KnockBack: The Retro and Nostalgia Podcast

KnockBack's 159th episode is a unique one in that it's dedicated to the wholesale recrafting and rewriting of 2015's Star Wars film The Force Awakens. Quite simply, we've decided to follow it up with our rewriting of Episode VIII! Now, it's important you listen to or watch Episode 159 first, or you'll have no idea what we're talking about. You've been warned! Otherwise, please enjoy yet another ep...

Nintendo has long dominated gaming's lucrative handheld scene, vanquishing foes who dared enter the space, one after another, from Atari to SEGA to SNK. But then 2004 rolled around. It was late in that year (and into the next) that Sony launched PlayStation Portable, or PSP, the only non-Nintendo handheld in the history of the industry to... well... hold its own against its arch-rival in an ecosys...

You, our precious audience, have a wide array of wants when it comes to KnockBack. You like the episodes about games, and about movies, and TV shows, and all the rest, but you also like when we get into the ephemera of the past, too. Today's show is thus dedicated to just that. We, the Brothers Moriarty, have chosen 10 'somethings' from the decade of the 1990s -- maybe a show we used to watch, or...

For pretty much every child, going to the movie theater is a rite of passage. The thing is, the nature of that rite hinges mightily on when and where you grew up. For we The Brothers Moriarty, our formidable movie theater experiences were on Long Island in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, and it's from there that we can draw many memorable, funny, and resonant stories. Our pre-movie rituals. What snacks...

In the early '80s, Harrison Ford was completely and undeniably in his element. Over a five year period, he appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, and The Temple of Doom. That's one hell of a run. But squished right in between those four movies is 1982's Blade Runner, where we see Ford lose the roguishness (kind of) for something decidedly deeper, darker,...

We're pretty hard on Star Wars here on KnockBack. But it's only because we care so damn much! Yet, we're rarely (if ever) asked to put up or shut up when it comes to the topic... until now. As voted on by our listeners, this episode is the first of three that will be dedicated to the new Star Wars trilogy, but through a simple lens: If given free reign, what would our new trilogy look like, one th...

High above the clouds is a city in the sky. It's called Columbia, and it was once a part of the United States, a floating testament to American Exceptionalism and the sacred religion of The Founders. This is all true in BioShock Infinite, anyway, an adventure set in an alternate version of 1912. As Booker DeWitt, your charge is clear: Rescue an unusual girl named Elizabeth from the grasp of Columb...

Through a modern lens, board games seem... well... quaint. After all, why would a child play with plastic toys when they can hold an iPad, are we right? Thus, it's incumbent on us to explore the Old Ways, and in reality, those Old Ways are still quite new, indeed. Board gaming, as it turns out, is in a boomtime as we speak. But enough of the contemporary. Let's instead explore the borderline-antiq...

This week's episode of KnockBack makes you an offer you can't refuse, as we open up the floor to a discussion all about the classic 1972 film The Godfather, a movie some consider to be the very best that American cinema has ever had to offer. Is it true? Well, that's subjective, but what we do know is this: The Godfather is an amazing flick, and sets such an important template for all of the wonde...

Long Island, New York is the nautical homeland of The Moriarty Boys, and it comes up on KnockBack constantly. Almost every one of our childhood and teenage stories, memories, and events happened there, and -- at the request of the audience -- we thought we'd take the opportunity to do a non-IP-driven episode of our show all about that peculiar strip of land in New York City's shadow. For without i...

The term 'action movie' is sometimes used as a pejorative in order to hand-wave away bombastic and violent films that don't have some sort of deeper meaning. Yet, 2014's John Wick -- starring the seemingly-affable Keanu Reeves -- may just have redefined the term for a modern era. The titular Wick's head-first dive into the underworld seems almost unimaginably absurd at first. And maybe it is. But...

In the late '90s and early '00s, writer and director Wes Anderson came out swinging with his beloved comedies Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. His third film, however -- 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums -- is perhaps his most beloved project, a movie all about an equally talented and troubled family of two estranged parents, three peculiar adult children, and a small group of outsiders that make up their wi...

World War II raged from 1939 to 1945, and as its name aptly suggests, there was fighting pretty much everywhere: the Pacific, North Africa, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, France and the UK, and on and on. However, HBO's 10-part miniseries Band of Brothers -- released in 2001 -- explores one piece of one of the theaters of war through the eyes of the United States' much-celebrated Easy Company...

Every one of us have had a "we're not even supposed to be here today" moment, whether at work, school, or just about anywhere else. For Dante Hicks, though -- a young, 20-something worker at a local convenience store -- being where he wasn't supposed to be ends up netting him one of the most memorable (and also unfortunate) days he could possibly remember. Clerks is Kevin Smith's very first film,...

Our retro and nostalgia podcast KnockBack is a bit of an enigma. On one hand, it's a relatively straight-forward, passion-driven project -- heavily directed by our wonderful audience -- but there's a catch: The nature of our show means it's hard to go back and talk about already-trodden topics again. Since we've reached this 150 episode milestone, however, we figured we'd try to change that, if no...

When you really sit and think about it, it's kind of interesting that a ghoulish holiday like Halloween and a celebratory and feel-good holiday like Christmas kinda butt-up against each other, with nary a couple of months separating them. It's here that Tim Burton's and Disney's 1993 stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas begins, introducing us to Jack Skellington and his crew of mischiev...

It's easy to make fun of child actors and children's performances in film and TV -- we do it all the time on this show -- but what makes 1990's classic film Home Alone so interesting is that its lead is a compelling kid protagonist. We all know who Macaulay Culkin is because of this movie, and rightfully so: He does a great job as Kevin McAllister, the mischievous child who's... well... left home...

There are really only a small handful of titles that are regularly bandied about as potential Best Game of All-Time, and 2005's Shadow of the Colossus is one of them. Created by Team ICO -- an internal group working out of Sony-owned Japan Studio -- Shadow of the Colossus is a truly breathtaking, gorgeous, clever, and admittedly contentious offering, one that has since migrated to PlayStation 3 (i...

Did you know KnockBack is a podcast about all things retro and nostalgia? It's true! Nearly 150 weeks into the project, we assume that's fairly well-established. But since this particular episode goes live on American Thanksgiving (for our Patrons, that is), we figured we'd do something just a little bit different. See, there are these things from our past that helped to establish who we are today...

We happen to love Studio Ghibli here on KnockBack, and we know that many of you do, too. However, Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 animated picture Princess Mononoke may be the most beloved movie in his team's extensive, decades-long filmography. The setup is simple: Ancient and solidified nature is in existential crisis thanks to humanity's industrial progress, and with both 'sides' dug in, it looks like on...

In its mere existence, 2016's Rogue One is an interesting movie. It's the first Star Wars film (per se) that's unassociated from the three trilogies, yet it intimately intertwines with and sets the stage for the very first Star Wars offering: 1977's Episode IV. Of course, it's even more interesting when it comes to what it's about, a daring caper to steal Imperial plans for the original Death Star...

If you're a fan of documentaries, then there's a good chance you've heard of Grey Gardens, the 1975 so-called "direct-cinema" documentary that investigates the lives of two women -- a mother and daughter -- who live in isolation and complete squalor on the eastern end of Long Island. Why is that notable? Well, two reasons: They live in the Hamptons, one of the most exclusive and expensive places t...

It's not easy for a development studio to pivot from one group of projects to something radically different, but Sony-owned Guerrilla Games did just that when it released its open world action-RPG Horizon: Zero Dawn in early 2017. Horizon was unlike anything Guerrilla had ever done: Rather than an FPS like Killzone, Horizon is a wide-open, non-linear, character-driven affair, an interesting mixtur...

When you grow up with a father who's obsessed with all things retro, it's safe to assume the apple won't fall from the ever-nerdy tree. In that spirit, we have a guest on this episode: Dagan's son, Graeden. Together, father and son take a walk through their shared passions -- video games, especially -- and how one dad's love of nostalgia naturally enchanted his kid. The end result is something we...

On its periphery, the 2006 film The Prestige is about an ever-escalating rivalry between two 19th century magicians, but in reality, its thematic focus is about something far more sinister: Obsession. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's adaptation of the novel by the same name boasts a star-studded cast and a convincing recreation of late-Victorian London, but -- in true Nolan fashion -- it's what re...