel Sant Angelo, yeah. Laying down.
01:15:52
Tell them to go there. Yeah, exactly.
01:15:54
And then there's also what I think is probably the mass mark,
01:15:57
mass market paperback, the one with the light streaming in
01:16:01
through the windows. Yeah, with an explosion.
01:16:05
Orange and red, Yeah. I'm trying to load it bigger.
01:16:09
I don't really see an explosion. No.
01:16:11
Oh. Oh, no, I I see the light
01:16:14
streaming and yeah, I see that one.
01:16:15
Inside Saint Peter. It's more like a running man.
01:16:17
Yeah, with a shadow figure. Inside Saint Peter, that's the
01:16:20
running man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:16:22
Yeah, that's a cover. See, it's, it's kind of funny, I
01:16:27
think the original one that we read and the modernized version
01:16:30
with the Angel wing or. There's the the other one I've
01:16:36
seen is the the Ambigram of Angels and Demons.
01:16:39
Yes, yes. That's that's a cool cover.
01:16:44
I don't think I saw that one in person though.
01:16:46
But yes, it's a cool I think. When I first, because I also
01:16:51
listened to this audio book and I went through I, I listened to
01:16:54
all the audio books in grad school and I think this was the
01:16:58
cover of my audio book Angels and Demons.
01:17:01
Yeah, the the how they do ambigrams is pretty cool.
01:17:05
Now remind me in the book of the printed version, they also, they
01:17:08
have them right in the text, like you, you see Illuminati and
01:17:12
what it looks like. Yeah, I remember liking that
01:17:15
part of, I think Davinci Code has it too, with a lot of the
01:17:17
puzzles, like the little codices and everything.
01:17:20
I think I remember the text would actually show a lot of
01:17:23
these little puzzles. And here will be the ambigrams.
01:17:26
So yeah, I like that part. The audio book doesn't quite
01:17:29
capture that. There's one with the one.
01:17:34
With the, I guess that's the staircase that goes down to like
01:17:39
right where the oil, the oil lamps are.
01:17:42
That one's pretty cool. I see a circular staircase on
01:17:45
one of them. That's interesting.
01:17:48
There's one with the papal ring. The ring.
01:17:51
I just saw that. Oh, the roof of the Sistine
01:17:52
Chapel with the fingers. So we have to one pick out our
01:18:01
favorite. Is it, is it the Pantheon?
01:18:03
Yeah, there's one with the Pantheon.
01:18:05
Yep. Interesting.
01:18:07
You see the see the one Illuminati with just the hooded
01:18:10
figure with the blacked out shadow face.
01:18:15
All right. I think favorite is, is might be
01:18:17
kind of clear, but where you settle on an overall score, I
01:18:21
think we have to heavily put it into the original, the orange
01:18:24
and red one most of our score. Yeah, I think it's a solid. 4
01:18:34
yeah, I think I'll go four. I was contemplating a little
01:18:41
lower because it is kind of one note with the color scheme and
01:18:46
the sketch of like the the columns.
01:18:48
It's kind of like a background sketch with some what I'm
01:18:52
guessing are Galileo and or other artists like Bernini even
01:18:57
like sketches or something. Yeah, they're trying to overlay
01:19:00
like archive like the. Archival I.
01:19:02
Feel, yeah. Which was a good scene.
01:19:04
We didn't talk about much when they tried to kill him by
01:19:07
suffocating him in the archive. Yeah.
01:19:11
Pretty, pretty good scene with the bookcases.
01:19:12
And I remember in the movie with the bookcases toppling over, it
01:19:15
was like very good. Yeah, they did it.
01:19:17
They did the thing. The bookcase is toppling over
01:19:20
like the thing. Are they going to do the thing?
01:19:21
They did the thing, yeah. And I remember holding this book
01:19:25
I probably carried around forever because the high
01:19:28
schooler reading an 809 hundred page whatever was took me a
01:19:32
while. So I yeah, 4 is good.
01:19:34
I think what solidifies the four is the modernized one, the the
01:19:38
Angel wing. I would even I might get 4 1/2
01:19:41
if it were on its own. So yeah.
01:19:45
Let's go. I don't want to like.
01:19:46
Almost looks like a like a swap out Dan Brown but Brad Thore
01:19:53
there boom. Looks like a Brad Thore 1, and
01:19:55
it could come out today and it could sell.
01:19:57
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great cover.
01:19:59
It's a universal cover. And I really like this.
01:20:02
Or the orange Ambergram one. That one's really cool.
01:20:05
There it is. I I do think though, most of
01:20:08
these would not sell today on a modern bookshelf, especially the
01:20:12
red and yellow one. It's kind of like some of the
01:20:15
early Vince Flynn's. Sure.
01:20:17
While those covers are classic and iconic, I just think they're
01:20:19
a little too boring for the modern audience.
01:20:26
So yeah, I can't go to 4 1/2. What is your phrase?
01:20:31
Base God there's. So much.
01:20:38
Is it cheap to say Rome? There's Dan Brown's handling of
01:20:42
all things Roman. But now, could there have been
01:20:45
more food? Now that I think about it, there
01:20:48
really wasn't much. Know if it Well, I guess he
01:20:51
doesn't make a point that he's starving like he.
01:20:53
He says I'm starving, but yeah, it's interesting.
01:20:56
This might be one of the only books that goes to Italy.
01:20:57
We don't have a real solid food scene.
01:21:01
Yeah, very true. No, I I think I'm going with the
01:21:05
setting. I I just love it so much.
01:21:07
It it's my favorite place in the world.
01:21:09
Still long to go back as often as I can.
01:21:13
And this book takes you there. It really takes you there.
01:21:16
So I'll cop out and just say the city of Rome and how Dan Brown
01:21:21
transported me there. So for me, it's the I like the
01:21:28
humor that Dan Brown puts into these things and how and, you
01:21:34
know, maybe it's another cheap one of just nailing the
01:21:37
character of Robert Langdon and like this quirky guy, you know,
01:21:43
bachelor, you know, they make it even reference that you like,
01:21:46
you know, ignored some hot lady like that that's been trying to
01:21:50
get like, I don't know, just it's cool to have this different
01:21:53
kind of character, you know, especially maybe because we read
01:21:56
a lot of like novels that the main characters.
01:22:02
Not that I want to say that you can interchange them, but you
01:22:05
know, sometimes you probably could, but you couldn't put like
01:22:10
another protagonist in here and and have him succeed like Robert
01:22:14
Langley does. And yeah, just to give him props
01:22:18
for kicking off the series and for shit making now or seven
01:22:22
books and they're selling like hot cakes, so.
01:22:25
Yeah, yeah, he established himself for sure.
01:22:29
Interesting that this was the first Langdon, because I knew it
01:22:32
was written before Da Vinci Code, but I hadn't considered
01:22:34
that because as I'm reading, I'm like, are they going to bring up
01:22:37
the identic memory? And there really wasn't any of
01:22:40
that. They don't bring that up.
01:22:42
I never realized he didn't invent that in his first Robert
01:22:45
Langdon book. It was really the second one.
01:22:47
I think, I think it doesn't get brought up, told Da Vinci Code.
01:22:49
Yeah. I was waiting for it.
01:22:52
I was like is there going to be a hint or a mention of it but
01:22:55
but no nothing. Dry hole all.
01:23:00
Right, so that leaves me with a 43.
01:23:03
Oh interesting, I move you got mine open there to total up.
01:23:07
I hope I'm not lower, but I feel like I am.
01:23:16
You're a 43 1/2. 43 1/2 OK, OK. Are you surprised by that?
01:23:27
A little. I would have thought it would
01:23:29
have been higher. Same. 45 would have been a good,
01:23:34
good benchmark, but I was also surprised at how much I was.
01:23:38
Not that I wasn't enjoying it, but I was also surprised at how
01:23:40
much of A drop off there was with this reread.
01:23:43
Yeah, I don't know. And I don't know what it was.
01:23:45
I'm more cynical, Older, old ways, Yeah, less flexible.
01:23:50
And this one didn't enough, didn't do enough to pry me away
01:23:53
from that. Like I'd like if it challenged
01:23:55
me in a good way, in a good healthy way, but it really
01:23:58
didn't. It just challenged me with a
01:24:00
straw man that I didn't that that I don't believe him anyway,
01:24:06
won't belabor the point. Yeah, considering we gave Secret
01:24:11
a Secrets a 37 and 38 respectively.
01:24:18
Yeah. It's that this book is that much
01:24:21
better than this one. So we've read three.
01:24:23
It is completely. We've read 3 Dan Brown books.
01:24:27
I think we're pretty clear based on our scores, the rankings of
01:24:30
them. So we read Deception Point,
01:24:34
Angels, Demons. Yeah, what do we give deception
01:24:36
and. Secret.
01:24:39
Here's the crazy thing though. Deception point.
01:24:42
We gave a 45 and a 46. Well, I was about to say coming
01:24:45
back to it this many years later, it was almost just as
01:24:49
enjoyable, if not more. Maybe because there was less
01:24:53
familiarity. I I remembered the overall
01:24:55
picture of it, but I didn't remember the nitty gritty.
01:24:58
When I got the nitty gritty, I was along for the ride.
01:25:00
It didn't do any things that made me standoffish where this
01:25:03
one was the opposite. When I first read it it it had
01:25:06
me along for the ride. It was the best thing in the
01:25:08
world. But now coming back to it, I
01:25:11
almost remember too much. I I want to compare it too much.
01:25:15
Deception Point brought me right back in and said, let's go on an
01:25:18
adventure together. This one was like, oh, I've
01:25:20
already been on that ride a bunch of times.
01:25:22
I'm good. Yeah, it's interesting.
01:25:27
I did not think this was going to score lower than deception
01:25:30
point. I definitely did not either.
01:25:32
Like I said when I first read this, 50 out of 50.
01:25:34
Easy easy. Am I too cynical?
01:25:45
Too cynical? Yes, you always are too cynical.
01:25:49
But. Yeah, that's a good point.
01:25:50
Fair, fair. All right, what's next?
01:25:57
What's next on our Dan Brown, which we may not get to anytime
01:25:59
soon, but I think we got to do the movie and we've got to do
01:26:04
Davinci Code. Yeah, we should just jump to
01:26:07
Davinci code and then and see whether I, I really want to
01:26:10
revisit Lost Symbol because I remember you mentioning that you
01:26:14
didn't like that one and I really vibed with that one.
01:26:18
Yeah, I, I probably should. I was probably being harsh
01:26:20
again. I think I enjoyed reading it.
01:26:23
I just, I want to revisit some of the Mason stuff and see how
01:26:27
it sells me on that. Yeah.
01:26:30
Again, I might be too close to it, the same way I might be too
01:26:32
close to Rome. Maybe I'm too close to DC.
01:26:35
So it's like it has that initial excitement, but does it quench
01:26:41
your thirst in the end? Yeah, it, it could be again a
01:26:44
time after I have to, I have to check myself a lot more.
01:26:47
We had another author reach out to us was like, I don't really
01:26:49
agree with all of your your critiques and conclusions.
01:26:52
And he was really, really generous about it.
01:26:55
And we'll, I'm sure I'll respond and we'll have a good
01:26:58
conversation, but. OK, you can tell me about this
01:27:00
SO. Yeah, I'll have to break it down
01:27:03
for you, but I think that's a good thing.
01:27:06
I, I, I think one, we have a right to be as critical as we
01:27:13
want to be and not just positive all the time.
01:27:16
And two, I still think we've always said, read the books.
01:27:19
They're worth your while and they deserve this level of
01:27:21
conversation. If you if you want to have a
01:27:23
book club discussion like that, like we're doing on a book, that
01:27:27
means it's a book worthy of your time.
01:27:31
Yeah, or else why talk about it? Why bother?
01:27:34
Yeah, and I'm not just being miserly like Da Vinci Code.
01:27:38
I know it's preposterous. I know compared to Catholic
01:27:40
teaching and all this, you know, BS.
01:27:43
We I, you know, I put out there. No, I, I can, I can enjoy it for
01:27:47
the story. It is like, sure.
01:27:48
You know, like people hated on the Da Vinci Code.
01:27:50
Remember all the hate mail he got and like, probably death
01:27:54
threats. Like, Can you imagine if social
01:27:56
media were what social media today is?
01:27:58
When The Da Vinci Code first came out, people were going
01:28:02
nuts. I'm could be OK with that if it
01:28:05
completely works for the story. So I'm not just going to be
01:28:09
against it just because as teachings I disagree with or
01:28:12
something like that. No, it's just got to work for
01:28:14
the plot. I was just a little surprised
01:28:16
with how much this plot in Angels and Demons had to be
01:28:19
manufactured with what I would consider, you know, false
01:28:22
dichotomies or or not true teaching not or not accurate.
01:28:26
It's not truth and and and untruth.
01:28:28
It's not accurate teachings, but to create drama, you have to
01:28:32
falsify those teachings or pretend they're one thing that
01:28:36
they're not just to create the story in the central drama.
01:28:38
That's what I'm against, not the fact that you write a story with
01:28:41
something I personally disagree with that I could be all for
01:28:44
that doesn't matter to me if is it a good story.
01:28:46
It's it's just the false premises to create drama that
01:28:49
I'm disappointed in. Gotcha.
01:28:53
Yeah. Yeah.
01:28:54
All right. Cool man.
01:28:59
We're off next week. I'm on vacation but we got to
01:29:03
figure out what we're reading next so.
01:29:06
We'll talk about it, we'll let you guys know, but more Dan
01:29:09
Brown will be in the future and I think we're going to have to
01:29:11
do a couple of movies here too while we're on a Dan Brown kick.
01:29:14
Let's do it. Yep.
01:29:17
All right, before we get out of here, we need to thank our
01:29:19
patrons, our W director, Sherry F and Brad E, our special
01:29:22
agents, Adam, Mike, Ben, Darryl, George, Matt, Dawn and Chris.
01:29:27
Please subscribe, rate and review to all three seasons of
01:29:29
No Limits. You can find us@thrillerpod.com
01:29:32
or on Twitter and Instagram at Thriller Podcast.
01:29:35
And as always, just let Robert be Robert.