286: Gen Z Daddy

In this episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy discuss Thunderbolts*, Fantastic Four: First Steps, and detective fiction.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown. No, don't's a little page.

Speaker 3 (00:02):
He's bagging boarding batman and the gut or like a
maze story tellers me some fellas, we some felons.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Isn't amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
It's like Appella bearver sella because this shit is so contagious.
Mouths on the Summer Reason Pilot got the shells while
the cycle spinning knowledge on the getty like a pro
beat the babble, be the rabbit.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Don't step to the squad.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
We get activic and hate. It's like a stepla pot.
You don't like fish talk, do you hate? It's a
batl we the cuttle fish killers tender pools on the
taping the Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life,
Bucky barn Hit Squad, spraying leg and your pipe.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another edsion of it is this
is bad? It is this just bad?

Speaker 4 (00:37):
The best podcast you never heard of your Husbandfessor Mouth
Joint is always buysy becosmologists and teddy.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
Hell, low folks and happy pride.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (00:47):
It is probably still June when you're listening to this,
So I hope you're all having a wonderful time. With
whatever festivals and events are out near you check them out.
Should be fun.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Call this show Wells Fargo because we are banked.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Oh I like that one. Well done? Okay and bad.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
Say I haven't stolen anything from anybody recently, and I'll
think the.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Insted in subprime mortgages.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
The publicly the worst bank. Although it's weird that Wells
Fargo has the rep of being the bad bank that
just goes to show how bad they are.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Wells Fargo there is an entire three or four banks
that literally got shut down because of scams.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
Yeah, Wells far Fargo is the Wilson Fisks task Force
of banks, like you got to invent and it's explic
enormously cartoonishly evil bank to make call the other banks
normal comparison.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
There's like, I know somebody has Wells Fargo who constantly
receives like it's little but like little sums of money
from class action lawsuits like regularly because they're you know,
banked by Wells Fargo, so like every year they'll at
like two dollars or something.

Speaker 5 (02:12):
I think I saw a stand up routine about exactly
this of the it's real. Yeah, just oh, we're so sorry.
We pros will never.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Do it again.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
Oh oops, here's not two bucks.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah, Wells Fargo is horrible,
like several cities filed suit against them after the the
housing bubble burst being like you specifically are the reason
why tens of thousands of people don't have homes in
this local like not a lot, like moneyed interest or

(02:49):
bank like Wells Fargo specifically is the problem. And they
weren't even they weren't even the worst affected by the
housing bubble bursting.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So to put it in perspective.

Speaker 5 (03:02):
If you, dear listener, are at a pride parade and
probably a bank will be sponsoring it if it's specifically
Wells Fargo, flip them off, get them.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'll give you two bucks.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
But we are we are back, which is another regular episode.
There's no fan no fantasy world, no role play, no
dice rolling, although we can get into that, uh perhaps
depending on what the content brings us.

Speaker 5 (03:32):
All the dice go ahead.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Before we started, before we started recording, we were just
talking about Disney and uh Thunderbolts and the weird the
the weird galaxy brain move that Disney pulled off. It
does seem like it is a sign that the MCU

(04:00):
is moving towards quality irrespective of profitability, which is I
think hopefully a sign of like good things to come.
So basically within the same week or the same couple
of weeks, the news from the MCU was Thunderbolts asterisk.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
What does it mean?

Speaker 4 (04:22):
It actually means the New Avengers Thunderbolts bombs at box office.
Thunderbolts does not make back, it actually makes it actually
loses money, and Disney takes a bath on it. But
it is the future of the MCU as the Avengers

(04:44):
movie that they are not going to make a profit
off of because it will require two billion dollars of gross.
The Robert Downey Junior Russo Brothers Helms new Avengers movie
is both pushed back and has capsized in terms of

(05:06):
its budget, and so it has reached a new level
of film financier like class, wherein it will have to
make two billion dollars to break a dollar of profit.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
This is mostly our DJs salary.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I ass no, it's everybody.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
I mean they pay the Russo Brothers like a king's
ransom to come back. They paid r DJ kings ransom
to come back. You know, there's gonna be cameos from
people who haven't been in the.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Movies for.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
At this point when by the time it comes out
maybe a decade and they're gonna be paid out.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
There are people who are getting points on the back end.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
Most of their money they're looking at is not gonna
be domestic gross, but it's gonna be foreign gross, which
is taxed and haveved and kept by those countries like
they are.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Really they mortgaged a lot on that.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
And what it seems like is happened is Thunderbolt, which
is a fine little movie, and it's dropping on Disney
Plus about a month after it is theatrically released, which
indicates that it was in fact a bomb because the
same thing happened with the Marvels still has is highly
regarded by the Disney executives in a way that it

(06:21):
doesn't seem like it seems like they've already put too
much into this, like RDJ Avengers thing they can't pull
out of it. But it does very much seem like
like this is the new this is the new team
to build around Wyatt Russell, David Harbor, Sebastian stand most importantly,

(06:41):
Florence Pugh and let's just continue creating these types of movies.
Maybe drop the budgets down a little bit because we
don't need all of everything that we have, and let's
put out like James Gunnyan type films.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
It's like it's kind.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
Of weird where they were like, you know what, let's
hire comedic writers. One of the writers on Thunderbolts. I
don't know who Eric Pearson is, but I know Joanna
Callo is like a straight up comedian.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
She is the co show.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Runner, co creator of The Bear and you can find
her on any like La Improvisers podcast.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
I saw her on dough Boys.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
She's like very much in the LA comedy community and
was like given massive creative input on Thunderbolts and is
writing the sequel. So it's like very much the same
type of let's get a seasoned comedic writers to create
a superhero movie in the James gun mold, the.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Anti Heroes, the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Let's do that, and the end product, though not profitable,
was like loved. People on line love it like it
has spawned all of these memes and has created cultural
conversations unlike anything Marble has done since Endgame. And maybe
No Way Home where it was like, it's the meme

(08:05):
brought to life, but that's such low hanging fruit where
they're like, let's do three spider Mans.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
That.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Now this seems like it seems like there's some life
in the MCU again, which is weird.

Speaker 5 (08:18):
This is fascinating because you're totally right about the meme
feedback loop of the No Way Home adapted a meme
that already existed the real scene. The real sign of
cultural conversation and impact is is it creating its own memes.
So I'm not seeing this movie yet, I'm really excited

(08:39):
about it because the very heavily skewed biased pro Bucky
Barnes corner of Tumblr that I see there are some
marvel heads there who have a very specific flavor of
twenty fourteen. When The Avengers was out, there is this

(09:01):
huge spike in fan fiction and specifically like, oh, they're
all living together in the Avengers Tower and having like
domestic hijinks, and that's when you know you have the
The fans really hooked is that they are desperately interested
in the inner lives of these characters and they want
to see more of them, and it is it can

(09:22):
go in like all kinds of directions, some of them
are like, well, these will never be interesting narratives. I mean,
the point is you've got a bunch of traumatized people
doing heroic things. If you have engaged emotionally with them
to the point that you want to see them do, well,
we've succeeded. It's also never what the story is about.

(09:44):
Do you only care about these characters because they're struggling,
but this is like, oh, they're my cinnamon role now
I really want to like see them be happy. And
I have not seen anybody care about any Marvel movie
in that capacity in a decade. It feels very much
like a throwback. So what's fascinating to me is you
talking about the comedy writer background of this, because that

(10:07):
feels like the exact same kind of throwback the movies
that people invested in emotionally a decade ago, written by
exactly those kinds of people. Teddy, are you seeing the
same kind of like online conversation about Thunderbolts and that
like retro everybody's back to Cinnamon roll Land?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Weirdly, what I've been seeing mostly is the type of
discourse that people are having about how the Thunderbolts talks
about mental health. So it's the same type of discourse
that we saw with a Doom Patrol mm, except on

(10:49):
a larger scale. At least that's what some of the.

Speaker 5 (10:52):
Uh nobody watched Doom Patrol.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Well, well, I mean yeah, I mean, I guess on
my weird nie corners of the Internet, people were like,
oh wow, like there there were some interesting discussions.

Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, Doom Patrol was awesome and we all loved it
and watched it. But I'm assuming it's because widely it
was locked on HBO Max.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Right, and in this case, it was people's first time
seeing the mental health distributed amongst the team. Uh, those
conversations instead of it all being concentrated on just iron like. Unfortunately,

(11:33):
the only film that dealt with hey, here are the
health consequences of people being in the Avengers is iron
Man three. I personally am an iron Man three apologist.
I thought it was I liked it a lot. People
clown on me, but you know, whatever, I will, I

(11:54):
will stand on this. No other film really dives into that.
I mean even in Guardians of the Galaxy when they're like,
oh wow, this character development that was on the third
one when when they have Gomora, talk of spoilers for that,
but when they have Gamora basically be like, I'm not

(12:15):
the same person. That was very much James Gunn being
like that wasn't part of my writing decision. You got
rid of all of my character development. So Disney, you
live with my concept, you live with your consequences, right,
and it was. It was great. It was an interesting take.
They had to do a lot. They did stuff with Morning,

(12:35):
and they talked about with Rocket kind of his trauma.
But you've never actually had a team wide distribution of like, hey,
we all have been dealing with some stuff for the
last however long. So a lot of the conversations I've
been seeing online are about that, as well as people

(12:59):
being hate watching John Walker as as the new as
the US Agent. But in terms of the I was
just gonna say, in terms of the kind of interest

(13:20):
in the mar honestly, I haven't I agree with you
in terms of the spike and interest. The last time
folks were having these conversations was during WandaVision, and that
was now four years and that was not a mainstream continuity,
well not continuity, but that was not a widely released movie.
That was a prestige show on Disney Plus, and they

(13:46):
immediately undid all of that character development and all that
work done within WandaVision during Multiverse of Madness. Yeah, I'm
interested to see if they actually cash in like you're
like you're saying mouse on kind of the goodwill even
though the movie didn't do as well as they were thinking.

Speaker 5 (14:05):
I'm thrilled to hear you say that they're like mental health,
like distributed everybody's kind of damage and you have to
like work through that as opposed to we were just
talking about the sort of inauthentic therapy speak that comes
through in both Falcon Letter Soldier and Daredevil Born Again

(14:26):
of we got like therapist characters that or one guy
who has to deal with his problems in a way
that doesn't really feel particularly authentic. So two points, I
guess one, this is wild to me that they care
they Disney Marvel cares about audience reaction over money. But

(14:51):
it speaks to they're they like desperate now to get cultural,
get re saturated culturally in some way, I don't know
they felt checked out, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
They're I think that they're desperate because the problem, the
problem has been twofold and they haven't been able to
fix it, which is like the critical panning and the
box office bomb. It's like you can't have both of
those things because that's what like killed the dc EU

(15:23):
back when it was called that before it even launched,
was the critics hated it. People were very divided on
that entire thing, and it didn't make any money. So
it's like, why are we putting out movies that people
don't like that don't make money. There's like, no, it's
an it's an existential question of like, hold on, wait,

(15:45):
we're a movie studio. No one likes this, and we
are losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
We like, we have to change something.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
And you know, they have like a bunch of new
people in the stable after all of the like early
creatives left. You know that hail Mary of getting not
Marcus and mcpheeley, but I guess just Marcus and the
Russo brothers back.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
With RDJ.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
I think a lot of people were like pretty underwhelmed
by that in a way where it was like the
discord wasn't like, oh my god, I'm so excited. It was, well,
is he like a multiverse doctor Doom. He's he a
real Doctor Doom, Like this guy's dead in the and
just like confused. And the weird thing about that is

(16:36):
that Marvel has conditioned people to ask questions like that
based on their like two decades of storytelling where they're
the ones who came up with the Multiverse of Madness
and all this bullshit. And so when RDJ comes out,
instead of everybody just losing their shit online, everyone's just like, well,
how's this going to work? This doesn't make any sense,
this is stupid, this is desperation, which is not what

(16:59):
they want to see. Then you have this movie come out,
and it's like, oh, what a fucking fun, fascinating little thing.
What like what like some energy in this fucking Marvel
hellscape that has is not even a hellscape. It's too
it's too underwhelming.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
To be a hellscape.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
It's just like a flat plane of kind of like
you know, there are people like it's like, what's your
favorite of all the bad movies? And like we know
like Teddy Teddy Teddy will Die on the Eternal's Hill.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
I'm like that with shang Chi.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
Like but like there there is not there isn't consensus.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
The same way that there was consensus.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
For like five years after Iron Man came out of
like oh wow, they're like building up to something really cool.
Wouldn't be awesome if they all came together in the
same movie, that would be fucking dope.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Like that has totally lost the public. So a lot
of it is bringing people in.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
And having a new creative voice and trying to link
into new characters. So the New Avengers, there's a reference
in the New Avengers to Fantastic four movie which is
coming out, and people are this will be the test, right,

(18:22):
People are not super excited about that. It's not tracking
to do that well at the box office.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
However, what if it's good?

Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah, what if it is? I okay, So I've been
screaming into the void for ever since Endgame, I guess,
And we've been doing some screaming together about these movies
are bad, but somehow they make money, and so now
they are good but they don't, which is the flip side.

(18:54):
I'd prefer, Yeah, yeah, I've got a stake in Disney.
That's fine by me.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
But then it was like, these movies are bad and
they don't make money, so these are like Paul ws
Anderson movies. These are like any movie with Mila Djovivic
where it's like, God, I wish this, I wish this
movie didn't suck. I by the way, I saw all
the Resident Evil movies, which I think Paul W. S
Anderson directed, and I saw Monster Hunter, and I'm gonna

(19:26):
watch that movie with Dave Batista and Mila.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Jovivic in it.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
You know, I'm gonna watch that piece of shit. But
like that's the level Marvel had been producing at. It's like,
this shit doesn't make money. The margins also in these movies,
Paul ws Anderson movies probably make more or sorry lose
less than Disney movies because the margins are crazy. It
was like a real identity crisis because even Pixar had

(19:54):
a couple of bombs, Like everything related to Disney was bombing.
Star Wars had some bombs, Like a lot of the
TV content wasn't doing what they wanted it to do.
And so I think there's like a reinvestment in like,
let's make this as as good as it can be
and if and if it fails at the box office,

(20:16):
guess what, Now, that's normal us.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
So I would push back only in that for a
few phases of them, like kind of Marvel experiment, and
I'm using the Parlament phase specifically. The first six in
phase one established a certain level of just film quality.

(20:41):
They it like rewatching. They still hold up some of
the CG. While it seems some of it a little jankie.
You look back and you're like, oh right, this is
almost twenty years ago, it still holds up far better
than certain other properties that have been put out recently.
So for I would say almost the first like through

(21:05):
Endgame in Infinity War. While they, I would still say
that they are still a baseline quality of movie, even
though within the baseline quality of movies they've created there
are definitely better and worse ones. I would still say

(21:26):
the worst Marvel of the Marvel movies is still light
years better than the absolute crapshoot you can see within
of the worst Sony or the worst DC like EU movies,
like I still look at like Green Lantern. I still
look at things like the Captain America movie from the seventies.

(21:50):
I still look at stuff.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Like wait, wait, wait, wait, So you're telling me you
would rather watch thor Love and Thunder before.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
The Green Lantern movie.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yes, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
You're crazy. That's insane, that's insane.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Take far rather watch it, because I'm just saying in
terms of there's a certain.

Speaker 5 (22:16):
Just a better world as possible, you don't have to
watch I.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Don't have to watch either. Well, so one of the
I over the weekend there some stuff happened where I
ended up having to stay in and I ended up
being like, all right, well, my dog and I are
just going to do a movie marathon. So I watched
all of the Final Destination movies because I was like,
they're all on Max why not? And I've gotta say

(22:45):
they're like range from one is bad, but the other
four are like actually like still hold up in kind
of fun And.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
I mean, but that's apples to Oranges. Final Destination is
like cinematic Royalty. It's they're they're like the best movie.
They're like the best movies ever made, truly and truly
and sincerely.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I love The's so just the idea of what if
death said.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Fuck you is wonderful.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's great, but so and the whole reason I'm tying
those together when it comes to like Marvel, there are
still but there are still a bunch of Marvel movies
that I would much rather watch than a sci fi
original movie.

Speaker 5 (23:32):
Okay, so here's the key, because I think Mouse brought
up a moment ago about it's not a hellscape, it's
just bland prairie as far as the.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
You're there.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
They built a factory model, and the factory model churns
out a floor of for a while, you know, first
couple before it got all put together in under the
Disney umbrella and we got and I was just talking
to Ma all about this because we finally watched Vantom

(24:06):
three and why why did I do that to myself?
I don't know. I could just rewatch the first one.
There's only one. Told you you were right and it
was worse than you told me. You undersold how much
of a nothing movie that is. But we were having
a conversation about the first core of movies that Teddy

(24:27):
was just talking about conditioned us to think that sequels,
specifically superhero sequels, were worth it. And it was partially
like replicating the comic book periodical nature of there's always
more story to tell, and we'll see these actors we
like again and will like kind of gloss over the
fact that it's now different creative teams with a different

(24:49):
vision and like it'll be okay, And but mal for
as long as these have existed, has had the I
knew about this before. It was cool the take that
at a very basic level, there is not actually much
difference between the direct to VHS sequels to good Disney

(25:10):
Renaissance movies and these Marvel sequels. And I know, Aladdin's
Dad is hot, and I agree, and the third, the
third Ladin movie has some redeeming qualities, and John Ryce
Davies is fantastic, But in general, those you know, Lion
King one point five or whatever, like those sorts of
things are cynical cations. But everything's got this sort of

(25:34):
like baseline level of quality. We can do better, and
what we have found is that people are no longer
willing to uh just take that baseline is like, well
that's as best as we can do. It's fine, whatever,
it's too boring.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, there's yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
I was also I was also going to say that
it's been a generation of films, so they're they're making
these movies for different audiences too, and that's something they
haven't figured out how to do. Like if the first
Iron Man came out in two thousand and eight. We
are approaching twenty years of MCU movies.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
And so the first.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
Iron Man came out when I was eighteen years old
and I'm now thirty five. Eighteen year olds were born
in the early post nine to eleven, Like this is
like gen Z and shit, and so there is also

(26:40):
like it, there's like a market capture that they have
not done and a pivot that they've not done to
engage an entirely different set of audience members. And I
think that the kind of like goofy chaos and self

(27:02):
referentiality of Thunderbolts is kind of what gen Z gravitates
towards in a way that the house style is predicated
a lot on like the kind of like ubermens.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Those Ironman movies don't hold up.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
When you watch iron Man and you're like, oh, this
is like if Elon Musk was a superhero. It's kind
of gross. Those movies are kind of bad. I remember
watching Iron Man three recently and being like, oh God,
I should have just missed this forever, like this is
not worth engaging with. And they were, but like people

(27:44):
have like it has entered into the nostalgia part of
our brain.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
The beginning of.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
The MCU in a way that is fascinating, in a
way that's like you want to feel old, but also
in a way that's like Marvel's not writing to the
correct people anymore. Like they need to get gen Z
ers who are famous for not giving a shit about movies,
not wanting to go to movie theaters, only liking or

(28:13):
engaging with shorter form content DIY content also like YouTube
and shit, how do we get those people interested in
going to see these movies? And part of it is like, yeah,
people think that Yolena Bolova is like very funny and.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Like a gen Z kind of like queen who is.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
Like a goofball and is always like making jokes that
are self effacing and also jokes that are like rooted
in the gen Z consciousness of like and like everything
in the world is bad, everything about what's happening is bad.
Loll I forgot my something important, Like you know what

(28:59):
I mean. Like it's like, the the way that gen
Z processes and considers what is and isn't funny isn't
being represented on the MCU screens.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
How how are.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
You going to get eighteen year olds to go watch
a movie where like Toby McGuire is in it, and
you're supposed to feel happy that it's.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Happening and care about to McGuire, Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
That movie made.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
That movie made a lot of money by virtue of
its spectacle. But all of those kids were going to
watch Tom Holland and if they had done what, But
if they had done what, they were gonna say what
A lot of people were calling for a news standalone
Spider Man with Andrew Garfield or Toby McGuire, it would
have bombed, Like fucking I won't make any analogies.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Sure, And what I would say is, I think you're
exactly on the money, but I would approach it from
a different angle. There was this is like again from
a time where when Elon Musk was hitting on the
scene and folks were saying like, oh, you could actually
be Iron Man, And then some of us were like,

(30:13):
didn't you invest in flamethrowers and digging an underground society.
That doesn't sound that sounds more super villain than Iron Man. Dude. Yeah,
But I would say that the thing that Marvel has
slowly gotten away from in terms of cause what you

(30:34):
were saying when it comes to the not in shiitification,
but the standardize in averaging things out too much. The
thing that Marvel had really lost wasn't the broad appeal,
because they had that for a minute because of the novelty,
but that was going to wear off anyway. The thing

(30:56):
that they lost was the stuff that rewarded people from
staying around, and unfortunately it is the virtue of it
being comic book properties. It is the same thing that
you get when it comes to all of these trade paperbacks.
You can follow certain writing teams, or you can follow
certain writers and artists and go, this is fabulous, and

(31:20):
then an entire other continuity or writing team goes in
and recks things, you know, and Marvel is running into
a like unwieldy continuity. We have thirty four moves, thirty
five as of Fantastic four in July. That is, that's

(31:41):
a lot of hours and a lot of a lot
of writing continuity with I think seventeen different writing teams
and a few turnovers of Disney executives. Yeah, Kevin Fahy
is large scale executive producer, but that does not mean
he's the showrunner. And this long term thing, I mean,

(32:04):
even Eric Kripkey on Supernatural and I can't remember the
person who ran X files, but even some of these
showrunners mess it up after a few years. You know
what I mean? I think in terms of appealing to
that next generation, and that additional generation is a root

(32:26):
in what they were experimenting with. When it comes to
Marvel's version of Where Will Finnite? It is twenty eight
minutes and I have watched it every Halloween since it
came out a few years ago.

Speaker 5 (32:43):
Okay, so this is an interesting point because Mouse, you
explained why Thunderbolts works and have clicked it from again,
very excited to see it. But when it was announced,
it is like, here's a bunch of cast off, second
string characters who don't really have stories of their own.
Why would anybody care about this? And you said the

(33:05):
thing about the nostalgia of the early Marvel movies, which
is completely true. However, those first Marvel movies are also
taking big dramatic swings because, as Teddy points out, they
are not burdened by a bunch of additional continuity they
have to worry about. And there's still a couple of
those are pre Disney. So there's this like you go
back and you look at the Fox x Men movies,

(33:26):
where they are massively swingy in their quality, but they're
trying stuff because there is no established house style. So
the idea of here's a bunch of cast offs for
the Thunderbolts cast who we basically can do anything we
want with because they don't have larger purpose their discarded playthings.

(33:48):
That allows us to take dramatic risks and also probably
fits with the gen z we're all cast offs with
no future, you know, have gallows humor about it. That
makes total sense. It also I would expect that Fantastic Four. Sorry,
I always expect that Fantastic four movies are gonna suck.

(34:11):
I don't think it works. But this like nuclear family
of traditional like family values sort of that Fantastic Four
often is. I don't feel like that's going to play.
On the other hand, because I was just thinking about
it's this period piece, it's got no connection to anything else.
How are they gonna fit it into the larger cosmology.

(34:31):
Maybe they don't. Maybe they use that opportunity to just
like tell a completely different story that you don't have
to have cared about fifteen years of other movies to watch.
You can just go in fresh great.

Speaker 4 (34:42):
Well, here's my read on Fantastic four. Pedro Pascal is
gen z daddy, right, he is like literally gen Z's dad,
and like we the.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
I mean, god, I don't want.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
To do Last of Us two spoilers because the finale
just came out, but there's like a direct correlation between
Pedro Pascal's involvement in Last of Us and its ratings.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
And I'll just say that.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Oh, no, okay.

Speaker 4 (35:23):
For anyone who plays, who has played the video game, like, oh,
everybody kind of knows what happens the Last of Us
season two like significantly went down the tubes. A lot
of people were like, it's Bella Ramsey. It's not Bella Ramsey.
It is them, But it's also their relationship with Pedro Pascal,
which is what people gravitate towards. So I think his
casting is very specifically oriented. And the other thing is

(35:47):
if Johnny Storm works, then that movie will work.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
For these audiences.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yes, And from the a trailer it doesn't see it.
He seems really annoying to me, which is probably maybe
a better indication that he might work than like if
I thought he was funny or palatable. There is like
it's so weird. I just did these did this map?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
This is crazy?

Speaker 4 (36:21):
An eighteen year old I thought was like just kind
of posting eleven. An eighteen year old was born in
two thousand and seven, so like the year before iron
Man came out.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
So iron Man to them is kind of like.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
A like a weird relic, like an eighteen year old
in nineteen movie.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Yeah, iron Man to that is what Blade is to us. Well,
it's like.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Blade Runner is to us. Well, okay, like no literal
like in point of fact, is these sixties and seventies
not next seventies and eighties movie that are like these
are dad movies?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah, there has to be something else.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
I'm wondering why they're not yas queening Sue Storm, Like
why get why get a thespian to play Sustorm? Like
Vanessa Kirby is fantastic, but she has like consistently she
has just been going back to the West End because
anytime they put her in a movie, it's like, oh,
this doesn't work at all, There's something missing here between

(37:29):
like her, she's like a celebrated incredible British actress, like
the best one, like the actor's actor in the UK
and anytime she's in a movie, she fucking never hits.
It's always like a tone deaf note. There's just there's

(37:49):
no translatability.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
And a lot of people are already talking about her chemistry.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
With Patro Pascal seems stiff, seems weird, seems kind of cold,
and like, I don't yeah, it's it's it's very strange
that casting decision. And then the Eben Moss backrack as
the thing in a fucking CGA suit. I guess that's
the only way you can do that. I don't think

(38:16):
the Michael chickliss thing would work now, Bro.

Speaker 5 (38:21):
The Michael chickless thing still looks good on film.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
I love the Michael chick That's the only thing I remember,
like un ironically liking about those movies as the Michael
Chicklis story line.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
He's great. And also it's practical effects and so it
still looks good. Yeah, but this is interesting because I
was looking at Pascal and being like, he seems woefully
miscast as mister Fantastic. It's such a flat role. Why
is he doing Obviously he's gonna get paid for it,
good for him, But of all of the Marvel characters
to try to like get into but as a he

(38:56):
is daddy. We are specifically casting him as the found
dad of Marvel comics. That makes total sense. His relationship
with his wife is cold and frigid because he's an
awkward person and they're in their marriage is kind of
a mess. I don't know if they're gonna like have
a feeling marriage on screen. It is like a big
blot point. But they could. I can't.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Here's my here's my hot take. That will not happen,
but I think it would be amazing, fantastic. For the
second one, it is basically Marvel's Challengers the Zendea movie,
except it's Witherta and Pal. I think that would be

(39:48):
it would be a big swing. I bet gen Z
would show up. A lot of people would show up
to what they do with that.

Speaker 5 (39:55):
Yeah, okay, I'm here for it. That's I like that
a lot. Okay, this is interesting.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Have no idea what I'm talking about. Look up Nay
more and get back to me.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
Yes, And I think that listeners if you Marvel Rivals
is a thing that like has hit in a way
that the movies have not, Like this video game Free
to Play.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
By the way, by the way of hips.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
Yes, I mean it's character design absolutely.

Speaker 4 (40:25):
At at you know, this little dated episode at this
Memorial Day barbecue that we had and a lot of
our friends were at, that was all that was being
discussed was Marvel Rivals. Like for an hour and a
half you were just talking about how good or bad
they are at that game.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
I don't know, I don't know. I haven't played it.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
I haven't played it, but everybody was obsessing over it
and talking about it and like trying to figure out
who else at the party was playing it so that
they could like get down a chat. And it was
like a huge topic of conversation. So it has like
at least an our front group, which is not representative

(41:08):
I don't think of like the general population.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Excuse Nerdier has taken a weird grip.

Speaker 5 (41:17):
Well, but so yes, fantastic character design for sure, but
even to the point of Disney Plus has a Marvel
Rivals category of we are assuming that you were coming
to this your main familiarities with the video game, would
you like to see some TV about these characters that
you're playing as?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Which wild?

Speaker 5 (41:39):
Yeah, truly wild, the sort of the the circuitous nature
of adaptation and speaks to their trying to get their
foothold in wherever they can and speaks. I think mouse
to your point about gen Z short form content, you know,
matches of Marvel rivals online, hooking them that way. First.

(42:01):
This will be probably topic for another time, but I'm
curious about adaptation specifically in your point about human torchs
being annoying. He's always been annoying, like a specific kind
of annoying. But if he is going to be a
very specific modern annoying in a period piece, what kind

(42:21):
of adaptation are we doing? Which is to say, is
it a it's set in the sixties, but everybody speaks
as though they are on TikTok in order to sort
of like collapse the timeline. So because we figure that
the sixties is too long ago and nobody can can

(42:43):
relate to bell Bottoms or something, or you know, what
is the nature of are we are we basically digging
up the corpse of this decade and wearing it as
a meat suit, or are we trying to do an
adaptation of this? You know, history doesn't repeat itself, but
Rhyme's here are some ways in which family structure of

(43:06):
the sixties says something about where we're at now.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
It's it's it takes place in the future past, which
is a total yeah, a total like aesthetic that I
always have problems with. Well, I I there's something about
the future past that is like, so it's totally uninteresting
to me.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
You, as a historian, are not a big fan of
the melting No.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's not even that I'm not a big fan of that.
It's just like, for whatever reason, why is the future
past always the fucking Jetsons, Like it's such a weird
like like, uh, it's an it both anticipatory and regressive
in ways that are like, oh, in the future everything

(43:58):
is the same as opposed to like, I don't know,
people were really gravitating towards in the historical community community.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
That book.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
James, which is about Jim from Huck Finn and yeah,
it's like a it's like a recent novel which I
admittedly haven't read, but I was leafing through it.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Because I was like, oh wait, I had no idea
what this was about.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
I just kept seeing this book on my uh in
my house, my my wife was reading it that it
said James on it, and I kept seeing it everywhere.
I'm like, what the fuck is this? And so I
was like, oh, wait, this is about Jim from Huck Finn,
which I you know, I.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Just like I can. It's something suddenly the ring the
echoing of some like suburban English teacher at like, I'm
going to be really progressive and and talk about this
book James in my high school and not bring up
anything from the original Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and that

(45:05):
one that one as fall middle at like high schooler.
It was like, all right, so are we going to
talk about something, Jim, Why don't we have youth? I'm sorry, sorry,
I just heard the echoes of that immediately. I didn't
need to cut you off.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
You're saying, well, it's weird because like the whole the
whole point of.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
The book is to be is to be both.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
Like cognizant of and to a degree honest to the
late nineteenth century, but.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
For Jim to not have to.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
Endure the abuse that he does in the Adventures of
Huckleberry Fin. And so it was weird because as I
was reading through it, I was like, is Huck Finn
in this?

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Is this a prequel?

Speaker 4 (45:57):
And it's like Huck is in the first couple of pages,
and he's in there talking the way that he talks
in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the yeah, with
all of that and Jim Coate switches, and it talks
both in this sort of like kind of like refined
way that would it not have been anachronistic to the

(46:19):
black professional class of the late nineteenth century. But also
it engages in the same type of dialect that Mark
Twain wrote him within the original and so it is
a very interesting and also it's written in twenty twenty
three or twenty twenty four, and so the author, Percival Everett,

(46:42):
is not is not pretending to write a historical novel
because this is based on a fake book, right, just
based on a work of fiction. And so it also
has a modern sensibility to it from the twenty pages
that I read, which is really interesting. And that is

(47:02):
how I like the sort of like past future past
to be written, where it's like, for sure, this is
about the past, but I'm writing this in twenty twenty three,
and that can't be ignored, it can't be alighted. It
has to be contended with because the the conversations around authenticity,

(47:22):
that only won't it be authentic because we are not
one hundred and thirty years in the past. But also
the books that came out in the eighteen nineties were
not authentic to the eighteen nineties.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
If you're if you're thinking.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
About authenticity in a theoretical way, the idea that the
Avengers of Huckleberry fing captured anything beyond Mark Twain's imagination
and his like moderate experiences working on the Mississippi River.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
You're crazy. It's a book. It's a book that.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
Has a very myopic, finite view and is I would say,
one of the great pieces of Americana, but also like
incredibly limited.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well sorry, yeah, I know, go for it. For I
was gonna say that just thinking about adaptations, but also
thinking of literary snapshots. An interesting, maybe not full counterpoint,
but thing to hold up against would be something like
a lot of Jane Austen's novels and a lot of

(48:28):
the stories that we have where I mean her own
self criticism at the time was yet, no one's gonna
get this because it's so it's gonna be anachronistic to
any other time, but this era so the entire like
the regency fiction almost genre, one of the big like

(48:49):
the critiques of it is, well, who's gonna care about
these folks arguing about land deals. This is about our
time that we're like celebrating it. But over the years
people can te you to see, as you were saying,
history rhymes, so people are still seeing, Oh wow, rich
hot dude finally lands this girl who's a little more

(49:09):
down on her luck but secretly not. It's one of
those there's still a when it comes to how these
things are adapted. When you hit a certain through line
that people can still hook onto, it still works. And
so outside of Jane Austin, when you have a clueless

(49:32):
with the Bronti Sisters, sorry clueless as an adaptation of
the Bronti Sister So I realized several words needed to
be added to that sentence, but you still see, like,
oh yeah, this story still works. We just need to
pluck a certain certain sets of items ten things I
hate about you as an adaptation, like we see these

(49:55):
we can still see these through lines where certain things
need to be connected. All even tie it back to
our kind of nerdier discussion. I actually think that's one
of the reasons why the Batman worked so well, even
with the gen z audience because in contrast to Spider
Man three, where they're like, we're gonna do emo goth,
but he's gonna try and be a cool emo and

(50:17):
it just didn't work. Oh god, it's a little cringey
versus The Batman where oh no, this weird goth kid
has no social skills and he looks like he's not cool.
He looks like he went to bed with eyeliner off.
Like that's It still worked because there was something a

(50:39):
little more core that was being able to be written
in versus the artifice that a lot of the Disney properties.
So I'm trying to lay.

Speaker 5 (50:52):
And I'm I'd like to wonder. I wonder if we
can distinguish between remixes well, like Ten Things I Had
About You, it is a great, great example of we
are taking core story elements that are still applicable because
society hasn't changed that much. Some core pieces of how
people relate to each other hasn't change that much, and

(51:14):
we're going to like update it and then play with
the language. But we are telling we like the story,
We're going to bring that story forward and play with
and some of them work, you know. Romeo plus Juliet
Titus things like that, and then what feeled me like
specifically adversarial adaptations, which is to say, it's like a

(51:35):
fix it fick. I have an ax to grind with
the original source material, and I am going to either
try to, you know, redeem a character. I feel like
I know what the author intended. I feel like I
don't like what the author intended, and I'm going to
reimagine this, but it's it. It comes off to me

(51:56):
as like as a takedown of the original work, and
I don't and I don't know if that's what James
is doing, but it's interesting. You're right, obviously, Agabert Finn
is not a real story. It is a snapshot of
real culture of like a guy's weird perspective from his

(52:17):
own experience and like that is informed by what was
actually happening to Mark Twain and the people around him
and his privilege and position.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
And so.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
I just saw an adaptation of Frankenstein and it was
what I think is an adversarial adaptation, which is, we
have done a bunch of dramaturgy about Mary Shelley's life,
and this playwright decided that they were going to give Elizabeth,
Victor's wife who more agency, And what that ends up

(52:53):
meaning is all the dialogue is hyper modern, sounds very tiktoky,
and everybody explains all of the trauma very explicitly, and
then there's this strange back and forth between she is
stuck having to marry Victor because of what the social
situation of a woman in her position at that time
would be. She doesn't have an income stream, she can't

(53:15):
have a bank account, like she's stuck socially, and then
by the end she leaves him and like walks off
into the sunset with her child, which is a certain
kind of like fix it empowerment, but then also isn't
plausible in the world that you set up in the
first half. That is the world of Frankenstein. Again, the

(53:37):
world of Frankenstein is not a real world, but it
is Mary Shelley's life was in fact real, and all
of the trauma and dealing with having to try to
buck social conventions for women at the time were real.
So this this is what I'm talking about about collapsing time.

(53:59):
And I'm not sure I personally am biased against these
adversarial relationships because I feel like they try to say
that there is nothing redeeming about the original work. We
can learn nothing from it. We are so evolved and
so enlightened and so advanced now that the only thing

(54:20):
these are good for is punching bags, as opposed to
if you take an honest look at that original work,
with all of its flaws and all of it's like
screwed up natures, and go, what can this teach me about?
Maybe we are still wrestling with some of these same issues.
How can we use that as a way to get better?

(54:46):
As opposed to saying we are better? Look how far
we've come?

Speaker 4 (54:52):
Sure, the I think that the I don't think that
it is worth He brought up Jane Austen. And one
of the things about like those types of those types
of works that transcend time, that become canonical, is that

(55:14):
they are writing about the present as honestly as the
author can write about the present. And what is what
is the difficulty? And you know you adapted Macbeth and

(55:34):
I played a small role in that. What is the
difficulty of making anything from the past resonate is what
the fuck does it have to do with now? And
if you don't have an answer to that question, you
shouldn't engage in the creation of art.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
It's just it.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
If it has nothing to do with right now, then
there's no reason to say it. There's no reason to
do it, there's no reason to mount it. That said,
like this is a general rule, this adaptation of Frankenstein.
There's a lot that Frankenstein can tell us about right now.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
That is.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Embodied in all of the sort of like thirst for power,
the the the playing of God, the the monster's own
sort of inner turmoil, the relationships that this adaptation seems
to highlight. It is it is what you're trying to emphasize.

(56:38):
That is the difficulty. So here's the difference I see
between James which I just looked this up. It just
won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, uh, because they came
out last year and when this this year's Pulitzer Perceval
Everett from the what I've read about the book is

(56:59):
is like not a is a fan of Mark Twain.
I think anybody who's being honest about like American literature
knows that Mark Twain may be the best American writer
of all time. And this is my bias showing he

(57:20):
was writing during a period where I am like particularly
fascinated by but also like I genuinely believe that he
had the most impact, especially politically during that time that
a lot of authors, certainly more than anybody in the
last generation, anybody who was writing in the sixties, Like
as far as American authors are concerned, Twain was and

(57:42):
continues to be like the pinnacle of the highest aspiration
of it at the very least an American satirist, and
so Percival Everett is taking though a very crucial present question,
which is, how do you deal with this shit now?

(58:05):
Because it it's it's just been a matter of public
debate since I was in.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
High school and we had to read that shit out loud.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
We had to read it out loud, and we were
told we were given the pass by white teachers in
a in a place that has a very fraud racial history,
which you could say about any place in the United States,
but especially where what fuck I am? And so that
I think as far as like do we need to

(58:39):
talk about this for that? I think that that like
that subject matter, that topic now the question that I
would have for anybody mounting Shakespeare, Frankenstein, any of the
classics started doing Dracula again, no speratu is.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Is why the fuck are you doing it?

Speaker 4 (59:04):
Why is it important to engage with this piece of art.
And if the answer is it's not, to just fucking
put your pen down, save us all some time here,
because like we only have so many plays that we
can see in our local theaters.

Speaker 5 (59:24):
Yeah, this is a great point. There are so many
things about Frankenstein, the sci fi nature of it, also
the family structure nature of it, like the when we
think about fascism specifically as like family domineering father as
god fatherland, the frankly creepy and incestuous nature of you know,

(59:49):
daddy daughter promise ring balls like this is part of
that culture that is shares some issues with Gothic horror
or stuck in a creepy family that you can't get
out of. The horror is inside the house. These are
things that are totally relevant and important to unpack. They

(01:00:12):
run counter to puritine. Two, Icky, can't look at it.
We would rather pat ourselves on the back for how
pure and morally good we are and how far we
have come. And so to your point, if you're not
comfortable with the Gothic, don't adapt to Gothic novel. If

(01:00:34):
you're not comfortable with really deep conversations about race relations,
don't adapt, you know, huckle very fit. And if you are,
then there's something really important. Then you can get out
of interrogating these things.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
And I think that's a key word that you're saying,
the interrogation or at least conversation with. But I think
interrogation is a very specific one because there are things like, oh,
I hate this so much, that's why I'm making my own.
So we see that in like, uh, we were talking

(01:01:13):
earlier about sometimes our references being weird and far and
why it can get us in trouble. But if you
look at the detective genre right, especially internationally, uh, and
you start looking at something like our Sin lupin versus
Charlock Holmes, if you look at something like well, so

(01:01:34):
like the whole thing with Sherlock Holmes is like, oh,
he's this gentleman detective. He's doing this, and these French
guys are like, I like gentlemen detectives, but I don't
like this guy because I would much rather have a thief,
a thief turned PI do it. So that's why our
Saint Lupon exists. And there's an entire our Saint Lupin
versus Perlock showns now they also have lupon Is like, again,

(01:02:01):
this is a French dude in the late Victorian. Well,
I guess the Victorian era is not what it was
called in Prantic.

Speaker 5 (01:02:08):
But still a Victorian era somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
It's still kind of they still have some really problematic aspects,
especially around anti Semitism. So, dear listener, if you do
look this up, please let it. I recognize that, but
we're talking about the interrogation of which when there was
a Loupin adaptation, not only did we have loop in

(01:02:30):
the third from Japan, because they are these people who
are like, dope, love this idea, We're making an anime
about it. And they've been making adaptations of this since
the seventies where we have that adaptation versus remix, and
then they had the remix recently on Netflix when it
came to the oh, this dude is a thief who

(01:02:51):
just loved the Loupon books, so that's why he became
a thief. I think there is something to be said
about and I'm again gonna go a little too tumblr
about this your doyalist versus Watsonian reasons for this piece
of art existing, I think is also important to the context.

(01:03:14):
So if your entire thing is man Sherlock Holmes kinda
is a horrible person, you can create You can interrogate
that if you want to. And it comes to Frankenstein
versus Frankenstein's monster. If at some point somebody's like, hey, uh,
doctor Frankenstein was never actually a doctor, he never actually

(01:03:36):
finished it. What would what would it look like if
someone who had finished a degree interrogated doctor Frankenstein and
then we get young Frankenstein. You know it's there is
certain certain elements that you can start bringing into these
adaptations that I think will as you as you said, mouse,

(01:03:58):
draw it into what will actually hook the audience and
make it relevant. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:04:03):
The difference is I am invested in this material. I
see something about it that speaks to my current situation.
I want to remix that and play with that. Versus
what you said, Teddy of I hate this, I feel
compelled to make something that will fix it. In my estimation,

(01:04:24):
which often reads to me as the person who hated
it was unwilling to engage with it, and it just
like turned off And that's fine, you don't like it.
That's cool, but doing the extra steps of I'm going
to rip it apart and parade it around as a
trophy with this thing that I've done in order to
like make myself feel better. Maybe you didn't get what

(01:04:48):
it was about this possibility.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Yeah, And there's.

Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
Also like in terms of the adaptation to like the
I think the detective example is an interesting one because.

Speaker 6 (01:05:04):
The the way that those stories operate, like so like
Poe created that genre essentially with like three short stories.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
One of which was about an orange tank stealing a
letter off of like a bureau.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
I mean it's a short story.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
It still holds up.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):
It still holds up, and it's like, it's very it's
very interesting the way that he creates this like this
like and it does speak to somebody who is so
utterly confused and baffled in his real life and is
creating characters who are like in total control of a situation,

(01:05:49):
unable to analytically and logically deduce what is happening. And
he's also like just a fantastic plotter as well, which
is crazy because he wrote one novel that is fucking awful.
You read the narrative of a Gordon Pimm it's so
bad he just could sustain it over the course of

(01:06:12):
like several hundred pages. But then yeah, the Arth and
Conan Doyle is like the sort of gentleman's detective. What's
fascinating is when you get to the American turn of
the century and then you have the Dashl Hammet and
then up through into Raymond Chandler, and then it becomes

(01:06:35):
it was way before Grisham, this is like a celebration
of the police, Like this is like a celebration of
the sort of rogue elements of policing, and this kind
of like romanticization of this type of lifestyle, which then

(01:06:56):
you have like the Robert Altman adaptation of the Raymond
Chandler book and the fucking Philip Marlow is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
A is a mess. You can't drink that much.

Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
You cannot drink that much and just be okay, and
he has Elliott Gould basically out there fucking naked, just
shooting his gun off in the air, going.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Like I'm a fucking Fridian nightmare. I can't do anything.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
And so it is interesting where because I think that
like in those detective stories, there is like what is
that the the individualistic nationalist take of masculinity is whatever
the hell the detective.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Is, and then it it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
The way that it's treated changes based on like when
it's being produced, like a lot of the Dashel Hammett
books and shout out, I mean he's from fucking Baltimore.
Is just like the Continental op just shooting everybody and
like being like did you do it? After they're dead,
Like just shooting a guy in the head and being

(01:08:01):
like did you do the crime and being like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Oh shit, hold up, I don't know. I don't know
what I'm doing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
And the first Continental Continental Op Book and the Harvest,
this dude has called to go figure out what's happening
in a town because there's like graft and corruption all
this shit. And he goes in there and he kills
everybody like he's he's chased, he's chasing the threads, and
he's like, Okay, I gotta I gotta talk to this dude.

(01:08:27):
He goes talk to this dude. At the end of
the chapter, that dude is dead and he had gotten
a name at some point, so he's like, I got
to talk to this motherfucker and he kills him until
he like kills the mayor kills everybody and then leaves town.
And it's like this is actually a really solid encapsulation
of American policing in the early twentieth century, Like this
is legit, what the fuck is going on? And so

(01:08:53):
it is interesting the way that it is now sort
of adapted into like the classic Hollywood thin man adaptation
of Nashal Hammet is the Gentleman Detective, because people are
still like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Very much.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
Trying to establish some type of respectability in Hollywood and
then post sixties, anytime an adaptation of this shit comes up,
it is like the dirtiest, grungiest, grimiest dudes, and they
are like counter cultural.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
They hate police. They have like a.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Really kind of like audacious way of being vigilantes where
it's not just like I know I'm doing something that
is not correct to do, but it's like actually morally
superior and smarter, so I should be doing this. And
it is interesting how Sherlock Holmes has continued to be

(01:09:58):
as successful.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
As it as.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
It is like Morris Chestnut is currently doing a show
where he plays Watson.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah, I've seen commercials for that. Is it any good?

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I'll never know, but.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Like he's basically doing house without the drug addict.

Speaker 4 (01:10:19):
Yeah, but that started after Lucy lou was playing Watson
in a show called Elementary that ran for like ten years.
There's something about like being able to figure figure out
a mystery or solve a crime without the help of
like an established institution that appeals to American and British audiences.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
And I think a.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
Lot of it does have to do with how dysfunctional
our criminal legal system is.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
It's funny you bring that up because I've been well
in terms of turn off brain teller payment. I've watched
Reacher and when you when you look at it through
that lens, Reacher is a serial killer, like every every

(01:11:11):
episode has a large body count, and not even in
the like when you see these police procedurals or something
like Justified with Timothy Oliphant. And the only reason that
show works is because Timothy Oliphant isn't is a charismatic
and charming actor and he has killed like like he

(01:11:31):
has killed so he has shot so many people, Like
I recognize it becomes a farce. At a certain point
we were like, oh, well, I guess this guy and
his associates I've all gotten shot now, And uh, there's
gonna be no follow up. Cool cool, cool reacher like
ends up dismembering people and is just like, well that

(01:11:53):
dems the breaks. He's still like, oh yeah, he's the
good guy. And he's very solidly like, well he was
this military police, so he's super super cops, and these
other cops are so just either either impotent or just
inept when it comes to their job. And if only

(01:12:16):
this one military man could come in and just just
murder yea of people, it would all be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
But isn't that always the way in these fucking shows like.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
The And he's a super genius. Sorry, yeah of.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
Course, yeah, of course he is. And and he's never
taken a steroid ever. The police procedural, they never valorize
uniformed cops. It's always like the fucking uniformed police are worthless.
Like we have to get an insurance agent, a private detective,

(01:12:56):
a military police officer, a master at arms, a fucking plumber, anybody,
but these adults.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Anybody but these fucking idiots.

Speaker 4 (01:13:05):
It's like that's like the basis of like the Brooklyn
ninety nine, the two like old school cops that are
there in the precinct. It's just like, yeah, the uniform
police are fucking used. They can't do anything. That's the
copaganda that we get is it's so funny because like
it at once enforces the criminal legal system and being

(01:13:27):
like it it look it works, but the whole bedrock
of the message is that it actually it doesn't work
because the worst people here, the villains, are not even
the people who are doing the murders. It's the useless
cops who can't solve anything. And so like Sherlock has

(01:13:48):
to come in and like dismiss her Majesty's a bullshit artists,
the fucking the fucking idiots what are they called, the
buzzbes gives a fuck like these fucking idiots with their
stupid hats, and he has to figure it out as
a consulting detective like a fucking thing that doesn't make

(01:14:09):
There was a show in the United States about a
fucking psychic that had to go in and solve crimes,
which one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
That's actually said. There are several.

Speaker 5 (01:14:19):
Several There is a show where Lucifer himself does this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
We don't, we don't, we can't trust the cops. We
gotta get the devil.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
There's there's a show. There's like I'm thinking about it
happens on every level too, because where if you look
at something like Criminal Minds, which is the it's the
next level of copaganda, it's the g man, uh, the
FBI aganda. They're like, oh yeah, regular FBI agents who
are like regular accountants, they aren't us, who are super

(01:14:52):
sleuth psychologists who definitely can solve every crime white collar,
which is the entire premise of that show is well,
there's an entire FBI agency and they can't figure it
out except for this one con artist cop this one
con artist who is definitely gonna show up and always
help us out and then betray you all the time.

(01:15:13):
Like oh my god, the Blacklist now, I'm yeah, literally
every show where I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:15:20):
Like wait, what what was James Spader was just a criminal?

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
He's just straight up a criminal like that. He's He's
a super criminal who just on a whim, is like
I feel like helping these people for my own game.
That's the entire friends of the Blacklist. James Spader go
be charming and violent somewhere and that's how the show works.

Speaker 4 (01:15:43):
His whole vibe is like you fucking idiots can't figure
this out. Let me tell you, and then he doesn't
tell them. He gives them like clues to be like
you're gonna have to figure it out. I once ran
into him in nineteen ninety four, this cop, and like
he'll just send them places and it's is like it's
a huge.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Game to the almost the time.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Oh man, this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Feels like it's own spin off, Like how much of
this is just predicated on the system being backed?

Speaker 5 (01:16:15):
Yeah, I love your point mouse about it is simultaneously
the system could work if only we had the ubermanch
to come in and force it. Like the justice system
itself is correct, trust the system, but we acknowledge that
the people enforcing the system are all idiots, which is
also Batman.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah and yeah it is.

Speaker 4 (01:16:38):
And to Teddy's point, it's like you have to get
a military police with genius level intellect and uh, the
strongest man on earth, Like it has to be like
all of these impossibilities, Alan Cross.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
You have to have a trade, Like he could have
been a therapist, but now he's a street level cop.
But now he's not, but now he is again.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
The Alex Cross one is crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
It's like it's like, oh God, what is it not
Lewis Hodge. Alvis Hodge is it's like they're like try
to simultaneously deal with like racialized policing by having this,
and I mean in the books and the Crichton novels,
he is like a black police officer, and it is

(01:17:27):
just like, yeah, the police procedural is just a vessel
to getting a greenlit show, and then you try to
do what you can within the context of that. But
I remember watching that show and being like, this is impossible.
This is so weird that they have tried and attempted

(01:17:47):
to do this. But Alvis Hodge is incredible and he's
not in enough stuff and I hope his character is resuscitated.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Although didn't they cast Hawkman already.

Speaker 5 (01:18:02):
There is a hawk Woman in the trailers for Superman.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
I don't think there is a Hawkman, so.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
Hopefully, hopefully, I mean that motherfucker made a Hawkman watch.

Speaker 5 (01:18:11):
He was wonderful. Yeah, and he and Pierce Brosnan were
their little buddy comedy scenes were fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
They were very fun and just to tie a bow
on it, it's interesting the in terms of adaptations and
what you were talking about, Cousin kind of the different adaptations.
I think it it really like it just comes down
to intentionality and also to tie it back to our

(01:18:38):
original discussion of the MCU, when it comes to the
intentionality with the source material and what you can do
when you are experimenting and throwing stuff at the wall.
You know, Thunderbolts was great because these are all like
these people have some like in universe baggage but also

(01:18:59):
studio baggage. We threw it at the wall. Oh yeah,
it worked. It's a functioning, fine movie. It's so much
better than other stuff. Yeah and yeah, Guardians of Galaxy
who hooms among us knew who they were before that movie.

Speaker 5 (01:19:16):
And Mouse did and read all the Abnitt and Landing
books and they were like, not relevant to the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
No, those but those books are so much more serious
than the movies are. It's that time. Now it's time
to gig get wrecked. I have a I have a wreck.

Speaker 4 (01:19:41):
Finally, this is the first motion picture I've watched since
I was looking at.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
My letterbox and we watched this is not the Wreck,
but we.

Speaker 4 (01:19:52):
Watched The Nightmare before Christmas, and we did so because
my three year old nephew is visiting and uh, my
my daughter Munchie was just like so jazz that there
was a kid. He was like running around everywhere, and
she was just like screaming and putting her finger up

(01:20:13):
and doing lectures and her whole bit. She loves it
when kids, just like when kids are around at the barbecue.
She was just having a blast just watching kids running around.
So we had to we we wanted to watch a movie,
but we needed to watch something that was approved by

(01:20:34):
a three year old and my and then our only
real recommendation was that it was short. And The night
Bemery before Christmas is like seventy five minutes long. It's
like a very short film. There are episodes of television
that are longer than it. And my three year old
nephew keuld being like, we got to watch pumpkin Jack.

(01:20:58):
He kept calling it pumpkin Jack, and I'm like, the
Nightmare before Christmas and he's like, no, not that one
pumpkin Jack. Put on Pumpkin.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
Jack and I was like okay.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
And then we put on The Nightmare before Christmas and
I'm like, do they ever call him that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
And they don't. They just call him Jack.

Speaker 4 (01:21:19):
But every time he came up on the screen, he'd
be like, that's Pumpkin Jack and then just run away
from me. But so that's the last movie I watched,
and honestly I don't I don't think I watched it,
So I can't count it, and I couldn't recommend it,
and I couldn't rate it. But I did log it
as something that I was in the room for all
seventy five minutes it was happening. The movie that I

(01:21:41):
will recommend is a movie called Drop. Drop is a
fucking dumb movie, and that's good. It is about a
woman that goes on a blind date and she starts
getting mysterious air drops on her phone. It is so crazy.

(01:22:06):
The escalation of this movie. The heightening is like as
you're watching you you're like, oh man, this is like
a solid this is like a solid sea film. And
then the escalation wherein this is just like a a woman,
just like a like a normal, just just a gal

(01:22:29):
by fantastically by Megan Fayhe, who was UH in the
second season of White Lotus and The Perfect Couple, which
was a cool mini UH limited series. She's also on
Sirens right now on Netflix. She's like doing her thing.
Oh and this is also the movie that Christopher Landon,
who was going to direct Scream seven, pivoted to after

(01:22:54):
uh uh, Spyglass fired Melissa Brera for being pro palestign,
so he abandoned that movie and then he did drop instead.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
And I say, the world is better for it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:10):
So like there's like a mystery and there's like intrigue
and all this stuff, and there's a killer watching her
and her every move and she's trying to get her
to do several different things and follow her commands, and
he's they are omniscient and we don't know where they are.

(01:23:32):
And you think, like the resolution for this movie is
going to be like just finding out who that is.
But the resolution of this movie is like like a
dash Ol Hammett novel, killing everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
So it like it goes.

Speaker 4 (01:23:47):
It goes from being like as soon as she finds
this dude, this movie is over to as soon as.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
She finds this dude.

Speaker 4 (01:23:54):
There's a twenty minute long set piece where she transforms
from a single mother out on a date with some
dude into black widow.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
She's just like fucking just fighting everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
WHOA I love a movie like that where it's just like,
you know what the people what?

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
I just realized something. This is the director on set.
This movie is fake, so let's jump out the window.

Speaker 5 (01:24:29):
Someone just discovered the matrix and learned kung fu. That's delightful. Okay,
very cool. Well, good for him for pivoting to something.
It sounds like a lot of fun. I will recommend.
I just rewatched Danger Diabolic, so speaking of completely inept
police and total camp, this is an adaptation of the

(01:24:53):
Italian Flemety comic book about a super thief, Diabolic, and
it is very much informed by Mario Baba directs, and yeah,
and it's very much informed by the Adam West Batman
and also the sort of James Bond aesthetic and basically

(01:25:13):
the conceit is what if Batman were a thief Andy
like evil sort of, but also everyone else is worse,
so don't worry about it. Is a very Italian kind
of way to look at it, and it's it's delightful.
It's got one bad theme song and that's all I
could afford. But it has beautiful set paintings that make

(01:25:36):
like like really really well done special effects of painted
matt backdrops to give depth, and lots of neat set
pieces and practical effects. So because it is an Italian
film of that time period. I don't even know what
the original language was meant to be. It is easily

(01:25:58):
available in English with it with course terrible English dubbing,
but the Italian audio track that I found is also
clearly not the original because very few people, like they're
all speaking their own languages probably, and then the English
subtitles for the Italian audio track were probably for the

(01:26:19):
English track. So there's some stuff that is just not translated,
some stuff that's translated totally differently, which is kind of
part of the experience of watching an Italian film from
the late sixties. They're all over the place. So yeah, fun, little,
total campy film too, especially if you're interested in our

(01:26:40):
conversation about cops are idiots? Watch this film.

Speaker 4 (01:26:46):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
Mario Baba is a king on this podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:26:49):
We did Planet of the Vampires during a nosparoc too,
which was a crazy movie that didn't make any sense
and from what.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
I remember, didn't have vampires in it, but was like.

Speaker 5 (01:27:04):
Yeah, their space zombies sort of, but it's beautifully shot.
And then the.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Beautifully shot a terrible Twilight episode but.

Speaker 5 (01:27:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, all too longlight Twilight's one episode
with a really inventive use of little flamethrowers to pretend
to be laser c.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Mario Baba is the king of being like the guy.

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
That influenced the better version of the movie, so like
Planet of the Vampires was like like influenced Alien and
like A Bay of Blood influenced Halloween.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
But those movies are fucking horrible.

Speaker 4 (01:27:42):
Like I remember watching A Bay of Blood and being
like he has managed and it's all budget and it's
like that weird thing with the dubbing where they like
I guess burned whatever the original sound was, because like
the only thing you can see now are the dubs,
and the dubs are fucking off, like if they were
able to just restore.

Speaker 5 (01:28:03):
The specifically, that's the way it was done in Italy.
There is no original Yeah, they spoke on set, but
there's no original audio track because they were dubbing it
anyway because.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
Oh that's right, because they would film it on mute.

Speaker 4 (01:28:15):
They wouldn't they wouldn't do the sound, they would only
dub aut, so it doesn't actually exist.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
There is.

Speaker 4 (01:28:22):
Oh my god, it's just so fucking bad.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
But I love that. I've only ever seen danger d
of a League Mystery Science Theater.

Speaker 4 (01:28:30):
I want to watch that movie without the dudes talking
over it, but I you get it when you watch
MS pre K.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
That's awesome, Teddy.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
I would say, Uh, my recommendation is going to be
a movie from earlier this year, Hard Eyes. It was.

Speaker 6 (01:28:54):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
There's something to be said for comedians doing horror because
there's a podcast Brett Goldstein does and in it often
people say, oh, comedy and horror are the same thing.
So people who are really good comedy directors, performers, actors

(01:29:15):
excel in horror, and Hard Eyes has that sensibility. Uh,
it's just go watch it. Support some of the college
humor folks. Josh Rubin I believe directed, Yes, Josh Rubin directed.
It's just really it's been added to my horror lexicon
of films to watch.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
I believe. Uh, that's the first double reck. I recommended
Hard Eyes a couple months ago when it came out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
Oh invalid, Yeah that's right, all right, Well I will
co sign. I will finally co sign and do the rection.

Speaker 4 (01:29:55):
It's the first double wreck, which means like, you got
you gotta watch it, you gotta pay for you gotta pay,
and you gotta pay for it twice. You can't watch
it on the same you gotta pay go buy it,
watch it, buy it again, and watch.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
It one of the streamers for a month rent Like
watch it on the streamer.

Speaker 5 (01:30:15):
Go find the last remaining red box on the planet.

Speaker 2 (01:30:18):
Yeah, pay a dollar for it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
Give Josh Rubens your money.

Speaker 4 (01:30:24):
Uh that's awesome and also written by Christopher Landon, who
wrote or who directed Drop Amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
So this is the whole horror ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (01:30:38):
Uh so that's that's a pretty actually good trilogy. Like
you just do it, danger to a bull, leek, hard
eyes drop and then you're like this this all makes
sense in the grand scheme of the universe, just like
excessive cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
I don't do it for this episode of Is this
just bad? We'll see on the next one.

Speaker 5 (01:31:03):
By it is it's just a nab.

Speaker 7 (01:31:13):
It's like, oh, Pirates, quote your brain, Robin Kneale's no
joking opening your mind with the probot, so you're woken
hit Hydra halen Hairs had for time, for hell of reasons,
for more than with the soldiers, with them and for
all seasons. Listen closely while we share our expertise in
costolic comments, culture dene and street tuition to the Multiversity mouse,
it's like go teaching perfect balance when we snap and
fine gents into your ears, does the shoulders when we speak.

(01:31:33):
Purple men versuasing feet for Randy Savage randals with the
Immortal Technique