Episode Transcript
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(00:17):
From Geppetto Studios in New Freedom,Pennsylvania. Welcome to the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast,
your home for inclusive, positive geekculture where we talk about movies,
comics, music, books, andwhatever else we feel like. Please welcome
your host, an effortless cool BradMendenhall. Hey kids, it is episode
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two eighty six of the Cosmic GeppettoPodcast. Jarp Harden returns for another fix
it ep THEO so wow, wehave not done one of those in years.
We set our sites high. Todaythe Marvel Cinematic universe will be fixed.
Let's get to it. This isvery exciting because it said we started
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bringing everything full circle. As we'recoming down to like probably about the last
ten episodes of the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast, we go back to the first guest
isn't even the right term, Thefirst co host of the show, the
first person I talked to when Idecided to do the show. He is
back, Jarf Harden, Jarf,how you doing. I'm great? That's
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right, we're back together, freshfrom our humiliating first defeat in the Movies
by Minute trivia contest. It goesto show boy that one was tough.
It goes to show where my strengthsand weaknesses are in the world of movie
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trivia. Because I am really goodat oh, this is the director of
that movie, this is the moviethat Sean Connery wanna oscar for stuff like
that, I'm really good at that. But when it comes to the eagle
eyed minutia of movies, I'm notespecially strong. Yes, same and movies
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are in real life, yeah,oh yeah, yeah, yeah, in
real life. I'm better in reallife. Honest to god, that's pretty
much my job. It's just lookingfor little things that are wrong. But
it was and I remember there wasa game show about the Harry Potter films,
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and I've read the books, I'vewatched the movies. My kids enjoyed
the movie. So I've watched themovies many times. And it'd be like,
okay, there was a candle,how many rings were on the candles?
Like what the hell are you talking? And the contestants we're like,
oh, well that's twelve. Iwas like, oh my god, these
kids are so so so into it. I feel like I should be kicking
sand in their faces. But itwas for a great cause. It supported
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the cystic fibrosis Foundation. The fundraiserwas successful, so despite our own defeat,
we can you know it was alike moral victory. Yes, we
we helped put some good in theworld, and we weren't going up against
scrubs. I mean everyone was reallygood. So we're we're bringing back something
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we haven't done in a while,literally years. We're gonna fix something.
We found something in the world ofpop culture. It's not necessarily bad,
but we feel it could use acourse readjustment, and we're going to make
suggestions. Jarf, what are wefixing today? We're fixing the Marvel,
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the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mean, like you said, going back to
our earliest conversations on this podcast,back when it was called Movies at Marvel.
So we're going full circle. AndI think it would be interesting to
listen back to that first episode thatI was on talking about Iron Man and
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the very different way that we thoughtabout the MCU, when it was just
limitless possibility and the idea that movieswould come out that just by word of
mouth, I would decide, yeah, I don't need to see. It
was unfathomable to me, But herewe are. Back then it was two
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movies a year quickly became three moviesand the amount of excitement that everyone had
and just the tear of super ofcharacter, not in quality. But back
then when the Marvel Stomac Union universebegan, it was Ironman, Hulk,
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Captain America, Thor. Now,not all these characters had huge They didn't
have like, for lack of abetter term, the biggest Q rating.
Not everybody off the street would knowwho Captain America or Thor was. But
if you even had a passing familiaritywith com books, you knew who these
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characters were. They were a listin that world. And now looking at
it in twenty in the twenty twenties, where you know, the next movie
is going to the next Marvel movieis going to feature Captain Marvel, who
in the comics they're trying to pushup to that a list. Miss Marvel,
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who's a great character, but youknow she's a relatively new character.
She's that character has been around forwhat maybe ten years. And Monica Rambeau,
who who was always a favorite ofmine, but she it's a real
indication how many times that character haschanged names and changed power sets over the
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last twenty years. Because she's alwaysan afterthought, and the three of those
characters leading a movie is pretty astounding. But I have yet not yet missed
a movie in theaters. Every Marvelmovie I have seen in theaters, but
I'm not seeing them all opening weekend, and I'm not It used to be.
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I would see the movie in theatersopening weekend, and then there's a
second run movie theater not too farfrom me, and I would see it
a second time when it came tothe cheap theater. Not doing that,
and I have missed a lot ofthe Marvel TV shows. And if you
had told me, if you wentback in time and told teenage me,
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it's like they're gonna be Marvel TVshows that you're just gonna skip, I
would have found that very hard tobelieve. But that's sort of where I'm
at, and I have Disney Plus. Literally there's nothing keeping me from watching
this other than I don't feel likehitting that button on the roku. So
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I want to flag something in thiswhole idea of first wave of Marvel was
your A listers, and now goinginto phase five, we're doing movies featuring
B listers or lower. Now,I think that it's important to acknowledge that
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is coming from the perspective of usas a couple of middle aged guys.
So I think, especially with CaptainMarvel and Miss Marvel, whether they are
B list characters or a list itdepends on how old you are. So
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if you were in your prime comicbook buying age when the Captain Marvel solo
comic premiered, she might be ana lister to you. And same with
Mis Marvel. Yeah, and Idefinitely don't want to make it sound like
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I'm not trying to say that disparagingly. And Marvel's different where Marvel doesn't have
quite the same trinity of characters thatDC does. D C has Superman,
Wonder Woman, and Batman. Thosethree characters are the undisputed champions of the
you know, the most cultural awareness. Yeah, that's that's a great point.
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I mean true in the Silver Age, true in the modern age.
True today, They're never there neverhas been a character that to kind of
knock them off of Mount Rushmore.When it comes to cultural awareness. From
Marvel, you have Spider Man.I guess Hulk a bit because of the
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Bill Bixby Show, But I don'tknow is when it comes to cultural awareness.
Is there a third character that isat this before the Marvel movie started
happening, that was the same thing. They haven't been and they're only starting
to be part of the MCU.But I would say the third would be
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The X Men as a whole becauseof the nineties cartoon. Yeah, yeah,
because you got like nineties cartoon andthen like bang bang, the two
thousands movies come out right after that. You sort of alluded to it.
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Are there Marvel movies that you havenot seen in the theater? And keeping
in mind that because of COVID thatsort of changed the rules a little bit.
There are Marvel movies that I havenot seen period, or at least
one Eternals. I think that mightbe the only one. You are certainly
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not the only person who said thatEternals. It felt like the first Marvel
movie that was just a it wasa bit of a swing and amiss.
Uh. Financially, it didn't makehuge money. Nobody was excited about it.
You never see anybody if you goonline, if you go on the
YouTube, it's pretty quick to find. Okay, well there's a cool scene.
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All the clips of cool clips fromthe movies, you know, the
the Captain America elevator fight from WinterSoldier the Avengers Endgame, where Cap says
Avengers assemble, all those great scenes, uh, so many great sea haul
twerking. Yeah, there's just nothinglike that from Eternals. Nothing like grab
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grabbed the fans imaginations the same way. And it sort of hit me and
I actually looked in prep uh,which honest, folks, it is something
we do sometimes. Uh, forthis discussion, I sort of looked it
up and they are being very coyabout a second Eternal's movie, and oh
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really, every now and then someonefrom the first movie is like, oh,
yeah, there's there's gonna be asequel, and then then that same
person will be interviews, is like, well, nothing's really in yeah,
And I mean there's some great castmembers, and I've heard great things about
the director's previous work, but itwas a comic that I never cared about.
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And it's something like two and ahalf hours long, which I am
a fan of shorter movies. Forme, ninety minutes is the sweet spot.
So usually they're already starting longer thanI would like. And so those
were those were all the things thathave made me say it's not for me.
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Like, I'll keep it in myDisney plus Q and sometimes I'll toy
around with the ideas starting it,but it feels so daunting. I wonder
what's gonna happen. Because it didhave good cast members, it could be
very easy to slide over one ofthose characters, like find the characters that
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do work, and all right,they'll be in Thunderbolts, Marvels, whatever.
But it does feel like you wouldhave to reintroduce them and find a
different hook to make them interesting.What about the TV shows? Have you
been keeping up on those? Mostly? Yes, I have not seen Secret
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Invasion yet. I yeah, Ihaven't. With Secret Invasion, I don't
know if I find and Samuel L. Jackson's a great actor. I did.
I just for some reason, Ididn't find him compelling as a lead.
And I remember the Secret Invasion comicsand I skipped it so that there
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was like in a mini Clark,who is a who comes across. I
don't think I've ever seen her ina movie, and I never watched more
than like a little bit of Gameof Thrones here or there, so I
wasn't like invested in her. Soit was just okay, and I just
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didn't find it compelling. You know, I watched I watched She Hulk.
I like she Hulk, and Ithink there was definitely a place for it.
I watched the first few episodes ofMoonnight, and I just didn't feel
like I just never bothered catching upwith it. Okay, you're missing out.
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Moonnight is excellent. Maybe one dayI'll I left off at the second
episode. It's a little bit ofa slow burn. I mean, the
easy answer, maybe the right answer. There's just a lot of Marvel,
and then there's a lot of othercompanies trying to be Marvel. Is it
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just burnout? Now? Okay,So if we're before we start to fix,
if we're identifying the problem, Iam okay with Marvel creating streaming series
and movies that I'm not particularly interestedin. I don't see that necessarily as
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a problem, especially as like you'resaying, they're creating more and more content,
and if they are varying the content, it's just inevitable. There's gonna
be some things that it just doesn'tland for me period, or maybe just
does not land for me at thatparticularly time, particular time. So I
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don't feel like watching a spy Marvelshow right now, which is what I
imagine Secret Invasion is because it's aNick Ferry show. I mean, I
had spy Marvel show Agents of Shieldthat I watched and loved for many seasons,
and obviously it went in all kindsof directions that are not so much
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about spycraft, but it just,you know, sometimes it's just a timing
thing. So I want to kindof more focus on things in movies,
whether it's our cup of tea ornot, that really seem to be not
working or holding the MCU back.What's the first thing that comes to your
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mind when you look for that typeof problem. There there is a little
bit of visual sameness, especially fromsome of the action stuff, and I
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think my favorite, my favorite favoriteMarvel movie is a Winter Soldier, and
the action from that movie felt differentthan anything that had happened before it.
And you have some really they havesome really good directors, and I understand
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Marvel has a house style, butI feel like they've that house style is
starting to cost them some interesting directorsdoing interesting work visually. And I think
it was something that never bothered meand it has started to. And I
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one of probably my favorite Marvel's showwas WandaVision, and my least favorite part
of WandaVision was when they had tobig fight at the end with the two
visions fighting, and it just lookedlike so many other Marvel climaxes, right,
like, what's the first thing thatpops up into your mind? Or
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maybe start with that. No,no, I support what you're saying,
and mine is related to visuals too, but it's not about the staging and
action choreography. It's about the visualeffects. So big picture, the biggest
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thing that we need to do isimprove the conditions for VFX workers, and
the union has already made a bigstep forward in this direction because just recently
as we're recording this, Marvel StudiosVFX workers voted unanimously to unionize with the
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International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees andthat is the first time visual effects workers
have unionized with I A T sC. So this is like, you
know, Marvel's got its own inhouse VFX workers, So it's just like
a slice of the pie, butas something that can improve the product that
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Marvel makes along with improving their jobs, huge win. And then also you
know that can pave the way forother VFX workers because you know, the
Flash movie looked terrible. You know, this is a complaint that's you know,
far beyond just m CU. Yeah, it's we've become a little more
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aware of how overworked CGI houses andanimation houses are, and they're just overloaded.
I I enjoyed. Did you seethe uh Spider second Spider Verse movie?
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You know, I haven't seen thatyet, but that is actually something
that I'm dying to see, butI haven't seen just because like I'm in
the middle of like several series,or i have another movie that I decide
to watch because somebody's doing a oneoff podcast episode about it, and so,
you know, instead of seeing thenext Spider Verse movie, that obviously
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and I'll watch like a Sword andSorcery movie from the eighties. It's very
good, and there was a lotof talk about how successful that movie was
financially, not just creatively, andcreatively it was a it was amazing.
But part of why it was sofinancially successful is it had a comparatively low
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budget. It actually surprised me,and I'm looking up the budget as we
speak. It was the budget wasone hundred million dollars and it may it's
six hundred and eighty nine million dollarsglobal box office, so it made a
good chunk of money. But Iwas like, one hundred million dollars and
hey, folks, I know thisa lot of money. But for a
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Sony big budget movie, that's that'snot a lot of money. I was
like, oh, oh, that'ssomebody didn't A lot of animators who put
in a lot of hours did notget paid if that's the budget for that
movie. Uh. Same with theMario Brothers movie that made over a billion
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dollars and had a similar budget.It's like, wow, that's that.
That's really sort of scary because itwas a you know, U and I
watched Mario Brothers because my kids wereexcited to watch it. It was completely
fine. It was definitely a moviethat you know, had a couple of
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winks to the adults, but nota lot. But it was But just
like that, Like when I seethat, I just think it's like,
wow, a bunch of people didnot get paid a proper living wage if
they made that movie for that amountof money. I heard a great episode
of Today Explained, which is aVox podcast, and the title is why
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do Marvel movies look so bad,and they were talking about some of these
working conditions, like you said,VFX workers being overworked, and so obviously
union organizing is the best way toaddress that. But another thing they proposed
which I found interesting was bringing inproducers who are more experienced with working with
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digital effects, because they were drawinga contrast between The Little Mermaid and the
latest Avatar movie and like the qualityof visual effects, and a lot of
people called The Little Mermaid's visual effectsflat and uninspired, and you know vy
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views for Avatar and kind of like, what is the difference. One,
there's not this huge push for thedeadline where like a movie has got to
come out by a specific date andthen you know, they just end up
rushing the visual effects. Whereas JamesCameron, you know, he has the
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luxury of saying, I'm going tospend as long as it takes on this
movie until I get it right.Then also, he is one of the
most experienced directors working with visual effects. So you know, it's great to
bring in directors who bring a freshvoice to Marvel. But then it would
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be really helpful if there's someone ina producer role that is experienced and is
going to know how long things aregoing to take. So if they are
because Marvel is I mean, alot of things are getting delayed now because
of COVID and kind of like atrickle effect from that, but they're still
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going to ultimately be some deadline thatthey're rushing towards. So I think that
kind of behind the scenes direction wouldbe really helpful. So you know,
you get a better product another thing. And it's funny because it's almost a
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little bit counterintuitive to what I justsaid, where a lot of the people
working in the effects houses are gettingunderpaid. Also, conversely, a lot
of these budgets are too big.The last Fast and Furious movie lost money.
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It made seven hundred million dollars worldwide. Yeah, it made seven hundred
and fourteen million dollars worldwide and lostmoney because the budget for it was three
hundred and forty million dollars. Thebudget for that movie was so staggeringly big
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that it would need to make prettyAnd you know, I'm sure someone will
pick apart my math or will findsomething where, oh it did make money
based on this, or it didn'tlose as much as I thinking. But
it basically, when a movie isthat big a budget. It needs to
make like a million dollars to breakeven or to make a significant profit.
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I think back to the first Deadpoolmovie, which was made for a comparatively
small budget because Ryan Reynolds was notat a career peak. Deadpool was not
considered to be a prime candidate fora solo film based on not having the
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best cultural awareness, the poor receptionof the ex Wolverine Origins movie. So
they ended up giving it like abudget of sixty million dollars because it had
that small budget, because it didn'tneed to have as higher rate of return,
they could have an R rated moviethat was and we all forget how
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different the first Deadpool movie was.It was a lot of profanity, a
lot of yeah, and you know, it was certainly wasn't a perfect movie,
but it was a movie they couldn'thave made if it had a two
hundred million dollar budget. I wouldlike to see what could happen. Let's
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get let's get a really good directorwith an interesting visual style, Let's get
a daring script, and it's like, Okay, we're gonna this is gonna
be a cheaper movie, and we'regonna do something cool. We're gonna be
a little more creative with the effects. We're not gonna need We're not gonna
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need to make half a billion dollarsto even get close to breaking even that.
Some of the things that I've likedmost from Marvel most from Marvel over
the last few years have been sortof the under the radar stuff. I
really liked Werewolf by Night. Yeah, that's on my top five from Phase
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four list. That was cool.It was very cool, small budget,
low expectation. They just want peopleto watch it and enjoy it, and
I really did. And it wasblack and white, leaning into the horror
aspect with some great dark humor,almost like Tales from the Crypt style humor.
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I was like, Okay, thisis awesome. And they didn't have
to worry about making they didn't haveto worry about making everyone happy. Another
thing that I loved, this isprobably my favorite Marvel thing over the last
two or three years that I don'tthink anybody's that a lot of people aren't
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paying attention to, is the excellentMoon Girl and Devil Dinosaur TV show.
Have you had a chance to checkthis out? I've checked out a little.
I love that comic. The musicis amazing. It's really cool,
kinetic visual style, like great music, great art. It's it's a show
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that my daughter love seeing a younggirl as the protagonist and is so well
done, so well written, andyou know, it's it's a little bit
under the radar because and I wouldhate to think of if they tried to
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start with a moon Girl movie,a live action moongirl movie, what they
would have to do to make everyonehappy. Yeah, I don't want to
see her hanging out with a bigCGI dinosaur. So that what you're saying
about smaller budget, R rating,daring choices. It kind of leads into
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my next point, which is dialup the romance. The MCU is pretty
notoriously sexless, and I think it'stime to let our heroes be horny.
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And my number one from phase fourthat is heading in the right direction with
this is Sheehawk. She smashes forththe fourth wall and sometimes Matt Murdoch like,
that's the energy that I think weneed in this next phase. We're
not the first people to point thisout. Just an entertainment in general,
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there's been a loss of romance,sexiness, whatever, which is why when
every now and then a movie doeslean into that a little bit. You
know, despite the fact that theFifty Shades of Gray movies were terrible,
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people came out for them because itwas the first time in a while that
there was sexiness in movies. Again, it was really crappily done and also
gave a really bad message about aworld that the people who were involved in
this creation did not understand. Right. Yeah, so like like healthy sex
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positive horniness, to be more clear. And I think that she Haulk had
all of that. You know,she had her and it was like sexiness
words and all. So you know, she's going on all of these terrible
Tinder dates and then the guys onlydigger when she's she hawk and you know,
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because god, who would be intoTatiana Manslani. Oh, she's only
one of the most beautiful creatures onthe planet the rest of the time.
But I like the way. Ilike the way that she talked about her
hook up with Matt Murdoch and youknow, she said that, oh what
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I thought the episode was over.I thought we brought it to a satisfying
climax. And believe me, wedid something along those lines, you know,
those like winking, but like alsocentering a woman's pleasure, like all
of that is what we need moreof. It felt like they had a
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little bit of that at the beginning, where and you know, Tony Stark
in the first Iron Moon movie hewas a cat mm hmm, but he
was also you know, he wasa pleasure seeking individual. And even in
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the first Incredible Hulk movie there wasnot a lot, but they at least
addressed sex a little bit. Theyalso didn't ignore the fact that Edward Norton
has is a good looking guy witha ton of with with charisma. They
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had this there was the co thethe absolutely gorgeous coworker of Bruce Banner at
the bottling company who was making eyesat him the entire time, and there
was a neat little bit of flirtinessthere and it just got less and less
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the times were they've and it feelstacked on when they've done it. They
tried to have a little bit of, you know, addressing the fact that
Chris Hemsworth is a great looking guyin Love and Thunder, but it el
tacked on. So I think weI mean, let the heroes be horny
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and explore that as a motivation forthings they do, because that's a relatable
thing like that is something that humanizesthem. None of us have a magic
space hammer that we can fly aroundwith, but you know we can relate
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to like a relationship brewing and attractionand all of that. So it just
brings the Marvel characters back to that, like you're empathizing with them, Like
why do we love Spider Man,because like he's in every Man and he
feels a little bit nerdy, andyou know, he's trying to balance his
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home life and work and being SpiderMan, and so you know, I
think it's just a part of thecore of characters. That's kind of a
scene from the Marvel movies. Imean, aside from she Hulk, which
has sort of been established, doyou see any characters where that you think
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they could lean into that. Ilike the shang Chi movie, but they
really steered away from any sort ofromantic interest in that film, which you
know, you have there's a greatlooking actor with it's like, you're not
gonna try to give him an interest, you know. Marvel's they have not
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yet done anything trying to even addressa romantic interest for Carol Danvers, which
is interesting because in the comics She'sthey She's had a lot of romantic interest
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from everyone from Falcon to Wonder Manto even like flirting with Spider Man.
Is there a character you think theycould really do something cool with other than
well to address the characters that youbrought up. I kind of am okay
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with Carol Danver's stories focusing on otheraspects of her life than her romantic life.
I feel like there's just so manyways they could do that wrong in
a movie that they might be betterfocusing on her friendship with her fellow Marvels,
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you know that, and like friendshipswith women. I you know,
I see such an important character inthat regard. You know, you just
kind of have sense that they're goingto it up if they, you know,
introduce some dude that she's hot for. However, the character that they
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keep teasing us about is Valkyrie,and you know, in the press leading
up to thor Love and Thunder,Tessa Thompson said, what's the first thing
that she's going to do? Youknow, now that she is the head
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of Asgard, she's got to findherself a queen. It didn't happen.
Now there was you know, therewere sad flashbacks for someone who was her
girlfriend and spoiler alert died many manyyears ago, and you know now she
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is carrying all of that guilt andsorrow. That's just to be clear.
When I said I wanted Valkyrie tohave a girlfriend, that's not what I
meant. I meant like a romanceand dating and together and fun and sexy.
And Tessa Thompson is one of thesexiest people on the planet. Yeah,
she's got chemistry with everyone, solet her use it. How about
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you, Marvel, Marvel matchmaking.There's a Blade movie coming out, you
know, it's it's it's it's onthe board, and I think you could
have something really cool with a witha with a Blade film. I think
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that is uh for Marcia Shalla Aliis a I think it's Mahershela. I
think you're right, Mahershela. Ijust bad with names, but Mahrshela Ali
is an amazingly such a fantastic gravatazeand uh, great looking guy with a
(39:40):
charisma for days. And I think, you know, having Blade, if
you could, you could lean intothe blaxploitation, which Blade has dabbled with
in other films in the comm andyou know, Leen's at charisma and you
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know, the brooding hero, andI think you could give him. I
think you could find a bunch ofactors, actors who he could have chemistry
with, and I think it wouldbe really amazing. I think it's very
telling that one of the best sexystars that you've had was in the Netflix
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Marvel shows. You know, MattMurdoch and of course lou Cage, who
you know. They couldn't wait tohook him up with basically every female character
in that little Netflix universe because helooked really good with all of them,
right, And I think you coulddo that on a in a cinematic level
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with maherschel Aldi. So I thinkBlade, you could do something really cool
in that regard. What do youmean when you say lean into the blaxploitation
angle of the character? Blade hasa hit as roots in that supernatural blaxploitation
era, seventies era and a lotof that when when if you watch an
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old Shaft movie, it was allabout him beating people up and then hooking
up with a woman and then rinseand repeat. Now it was really misogynistic.
The Chaft films don't have not agedwell but modernize it where he's like
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lean into this, like it's therewas a sexiness to those movies and a
grittiness and really surviving on the presenceof these amazing these performers who honestly not
all of them were great actors,but they all just had an effortless an
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effortless cool and you were like,you're all about It's like, yeah,
I'm worried. It'd be cool tosee all these really sexy people and they
all like with great costumes and greatswagger. Is like, yeah, of
course you want to see them hookup. And I think you could lean
into that. I think you coulddo the same thing with a Blade movie.
(42:29):
I can see it with Maherschela.I think the character is tough,
at least the way that Wesley Snipesportrayed him, because a big part of
it is that he is so restrained. I mean maybe that is where you
get the tension, but I couldnever imagine him as like a Pierce Brasen
(42:54):
and James Bond, where he's likesmooth and cool and yes, like everyone
wants to have sex with me.You know, I am confident in every
situation like he is, you know, has this haunted quality to him,
(43:15):
and it's it's all about like holdingback his blood lust. And you know,
in the Wesley Snipes movies, youwould have these really intense scenes where
he's given getting the treatment that likeholds back his thirst and it like is
racking his body violently, and sothat, you know, none of that
(43:39):
is really sexy because it's like abouthim being restrained. Now, I don't
know how they're going to approach itin the modern iteration, but that's kind
of the challenge that I see withthat character. It can be done.
(44:00):
You know, vampire stuff has historicallybeen the it's been the sexy horror genre.
Mm hmm. You and I whenwe were in our twenties, it
was Buffy where you had you know, they had David Boreanis and Spike who
(44:29):
were charismatic guys who were brooding andyou gave him great They were able to
had great costumes and you know,cool outfits, and they got to be
sexy characters. And don't forget aboutDrusilla Man Spike and Drusilla. Oh yeah,
yeah, that's a sexy couple forthe ages so much to the point
(44:50):
where for a lot of people,Spike falling in love with Buffy didn't work
because it's like, what about Drusilla. Yeah, like we like those two
characters together so much. Yeah,and maybe that's where you amp up the
sexiness in a Blade movie, becauseit's like other vampire characters that you introduce
in contrast to Blade ones that fullyembrace being vampires and are kind of throwing
(45:16):
it in his face. It feelslike that's a natural place it needs to
be done with the movies. Ifeel they that's where the big swing is
when it comes to that. Well, it was interesting because with the some
of the shows, you know,she Hulk had a little bit of a
you know, you've already called outShe Hulk had a bit of that.
(45:37):
I have been assured by doctor AnnaPrepard that in Wanda Vision Vision was very
sexy. Nice. Uh, Imean, I'll doctor Anna is waiting for
is she just wants a sexy nightcrawlerin her movies. They're bringing Deadpool into
the Marvel universe, especially in thefirst Dead Poole movie. He was portrayed
(45:59):
as that was horny movie, especiallythe first half hour. Yeah, and
I mean it was it was likesilly horny, but it was still horny,
Yeah, which was one of ithurts so bad when they fridged Vanessa
in the second movie. Yeah,what else do you think the Marvel movies
need? So my third and finalnote is, don't force everything to build
(46:24):
towards a future crossover everything with Marveland it's them trying to repeat what worked
where you had the first the firstthree or however many phases you're it was
getting to Thanos, and now thenew Thanos is Kang. But I yeah,
(46:53):
I mean, do you think theyneed to get completely get away with
that or is it uh, justhave that in the background and you don't
need him in every movie or shouldthey just get away from it and just
say make good movies. I thinkthey should just make good movies. I
mean, there's a there's so manycomplicated things to unpack. I think the
(47:14):
actor's name is Jonathan Major's right,who plays Kang, and so he's got
a really problematic personal history of lateand I think it was assault charges and
so I mean that has probably cooledtheir interest. And then even before I
(47:37):
knew that, I mean, antMan quantum Mania is like the lowest on
my list for Marvel movies and streamingseries, and I just did not relate
to him as a villain because Ididn't really understand what his motivation were,
(48:01):
So I don't think that that isa good start for centering a bunch of
movies around him. Plus the multiverses, it's, you know, kind of
a tricky concept because it can goin unlimited directions and it kind of works
(48:23):
for a series like what If,where all you have to do is just
have a little rump in one alternatedimension, and it can be really cool
in standalone comics too. But Ithink building towards a big cinematic event that's
about multiverses, I mean, Ican't, like it makes my head swim
(48:47):
imagining the like over blown CGI Laidenfinale that that would require. So yeah,
I mean I think maybe pump thebrakes on that. But I'm really
looking at it from like the largerpoint to you need to make sure that
(49:08):
the individual shows and individual movies arecompelling themselves and not focus so much attention
on Okay, now, in episodetwo, we're going to introduce this character
because they're going to spin off intotheir other show, because then sometimes those
shows don't even happen, like Ijust read that. Unfortunately, Ironheart has
(49:30):
been removed from the schedule so whoknows if we'll ever get that Iron Heart
series. And it now feels evenmore extraneous that she was introduced in Black
Panther Waconda Forever, because you know, there were too many characters going on
(49:52):
to give any one or more ofthem enough screen time and attention and kind
of storylines pulled in too many directions. So so yeah, I think that
you just kind of like focus onthe story that you're telling and then the
(50:15):
things that you do to tease futureprojects just relegate them to like a much
smaller part, like they would dowith just an extra an after credit scene.
I'm like, I'm not saying don'tdo it. Obviously they want to,
and they're you know, trying tocross promote, Like yes, do
that, but just don't don't makethe cross promotion and integral part of your
(50:39):
story in a way that takes awayfrom the story. And you're right with
with Thanos. He popped up inthe first Avengers film at the end credits,
awesome, and he had a minutelong bit in minute minute and a
half a screen time in the firstGuardians movie, there was so little of
(51:05):
him until you got to uh,Infinity War. We've already seen Kang lose
twice. Uh, he died atthe end of this first season Loki,
and he loses in a man Quantuminium. We've already seen a lot of him.
(51:30):
Yeah, it's like, yeah,it's each time you have that,
each time where he gets how smartedare out, whatever you're It makes like
there being a big showdown in anAvengers film, not as compelling. I
(51:52):
don't know, it's it's tough.And then yeah, there there's Jonathan Majors.
For a while looked like you goingto be a huge new star.
Between he was I thought, Ithought he was great in in Loki,
and then he was fantastic in it. There was a western on Netflix,
(52:14):
The Hearder They Fall with him andIdris Alba, and then he was really
good in the second Creed FI third, Yeah, Creed three. Yeah,
it just shows the danger of investingin having so much invested in actress.
But that's that's the world of Eventof Marvel, because they signed these actors
(52:35):
to really long contracts and they focusso much around them. Yeah, I
tend to agree. I don't.I don't think Kang. They've given Kang
three four times as much even morethan that, as much screen time as
they given Thanos at the same point, and I think it's diminished returns.
(53:25):
Look over on the other side overin d C, they're doing a lot
of shifting around, and like itlooks like it's sort of a soft reboot.
You already mentioned the flash, which, oh, the flash happened,
right. What do you think isgonna happen there? Do you think because
it feels like DC has been tryingto has been trying to do Marvel stuff
(53:50):
and not with a lot of success, do you think they're gonna go in
that direction? Do you think they'regonna with with James Gunn co leading things
over there, do you think they'regonna be able to sort of get in
the right direction? Because I havethoughts, but I want to hear yours
first. You know, honestly,I don't really know. I like some
(54:13):
of James Gunn's work, and someof it, like I don't especially care
for. I think that he isat his best when he is kind of
tempered by somebody else, and soI'm very curious to see what he does
as like an overall lead for auniverse rather than someone who is putting his
(54:39):
own personal stamp on something like Guardiansof the Galaxy, which I mean,
it definitely was a comic, butthere was so much that you could do
with it because it was like,Okay, it's an ip, but it
does not really have like a diehardfan base. So I'm going to use
(54:59):
this to tell a story about traumaand grief and found family and he and
I'm sorry, I don't remember thename of the woman that he worked with
that was a co writer on that, but you just can kind of tell
a difference between that and The SuicideSquad, where it was just like him
(55:21):
going on a complete romp of hislike sort of Traumaville style married with a
superhero movie, and it just didn'thave as much heart. It was still
an enjoyable movie, but it's notthe kind that I would return to again
and again like I do the Guardiansmovies. So yeah, so it's kind
(55:47):
of you know, he can bea little bit erratic like that to me,
So I'm very curious to see,you know, it's a much bigger
job to steer a whole un reverse. Yeah, I agree, I And
I really liked the Suicide Squad,but it was obviously gun without restraints and
(56:10):
there were a couple of times,like you know what, wouldn't have hurt
him having a little a little bitoversight or someone pulling him back just a
little bit. My thing is,I don't I think he works so much
better put him, you know,have him work in in in the corner
of a universe, of a franchisewhere I was, I wouldn't have been
(56:34):
interested to see what he the Guardiansof the Galaxy, where the where the
type of characters I wanted to seehim work with. I would have loved
to see him work with maybe Bladeor Ghostwriter or even Doctor Strange. I
didn't want to see James Gunn's takeon Captain America Spider Man. I don't
(56:59):
think that fits his the way heworks. And when they announced it James
Gunn's going to direct to a Supermanmovie, I was like, I don't
want to see that. I don'tthink he's a good fit for a Superman.
I don't think a Superman is agood fit for him. That isn't
to say it'll be a bad movie, but I don't think it leans into
his strengths as a director. We'llsee what happens, but I think he
(57:24):
is a very subversive director. Ishe called out. He came from Troma
World. There's some weird, neatdark edges in the Guardians movies, especially
you saw it in the third one. The third Guardians movie was really dark
in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think he's great. If you
(57:46):
say, Okay, here's Suicide Squad, here's the Outsiders, Here's Challendars of
the Unknown, these lesser DC propertieswhere you can really go crazy with it
and leave him alone and see whathe comes up with, rather than here's
Superman, Batman, Lobo, Ohgod, Lobo. He would do amazing,
(58:10):
horrifying stuff. Yeah. And Idon't really care for Lobo, but
I think he's the sort of characterthat would just be wonderfully unhinged. I
you know, he did great stuff. I really liked the Peacemaker Show.
Although it was completely unhinged, itdid make you grimace a little bit.
(58:31):
It's like, wow, that's that'spainful to watch, Jarf. This has
been amazing. I really appreciate youtaking the time. I think we fixed
it. We did it. You'rewelcome. Make the movie. You know,
maybe a few less movies. Makethem in ninety minutes and make them
horny. What more do you need? Yeah? Stop trying to make Kang
(58:53):
happen. Jarff, plug your pluggables. You know, you guys a very
cool show out right now, andyou need to tell our audience about it.
I do, and I will,But I have a recommendation first something
that I'm watching right now, thedocumentary Kelsey on Amazon Prime. It's about
(59:19):
mainly about Eagles center Jason Kelcey,but also his family, his brother Travis
kelce who is you know, oneof the most trending topics in the NFL
because of the Taylor Swift of itall. By the way, speaking of
Taylor Swift, great episode with Sarahon Taylor Swift and follow up boy and
(59:44):
Marshall Crenshaw at all. I reallyenjoyed that. So but you know,
going back to the Kelsey documentary,it's it's NFL films. I became aware
of it because an old friend,Demian, was an editor on it.
It is really fun. You getkind of this insider look into the NFL
(01:00:07):
and then his family personally. Itwas made at the time where he was
deciding whether last year was going tobe his final year in the NFL,
at the same time as he andhis wife were expecting their I think it's
our third child. And then ofcourse the Eagles ended up going to the
(01:00:30):
Super Bowl up against his brother andKansas City, so you know, like
unexpected drama coming from the situation,but you just really see how much heart
he has as a player, andit's really excellent. So Kelsey on Amazon
(01:00:53):
Prime one hundred percent recommend. Didyou want to react to that or should
I go right too? Oh yeah, Well, the Kelsey Brothers, it's
basically it's like if you took agolden retriever and turned it into a pair
of brothers and then had him playfootball. They are so likable, goofy.
They have a hit podcast and itis insane. Travis and his like
(01:01:17):
you said, the Taylor swift ofit all. Actually just last night and
this is the weirdest thing. Mydaughter London is a massive Saturday Night Live
fan. Hm. We have Peacockwhere they have all the old starting from
episode one, they have all theSenate lives and she will and she started
(01:01:39):
watching it because Jenna Ortega, whomy daughter loves, Yeah, Wednesday in
the house. Oh yeah, andLondon watched that. It's like, well
what else is there? So andI have to be very careful because the
content of SNL is adult skewing.Yes, most of that goes over her
(01:02:00):
head. But we just watched theepisode that Travis Kelcey hosted yesterday. Oh
cool, both Kelsey brothers are onthere. They joked a lot about the
results of that particular Super Bowl,which which Jeffer and I are Philadelphia sports
fans. That Super Bowl hurt us. Yep, that was That was a
(01:02:23):
weird year last year, that season, between the Phillies going to the World
Series and the Eagles going Super Bowland just a lot of disappointment all around
with the results of those two games. But it's a brand new year now.
As of last night, the Philliesjust clinched a postseason birth with a
walk off win. So yeah,and the Eagles are three and oh so
(01:02:45):
you know, last year was amazingdespite those disappointments, and I'm feeling good
again. Yeah, it's it's nota terrible time to be a Philadelphia sports
fan, especially if you compare itto the history of Philadelphia sports fans over
time. Oh yeah, it's ait's a lot of losing. That's a
lot of losing. Yeah, thePhillies were such a bad baseball team for
(01:03:10):
so long. The Eagles were apretty good football team for so long,
but at the same time that theDallas Cowboys were amazing. So it was
a lot of congratulations on getting tothe first round of the playoffs and have
a nice offseason, all right,But Kelsey documentary on an Amazon Prime Definitely,
(01:03:36):
we'll have to check that out.Do you have anything else to recommend
or are you gonna plug your pluggables? I am going to both recommend and
plug my new podcast, Don't Feedthe Plants, which is a limited series
on the movie musical Little Shop ofHorrors. I'm doing one episode for every
(01:03:57):
song in the movie, and I'vejust got some really cool guests friends of
the show. Mav was on foran episode. That's the episode as we're
recording this that's coming out on Friday, and it's weekly. I brought in
some media studies professors, some performersfrom Little Shop on Broadway, puppeteers,
(01:04:19):
other fans, even got a horticculturalists from the local arboretum that happens to
be a big little Shop of Horrorfan, So people with a lot of
interesting perspectives and we're just taking itone song at a time. Talking about
the themes of the movie and othersocial issues that it gets into, and
(01:04:40):
it's just been a lot of fun. I'm finding people have a lot of
nostalgia and love for this movie.Just a wacky mix of horror and puppets
and musical satire. Fantastic cast,great comedic cast, and definitely encourage folks
to check that out again. It'scalled Don't Feed the Plants, so a
(01:05:03):
weird little bit of timely stuff.Now have you finished recording? Is it
all in the can? I haveone episode left to record because that's been
in the news because of Miriam Margoylesor Margolis accusing Steve Martin of being what
(01:05:28):
was the term she used, unlovelyand unapologetic? Unapologetic on the set of
that film. Yes, I didread that. Did you have chance to
address that because it was part ofone of the songs. I didn't know
how the timing worked out on that. No, I just my wife just
sent me that article this weekend.I haven't recorded anything since then. I
(01:05:53):
recorded the so she's taught. She'sin the scene with Steve Martin for the
song Dentist. I recorded that along time ago, which was brilliant.
That was so good. It's reallyreally good. To be honest, it
sounds like a shitty situation. Sorryfor the language, but I think that
(01:06:16):
the headlines for it make it soundlike it was something a lot worse than
what it really was. So theway she described it, he was doing
a fake punch because you know,he's like this abusive dentist, and so
in addition to torturing his patience,he also punches his coworkers, and so
(01:06:42):
when staging this fake punch, shesays that he really hit her. And
when I read the headline, Ithought, like, oh my god,
he sexually assaulted somebody on the setof Little Shop. That's horrible. And
so it's nothing like that. It'ssomething that's really crappy obviously that you don't
want it to happen. And shesaid that she at the end of working
(01:07:04):
had a headache, and so,I mean, it's a crappy thing,
but honestly, it's not that bad. The only thing that bugged me about
the situation was the way Steve Martinresponded, because he was completely dismissive,
and he said, I'm always veryprofessional when I staged my physical comedy,
and considering the fact that he issomeone who has so much more power than
(01:07:28):
this actor who I honestly had tolook up and like, wait, she
was in little Shop, Oh yeah, right, right right, she's a
dental assistant. And then also she'sin the Harry Potter movies, which you
mentioned earlier. You know, I'mnot really a fan, so I think
that it he should have just said, like, I'm so sorry that happened.
(01:07:53):
You know, that's something that likeI never wanted to happen, because
you know, all she said thathe did was really Puncher when he was
meaning to just fake Puncher, Likethat kind of thing could happen, right,
And I mean, it's a moviethat he made thirty five years ago,
(01:08:14):
so he can't admit that he madea mistake thirty five years ago.
That's the part the books me.Yeah, it's it would have done.
He would have done a lot forhimself, where if just saying and you
can't even I don't know. Thereare people whose jobs it is is to
walk people through these sort of things. It was pretty shocking. He has
(01:08:36):
a really good reputation. You andI have both been on sets, and
I've seen actors, directors in theheat of the moment or for some sort
of desire to be get too physical. I once had a director just beat
(01:08:58):
the tar out of me. Iwas in a show called Incident of Vici,
which was based on Arthur Miller playabout the Nazi occupation of Fichi,
France, and my character was ruffedup by a German guard and the director
(01:09:20):
wasn't happy with how the German guardwas grabbing me and she and she was
a five foot four woman, probablyabout thirty years older than me. She's
like, no, this is whatyou gotta do. And she grabs me
and she starts yelling Jewish slurs atme, bouncing me around, ripped my
(01:09:41):
shirt and threw me down. Iwas like, that woman just kicked my
ass. Well, that play soundslike a lot of fun, and we're
definitely steering this episode towards like anice upbeat conclusion. Good job again.
Where can people check out check outthis program? I'm sure it's on all
catchers, is there. Do youhave any social media that they should be
(01:10:02):
following. Yes, you can followit on Instagram and TikTok at. Don't
feed plants. We recommend everyone dothat. I listened to the first episode
as always, it's excellent. Ohthanks man, recommend everyone to do so,
jarth you get the final word.Well, folks, the Marvel Cinematic
(01:10:25):
universe, what could be a biggertopic and what could be a more fitting
topic for us to address? Andyes, we fixed it for you,
so you're welcome. Now. Weonly touched on DC rather briefly, so
probably there's a little bit more thatcould be fixed there, and I'm sure
(01:10:45):
there will be future franchises for usto fix. But until then, we'll
see you in the Funny Pages thatRaps episode two eighty six. Obviously,
(01:11:21):
I have to give big thanks toJarff Harden. He was the first voice
other than mine heard on this program. He has given so much creatively,
and more important is the conscience ofthe Cosmic Geppetto podcast. Our friendship is
over thirty years old. Geez,I say that and I feel very very
(01:11:44):
tired. AnyWho, that is along winded way of saying he is one
of my dearest friends and I lovehim. Next time on the Cosmic Geppetto
podcast, author and podcaster Tyranny Steeleis back to talk about biopics and quite
frankly, anything else we can thinkof until then. As Jarff already said
(01:12:09):
see in the funny pages. Subscribeto the Cosmic Geppetto podcast on iTunes,
Stitcher, or wherever quality podcasts canbe found. Rate and review us while
(01:12:32):
there. Follow us on Twitter atCosmic g pod, and we will follow
you back unless you're a jerk.We don't follow jerks. Like us on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, forwardslash Cosmic Geppetto. We love hearing your
ideas for upcoming episodes. Email usat Cosmiccippetto at Comcast dot net. It's
(01:12:55):
time to let our heroes be horny, think, dont ass
From Geppetto Studios in New Freedom,Pennsylvania. Welcome to the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast,
your home for inclusive, positive geekculture where we talk about movies,
comics, music, books, andwhatever else we feel like. Please welcome
your host, an effortless cool BradMendenhall. Hey kids, it is episode
(00:54):
two eighty six of the Cosmic GeppettoPodcast. Jarp Harden returns for another fix
it ep THEO so wow, wehave not done one of those in years.
We set our sites high. Todaythe Marvel Cinematic universe will be fixed.
Let's get to it. This isvery exciting because it said we started
(01:29):
bringing everything full circle. As we'recoming down to like probably about the last
ten episodes of the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast, we go back to the first guest
isn't even the right term, Thefirst co host of the show, the
first person I talked to when Idecided to do the show. He is
back, Jarf Harden, Jarf,how you doing. I'm great? That's
(01:53):
right, we're back together, freshfrom our humiliating first defeat in the Movies
by Minute trivia contest. It goesto show boy that one was tough.
It goes to show where my strengthsand weaknesses are in the world of movie
(02:14):
trivia. Because I am really goodat oh, this is the director of
that movie, this is the moviethat Sean Connery wanna oscar for stuff like
that, I'm really good at that. But when it comes to the eagle
eyed minutia of movies, I'm notespecially strong. Yes, same and movies
(02:38):
are in real life, yeah,oh yeah, yeah, yeah, in
real life. I'm better in reallife. Honest to god, that's pretty
much my job. It's just lookingfor little things that are wrong. But
it was and I remember there wasa game show about the Harry Potter films,
(03:00):
and I've read the books, I'vewatched the movies. My kids enjoyed
the movie. So I've watched themovies many times. And it'd be like,
okay, there was a candle,how many rings were on the candles?
Like what the hell are you talking? And the contestants we're like,
oh, well that's twelve. Iwas like, oh my god, these
kids are so so so into it. I feel like I should be kicking
sand in their faces. But itwas for a great cause. It supported
(03:27):
the cystic fibrosis Foundation. The fundraiserwas successful, so despite our own defeat,
we can you know it was alike moral victory. Yes, we
we helped put some good in theworld, and we weren't going up against
scrubs. I mean everyone was reallygood. So we're we're bringing back something
(03:49):
we haven't done in a while,literally years. We're gonna fix something.
We found something in the world ofpop culture. It's not necessarily bad,
but we feel it could use acourse readjustment, and we're going to make
suggestions. Jarf, what are wefixing today? We're fixing the Marvel,
(04:12):
the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mean, like you said, going back to
our earliest conversations on this podcast,back when it was called Movies at Marvel.
So we're going full circle. AndI think it would be interesting to
listen back to that first episode thatI was on talking about Iron Man and
(04:34):
the very different way that we thoughtabout the MCU, when it was just
limitless possibility and the idea that movieswould come out that just by word of
mouth, I would decide, yeah, I don't need to see. It
was unfathomable to me, But herewe are. Back then it was two
(05:00):
movies a year quickly became three moviesand the amount of excitement that everyone had
and just the tear of super ofcharacter, not in quality. But back
then when the Marvel Stomac Union universebegan, it was Ironman, Hulk,
(05:26):
Captain America, Thor. Now,not all these characters had huge They didn't
have like, for lack of abetter term, the biggest Q rating.
Not everybody off the street would knowwho Captain America or Thor was. But
if you even had a passing familiaritywith com books, you knew who these
(05:47):
characters were. They were a listin that world. And now looking at
it in twenty in the twenty twenties, where you know, the next movie
is going to the next Marvel movieis going to feature Captain Marvel, who
in the comics they're trying to pushup to that a list. Miss Marvel,
(06:13):
who's a great character, but youknow she's a relatively new character.
She's that character has been around forwhat maybe ten years. And Monica Rambeau,
who who was always a favorite ofmine, but she it's a real
indication how many times that character haschanged names and changed power sets over the
(06:33):
last twenty years. Because she's alwaysan afterthought, and the three of those
characters leading a movie is pretty astounding. But I have yet not yet missed
a movie in theaters. Every Marvelmovie I have seen in theaters, but
I'm not seeing them all opening weekend, and I'm not It used to be.
(07:00):
I would see the movie in theatersopening weekend, and then there's a
second run movie theater not too farfrom me, and I would see it
a second time when it came tothe cheap theater. Not doing that,
and I have missed a lot ofthe Marvel TV shows. And if you
had told me, if you wentback in time and told teenage me,
(07:26):
it's like they're gonna be Marvel TVshows that you're just gonna skip, I
would have found that very hard tobelieve. But that's sort of where I'm
at, and I have Disney Plus. Literally there's nothing keeping me from watching
this other than I don't feel likehitting that button on the roku. So
(07:46):
I want to flag something in thiswhole idea of first wave of Marvel was
your A listers, and now goinginto phase five, we're doing movies featuring
B listers or lower. Now,I think that it's important to acknowledge that
(08:09):
is coming from the perspective of usas a couple of middle aged guys.
So I think, especially with CaptainMarvel and Miss Marvel, whether they are
B list characters or a list itdepends on how old you are. So
(08:30):
if you were in your prime comicbook buying age when the Captain Marvel solo
comic premiered, she might be ana lister to you. And same with
Mis Marvel. Yeah, and Idefinitely don't want to make it sound like
(08:52):
I'm not trying to say that disparagingly. And Marvel's different where Marvel doesn't have
quite the same trinity of characters thatDC does. D C has Superman,
Wonder Woman, and Batman. Thosethree characters are the undisputed champions of the
you know, the most cultural awareness. Yeah, that's that's a great point.
(09:16):
I mean true in the Silver Age, true in the modern age.
True today, They're never there neverhas been a character that to kind of
knock them off of Mount Rushmore.When it comes to cultural awareness. From
Marvel, you have Spider Man.I guess Hulk a bit because of the
(09:37):
Bill Bixby Show, But I don'tknow is when it comes to cultural awareness.
Is there a third character that isat this before the Marvel movie started
happening, that was the same thing. They haven't been and they're only starting
to be part of the MCU.But I would say the third would be
(10:00):
The X Men as a whole becauseof the nineties cartoon. Yeah, yeah,
because you got like nineties cartoon andthen like bang bang, the two
thousands movies come out right after that. You sort of alluded to it.
(10:28):
Are there Marvel movies that you havenot seen in the theater? And keeping
in mind that because of COVID thatsort of changed the rules a little bit.
There are Marvel movies that I havenot seen period, or at least
one Eternals. I think that mightbe the only one. You are certainly
(10:52):
not the only person who said thatEternals. It felt like the first Marvel
movie that was just a it wasa bit of a swing and amiss.
Uh. Financially, it didn't makehuge money. Nobody was excited about it.
You never see anybody if you goonline, if you go on the
YouTube, it's pretty quick to find. Okay, well there's a cool scene.
(11:16):
All the clips of cool clips fromthe movies, you know, the
the Captain America elevator fight from WinterSoldier the Avengers Endgame, where Cap says
Avengers assemble, all those great scenes, uh, so many great sea haul
twerking. Yeah, there's just nothinglike that from Eternals. Nothing like grab
(11:39):
grabbed the fans imaginations the same way. And it sort of hit me and
I actually looked in prep uh,which honest, folks, it is something
we do sometimes. Uh, forthis discussion, I sort of looked it
up and they are being very coyabout a second Eternal's movie, and oh
(12:03):
really, every now and then someonefrom the first movie is like, oh,
yeah, there's there's gonna be asequel, and then then that same
person will be interviews, is like, well, nothing's really in yeah,
And I mean there's some great castmembers, and I've heard great things about
the director's previous work, but itwas a comic that I never cared about.
(12:31):
And it's something like two and ahalf hours long, which I am
a fan of shorter movies. Forme, ninety minutes is the sweet spot.
So usually they're already starting longer thanI would like. And so those
were those were all the things thathave made me say it's not for me.
(12:52):
Like, I'll keep it in myDisney plus Q and sometimes I'll toy
around with the ideas starting it,but it feels so daunting. I wonder
what's gonna happen. Because it didhave good cast members, it could be
very easy to slide over one ofthose characters, like find the characters that
(13:13):
do work, and all right,they'll be in Thunderbolts, Marvels, whatever.
But it does feel like you wouldhave to reintroduce them and find a
different hook to make them interesting.What about the TV shows? Have you
been keeping up on those? Mostly? Yes, I have not seen Secret
(13:35):
Invasion yet. I yeah, Ihaven't. With Secret Invasion, I don't
know if I find and Samuel L. Jackson's a great actor. I did.
I just for some reason, Ididn't find him compelling as a lead.
And I remember the Secret Invasion comicsand I skipped it so that there
(13:58):
was like in a mini Clark,who is a who comes across. I
don't think I've ever seen her ina movie, and I never watched more
than like a little bit of Gameof Thrones here or there, so I
wasn't like invested in her. Soit was just okay, and I just
(14:20):
didn't find it compelling. You know, I watched I watched She Hulk.
I like she Hulk, and Ithink there was definitely a place for it.
I watched the first few episodes ofMoonnight, and I just didn't feel
like I just never bothered catching upwith it. Okay, you're missing out.
(14:41):
Moonnight is excellent. Maybe one dayI'll I left off at the second
episode. It's a little bit ofa slow burn. I mean, the
easy answer, maybe the right answer. There's just a lot of Marvel,
and then there's a lot of othercompanies trying to be Marvel. Is it
(15:01):
just burnout? Now? Okay,So if we're before we start to fix,
if we're identifying the problem, Iam okay with Marvel creating streaming series
and movies that I'm not particularly interestedin. I don't see that necessarily as
(15:24):
a problem, especially as like you'resaying, they're creating more and more content,
and if they are varying the content, it's just inevitable. There's gonna
be some things that it just doesn'tland for me period, or maybe just
does not land for me at thatparticularly time, particular time. So I
(15:48):
don't feel like watching a spy Marvelshow right now, which is what I
imagine Secret Invasion is because it's aNick Ferry show. I mean, I
had spy Marvel show Agents of Shieldthat I watched and loved for many seasons,
and obviously it went in all kindsof directions that are not so much
(16:08):
about spycraft, but it just,you know, sometimes it's just a timing
thing. So I want to kindof more focus on things in movies,
whether it's our cup of tea ornot, that really seem to be not
working or holding the MCU back.What's the first thing that comes to your
(16:34):
mind when you look for that typeof problem. There there is a little
bit of visual sameness, especially fromsome of the action stuff, and I
(16:55):
think my favorite, my favorite favoriteMarvel movie is a Winter Soldier, and
the action from that movie felt differentthan anything that had happened before it.
And you have some really they havesome really good directors, and I understand
(17:17):
Marvel has a house style, butI feel like they've that house style is
starting to cost them some interesting directorsdoing interesting work visually. And I think
it was something that never bothered meand it has started to. And I
(17:40):
one of probably my favorite Marvel's showwas WandaVision, and my least favorite part
of WandaVision was when they had tobig fight at the end with the two
visions fighting, and it just lookedlike so many other Marvel climaxes, right,
like, what's the first thing thatpops up into your mind? Or
(18:03):
maybe start with that. No,no, I support what you're saying,
and mine is related to visuals too, but it's not about the staging and
action choreography. It's about the visualeffects. So big picture, the biggest
(18:26):
thing that we need to do isimprove the conditions for VFX workers, and
the union has already made a bigstep forward in this direction because just recently
as we're recording this, Marvel StudiosVFX workers voted unanimously to unionize with the
(18:52):
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees andthat is the first time visual effects workers
have unionized with I A T sC. So this is like, you
know, Marvel's got its own inhouse VFX workers, So it's just like
a slice of the pie, butas something that can improve the product that
(19:15):
Marvel makes along with improving their jobs, huge win. And then also you
know that can pave the way forother VFX workers because you know, the
Flash movie looked terrible. You know, this is a complaint that's you know,
far beyond just m CU. Yeah, it's we've become a little more
(19:41):
aware of how overworked CGI houses andanimation houses are, and they're just overloaded.
I I enjoyed. Did you seethe uh Spider second Spider Verse movie?
(20:02):
You know, I haven't seen thatyet, but that is actually something
that I'm dying to see, butI haven't seen just because like I'm in
the middle of like several series,or i have another movie that I decide
to watch because somebody's doing a oneoff podcast episode about it, and so,
you know, instead of seeing thenext Spider Verse movie, that obviously
(20:25):
and I'll watch like a Sword andSorcery movie from the eighties. It's very
good, and there was a lotof talk about how successful that movie was
financially, not just creatively, andcreatively it was a it was amazing.
But part of why it was sofinancially successful is it had a comparatively low
(20:48):
budget. It actually surprised me,and I'm looking up the budget as we
speak. It was the budget wasone hundred million dollars and it may it's
six hundred and eighty nine million dollarsglobal box office, so it made a
good chunk of money. But Iwas like, one hundred million dollars and
hey, folks, I know thisa lot of money. But for a
(21:11):
Sony big budget movie, that's that'snot a lot of money. I was
like, oh, oh, that'ssomebody didn't A lot of animators who put
in a lot of hours did notget paid if that's the budget for that
movie. Uh. Same with theMario Brothers movie that made over a billion
(21:33):
dollars and had a similar budget.It's like, wow, that's that.
That's really sort of scary because itwas a you know, U and I
watched Mario Brothers because my kids wereexcited to watch it. It was completely
fine. It was definitely a moviethat you know, had a couple of
(21:55):
winks to the adults, but nota lot. But it was But just
like that, Like when I seethat, I just think it's like,
wow, a bunch of people didnot get paid a proper living wage if
they made that movie for that amountof money. I heard a great episode
of Today Explained, which is aVox podcast, and the title is why
(22:21):
do Marvel movies look so bad,and they were talking about some of these
working conditions, like you said,VFX workers being overworked, and so obviously
union organizing is the best way toaddress that. But another thing they proposed
which I found interesting was bringing inproducers who are more experienced with working with
(22:48):
digital effects, because they were drawinga contrast between The Little Mermaid and the
latest Avatar movie and like the qualityof visual effects, and a lot of
people called The Little Mermaid's visual effectsflat and uninspired, and you know vy
(23:10):
views for Avatar and kind of like, what is the difference. One,
there's not this huge push for thedeadline where like a movie has got to
come out by a specific date andthen you know, they just end up
rushing the visual effects. Whereas JamesCameron, you know, he has the
(23:32):
luxury of saying, I'm going tospend as long as it takes on this
movie until I get it right.Then also, he is one of the
most experienced directors working with visual effects. So you know, it's great to
bring in directors who bring a freshvoice to Marvel. But then it would
(23:52):
be really helpful if there's someone ina producer role that is experienced and is
going to know how long things aregoing to take. So if they are
because Marvel is I mean, alot of things are getting delayed now because
of COVID and kind of like atrickle effect from that, but they're still
(24:15):
going to ultimately be some deadline thatthey're rushing towards. So I think that
kind of behind the scenes direction wouldbe really helpful. So you know,
you get a better product another thing. And it's funny because it's almost a
(24:49):
little bit counterintuitive to what I justsaid, where a lot of the people
working in the effects houses are gettingunderpaid. Also, conversely, a lot
of these budgets are too big.The last Fast and Furious movie lost money.
(25:12):
It made seven hundred million dollars worldwide. Yeah, it made seven hundred
and fourteen million dollars worldwide and lostmoney because the budget for it was three
hundred and forty million dollars. Thebudget for that movie was so staggeringly big
(25:37):
that it would need to make prettyAnd you know, I'm sure someone will
pick apart my math or will findsomething where, oh it did make money
based on this, or it didn'tlose as much as I thinking. But
it basically, when a movie isthat big a budget. It needs to
make like a million dollars to breakeven or to make a significant profit.
(25:57):
I think back to the first Deadpoolmovie, which was made for a comparatively
small budget because Ryan Reynolds was notat a career peak. Deadpool was not
considered to be a prime candidate fora solo film based on not having the
(26:19):
best cultural awareness, the poor receptionof the ex Wolverine Origins movie. So
they ended up giving it like abudget of sixty million dollars because it had
that small budget, because it didn'tneed to have as higher rate of return,
they could have an R rated moviethat was and we all forget how
(26:44):
different the first Deadpool movie was.It was a lot of profanity, a
lot of yeah, and you know, it was certainly wasn't a perfect movie,
but it was a movie they couldn'thave made if it had a two
hundred million dollar budget. I wouldlike to see what could happen. Let's
(27:11):
get let's get a really good directorwith an interesting visual style, Let's get
a daring script, and it's like, Okay, we're gonna this is gonna
be a cheaper movie, and we'regonna do something cool. We're gonna be
a little more creative with the effects. We're not gonna need We're not gonna
(27:32):
need to make half a billion dollarsto even get close to breaking even that.
Some of the things that I've likedmost from Marvel most from Marvel over
the last few years have been sortof the under the radar stuff. I
really liked Werewolf by Night. Yeah, that's on my top five from Phase
(27:52):
four list. That was cool.It was very cool, small budget,
low expectation. They just want peopleto watch it and enjoy it, and
I really did. And it wasblack and white, leaning into the horror
aspect with some great dark humor,almost like Tales from the Crypt style humor.
(28:15):
I was like, Okay, thisis awesome. And they didn't have
to worry about making they didn't haveto worry about making everyone happy. Another
thing that I loved, this isprobably my favorite Marvel thing over the last
two or three years that I don'tthink anybody's that a lot of people aren't
(28:37):
paying attention to, is the excellentMoon Girl and Devil Dinosaur TV show.
Have you had a chance to checkthis out? I've checked out a little.
I love that comic. The musicis amazing. It's really cool,
kinetic visual style, like great music, great art. It's it's a show
(29:00):
that my daughter love seeing a younggirl as the protagonist and is so well
done, so well written, andyou know, it's it's a little bit
under the radar because and I wouldhate to think of if they tried to
(29:22):
start with a moon Girl movie,a live action moongirl movie, what they
would have to do to make everyonehappy. Yeah, I don't want to
see her hanging out with a bigCGI dinosaur. So that what you're saying
about smaller budget, R rating,daring choices. It kind of leads into
(29:48):
my next point, which is dialup the romance. The MCU is pretty
notoriously sexless, and I think it'stime to let our heroes be horny.
(30:10):
And my number one from phase fourthat is heading in the right direction with
this is Sheehawk. She smashes forththe fourth wall and sometimes Matt Murdoch like,
that's the energy that I think weneed in this next phase. We're
not the first people to point thisout. Just an entertainment in general,
(30:37):
there's been a loss of romance,sexiness, whatever, which is why when
every now and then a movie doeslean into that a little bit. You
know, despite the fact that theFifty Shades of Gray movies were terrible,
(31:00):
people came out for them because itwas the first time in a while that
there was sexiness in movies. Again, it was really crappily done and also
gave a really bad message about aworld that the people who were involved in
this creation did not understand. Right. Yeah, so like like healthy sex
(31:25):
positive horniness, to be more clear. And I think that she Haulk had
all of that. You know,she had her and it was like sexiness
words and all. So you know, she's going on all of these terrible
Tinder dates and then the guys onlydigger when she's she hawk and you know,
(31:52):
because god, who would be intoTatiana Manslani. Oh, she's only
one of the most beautiful creatures onthe planet the rest of the time.
But I like the way. Ilike the way that she talked about her
hook up with Matt Murdoch and youknow, she said that, oh what
(32:14):
I thought the episode was over.I thought we brought it to a satisfying
climax. And believe me, wedid something along those lines, you know,
those like winking, but like alsocentering a woman's pleasure, like all
of that is what we need moreof. It felt like they had a
(32:39):
little bit of that at the beginning, where and you know, Tony Stark
in the first Iron Moon movie hewas a cat mm hmm, but he
was also you know, he wasa pleasure seeking individual. And even in
(33:00):
the first Incredible Hulk movie there wasnot a lot, but they at least
addressed sex a little bit. Theyalso didn't ignore the fact that Edward Norton
has is a good looking guy witha ton of with with charisma. They
(33:22):
had this there was the co thethe absolutely gorgeous coworker of Bruce Banner at
the bottling company who was making eyesat him the entire time, and there
was a neat little bit of flirtinessthere and it just got less and less
(33:45):
the times were they've and it feelstacked on when they've done it. They
tried to have a little bit of, you know, addressing the fact that
Chris Hemsworth is a great looking guyin Love and Thunder, but it el
tacked on. So I think weI mean, let the heroes be horny
(34:06):
and explore that as a motivation forthings they do, because that's a relatable
thing like that is something that humanizesthem. None of us have a magic
space hammer that we can fly aroundwith, but you know we can relate
(34:28):
to like a relationship brewing and attractionand all of that. So it just
brings the Marvel characters back to that, like you're empathizing with them, Like
why do we love Spider Man,because like he's in every Man and he
feels a little bit nerdy, andyou know, he's trying to balance his
(34:50):
home life and work and being SpiderMan, and so you know, I
think it's just a part of thecore of characters. That's kind of a
scene from the Marvel movies. Imean, aside from she Hulk, which
has sort of been established, doyou see any characters where that you think
(35:10):
they could lean into that. Ilike the shang Chi movie, but they
really steered away from any sort ofromantic interest in that film, which you
know, you have there's a greatlooking actor with it's like, you're not
gonna try to give him an interest, you know. Marvel's they have not
(35:38):
yet done anything trying to even addressa romantic interest for Carol Danvers, which
is interesting because in the comics She'sthey She's had a lot of romantic interest
(36:00):
from everyone from Falcon to Wonder Manto even like flirting with Spider Man.
Is there a character you think theycould really do something cool with other than
well to address the characters that youbrought up. I kind of am okay
(36:22):
with Carol Danver's stories focusing on otheraspects of her life than her romantic life.
I feel like there's just so manyways they could do that wrong in
a movie that they might be betterfocusing on her friendship with her fellow Marvels,
(36:47):
you know that, and like friendshipswith women. I you know,
I see such an important character inthat regard. You know, you just
kind of have sense that they're goingto it up if they, you know,
introduce some dude that she's hot for. However, the character that they
(37:08):
keep teasing us about is Valkyrie,and you know, in the press leading
up to thor Love and Thunder,Tessa Thompson said, what's the first thing
that she's going to do? Youknow, now that she is the head
(37:31):
of Asgard, she's got to findherself a queen. It didn't happen.
Now there was you know, therewere sad flashbacks for someone who was her
girlfriend and spoiler alert died many manyyears ago, and you know now she
(37:53):
is carrying all of that guilt andsorrow. That's just to be clear.
When I said I wanted Valkyrie tohave a girlfriend, that's not what I
meant. I meant like a romanceand dating and together and fun and sexy.
And Tessa Thompson is one of thesexiest people on the planet. Yeah,
she's got chemistry with everyone, solet her use it. How about
(38:43):
you, Marvel, Marvel matchmaking.There's a Blade movie coming out, you
know, it's it's it's it's onthe board, and I think you could
have something really cool with a witha with a Blade film. I think
(39:09):
that is uh for Marcia Shalla Aliis a I think it's Mahershela. I
think you're right, Mahershela. Ijust bad with names, but Mahrshela Ali
is an amazingly such a fantastic gravatazeand uh, great looking guy with a
(39:40):
charisma for days. And I think, you know, having Blade, if
you could, you could lean intothe blaxploitation, which Blade has dabbled with
in other films in the comm andyou know, Leen's at charisma and you
(40:07):
know, the brooding hero, andI think you could give him. I
think you could find a bunch ofactors, actors who he could have chemistry
with, and I think it wouldbe really amazing. I think it's very
telling that one of the best sexystars that you've had was in the Netflix
(40:31):
Marvel shows. You know, MattMurdoch and of course lou Cage, who
you know. They couldn't wait tohook him up with basically every female character
in that little Netflix universe because helooked really good with all of them,
right, And I think you coulddo that on a in a cinematic level
(40:57):
with maherschel Aldi. So I thinkBlade, you could do something really cool
in that regard. What do youmean when you say lean into the blaxploitation
angle of the character? Blade hasa hit as roots in that supernatural blaxploitation
era, seventies era and a lotof that when when if you watch an
(41:21):
old Shaft movie, it was allabout him beating people up and then hooking
up with a woman and then rinseand repeat. Now it was really misogynistic.
The Chaft films don't have not agedwell but modernize it where he's like
(41:42):
lean into this, like it's therewas a sexiness to those movies and a
grittiness and really surviving on the presenceof these amazing these performers who honestly not
all of them were great actors,but they all just had an effortless an
(42:07):
effortless cool and you were like,you're all about It's like, yeah,
I'm worried. It'd be cool tosee all these really sexy people and they
all like with great costumes and greatswagger. Is like, yeah, of
course you want to see them hookup. And I think you could lean
into that. I think you coulddo the same thing with a Blade movie.
(42:29):
I can see it with Maherschela.I think the character is tough,
at least the way that Wesley Snipesportrayed him, because a big part of
it is that he is so restrained. I mean maybe that is where you
get the tension, but I couldnever imagine him as like a Pierce Brasen
(42:54):
and James Bond, where he's likesmooth and cool and yes, like everyone
wants to have sex with me.You know, I am confident in every
situation like he is, you know, has this haunted quality to him,
(43:15):
and it's it's all about like holdingback his blood lust. And you know,
in the Wesley Snipes movies, youwould have these really intense scenes where
he's given getting the treatment that likeholds back his thirst and it like is
racking his body violently, and sothat, you know, none of that
(43:39):
is really sexy because it's like abouthim being restrained. Now, I don't
know how they're going to approach itin the modern iteration, but that's kind
of the challenge that I see withthat character. It can be done.
(44:00):
You know, vampire stuff has historicallybeen the it's been the sexy horror genre.
Mm hmm. You and I whenwe were in our twenties, it
was Buffy where you had you know, they had David Boreanis and Spike who
(44:29):
were charismatic guys who were brooding andyou gave him great They were able to
had great costumes and you know,cool outfits, and they got to be
sexy characters. And don't forget aboutDrusilla Man Spike and Drusilla. Oh yeah,
yeah, that's a sexy couple forthe ages so much to the point
(44:50):
where for a lot of people,Spike falling in love with Buffy didn't work
because it's like, what about Drusilla. Yeah, like we like those two
characters together so much. Yeah,and maybe that's where you amp up the
sexiness in a Blade movie, becauseit's like other vampire characters that you introduce
in contrast to Blade ones that fullyembrace being vampires and are kind of throwing
(45:16):
it in his face. It feelslike that's a natural place it needs to
be done with the movies. Ifeel they that's where the big swing is
when it comes to that. Well, it was interesting because with the some
of the shows, you know,she Hulk had a little bit of a
you know, you've already called outShe Hulk had a bit of that.
(45:37):
I have been assured by doctor AnnaPrepard that in Wanda Vision Vision was very
sexy. Nice. Uh, Imean, I'll doctor Anna is waiting for
is she just wants a sexy nightcrawlerin her movies. They're bringing Deadpool into
the Marvel universe, especially in thefirst Dead Poole movie. He was portrayed
(45:59):
as that was horny movie, especiallythe first half hour. Yeah, and
I mean it was it was likesilly horny, but it was still horny,
Yeah, which was one of ithurts so bad when they fridged Vanessa
in the second movie. Yeah,what else do you think the Marvel movies
need? So my third and finalnote is, don't force everything to build
(46:24):
towards a future crossover everything with Marveland it's them trying to repeat what worked
where you had the first the firstthree or however many phases you're it was
getting to Thanos, and now thenew Thanos is Kang. But I yeah,
(46:53):
I mean, do you think theyneed to get completely get away with
that or is it uh, justhave that in the background and you don't
need him in every movie or shouldthey just get away from it and just
say make good movies. I thinkthey should just make good movies. I
mean, there's a there's so manycomplicated things to unpack. I think the
(47:14):
actor's name is Jonathan Major's right,who plays Kang, and so he's got
a really problematic personal history of lateand I think it was assault charges and
so I mean that has probably cooledtheir interest. And then even before I
(47:37):
knew that, I mean, antMan quantum Mania is like the lowest on
my list for Marvel movies and streamingseries, and I just did not relate
to him as a villain because Ididn't really understand what his motivation were,
(48:01):
So I don't think that that isa good start for centering a bunch of
movies around him. Plus the multiverses, it's, you know, kind of
a tricky concept because it can goin unlimited directions and it kind of works
(48:23):
for a series like what If,where all you have to do is just
have a little rump in one alternatedimension, and it can be really cool
in standalone comics too. But Ithink building towards a big cinematic event that's
about multiverses, I mean, Ican't, like it makes my head swim
(48:47):
imagining the like over blown CGI Laidenfinale that that would require. So yeah,
I mean I think maybe pump thebrakes on that. But I'm really
looking at it from like the largerpoint to you need to make sure that
(49:08):
the individual shows and individual movies arecompelling themselves and not focus so much attention
on Okay, now, in episodetwo, we're going to introduce this character
because they're going to spin off intotheir other show, because then sometimes those
shows don't even happen, like Ijust read that. Unfortunately, Ironheart has
(49:30):
been removed from the schedule so whoknows if we'll ever get that Iron Heart
series. And it now feels evenmore extraneous that she was introduced in Black
Panther Waconda Forever, because you know, there were too many characters going on
(49:52):
to give any one or more ofthem enough screen time and attention and kind
of storylines pulled in too many directions. So so yeah, I think that
you just kind of like focus onthe story that you're telling and then the
(50:15):
things that you do to tease futureprojects just relegate them to like a much
smaller part, like they would dowith just an extra an after credit scene.
I'm like, I'm not saying don'tdo it. Obviously they want to,
and they're you know, trying tocross promote, Like yes, do
that, but just don't don't makethe cross promotion and integral part of your
(50:39):
story in a way that takes awayfrom the story. And you're right with
with Thanos. He popped up inthe first Avengers film at the end credits,
awesome, and he had a minutelong bit in minute minute and a
half a screen time in the firstGuardians movie, there was so little of
(51:05):
him until you got to uh,Infinity War. We've already seen Kang lose
twice. Uh, he died atthe end of this first season Loki,
and he loses in a man Quantuminium. We've already seen a lot of him.
(51:30):
Yeah, it's like, yeah,it's each time you have that,
each time where he gets how smartedare out, whatever you're It makes like
there being a big showdown in anAvengers film, not as compelling. I
(51:52):
don't know, it's it's tough.And then yeah, there there's Jonathan Majors.
For a while looked like you goingto be a huge new star.
Between he was I thought, Ithought he was great in in Loki,
and then he was fantastic in it. There was a western on Netflix,
(52:14):
The Hearder They Fall with him andIdris Alba, and then he was really
good in the second Creed FI third, Yeah, Creed three. Yeah,
it just shows the danger of investingin having so much invested in actress.
But that's that's the world of Eventof Marvel, because they signed these actors
(52:35):
to really long contracts and they focusso much around them. Yeah, I
tend to agree. I don't.I don't think Kang. They've given Kang
three four times as much even morethan that, as much screen time as
they given Thanos at the same point, and I think it's diminished returns.
(53:25):
Look over on the other side overin d C, they're doing a lot
of shifting around, and like itlooks like it's sort of a soft reboot.
You already mentioned the flash, which, oh, the flash happened,
right. What do you think isgonna happen there? Do you think because
it feels like DC has been tryingto has been trying to do Marvel stuff
(53:50):
and not with a lot of success, do you think they're gonna go in
that direction? Do you think they'regonna with with James Gunn co leading things
over there, do you think they'regonna be able to sort of get in
the right direction? Because I havethoughts, but I want to hear yours
first. You know, honestly,I don't really know. I like some
(54:13):
of James Gunn's work, and someof it, like I don't especially care
for. I think that he isat his best when he is kind of
tempered by somebody else, and soI'm very curious to see what he does
as like an overall lead for auniverse rather than someone who is putting his
(54:39):
own personal stamp on something like Guardiansof the Galaxy, which I mean,
it definitely was a comic, butthere was so much that you could do
with it because it was like,Okay, it's an ip, but it
does not really have like a diehardfan base. So I'm going to use
(54:59):
this to tell a story about traumaand grief and found family and he and
I'm sorry, I don't remember thename of the woman that he worked with
that was a co writer on that, but you just can kind of tell
a difference between that and The SuicideSquad, where it was just like him
(55:21):
going on a complete romp of hislike sort of Traumaville style married with a
superhero movie, and it just didn'thave as much heart. It was still
an enjoyable movie, but it's notthe kind that I would return to again
and again like I do the Guardiansmovies. So yeah, so it's kind
(55:47):
of you know, he can bea little bit erratic like that to me,
So I'm very curious to see,you know, it's a much bigger
job to steer a whole un reverse. Yeah, I agree, I And
I really liked the Suicide Squad,but it was obviously gun without restraints and
(56:10):
there were a couple of times,like you know what, wouldn't have hurt
him having a little a little bitoversight or someone pulling him back just a
little bit. My thing is,I don't I think he works so much
better put him, you know,have him work in in in the corner
of a universe, of a franchisewhere I was, I wouldn't have been
(56:34):
interested to see what he the Guardiansof the Galaxy, where the where the
type of characters I wanted to seehim work with. I would have loved
to see him work with maybe Bladeor Ghostwriter or even Doctor Strange. I
didn't want to see James Gunn's takeon Captain America Spider Man. I don't
(56:59):
think that fits his the way heworks. And when they announced it James
Gunn's going to direct to a Supermanmovie, I was like, I don't
want to see that. I don'tthink he's a good fit for a Superman.
I don't think a Superman is agood fit for him. That isn't
to say it'll be a bad movie, but I don't think it leans into
his strengths as a director. We'llsee what happens, but I think he
(57:24):
is a very subversive director. Ishe called out. He came from Troma
World. There's some weird, neatdark edges in the Guardians movies, especially
you saw it in the third one. The third Guardians movie was really dark
in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think he's great. If you
(57:46):
say, Okay, here's Suicide Squad, here's the Outsiders, Here's Challendars of
the Unknown, these lesser DC propertieswhere you can really go crazy with it
and leave him alone and see whathe comes up with, rather than here's
Superman, Batman, Lobo, Ohgod, Lobo. He would do amazing,
(58:10):
horrifying stuff. Yeah. And Idon't really care for Lobo, but
I think he's the sort of characterthat would just be wonderfully unhinged. I
you know, he did great stuff. I really liked the Peacemaker Show.
Although it was completely unhinged, itdid make you grimace a little bit.
(58:31):
It's like, wow, that's that'spainful to watch, Jarf. This has
been amazing. I really appreciate youtaking the time. I think we fixed
it. We did it. You'rewelcome. Make the movie. You know,
maybe a few less movies. Makethem in ninety minutes and make them
horny. What more do you need? Yeah? Stop trying to make Kang
(58:53):
happen. Jarff, plug your pluggables. You know, you guys a very
cool show out right now, andyou need to tell our audience about it.
I do, and I will,But I have a recommendation first something
that I'm watching right now, thedocumentary Kelsey on Amazon Prime. It's about
(59:19):
mainly about Eagles center Jason Kelcey,but also his family, his brother Travis
kelce who is you know, oneof the most trending topics in the NFL
because of the Taylor Swift of itall. By the way, speaking of
Taylor Swift, great episode with Sarahon Taylor Swift and follow up boy and
(59:44):
Marshall Crenshaw at all. I reallyenjoyed that. So but you know,
going back to the Kelsey documentary,it's it's NFL films. I became aware
of it because an old friend,Demian, was an editor on it.
It is really fun. You getkind of this insider look into the NFL
(01:00:07):
and then his family personally. Itwas made at the time where he was
deciding whether last year was going tobe his final year in the NFL,
at the same time as he andhis wife were expecting their I think it's
our third child. And then ofcourse the Eagles ended up going to the
(01:00:30):
Super Bowl up against his brother andKansas City, so you know, like
unexpected drama coming from the situation,but you just really see how much heart
he has as a player, andit's really excellent. So Kelsey on Amazon
(01:00:53):
Prime one hundred percent recommend. Didyou want to react to that or should
I go right too? Oh yeah, Well, the Kelsey Brothers, it's
basically it's like if you took agolden retriever and turned it into a pair
of brothers and then had him playfootball. They are so likable, goofy.
They have a hit podcast and itis insane. Travis and his like
(01:01:17):
you said, the Taylor swift ofit all. Actually just last night and
this is the weirdest thing. Mydaughter London is a massive Saturday Night Live
fan. Hm. We have Peacockwhere they have all the old starting from
episode one, they have all theSenate lives and she will and she started
(01:01:39):
watching it because Jenna Ortega, whomy daughter loves, Yeah, Wednesday in
the house. Oh yeah, andLondon watched that. It's like, well
what else is there? So andI have to be very careful because the
content of SNL is adult skewing.Yes, most of that goes over her
(01:02:00):
head. But we just watched theepisode that Travis Kelcey hosted yesterday. Oh
cool, both Kelsey brothers are onthere. They joked a lot about the
results of that particular Super Bowl,which which Jeffer and I are Philadelphia sports
fans. That Super Bowl hurt us. Yep, that was That was a
(01:02:23):
weird year last year, that season, between the Phillies going to the World
Series and the Eagles going Super Bowland just a lot of disappointment all around
with the results of those two games. But it's a brand new year now.
As of last night, the Philliesjust clinched a postseason birth with a
walk off win. So yeah,and the Eagles are three and oh so
(01:02:45):
you know, last year was amazingdespite those disappointments, and I'm feeling good
again. Yeah, it's it's nota terrible time to be a Philadelphia sports
fan, especially if you compare itto the history of Philadelphia sports fans over
time. Oh yeah, it's ait's a lot of losing. That's a
lot of losing. Yeah, thePhillies were such a bad baseball team for
(01:03:10):
so long. The Eagles were apretty good football team for so long,
but at the same time that theDallas Cowboys were amazing. So it was
a lot of congratulations on getting tothe first round of the playoffs and have
a nice offseason, all right,But Kelsey documentary on an Amazon Prime Definitely,
(01:03:36):
we'll have to check that out.Do you have anything else to recommend
or are you gonna plug your pluggables? I am going to both recommend and
plug my new podcast, Don't Feedthe Plants, which is a limited series
on the movie musical Little Shop ofHorrors. I'm doing one episode for every
(01:03:57):
song in the movie, and I'vejust got some really cool guests friends of
the show. Mav was on foran episode. That's the episode as we're
recording this that's coming out on Friday, and it's weekly. I brought in
some media studies professors, some performersfrom Little Shop on Broadway, puppeteers,
(01:04:19):
other fans, even got a horticculturalists from the local arboretum that happens to
be a big little Shop of Horrorfan, So people with a lot of
interesting perspectives and we're just taking itone song at a time. Talking about
the themes of the movie and othersocial issues that it gets into, and
(01:04:40):
it's just been a lot of fun. I'm finding people have a lot of
nostalgia and love for this movie.Just a wacky mix of horror and puppets
and musical satire. Fantastic cast,great comedic cast, and definitely encourage folks
to check that out again. It'scalled Don't Feed the Plants, so a
(01:05:03):
weird little bit of timely stuff.Now have you finished recording? Is it
all in the can? I haveone episode left to record because that's been
in the news because of Miriam Margoylesor Margolis accusing Steve Martin of being what
(01:05:28):
was the term she used, unlovelyand unapologetic? Unapologetic on the set of
that film. Yes, I didread that. Did you have chance to
address that because it was part ofone of the songs. I didn't know
how the timing worked out on that. No, I just my wife just
sent me that article this weekend.I haven't recorded anything since then. I
(01:05:53):
recorded the so she's taught. She'sin the scene with Steve Martin for the
song Dentist. I recorded that along time ago, which was brilliant.
That was so good. It's reallyreally good. To be honest, it
sounds like a shitty situation. Sorryfor the language, but I think that
(01:06:16):
the headlines for it make it soundlike it was something a lot worse than
what it really was. So theway she described it, he was doing
a fake punch because you know,he's like this abusive dentist, and so
in addition to torturing his patience,he also punches his coworkers, and so
(01:06:42):
when staging this fake punch, shesays that he really hit her. And
when I read the headline, Ithought, like, oh my god,
he sexually assaulted somebody on the setof Little Shop. That's horrible. And
so it's nothing like that. It'ssomething that's really crappy obviously that you don't
want it to happen. And shesaid that she at the end of working
(01:07:04):
had a headache, and so,I mean, it's a crappy thing,
but honestly, it's not that bad. The only thing that bugged me about
the situation was the way Steve Martinresponded, because he was completely dismissive,
and he said, I'm always veryprofessional when I staged my physical comedy,
and considering the fact that he issomeone who has so much more power than
(01:07:28):
this actor who I honestly had tolook up and like, wait, she
was in little Shop, Oh yeah, right, right right, she's a
dental assistant. And then also she'sin the Harry Potter movies, which you
mentioned earlier. You know, I'mnot really a fan, so I think
that it he should have just said, like, I'm so sorry that happened.
(01:07:53):
You know, that's something that likeI never wanted to happen, because
you know, all she said thathe did was really Puncher when he was
meaning to just fake Puncher, Likethat kind of thing could happen, right,
And I mean, it's a moviethat he made thirty five years ago,
(01:08:14):
so he can't admit that he madea mistake thirty five years ago.
That's the part the books me.Yeah, it's it would have done.
He would have done a lot forhimself, where if just saying and you
can't even I don't know. Thereare people whose jobs it is is to
walk people through these sort of things. It was pretty shocking. He has
(01:08:36):
a really good reputation. You andI have both been on sets, and
I've seen actors, directors in theheat of the moment or for some sort
of desire to be get too physical. I once had a director just beat
(01:08:58):
the tar out of me. Iwas in a show called Incident of Vici,
which was based on Arthur Miller playabout the Nazi occupation of Fichi,
France, and my character was ruffedup by a German guard and the director
(01:09:20):
wasn't happy with how the German guardwas grabbing me and she and she was
a five foot four woman, probablyabout thirty years older than me. She's
like, no, this is whatyou gotta do. And she grabs me
and she starts yelling Jewish slurs atme, bouncing me around, ripped my
(01:09:41):
shirt and threw me down. Iwas like, that woman just kicked my
ass. Well, that play soundslike a lot of fun, and we're
definitely steering this episode towards like anice upbeat conclusion. Good job again.
Where can people check out check outthis program? I'm sure it's on all
catchers, is there. Do youhave any social media that they should be
(01:10:02):
following. Yes, you can followit on Instagram and TikTok at. Don't
feed plants. We recommend everyone dothat. I listened to the first episode
as always, it's excellent. Ohthanks man, recommend everyone to do so,
jarth you get the final word.Well, folks, the Marvel Cinematic
(01:10:25):
universe, what could be a biggertopic and what could be a more fitting
topic for us to address? Andyes, we fixed it for you,
so you're welcome. Now. Weonly touched on DC rather briefly, so
probably there's a little bit more thatcould be fixed there, and I'm sure
(01:10:45):
there will be future franchises for usto fix. But until then, we'll
see you in the Funny Pages thatRaps episode two eighty six. Obviously,
(01:11:21):
I have to give big thanks toJarff Harden. He was the first voice
other than mine heard on this program. He has given so much creatively,
and more important is the conscience ofthe Cosmic Geppetto podcast. Our friendship is
over thirty years old. Geez,I say that and I feel very very
(01:11:44):
tired. AnyWho, that is along winded way of saying he is one
of my dearest friends and I lovehim. Next time on the Cosmic Geppetto
podcast, author and podcaster Tyranny Steeleis back to talk about biopics and quite
frankly, anything else we can thinkof until then. As Jarff already said
(01:12:09):
see in the funny pages. Subscribeto the Cosmic Geppetto podcast on iTunes,
Stitcher, or wherever quality podcasts canbe found. Rate and review us while
(01:12:32):
there. Follow us on Twitter atCosmic g pod, and we will follow
you back unless you're a jerk.We don't follow jerks. Like us on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, forwardslash Cosmic Geppetto. We love hearing your
ideas for upcoming episodes. Email usat Cosmiccippetto at Comcast dot net. It's
(01:12:55):
time to let our heroes be horny, think, dont ass
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