Episode #70 Deadpool/Wolverine and Love Letters to FOX

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:30):
Hello, hello, regions and welcome once again.
Welcome to the What You Can Watch Me podcast.
I am your host, the always effervescent, marvelous Mike Dudley.

(00:50):
Joined as always by my co-host, cohort and youngest brother.
MD3 Marcus Dudley checking in on the YOU.
What is going on out there in podcast land.
We are broadcasting live from the What You Been Watching studios, Northeast, I suppose.
We're like the admirals of this stuff.
Now we got a fleet of studios that we just oversee.

(01:13):
We are broadcasting live from the Northeast studios of What You Been Watching, you know.
Big shout out to all those that are tuning in and listening.
And big shout out to KETSA.
K-E-T-S-A.
Which apparently we've been saying wrong this entire time for our lovely intro music,
Always Bright.
We are so sorry we've butchered this for so long.

(01:35):
I think the file got saved incorrectly and we...
That's exactly what happened is at some point in writing down the information, I just switched
the two letters and we've just been saying it wrong ever since.
So, our apologize, KETSA.
KETSA, it still might be...
Our apologize?
Yeah, our apologize.
We're working on a lot of things around here.

(01:55):
This is just the first start with, this is a giant correction episode.
Man, big shout out to MK Dudley Art, right?
As always for the beautiful banner that signifies that you have arrived at your audio listening
destinations.
Right, and you can always write us in.
We truly appreciate anyone who does write us in at whatchabinwatchingpodcastatgmail.com.

(02:19):
Again that is whatchabinwatchingpodcastatgmail.com.
Where else can they find us, my brother?
They can find us online at facebook.com.
We're on Instagram at whatchabinwatching.
Other than that, you know, we're out there in the streets.
I was selling used school supplies for like, you know, five bucks a can.

(02:41):
I was taking recently just the photos out of public places like, you know, if you go
to a bathroom and they have a framed photo because it's a nicer establishment.
I was just taking the frames and leaving the photos recently and then reselling them.
So call me for all your framing needs.
We all got our side hustle homie.
But by the way, now that I know where we are in the whatchabinwatching timeline, there's

(03:05):
a little secret soft set.
We don't always know which episode is coming out when.
We just roll sometimes.
But I had a great time recording the ladies man specials.
I was just going to say, I had a great time doing that.
That was fun.
I don't know if it, I hopefully it transferred in terms of like, I hope it wasn't just us
fawning over a movie for an hour and a half to two hours, just being like, and then remember

(03:26):
that part and remember that part.
Like I'm sure it was probably a little bit, but I really hope that that we communicated
to the legions, like why we're passionate about this movie and like why it resonates
with us so well.
And like, yes, it's a thing that we love, but like, here's the here's the why.
And here's here.

(03:46):
Here's the structure of how we got to our love for it.
I think we hit the nail on the head when we were talking about being like a sexually
trans transmitted, transmitted movie, as it were, in the sense of like, if you watch
it with us, you'll get it.
Right.
You know what you got to get it from one of us.
So hopefully, I don't know, hopefully I, I think we tried to make that pretty clear.

(04:07):
And so if you haven't ever seen that movie, you've learned a lot about where our references
come from.
We're going to slowly try to do more episodes that are really, really near and dear to us.
Right.
And we can really kind of explain some of the references and some of the things that
you, they might not always make it to the podcast, but even just little things that
Michael and I say to each other that are kind of in code to most people.

(04:31):
You know, like fish sandwich, like I can't look at a, you know, like fish sandwiches,
one of those things that's just everywhere now in my life is this constant rotation and
thanks to that movie.
And so we want to try to expand our personalities through these movies that we love.
So I enjoy, that's the reason I enjoy doing it so much.
I literally can't drive by cyclists on the side of the road anymore without going, BATS!

(04:53):
Oh yeah, from Tom's a girl.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of little ticks we have that we just kind of scratch the surface in
our description of the ladies, man, and it's important to us, but other than that though,
man, how are you?
Oh, I'm good, man.
You know, summer weather is finally starting to become unbearable.

(05:14):
It's the dog days.
It's the point where everybody's like, oh, let's move to Florida.
The weather's nice here all the time.
And then you're like, there's certain times of the month that we just don't go outside
because I don't want to die.
Just remember it's the coldest summer for the rest of your life.
So enjoy it while you can.
That's right.
Just reframe it that way.
You'll be like, boy, this is the golden era.

(05:37):
In 10 years when it's 120 degrees outside.
Yep.
In November.
That's right.
I'll lament the days of, oh, man, I remember when it was 101 in August.
Yeah, I didn't go outside.
Yeah, I was in Idaho recently.
It was 105 degrees.
Jesus.
Everyone's like, people call me, oh, how's the weather?
I'm like, it's pretty hot.
Oh, you know, it's a dry heat.

(05:58):
It's a little different.
I'm like, you're right, it is, but it's also 105.
You're like, oh, that's just f'ing hot.
Right, yeah.
105 is 105.
105 is 105, dog.
It's a, it wasn't aware on that one.
Other than that, they've been good besides avoiding the heat.
Yeah, yeah, man.
Just, you know, trying not to get bogged down on the day to day.

(06:20):
Trying to, and let me get a little personal here.
Like as someone who struggles with depression and struggles with, especially like ADD and
you know, like it's this weird counterbalance of I'm at one point hyper focused on something
and then totally apathetic about everything, you know, the next week.

(06:40):
And I never know how it's going to bounce.
And so it's just, it's been a lot of that lately.
And it's sort of, it's just taxing.
It's just, it's, you know, like I noticed over the past couple of months, it's just
been like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
And then like, no, I don't care.
Who gives a shit?
I don't care.
I don't care.
And then just, and then, you know, bouncing back and forth between that is just, it's

(07:02):
just mentally exhausting.
No, I feel you, dude.
I feel you.
And I'm glad you shared that with us.
Thank you for sharing that.
You know, this isn't certainly the talk about it isn't in Dr. Phil.
God damn it.
But no, I do appreciate it.
Like I said, any insight to what we do is, is I think genuinely well received.
And, you know, it, it's fine.
It's a fine line, man, because I know one of the things that I've always said that I genuinely

(07:27):
feel exhausted by, and I don't know another option.
That's why I relate to the movie, everything everywhere, all at once so much with a key
Hugh Kwan's character, or he's just like, oh, you're just so nice and naive all the
time.
It's like, man, this is a survival technique.
Like what are you talking about?
Like, and if you think that makes me weak for trying to give people the benefit of the
doubt, like you have no idea the amount of strength it takes to sit there and try to do

(07:48):
what I do.
Like this is how I fight.
And certainly that's why I strive to be that character.
But one of the things you're talking about being exhausting is like, and I'm not doing
a good job of it recently is having my crap not become other people's crap and being able
to compartmentalize.
Sure.
But inside it's like, I'm really sad inside.
But like, I want to be of service to other people, and I want to do this in giving out

(08:12):
that little extra bit to not throw people off the scent, but just to try to not drag
the room down with my mood.
Because there's a little bit of, it's a fine line between that and narcissism when it's
like your mood dictates the entire mood of a house or a room.
You're like, I'm in a bad mood there for everyone else.
Not letting your trauma bleed over into other, or not trauma, but your bad day or whatever,

(08:34):
bleed over into other people.
Yeah.
And I'm exhausted genuinely by the end of most days because I'm just like, I don't,
man, and it's been a little more secret sauce.
I'm in the process of moving out of the house or in and it's just been a nightmare.
Which is always stressful.
Yeah.
And so there's just only so many hours in the day.
Just by the end of the night, it's like I've been going to like Tallahassee, like physical

(08:59):
therapy pretty much.
Right.
Okay.
Go do these stretches and it's like, you're right, I should go do these stretches and
they take 15 to 25 minutes, maybe 30 at the most, if I'm really locked in.
But like, man, it's 9.15 at night and I'm just now showering.
I got to be at work at eight.
Yeah.
Like it's going to take me two hours to wind down and desk roll on my phone for a minute.
Right, right, right.
Deep compartmentalizing and sort of like.

(09:19):
Yes, I could be spending the time not desk rolling or playing the hour of, you know,
Nintendo 3DS that I want to play.
But fuck you.
Give me my little dopamine man.
Let me just get a little, I don't want to do this at night.
I'm just showering.
I genuinely get exhausted.
I agree.
Let me get my little, my little, you know, not a journal, like dopamine or what's the

(09:42):
love drug.
Serotonin.
Serotonin.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me get my little serotonin and just let me be happy.
Yeah.
And let me to beating Ocarina of Simon 3DS.
There you go.
Yeah.
Which by the way is probably one of my favorite video games of all time.
It's, I mean it.
I could do a deep dive on that if you want to real quick.
We saved for another day.

(10:03):
There's, there's aspects of it that are still hold up phenomenally to this day and there's
aspects of this game where it's like, if I didn't have a walkthrough, there are zero
clues as to what I do next.
Right.
You know, you got to really like go talk to everyone.
Go like it's, there's a lot of just go figure it out and it's really vague.
And if you know what you're doing, it seems like you can piece it together well, but there
are certain times you're like, there's no clues to indicate that that's what the answer

(10:26):
to not even just the dungeons in the puzzle, like when you're just running around town
and going like, oh, all the extra shit and how do I get to the next dungeon side missions
and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're like, there's no way I can figure that out on my own.
But to me, I always appreciate that.
Cause to me, like that's how a D&D game should have run is just like, yeah, you can finish
the main story or you can, you know, be aligned towards it.
You know, you can literally go to go straight to the castle and try and fight Ganondorf if

(10:49):
you want.
But like there's a whole world go explore.
Like, you know, anyway, I always love that.
It's a great game.
It's anytime somebody says, oh, it's my favorite game of all time.
It's like, I get it.
I get it.
But enough of the subsection of what you've been playing.
My brother, the reason that people try to escape the humdrum aspects of their lives,
which if you're out there struggling for real, it's not movie related.

(11:11):
Write us into what you've been watching podcast at gmail.com.
We will give you a movie reference for the day that will make you feel better.
That's right.
Or at least try our best.
We'll try our best.
You know, we ain't doctors.
We ain't doctors.
And also please go and rate and review and leave some sort of comment, you know, like

(11:32):
believe it or not, that really actually helps our algorithm.
They knew what you were going to say.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to leave the stutter in.
They knew what you were going with.
Yeah, I mean, again, not to pull the curtain back too much, but you know, we're trying
to move this up to bigger and better things and looking for sponsorship and stuff like
that.

(11:52):
And those kind of numbers help us out with with the mathematics behind it.
So please, please, please help us out.
Yeah.
And there's some people that have been along for the ride this whole time and we genuinely
appreciate it.
If you're an old, an old OG of what you've been watching or if you're a newcomer, we
appreciate it all.
So the reason why all these people tune in bi-weekly month in, month out, they need to

(12:15):
know my brother.
Cheers to everybody out there.
Whatcha been watching, him, Duddy's?
So in preparation to talk more more in depth about the our main feature tonight, which
I'm sure you guys have already read the headlines so you know what it is.
I watched X-Men Origins Wolverine.

(12:37):
Oh, okay.
Should we, should we use Deadpool and Wolverine as our framing device here?
I mean, we can.
Give a little teaser.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's do this.
Let's, we're going to make sure that the first half is going to be spoiler free and
then we'll, after the break, we're going to do just let the spoilers fly because I feel

(13:00):
like there's, we can't really get in depth as much as we want to without spoiling a few
things.
So, if you haven't seen the movie, you've got until the break to go see the movie and
then afterwards all bets are off.
Let's fucking go.
There you go.
There you go.
No, I was going to say just my overall, and this doesn't spoil anything about the movie

(13:21):
so I would just say my overall opinion of Deadpool and Wolverine, which we'll talk about
more so we'll just call this a little teaser or a framing device as it were, is that this
is a while it does serve as an introduction to Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe
as we know it.
And it certainly does not rescue it.

(13:41):
It is not the Marvel Jesus as he jokes about being.
He is what he's not, but it certainly isn't that.
It's a really good bandaid, but it's more of a than it is an introduction for Deadpool
into the MCU.
And it is a farewell to the movies that are often nowadays kind of out of style and kind

(14:01):
of get crapped on in the Fox Mutant Universe and some of the original movies that got us
there like the Daredevil's and all the X-Men movies and all their spinoffs and all that.
We really owe a great debt to those movies.
For sure.
That's why a lot of people don't realize like oh the Marvel MCU, it's jumped the horse
or it's jumped the shark whatever.

(14:24):
Jumped the shark with a horse.
Right.
I knew what I was trying to say.
Beating a dead horse.
I was going to say beating a dead horse, but I pivoted it the last second.
Classic Marcus Dudley moment.
But actually jumping the shark on a horse would be a jumping the shark moment.
So it kind of works.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So yeah, so I know that a lot of people don't appreciate where we're at now with the MCU,

(14:44):
but I just want to remind you.
It wasn't that long ago that these movies were not good.
Well, but in a weird way.
Not what we were looking for.
Well, but here's the problem is those movies had to lay down on the barbed wire so that
Iron Man could storm the beaches.
You know what I mean?
It's true.
Like they had to go through the hardships of figuring out what didn't work so that by

(15:05):
the time Kevin Feige came in, he was like okay, we've got the formula pretty much figured
out or at least maybe not figured out, but we're zeroing in on the Coke secret recipe.
And once we get it nailed down, we're going to bottle and sell the shit out of it.
That's right.
That's right.
So what did you watch in Preparation?

(15:26):
I watched X-Men Origins Wolverine.
Oh, that's a tough one.
Well, just because it's the first time that these characters interact.
Which characters?
The Deadpool and Wolverine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, obviously you have Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine and then Ryan Reynolds playing
Wade Wilson and a version of Deadpool.

(15:49):
Like I hesitate to call him that because it's so far removed from anything that the comics
has given us or any sort of expectation of the character.
Yeah.
At least in a fan-based sense.
They took some liberties.
Yeah.
They were pretty generous in the liberties that they took of this interpretation of Deadpool.

(16:10):
But yeah, I don't know.
That's a tough watch, man.
Yeah, it was Who directed Gavin Hood?
Yeah, I know it.
That was Gavin Hood.
I was just going to say.
I swear on everything I did not Google that ahead of time.
No, no.
I just remember the opening sequence.
Just the weird shit your brain recognizes sometimes.
I really did not Google that.
I was like, yeah.

(16:32):
There are things that I really, really did like about it.
For example, the opening montage is fantastic.
Having Saber Tooth and Wolverine growing up as brothers fighting in all these wars,
everything from the Civil War up through Vietnam and stuff like that.
You sort of get a real feel for their personalities in terms of, yes, they're both ferocious men,

(16:55):
but Logan is passionate where Victor is brutal.
Yeah, cool.
Yeah, yeah.
To that point, I think Leif Schreiber as Saber Tooth, Victor Creed was probably the best
iteration we've ever had of that character.

(17:16):
Not to take anything away from Tyler Maine because I think.
He just had a look that they were going for.
He didn't really do anything.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
He snarled with big, dilated pupil contacts.
Sure, sure.
To be fair, he was a tertiary character in a much bigger movie.
Whereas Leif Schreiber was essentially the antagonist of the entire movie.

(17:39):
There was a lot of weight that he had to pull.
That being said, I think his iteration of Victor Creed is brutal and animalistic and
just everything that you want in a cold-hearted killer.
This is a guy who is the perfect tracker and always gets his prey in the very literal sense.

(18:04):
He's mad that his little brother has stronger powers than him.
So that's why Michael relates to him.
That is why I relate to him, exactly.
He's like, I want to add a man to you.
He's like, kill you.
I want it.
I want it, though.
It is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The whole dynamic of Wolverine can take the things that Saber Tooth can't and yet Saber

(18:27):
Tooth arguably grew up harder than Wolverine ever did.
At least in the beginning.
Anyway, so yeah, I really like him.
I think he's cold.
Yeah, at least Saber's good, too.
Just in everything.
He's a pretty good dude.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a cold, calculated, brutal.

(18:48):
Every kill he does is meant to be as if he's a psychopath.
He loves his job.
He's not just enjoying killing people.
He's arrogant about it.
Flipping, as it were.
Flipping, sure, sure.
And yet he's always this intimidating and constant reminder of just violence.

(19:11):
Anytime he's on screen, especially with other characters, they always react to him as if
essentially it's like being in a broom closet with a bear.
This could go bad at a moment's notice and I would never see it coming.
Just because he's having a bad day.
Or just, yeah, whatever.
And essentially there's nothing I can do about it.

(19:35):
There was a way, and he did a pretty good job.
Not that the movie's all that good.
And I think he did the best.
Well, I'm going to get into that.
Well, not that, but he did the best with what he could.
Ultimately they wrote him as just like, just be a hard ass, be a tough ass.
And he actually brought some humanity to that, which probably wasn't in the script, given
the other on the nose everything else they did.
Right, right.
So I think he actually did.

(19:56):
It's not like overflowing, like I said, given what he was working with, but you could tell
he did bring a little bit of humanity to that character.
Because it could have gone just one note real quick of just like.
Which was the Tyler Maine of it all.
You're looking at me, huh?
Yeah, oh, you want to fight about it, huh?
You want to fight.
Like, Ali, I get told quick in the movie's end in real life.
Right.
Yeah, so that's the things I really liked about it.

(20:18):
And yeah, other than that, it's an editing clusterfuck, man.
There are so many cuts, especially during the fight sequences and action sequences.
I counted during a 10 second action sequence, they cut it, I want to say 22 times.
Ali.

(20:39):
Like I might have been off by, you know, like one or two, but probably not by much.
Like 22 cuts within a 10 to 12 second action sequence.
It's too many.
It's too many.
It suffers from that thing that happens with transformers where like my brain recognizes
that there's action happening on screen, but it's not registering fast enough to actually

(21:04):
be able to tell what's happening.
So it's just movement and noise and objects in space colliding.
And you're just kind of filling in the blanks mentally, right?
Kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, okay, I see somebody got flipped up and like all of a sudden now somebody's getting
hit by a truck.
I don't know who, I don't know how, I don't know like how that had like what sequence
of events let us do that.

(21:26):
But here's what's happening.
And then by the time you process that something else is already happening.
Yeah, yeah, it's, I didn't watch it as recently.
I'm going to tell you, rest in peace, Uncle Richard, Uncle Bruce Wayne, rest in peace.
He watched a lot of movies that were deemed bad, you know, by his today standards, or
we watched him in kind of repetition just because we had, I don't know, he had odd taste in

(21:50):
things go from everything from you seen crank to you go watch Stomp the Yard 40,000 times.
So yeah, yeah, which if you knew who I was talking about, you'd realize how funny it
is that he would watch that movie as often as he did.
So I watched this movie a lot and I do remember it being just even editorial just all over
the place.
Like just what, what is our motivation here?

(22:12):
Like plotline wise, like the opening sequence with where you do finally meet like the mercenaries
that he's tagging along with, which is Will I am his ghost, I think.
Yeah.
Phantom.
I think it's Phantom is his name.
I can't remember.
It's not night crawlers.
Not night craze.
Yeah.
Dood in the cowboy hat with machine guns that teleports.
Yeah.

(22:33):
Then you get the blob and yeah.
But even that was another one of my problems is that they spend the first 15 to 20 minutes
setting up all the members of Wolverine strike team.
You know, you meet the blob, you meet agent zero, you get to know Savertooth, you get

(22:55):
to know Striker and I feel what Dominic Moynihan's character was, but electric boy or whatever
it was.
And obviously Deadpool.
And obviously, yeah.
Wade Wilson.
Wade Wilson.
Right.
Right.
Played by the incomparable, the undeniable Ryan Reynolds.
Yes.
For the very first time.

(23:15):
And then later on, like in the movie, when Wolverine goes on his vengeance streak, they
just become keynotes to get him to the next cameo.
And so like, yeah, we meet the blob after he's, you know, gotten really fat and, you
know, we finally like, did you call me blob?
Like, no, I said bub.
Like, I don't know what whoever wrote that line was on some crack because that line does

(23:39):
not work.
Yeah.
But yeah.
And then, you know, we get the will I am who's playing not night crawler, not crawler.
Yeah, I like that.
Sorry.
I wouldn't expect it was such a stupid joke when I got here for the reason.
But yeah, like it just so we meet all these characters and then they obviously don't, they

(24:03):
just don't amount to anything.
They don't service anything other than another key point to get Logan to the next point on
the map.
Does that make sense?
No, it does.
It does.
Because then they do something on those same points of the map thing.
They do something that I found in for unforgivable.
What's that?
Which they go, we need to get a plane and they go, I know somebody with a plane and then

(24:23):
it's gambit and then he's on the screen for like three minutes and he runs away from them.
It's longer than three minutes, but yeah.
I mean, they have like a quick little scuffle and then his whole character motivation.
Like, yeah, I'm not getting you on this plane.
And later he's like, all right, you can get on the plane.
No reason.
It makes no sense.
Yeah.
There's people's motivation in this movie is completely lost to the plot.

(24:45):
Like they feel just how the writer needs them to feel so that there's conflict.
And then as soon as there's no more conflict, they're just like, okay, but I really felt
that way all along anyway.
So who cares?
You're like, well, what the fuck were we fighting about this?
Yeah, I don't even remember what he was on the binge.
I knew his, the goal was to get William Stryker.
Yes, because I forget what his vengeance tour was even about.

(25:05):
Like they killed, they killed his girlfriend.
They killed Silver Fox allegedly saber tooth killed Silver Fox.
And then later it turns out that spoiler alert, Stryker and saber tooth are working
together.
Yep.
So, so yeah.
So that's his, that's his vengeance quest is getting back to all the members of his
kill team in order to trace back to saber tooth to avenge his girlfriend's death.

(25:30):
And then saber tooth and Wolverine work together and the end to kill Deadpool.
Correct.
Which you want to talk about wasted cameo.
I mean, yeah, what was his, well, because I remember there being a really bad line
as to why they need to convince saber tooth and him to work together.
It was just like, Oh, nothing.
It's saber tooth literally has one line.
Nobody gets to kill you, but me.

(25:51):
The Vegeta Goku.
That's literally it.
That's the only reason they start teaming up.
Like nevermind, like why he wouldn't just kill Deadpool and then immediately turn around
and be like, okay, now you and I are going to finish this.
But he's like, he dips out.
He's like, next time, Jimmy, peace out.
Just jumps down like a channel is 1980s speaker who comes to a school to raps to you about

(26:20):
stopping to smoke.
You have to peace out and crosses arms.
Like, that was funny.
That's exactly what I saw when you did that.
You gave some lecture about why smoking is bad.
You did in a rap to the young kids of an element.
But I sit down in the chair backwards.
I know I'm cool.
So you know that there's real related issues that I've overcome.
That's right.
I'm I don't play by the rules.

(26:40):
I'm going to tell you some things that the parents might not be willing to tell you.
Yeah.
I'm going to break it down for you.
It's like when we'll see.
Can I can I rap with you, my homies?
Right.
Sorry.
I'm going to be sad.
But yeah, it's it's just God.
And what a waste of such a perfect rendition of you already had Ryan Reynolds basically

(27:02):
playing Deadpool.
And then in the movie spoiler alert, they take away his mouth and they give him some
wonky.
The whole point was it.
Sabertooth was killing mutants and somehow stealing their powers.
They don't really explain that.
Just like take a vial of blood.
No, whatever.
And now and so they put it into the dead pool of mutant powers and then put that into Wade

(27:26):
Wilson.
He becomes dead pool, but they never actually call him Deadpool.
Yeah.
Yeah, they just call this the power setting or throw it because they kill somebody.
Throw it in the dead.
Throw it in the pool and into the pool, the Deadpool.
The Deadpool.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
And they they balled him up and because they finally found a way to shut you up.
I remember that one.
And then his power said that he can teleport and he has laser vision and he has adamantium

(27:50):
swords coming out of his wrist.
And he is baraka.
He is baraka.
Yeah, like he really is.
I know you're right.
But without the mouth.
Yeah, that's it.
It was just, yeah.
Oh, laser eyes.
Yeah.
Anyway, it's a yeah, it's it's a clusterfuck.
It's edited poorly.

(28:10):
It messes.
This is the the reason why some of these things like when people like I just can't
anytime I know somebody who runs a comic book shop and I was living in Frederick, Maryland
and the second that the Avengers and the MCU played with time, it was just like I'm
out.
He's like, I can't like nothing.
There is no consequence that cannot be undone anymore.

(28:33):
Right.
Like moving.
It's like Star Trek.
Like the second they start playing with time, a lot of people in that franchise are like,
I'm out.
Nothing is like, oh, just go undo it.
Or then another person goes, it just becomes Terminator, you know, it's whatever.
And so this is when they start to play in, they don't play with like time like that,
but they just f up the timeline.
And I don't think there was a clear plan ahead of time with these movies in terms of where

(28:58):
we are, we're going to do a prequel.
But then like the more they did in terms of the X-Men universe, the more you're like,
this can't make sense.
Like there was no blueprint ahead of time that like a skeleton like, hey, this movie's going
to take place here and here.
And they just started adding to it and then like reversing like when this character did
that, like the whole timeline becomes so muddy.

(29:19):
And this was the start of it.
Sure, sure.
But I think the problem lies in the origins of the character.
So like if you were to follow the origins of Wolverine as a comic book reader, you first
met him, he was a mutant.
He had no memory of who he was, you know, that's why he comes to the Xavier school because
he knows that he's a mutant, he has these razor blade claws, he doesn't know where they

(29:44):
came from, but he feels like there's trauma in his life, whatever, whatever, whatever.
We slowly start learning together that, oh, there's this dude called Sator Tooth and they
have a history, but we're not real sure what it is.
You know, then we move into, you know, oh, the adamantium came from the Weapon X program.
And then we learned about Weapon X, you know, through the Chris Claremont, not Gabriel

(30:06):
Burn, John Burn, anyway.
And then we learned, you know, then his adamantium skeleton is pulled out by Magneto and we realized
that, oh my God, he has bone claws underneath his adamantium ones the entire time.
So the claws weren't put into him, he always had them.

(30:27):
And you know, then whatever, then he learns his memory, yada, yada, yada.
So like, to do a movie based on a man who has no memory of who he is, while still trying
to make him charming and affable and someone that you can root for in terms of like, yes,
I understand this character's motivation and I agree with his mission, is a very difficult

(30:51):
task.
And so to basically do, we already know who Wolverine is, now we're going to take away
his memories in order to fit it into the X-Men timeline in the last 30 seconds of the movie.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
And the fact of like, he got his adamantium and then he lost his memory again after the
adamantium.
It's like, we've already been down, so you're just resetting it to do nothing.

(31:16):
And it's just as a testament to the popularity of the character, because I remember when
this movie came out, like, if you're going to do an origin story, don't do it about the
person with the most convoluted backstory.
Agreed.
All of comic books, like, who not only was it convoluted at any given time, you can
just look at one section of his life being like, Civil War Wolverine.
And it's confusing as hell.

(31:37):
And then you go to like, especially in the comics, when he's in feudal, or not feudal
Japan, but when he's in Japan, it's like, equally as a whole different lifestyle that's
equally confusing.
Or if he's in Weapon X, like, oh, I have false memories.
Yeah, I implant, like, it's just, some are implanted and some are real, and how can I
trust them?
And then like, yeah.
And then you go, this is memory again by Adamantium Bullet.

(31:58):
It's like, what are we talking about?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, again, I think it was just sort of flawed from the start.
They didn't help themselves in the actual production quality of the movie.
No, it's bad.
The plot is really lacking.
So like, a lot of the, any time that there's not action happening on screen, like the slow

(32:22):
scenes, you know what I mean?
Like, quote unquote.
You're either just exposition dumps where it's like, oh, I know the guy that you need
to meet.
You got to go meet so and so.
He lives at such and such place.
Or like, or they'll do a whole exposition dump of here's everything you need to know
about the backstory behind Weapon X.

(32:43):
And it's like, okay, we could have pieced that together.
We could have either that or it's just no character development.
There's like, nobody learns anything in this entire movie.
They are who they are beginning to end.
And then Wolverine gets shot at the end with an adamantine bullet.
Yeah.
The one dude who had a character arc about like, I can't unleash the beast.
I have to keep the animalistic side of myself in the, oh, shit, I got shot in the head.

(33:07):
Now I'm just an animal again.
It does not make.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
Like I said, I felt it was at least noteworthy and worth checking out because it is the first
interaction that we have with Deadpool and Wolverine.
Yeah.
It's the first iteration of Ryan Reynolds as some form of Deadpool, even though he played

(33:29):
Wade Wilson and the guy who played the quote unquote Deadpool at the end or totally different
dudes.
Yeah, he did.
He was the initial photo.
Well, he didn't do any of the stunt work or anything like that.
Was it who?
What?
Yeah, Ryan Reynolds.
Wasn't it him standing there to kind of cocks his head to Wolverine or whatever?
Yes.
Right.
So like they put him on the zip up.

(33:49):
Well, because, because essentially they turn him into a flippy, jumpy ninja.
So he's just doing like cartwheels and parkour all over the place.
And I'm pretty sure Ryan Reynolds can't do that.
I'm pretty sure Ryan Reynolds is powerful, but I don't know if he has parkour powers.
Although the interesting thing, and I think this was in their Hot Ones interview, the
one that Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds just got.

(34:11):
Oh, I love that show.
Yeah.
No, I think it was either that or a different.
Their press tour for this was wild, but they were saying that this was one of the only
times that X-Men Origins Wolverine got released to a pirated site.
Oh, that's right.
And it ended up getting like, how many people saw it?
And they're like, it's up to 10 million views right now, which is, you do that.
That's you know, $15 of a movie ticket.

(34:32):
Right.
$10 of a movie ticket.
Like that's a lot of cash that they just missed out on.
And that was one of the only times that they actually found the person who leaked it and
persecuted or prosecuted them.
And they actually did jail time.
Really?
Interesting.
Yeah, I remember that somebody put out a, it was the full length movie, but they hadn't
put in all of the special effects yet.

(34:55):
And so there was like, you could see wires, you could see like, there were scenes that
would that that would just, you know, flash up.
Like if they hadn't shot or CGI the scene yet, it would just be like claws extend from
Wolverine's hands and then they would go right back into, you know, Hugh Jackman wearing
the prosthetics or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was, that was a wild.

(35:15):
And I mean, what are you going to do, man?
Like if you're a company, like you said, you sit there and you do the math.
It's a week before arguably one of the biggest summer releases.
And you can, you, it's not like it's, it's not like it's some unknown number.
Like they had the numbers of, oh, it's been pirated this many times.

(35:37):
Yeah.
And so we know exactly, we can put a dollar amount to that and it's substantial.
Yeah.
No, it's, it was.
It got a lot of traction.
It was one of the biggest of all time.
Did it end up being like somebody's assistant or something like that?
I don't remember who it was.
Or like a PA or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Somebody got a hold of early test footage that it shouldn't have and they probably made

(35:58):
some money in giving it away, but I mean, I hope so.
I hope they didn't just put it up on Pirate Bay or something like that and then have to
do jail time for it.
Like I hope you made a little bit of money off of it.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
But yeah, that'll be a thief.
Be a profitable thief.
Right.
And Joker taught us that if you're going to do something, never do it for free.
Yeah.
What do you say?

(36:18):
If you're good at something, never do it for free.
Yeah.
Something about scars.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But now this is funny.
That movie, I watched it more times than I cared to admit and I was always pissed off
at it.
More than they ruined Deadpool, they ruined Gambit.
And I was just like, man, that's the only Gambit I get.
I mean, they did.
So we'll talk about it later a little bit.
Taylor Kirch or Kirch, Kirch, Kirch.

(36:42):
He did an OK job.
Again, I don't think that it's the fault of the actor.
I think it's the fault of this movie was written by test audiences.
You know, it was the producers going, well, we tested this scene and it tested real low.
But they really like this part.
We got to include more of that.

(37:03):
And I think a lot of the plot and a lot of the continuity got sacrificed for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But again, Gambit was one of those wasted cameos.
I mean, just his power set isn't even the same one from the comics.
Like he just does magic tricks with cards, basically.
And like pretty much.
Anyways, well, that was one of the early beginnings of this Fox collective universe.

(37:30):
Right.
And any of you want to talk about this movie?
I mean, that's it.
I mean, it's.
We're going to talk a lot of to be honest.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, there's better Wolverine movies.
I highly recommend Logan.
Even if you don't know much about the character, if you know just the basic premise of who
Wolverine is.

(37:51):
It's a perfectly serviceable movie.
Like you can watch it and still be entertained.
And quite frankly, it's really emotionally invested.
Like it's emotionally gripping.
Like you care about these characters.
It's not just superheroes fighting big glowing things in the sky.
It's we always say that the way that these movies work the best is if it's not it's a

(38:17):
movie that has a plausible plotline.
Like for example, like Logan Logan is a Western.
The guy is the main protagonist just happens to have claws for sure.
Yeah.
It's the old gunfighter trying to sail trying to ride off into the sunset with one last
heroic deed or like Dark Knight up to the last end.
It's a movie about crime bosses and power takeover.

(38:39):
There's one force of like a surpoly as well as you can.
They can try to stop it.
Stop the corruption of the city.
That's what it is.
It goes all the way to the man.
All the way to the man.
And that's what it is.
It's like Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight is just a crime movie that happens to have Batman in it.
And that's why those work well.
Like Logan is a Western.
Iron Man is really about a guy who is a weapon.

(39:03):
It's about an inventor who overcomes a traumatic experience by building a suit to protect him
at all times.
Yeah.
You know, and thusly giving the world the one thing he was trying to strip it away from
its greatest weapon.
And in the process grows a conscience and becomes superhero.
Like the point is that superhero movies work better when they're essentially about another

(39:26):
genre than superheroes.
Like Captain America is essentially a World War Two movie.
Iron Man is essentially a drama about a man working through therapy.
Pretty much.
You know.
Pretty much.
Captain America Winter Soldier is just a 70's spy movie.

(39:47):
Correct.
Yeah.
Like Days of Condor or something like that.
Yeah.
Super Power Doop.
Yeah.
So I think that they always worked that.
The first Spider-Man movie was essentially John Hughes meets web powers.
You know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that that's the best example of superhero movies is when they're about something

(40:09):
other than just the superhero origin story.
Like if you can tie it into another genre, that's the way to do it.
And Wolverine was not that.
You know.
No, not at all.
Yeah.
That's it.
So three claws down.
Three claws down.
All right.
So that was one of the entry points to Deadpool and Wolverine as we first are introduced to

(40:34):
them.
But what do you think were some of the high and low points?
And we can keep it simply Fox movies or we can keep it just universal before the MCU
was what it was.
So pre Iron Man, John Favreau, all that good stuff.
What do you think some of the highs and lows were?
Because I can tell you a couple of mine.
Because it started with Blade.

(40:54):
Sure.
And I'll say this, the opening sequence of Blade still plays.
In fact, the whole movie of Blade still largely works pretty well.
I would agree.
It largely works pretty well.
To be honest, I really enjoy the Blade trilogy.
I think I think three was a joke.
Like yes, it was a joke.

(41:14):
But hear me out.
I think that the problem with the Blade trilogy is that those are three separate types of
movies.
Yep.
The first movie is meant to be like an action movie.
The second movie is meant to be more of a horror movie.
And then the third one is meant to be a cash grab.
Yeah.
So genre movie.
Or maybe not even a cash grab.

(41:37):
It's meant to be...
I mean it is.
Yeah.
In the same way that Jaws 3 was like, it's just trying to cash in on something that...
It's paying homage to the original source but also it's taking wild new swings in order
to introduce these new concepts.
It didn't seem like they had an idea of what to do with Blade 3 that they just knew that

(42:01):
they wanted a Blade 3.
Sure.
You know, like two would seem like Guillermo del Toro directed it.
Right.
He looked...
You put a monster in a movie, he's going to make you love that monster.
Exactly.
Or he's going to show you that he loves monsters.
Right.
So like three just seem to be like, whoa.
Plus we got Donnie N doing...
Yeah.
Donnie N.
Yeah.
Oh, Norman Reedus is in that one.

(42:21):
We got...
Wistless Knife.
Wistless Knife, obviously.
Oh God, who was it?
Ron Perlman?
Oh yeah, he was.
That's when they first met.
Reinhardt.
Yeah.
No, like those were all good movies but three is just like, well we got to do three for
a trilogy so I don't know.
It just seems like there wasn't an idea first.
But see, I can't be mad at three because for three reasons.

(42:48):
One, it gives us Triple H as a vampire.
Yes.
Who by the way has a vampire Pomeranian which, let's make that a D&D character please.
I forgot how bad that was.
Two.
I saw it on the Dollar movie by the way.
It was Rob Bob.
Did you?
Yeah.
Nice.
I think I actually paid full price to go see it.
Yeah, have fun with that.

(43:08):
Two, it gives us Ryan Reynolds in an action movie.
He's so out of place in that movie dude.
But he's the comic relief because everybody else in that movie takes it way too seriously.
That's why it doesn't work as a movie.
Everyone else is super stern and he's just like yuck yuck yuck.

(43:28):
Walk a walk.
And three, it gives us probably one of the best insults I've ever heard in my life when
Ryan Reynolds calls Parker Posey a cock juggling thunder cunt.
I do remember that.
He was like, hey, those words roll so effortlessly off of his tongue.

(43:49):
He didn't seem effortless.
He seemed like he was phoning all that in.
He plays a lot of the same quirky.
It didn't work quite that back then.
But just in terms of an insult, like when you string those words together, it's like
a fine wine.
It's like a just aged perfectly.
I didn't even step on it for you.
Just a perfect blend of summer notes and winter crispness.

(44:12):
At one point he's tied up being tortured and he's like, there's another thing you should
know.
I ate a bunch of garlic before I came in here and I just farted.
He's being silly and funny.
He is funny in it, but his character is so out of place in this movie.
I agree.
I agree.
The movie itself doesn't work.
I agree.

(44:33):
But again, I like that because it is so silly and so over the top.
It's almost like a Roger Corman version of Blade.
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
Yeah.
Whereas again, two has a lot more horror aspects.
It's got Guillermo del Toro's vision, which is just gothic and creepy as fuck the whole
way through.
And then the first one, you know, for what it was, it paved the groundwork and it was

(44:56):
first hundred million dollars coming movie for sure.
I mean, literally set the map that was like, Oh, there's an audience for this.
Well, I mean, you got to remember at the time Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankrupt.
It was.
That's why they sold all the like.
The computers, their comic books weren't selling like they were by their own fault.
They were overproducing thousands of comics and then trying to say that there was a shortage

(45:19):
and just flooding the market.
So and driving the demand down anyway, but that's neither here nor there.
But you got to remember like when they first got into making movies, everybody was like,
Oh shit, Sam Stan Lee's about to sink the company.
And then they kind of knocked it not necessarily out of out of the park with Blade, but at

(45:41):
least got a solid double.
Yeah, at least stay in the game.
They connected to Blade for sure.
And then from there, like so the opening sequence of Blade, the blood rave scene.
It's a great is that was our introduction to the Marvel cinematic world.
Besides, I mean, I'm not counting the Roger Corman Fantastic Four.
I'm not counting the Punisher saying this is the original Punisher.
The original Punisher.

(46:02):
Yeah.
And so there was a lot of misses, man.
And so the opening to Blade was awesome.
I'm just talking about some of the high points that I like of this.
I actually really liked X2.
I thought X2 was really good.
Again, especially the opening sequence.
The opening sequence of Nightcrawler goes in and he's teleporting around the White House
and taking out Secret Service agents to the president.
Yeah, that was awesome.

(46:23):
Quite a statement.
It's a heck of a cold.
But yeah, so I think that was one of the parts of X2 overall was a really good movie.
Again, they immediately dropped it in a last stand or whatever.
Yeah, actually the last stand.
So it's been a real kind of a bumpy roller coaster in terms of some of these movies
that really have good moments and a lot of them are really bad.

(46:46):
Days of Future Past was a really good movie.
I'm actually like first class, too.
But I did too.
In terms of rebooting and reimagining the X-Men franchise, I mean, that's kind of the problem
with with.
Well, they screwed the timeline up again.
They reset an already f-ed up timeline thanks to Wolverine and all these other movies.
We're going to reset it with Days of Future Past.

(47:06):
It's like, all right.
Yeah, I'm not saying it was a mistake to bring in Hugh Jackman's Wolverine into the
first class timeline, but it definitely complicated things.
I really did appreciate in X-Men first class, the very first movie when Magneto and Charles

(47:29):
Xavier are assembling their team and they go to the bar and they have that wide shot and
they zoom in and you can definitely see that it's Wolverine sitting with his back turned
to the camera.
They come up and I'm Charles Xavier.
I'm Eric Lynch.
Go fuck yourselves.
And then they just walk out.
I wish that they would have just left it at that.
They tried to get Wolverine in.
It didn't work.
Who cares?

(47:49):
He's in the universe, but he's not necessarily part of this story.
Yeah.
And then they brought, well, he's such a moneymaker for them that they had to bring
them in immediately for Days of Future Past, which actually was a good movie, a little
complicated, but again, plays with the timeline too much.
But in between all that, I mean, those to me are some of the high marks of this universe.

(48:10):
Some of the low points.
I mean, like there was just a slew of just mediocrity and like, and then just under mediocre
where it's not completely terrible, but it's not really good.
Like Daredevil, I would say falls there.
Electra falls.
It's just kind of like, I really like Daredevil up until the third act when it got really,
really CGI heavy.
Yeah.

(48:30):
I didn't mind Ben Affleck as I didn't either.
And I really liked the Daredevil story in terms of it's a man tortured by his own self
imposed crucifixion.
Like he's kind of killed, man.
Yeah.
He's literally putting himself on the cross and saying, whoa, is me.
How do I burden?
I take this burden and everyone around him's being like, just come off the fucking cross,

(48:51):
dude.
Just you don't have to.
It's okay.
Yeah.
But then in the third act when it just becomes this wild CGI action schlockhouse thing.
All right.
Miss me with all that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So again, it just suffered largely from mediocrity.
I just mean, like, is this movie going to be any good or not?
And they kind of got it right with two of the X-Men movies, the reboots in first class

(49:13):
and days of future past.
And then they immediately threw it away with apocalypse and the dark Phoenix.
Dark Phoenix was bad.
And you could tell that they were going to use scrolls and then that went away.
But well, yeah, that's just the X-Men universe, though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(49:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it just, the actors are now demanding more money to be in this franchise.
We're cutting the budget on everything else.
And so do with that with what you will.

(49:54):
Here you go.
Here's your ingredients.
We're cutting them in half.
But also, we expect twice as much.
And it just becomes burdened by the weight of the machine itself.
Does that make sense?
No, it does.
It does.
And it wasn't all unified either.
There was aspects to jump over a little bit to some of the other franchises.
we mentioned Electra and Daredevil.

(50:16):
Like, you know, my honest to God opinion,
I've seen this movie a lot.
Like Ghost Rider really missed the mark
in terms of tonally and like.
Blast funny.
But can you like drop the Nick Cage thing for a second?
I'm talking about from the character
to what it was on screen.
Blackheart was not Blackheart.
Like the way that they,
it missed the mark in terms of what makes Ghost Rider special.

(50:37):
You can love Nick Cage's performance all you want.
It does get very cagey.
I'll give you that.
But I'm saying in terms of tonally what we wanted
Ghost Rider to be, this ain't it.
This ain't.
I would agree with that.
This ain't it.
He does a version of Ghost Rider.
It's not necessarily my version of Ghost Rider.
To me, yeah, just like.
But he's still awesome in that movie.

(50:57):
I didn't say that.
I said in the movie,
I didn't say anything bad about Nick Cage.
I just asked him.
Better not.
Just drop him for a minute.
It's much like Tom Hardy's Venom.
That is not the Venom that I see
where I read the comic books.
I don't mind watching him do it cause he's fun.
But this is not, to me, this ain't it.
Right, I hear you.
I hear you.
And so same thing with that.
Fantastic Four, that was another Marvel Fox movie.

(51:20):
Where I get why they did it.
Fantastic Four, their whole tagline
is we are the first family.
So I get why director Tim Story did it.
How you know that?
I don't know.
He also directed the Haunted Mansion movie
that we talked about.
Again, saw his name and we're like, oh, he did that.
I thought you were gonna say Toy Story for a minute?

(51:40):
That was gonna be like, oh, he's off by like two letters?
They had Bruce Tim and Tim Story.
Anyways.
So he did the Fantastic Four movie.
Which there were parts of that I really liked.
I believe that they were a family.
I liked their dynamic in terms of like,
they got the Johnny Storm thing,
how they mess with each other a lot.

(52:01):
Mr. Fantastic and their chemistry was not believable
whatsoever.
No, no, no, that's not, but I think.
But Michael Chiklis was fine as the thing.
I agree.
I didn't bump up against Chris Evans as Johnny Storm.
I like that.
But again, after the first movie it was like.
I liked what was the name?
Not Julie McDermott.
Julie McMahon?

(52:21):
No, Julie McMahon, that's it.
From Nip Tuck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was, again, you're talking about Dr. Doom here,
so I can't abide.
When he's just dropped the Dr. Doomy.
Yeah, but like they did it more like 1960 style
when he was more just villain of the week
when it's like, oh, I'm going to freeze Mr. Fantastic

(52:42):
and then I'll be away to get away with my diabolical scheme.
Then I'll sneak into the Baxter building
and know all of his secrets.
Yeah, like they did a more like plankton and,
that's kind of like plankton and spongebob.
That's kind of the character he was,
so they went in that direction.
But by then it's like post-secret wars,
he was a vastly different character.
It's like, oh, this is the guy that you call in.
Like it's like every person that writes for Batman now,

(53:06):
you can't use the Joker.
Like if you're doing a Joker story,
you got to be sure where you're going with this
because you don't, no one.
You can't just play around with Joker.
Like Scott Snyder in, what's his name?
Greg Capullo when they did their Batman run.
They only did one Joker story, it was death of the family.
He had made like, he was hinted at and other things,
but largely he had disappeared.
But what an impact they did with that.
Yeah, and they're like, so we're doing this Joker story.

(53:28):
And then later, the next writer that took over,
it was like, we're going to do war of jokes and riddles.
And it's going to be a Batman like early on in his career
story and that's what we're doing with the Joker
and that's one.
There's certain characters that you get one chance
to really like to call your own for a minute.
And you have to hit the mark.
Like you can't just futz around with it.

(53:49):
Right.
And so they did a version of Dr. Noom
that was very much so before he had the reverence
of that character.
So I'm not like entirely mad.
I don't think that's the actor's problem.
I think he did a perfectly great job.
He certainly looks the part, he's handsome.
He's got a certain erudite and arrogance about him.

(54:09):
Like I dig that.
I think that he's hindered by the character arc.
I think he's hindered by the writing.
I think he's hindered by a lot of the faults of the movie.
But he himself did a perfectly suitable job.
And the idea that individually he can take them all down,
their strength is in them being a family and working together.
I get it.
It's a family movie.
You got to pitch that.

(54:29):
So like that was fine.
Like again, but it's just on the grand scheme of things,
these movies are just kind of not,
they weren't really hitting.
In terms of what as comic book fans,
it was like I get you're trying to appeal to a large audience.
But in this process, which we've talked about before,
you're really doing neither.
Which spawn was the biggest culprit of that.
Again, not a Marvel movie.
But in your want to get everybody, you got no one.

(54:51):
Exactly.
And that's what largely these movies were.
It was just a series of like.
How do we appeal to the mild success?
How do we appeal to both the hardcore comic book fan,
but also appeal to the biggest audience possible?
And at some point, you can't do both.
There has to be a, you have to go either or away with it.

(55:13):
Like maybe not lean completely into it,
but it's never going to be a 50-50 split.
You're always going to have to make the hard decision.
Like, OK, are we going to offend the hardcore fans
by just making for mass appeal?
Or are we going to alienate certain members of the audience
by going into the fan service?
Yeah.

(55:33):
Yeah.
It's like if we're watching a Street Fighter movie,
like I want Ryu to do a Hadouken.
Well, that's silly.
We're grounding it in reality.
Yeah, maybe you should rethink your pitch.
Right.
The whole reason I played this game
is so that I can throw fireballs and electrocute people.
Like what are we talking about here?
Right.
You know?
Well, it's a grounded in reality.
No.
Picture this.
It's a Batman movie, but he never puts on the cow.

(55:56):
Like, so you want to make a Bruce Wayne movie?
Like, that's called American Psycho, dude.
He already played that role.
Don't fucking do that.
For real.
So I don't know, man.
I just wanted to talk about kind of where we,
where it all started in terms of these Marvel movies.
And we'll do a much larger, we're
going to do a whole MCU dive one day when we actually get on YouTube.

(56:16):
Oh, Lord.
But it's going to be a 14-hour podcast.
It'll be a three-part segment.
We'll wrap it up in X.
One, act one, introductions, two, boring.
Three, wrap that gaffel up.
Coming soon to the Westman Watch podcast.
But I just wanted to kind of touch on that and what that,

(56:36):
what it all meant to you, what some of those original movies
meant to you before we take a break and start
talking Deadpool and Wolverine.
Oh, they meant, they meant so much to me.
Because as a comic book fan, I'm admittedly,
I'm not as voracious a reader now as I was then.
But at that point in my life, I mean, mid-90s to early 2000s,

(56:57):
I mean, I was snapping up every comic book.
I'd get my hands on it.
And I was so into it.
And so to have these movies come out, starting with Blade,
and then moving into the X-Men, then moving into the Spider-Man
movies, then moving into what have you, what have you.
Spider-Man was the universally first,
besides, obviously, they were sparing.

(57:17):
It was like Superman was like, oh, crap, this is really good.
Spider-Man was like, oh, this is good.
And then there was a long lull of just crap.
And then while X-Men made money financially,
Spider-Man was the one that universally was like,
oh, this is good.
Well, because at that point, they brought in,

(57:38):
that was the studio bringing in all the money.
They had seen, again, like they had sort of seen
the successes and the failures of the previous movies.
And they knew what worked and what didn't.
We can't put Spider-Man in a realistic costume.
We got to have that shit be comic book accurate.
Because people saw the X-Men movie and went,

(57:58):
but it's black leather.
Yeah.
You know?
So again, those movies, they were cutting down the jungle
so that the rest of the company could come through.
Whether they knew it or not, it was a crucial and brutal time.
Because although we were so happy that we

(58:21):
were getting some version of our favorite stories
and our favorite characters, we were also very, very critical
of what was presented to us.
Perfectly said.
Perfectly said.
It's like, we'll take what you can give us,
because we were asking for steak, and you're
giving us chopped up steak sandwich.
We're like, mm.

(58:41):
Right.
Right.
There's some things in here that are OK.
But it's not quite what I was asking for.
I'm appreciative.
Yeah.
Because you're giving it to me, you know.
But still, it's not quite what I asked for.
And I think that those movies had to exist so that other movies,
such as Deadpool versus Wolverine, which is almost

(59:04):
completely fan service, could exist.
To its good and detriment, yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So I don't know.
It was an odd time.
If you're a newer listener and you weren't that familiar with,
or newer in life and listening, I should say.
And you weren't really alive for those times.
I was 14 in 2000 when X-Men hit.
So I was, and I have strayed away from comics a little bit,

(59:25):
but I came back probably in 2000, and I think by 2006 or 2007,
I had kind of come back.
But man, that was a whole different ball game,
like dealing with those movies.
I remember watching X-Men and wanting to like it.
I remember being like, sure.
And I walked away being like, I'm glad it exists.
I got to see Cyclops do Cyclops things.

(59:45):
And they still do little things that piss me off,
like in X-Men 2 when they go to Colossus.
And instead, you could have just phoned in a phony, baloney,
Russian accent and have him just go, don't worry.
I got this.
That was actually better than the accent they did in the movie.
They didn't even do it.
He just was American.
He's just like, I got this.
Go ahead.
And it's like, come on, man.

(01:00:06):
And I understand that it's not going to.
It takes this much more effort to give us the thing that we want.
And we will lose our minds.
And it's not even like that line would have made the difference
if it was a good or bad movie already.
But it does make a difference.
It's right there.
Because it's how you do anything.
It's how you do everything.
Are we doing this with reverence to the material?
Or are we just going, eh, it's kind of X-Men based movies
in reality?
Sure.

(01:00:26):
Right.
Right.
It's X-Men-ish.
Yeah.
And you're like, man, come on, dude.
So I think you summed it up perfectly where it was like,
we'll take what we can get.
But once really the Dark Knight and Iron Man hit,
it was a different ball game again.
But we will take a break now if that's right with you,
unless you have something else you
want to talk about with our love letter to the previous.

(01:00:47):
Oh, no.
I think we're going to touch more on that when
we get into the main feature of it all in terms of how our,
not just our reverence for these movies,
but how Deadpool and Wolverine also
pays reverence to these movies.
It's really a love letter.
It's a love letter to an X. You know what I mean?

(01:01:07):
I see what you did there.
Yeah, we've got to go out on that note.
So we will be right back after this message from our sponsor,
your favorite coffee mug.
If you're a co-worker, don't get your greasy mitts around it.
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(01:01:54):
And we are back.
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(01:02:16):
Alright, well we hope you enjoyed your respite from us here at Whatcha Been Watching, but
we have got to dive in deep, maybe a day late, but certainly not a dollar short, about the
billion dollar grossing Deadpool and Wolverine.
That's right, son.
We have thoughts, maybe some of them are original, maybe some are not, maybe you're gonna agree,

(01:02:40):
maybe you won't.
So overall what'd you think?
We are not gonna do a play by play, we're not gonna tell you the events in the movie.
Go see it if you haven't.
From this point on, we are spoiling it very heavy.
That's right.
You're in the kitchen right now and you're like, oh I still haven't seen that movie.
I'm gonna keep rambling for a little bit just because this is gonna be your true spoiler
warning.

(01:03:01):
So if you need to come to your speaker and or phone and turn it off, you got about three
more seconds.
Well Michael and I prepare ourselves to talk about Deadpool and Wolverine.
And with that being said, final spoiler warning, can't talk.
And we're good to go.
They have Gambit in this movie.
They have Gambit.

(01:03:21):
So we tried to warn them.
So what'd you think, man truly?
We could start right there on Gambit if you want.
We did, the reason why we wanted to frame this earlier and the way that we did set this
episode up is this movie, I think the hype of it was really that it was going to be,
especially with them saying it in the trailer, of Wade Wilson saying, am I Marvel Jesus?

(01:03:45):
Right, right.
And I'm happy to report that this movie is not the savior of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Not at all.
It is not trying to be.
It is a giant band-aid in terms of their production and the fact that they can still
produce quality.
I'm glad that largely they did not put their, I'm going to say this is going to say stink
like it's a bad word, but like that they didn't get their stink on this movie from trying

(01:04:06):
to overly connect it with other things that are going on.
This movie largely stands alone on its own as long as you can accept the TVA from Loki
and that there's multiversal madness going on.
Yeah.
Exceptually all you need to know from the other movies.
Other than that, it's all Fox related.
So we wanted to set this up as a framing device to say what this movie does for us, the way

(01:04:29):
we view it is, it is not an introduction of Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe
as much as it was a farewell to the movies that got us here and the Fox Universe and
some of the like the Sony movies like Ghost Rider and I think the New Line Cinema is one
that own production for Blade and it's a send off to those characters that we never thought

(01:04:51):
we'd get a chance to say goodbye to and so it's really.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I think that more than anything this is it's not it's not Deadpool joining the MCU.
It's a farewell to like old friends.

(01:05:14):
It's not necessarily burying them but getting giving them the final send off that we all
kind of felt like they deserved.
Yeah, you're we're dancing with the girl that brought us here.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or or even better, we're dancing with our prom date from, you know, at like at the 25

(01:05:35):
year reunion.
Yeah, it's it's it's checking up with them and seeing how they've changed and grown and
sort of we're we're in different spots now, but we always sort of remember what we had.
And yeah, why not?
You know, why not share one one last dance and sort of maybe not see if we can rekindle

(01:05:55):
the magic, but at least reminisce about how it made us feel.
Yeah, yeah, we've all grown a little bit since then.
Truly things are different.
No, I guess.
Good analogy.
So I think that's really the point of this movie and I'm glad that it exists for that
reason.
I mean, there's not some like, oh, he's going to come in and save the universe and we're
introducing Dr. Doom and we're introducing Galactus and the Fantastic Four.

(01:06:16):
Like, thank goodness, this is kind of they play around on Deadpool Island a little bit.
Now all that being said, before I get into it, this is not me being hater ass, you we
can ring the alarm later for me.
I want to say I largely very much so if we are talking about the point of me going to
a movie does it entertain you, I can wholeheartedly say this movie entertains the absolute shit

(01:06:40):
out of it.
Yes, I had a great time watching this movie, me as well, especially the more I take it
to a surface level, the better this movie is.
But OK, I would kind of disagree with you on that one.
I think that for better or worse, like I said, this really is a love letter to the Fox movies.

(01:07:02):
And in a weird way, this movie rewards you for being there from the beginning.
Like it rewards the fans that watch Blade and Daredevil and all the X-Men movies and
all that.
But more than that, it rewards people like you and me who paid attention to all the backstage
drama and how things were being built and sort of the I hate to say, but like sort of

(01:07:30):
the entertainment weekly of it all.
In terms of, oh, well, this movie got put into production hell for two years and it
went through several different directors, changes and cast members and this, that, the
other.
So that being said, it does a great fan service to people like you and me who have been so

(01:07:52):
heavily invested in this.
But I think on the surface level, a lot of those jokes and a lot of those nods are going
to be lost on on maybe the casual viewer.
So for better or worse, like if I hadn't already been privy to all of the knowledge and all

(01:08:15):
of the cameos and all of the inside information, I probably would be really lost in a lot of
the humor of this movie.
I don't know.
I can't put myself in those shoes because I do know the inside scoop.
I know the people that don't care at all about that stuff.
Every person I know that's seen it has genuinely loved it.

(01:08:35):
Sure.
Sure.
And the sense of is the action good?
Yes.
Is it funny?
Really?
I think it works better as a comedy at times and it does.
Oh, absolutely.
It's really, it's for sure.
It's a joke a minute.
It's for sure a comedy movie.
It's Axl Foley.
It's a buddy cop movie.
Absolutely.
It's a team up film.
Yeah.
So with all that being said, though, there are there are some misses and one of them being

(01:08:58):
it's hard for me to invest what I know of a Deadpool movie.
And the friend like we said earlier, and this is why we are so good at our jobs because
it's a callback.
The first Deadpool movie is a love story.
And I know a lot of movies you can frame it as Oh, these two are in love.
So it's a love story, but it really is.
This guy does this thing and then he's afraid that he's some hideous monster to his beloved.

(01:09:21):
And so he's afraid to even let her know that he exists again and is trying to win her back
and protect her at the same time and all this stuff.
And that's why he does what he does.
But it works that way.
And so the first movie is very much so like that.
The second one works is Deadpool.
He's very attached to his family.
He's about Deadpool too.
Deadpool one and two.
It's he largely is expanding this family and growing as a as a person.

(01:09:44):
Sure.
And in this one, like spoiler alert again, we're not last time we're saying it, but like
they him and Vanessa break up off screen.
Yeah.
And like, okay, and it lacks the emotional resonance.
And I get why they did it is they're trying to fast forward to the point of the point
of this movie is to see these two buddies go at it.

(01:10:05):
And so they want to get to the point that we all are.
It is a Deadpool and Wolverine movie through and through like there is they are damn near
in every single scene and Wolverine comes in really fast.
Yeah.
You know, and so it is not a lot.
And I waste a lot of time getting there and it's not a slow burn.
Yeah.
And so for for better or worse, it kind of works that way.
But then also with Wolverine, they spend so much time of just their current adventure

(01:10:26):
that like we don't even see why he hates himself so much.
It's just assumed and this movie, I mean, they, he does mention some sort of line, but
they don't show it.
They spend no, they spend no more time with him in his backstory as to why he's sad than
they do with them showing Vanessa breakup.
I agree.
They show enough to let you know this is what it was.

(01:10:47):
And that's it.
It falls under the sin of they tell you don't show you.
Yeah.
And in a movie that's a cardinal sin of like, I'm not saying we have to go into like the
entire whole flashback, but you have to do more than a throwaway line of like, oh, me
and Vanessa broke up or, oh, I let the X-Men die.
Yeah.

(01:11:07):
It's like, okay, so you gave me the reason.
I get it.
But I don't, I don't feel the impact of it.
I don't, I don't understand why that resonates with that character.
And that's, that's the thing that with this movie that it makes it for lack of a better
term.
It's not that Deadpool movie.
It's the most Deadpool movie you're going to get.
I mean, in terms of the other two, though, it's, it's kind of different in that sense.

(01:11:29):
For sure.
And if you didn't know how much he cared about Vanessa and how much time you see just undid
time the fabric of reality to get her back.
So you know, that's kind of a big deal, which they did hilarious fashion because it was a
post credit scene.
Sure.
Right.
It's a very funny sequence.
And so he does all that because Vanessa dies.
He brutally tries to kill himself over and over and over and over in the second film,

(01:11:51):
Deadpool does.
And so they just kind of in this one like, Oh yeah, we broke up.
And if you had not seen that, I assume everyone's seen one and two to get to three.
So I guess they're not trying to spoon feed your audience to a certain level, but it does
lack the emotional punch there.
And they make up for it with it being a Deadpool and Wolverine movie because their chemistry
is so good.
Exactly.

(01:12:11):
But if, if you were to just look at it that way, like there's really no gut punch in this
one.
Yeah.
That's one of the things that really rub me in this movie is, and I kind of talked on
this earlier, it's a movie that sacrifices plot and continuity just for the sake of cameos.
I mean, essentially, and fan service, really, I would call it fan service more than cameos.

(01:12:33):
Sure.
Sure.
Sure.
I mean, when you call a movie Deadpool and Wolverine, obviously you want to get to them
fighting and or teaming up as quickly as possible.
And they do.
Yeah.
I think that this movie pulls on the thinnest of threads in order to make that happen.
Again, it gives me just enough to where I can sort of in the back of my back of my mind,

(01:12:57):
except like, OK, that's that's the bridge we're using to get to the next fight sequence
or to the next plot point or what have you.
But even then, it's a rickety bridge.
Yeah, it's it does suffer a bit of that.
I'm not necessarily saying this is Marvel's fault because I don't know how much they would
intervene on this, but it does seem to suffer the Marvel kind of flimsy bad guy kind of

(01:13:19):
flimsy like like lack of development in some areas for certain people.
And even worse than that, it's trying to draw on too many sources at times.
Like it's it's it's trying to integrate, you know, the TVA from the Loki series.
It's trying to integrate all of the Fox movies with the cameos from Gambit and Blade and

(01:13:40):
Electra and, you know, bringing Cassandra Nova.
They don't really explain who she is, but we sort of understand that she's tied into
Charles Xavier somehow.
To be honest, thank goodness, because that was a what's his name, Morrison, Grant Morrison,
character and boy, he gets into the weird in the back story is.
Yeah, yeah, fetal psychic battles and stuff like between Cassandra Nova and the proportions

(01:14:07):
that grow up in the sewers and are feed themselves surely by pure willpower.
Yeah, it's wild.
Yeah, so anyway, glad they stayed out of some of that.
But even still, like, I mean, the thread between who Cassandra Nova is and why she's important
is just like, OK, she's kind of like Charles Xavier, but a scanner darkly.

(01:14:28):
Yeah, wait, yeah.
And also it's.
She's kind of unnecessary when you think about it.
The bad guy could have easily been paradox.
Yes.
And she could have just been in the way and had nothing to do with him.
But I guess they got a loosely tied together of, hey, our deal is that you get to rule
the void or a part of the void, but you leave us all alone.
Because we're actually genuinely afraid of you.

(01:14:49):
And she's just like, no, I'm just going to destroy everything between the voids.
All right, I guess it kind of works, but it's kind of thin.
But like her like her turn happens with no setup with no like there's.
Oh, you betrayed me or you tried to.
So right.
And now all of a sudden now I must destroy everything.
Yeah, I'm just between the voids are a little arrangement is broken.

(01:15:11):
It's like, all right, I guess.
So they do suffer a little bit of the Marvel fate and some of the underdeveloped villains,
which Marvel typically has a villain problem largely.
And another thing is is why I brought up the idea that lacks the emotional punch.
And this is just a testament to how familiar and how desperate we are as a as a moviegoer

(01:15:31):
to see something like this is we we have to remember that the Wolverine that we're looking
at is not our Wolverine that we spend all this time with.
It's not the bad movies.
It's not the Logan.
It's not the X-Men origins.
It's completely separate.
Yeah.
Splinter universe.
The worst of Wolverine.
Yeah.
And it's funny because we just dump as an audience member, we just dump all of our emotional

(01:15:56):
attachment to that Wolverine right onto this one because it's we're just so willing
to accept this familiar face go play with Deadpool.
Like for whatever reason, we as an audience like those credits transfer.
Sure.
And he's done nothing to earn it.
He's like, he's not a likable guy in this movie.
He's a prick the entire time.
And we're like, look, and we know your heart of gold.
Like it's a different guy.
No, for sure.

(01:16:17):
It's like it's like Fresh Prince in season three when they just replaced Aunt Viv and
we were just supposed to be like, that's a different person.
But everybody was like, no, that's the same one.
Yeah.
So it's on a surface level, this movie kind of soars, like I said, to me, at least it
really kind of does.
And what was I going to say?
Oh, the other thing I want, unless you got the point you want to bring up.

(01:16:40):
No, no, I think that, yes, it it works on the surface level in terms of it's highly entertaining.
I think that a lot of the jokes are lost if you're not really heavily invested into like
not just the movie aspect or the historical, how do I put this, the cinematic history of

(01:17:05):
the movies, but also the backstage history.
The pop culture.
The pop culture.
Right, right.
The E entertainment tonight stuff.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I don't know how much of that would detract from the movie though, because I'm sure some
people, they wink at the camera enough to go like, OK, that's obviously an inside joke
to something.
I just don't get it.
Next joke.
Don't worry, the next joke that you will get is coming very quickly.

(01:17:26):
Sure, it works in the sense of this is this movie more than any other Deadpool movie winks
at the fourth wall very heavily.
I mean, like, it leans on it almost to the point of breaking it open.
But I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
That being said, it still has all the poop and fart and stupid juvenile humor that you

(01:17:51):
would expect from a Deadpool movie, so there's still plenty of that to keep you entertained,
even if you don't understand the pop culture references that they that they're digging
at.
No, I got you.
Like I said, in checking the box of does entertain you with source.
And I would say it's also gloriously over the top violin.
Oh, hell yeah.
Like two people that can't really hurt each other.

(01:18:13):
I mean, the fact that they have a huge knockdown drag out fight in the back of a home.
And I think it's a lot of fun to see.
Like they literally drive at some point in the movie, they drive the car into the wasteland
into the middle of the woods, and then they just decide like, we're going to fight.

(01:18:33):
And they have this whole glory.
The reason why they fight is why someone wanted to talk about good.
But like they have this whole like glorious wood scape to go romp around and do whatever
they want.
And the producers and writers were just like, no, let's keep it contained to a 16 by eight
foot square and just see what damage they can do.
And it's just them stabbing each other over and over and over again in glorious fashion.

(01:18:57):
But it still kind of makes sense.
Like in this, this is a violent over the top movie, but yet it's still so self contained.
Like this movie almost stands alone like microcosm.
Yeah, microcosm of a vein.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So there was a scene before they fight.
There's a wonderful monologue that Hugh Jackman delivers to Ryan to dead Wolverine says to

(01:19:23):
Deadpool.
And it's just pretty much about like you are the biggest fuck up there has ever been.
And he I'm not going to do it any form of justice, but ultimately like you are so pathetic
that like you are reaching out to the bottom of the barrel, bottom of the barrel Wolverine
to go save some people that probably don't give a shit about you.
You are he even calls them God's perfect idiot.
He's like, you're such an F up that you can't even maintain a relationship with a stripper.

(01:19:48):
He's like in the ironic part is, is that and he's like, and it's God's perfect joke.
He's like, God keeps you around on earth just to bother everyone in the great iron Neenie
punks.
It's the only thing is that you can't fucking die.
Right.
He's like, you've done that.
Like you are a joke.
Right.
Okay.
It's like the X men won't even take you and believe me, they take everyone.

(01:20:11):
And he rips into it.
It's such a good scene and Deadpool politely just kind of twirls.
He's like, I'm going to fight you now.
Okay.
And it's such a good scene because it's every Deadpool's always, I mean, it's self deprecation.
He's like, I'm going to make fun of you because it keeps me away from myself or whatever.
And he's always talking shit.

(01:20:31):
And he's like, got anything to say now mouth, Merck with the mouth.
He just takes a minute.
He's like, I'm going to fight you now.
Right.
And actually when Deadpool works at, even in the comic books, is he silly all the time,
but there's a scene in the comics that he does in one of the X uncanny X-Force runs
where they save this child or whatever.

(01:20:52):
And Deadpool was very silly the whole time.
And then eventually he comes and talks to the kid and it's just strictly business.
He's like, look, man, the world's going to hate you for what it is.
Why do you think I am the way I am?
I got to do something to entertain myself.
Like it's, and it's not just a joke to me.
I take this very seriously.
I just don't know what else to do.
So I'm butchering what he says, but he has a very hard time.
He's hard in only the way that he can do.
And that moment of him being really sincere for a second and being like, I'm going to

(01:21:17):
fight you now.
He's being dead serious.
He's like, OK, we're dropping this.
It's the classic conundrum of I have to make jokes about it because if I actually sat down
and analyzed how shitty my life is and how like how the trajectory of my life has been
nothing but misery, I'd crack.
I'd want it.

(01:21:37):
I'd want to die.
Maybe I have already.
Right.
But what else can I do but laugh in the face of the void, which he literally does?
You know, yeah.
It's it seems like that than make dead poor and he does have a heart of gold.
Like even in the first movie when he got, when he's before he becomes dead pool and
he goes and.
They show him as a mercenary.

(01:21:58):
He beats people up for hire or whatever.
And he intervenes on the one pizza delivery guy who's been stalking a girl.
Right.
Like he does.
You can tell he has a lot of heart in like the way he treats Vanessa and stuff.
Well, he gives the money back to her after she tries to pay him.
He's like, no, this one's on me.
Basically.
Yeah, it felt good to do.
So yeah.
And so there are moments of that.
And so really they don't show it in this movie, but you can tell his love for Vanessa

(01:22:21):
is still there.
And the reason kind of they kind of move through through it so fast.
And there's a meta joke that's in the very beginning of the movie, which I'll talk about
if we have the time about how bad it screws up the timeline.
But where Deadpool is talking to Johnny Favreau, who plays happy Hogan, who for those of you
who don't know, John Favreau, what you've been watching and also foggy Nelson.

(01:22:42):
Oh yeah, and response.
Right.
So what you've been watching while a famer first round ballot for sure.
He directed Iron Man, which is what the first MCU actually produced movie studio.
And so he was the gatekeeper of the MCU for a long time.
He was like, we set the standard here.
So Deadpool talking to his character, happy Hogan is this kind of meta joke of him being

(01:23:03):
like, Hey, I'm at Fox Studios and I want to join the Avengers.
And it's ultimately like, no man, Johnny Favreau is being like, we're done with that.
We're done with that.
Like we don't we'll call you if he needs to.
But we're not going to call you.
He talks about, you know, where's where's the big guy's like, man, he doesn't do this
one.
Yeah, he doesn't do stuff like this anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so it's a kind of a meta joke.
And his the reason why Vanessa breaks up with them is he's saying, like, it's great

(01:23:25):
that you're doing these little things like you need to do something that really matters.
And that is them saying, your universe, your Fox universe one, it doesn't matter anymore.
Sure.
And it's this giant thing of like, we're not doing matters.
Look at all the and it's so that's why it also kind of parlays in this perfect sendoff
for these people like, Hey, these people did matter, you know, we electrized into this
and like, they did matter.

(01:23:47):
And so it's him trying to join the MCU and that's kind of the framing device that they
use.
Now they botched the timeline in the sense of, and this is me pushing up my nerdy glasses,
which I'll give myself 30 seconds here.
He has the time watch at the end of Deadpool two.
And so he's allowed to play in time in his own universe.
But somehow he's allowed to cross universe to go talk to the earth 616 people.

(01:24:09):
So not only is it a time watch, but it's a temporal pad as well, which like that is
a power set that is like, it just doesn't make sense.
And then it does not make sense.
Yeah.
And so it's like, how did he get there?
And then he goes back to it just because plot because they needed him to be able to interact
with Johnny Favs.
Johnny Favs.
Yeah.

(01:24:29):
And I get it was a good scene.
I didn't even notice it until later.
And I was like, oh, that's literally him saying like, you know, the metaphor of like,
I'm going to say this directly without saying it.
It's like, I'm going to tell you the story of, hey, I'm over here at Fox and I want to
join the big dogs over there at Marvel.
And we're all filled up.
We don't really have a roster spot for you.
What you do.
And conversely, and Ryan Reynolds, like, I want to do something that matters.
I don't want to join the MCU and do that.

(01:24:51):
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course, like it's time to graduate.
Why shouldn't I come?
You know, I've been amateur league for so many years now.
Let me come be part of the pros.
And they were like, sorry, kid, don't have a seat for you on the bench.
Yeah.
So that's a very funny scene, which I genuinely appreciated.
I just wanted to mention, like you were talking about how, like meta in terms of Johnny Favs

(01:25:15):
shutting down Deadpool, joining the MCU, like, no, our roster is full.
Like there's a scene later where paradox is talking to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.
And he's basically talking about how like, you're the worst Wolverine we've ever had.
You know, we've ever seen you, you, you not only failed your team, but you ultimately,

(01:25:36):
like the failure of your team is what shut down your world.
And it's a weird, it's this weird meta in terms of like, maybe that was sort of the
producers voices talking about the Wolverine character like, yo, dude, you were supposed
to keep the franchise alive.
And you were supposed, you know, we penned all of our money and hopes on you and you
let it die.

(01:25:58):
Like, you know, like as Fox executives, you know, and so, and so there's, there's, there's
sort of this meta, like not only did his character let his friends die, but Hugh Jackman could
be argued for better or worse.
Also let not just his friends, the X-Men die, but the entire Fox universe.

(01:26:19):
His best wasn't good enough.
He's done it nice.
He's been in 10 different movies.
Right.
Right.
I mean, like, you, you, you work.
It's a weird way to look.
I might disagree.
You work the field, the field, you will long enough and eventually like, she don't plow
no more.
You know, right.
No, that's the interesting way.
I didn't think about it that way.
But again, it's a little bit of a stretch, but I could see the parallels there or the

(01:26:41):
paradox there.
I like it.
I like it.
The only thing I also wanted to bring up, well, not the only other thing, but this is
so funny and we got it.
We should have brought this up when we were talking about X-Men origins.
But you remember way back in the day, this is how fduff the internet is.
When they cast Heath Ledger as the Joker and everyone lost their mind.

(01:27:02):
And then before that, same thing with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.
Like he's too old.
He's too this.
Now, one of the originals of this casting Hugh Jackman as Wolverine back in 99 when
they ammouse it in Wizard magazine was controversial because as they, as you see in the movie when
they did the comics, accurate Wolverine, when he's hops down the bar, he's like five foot
two.

(01:27:22):
They're like, he's too tall.
He's too this.
He's six foot four.
He's too muscular.
He's too handsome.
Yep.
And that was not hairy enough.
And yeah.
And fanboys all over the world lost their minds.
And so it's funny now that we're like, this is the only person that can play.
That's right.
So it's funny, man.
And we're wrong often.
So it is for those of you that don't know that Hugh Jackman was a controversial cast

(01:27:44):
for Wolverine back in the day.
So just how far we've come so now that we can appreciate him and give him a proper send
off or at least continue to play it till he's 90.
And that's sort of that's sort of one of the things I noticed about this movie is not only
is it is it a send off to the Fox movies in general, but it's a send off and a love letter
to Wolverine and Hugh Jackman character.

(01:28:06):
And so like it like there's a lot of reverence for the Wolverine character.
I mean, even though again, within the first 10 minutes, they literally dig up the corpse
of Logan and desecrate his bones.
But they ultimately do give the audiences what they want in terms of Wolverine is a

(01:28:30):
violent, broken man seeking to be a better version of himself, which really when you
get down to it is the most comics book accurate version of the character.
The self loathing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In terms of, you know, what I am the best at what I do and what I do isn't very nice
and not reveling in it, but self loathing in it, accepting it like yeah.

(01:28:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And really it it ultimately asked the question, can there be an X men without Wolverine or
specifically without Hugh Jackman as Wolverine?
And I think that it does a good job of closing closing that question or at least trying to

(01:29:17):
suture it up.
Like it may not close the wound completely, but it's at least putting more than a band
aid on it.
It's it's finally giving us a comics accurate version of Wolverine complete with costume
and mask and personality and, you know, all the quips and things like that.
I mean, the only thing they didn't do in this was a fastball special.
Yeah, pretty much.
You're going to mask.

(01:29:38):
What did you think about it?
I loved it.
I loved it.
I thought it looked a little, it looked a little off, but I'm so glad they just did it.
It looked like the really expensive version of like the Hollywood costumes version, you
know, like, like, oh, like, or like a cosplayer that invested a lot of money in their costume.

(01:29:59):
But again, it's a comic book, accurate movie or comic book, accurate costumes.
So like, what did you expect?
Right, right.
It was a weird part.
It kind of sat on his head just a tiny bit weird, but like it that's like the most nitpicky
I was like, I'm so glad to see a minute.
I'm not going to lie.
Right.
I mean, all the things like, yeah, it's pretty.
That's way down the list.
But I just thought it was like I said, we talked about how it's not our Wolverine, but somehow

(01:30:22):
that crance that those credit transfer, because he's so good at playing it.
Like we just accept this guy because like Daphne Keane says, which is the part that I wanted
to talk about as well.
This movie, it only slightly undercuts the emotional impact of Logan of the ending of

(01:30:43):
Logan, which is the perfect send off to the character that we're going to get.
It only slightly undercuts it, not by bringing him back, but by bringing back Daphne Keane
as X-23.
I was okay with that.
No, she was there, but it does undercut it some.
Well, because even so, you could argue that she's not necessarily X-23 from the original
timeline.

(01:31:03):
She's just a version of X-23.
No, I get that.
I get that.
But and it's necessary for her to have the conversation when they're sitting around the
fire.
And what does she say to him, something like, I'm just always the wrong guy.
Yeah, he says, I'm sounds like you're Wolverine.
Yeah, he basically says, like, you know, they keep asking me to save this universe, but I'm
the wrong guy.
And she basically says, you're always the wrong guy until you're the right guy.

(01:31:25):
That's why you're the Wolverine.
Yeah.
And so he's just so good at playing self loathing that you just believe this character as is.
It's like, you don't even didn't know what else he's been through.
You just know that whatever it was, wreck this guy and he's going to outlive all these people
to live with this shame a longer than anybody else.
Right.
So like that's the part that you get across really quickly.
We talked about how overachieving corporate ambition is the main villain.

(01:31:49):
Like ultimately, paradox is just selling a bill of goods that like he doesn't have
credit to.
He wants to over he wants to climb up the corporate ladder and he's going to use underhanded.
He wants to take the results of something that he's not supposed to be doing to the
boss in charge and go see what I did.
Right.
So what was that in Eastbound and down when the dude calls up Kenny Powers and he's like,

(01:32:11):
I want to offer you a team on a spot in the Miami Dolphins and he like leaves town and
calls off and then later the agent calls up the next day.
He's like, listen, man, I was on a big cocaine bender and like, I kind of overshot.
Like I'm just an accounting executive.
So yeah, that's kind of what it was.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We've talked about John Favre.

(01:32:32):
We talked about Kevin Feige being cool with the inside jokes.
We had a little thing saying about like, you know, if it's the cool thing, if Deadpool
making fun of you is cool, you certainly don't want to be left off the coolest.
Sure.
So we got to be able to take the jabs with it and some of them were pretty harsh.
And also, also I think in a movie like this, especially where you are trying to play on

(01:32:54):
the nostalgia of the Fox movies and sort of bring about the a little bit of what's
sort of I'm looking for.
You can't just talk about the good times without also mentioning the bad times.
Like I said, it's like meeting your ex at the 20 year reunion.

(01:33:14):
Like you can talk about like, yeah, and the night that we danced together, but also like,
yeah, but you also kind of cheated on me a little bit.
So I was like, you know, sorry to do this to you, Wolverine, but you're kind of joining
the MCU at a low point.
Right.
Right.
They constantly, and they have a big sequence of, oh, not a big sequence, but they have
enough sentences about like stop with the multiverse thing.
It's just old, nobody cares.

(01:33:35):
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Which I do, I just think they've, they've oversaturated it to get there, but they, the multiverse
in itself is a wonderful concept.
It is.
No concept.
And like the, if Kang were to play out the way, the potential of Kang playing out and
to be the most nefarious thus far would have been awesome.
There's a path to that that still could have really worked, but they just, they're taking

(01:33:57):
too many, it's all over the place right now and we've lost the common thread of just.
Well, and like you said, I think once you start introducing, it's like time travel.
Like once you introduce the fact that like nothing matters because we can just go to
a new world where things were.
The Rick and Morty of it all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so then what's the point?
Like there's literally zero consequence that matters.

(01:34:18):
Yeah.
No, that's a good point.
The last thing I kind of wanted to talk about in terms of just one of my nitpicks with the
movie, once they finally all team up and I want to, you, we all lost our mind collectively
when we got to the team up.
Obviously when Chris Evans came back and not as Captain America, but came back as Johnny
Storm.

(01:34:38):
That was a great scene.
We see all the classic X-Men villains.
There's just this movie has so many moving parts that I understand to be honest.
I kind of understand.
I wish they would have spent more time on Wolverine and Deadpool.
They're emotional investment into this, but there also are so many.
It does seem kind of just thrown together at the last minute or just like maybe not
thrown together at the last, but just like just because.

(01:34:59):
Yeah.
They're like, well, Vanessa, we got to fight for Vanessa.
And he's like, oh, I'm no good, but you can be.
And that's, that's enough to carry the movie, but it's, it's pretty thin.
Yeah.
Don't put a lot of weight on those plot points.
But I was especially like, there's that whole moment where Wolverine finds out that Deadpool
like lied basically, you know, he promised him like, oh, if you come, before they fought

(01:35:20):
in the, yeah, if you come help me save my world, then they're going to help you, you
know, change yours or, or, or recondition yours to where it never happened.
And then he still sticks around like literally his whole point for being in the movie at
that point is gone.
And Deadpool just makes one more impassioned plea.
Like you just have to help me save my family.

(01:35:41):
And Wolverine's like, okay.
No, no, no, that's when they fight.
That's when he pulls his, everyone I know is in this picture right here.
And that's when he's like, he rips into him about, you can't even save you.
He's like, you're a joke, dude.
That's when they fight.
But ultimately he does decide to help him out.
Yeah.
Via da, after they get kidnapped by the players that come in in terms of Gambit and, uh, Electra

(01:36:02):
and who has a funny joke about me again, a meta joke about her and Ben Affleck breaking
up.
Oh yeah, yeah.
It killed Daredevil.
So sorry for your loss.
She's like, eh, it's funny Joe.
Good on her.
I still love the line.
Wesley Snipes when they, when they, when they're gearing up for the big like final boss fight
with Cassandra Nova, some motherfuckers are still trying to ice skate up hills.

(01:36:27):
Right.
Right.
Um, and me seeing Gambit who gambit's got a lot of heat.
Can we please talk about this?
Well, I'll say this.
Yes.
I would love to talk about Gambit because he's one of my favorite X men.
Um, I'll say this.
I think I liked Channing Tatum's performance.
I do honestly think this, I think this is an exaggerated version of what I think he would
have done in the actual Gambit movie if it were, because he went way too comedic at points.

(01:36:51):
And it was funny.
You don't get me wrong, but if I know me, if I would have seen him say stuff like that
in a Gambit movie, I would have been like, come on, man, you're not dead.
I literally wrote, it sounds like Channing Tatum's accent is me trying to do a D and
D character.
No, no, I don't mean in the accent.
I mean in the comedic bits that he went.
No, like so over the top, you know, yeah, he was just like, he would say, and I'm sure

(01:37:12):
it was hilarious.
Like it's genuinely very funny to hear him say that, but it was like, I can tell this
is an exaggerated performance.
Sure.
But again, it's sort of poking fun of the character itself.
Like everybody was worried, you know, producers worried like, okay, well, he's Cajun, but
if we do a Cajun accent, then we're going to lose a lot of the audience because that's

(01:37:33):
admittedly a really hard accent to follow sometimes.
So they just make fun of it by having him just lean into it a hundred percent, you know,
just, oh, I can't wait to make a name out of myself over here.
I guarantee you, no, no, no.
You know, what about to make a name for myself?
When I come out my daddy ball, you know, come ready to fight.

(01:37:55):
Not my daddy, butter ball.
Yeah.
So I'm just saying, you can tell it was an exaggerated version of it.
But why not?
Again, that's the whole like, if you're going to, if you're going to bring in, bring in these
films and these characters for reverence, you have to look at them warts and all.
Yeah, no doubt.
I just think because I don't know if he's going to be able to play a game again.

(01:38:16):
I think he's just like, screw it.
We're in a dead pool.
It's a highly improvisational scene.
Let's improv.
Let's have some fun.
And Daphne Keene and a couple of other actors and actresses have come out and been like,
I had to ask him to like the director to like shoot him single on those because I couldn't,
I kept breaking every time he'd go for it between him and Ryan, which is great to hear.
I mean, he's had a lot of fun.
But yeah, I mean, you bring in the comics, comic book, accurate costume because please,

(01:38:41):
even if it looks silly, like even if and on the surface, let's be honest, it's a silly
looking costume.
Oh, absolutely.
But why not?
But it's because it's like, if this is the last opportunity that Channing Tatum is going
to have to play Gambit, let's do it.
Let him swing for the fences.
Let them just do the thing and just let the chips fall where they may, you know, like,
of course it's going to look silly.

(01:39:02):
But wasn't that always sort of the big fear anyway that like, well, he's how do we, you
know, again, how do we placate the comic book fans by not having, you know, by having
a comic book, accurate costume, but also not alienate the rest of the audiences by having
him look ridiculous?
No, absolutely.
And I'm glad they leaned into it.

(01:39:24):
And for those of you that don't know the reason he makes jokes about being in the void, he
was Channing Tatum was going to make a Gambit movie.
He was really trying to champion for it for many, many years.
Oh, it got greenlit and stopped.
And stopped.
And we had a reintroduced production and rewritten and whatever.
And he was trying to just get it off the ground much like, with respect to him, much like
Ryan Reynolds did with Deadpool's.
Like I really have a passion and a vision for this character and what we can do with

(01:39:47):
it.
I would have been interested to see what Channing Tatum could have delivered because I think
he is a pretty dedicated guy.
Sure.
Certainly just by the amount of things he can do, tap dance and dance and sing.
And like he's a pretty talented cat.
But yeah, the reason, but yeah, they, they can the movie.
And so it never really came out, but it had been talks for a while.
Which is why.
For those of you that don't know.

(01:40:07):
Which is why he has that great line where they're talking about how they all came to
the void.
And he's like, I think I'll always be here.
Yeah.
I guess I might have been born in the void.
But I want to talk one more nitpick and then you can have the floor if it's all right with
you.
Good.
The last thing I'll nitpick this movie about, and it was a choice that the director made
that kind of threw me off.
Deadpool is known for its slow mo shots that go back into fast.

(01:40:28):
So they get really iconic comic book frames and panels where they slow it down and then
speed them back up and slow it down when they bend and reload and all these sorts of things.
When the final battle happened, or not the final battle, but the climactic battle of all
of the newly assembled Fox heroes goes up against Cassandra Nova's forces of the villains.
Who what I was going to say earlier was that I understand why they just focused on Deadpool

(01:40:51):
and Wolverine.
Because I would have liked to spend more time with those villains too.
But at that point it's like a 30 member ensemble cast.
Yeah.
Then then I get it.
That's why I kind of get whether like then it becomes Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
And we're just going to focus on this, this chapter of these two teaming up.
We're taking it like here's a little bit of back.
It's like a one shot comic book.
Yeah.
Kind of.

(01:41:11):
Like a very small story.
Right.
Like a limited run.
Right.
Like a three issue run or something like that.
Right.
Right.
So, but when they do go to battle Cassandra Nova's forces, they make a choice there and
it's they undo the typical dead Deadpool style with the slow and they use the shaky cam.
Right when the battle takes off and it didn't.

(01:41:32):
It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but it was a choice that I didn't understand in the sense
of I was asking myself like maybe they're trying to shoot around things if they only
had these actors for a couple of days and they can't.
I'll bet that's probably what it was.
Maybe, maybe it's a another thing I was thinking is maybe it is a sense of we are trying to

(01:41:53):
do this more the 2000s, the early odds style because that's when these movies were popular.
And that's kind of where I could see this Deadpool style or this John Wick style didn't
exist back then.
So we're going to throw it back.
I had not thought about that.
That might be too clever for the audience though.
Maybe, but like that's an inside joke for the production crew alone.

(01:42:15):
It wasn't.
And here's the thing.
It didn't totally take me take well, initially it did take me out of it.
Well, because it is such a different it's so different stylistic.
Yeah, it's like why are we shooting this like a saving private Ryan?
Like I want to see what's going on here.
So I don't know what it was a choice that the director made to go handy cam and have

(01:42:36):
it shaky.
It didn't it didn't ruin it.
It's not an unwatchable shot.
It's still there's a lot of really cool things that happen and you get a little moment from
each of the characters.
But there is a stark difference.
It's it is.
And it kind of took me out of it a little bit again, not a game breaker, not a deal
breaker or whatever, but I was like, I didn't understand the choice is all I'll say about
that.
And I thought that kind of I really wanted to see these them go at it and get these beautiful

(01:42:59):
frames that we get to see gambit slow mowing.
And you know, you got a little bit of it, but not really.
So that was the only other like real nitpick I had on top of that though.
I genuinely like the movie very much.
It entertained the shit out of me.
I'm really happy to see that they largely stayed out of it.
It still doesn't even feel like they stayed out of it.
Sorry that Kevin Feige and then it seems like they stayed out of it.

(01:43:21):
Okay, right.
Right.
In terms of the like I said, like the Fox movies being brought down by like audience
testing and corporate interests or whatever.
Hey, we got a shoe or you're we got a shoehorn and all this extra stuff for for the multiverse
we're working on.
Can you do it?
It's like just let this be what it is.
It seems like they stayed out of it.

(01:43:41):
It's flawed movie in some way.
But again, in terms of the entertainment value, I've only seen it once.
There are some flimsy points in the story.
But now that I know the cameos, now that I know the jokes, I'm curious if there would
be diminishing returns.
But I can say the first time I saw it, I enjoyed every single second of it.
So and there's something to be said for that.
To see it in an audience with people that lost their mind.

(01:44:02):
Well, I held my a good friend of mine's hand when it happened when Logan put on the cowl.
And you know, when we see Gambit walk and when Blade came out, holy shit, we lost it.
And so I literally was slapping Liz's thigh every every time like, oh, they're doing a
thing.
Oh, they're doing a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, again, I think it's it's perfectly serviceable as a fun, entertaining movie.

(01:44:27):
It's even better if you know the ins and outs and the history of not just the movies themselves,
but like the production and how they got made and sort of the all the intertwining spider
webs that got us to here.
But you don't have to.
It's not necessary.
On the surface, it's a gloriously violent hysterical satirical movie that I think either

(01:44:54):
to maybe to its own detriment, pokes a little bit.
It pokes a lot of holes in its own parachute.
It's probably to its own detriment, I think, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.
I do appreciate the fact that they're like, we're doing this as a send off to these characters
that we love.

(01:45:15):
And at the end of the movie, they play the Green Day Good and Riddent song that something
unpredictable can't sing anymore.
It's an actionable.
They play that while they play clips of want to be inside of your wife.
Right.
So they play that song.
Green Day Good Riddent's right.
And they play all the clips of how these movies have gotten made all the previous Fox movies

(01:45:36):
all the behind the scenes shots.
And it was really nice to see.
So truly is a love letter to that.
And they did the thing.
They weren't half in on the fan service.
They knew that like, if we're going to let fan service carry this movie, then fan service
has to carry this movie.
Right.
Right.
And couple that with the two actors that we've come to absolutely beloved, which is, let's
be honest, Ryan Reynolds was born to play Deadpool.

(01:45:57):
Yes.
And Hugh Jackman crushes it.
He crushes it as Wolverine in the generation on the screen.
So between that, can we let these two do enough things and float on a cloud long enough with
with heavy fan service between?
Surprisingly you can.
I mean, the movie made how much money on opening weekend.
So it'll be a trivia question about where it ranks in a rated R box office.

(01:46:21):
Yeah.
I mean, we, we, we talk about it like this.
I don't want to say this movie saved the summer blockbuster, but it at least inside out to
it and started it.
This and I think those two movies coupled at least kept it afloat.
It didn't necessarily sink the summer blockbuster.

(01:46:41):
It's got just enough life to carry it into next year.
And then we'll see how it goes.
Right.
Right.
Right.
So I don't know.
I got nothing else, man.
Overall, genuinely enjoyed the movie.
Do you got anything else you want to talk about or you want to review?
That's good.
That's, I think we've just about covered it, man.
Other than like, Oh, also just real quick, all the comic book covers that they did having
to see patches, having to see age of apocalypse Wolverine with the one hand, having to see

(01:47:06):
the classic.
What is the X-Men 351 or 551 or whatever it is?
531.
531 with either way with the one where he's crucified on the X and having to see Wolverine
in the, in the tan suit when he flashes his claws and you see the Hulk yelling.
That's a comment.
We're covered.
Didn't you fight the Hulk in this?
Yeah.
We're covered.
So again, if we're going to lean on fan service as the fluffy parts to get us through to the,

(01:47:30):
to back to these characters, let's lean on the fan service heavily, which they do in
glorious fashion.
But how the hell does the time slider work as a, as a interdimensional portal as well?
And then he loses that.
That did not make sense.
That did not make sense.
I will review it to Adamantium Katanas.

(01:47:54):
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
I was going to give it just the right amount of cameos.
Just the right amount.
Not too many, not too few, but they were tasty cameos.
Yeah.
A lot of Deadpool Corpse is my other one.
Yeah.
A little, yeah.
A lot of Deadpool Corpse, but either way.

(01:48:16):
Well, yeah, I appreciate it, man.
Thank you for rapping with me.
It's been a true honor to sit here and talk, comic book movies and the fact that we can
do this and people know what we're talking about on some level that they're popularly,
popularly cultural and relevant.
Rather than I just, just talking about some random movie from like, I liked that one.

(01:48:37):
Yeah, me too.
That was pretty cool.
Otherwise it'd be Michael and I breaking out his classic X-Men cards from tops and just
being like reading the stats of the back of these characters off.
Like, I still have them somewhere.
I'd find them dude.
Like known powers.
That's what it sounds like to most people when we talk.
Even if it's not superhero shit.
Well, my brother, on that note, it is always a pleasure to you at home.

(01:49:02):
We recommend for you to go watch a movie.
And as always, talk about it with somebody that you love.
Shniki, Shniki, Shnou.

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Episode #70 Deadpool/Wolverine and Love Letters to FOX

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