Bloodshot (2020) with Kevin Davis

On this episode of Movie Smash!, we discuss 2020's Bloodshot directed by Dave Wilson and starring Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez and Sam Heughan. The film follows a reanimated solider composed of nanobots as he hunts down his wife's killer.

Hosts: Christopher Roberts and Fergel Amayo

Guest Host: Kevin Davis

Edited By: Christopher Roberts

Produced By: Off Panel Creations, LLC

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Okay everybody, it's Michael E. Cullen II.

(00:02):
And I'm Sesame and Carter from the All Too Real 2 podcast.
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(00:48):
listen and subscribe to All Too Real 2,
available wherever you find podcasts,
and on the age of radio.
I was actually looking forward to like Vin Diesel like hugging a cow.
It's just when the singing started I was like this is too much.
I'm glad for when you finally support me for once.
There is a time to absorb.

(01:09):
You haven't seen it?
Dude, you need to see it.
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash.
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash,
a show where we dive headfirst into comic book movies outside the MCU.

(01:30):
If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us.
If you've been here before, you know the drill.
Each episode we're going to smash through a movie
whose source material is from a graphic novel or a comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?
Let's find out this is Movie Smash.
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of Off Panel Creations with me today, Fergal Amayo.
This is Fergal Amayo, co-founder and owner of Gotham Night Comics,

(01:52):
where I got to say we do reimagine nerddom for you, our fellow nerd.
But here's the thing, I will tell you I'm excited.
And just as my good friend in our movies discussion will say, I will find you.
And our guest tonight is Kevin Davis.
My name is Kevin Davis and I am a full blown nerd and I am not ashamed about it.
And I'm also a comic creator and author.

(02:12):
Our movie for tonight's discussion is 2020's Bloodshot.
And this is starring Vin Diesel, Eric Hezier and Kevin Van Hook.
I get that wrong and directed by Dave Wilson.
This is his first movie for directing, so we'll see how it goes.
We are leading the way in the greatest human advancement of all time.
The technology running through his veins augments his strength, his reflexes, even his healing capabilities.

(02:44):
He's unlike anything we've seen before.
And he's entirely in our control.
Commencing memory fabrication.
Next mission in three, two, one.

(03:05):
And initiate sequence.
But before we jump on the movie guys, just by the timing of this, we're recording here on
a Thursday evening, the new Superman trailer drop this morning.
Have you guys seen it and what are your thoughts about it?
I'm absorbing.
I'm absorbing.
So, Gunn, I watched Creature Commandos.
Let me reference by saying that's a really interesting show with some uninteresting moments,

(03:26):
but very interesting show.
So he's coming out with this movie supposed to be a temple of the DC universe.
I think he attempted to catch that original 1978 feel from it, which was interesting.
Nathan Phelan is going to be an interesting character.
I mean, Guy Gardner is going to be interesting, but I'm still absorbing what I saw.
We've got very much almost like we're pulling in the original Superman from Christopher Reeves.

(03:50):
I think we're, is he channeling too much Christopher?
I don't know yet, but I think this could be, you know, I've heard a lot of reviews online
that said they would watch this over Man of Steel with their kids, but they still love
Man of Steel better.
Yeah, I actually watched it twice because one, I do like Man of Steel.
Same thing with Creature Commandos.
I watched the show, but it kind of has like, sometimes that's like too much of a moment,

(04:12):
if that makes sense.
When I heard about James Gunn taking over DC, I was like, okay, is he going to make
it like Marvel and make it like really comical, pointless jokes, basically, as I'm trying to say.
But after watching the teaser trailer, I'm like, I'm interested, but I want to see more
to understand what route he's going with it, if that makes sense.

(04:33):
When I saw the set photos, I was like, that suit looks so baggy and so weird.
Well, I'm like, it's set photos, so you won't really know until you see the edited part.
But I've seen the trailer, I like that showing the hope of Superman.
And I'm actually shocked that it seems a little darker, but with more light into it,
more light in Man of Steel.
So I'm like, he's like, he's kind of giving that Zack Snyder feel, but making it lighter,

(04:56):
if that kind of makes sense a bit.
So I'm like, I'm definitely interested seeing where this DC goes, because DC has been sucking
for a long time.
Yes, my favorite properties are sucking, that's no good for anybody.
I think you're right.
It feels a lot lighter than the original, the last DC we had.
And I think Gunn is not really trying to go Christopher Reeves necessarily, though,

(05:17):
that song in the trailer was fantastic.
The guitar rift going with the original music was great.
But I think he's actually going even further back, and he's trying to go to capture really
the Silver Age of comics, because I don't know how I feel about it yet, but no,
crypto is in it.
And I was like, that really pulls it away from being grounded and becoming more comic booky.

(05:40):
If anyone could pull it off, Gunn can probably pull it off.
But that's my only worry with it, is it feels a little too light.
I do like my dark, gritty DC.
Superman does have some really sort of cartoony characters in it.
And that's the other thing I'm worried about.
There were so many villains they showed in this trailer.
No, it was a minute long trailer and there were like six or seven different other characters.
Two minutes and twenty seconds.

(06:02):
Two minutes and twenty seconds.
It was a full blown showdown for all of the points you just said makes perfect sense.
And honestly, we usually don't agree about these things, but I'm fully supportive of
that statement that you've just made.
And I'm also fully supportive of you, Kevin.
I'm glad for you, you finally support me for once.
Well, I just want to be known as a guy.
But not going to lie, when I saw Nathan as the Green Lantern, I forgot his character name.

(06:26):
I was like, we did Justin Bieber in this movie because I looked at his hair.
I'm like, we did Justin Bieber in this movie.
I'm sorry.
The look on his face.
So there's a meme going around right now where they have him.
You guys ever see the movie Kingpin?
The Bowling movie?
Great movie, by the way.
Just one of those like just off the wall funny movies.
But he looks like that with the look when he's doing the ring.
He sort of looks like he's carrying off.

(06:47):
And that was a completely comic accurate Guy Gardner, which again, Mr. Terrific.
That is a completely comic accurate Guy Gardner.
If you go at any original when the Lantern Corps expands out.
But from what I hear, Lanterns is a completely different take.
It's Jon Stewart.
It's completely different.
So he's actually bringing the whole Corps in.

(07:08):
I don't know what he's going to do with it yet.
But yeah, so he's connecting the universe somehow.
I just because you notice even in the creature commandos,
I know we got to get to our movie.
He connected the DCEU.
He didn't leave out Zack Snyder's unit.
He connected them right directly to from Task Force X all the way into where we're at today.
Only certain parts of it, though.
He's picked and choose what is carried over.

(07:30):
I think that this movie, if I had to put money on it,
I think it's really to be a more of a character,
a sort of a character story versus an action movie.
I think there's going to be a lot of flashbacks.
This way you can have that many villains.
You're having lots of flashbacks and sort of telling the story of Superman versus here's
his first adventure.
I don't think this is going to be an origin story of any sort.
I think they're also getting much, much more comic book accurate.

(07:52):
Very different than our movie today.
They're actually leaning into the cheesiness of comic books.
Terrific that he had the tea on his head.
I mean, I don't know how you pulled it off, but actually look good.
Awesome.
Heck yeah.
Yes, especially from the guy who played.
What is his name from the original, the X-Men movie with the Hellfire Club?
That's that same actor who played the black guy in that movie.

(08:13):
So he's the Mr. Terrific in this character.
That's who plays Mr. Terrific.
Are you talking about X-Men first class?
X-Men first class.
That gentleman is who plays Mr. Terrific.
So just pulling that together.
And you're right, the T-spheres, the look across the face.
There's a lot to absorb.
Metamorpho.
There is a ton to absorb in this.
They got the engineers.
There's a Kaiju.
I mean, there's a lot in those two.

(08:34):
There's definitely a Kaiju in that movie.
I don't know where did that come from?
The engineers in there too?
The engineer.
Remind me who that is again.
Are you telling me you stumped our comic historian on the character from DC?
Fergal, your credentials are revoked.
I promise you I'll regain them in this.
I can promise you because I've actually read Bloodshot.

(08:55):
So I'll regain them in this.
Why don't we switch gears and get into Bloodshot?
Because we've already gone a little bit long on this.
And people are here to listen to us talk about Bloodshot, not the new trailer.
Well, maybe they're here to talk about the new trailer.
Our movie tonight is Bloodshot.
Kevin, you picked this.
Why?
One, it was one of the first movies I didn't really like.

(09:17):
And I wanted to talk to other people about it, see their point of views on it.
Especially, I watched the movie before I saw the comic.
So I was like, OK, what the hell did they do with this movie?
Because this is not what the comic is.
So that's really why I basically chose this movie one, because it's easier to talk about.
You can learn fast forward through the movie and know the plot.

(09:37):
Yes, you can just get to certain spots and be good.
So you want to share your trauma of this is really what you're saying.
You said, I had such a bad experience.
Other people must feel this pain.
Because I was one of the few people that saw it in theaters back in 2012.
No, you're not one of the few.
If it's a comic movie, I'm usually in the middle row in the front seat of Imagine Theater watching this movie.

(09:58):
And I was surprised when you didn't say family like a thousand times in the movie.
You didn't say family too often.
So let's jump in.
I think, Kevin, you said you were not familiar with the comic before you saw this movie the first time.
Fergal, were you familiar with the comic before you saw this movie the first time?
I actually read Bloodshot growing up.
Valiant Comics had some really cool.
It's formed by Bob Lawton and Jim Shooter.

(10:20):
Obviously, Jim Shooter was at one point one of the CEOs of Marvel, one of the editors in Marvel.
So kind of a really big name in the world.
And so Bloodshot, as you can see, they're incorporating some of these valiant heroes in as well.
So Bloodshot, the iterations of Bloodshot.
So, yeah, I was familiar with the material.
And as soon as the movie come out, I was like, this is not Bloodshot, but it's going to be fun to watch.

(10:40):
And it was for some of the tech.
They got the tech extremely well.
But the acting with the powerhouses they had in this movie was definitely like what is going on.
But Vin was able to show off.
Then I will find you.
I had never seen this movie.
I was like, first off, this comic, I had never even heard of this comic until you, Kevin, you pick this movie.
And I had to go do the research on this, which is why I kept calling Bloodspot.

(11:04):
And I could not find the Bloodspot movie, Bloodspot, sorry, comic for the longest time.
I had to go look it up and then kind of find I had to buy the definitive collection of Bloodshot to read before watching this movie.
And this is going to be one of those wanted situations where the comic and the movie are just pretty much in name only in one or two concepts.

(11:25):
And that's about it.
But that was so I read the first time I read this comic was last week and getting ready for this recording.
But for the first time viewing it, did the two of you see you two of you both saw this in theaters?
Yes, yes, yes.
It was a I mean, it was so any movie about comics, I think the only one that I actually walked out of was the Marvels.
That's the only movie I literally got halfway through.

(11:47):
I got up halfway through the Marvels.
I was like, nope, can't do it.
I'm out.
It just when the singing started, I was like, this is too much.
But this movie was cheesy, but also for the amount of money they spent on the CGI on this movie, it was really fun to watch.
Like it was it was cheesy as shit, not great in the acting, but the tech was phenomenal.
Well, we'll get to the special effects in a bit on this movie.

(12:10):
I did not walk out of the Marvels.
I stayed for that whole movie.
God bless you.
This thing I should have walked out on.
I really should have.
I want to save that review for a little bit.
So but my first viewing this was like six days ago.
Fergal, why don't you give us a brief history of the comic itself?
This is a valiant story.
This came out, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, just in 1992, a year before I graduated high school.

(12:33):
Actually, a year I graduated high school.
I'm sorry, I'm old.
Again, story is about a soldier that's resurrected dead and resurrected with nanites.
First, there was a completely different character, Angelo Manatelli.
Then it was Raymond Garrison, who is actually who we see in this movie.
There have been a couple of iterations.
The first one was called Rau Zero, and it was really just a special ops soldier.

(12:53):
They move on.
Then they move them to a hit man.
This is the next iteration.
Then he's back out as Ray Garrison.
Then there's a cool backstory.
Project Rising Birth is what it's been around since 45.
His other nickname is actually called Everman.
Everyman.
So that's what he's at because they designate these super soldiers as one of them.
They've been doing this since like Captain America days.

(13:14):
So it's a pretty sweet book.
Has a lot of play.
It's actually got a lot of video games.
It's got the high ends of Hard Corps and Valiant, as you guys know as well, has done some work
with Leah Field, McFarlane.
It's produced some really good stars that have gone on in huge in the industry.
So quick spoiler warning.
If this is your first time joining us, just a heads up.
We'll be discussing the plot of this movie, Bloodshot.

(13:36):
And we're going to set certain elements of the story that you might consider spoilers.
So consider yourself warned.
But to be very frank with you, if you go watch the trailer, you've seen the movie.
So save yourself the two hours.
You are going to pound this one to the ground, Chris.
I feel like this is going to be a good counter counter situation.
Let's do this, my man.
So Kevin, why don't you walk us through the plot of this movie?

(13:59):
It should take about three words.
Vin Diesel playing himself, getting resurrected by scientists by nanonite technology.
That's pretty much this movie.
Why don't we talk a little about the character?
We keep mentioning Vin Diesel.
Vin Diesel is the titular Bloodshot.
He is a resurrected soldier who's resurrected using nanotechnology.

(14:21):
How do you feel about the character of Bloodshot slash Vin Diesel playing himself?
So I'm going to say I got like two things right.
So in the comics, they do talk about how when the nanites heat up,
they do leave the red mark.
And they actually so they did give us, I think, about a 10 second comic accurate scene.
When the nanites are heating up and his eyes do go red,
that gives you a real nice sense that there's Bloodshot.

(14:44):
But from the other points, I just think again, it's a movie about Vin Diesel.
It's a movie about him.
You could literally predict the plot with about nine minutes.
Okay, as soon as they do the first mission, you're like, that shit is fake.
He's being implanted memories.
Let's go.
And then he just takes on then they throw two typical bad guys in there
who don't even appear in the comics, really, and give them huge stories.

(15:04):
But I do like the guy with the ocular thing.
Because if I figure I want to be blind, that would be dope as shit.
To have eyes everywhere, that'd be dope as shit.
Yeah, what was that character's name?
The guy with all the eyes?
Was that Axe?
I don't remember his name.
I gotta look it up now.
You guys are making me do some work.
I'm going to check it.
It is Axe.
It was Axe.
Yeah, I thought so.
In the comic, I'm reading the comic and I don't remember them saying that spot came from the heat.

(15:29):
I thought that was completely made of whole cloth for the movie.
No, no, his nanites heat up.
They turn him as he uses more of his power.
It creates the red spot in his chest.
And it actually was appeared in the first edition of You Read Rao.
I believe you can see that red spot.
And as he's getting more engaged, that spot lights up and his eyes get darker and his skin gets white.

(15:51):
They permanent it.
So again, remember, Valian's gone through a lot of iterations.
So it was IDT.
It's gone through a few different things.
So they've changed the character whole cloth, even in the comic books.
They've made completely different takes on the character as they've gone through the comic books.
So you get a lot of different series on this.
So that's about one of the few comic accurate things.

(16:12):
It's only 10 seconds.
One of the things that I found that was very different in Bloodshot in the comics and Bloodshot in the movie is that they said that he gains the nanobots are repowered in the facility.
They recharge them every time he comes in.
In the books, it's fueled by protein.
So that's one thing I did find it very true in the book.
There were a couple of shots where he had to go off and like hug a cow somewhere just to devour the cow.

(16:33):
And I was actually looking forward to like, like hugging a cow.
That might be a chance.
Well, I feel like I turn it turn into a pile of goo of just him hugging this cow.
That would have been fantastic to see.
But they decided not to go the body horror direction.
I don't think that was body.
Did you say body?

(16:54):
Why are you using the word in our shows?
What is the problem with coming back with horror?
I'm not is my intolerable accent.
I think that would have been horrible on film.
That would have been somewhat CGI.
That would have looked messy on the film.
You could go full practical effects too.

(17:14):
Like you could hug that thing and then just have it explode.
That would be perfect.
That would be perfect.
That would be perfect.
So and also probably cost a lot less for when it comes to the effect.
Less, right?
Less.
Thank you.
First off, when he wakes up, he joins a cadre of other heroes, quote unquote, heroes,

(17:35):
other soldiers, including looking at Martin Axe, who is the guy with all the eyes on his chest.
He's also without KT.
She is definitely.
Good looking lady.
She was in the Six Underground.
And then Jimmy, Jimmy Deltwin, he's the guy with the legs.
Yes, he's the Jimmy Deltwin.
He's the typical prototype seal who killed Bill Nodden,

(17:56):
which literally encapsulated every dick that you can possibly imagine.
That's what that was.
Yeah, he lost his legs to a to a mine or an IDD or something.
And they refitted him with cybernetic limbs, which is a guy not in the books.
But he still runs really fast.
And how does he use like, don't you need your upper leg muscles to run really fast on the road?
Because the legs will only jump you.

(18:18):
It's only rotors, man.
It's all these rotors.
It's high technology.
If you can make nanobots that heals you from dust, I think they can make legs at this point.
This is a movie.
So what's also weird is, too, in the book, bloodshot, once he realizes what's happening to him
and we'll get into that in a second, that he goes to the facility where he was made

(18:40):
and he ends up fighting like mutants or like these bio mutants.
He doesn't fight cyborgs.
He doesn't fight other soldiers.
He fights like a cadre of just monsters, effectively.
And also finds these kids who are basically proto-muants.
They're sciats.
They're called sciats.
Yeah, sciats and hard-bringers.
I really want to know why we didn't get that storyline.

(19:01):
Like, where did this whole, like basically, I feel like they said, you know what, bloodshot,
we had his IP.
He's nanobots, rebuilds himself.
That's all we're going to take from this.
It's like Wanted, where they had the whole thing of like, no, he's the kid, he's the son of an assassin.
And that's it.
The Wanted, first off, I'm going to say it, like I said in the thing, the Wanted would never have

(19:23):
translated into an original caption motion.
I mean, maybe Watchmen, you got that, but you would have never got the original Wanted on screen the
way you want it to be.
It would have just, it would have not taken off.
It would have probably gone culty.
But on this movie, I think it's exactly what you said, Chris.
I think they read the cover, they read the short sheet, the white sheet, if you will,
that showed the overall story and they just decided to go, you know, let's just go completely

(19:45):
off script and do what we want with it, which is a shame because they had so,
at the time they made this movie, they had like four different iterations of this IP.
So they really did have a ton of source material and it was all different.
Like the source material was not the same throughout the entire comic.
So you could pick what you want.
Yeah, because this is supposed to be based off the definitive edition, the one I have.

(20:07):
That's when I got, so it actually says on the cover, made into a movie.
So it really feels like Wanted where they read the first comic and that was it.
The first of 12 or whatever it was in it, because once it gets past that first one,
it goes nowhere near it.
I think we should actually change gears.
We keep touching around who Bloodshot is.
The first scene in the movie is an opening shot of Vin Diesel on a raid.

(20:29):
What did you guys think of that scene?
I think this will connect us to exactly who Vin Diesel is in this movie.
He's badass.
I mean, he's Vin Diesel.
My aspiration over this next 2025 is to bring my Vin Diesel-ness back out.
I'm going to do that.
He's got to look.
He definitely carries his look well.
God bless that guy.
He's got a brand.
He isn't screwed.
He's not screwed that brand up, even in movies like this.

(20:50):
He carries a look well, but he's definitely a definitive Vin Diesel.
I agree with him.
I love Vin Diesel.
Like he's a really, he's an action star.
I actually enjoyed the opening of it because he's showing who he is.
Well, that opening scene remind, I was, you know, again, I watched it.
I read the comic like two days beforehand and I watched that first scene.
And my first thought was, is this a Michael Bay movie?

(21:12):
Because it's really shot like that.
Like it's, it's also over the top patriotic.
He gets back from his mission and they're basically all high fiving and boys,
this is what we're fighting for.
And it's his girl sitting on the car.
I watched gladiator the other day and I say the same thing as a strength and honor,
strength and honor, Max Moose.

(21:32):
It felt like a Michael Bay movie.
And there's actually an extended version of that scene where it's even cheesier.
When he kisses his girlfriend, that looks like a triple X.
Do you ever notice the similarities between that and triple X?
I didn't think about that.
I didn't think about that.
So if you look at the way he hits his girl right back when he's done and he comes at his girl,
literally you could have took that scene and replaced it with that scene.

(21:52):
It would have been the exact same thing.
I thought what's interesting was you don't see her face in most of that scene.
Like she, her head is like tucked into his shoulder and you don't see it.
And I actually thought having had just read the comic that we're never going to see her face
because that way it's always, because in the book it's a different wife.
Every, every mission.
It's a different backstory.
Every mission.
Now for this, all they did was change who the bad guy was.

(22:15):
That's who his target is.
But in the book, every mission, he has a different backstory, different wife, different family.
So I thought that's what they were going to go with was that they were going to show these
shots and never show her face.
That way there's no, we have, we as the audience confused, but no, of course it didn't go that way.
There's a simpler route and just showed her.
So how'd you guys feel about Guy Pearce?

(22:36):
I've been a fan of Guy for a while.
He's a fantastic actor.
He's really good at playing the villain characters, like the bad-ass characters.
And when I was watching him in this movie, I was like, I hate you, but I love you as an actor.
I think he was a really good villain, honestly.
I think he was like the best part of the movie because he was like that mad scientist that wants
power, that wants control.

(22:56):
Well, I think that could have used a bit more to make it more, more intimidating.
Cause I feel like they kind of made him weak a bit at times.
But I love Guy Pearce.
Like he's awesome.
So I agree with you.
And here's, I'll even go one step further.
Time Machine with Guy Pearce in it is one of the best underrated movies you could ever watch.
It's cheesy as shit in some areas, but it's a great representation of who this actor is.

(23:18):
I actually thought he was a bit flat in this movie.
I thought he had, there were parts where he were very cool.
Like you could start to see some potential breakout, but then they, then they just brought
him back down.
He didn't step into what I know he wanted to do because like when he played Aldrich Killian
and the, when he played the Mandarin, like he truly got into that role.
He was a bad guy.
He was glowing.

(23:38):
He was honestly, this kind of felt the exact same way in that regard.
Cause I was watching that before we started this thing.
And so I could see that, but I just think he's a little flat in this one.
I think, you know, I think maybe surrounding with the nerves and just talking about the
kind of low voice and he's got this super powerful arm.
They doesn't really use except the punch table.
And to turn off a Katie's breathing apparatus.

(24:00):
Now for me, Guy Pearce, I like to look at two movies.
I like to look at Prometheus where he's a, was it Wayland?
Wayland.
Yeah.
Oh shoot.
I forgot about that movie.
Oh man.
Well, that looks like I'm not the only one smoking tonight.
So somebody else is enjoying a little smoke tonight too, which is cool with me.
Mainly not because of his role in that movie, because he's not in that movie much, but the

(24:24):
promo stuff they did where he does a Ted talk.
If you haven't seen it before, go look up Wayland Ted talk.
It's amazing.
He does a fantastic job.
It's all promo stuff for the Prometheus movie.
And that's what I think of him as when it comes to a nerdy scientist.
Chris, did you get that from the steel book?
Was that the, did you have that from the steel book?
It was out on YouTube well before the movie came out.

(24:44):
It was all promo stuff.
It was like one of the trailers.
Okay.
I got to check that out.
But I do have the steel.
I do have, I don't have the steel book of Prometheus.
I've got the, I've got the, it's like an art book.
You open it up, it's got all the art from the movie.
And then in the back, it's got the DVDs.
By the way, did you see alien?
I mean, that last one was phenomenal.
Romulus was so, it's the best movie.

(25:05):
I really, it, it sort of like, you could have just
insert that between aliens two and aliens one.
And it would just make that, it would be a perfect trilogy to watch.
I have not seen Romulus yet.
You haven't seen it.
You need to see it.
Oh my God.
Take a breather.
We can get back to this movie in two minutes

(25:26):
because it's only a two minute plot, but go see alien.
That's, that's alien Romulus will take longer than two minutes to process through this.
Like four movies in that movie.
But back to Guy Pearce, the other movie is Memento.
Where he plays a character.
I haven't seen that one.
Okay. You guys just go home.
Is this going to be like one of those movies that we just need, you know, one of those like-

(25:49):
You need to go watch.
So I'm not going to ruin it, but essentially Memento is the story of a guy whose memory is wiped every day.
He's trying to figure out who kills his, who killed his wife.
And he, every time he learns something new, he writes it.
He puts a tattoo on his body.
So every day he wakes up, reads all the tattoos on his body and goes about solving the mystery.
And the movie is played in reverse.
So as you go to the movie, you're getting closer and closer to day one.

(26:12):
No, it's, it's fantastic.
And the option is on the DVD, you can play the movie in the right order if you want it to.
But why it's important is because just like Vin Diesel's character,
whose memory is wiped after every single mission,
Guy Pierce's memory is wiped every single morning.
And at the same time, they're both on a revenge storage.
He's trying to figure out who killed his wife.

(26:34):
The same thing Vin Diesel is doing.
I'm going to look this up, my man.
A far better movie.
It sounds better than this two minute plot movie.
You guys keep slaughtering this movie.
This is still a good technological movie.
Can't let you slaughter it that bad.
One of my favorite characters, and I think only one of the few redeeming factors of this movie was Wiggins.
The tech guy at the very end of the movie.

(26:55):
Yes.
Wiggins was hilarious.
Oh, Wiggins overplayed the shit out of this movie.
So that's what Wiggins is about.
And by the way, he's in Game Night.
So just so you know, Wiggins is one of the guys in Game Night.
So of course he is.
We were with Jason Bateman, that funny movie.
He's one of the guys in that movie.
He plays the husband of the...
So he's, we know he's not British, but he does pull off a good British accent.

(27:16):
I'm not gonna lie.
He does.
I don't know if he's British in real life, maybe not, but he's got British.
He's not.
He's not.
No, he's not British.
No, he's from Chicago.
We keep hitting at some of these scenes.
We talked about the opening sequence.
The one scene I want to bring up is the first torture scene when the guy comes in wearing
the socks and the sandals.
Number one, that's how you know he's the villain.

(27:40):
I gotta say, though, I saw that scene.
We're like, what?
Ten minutes in the movie at this point.
And I'm like, okay, I may not like where this movie has been going so far, but this is kind
of a fun redeeming thing.
This is going to be an over the top silly movie.
I can live with that.
That's what I was thinking at that time.
How do you guys feel about that torture scene?
This is when he was, he was, Ray was tied up and they played the music, right?

(28:01):
Yes, they had that music on.
He was dancing around and threatening to kill his wife.
And he's like, I like you.
You're already gone.
When I was watching that scene in theaters and I was like, what the hell is this dude doing?
I'm like, first, you know he's a villain because like he said, socks and sandals.
That's a dead giver.
Right?
I was like, but did y'all have to zoom out his face when he does like when he's turning

(28:24):
up the radio, those facial expressions.
Did they do that on purpose just to make us laugh?
They make it seem so over the top.
Yeah, it's so corny, but it's actually a good funny corny.
I was like, okay, this guy is a good actor because he is cracking me up right now.
Well, I think that that was actually a really, really funny scene, especially like 10 minutes

(28:46):
into the movie.
I was like, okay, this is about to go really either stupid or I don't know where the heck
this is gonna go.
That's really my thought process when I saw it.
And this is right after the whole Michael Bay scene.
Yeah.
I was like, and it's still felt Michael Bay because how flashy it was too.
But you know how Michael Bay has that flashy touch in his movies.
Yes.
All the lens flare in the world.

(29:07):
I was like, oh, Lord.
I'm like, so many ways they can go with this scene.
Either stupid, this actually be a scene that makes sense for the rest of the movie.
Or Ernie, he kills his wife with that cattle prod.
Yes.
The thing that bangs her head.
It sort of felt like that Mission Impossible 3 type scenario.
But in that one, at least in that one, you kind of felt like the guy was painting for

(29:32):
his wife.
And this one, he just looked, he was doing his very best to look angry, but it just wasn't
pulling off correctly.
What was the joke?
You're the joke, he said.
I don't.
And she handled six inches.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, I just watched the movie again.
I forgot the freaking line.
Well, it's very forgettable.

(29:54):
But you're always going to remember the Oculus eyes and the way they just go on everywhere
and give you a 360 view.
That's dope.
Yeah, that's very dope.
Yeah, that's true.
I definitely had a good laugh at that scene, though.
What are the scenes set out to you guys?
The motorcycle scene was probably the coolest scene ever.
When he pulled those things off and went up and that was one of the coolest scenes ever.
Right. That was a dope scene when he first attacked the convoy before he knew it was

(30:18):
all a joke, because obviously they only gave us one time where we actually did a mission.
So that was a cool scene.
Like when he went through that whole thing and the jaw of the tunnel.
Yeah, the jaw was hanging on his cutback.
I said that and he just that was cool.
I think the ending got kind of stupid, like the ending and Katie was cool.
Like when she was in the water because she is hot.

(30:38):
So that was and then you could just see her breathe.
They zoomed in on her breathing thing and she's just there were a couple of cool scenes.
But again, all in all, great use of CGI, bad use of just putting it all together.
I like the scene when I was like fighting on an elevator thing.
At the very end, it's the outdoor elevator and the three of them are.
Yeah, that way.
I like that scene.
I'm like the CGI kind of got a bit messy at some point.

(31:02):
They could have cleaned it up a little more.
It did get messy.
Well, I like that scene because I'm an action nerd.
I'm a horror nerd.
So any action like that, I like it.
For some reason, it had like a Tom Cruise feel to it, that action scene on the elevator.
I don't know why, but it felt like something out of like a Mission Impossible movie.
See, Dalton didn't feel believable, like his character.

(31:22):
And then he like first, it's his legs.
Then I guess it was his skeleton because it wasn't just the IED that took his legs.
It was his because he's wearing a skeletal implant.
He's got like a whole spine implant where the arms, which had nothing to do with his legs, are in there.
So like that's what irritated me about incorrect use of that character.
Again, I get the two bad guys, but the other guy, his whole theme was eyes.

(31:46):
I think this is the leg guy.
Yeah, he had that spine.
That was to be the power of the legs because that's a lot of weight to control.
And he had attachments.
Like he was modular.
He got attached to himself through that spine attachment.
The one thing I did want to bring up was the second assassination where he's going
in after that guy and they had that EMP device.
Yes.
In the book, that's a person.

(32:06):
They had a person that could do that show of machines.
So when they brought the EMP machine, they're definitely not going the way of mutants
because that was the thing was in the book, it was a girl on a leash that they were dragging around.
It would point at people and she blast out an EMP wave, which I thought was far more fascinating than.
She was a hard one.
She was one of the hard bringers in the fads.

(32:27):
So I did like that motorcycle scene.
I like whoever was riding that motorcycle.
Their skill was fantastic.
Whoever the stunt person was, not the actual actor, but the stunt person,
you know, going up on reverse wheelies and going down hall alleyways.
Just a lot of skill.
Oh, yeah.
I'm gonna get my notes right now.
And there's a scene where Vin Diesel has just got, just learned he's this superhero

(32:48):
and he's like punching stuff and training, lifting weights.
And my only thought I wrote down while watching the movie was when he was punching that column
and he put like a hole in it was like, I'm like, I hope that's not load bearing
because he just, he's not taking on the whole building.
He didn't just put a load in it.
He actually knocked that thing off its axis.
Like he took that thing off his axis.
Like that was the only thing.

(33:09):
I mean, there were a hundred pound weights he could have been picking up on his arm,
but he felt the need to completely hit the load bearing wall.
And you're right.
Cause that is a very tall building to come flying down for one wall.
The structural damage alone is to me millions of dollars in repair.
That just shows that we're old.
Kevin, we're old.
These are the things we think about.
There's this idea that says, you know, as a child, you fantasize about staying up all night.

(33:30):
And then when you realize anything, your parents put you to bed at nine
and then you get old enough to realize nine is your appropriate time to go to bed.
So pacing this movie comes out at 109 minutes.
That was dumb.
Sorry.
That was dumb.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
Now go ahead.
So how do you feel about the length of the movie, Kevin?
Honestly, I felt they didn't, they didn't really utilize that time.

(33:53):
I feel like they just rushed it.
I think they just, like you said, they just read like a cover or something and just
smashed it into the movie.
I feel like I could have enjoyed it if they pasted a little bit better and actually added
more comic accuracy to it.
And also it could have been a little bit tab bit longer because Bloodshot is a complex story

(34:14):
at times because I feel like they just rushed it just to get the movie done and get it out.
And that's how I felt after watching the movie.
And I just felt, it just felt like very, very, way too fast.
Like they got to, I'm like, I know you want to get to the point, but storytelling wise,
you need to pace it to make, to allow people to digest and understand where the story's
going, if that makes sense.

(34:34):
Yes.
I felt that from the very first moment from like that first mission.
So they, and here's what made it actually worse in this.
I will agree with you because again, I think there's a ton of negative about this film,
but there is some positive as well, but that, you know, the moment you get like this,
it's like they slowed the first scene down and that you mentioned it Chris, like maybe
10, 15 minutes of just slowly bringing this guy into play who he was and boom, he's a

(34:59):
nanite.
Okay.
But now we're just absorbing that he punches a wall in one night.
The next day he's accessing global satellites positioning with his brain.
We don't even understand how all that's coming together and he's tracking people,
shutting communication.
And it's all these nanites.
I didn't know that nanites, you know, had their own type of computers that they could
access wifi.
I didn't know he was wifi capable.
Oh, his Bluetooth is all Bluetooth.
But that's not even from the books.

(35:21):
The books, he couldn't do that.
He had the internet.
So I think you guys are sort of touching on a really good thing.
So 109 minutes.
I'm torn because one, the pacing on this movie is terrible.
It goes.
It just goes from scene to scene.
That scene.
It falls that trap of like this happens.
Then this happens.
Then this happens.
And this happens versus therefore this, therefore that it just like someone's.

(35:44):
I want an action scene here.
We'll have an action scene there.
We want to do this.
We want to do that.
So it jams way too much into it.
The issue I'm having with it is I really don't want more.
Like I would want more if we had a different director, a different writer and a different
set of care, a different set of actors.
I don't want more of this movie, but the story needed more to work.
That makes sense.
You said you care about the characters.

(36:05):
I don't think you could.
I don't think you could fix this movie with 20 extra minutes.
I don't think it's possible.
I think it's possible to write that story and make a better movie, which we'll get to
about remakes and stuff.
But I don't think it was possible to to make this version of the story better with more
time, nor could you make it better with less time because it covered so much ground.
And I think it's really suffers from the wanted problem and the origin story problem

(36:28):
all thrown together in an origin story, which means you want to the desire to cover so much
groundwork to make you want to like this character.
And then it suffers from the problem that did not actually use the source material more
than just a couple of pages of it.
So I want more and I want less.
I'm really torn about that.
Wow.
That's amazing.
We don't want you to be torn, Chris.
Yeah, I'm torn about so many things in this world.

(36:49):
So this movie now, what's funny about this, too, is, Kevin, I think this is probably our
most recent movie we've ever covered.
I might be wrong on that, but I really think it is.
Twenty twenty is pretty, you know, pretty recent for us.
So this movie's got a lot of CGI.
We don't talk about does the CGI hold up over the past 20 years or the past 15 years?
This is only four years old.
How do you feel about the CGI as a whole?

(37:10):
Do you think you did a good job?
Yes, that's not even question that.
Like, I just think that the NINITES were phenomenal the way they processed, you know,
like you could.
And again, I think, you know, the way they showed technology being used, I just think
they didn't give you enough time to digest the individual parts of the characters.
They didn't give you an again.
Other than I even think like they gave you one great scene for Deadshot.

(37:34):
Like, I think it was that tunnel scene is really the only good slowed down scene that
you could see what he could do as Deadshot.
But, you know, and then the bike scene is the only really good scene that you can see
where those prosthetics are.
But other than that, it was just, you know, you got a girl who's smoking and she can't
you know, inhale stuff and just it's just super fast.

(37:54):
You got somehow this guy's got, you know, boxing hands with the big poker sticking out
in the middle of them.
And he's like, that's my idea.
I'm like, what idea is that?
Spikes in the middle of your hand?
Because that's not an original idea, my man.
No, the idea, the thing was that was his idea for the video of his history.
It was his idea to use the cattle prod to kill his wife.
That's what he was saying.
Which is why he has those things attached to his arms.

(38:16):
Oh, so it's the cow. Okay, so I just missed the cow prod.
They didn't show enough attention to the cow prod.
I didn't notice cow prod.
That was like a dagger to me.
Yeah, I missed that part too until I watched it again.
So you're not alone.
I'm not alone.
Chris, you hear that?
I'm not alone.
I don't even know where to go from there.

(38:38):
I think the CGI was good for the most part.
It was just the elevator scene that it felt a little bit messy, but overall it was pretty good.
Yeah, it is.
It's because they spent all that money on the bike scene.
And the first thing they were like, okay, we just got to do some shit together.
It's only going to need a few more minutes of stuff.
Yeah, so yeah.
And the CGI, generally speaking, it holds up.
The director, I forgot his name was already, had directed computer game trailers before this.

(39:03):
That's what his career was.
That makes sense.
Oh, okay.
That makes a lot of sense.
Very familiar with CGI, how it works.
I can tell.
Yeah, it looks like a video game, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
And I was going to say a couple of things that I had issues with.
I want to get your guys' opinion on it.
First off, this is an origin story.
How do you think it did as an origin story?
Okay, so I'll take away the comic aspect because that's completely different for me.

(39:24):
As an origin story of a movie, we have no...
I'm almost having a struggle.
If I were just coming in off the street as a normal person, which I'm not, but if I was,
I would probably come out of this not knowing what the hell I just saw.
Where did he come from?
I know he got superpowers.
How did that happen?
How did Wiggins fix the recharging?
He's like, I did that.
I fixed that.

(39:44):
And I'm just still trying to figure out how did that even happen because that was so central
to controlling Deadshot.
I had no idea how any of that kind of came together.
And then he blew up.
His nanite is depleted and he purposely set off a biomephralib and all of a sudden he's out of bed.
So he had to have come back from nothing with no juice in those nanites.
Because Wiggins is a computer god.

(40:05):
Yeah, I guess so.
And it looks good in a blue suit.
That last suit was pretty good, though.
That was pretty cool.
When I first watched it, I didn't know any of the comics.
So I was just a movie viewer.
When I first watched it, I was confused as hell.
I'm not a liar.
I was confused as I get out.
And I was like, OK, who is it?
What the hell just happened?

(40:25):
Especially when he legit blew up at the end.
And his whole body is gone.
So how the hell did Wiggins bring the guy?
I was like, OK, what the hell?
I'm confused.
He literally blew up.
So his body should have been splatted everywhere.
So I was confused as I get out.
They kind of hinted at how that works.
And yet again, this is, I think, really bad screenplay writing.

(40:49):
Remember how he gave him some of his nanobots?
Remember there's a scene where he gives him a bunch of nanobots
to test and learn about?
Yeah, through the chest.
That was supposed to be messy like the comic, but it wasn't.
So the reason why it's important is because if any of the nanobots
survive, he can rebuild Bloodshot.
So that was his backup plan at all times.
So Bloodshot could get obliterated as long as one of those bots survives.

(41:12):
Bloodshot survives.
And they're all sitting in the mason jar in the guy's bathroom.
Is that how they pulled that back up?
So you just literally connected more dots than 109 minutes, Chris.
And that is absolutely phenomenal.
Literally, you just connected.
So for all of our viewers, we were a lot less wondering what just happened.
And Chris just seriously connected those dots for us.

(41:33):
You should have walked this movie, Chris.
I mean, I'm just like, I completely missed the fact that he gave the blood to him
because it was that unmemorable.
One of my many jobs, Kevin, is I do a development editing for books and such,
which means I look at books and stories and say, here are the issues you have.
Here are the problems you have.

(41:55):
You need to solve these problems because these things jump to one another.
So seeing these things for me is like, it's pretty easy to see, but I can see
what they were thinking, but there are probably some key lines they dropped out
of it for the sake of time.
They're trying not to do a big exposition dump, and they're probably like,
well, the audience will figure it out.
But no, sometimes the audience won't figure it out.

(42:16):
Now, one of the things I did, I did actually go back and watch the interviews
with the actors during the junkets where they're going out trying to promote this movie.
And one of the things they kept saying over and over again, all the actors was,
this is going to be unlike any superhero movie you've ever seen.
So my question for you is, is this like any superhero that you've never seen?

(42:37):
Like, is it that unique?
No.
No, not at all.
The Guyver was unique.
Like, the Guyver was unique.
If I saw the Guyver, I'd be like, that is some fun.
Even now, to this day, I mean, just take everything else and just leave it Jimmy Walker.
That's the Guyver was unique.
This?
No.
Cemetery Man was unique.

(42:59):
Come on, we can't revisit that horror.
When I watched this, I had the same feeling as I had for Batman versus Superman.
I always just felt dull and just depressed.
So you were one of those, I'm taking Kevin, that you were one of those guys that stood in line,
just like I did to see the trailer coming out of that trailer and being like,
I'm so excited for this movie.

(43:20):
This movie is going to set the standard for Batman and Superman.
It's going to be all Frank Miller.
It's going to be all just amazing taking all those elements and then coming out and being like,
somebody get me a drink.
Somebody get me a drink and can I get access to a therapist?
When I tell you, I was like, I wasted my life watching this movie.
And I was like, how can I get that back?
Go watch another movie because you know that's good.

(43:42):
I got to the point where I don't watch trailers anymore because I don't want to get excited.
I still do it because I'm too curious because I'm a nerd, so I'm still going to watch it.
So I'm like, I kind of contradict myself.
That's what nerds do.
I was like, ah, screw it.
I'm going to watch it.
I'm going to try not to be excited.
I'm going to be optimistic.
But I'm not going to be excited.
Optimistic.
Optimistic.
We have a sense of optimism towards a potentially good movie.

(44:03):
Yeah.
So I don't get excited anymore, but I'll get optimistic and curious about it.
I'll say, OK, I'll see if I wait until you come to streaming or if I go with a friend to watch it.
But I have two things to that.
One, I think they need to start an Oscar category for people who make the trailers
because that in itself is Oscar worthy because they often lie to you.

(44:24):
The first Suicide Squad case in point.
It looked really exciting.
Terrible movie.
The second thing is I did not see Batman versus Superman in the theaters, which is surprising
because I love Batman.
Well, I saw the original.
I saw the ultimate cut of it on DVD about the special edition, saw the ultimate cut of it.
And I was like, why do people complain?
This is actually a really good movie.

(44:44):
Now, I use like three hours long.
Now that I went back and watch the original cut.
And I now and I understood what you saw in the theaters was not what you should have seen
because the ultimate cut is far much better.
Exactly.
Anyway, that is not this movie.
Again, remember, we only need two minutes to discuss this movie.
So it allows us.
This is the first podcast we've done where we could jump to 12 different movies

(45:06):
and still get back on point with this movie because that's how short the plot is.
One thing I do want to talk about is there was an alternate ending to this movie.
The original ending, so for listeners who have our listeners who have only watched the trailer
and have not seen, which I agree you should only watch the trailer and have not seen the
end of this movie.
The end of the movie is Vin Diesel catches up to the villain, Guy Pearce, and he's chasing him down.

(45:32):
And Guy Pearce shoots a grenade into his chest and it blows up, turning Vin Diesel into a gray cloud.
Right.
Which is, by the way, the first time we see when he reconstructs back into Bloodshot,
it is the first time we see Vin Diesel as Bloodshot being gray, which he is in the comic
books. He's gray because the Autobots don't care about what color your skin is.
They just turn you gray.
Also, Bloodshot had hair too, so that was not accurate in the movie.

(45:55):
It's incomplete through this character out.
But Guy Pearce shoots a second grenade.
He catches it.
He then basically hugs Guy Pearce and kills Guy Pearce with an explosive hug.
There's a lot of hugging going on this movie.
I'm sorry, that alternate ending that you just described.
No, that was not the alternate.
That's the original.
That's the original ending.
So what's the alternate?
Okay, you got to get into it.
Yeah.
And usually you're like the guy who flips the last page of the book.

(46:15):
Woo!
The alternate ending.
The alternate ending is he chases down the cybernetic arm dude into a pool and he's
fighting in the pool, but the nanobots are coming off of Vin Diesel.
Every time he's punched, he bleeds out.
The nanobots fall into the water and they swarm together to deconstruct the cybernetic guy.

(46:35):
Really?
Whoa.
And they give him all the material back over to this.
Okay, he deconstructs the cybernetic guy and then he falls deep into the pool because he's
all metal.
He can't swim, so he drowns to death and then Vin Diesel loops.
Basically leaving the Guy Pearce character still out in the greater world.
Well, that would have been if there would have been a Bloodshot 2, but Bloodshot 1

(46:57):
and Bloodshot 2 could be made in like 35 minutes.
Well, we'll get to Bloodshot 2 in a second.
This movie, like we like to do, what did you actually like about this movie and what could
they have done better to make this movie work?
I like that it ended.
That was so easy.

(47:18):
Oh, but seriously.
That was the T-ball strike right there.
This was easy.
I'm gonna set you up.
I love the action.
That's one of the good things about it.
I love the action.
What they could have done better is the pacing, like you said earlier, the pacing and the
storytelling, they could have done a lot better.
They should have revised the script a bit more to make it more make sense because like I said,

(47:42):
when I first watched it, I wasn't familiar with the comic.
So I'm just a moviegoer seeing it from a movie perspective.
I was confused.
I feel like they should have delayed that movie and to go revamp it before they put it out.
And I feel like they should have rushed it.
They should have took their time with it.
And they actually could have cleaned up the CGI at the end on the elevator scene.

(48:02):
Agreed.
All the money they spent on Vin Diesel.
When did this come out in 2020?
What month?
I'm just looking.
I'll say it's March 13th.
This was literally just before the pandemic.
Like literally days, actually a day before the pandemic started.
Before everything got shut down.
So I'm just wondering if this was a byproduct of the pandemic made movie, but this is just bad

(48:25):
making of a movie.
But I just think it was made with two years before the pandemic.
Yeah, this is peak cinema.
There are no restrictions.
This was the pre-COVID world.
There are no excuses.
This is the end game world when it was really in the end game.
But no, the movie did really great with technology.
I will tell you coming out of this and looking at how they implemented the technological pieces

(48:46):
of this, I thought like, boy, I could believe that actually happens in real life.
That could happen today.
You can go in and get material like that today.
It wasn't so out of whack.
And again, they added just enough fantastical elements like when he's coming back together
that while it could be available, it still pushes the boundaries of what you can do.
But everything else, Vin Diesel's Vin Diesel.

(49:07):
I mean, it's not like he was horrible, but he was used so quickly.
It was just an in and out.
It was a hello and a goodbye.
It was like the first time when you're 15 and having your way with a young lady and
realizing that only took about a minute and a half.
I was like, I don't even blame Vin Diesel.
He's an awesome actor.
I just blame the screenwriter.

(49:30):
Somebody should have came to the screenwriter and said, hey, this is OK,
but we need to make it more relevant.
Or the fifth grade education.
Basically, yeah.
To put it in a nice way like that.
We see your idea, but we need to flesh it out some more.
So the moviegoers, especially the ones that's not coming, knowing of the comic

(49:52):
can understand what we're trying to do with this movie.
Agreed.
I have to disagree a little bit on the Vin Diesel.
I don't think he's the right guy for this role.
I felt a little nuance.
Vin Diesel, I've got no problem with.
He plays Vin Diesel very well.
It's like he knows him pretty well.
That's a character.
I think, OK, what does well?
I think the action scenes look pretty good.

(50:13):
No, it's an action movie, so they had to.
I think the CGI solid is not amazing, but it's also not bad.
Except for the elevator scene.
There was some issue there.
Yeah.
What they could have done better.
I think it really comes down to the screenwriting on it.
I think he also tried.
There's too much plot to do to do what they were trying to do.
You would have to have a two to three hour movie to pull that off.

(50:34):
I think they need to narrow the scope down a little bit.
And also, if they just started with like the book starts with his first mission
as bloodshot and we flash back to all the other stuff, it's easier to see that
because you don't have to have this 10 minute long Michael Bay scene in the beginning.
That saves you 10 minutes right there.
And you could just flash back to it, which leaves it as a mystery throughout the story

(50:54):
of what's real, what's not real versus we know none of it's real.
We know 15 minutes in this movie, none of it's real.
It's better if we play with it throughout the movie, feels a little better,
make it more like a character piece around with action driving the plot.
I think that would have helped out quite a bit for this movie.
But also Vin Diesel, there's a scene.
Now, the reason I say Vin Diesel is not the right guy.

(51:15):
There's a scene where he's being told about these nanobots by the doctor for the first time.
And he's got his hands together like a pyramid.
He's like staring them down and it feels like I'm watching.
He's just literally paying Vin Diesel from the Fast and Furious movies.
And he's not even like if he had like channeled the Riddick Vin Diesel,
I think it would have been better.

(51:35):
Oh, I didn't think about that either.
That would have hurt a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He definitely.
So I thought his body type in this movie and the way he carried himself.
Triple X when he was in this movie.
It was much more triple X.
It was much more Xander Cade returns.
That was what it felt like he was really trying to pull that or like later additions of Fast and Furious.

(51:58):
Like when he was in Cuba, like when he was walking in Cuba with the girl and he was like,
when you make a deal, you go to that whole thing.
You talk about Fate of the Furious.
Yes.
I thought he was carrying like that kind of same vibe.
It's interesting because his later movies, he kind of carries that vibe.
But yeah, that would have been that Riddick was that was probably I think he showed more

(52:21):
range as an actor, by the way.
Let me be upfront.
He was also smaller.
Smaller doesn't mean you show more range.
Look at Tom Cruise.
This guy continues to defy gravity.
I think it lends to a very important question.
What is your favorite Vin Diesel movie?
Well, it's not Bloodshot, but I do think any Vin Diesel movie will work.
And Authentize, it's really just a great because it's Vin Diesel.

(52:43):
But okay, so you guys want my favorite Vin Diesel movie?
I'm going to give it to the audience.
That's the question.
Let's bring the answer.
Boiler Room.
That was mine right there.
I was on the same page, man.
I'm going to lay it out.
I'm going to lay it out.
And it's only because Chris and I come from the world of finance.
So we feel like if you're in finance, you're watching like, what is it, Gingrega and Ross,
Boiler Room.

(53:04):
There's certain movies that you're watching because they just push the ethical boundaries.
You're like, what?
I have two favorites.
It's trying to get through it because, you know, I love Fast and Furious, but Riddick
and his comedy movie Pacifier, the Pacifier.
Oh, nice play.
Now I'm thinking of the kangaroo song.
Isn't that the song?

(53:24):
Thank you.
Thank you for that, Kevin.
That'll stick around for a while.
I appreciate you adding that to my Brad Pad.
When I saw the Pacifier, I was like, who the hell is this guy?
Because that's not the main reason I'm used to.
But I loved it.
It was so freaking funny, but he still had the action.
He had the, he almost had almost a mission impossible, but as a dad type of action, the
Pacifier.

(53:44):
Because he was like, yeah, he was still like a special agent, but he was definitely like,
the key was trying to do, he was trying to pull off a kindergarten cop.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Which is quite frankly, a hell of a thing to do.
And I think he was helped greatly by the inept ninjas.
Well, yeah, Riddick, Pacifier, Fast and Furious.

(54:06):
Riddick is dope.
I'm still, you know, they've got the third Pitch Black 3 coming out, by the way, guys.
It's the fourth.
You have Pitch Black, you have The Chronicles of Riddick.
And Riddick.
Oh, this is the fourth one.
Okay.
Yeah.
So now you got Riddick 4.
Yeah, the fourth one is called Riddick Furious, because he's going back home now.
This is going back home.

(54:26):
Well, yeah, the third one came out in 2013.
So it's been a while.
This movie was meant to be the beginning of the Valorant cinematic universe.
It was supposed to be the cornerstone, valiant, sorry, to start that whole thing.
That's why I thought you said horror, just so you know.
That's why I thought literally, are we talking about horrors again?
Are we bringing horrors back into our conversation?
My offensive, I invented any horrors in this nice episode.

(54:48):
Now, question for you, you may or may not know the fact behind this, but I'm curious.
Knowing that that was supposed to be the cornerstone and it never happened.
What do you think was the reason it didn't happen?
Oh, because just like the Zack Snyder universe, if you have a vision
and you're thinking about that vision and you've got this idea and then it just doesn't
come off the first movie in, it'll kill the entire IP.

(55:10):
And then you just put that thing back on the shelf until, and right now is not the time for,
I mean, they can't remake it.
It's just not the time, right?
There's a bounce back between DC and Marvel.
We still are looking for movies, but what we're not looking for is that.
You know, the movie trailer most anticipated is Electric State.
Let me just put it out there.
That's the most anticipated.
Just Google that.
That is the most anticipated movie coming out next.

(55:31):
I'm so excited.
Electric State, which tells you everything you need to know about the state of our movies today.
So yeah, that movie doesn't pretty good Electric State.
So this was supposed to be the first one of that series.
The reason it didn't go bad was it had a bad box office.
The next movies were like about the Harbinger Wars and Harbinger was supposed
to be the next series of movies.
The Hard Corps, the Harbingers.
Yep.
The reason it didn't do well was not being necessary because the bad box office,

(55:54):
but before the movie's release, Paramount sold off the rights, the rest of the universe
before the movie even came out.
So the guys when they're making this movie thought that this was going to be the new thing.
And they sold off all the rights.
I think to Sony, I could be wrong on that.
Sony doesn't know how to make a good movie either.
They get, that was stupid.
Why they give it to Sony?
Sony screwed up Spider-Man characters.

(56:16):
It's all about the money.
It's all about the money.
They sold that off, but they kept the rights to Bloodshot.
And then of course, then it did bad in the box office.
It's like, you're right.
They can't reboot it now.
Number one, they don't have all the rights anymore.
And number two, it just, it's way too soon.
But we're actually, that's the next question.
Should they remake this movie or when should they remake it?
Or should they pursue a sequel or do at least to a spin off of it?

(56:38):
Not for a minute.
I mean, Marvel is about to have a whole new day in the sun.
DC is, you know, they just dropped the ball.
It would get lost in white noise.
It would not even, it would not even be seen.
Even if they, even if they put the effort into it
and they somehow elevate our podcast to Godlike status
and allow us to have our input in this film,
they would still never break through the white noise on this.
Because again, exactly why I said electric state

(57:01):
is the one people are talking about, not the Superman trailer,
which is, that's really interesting to me.
Cause we're not talking about Brave New World
and we're not really talking about the Superman trailer that much.
Well, the Superman trailer just dropped today.
So give it some time.
Give it about a week.
All the YouTube videos come out and.
But think about it.
When Marvel dropped the Captain America trailer within 24 hours,
everybody was talking about it, but the Superman just dropped.

(57:22):
You can, you see, you barely see comments.
It dropped at like less than 12 hours ago.
But still, if, if violent try to reboot right now,
they would get lost very easily.
Cause everybody's only talking about DC, Marvel, electric estate.
And so it would get lost very quickly.
I think you're right.

(57:43):
And I think one of the other issues is that those characters from that universe,
the fertile, you might know them, Kevin, you might know them,
but the general audience doesn't know them.
Like everybody knows Spider-Man.
Man of War.
There's the hardcore.
There's a lot that goes on into the whole series.
If you were to do something, if they were to do something
while tying it to the comic, not necessarily,

(58:05):
I don't know if they even have to promote that.
I don't think they even have to promote that.
I think they should do something on Project Rising Spirit.
I think the idea of going away from Project Rebirth to Project Rising Spirit,
I think you could make that movie.
I think you could make a movie showing the different iterations of blood sports
and just not focusing on those as the main character,

(58:26):
but focusing on the program that originated on 1945.
You could build that movie.
Like I was trying to say there, I think they should really go with
the Atomic Blonde, Atomic Blonde formula where people don't even know it's a comic.
They just lean into the movie, the genre.
This should make it sci-fi.
Well, Atomic Blonde.
I love that movie.
I love that movie.
It's a comic book.

(58:46):
I know it's a comic book.
Yeah, it's called The Coldest City.
It's called The Coldest City.
It's a fantastic book.
During all the promotion, nobody really knew it was a comic till like,
I think five minutes in the first, like the general initial crawl,
it says that it's based on the comic,
but most people had no idea going into it.
You just thought it was a great spy thriller from the 80s.
That's what you should do with this.
Yeah, for this, what they should really do is go with saying, build a movie.

(59:10):
Don't really mention it's from a comic book, maybe in the trailer somewhere,
not trailer, but in the credits or something.
But why highlight that it is because this world is so saturated with comic book movies,
but you go with like a sci-fi or like some sort of horror movie with all the material
that they have, a actual horror movie, fertile.
Yeah.

(59:31):
They don't really make comic.
I mean, I had so much promise for Werewolf at Night.
Did everybody else agree with you?
I love that.
That was great.
It was a great, man.
I still have a lot of promise for it, but there's a real horror component to the whole.
I mean, if you go back in the 60s and 70s on these books, that was all there was.
That was all there was.
I mean, that's quite frankly how Swampkin got out.

(59:52):
Was Alan Moore, was to, what is that?
I own that book for a short time.
Now I'm going to forget the, now I'm going to look it up.
Bugs Bunny.
No, the first appearance of Swamping.
It's a scary comic that came on.
It's like actually a first appearance of Swamping, one of the most valuable books
on the marketplace today.

(01:00:13):
Before we get to our views, I really appreciate if you are listening,
go out to Apple and Spotify and leave us a five-star review.
It's a great way to support the show, help new listeners discover us,
and let's not keep the show secret.
But besides reviewing our show, Virgil, what's your review for this movie?
My review is that I'm going to give this like a around the drain, heading downward,

(01:00:35):
thumb that is literally saved by Vin Diesel.
Like when he picks up the rock grounson from the ground,
he's got the shotgun in his hand.
That's what saves me.
So I'm going to put this review as circling the drain.
And then all of a sudden you got the big ass hand that comes up and like,
I will get you, my man.
That's what's pulling me back up.
So while this would be a complete absolute shit show,
I will allow for Vin Diesel's arm to take me up and carry me through.

(01:00:56):
That's my review.
One, I agree with Virgil.
When you were saying that, I was visualizing my head.
It's like Jesus coming down, helping you to get out this, watching this.
So it's a Jesus picking you up off the ground movie.

(01:01:17):
That's more powerful than Vin Diesel's arm.
Yeah.
He says, God said, free my people from this movie.
He said, let my son go.
So I'm going to say my opinion with Virgil on this one.
If you watch this, you're going to need a drink, a backup movie or something.

(01:01:41):
Or fast forward, man.
Because you could do a hundred nine minutes, forty seven, thirty three minutes.
Like you could literally get through a hundred nine minutes.
The way unless you speed fast forward like thirty seconds,
you know, you don't want to waste your time.
I might just fast forward to five and boom, you watch the movie.
There you go.

(01:02:01):
I would rate this movie one million, nine, no bots thumbs down.
Get all the bots in a line, all thumbs down on it.
This would be creating more thumbs.
Would keep replicating themselves to keep adding to the number of thumbs
they can point down is a self-replicating thumb down is what this thing is.
Which is actually lacking from the book.

(01:02:22):
The book had this whole great gray goose scenario where it eats a whole town and keeps going crazy.
That's what this movie needs is a gray goo giving a thumbs down as well.
Just millions upon millions of thumbs going down.
So I mean, this movie is nothing special.
It's not even like a top tier action movie on its own.
It's just it is what it is.
There are no stakes because he can't die.

(01:02:44):
And you've seen this movie before.
Like I remember I said how during the truncate, they kept saying,
you've never seen this movie before.
It's unique.
It's not.
I can name three universal soldier, robo cop and Wolverine.
They're all the same movie.
Oh, wait, you cannot put robo cop in this.
Are we talking about new robo cop or old robo cop?
They're all better than this movie.
Is a soldier.

(01:03:04):
Oh, I thought she was talking about the.
Okay, got it.
Okay.
A person who has forgotten their past, who has become a super soldier,
who is on a revenge story.
They're all the same one.
Let's just be clear.
Robo cop wasn't a soldier.
He was the Detroit police officer.
He was.
Let's get a little love for the detail.
You know what I mean, right?
You know what I mean.

(01:03:26):
You know what I mean.
It's some sort of guy.
He's lost his memory.
He's on a revenge story.
Once he figured out the truth behind it all, and he can't die.
That is universal soldier, robo cop and Wolverine.
Those are all far better than this movie.
If you like those genres, go watch those movies.
Yes, I could totally feel you.
Or the guy.
Let me just throw the guy right there.

(01:03:47):
Well, the guy is not immortal.
Well, actually, he is immortal, isn't he?
He doesn't die.
He possibly comes out playing the jaws theme as he cuts open your chest.
That's even better.
There you go.
There you go.
There you go.
Oh, man.
I have a couple of mail bags, so I'm going to hold on to those when we got Jeremy here
as well, because it's between you and Jeremy Fergal.

(01:04:10):
But for those of us who want to send us a comment, send us a note, tell us how we're
wrong in our view and how you actually love this movie.
We're actually never wrong, so sorry.
We're always right.
But nonetheless, you want to go to movie-smash.com, scroll all the way to the bottom.
There's a way to send a note into us, and we'll definitely read your comment on the air.
Before we head on out, guys, Kevin, where can people find you?

(01:04:32):
What sort of projects do you have that you're working on?
Juan, you can find me on Instagram at IamKevinDavisOfficial.
I have my third comic book called Skinshifter coming out soon in 2025.
It's a, if you like those all-too-ego type of horror stories.
That's what my Skinshifter is about, where the villain is named Sabrina Jackal,

(01:04:52):
but her all-too-ego is a jackal bunny.
And she was sent from hell by a Corpus Fiend to capture a soul of a girl named Amaya Fitzgerald.
And the story goes, you're trying to figure out why does he want her soul so badly?
Like, who is she to him?
Is she a lover or is she a villain to him for some odd reason?

(01:05:12):
It's hell, she could be his daughter, who knows?
You can find me on Facebook at KevinDavis.
If you see a Beetlejuice photo, that's me.
So random, but awesome.
And we have all your links on our site as well.
For our listeners, if you go to our movie ivansmash.com,
there's a guest tab and has all our previous guests on there as well.

(01:05:33):
And it has all your links on there for your next Kickstarter,
as well as your website and your Instagram handle.
And Fergal, where can people find you?
They can find me on the world of Movie Smash.
But if I'm not here doing amazing things on Movie Smash,
they might find me in Furiosa.
They might find me in the fictional land of the Dominican Republic
with Vin Diesel sipping on cocktails.
Or they could find me at Gotham High Comics or at Facebook.com.

(01:05:55):
We do have an IG handle, get your nerd on.
And if you're lucky enough, you might actually find me in person.
Come to Detroit, I know you'll see us win the Super Bowl.
What?
I'm just gonna leave it there.
Mic drop.
And for me, I'm always over our all panel creations.
We're always there billing some piece of nerdy furniture.
If you want to thank you, our listeners, for spending some time with us today.

(01:06:16):
If you have any thoughts about Bloodsport or whether or not
Fergal sounds like Vin Diesel, he does not.
Send us a note over movie-smash.com and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Thank you again for listening and I hope you enjoy the show.
This has been Movie Smash with Chris Roberts,
Jeremy Parmentier and Fergal Amayo produced by me, Chris Roberts,

(01:06:37):
executive produced by Off Panel Creations LLC.
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You can rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You might even find your review read on a future episode.
Got a question for us?
Visit us at movie-smash.com and send us a note.
It too can be read on a future episode.
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(01:07:04):
Okay, you guys just go home.