The Suicide Squad (2021) with Ankit Madhira

On this episode of Movie Smash!, we discuss 2021's The Suicide Squad directed by James Gunn and starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba and John Cena. The film follows a group of "supervillains" who are forced to join Task Force X to find out the truth in Corto Maltese in Operation Starfish

Hosts: Christopher Roberts, Fergel Amayo, Jeremy Parmentier

Guest Host: Ankit Madhira from the Post Finale Podcast

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):
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(01:23):
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash,
the show where you dive headfirst into comic book movies outside of the MCU.
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 a movie who sourced materials from a graphic novel or a comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?

(01:44):
Let's find out.
This is Movie Smash.
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of all panel creations.
With me today, I have Jeremy Parmentier.
Hi, this is Jeremy Parmentier,
also with the RetroVaniacs podcast and the band Subtastics.
And I'm sick, so I apologize in advance if I cough a lot in the microphone.
And Fergal Amayo.
What's up?
This is Fergal Amayo saying,

(02:04):
get your nerd on y'all, owner of Gotham Night Comics and lover of all things nerd-like.
So, I say let's get down to it.
Let's bring Amanda Waller into this conversation.
She's dope.
And we have our guest host this evening,
Esnick Madera.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Esnick Madera.
And I'm an actor, a singer-songwriter,
and I am also the host of Post Finale and the co-host of Flip the Scripts,

(02:26):
which are also movie and adaptations podcasts.
Fantastic.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
So, our movie today is 2021's The Suicide Squad.
Sorry, Margot Robbie,
Idris Elba,
John Cena,
directed by James Gunn.
You know the deal.
Complete the mission, you get 10 years off your sentence.
You fail to follow my orders in any way,

(02:47):
and I detonate the explosive device in the base of your skull.
Love him or hate him,
these are your brothers and sisters for the next few days.
Any questions?
Hand.
Yes, that is your hand.
Very good.
We're all gonna die.
I hope so.

(03:08):
So, before we jump on the movie, guys,
this episode's gonna be coming out three days before the new character,
this episode's gonna be coming out three days before the new Captain America movie's coming out.
I just want to get your thoughts on that.
Are you looking forward to seeing it?
Are you gonna avoid it?
Have you seen the trailers?
Oh, I'm definitely seeing this movie.
Now, it's not to say that they haven't done a gazillion reshoots,
and right now there seems to be resurgence in the DC Universe,

(03:29):
and I'm probably slightly more excited for the resurgence in the DC Universe,
but that's only to say because Marvel is on the fly trying to rewrite the entire next set of sagas,
and it's growing by the day,
and I'm curious to see because there are so many end-credit scenes.
Really, this movie is about what goes on after the movie,

(03:52):
then it's as much as about what's going on during the movie,
because all this is supposed to be setting up Doomsday, Secret Wars, Battle World,
all the really big movies with like hundreds of characters in there.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to see how it sets up everything like you were saying, Fergal,
because I've been following the MCU since about 2010.

(04:12):
I was, yeah, I wasn't quite old enough to be allowed to watch Iron Man on my own when it came out in 2008,
but yeah, I've been following it since about 2010,
a couple years before the first Avengers came out,
and I feel like we're back in that stage where we now got to like re-establish what's happening,
and I feel like they've lost that conjecture,

(04:33):
so I feel like this movie might be able to do that.
I think you just made Fergal feel old, because I think he was there when the first Iron Man was written.
This is, my son was born on that year, so yes, no, thank you for that, that's perfect,
I should go find my geriatology medicine, because that just literally sealed the deal.
Young man, that's all I want to say, I don't even know how he got there,
but thank you, this is good, I'm really excited to do this.

(04:56):
I'm looking forward to this one though.
You know, I'm excited for the Red Hulk, because I like Hulk in all forms,
anything you do to get more Hulk, I'm all for.
I also like this, the new Captain America, the Falcon Captain America,
I'm a big fan of him as well, so I'm hoping this movie kind of makes,
if you weren't watching the show, which I liked, Falcon Winter Soldier, whatever it was called,
if you didn't watch that and you don't really have a connection to this new Captain America,
maybe this will do it for you.

(05:18):
So I'm excited, that said, there's no chance to see it in the theater,
because apparently the only things I see in the theater anymore are Sonic movies,
so I'll see it eventually on TV.
I thought you would be into the Red Hulk part of it.
I'm hoping it's like Captain America Winter Soldier style of movie,
that's what it looks like, at least from the trailers,
but we've been deceived by trailers before.
I probably won't see in the theater just because, same reason,

(05:39):
I don't go into theaters too much anymore,
so I'll probably see that Disney Plus six weeks after it comes out.
Yeah, I mean, same, the last thing I saw in theaters was Wicked,
and the last thing before that was probably like Dune,
because the theaters are just expensive.
Dune I did see in the theaters, but that was a special event.
Our movie tonight, though, The Suicide Squad, you picked this one,

(05:59):
why'd you pick this version of it, if anything else?
When we started talking, you gave me a list of a lot of films,
and for any listeners that don't know who I am,
I host a podcast where I'm an actor, but I haven't seen anything.
When you and I were talking, Chris, I was like,
hey, do I have to have seen the film?

(06:20):
And you were like, no, sometimes it's fun if you haven't.
So I randomly picked five films that I hadn't seen and been like,
hey, I've heard decent things about all of these.
And so that's kind of how I picked this one.
And it was just part of that five because I had heard things about this film
and I had never seen it.

(06:41):
Were any of you familiar with the comic The Suicide Squad
before actually seeing this movie?
Yes, I am always familiar with the comic.
There is not many comics I am not familiar with.
So obviously, we'll get into the comic story, but the characters,
Rick Flagg, Rick Flagg Senior, Rick Flagg Junior,
the different iterations, Task Force X,
the Department of Extranormal Affairs, Argus.

(07:05):
The one thing you can say about DC that is probably similar to Marvel
is that the human beings within any organization,
within a governmental organization,
will always have different variations of their own little superhero teams.
And so Amanda Waller is extremely powerful.
If you get nothing else out of that movie, understand that.
She's a very powerful woman who built these teams.

(07:27):
And for some reason, this little lady, man, she just makes,
she gets people to work for her.
That's her job.
And so work against her best nature.
But the premise is cool.
That's all I'll tell you.
And I think this one was funner.
The first one took itself way too seriously.
And this one took itself maybe just quite not seriously enough, but also fun.
Yeah, I was not familiar with the actual comic,
but the concept, a team of supervillains that get recruited by the government

(07:51):
to do a mission, pretty straightforward.
So I knew some of the characters, some of the main characters in this
have been in other DC things I am familiar with, obviously Harley.
The idea, you don't need to be in-depth in the comics
to come into this one and be fine off the get-go.
Yeah, I think that actually helps you not to be too familiar
with these characters before coming to them.
James Gunn has a habit of taking D-level characters and bringing them to the surface.

(08:12):
I had not been familiar with the Suicide Squad.
I had heard of them, but I was not too familiar with them.
Because I know there was this whole, from the cartoon, Amanda Waller
and all the Suicide Squad stuff from that,
but actually the comic book itself I was not too familiar with.
So guys, was this your first time seeing this movie
or it sounds like a lot of you saw this in the past when it came out?
No, actually just like our guest, I had never seen this before.

(08:33):
Most of these movies, to be fair, I'm that guy anyway.
So in this case, I'm also that guy.
I've not seen this before.
I also had not seen the 2016 version of Suicide Squad.
Jeremy, you are that guy.
I actually saw this in the theaters with my son.
So this was a 2021 go-to after the pandemic.
Remember, I was out the pandemic and I had to start wearing deodorant again
and come out and feast the world.

(08:54):
So I figured let's do something where they're auction other people
and I was vaccinated.
So I felt good.
Yeah, I did not see in theaters, though.
I did buy the Sealbook version of the moment it came out and watched it on that.
I watched it last night.
It was cool.
Perfect timing.
We're on the same page.
That's how I do it.
In fact, I watched it this morning right before this taping.
There we go.

(09:14):
So all Jeremy, you two are just being filled with just only hot takes.
Nothing else.
No analysis.
No.
I have the analysis, but also hot takes.
So, Fergal, why don't you give us a little bit of background on who the Suicide Squad is?
Well, I mean, so it's an interesting story because, again, to properly tell the story,
you got to go all the way back to the snowy dupes of 1959

(09:37):
when Ross Andrew came out with this and Robert Kaninger came out with this and created this
in the Brave and the Bold issue 25.
It was actually out of their mind.
The characters that were in the first run are a lot of the characters you're seeing
in the Superman movie, like Minn-O-Morpho, things of that nature, Robin, Aqualad,
folks like that.
That was the original Suicide Squad.

(09:58):
And then Legends, which was the 1987 remake, really brought in Enchantress,
the Flag Story, Katana, Bane, all of Batman's characters along with some additional characters
like King Shark, who's got super popular blood sport, Peacemaker, who's now got his own show,
which is surprising on every level, Deadshot, Harley Quinn.

(10:20):
Again, it's part of the DC Universe's ability to take criminals and use them,
as she liked to say in her Mendeval is very fond of saying,
we use Nazis to stop, excuse me, we use mobsters to stop Nazis in World War II.
This is her version of that team.
It is the ability to go after criminals, complete deniability, blow their heads up,
take 10 years off their incredibly long life sentences.

(10:42):
And now I had heard that DC actually, part of the reason they had the Suicide Squad,
I can be wrong about this, was DC did this so they could off certain low level characters
they didn't want anymore.
Except for Weasel.
I don't understand how Weasel seems to survive every iteration of the Suicide Squad,
but he is in every iteration, including the cartoon version.
So if they were offing off characters, they were doing an ass backwards.

(11:03):
Meaning the point of, through the canon over the years of Suicide Squad, not the movies,
where they're like, you know what, we don't want these characters in our universe anymore.
Let's get rid of them.
No, no, because DC is right now, DC is probably more so than Marvel has retconned their universe
many, many times.
So no one is ever truly dead in the DC Universe.
I mean, you can go back to Bloodsports, have some Soul comics, you can go back to Bronze Tiger.

(11:28):
If you watch there's a great DC movie that talks about Batman's, he's learning part of his martial
arts training and one of the guys he's up against is kind of a 70s theme movie is Bronze Tiger.
So they don't ever actually get rid of people, but they do cycle through it.
It allows them to introduce lesser known bad guys like Plastique.
Plastique is a lesser known bad guy.
You would not know that she generates plastic explosives, if I'm not mistaken.

(11:53):
You probably would not know who Nightshade is.
And I damn sure know Captain Boomerang wouldn't have too much of a career if it
wasn't for the Suicide Squad because I believe the Flash had that guy wrapped up in about
the first three pages of a comic book he came out in.
So why do we jump into things?
If this is your first time joining us, just quick heads up.
We're going to be discussing certain elements of this movie that might be considered spoilers.

(12:13):
So consider yourself warned.
I mean, the movie is only a few years old, so I'd recommend going out and seeing it and maybe
coming back.
But like I said, consider yourself warned.
So why do you walk through the plot of this movie?
What actually happens?
Yeah. So my short summary of it without giving away anything because I don't want to give
away too much.
It's still a fairly recent movie.

(12:34):
And so Amanda Waller gets together a group of supervillains to take on a task out on the
island of Corteau, Maltese, where they have a very important mission to complete.
And their goal is to survive the mission.
And as we alluded to earlier, if they do, they get time taken off of their life sentence.

(13:00):
And that's how we meet Bloodsport and the rest of the gang.
So this movie is a...
How do I put this?
It's just an ensemble cast.
There are so many characters in this movie.
Which are some of your favorite characters?
I really enjoyed Weasel.
I know Fergal seemed annoyed with Weasel, but Weasel was just really funny.
Oh, Weasel was pointless.

(13:23):
And if Weasel had any more screen time than Weasel had, Weasel would have overstayed his
welcome.
I think the Weasel should have gotten with the guy who could take his arms off.
I think they should have had a whole scene where they were playing catch with the guy
with the arms off.
Because that was the only other way that Weasel would have been okay.
That would have been perfect.
I have no idea what his name is, but he's Armoth Boy to me.

(13:43):
And I just thought if you could have any superpower that you want to slap yourself with,
that would be the one you'd want to slap yourself with.
Because in Wake Up One Morning, imagine all of you gentlemen just wake up one day and
you realize your arms could move on their own, but they're not really strong.
Yeah, Detachable Arm Kid.
It's my favorite character in the movie.

(14:04):
I love the fact that he goes by the acronym for it.
But he doesn't want to tell anyone what actually means because the word kid is in there.
He's outgrown the name, but that's who he is.
And funny enough, he has been retconned as Guy Gardner in Green Lantern.
And he is the rookie police officer.
So just keep it in mind.
There's so many interesting things coming back at it.

(14:24):
But you got a lot of interesting characters.
I don't know.
There's so many like Michael Rooker, Savant.
He's actually a very far...
He's had like one or two comics on his own in The Suicide Squad,
kind of that process back in the 80s.
Interesting character.
I don't know.
I thought Bloodsport was cool, but then I looked at Bloodsport,

(14:45):
I'm like, are they just...
Is it because Will Smith wasn't available for Bloodshot?
Is it just one another blood?
So actually, it's funny you said.
So originally, Will Smith was not available for the filming of this movie.
So they were going to bring Idris Edd to replace him as the actor, but not the character.
And they said, then Will Smith was like, well, one day I might want to come back.
So that's why they went with Bloodsport.
So that way, Will Smith can eventually come back as his original character

(15:07):
from the first Suicide Squad.
Was that pre or post slap?
I think that was pre slap.
Because he's got a long way to go.
That's pre slap.
Okay. So he's got a long way to go post slap.
But it is funny Bloodsport, we had just done, was a blood spot.
No, blood spot.
Even you get confused.
There it is.
I get that one confused all the time.
That was a terrible movie.
Deadshot and Bloodsport.

(15:27):
That's who we were looking at.
But I actually, no, you're right.
There's no excuse for the first Suicide Squad, but there was a...
There was that Deadshot opening sequence that was no money, no honey.
And he just like, that was a cool scene.
To be able to shoot a bullet in every direction.
Oh, I was referring to the Vin Diesel movie.
Oh, careful.
Let's never dog out Vin Diesel because you're looking at his cousin right here.

(15:51):
So one of my favorite characters actually was Amanda Waller.
Milo Davis in that role was fantastic.
She was just one mean lady.
She's been fantastic since she took the role on.
She's been in many iterations of Amanda Waller throughout the entire show.
And they like her so much, they've actually got a show called Waller
coming out in development.
So she's quite a popular character.
So one of the things that happened in this movie is there are effectively two Suicide

(16:13):
Squads that are attacking this island at the same time.
Which of those two Suicide Squads did you prefer as characters?
Not success, of course.
The one that were Bullet Sponge?
I thought the Bullet Sponge ones were fun, right?
The Mongol's daughter, or Mongol's sister.
Mongao.
Mongao.
I thought they were fun.

(16:33):
Because that was a nod to real characters.
They didn't change none of those characters.
Like TDK is in the comics with the exact same gift that he has here.
No blood coming off his arms, by the way.
Just popping right out the joints and walking on their own.
Well, if you notice, they actually look like they're like action figure sockets.
Yeah, yeah.
So they were sort of slightly, like he was attempting, like he was really pushing them

(16:54):
to walk forward.
And so again, you think about that.
And I don't know who, I still can't remember his name because he was so unmemorable.
The guy with the long spear.
The spear was important.
Javelin.
Javelin's spear had more of a bigger role in that movie than Javelin did.
But again, an interesting storyline for there.
I thought the first team was great Bullet Sponges.

(17:16):
One of the SNL alums, who's the guy who died who called the quote?
Oh, that's Pete Davidson.
Yes, yes.
I wanted to point out, they just threw money at that scene.
Because this is the lineup that you got for some of them.
You got Nathan Philly in this TDK.
You have Flula Borg as Javelin.

(17:37):
I like how they just name him Javelin.
Pete Davidson is in his Blackguard.
Sean Gunn is in his Weasel.
You got really big names in here.
And I'm sure I'm missing a few, but those are the quick ones on IMDB.
And it's just like they just threw money at it.
Well, what's funny is I went back and looked at some of the trailers for this movie,
and they highlight those characters as if Pete Davidson had a much larger role in this movie

(18:00):
than he did.
I like that.
I think it was intentionally done because at first, I mean, they even do the full intro.
You get to see them fly in for their mission.
It does all the stuff like, oh, this is what we're going to watch.
But I was like, I don't see Bloodsport.
So I was like, I know there's another character in this that I haven't seen.
But everybody else was like, OK, this will be fun.
And then just to have them all get wiped out kind of early on, most of them is pretty great.

(18:21):
Yeah, I mean, I love that.
And I like the misdirect.
Yes, that was an interest because they all got killed.
And that is all.
And actually, that was the intro into the intro.
That wasn't even the intro to the movie.
That was the intro to the intro, which I think that should have been the first intro to the intro
because that's what the Suicide Squad is, Bulls Pudges.
But yeah, I liked how they did the two separate teams.

(18:43):
And then they really threw you off because they threw Rick Flag in there as well.
And they threw Holly Quinn in there.
They threw Rick Flag in there, which you knew were going to last.
They were definitely not going anywhere.
But they threw them in there.
I want to talk about Polka Dot Man, the most ridiculous of all the characters.
I love it.
No, he's not ridiculous.
How dare you call him ridiculous?
I can't agree with that.

(19:04):
He himself knew he was ridiculous.
I'm not saying he wasn't good.
He was the most accurate comic book character I think I've ever seen on screen.
That's because he puked up polka dots because his mom didn't love him enough
and subjected him to interdimensional crap at Star Labs.
And now he's a conduit for radioactive bombing polka dots.
Well, maybe she loved him so much,
she wanted to make him a superhero and all his siblings.

(19:26):
He saw his mom in every person and everywhere.
So I think even Giant Starro was his mom at one point.
I feel like he is quietly the strongest of all of them with his polka dots.
And it's not talked about in the movie.
Well, at first it's talked about only as like that's what he does.
He throws polka dots, whatever.
And then when you actually see it, you're like, holy crap, this is huge.

(19:47):
Like, it's power is the most powerful and anything else is there.
Like both Bloodsport and Harley Quinn, basically just they have a lot of weapons.
They're good with them, but they have weapons.
They don't have like they aren't causing nuclear explosions.
This guy's basically just like shooting energy at things.
I mean, towards the end.
If he just doesn't like something, he can blow it up and disintegrate it.
He's a great character.
Imagining what that virus does, it makes him vomit basically bombs

(20:11):
and it allows him to throw them at people.
The most disturbing scene, though, I think was the nightclub where he's
dancing with what, seven or eight versions of his mother.
Oh, that was perfect.
That whole scenario set out the ridiculousness of the Suicide Squad.
Right. I mean, because he wasn't the only comic actor.
The stinker was comically, you know, for the most part was comically accurate in this as well.

(20:33):
Starro was definitely comically accurate.
There's no mistake in that.
Like the take on and I mean, it's interesting.
They also threw a quick nod into some Norse mythology with Joden.
They threw a little bit of backstory if you're and I'm sure Chris, you're going to give us
a very detailed exposition upon the building where they took Starro because that is a Nazi
era building that was funded.

(20:55):
And obviously, if you go back and do a little research on Corto Maltese,
that is not the first time that has been mentioned in a movie.
I've also enjoyed King Shark with Sylvester Stallone.
Nmawe, Nimwe.
Which I thought as soon as you realize it's Sylvester Stallone,
all the potential casting questions are out the window because in every movie we've ever done,
it seems like Sylvester Stallone could have been in a movie and it never is.

(21:16):
He is in this movie.
This time he's there.
This and Judge Dredd.
We got him for that.
Oh, let's never talk bad of Judge Dredd.
So we sort of touched around a bit.
How did Idris Elba do as effectively the lead of this movie?
Better than Will Smith.
If you're talking about being absurd, outrageous, but if you're trying to lead a bunch of cats who

(21:40):
have asses where their faces should be, he did extremely well.
Yeah, I was glad he was the leader of this group because I thought going into this,
not knowing a lot about the Suicide Squad and not watching the previous,
that it was going to be Harley Quinn leading this team.
And I don't think that she's a good leader character.
I mean, I don't think she's supposed to be, but I think as a leader,
I think it's like that would be hard to follow and hard to believe.
So I like that it's more that things are happening.

(22:02):
She's there, but she's not the focus of this movie like I thought she was.
Yeah, I liked him in the role.
I enjoyed it.
I normally haven't seen him in something like where he's this cartoonish and outlandish.
So it was really fun.
But also, I kind of put together that he was the leader because he was in the top center of the
poster. I was like, all right, I feel like this guy's you got Idris Elba.

(22:27):
He's probably going to be the main person in this movie.
He's right there.
And so, yeah, I wasn't surprised when we found out he was the leader.
I do like that when they're assembling the team.
Waller says, we've assembled your team with everyone has their own unique set of skills.
And the first person she introduced him to is Peacemaker and describes his set of skills exactly

(22:48):
how she described his set of skills.
He can kill you with anything and has been taught since his father taught him since he was a child.
I do it better.
I do it better.
Yeah, that was an interesting one.
You know, does anyone else feel like Bloodsport had way too many weapons built into that uniform?
Like, it wasn't that uniform in and of itself, just a little like almost an interdimensional

(23:10):
pathway to extraordinarily amazingly difficult weapons.
Especially by the end of it, where he's like whipping things off.
And at some point, he runs out of weapons.
Yeah, I mean, he does run out.
But I mean, he is literally, what is that, the Giver?
Was he the Giver?
Because I was just kind of figuring this whole thing out, like, because, you know,
one little thing turned into a big ass thing that could harm a giant starfish.

(23:30):
I'm just curious to know where that came from.
I thought that was funny.
He basically was like Legos, the gun, just kind of attaching new parts, making it bigger
and bigger and bigger.
But it wasn't just that they like, it wasn't like he attached a scope or anything else.
It was like it morphed into other parts of the gun.
That was the only part that I was kind of like for his weapons, where I was like, come on
now.
But when he just pulled a thousand things out like Batman would, I was fine with that

(23:50):
because they were all individual things that could have theoretically been stuck in there.
But that one gun is like, what?
It's like Batman saying, okay, guys, hold on a second.
I'm pulling a Batmobile out and turning a couple of keys and dropping it on the ground.
I mean, like, oh, yeah, there's my Batmobile.
Don't worry about the fifth and fourth dimensional flip flops here.
We're just going to keep it all together.
Now, having seen Peacemaker in this movie, John Cena's character,

(24:11):
how do you feel the fact that a TV series spun out of this?
It was the bag of dicks on the beach comment that got him a show.
I don't think I think that was kind of ad-libbed.
I think the bag of dicks comment, I would eat a bag of dicks for freedom.
I think that's what got him a show.
I think honestly, that's what he was walking around his tighty-whities and was like, I
would eat dicks for freedom.
That's what got him a show.
I mean, I think James Gunn was like, we want that guy.

(24:34):
Well, the line that was ad-libbed was when he talks about his whitey tights, his tighty
whities, because why are you racist about it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the bag of dicks was written by Gunn himself.
I think that just the execution of the bag of dicks comment was the one that got John
Cena his show.
And I think there's just, his helmets are so outrageous.

(24:55):
I mean, I've actually got the first issue of Peacemaker, which is a Canadian book.
So it's a very old 12 cent books, really interesting book, but nothing like the character
represented on the show.
Nothing like that in the background.
Dad isn't a complete, you know, whatever he is, it's just a, but he is in love with
freedom.
Like I will tell you, Peacemaker is in love with freedom to the point that he will mass

(25:17):
murder everyone to get freedom.
I do think that out of any of the characters, he does probably pose one of the most interesting
backstories and like psyches to then follow in a TV show.
So I do feel like if it's written well, it could be a very good TV show.

(25:39):
So I see the potential.
So I see why this is the character that they picked.
If you haven't seen the show yet, I do recommend going to see it is basically just a lot of
Peacemaker.
Okay.
And he's coming, he has a second season coming out this year.
Oh, it does.
It's actually, so I will tell you this, it's an interesting show.
It does dive in and here's what's most interesting about the show.

(26:01):
And I will say this to you right now.
It's an interesting show.
What was unique about it is that James Gunn did not throw away cannon in that show, right?
Creature Commandos is a direct result of Suicide Squad and Peacemaker to give us Creature Commandos.
That is, I mean, if there's anything about like, and I'm always respectful of anyone

(26:22):
who does this.
I think the Russo brothers do this.
I think Nolan does this.
You know, the guy does Tenet and other things like that.
I think there's some characters or directors who understand nuance.
And I think Gunn is one of those guys.
He drew all of the small pieces that came out of all those shows to give us Creature
Commandos, which I think is one of the best shows on TV today.

(26:45):
I'll have to check it out.
So let me jump in.
We've sort of hinted at some things that have happened with these characters, but what are
some of the scenes that stood out to you?
I love when they first, so after the second group, you know, gets to the island and you
see that that's who you're actually going to follow, right?
Bloodsport and King Shark and those guys.
And they get the second mission where it's like, go save Flag.

(27:07):
Yeah, go save Flag.
And it's them like showing off what each other can do, mainly Peacemaker and Bloodsport as
they kind of sneak their way into this camp.
Again, another subversion moment where it turns out, well, that probably actually was
not the right course of action, but I liked it.
I loved it.
It set the tone of the movie.
Like it doesn't take itself seriously, but as soon as you're willing to accept, like

(27:29):
we're not going to take any of this seriously.
Yes, it's a real it's canon or whatever.
And it's got all these characters, but everything in here is kind of ridiculous.
And you're in for like a funny movie, right?
Even though it's violent and whatever, it's fun.
It's like Deadpool where it's like, as long as you can get past the, okay, we're just
going to do whatever is the funniest thing at the moment.
That set it for me where I was like, okay, I'm going to like this because I love that
whole section.

(27:49):
And then when they found out, like, wait, oops, perhaps we shouldn't have destroyed
everybody on the way into this camp.
Loved it.
Yeah, you have it with a peacemaker killing people to blow dart and yet King shark eating
people.
Yes.
Yes.
I thought the bar scene was one of the coolest scenes in the whole movie.
I thought the bar scene, I'm going to give it the bar scene is a dope scene because
it showed the characters kind of showed the relationship between Bloodsport and Rick

(28:13):
Flag, which I also think gives us another side of Rick Flag that was not on display
in the first Suicide Squad.
And it also sets up Rick Flag's dad, which is interesting in and of itself, which is
kind of the new Rick Flag senior storyline.
I like that.
And I definitely loved I think they start the movie off extremely well with everyone
getting slaughtered on the Cordo Maltese beach.

(28:35):
And they ended it just as nice with Weasel getting up and be like, and this runs away.
Yeah.
I mean, both of the scenes that you all mentioned I loved.
So, I mean, I guess the other one that stood out was Harley Quinn's escape.
Like, I just thought it was beautifully shot, the camera angles were very pointed and you

(28:56):
knew kind of looking at it exactly why each of the shots was lined up the way that it
was.
But it made it seem so seamless.
Even with just the fight choreo, everything when you look back at it is on the beat to
the music.
So like they I don't know if they did the score afterwards or if they did it before,

(29:19):
but either way, they lined it up so that it was coming in shot for shot.
Your strike was coming in when the music was crescendoing and things like that.
So yeah, that was a beautiful scene as well, in my opinion.
Yeah, I remember seeing the trailer and seeing there's all the sort of the flower
petals bursting behind her.
And I see myself like, I remember before seeing it, it's like, what is going to happen?

(29:41):
Is she going to be fighting in a flower shop?
Like, what's this all about?
Ends up being sure she's hallucinating, but it's covering up all the blood of the scene.
She was thinking about me and that's probably what Margot Robbie.
Let's be real.
Yeah, she was thinking about me and I know that I create those kind of flower moments
in people's lives and she's probably having those thoughts.
I understand.
It's very difficult to get away from a beauteous man like myself.

(30:03):
What?
Right there, just so you know.
Perfect.
I also want to add real quick to that, to her escape, that whole story arc where she's
in the first group and then she manages to escape, but she gets captured.
And then the Presidente or whoever it is, like the ruler of this island brings her over.
And I thought from that point, I was like, okay, this is going to be a deal where like

(30:23):
she's working with the enemy and then she eventually like joins the other team or whatever.
But no, because it's Harley Quinn and she just does unexpected things.
Like the whole, that whole switch was instant from, oh, okay, she's going to be, you know,
mistakenly working with the enemy.
It's just like, oh no, okay, got it.
All right.
So now she's probably getting me number one again.
Like I loved that whole buildup.

(30:44):
I was worried that was going to go a different way.
And again, subversion, they changed the entire of what I expected going into it.
So that's excellent.
Oh, she was missing Dr. J.
That's what was going on.
I think it was opposite.
She said after my last relationship, I learned if anyone has red flag, I just need to kill them.
And killing kids is a red flag.

(31:05):
But I also like the subversion of the fact that they go into a rescue Harley,
who's effectively the princess of that story.
And she gets out on her own.
Do you want me to go back and start again?
I really appreciate you guys.
I can do it.
Like I swear.
Oh my gosh.
Such a plan for this.
We really thought this thing through, which I guess made her feel very special and made
her feel like we were being cared about.
Where's this from?

(31:26):
The quiet under character.
Let's, I think we're all forgetting because no one has mentioned the one character who
saved the day, Ratcatcher.
Before you get that, let's circle back though.
I want to say back to that scene we were talking about though.
I like the fact that Peacemaker is in this assassin spot.
No, looking in the window is getting ready.
And he's like, I got my sights on the only person in the office.
And it's like the secretary.
He's like, somehow she's the threat.

(31:47):
I just like the way his brain works is everybody's got to die.
Everyone else has had flowers spurt out of them.
Now, how did Tahiti Wakiti get into this movie?
Out of curiosity, what was, does he fight with James Gunn?
Because he was Ratcatcher's dad.
Ratcatcher's, how did he get in there?
How did he get a line of cameo story in there?

(32:08):
Curious to know about that.
If anyone's got a steelbook reference, Chris.
But beyond that, Ratcatcher was the probably,
if you think about the most powerful character,
I think we try to look, we poke at that man, obviously.
I think if he had fully let go in all respects,
people would be dead everywhere.

(32:28):
But I also think from a perspective of just taking down Starro,
it really was Ratcatcher, right?
That device was something else, like a cosmic rod.
It brought rats from everywhere.
If they didn't make a TV show with Peacemaker,
that's the character I want to follow.

(32:48):
I want to know everything about her.
Give me the TV show of when she was a kid.
Like, give me the entire prequel.
Let me know, how does she end up in prison?
I want every single piece of information
because she is so interesting.
And we don't get told a lot about her either in the movie.

(33:08):
By the way, James Gunn has started to change
that thought process for Suicide Squad.
So I think he's getting better at it.
His products are showing better exposition
because Creature Commandos, every episode,
gives you a background, enough of a background.
I know enough about Weasel now to know why he is the way he is.
I got a better understanding of where his thought and motivations go

(33:31):
from however many of those things are besides kitty treats.
I just know what he's really looking for on that.
That takes some development.
But you're right, Ratcatcher I'd like to know more about.
Because again, that was beautifully shot choreography.
That was beautifully shot.
Even taking out Starro was beautifully shot.

(33:51):
The whole idea of it and Harley jumping in
and without giving too much away and the rats coming.
That's beautifully shot.
That's funny, Sam.
I was actually on a show yesterday
and we were talking about Creature Commando,
the show versus the Suicide Squad in general.
We were talking about how in the TV show,
you have the time to really dive into those backstories,
but you could not do that in a movie.

(34:13):
This movie is already pretty long as it is.
We'll get the pacing in a bit.
But to have done a deep dive into his backstory,
I think he did it right.
He hinted that there's a backstory.
He hinted that there's these other elements are not, no,
just a piece of paper.
So I think James got a good job when it came to that,
these backgrounds.
I think if we had spent like 30 minutes
on the Ratcatcher's backstory,
I think we would have been tired of it.
The fact that they hinted that there's a good one back there.

(34:35):
And I think she has a really interesting story.
And yeah, right.
A TV show would be fantastic to do a deep dive on her.
Yeah.
I don't think this was the right movie to do it.
They did it tastefully to where now I'm like,
mm, give me more.
I want to know more.
So yeah.
Exactly.
You sort of got like a sample platter.
Now, the one thing I didn't want to remember for scenes,

(34:55):
I liked every scene King Shark was in.
Nom noms.
Nom noms.
Nom noms.
Nom noms.
Can I eat?
Nom nom.
Oh, nom way.
Nom nom.
No nom nom.
And the scene I want to bring up in particular is the aquarium scene.
Yes.
Oh, it was so cute.
A little small fishies.
It was so adorable.
Yeah, that attacked him.

(35:16):
No, I think the running in circle scene when he's running up the circle,
he's trying to make his little shark.
That was the best scene.
Those were some of the.
So much fun.
Or he makes the Peacemaker C4.
Yes.
And Peacemaker is offended that it looks the way it looks.
I appreciate you doing that for me, but it does not look like me.

(35:36):
That is very nice.
And this movie does an interesting job of going from like sort of a,
I wouldn't say ground, but sort of smaller story that actually ends up with a kaiju
as the big bad guy at the very end of the movie.
And it really ramps up to get to that point.
I think it builds up on it builds up the things that are so ridiculous
that by the time you get to star, you're like, OK, like it's huge.
And it's still bizarre, but it's not like the whole movie is straight forward,

(35:59):
serious, and then star shows up.
Right.
Like that would have been too much.
Star is I didn't expect it to be that colorful.
I also think you have to.
I think what they did extremely well was utilize the CG and the people who are
representing his voice and to create almost a small amount of empathy.

(36:22):
Do you guys not feel just a smidgen bit of empathy?
I felt a little bit bad for it.
I was like, oh, this thing's just been trapped its entire life.
Like it didn't ask to be captured and then trapped for 60, what, 60 years or something.
Like it was a long time.
He's the Nazi era.
Yeah.
That's why it's called Yodin.
So like 80 years, like he's just like, I didn't ask for any of this.

(36:44):
Like I was just mining.
And like at the end of the movie as well, one star was just like, I was mining my own business.
Like here's like, like, especially with that last line, it's like, ah, like, yeah,
you do feel a little bit of sympathy of like, you, you really just wanted to leave.
Like you just didn't want to be stuck here.
You're absolutely right.
And it was an interesting needle how they thread the whole thing.
So I think Bravo to James Gunn for that.

(37:06):
Cause he, he threaded a needle on this movie.
That was really hard to do.
Well, I was about to say that James Gunn, that's what he does is that the villains
are the monsters and all his stories.
He always tries to humanize them and the true evil people in his worlds are always the humans.
That's what he always paints.
And I like his stuff.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm just saying that's just, he's, he's gotten really good at it.
Cause he, that's what he does.
Just like a creature commando is a good example.

(37:28):
But I also think that what he does really well is he paints it where even the villains per se,
like Starro, it's not all black and white.
Like what I like about his movies is none of his characters are black and white.
It's not, they are good.
They always do good.
It's like, no, they have demons in their closet.
Like you see it with Waller.
Like she's about to literally just be like, all right, my task is done.

(37:53):
A city of millions can die.
I don't care compared to even bloodshot or blood sport, blood sport.
This one's blood sport.
Blood sport.
Blood sport.
Welcome to our world.
But even with blood sport, like when we're introduced to him, it's he's an assassin.
He kills people.

(38:13):
But then by the end of the, and the entire time he's like, I am a terrible person.
I don't know why anyone wants to be associated with me.
But then at the end it's like, I can't let millions die when I know that I can help.
And then he had a smaller bullet for Peacemaker's bullet.
He actually shot a smaller bullet at Peacemaker's bullet, which sets up Peacemaker.
Yeah.
It's so funny, Jack.

(38:34):
That's a tie back to the whole, like, you know, my bullets are so small, they'll go through,
they'll go through your bullet holes without touching the sides.
Kind of, no, his bullets aren't smaller.
They are bigger.
Yeah.
And it was like, you can't hit this center when it's already the center.
It's like, I'll hit the center center.
They're back and forth.
It's hilarious.
But this movie comes in over two hours long.

(38:56):
How do you guys feel about the pacing of it?
Oh, you don't notice it.
Once you watch it, you don't know.
I mean, you could, here's, here's one of those movies.
I'll tell you, once you've seen it the first time, you could put it on mute and watch it
and almost know the lines.
Even to us, slightly middle-aged, a little bit older individuals on this podcast,
we could put it on to mute and be like, I know exactly what they're saying right now.

(39:17):
I feel good about myself.
Yeah.
I was worried when I started it and saw that it was over two hours long.
I was like, oh, no, what, this is going to be another one I have to watch in segments.
I don't have time.
I watched it right before this taping.
So I was like, uh, well, let's see.
But it flew by, I think, because you have an ensemble cast and they did have to do a
little bit of explaining on some of the characters.
I like that they didn't waste time, you know, introducing things to Harley Quinn again.

(39:37):
You don't need it.
In fact, they're like, oh, and her and she's there.
Don't even bother introducing her by name.
You just know who it is.
And it's like, okay.
And you know, the little bit of background they did was just enough to like, here's what
their powers are.
You don't need to quite know why they have it.
Who cares?
They'll get into it throughout the story.
It's there.
It's blended very well.
But it also meant that, you know, I wasn't wading through a whole bunch of weird flashbacks
and a whole bunch of things other movies like this would do or have like the scene

(40:00):
with Harley that I mentioned where it's her and the leader of the nation on a date, more
or less is so fast.
And so it moves along fast enough.
They didn't have a half an hour where it builds that up or other high school prom date.
It's in and out.
Done and done.
It's a high school prom date.
They literally went from first date to marriage in six hours.
Yeah.
And but in like five minutes, I didn't have to watch 30 minutes of this romance to get

(40:23):
to where that happened.
It didn't need it.
And I think like we just did Punisher a while ago.
And I think that has that problem where to try to get his backstory, you have 45 minutes
that it should have been willed down to 10.
This doesn't happen.
The Russian was such a well-developed fight scene.
Oh, boy.
No, the guy was no background.

(40:43):
Yeah.
He was the opposite.
They did no background for us.
Like, yeah, we hired the Russian and then he shows up and he looks ridiculous.
You know what?
I'm not talking about the Russian anymore.
Here's a fun fact.
The Russian was in Wolverine and Deadpool.
Did you guys know that?
Yes, he was one of the bad guys.
Yes, he was.
He was a completely different guy, but he was so important.
He got pulled in the void.
But to be real fast, I actually got sent pictures of the Russian from the comic book by people

(41:05):
who listen to the show saying, look, that's how he's supposed to look.
Well, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous in the comic book.
It's ridiculous in the movie.
Yeah, I have no idea if these characters are dressed like they are in the comic book or
not in this movie.
Because I have no reference.
I know of the characters, some of them, but I haven't read the comic, so I have no idea

(41:27):
if the costumes are accurate.
Well, that's the nice thing about this level of character.
Most people don't have a clue who they are.
No, they're pulled from the bottom of the barrel, like the javelin.
He's a real character, I hear, but I've never...
If you asked me to describe him, I would describe him from this movie because I have
never heard of him.
I looked at the Polka dot to see if they made him up for this movie or not.
They didn't.
He's some old Batman villain, but like a 50s, 60s Batman villain.

(41:48):
Right?
So it's not like he's going to be in a current issue of something where you're like, oh,
he's super damaging.
He was like an older villain they brought back for this purpose.
Right.
That makes me sad that the shark guy, Nam-Wai?
Nim-Wai.
Nim-Wai.
That makes me sad that Nim-Wai is not a bigger character because he's incredible.
Well, Nim-Wai is in Creature Commandos, if that doesn't ruin anything.

(42:12):
Nim-Wai is not done in his career with DC because he is just too funny a character.
He's introduced in the last episode of that series, yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that DC is doing a bit of a better job than Marvel did when it comes to bringing
monsters out because while I enjoyed Werewolf at Night, Werewolf by Night, and I thought
they had some really interesting takes on that, I just think the whole concept of how they

(42:34):
covered the Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein, the monsters, I just think that's kind of dope, man.
So, but back to the pacing, how'd you guys find the pacing for it?
Not too bad.
You could watch it.
You could watch it once and just kind of put it on mute and be like,
this is a fun movie to have in the background.
I watched it.
I enjoyed it.
I think if I, cause like when I watch and if I sit down thinking that I'm just watching

(42:58):
this for entertainment and nothing else, then the pacing's perfectly fine.
And then, yeah, I mean, even when I sat down and watched it and I was like,
I need to semi-analyze this movie to be able to have a discussion.
Even then I was like, I only found myself at one point being like, wow, this is getting long.
And then I got up, got some water, sat back down, and then we were good.

(43:20):
Like it was just something like that.
So yeah.
I had a similar experience.
I had to stop.
I've seen this movie, obviously, before I watched it again this morning.
And I had to stop halfway through to take care of something.
And when you pause it, the time remaining pops up on the screen and they were just
going into the tower and it said 45 minutes left.
And I'm like, how is there for, I've seen this.
How was your 45 minutes left to this movie?

(43:40):
But that last 45 flies by.
Like the moment I hit play again, it just cruised.
Yeah.
That's roughly where I hit pause as well.
That general timeframe.
Yeah.
There's not really a lull in the movie.
Right.
Even like I'd say that the bar scene is not boring by any means, but that's where I paused it to
go get some other stuff.
Because I was like, okay, this is kind of like they're relaxing.
It's a fun moment for a moment.

(44:01):
I know there's a plan here, but still I'll come back in a minute.
And I was only gone for a few minutes, came back.
That's the only time I paused it.
And that's only because I need to get a drink and go to the bathroom.
Exactly.
That's all I did.
Like I got a drink and I was like, all right, cool.
Sit back down, watch this movie.
One thing I didn't want to talk about, guys, is the soundtrack of this movie.
I didn't, it was, I mean, obviously clearly I've seen this movie hundreds of times and

(44:22):
the soundtrack hasn't stood out to me.
There are movies where soundtracks stand out, but this, I mean, it's the best I can say
is it compliments the movie.
I mean, it's not, you know, it's not you got the touch or dare, you know, so I mean, if I,
or, you know, the iconic Lost Boys believe with the sacks, right?
I've kind of played that my whole life.
I want to get the long, oaky bricky hair and, ah, but I can't do that.

(44:46):
So we're okay.
It didn't happen for me, but you know, this soundtrack flows along nicely.
I agree.
I think it compliments the movie, but it's not winning any awards.
Also, I think it's, it's a mix of old and new.
That's the problem with some of these is like whatever they do is the new music at the time.
So when you watch it later, it's dated, you know, all these movies that we watch that
had like new metal soundtracks for, you know, daredevil or whatever, like all those there,

(45:10):
or no, Electra had the one that was like Evanescence over and over again.
That's fine.
But it puts you in a moment.
It puts you in a specific moment.
It puts you in a moment.
I mean, Evanescence maybe even question your life choice in about 15 minutes.
I mean, for me personally, I'm like, if there's a way, if I'm creating something,
is there a way for you to write it yourself is my first thought of like,

(45:34):
can you get someone to help you write it or use something where it isn't set of like,
oh, you can tell that this movie came out in 2021 because of this song.
So I'll always use things from like, I would lean of like, hey, use something from like
2015, 2010, like use something that was already out, but isn't coming out like that year.

(45:57):
It's not the hip thing that year, but still fits your vibe.
Cause I guarantee you can find something.
You just got to go back a bit.
I really thought you were doing like, I want to, I've heard from a way back, like the nineties.
Sometimes I do.
And I love pulling from the eighties into seventies.
Like the majority of what I listen to is seventies and eighties rock.
You got to be careful on that self-confidence tip right there.

(46:18):
Cause we are old.
I don't know.
No, no, no.
Three of us are like one and one of us is not.
So the first song you hear is Johnny Cash.
That's older than all of us.
Right.
So that's fine.
That's older than all of us.
Yeah, that is definitely.
But then like the issue is when you start doing that new stuff and I'm like,
like now I'm going to know that like, or I'm just going to have that feeling every time

(46:38):
if I go back and watch it.
Like, like the movie Daredevil, when we watched Daredevil, like the
evidence and songs that were in it had dropped the month before the movie came out.
I mean, it was about as new as you get.
And that's, and it's, it taints it in the fact that that's all you think about when
you see that, but that show you hear that music player, like this movie came out in that year.
That's it.
And that's all I'm saying is like, don't do that.

(46:59):
No, James Gunn is going to have a, that's probably, if you ask me what this man's weakness is
after watching creature commandos is okay.
And I'm going to say this with all due respect, because I think he's done a great job.
So the movie Elizabeth Tom was about the music, right?
That the movie, when they did the Rolling Stone tune, that was about the way they followed
the reporter that was about the music that was of central to telling the story, even

(47:24):
Dune or Superman, John Williams soundtrack.
That's about complimenting the story as much as it is creating it.
Otherwise music should just be background and set moods.
And I think James Gunn can get a really, he's very much an all over the place music guy.
And I think it could take away from some of the things he's currently doing.

(47:44):
Like that's the only drawback of creature commandos is the music is a little off.
I will strongly disagree with you on that one.
The fact that creature commandos, I love the soundtrack from that, that the music is so
eclectic, it hits so many different points on it.
And it only comes in hard when the show's over, when it's the closing credits.
And it definitely summarizes how I felt going through that episode.

(48:05):
I think he does a great job or whoever he does it for him does a great job of selecting
songs.
Especially creature commando.
I love whoever selects his music does a great job because I've never heard those songs before.
And they're all bangers.
They're all great.
They're all bangers.
That may just be the fact that you are older.
You were probably back in the first punk days, weren't you there?

(48:26):
Yeah, I've got a walker here.
I don't even know when that came out.
I usually get a walker to get the stairs.
I understand, Chris.
I get it.
So let's switch to the effects real fast.
How do you guys feel about the special effects around this movie given it's only been out
for a couple of years now?
They've changed.
They're better now.
They're better.
But here's what makes it better.
You also clearly see where they don't spend money.

(48:47):
When they're as good as they are, and they are very good, you can clearly see where they
don't spend money.
And I think that's the problem with them.
Better effects get.
When someone does something where they run out of money, for lack of a better word, you
can see where they're shaving the budget.
See, I think they still hold up pretty well.
Again, it's a comic book movie.
It's fairly unrealistic.
You have Star-O going on.

(49:08):
But the fact that Star-O is there and doesn't look like a bizarre cartoon in the middle
of the world because everything else up to that point has been increasingly unbelievable
what they kind of fold you in.
You get to fold it in on Polka Dot Man's powers.
You get folded in on everything else.
And when you finally get to Star-O, you're like, well, let's see how it looks.
And it doesn't look half bad.
I thought it was funny, though, that this movie has this giant star monster and then

(49:30):
Watchmen, which was admittedly an older movie.
But the original comic book ending of Watchmen is much more similar to this giant Star-O
attack.
It's not, but graphically, visually, it looked the same.
And instead, they're like, that would be unfilmable and ridiculous.
We're going to change it.
Where instead, they just went full bore.
And this one, like, we're going to make it as ridiculous as possible.
And it still somehow really worked.
And I'm sure that's the difference of time, but also the fact that up until the end of

(49:52):
Watchmen, it was not that ridiculous, and then that would have been way out there.
Where in this case, again, you've got everything building up to how ridiculous this giant starfish
would be.
And it works.
It works.
It looks fine.
Yeah, I think that they held up.
I never felt at any point where it was like, oh, that's bad CGI.
James Gunn career started in horror.

(50:14):
Can you see those roots in this movie?
Oh, yeah.
In the essence, you have a starfish taking over people and killing them.
That is terrifying.
Well, and also some of this, like even the first scene where you see the other group
come on and get attacked.
Those are very violent, bloody graphic deaths, but in a completely horror way, so good.

(50:36):
But even all the scenes in the lab where they show all this experience in doing on the people
that have the starfish kind of invasion on them or whatever you want to call it, like a starfish
attack, you see the part where you pulled the face off.
And so there's like the starfish shaped face cut out of the sky.
Those are all really good horror effects.
I can totally see that background.
And I don't think the effects are bad.

(50:58):
I don't think the effects are bad.
I just think that, quite frankly, great effects like what they put in these movies.
And that's why I think the acclimation is so high for Superman because the way they shot
Superman flying, they had to overcome how Zack Snyder did Metal Steal.
And so they took everything Zack Snyder did.
And then James Gunn added about 19 different new things to it to get it more personal,

(51:21):
get it more in your face.
The better the effects they go.
And that's the problem with these movies when they have to be such big winners so fast
because they can't really, you know, the better they get, the worst they can become if you
run out of money as comparison to.
True. And James Gunn's favorite scene in that favorite shot was when King Shark rips a guy in
half. Yeah, that was a fun one.

(51:44):
And when you saw that, you're like, yeah, that's his horror roots screaming out right now.
So guys, we're coming near the end of this, but what we're seeing that you sort of really
loved about this movies, but what do you think they could have done better?
No, I think the movie is great.
I liked the movie.
I think the movie did really well.
I don't have any complaints on this movie.
I think seeing who comes out of the movie, like seeing which characters are kind of

(52:07):
surviving is an interesting story in and of itself, right?
Because now we've got like three characters, we've got Nimue, we've got Weasel.
I still don't get Weasel.
I get Weasel as a thing, but I'm trying to figure out what the enduring quality of Weasel
is because he does lick his own balls.
And I mean, unless somehow that has become an invoked thing that I somehow all wish to aspire to.

(52:29):
Expecting nothing going into this.
I quite like this.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised.
I went into it thinking this is going to be bonkers and I left thinking that was bonkers.
So yeah.
Fergal, you've alluded this a couple of times about how
Creature Commando, which is Task Force M and this is Task Force X.

(52:51):
And I'm not sure if you guys have seen that show or not, but between the two,
do you see what are the connections that you see between them?
So Task Force M, okay, is a direct result of, in essence, the Sokovia Accords against
Task Force F, which is a direct result of Coromaltis, which is a direct result of Peacemaker,

(53:13):
which is a direct result of Amanda Waller's family.
And then which is a direct result of Rick Flagg Sr. being the leader of Task Force M.
So this movie is actually could be considered the beginning of the new DCU sort of?
In a way, because they're not drawing it.

(53:33):
So that's the only major difference between these two lines.
And this is what James has decided on.
They're not drawing a story like Marvel is.
They're telling a comic book.
And then within that comic book, they have chapters and then they also have one shot
in those comic books, which are all the Elseworld movies.
So they're just building it in a different way than Marvel is.

(53:55):
Much different way.
Yeah, they're operating each chapter as a chapter.
And I don't think they yet have defined themselves as uniting against a singular global multiversal
threat.
But I think Marvel is going to say, oh, we've got some really good ones.
They're all multiversal threats at this point.
And they've actually been setting those guys up for now almost a year.

(54:18):
Everything from Venom to the One-Eyed Thing and Shavagarath.
They keep building up to these things.
But DC hasn't yet.
I don't think they've come to a point because at this point, they're not telling origin
stories.
They've got to tell compelling stories.
I think they've settled on a writer, Grant Morrison.

(54:41):
So a lot of their stuff is going to fall under.
If you're a DC fan and you want to kind of get a sense of where you're at anytime in
the movie stream, you got to go hunt out Grant Morrison's work.
Frank Whiteley, Grant Morrison, you've got to hunt these guys out because you'll also
see Superman in my viewpoint is one of the best stories ever written.
It's a great story.

(55:01):
It's a great story, even more expertly drawn.
Frank Whiteley, Grant Morrison.
And Grant Morrison's written Swamp Thing.
He's written Sandman.
I put him at the same quality as Alan Moore and other folks of that nature.
You can put it together.
But they've decided on a strategy.
They're sticking with it.
It's going to come across different.
But at least James Gunn took that continuity with him.

(55:24):
So he's kind of nothing's disconnected.
It's all one property.
Yeah, because James Gunn did this movie, did Peacemaker as well.
And now he's leading it up and he doesn't want those projects to die.
And what he has said is that if it's mentioned in Creature Commandos going forward, it's canon.
So in episode one of Creature Commandos, he mentions Operation Starfish.

(55:44):
They mentioned Peacemaker.
So that means these two things are part of canon, but doesn't mean everything in them is canon.
And it's like a good comic book where essentially
it might reference something from another run or it might not reference a thing from another run.
So it only matters if it's referenced.
That's essentially the take he's taking with it.
So he doesn't have to throw everything out and basically keep both things he likes,
which happens to be all the things he did.
So my question for you guys is, should people go out and find this movie if they haven't seen it before?

(56:08):
I was going to say, yeah, I think it's well worth finding as a standalone.
Again, you don't need a lot of background in the world of DC universe to enjoy this.
And in fact, even if you were very familiar with a lot of those characters,
there's still a bunch here you won't know.
So I think it's a good one off, but I'm also excited to see what else they do with some of these characters.
Yeah, I think it is a good one, both from the perspective of you know these characters or you don't know these characters.

(56:33):
I don't feel like you have to know these characters to enjoy this movie.
And then secondly, even if people might not enjoy comic book movies as much,
if they are looking for something that's just a fun action movie,
I think it's a fun action movie and you can just accept that they're in a world with superpowers,

(56:55):
but it doesn't force you to worry about an entire world.
Like you don't need to be sucked in.
Like it's not like an Avengers film where you have 12 different pieces coming together into play,
whereas it's a lovely one shot.
So I think it works in multiple different ways to watch it.
I actually think this is going to, you know, the whole thing about where James comes in.

(57:18):
I was one of the first people questioning Peter Saffron and James Gunby, right?
When you had Jeff Goff, if I'm not mistaken, who came from the same world as Kevin Feige,
reinvented the DC with 52.
I might be seeing as Jeff or James Gunby, but it's Goff is his last name,
like my quarterback that effed up at the football game.

(57:39):
But no, Jeff Johns, excuse me, I'm sorry.
I just took myself out of that negative period.
I went up with positive energy for Jane Daniels.
But I just think that he's done some interesting things with this role.
And I don't know about you, but you mentioned Chris,
that you like music in Creature Commanders.
Like you thought it was all bangers.
So I'm going to tell you, I thought the guitar solo of John Williams

(58:01):
for the trailer of Superman, that was a banger.
That was an absolute monster banger.
Does anyone else disagree with that?
Anyone else disagree with that?
I agree with it.
I don't disagree with it.
I agree with it.
Yeah, but it's a guitar version of a theme you already knew.
It's not a new theme.
It's a callback to a theme that you know.
You've learned it your entire life.
You know that theme is Superman.

(58:21):
But it's a reinvention, which is not a callback.
I think it was a good way to get the nostalgia going.
It's kind of like when we reviewed Superman as well, right?
You went into it thinking, I remember this movie being amazing.
And then you go back to it, like, it's not so amazing.
The second one was a little bit better.
But it's hard.
I think then Superman, and then we just did what?

(58:42):
The 1966 Batman.
It's hard to talk about those movies in any way constructively.
I don't know.
They're fun.
And I've watched them my entire life.
They're things that I've seen forever.
It's hard to go in and really criticize those movies because they are so different in a
time frame than this movie, for example, right?
You couldn't say the effects on either Batman from 1978 or Superman from 1978 or Batman from

(59:03):
1966 was on the same even universe as what was in this movie.
And it doesn't make sense to discuss them kind of in the same tone.
So before we rate this movie, for those who are listening right now, if you go to Apple
or Spotify, leave us a five star review and review.
That'd be great.
Great way to support the show and help other listeners find us.
But for this movie, guys, how would you rate this movie?

(59:24):
I'd give it about a half a thumb.
Well, no, no, no, no.
I'm going to say I'll give it three quarters of a thumb.
I will never, you know, I'm going to hold my full thumb.
I'll give it three quarters of a thumb with the threat of blowing your head off if you
don't agree with me.
Ah, with my little detonation device.
Well, now I'm being threatened, so I guess I have to give it a three quarters of a thumb.

(59:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't need that head to explode.
That's great.
Thank you for playing the straight man to death.
That was phenomenal.
I got your back.
But I agree.
I would probably give it about three quarters of a thumb.
Like when I was thinking of it on like a scale of like one to ten, it was kind of like a

(01:00:07):
seven, seven and a half ish, like very enjoyable film.
I don't know if you could get a lot more.
I don't know if you can really get a much higher rating with the type of film that it
is just for me personally.
But like it's a very solid film.
I enjoyed it.
Yeah, I'd say for me personally, it's a huge thumb up.
But I think if I was going to recommend this to somebody as like, oh, here's some superhero
movies you need to see.

(01:00:28):
It's probably in that three quarters thumb range because I think because it doesn't take
itself seriously, it is very tongue in cheek.
There is a lot of a lot more humor than you'd get in a lot of these superhero movies.
Right.
If this was how if this was the same theme that Batman had to the whole way through, it
would feel weird.
Right.
It wouldn't make any sense.
So I'm going to still I'm going to also go with a three quarters thumb.
But for me personally, this may be one of my favorites.
We've looked at.

(01:00:48):
Yes, I'm going to sing one star arm up.
I would even even have my head blown off by Fergal.
I'd say it's a good it's a fun action flick.
Even if you are into superheroes, go watch.
You'll have a good time.
I don't think you can come out as we'll be saying like I wasted two hours of my life
unless, of course, you're just adamant against action movies.
Chris, I just wanted you to know I do have the device at hand.

(01:01:14):
What do we learn, Fergal?
Your your internet connection is the most unstable we've ever seen.
So I doubt it even go through.
I do enjoy, Chris, though, that you created a new way of ranking your movies and that
it's now star arms.
And I would like to think that from now on, when you rate movies,

(01:01:36):
you're just going to be slowly like drawing star arms for each one.
How many star arms is this movie worth out of five?
Does it get to be the full star or no.
So before we finish up, guys, I do have a new review just came in.
And I just want to make sure you guys heard this one.
And don't worry, Fergal, this one's not a personal attack like the last.
Oh, I love them all.
Bring them bring the love.

(01:01:57):
There's better and there's more fun in the anger than there is in the happy.
But I love the happy.
So this one's five stars for us.
The movie Smash Crew does a great job discussing films and their love of them.
There's a great balance between the personal preferences, objective reviewing
and trivia regarding the films.
This show is enjoyable and fun for any fan.
Good times and good info.
I kind of wish it was a little more insulting, but you're right.

(01:02:18):
No, don't say that.
You wish it were going to get nothing but hate mail.
True, true.
If you're going to leave a review on Apple or Spotify,
make sure it's only five stars.
We only accept five stars over there.
But you want to send me a note that's kind of hateful.
That's different.
That's fair.
Yeah, keep that secret.
What if it's five stars, but then a hateful comment?
I'll still take that because the five stars, all the algorithm cares about.

(01:02:42):
Nice.
Just give look, look, look, just giving the people the options.
Exactly.
Don't do the other thing.
I've gotten I've gotten a one star review on RetroVaniacs, but was like,
I love the show.
One star.
No, what are you doing?
You're killing me.
What are you doing?
That's not how this works.
There's a show I used to listen to where they came out and said,
we want to be those four star rated podcasts out there.
They want all their fans to get four stars.

(01:03:03):
They thought it was hilarious.
But after a year, they literally only had four stars
and they realized they were just getting killed by the algorithm.
So they were killed by their own joke.
But where can we go find you?
Yeah, you can find my stuff.
My website is usually up to date.
It's unkit, A-N-K-I-T, madira, M-A-D-H-I-R-A.com.

(01:03:24):
And that has information to everything.
When this comes out, I have a new single coming out on Valentine's Day.
So that'll be coming out.
Musician single?
Same name.
Yeah, I'm a singer and a songwriter and I sing and I write music.
What kind of singer do you do?
It's mainly like indie pop, indie rock kind of vibe.
Not like a Michael Buble type situation.

(01:03:46):
Sometimes.
I'm easy, you know.
See, the fun thing about being an actor, I can do all of it.
But when I write personally, it's like indie pop, indie rock a lot of times.
A lot of electric guitar, bass, a lot of bass.
Well, I'm just jealous because I can't do that.
I bought my son a guitar when he was lying because he had this desire to be a guitar.

(01:04:07):
And it's been in his closet because we packed it away because he didn't want to use it.
For now, almost eight years, it's actually only ever been used once.
Now we have a brand new guitar.
In case anyone wants one of those, more than one.
Oh, that is a dated song.
Well done.

(01:04:28):
And I forgot he's feeling old.
I mean, well, for some reason, that song just riled around my brain.
It was the only thing I could draw to the mat at this point.
I really want to hear your rendition of Evanescence.
Then you'd have to start seeing me cry and have a bottle of liquor next to me
because that's the only way I could accurately portray Evanescence.
Or Sinead O'Connor.

(01:04:50):
Fair enough.
Yeah, so I got those.
And then I also have two podcasts.
I host one, which is called Post Finale, which is a film review podcast.
And it follows my journey watching popular films for the first time
as an actor who has seen nothing.
So as this episode comes out, we'll actually be going through.

(01:05:11):
And it usually takes me about a month on that show to get through an entire movie.
But we are working our way through The Notebook in the month of February.
As of recording this, I'm halfway through.
And oh boy, I can't wait to watch the second half of it.
But the other show that I do is called Flip the Scripts.
And that one is with my friend who is a director.

(01:05:32):
And we take a look at adaptations.
So books to movies, books to TV shows.
How did they do?
Do we think that is a faithful adaptation?
What could they have done better?
Similar to this, but more on the adaptation side of things.
Looking at that, we haven't yet hit the comics yet, though.
And we will soon.
And you can also find me on Instagram,

(01:05:52):
a-n-k-i-t underscore m underscore official.
But yeah, that's where you can find all of the different things that I do.
And Jeremy, how do we ever find you?
You can always find me here every two weeks, but otherwise on Retrovania.net,
where our podcast and video channel, YouTube and Twitch streams, etc.
Or at subtastics.bandcamp.com for 90s alt rock sort of more or less thing that I still do.

(01:06:14):
And fertile.
Well, you can bring me back to life, as they say in Evanescence.
Or you can find me at my house just barely trying to survive the day
as it attacks me every moment that I wake up.
Or you can find me at my job where I have a boss
who really wants to make my life by living hell.
Or if you really want to find me, you can find me at Get Your Nerd On,
where I really love to get my nerd on,

(01:06:35):
where I will eventually simply live in the word of nerddom.
And picking up amazing little buys.
By the way, I did just pick up an amazing comment.
If you guys comic recently, if you guys haven't caught up,
there's a comic series called Secret War.
Not Secret Wars, not to be confused with that theory,
but it's a five issue arc about like a very based in a real life

(01:06:58):
CIA black hit takeover government, overthrow government type situation,
but with Marvel character.
And for me, you can always find me over off panel creations.
We're always building some piece of nerdy furniture over there.
I want to thank you, our listeners, for spending some time with us.
And if you think that by adding the word the to the title
makes us a reboot or a sequel, just reach out to us,
send us a note or movie-smash.com and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

(01:07:21):
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,
executive produced by Off Panel Creations, LLC.
Movie clips provided by the respective studios.
You can rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You might even find your review right on a future episode.
Got a question for us?

(01:07:42):
Visit us at movie-smash.com and send us a note.
It too can be read on a future episode.
If you haven't already, please subscribe to Movie Smash wherever you listen to your podcasts.
But when you get past that certain age, you'll lose track
and then you'll just need to go pee somewhere.