292: Superman (2025)

In this episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy discuss James Gunn's "Superman."

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown.

Speaker 3 (00:01):
No, don't this little page 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. It's like appella bear sell it because this
shit is so contagious.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mouths on the.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Summer Wes compilet got the show while the cycle spinning
knowledge on the getty like a pro beat the bad,
but be the rabbit. Don't step to the squad. We
get activic and hate.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's like a steple of parts. You don't like fish talk,
do you hate?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's a batl We.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
The cuddle, fish killers tend pools on the taping The
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky Barnes
hit squad, spraying leg and your pipe.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another vision. Is It's just bad?

Speaker 1 (00:36):
It is?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's just bad? The best podcast you never heard of it?
But rsaur Melt is always by the sea because of
my I was just sending Teddy. Uh. This is a
classic episode, I guess of this show. The premise of
is This Just Bad? We're focusing on the singular pieces
of popular culture, talking about extensively and coming to the
conclusion whether or not it's just bad Superman. That's what

(01:04):
we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
He is Superman punk rock That's that's the study question
for today.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Just a punk rocker. Yes I am, I'm asking.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
If Teddy's punk rocker. I'm asking you is Clark Kent?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
I have something to tell you all. I don't know.
I've been hiding it for a number of years. But
that's so fun. That's such a punk rocker.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's such a funny move that Teddy just answered for
himself a question named else.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
I haven't seen Teddy and Clark Kent in the same
room at the same time, so maybe why.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Did they do the Why didn't they do the POV
of the person looking at Clark with the hypno glasses?
I was waiting for that the whole movie to He's
just like kind of like a twink.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
Like how does his face look? Yeah, and does it
look different to different people or does it the same
different for everybody? I thought it's just like kind of
a blur, like the question style.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I assumed it would be different for everybody. But that's
a that's a great point too, like does he have
a different.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Like like, Yeah, I like the idea that he's just
completely forgettable, Like if somebody asks you to describe what
Clark Kent looks like, like the guy with the glasses,
and that's just like it.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
He just it.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
It's like a numbing field, so you can't really accurately
look at his face and remember anything about it, just
so bland, so unremarkable, just blends into the one of
the shots that I liked in the film, and it
was I don't know if it's a direct frame for
frame pull from one of the Christopher Reeve movies, or

(02:49):
if I've just seen so much Superman media that it's
like a Superman media always has. It is him bumbling
his way into the front door of the day Planet
building with like coffee and his bag and like shuffling around.
And he looks way larger in his Clark Kent suit

(03:11):
than he does in his Superman suit. And I don't
know if he's just around so much cgi in the
Superman suit that it's hard to get a sense for
his scale. But I really liked the oversized, both lumbering
and bumbling nature of his Clark Kent performance, which we see.
You know, there's a lot of little subtleties of like
that version of Clark Kent him in the apartment with Lois,

(03:35):
when he's more authentically himself but still wearing civilian clothes,
and then he's in the Superman suit the rest of
the time. So the little glimpses of Clark that we get,
I think are good and teddy. After the movie mentioned,
you know, thinking about like what Smallville, what his origin,

(03:55):
what that background would have looked like for this actor.
I don't need to see it becau it's so like
classically Superman that like it looks like any Superman. It's
kind of like the hypno classes. It's entirely unremarkable, but
it's good. It's like classic core Superman. So I think
that piece of it worked really well. The Kents, to me,

(04:16):
bordered on caricature. They're like so overwhelmingly folksy, but I
like them. They're cute, They're you know, relatable, emotional. He's
got nice parents. It's very sweet that he he that
they are a really really punches home. They are his

(04:39):
real parents, So that that piece of like the home
life of Clark Kent, I think they nailed pretty well.
What did you think about that piece do you care
about that piece at all or you just here for
the Kryptonians.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Me and no I thought that I thought tonally everything was.
I was at the same wavelength. I don't think that
the Kents are more overly folksy than Lex Luthor is
cartoonishly evil. I think that James Gunn found like a
perfect sort of equilibrium that he wanted to strike, which

(05:12):
was this is based on comic books. These are comic
book characters, every single one of them, from Jimmy Olson
to the bumbling Clark Kent to like the his girl
Friday Lois Lane portrayal, like it's all on the nose.
There's nothing sort of lurking beneath the surface. It it

(05:36):
rejects groundedness. Literally, it's a movie about a flying dude.
So there's so much of the movie that I did
appreciate for that. And it's the only version of Superman
that I'm going to like, which is a Superman that
doesn't that it isn't embarrassed that it's about Superman, like
it's a it's a Superman that is that is so

(05:58):
true to the character and it doesn't need to. Your
point about Clark Kent is interesting because it doesn't need
to stick around the world with the bumbling Clark Kent
when the Superman is as bumbling as Clark Kent is.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
Yeah, it's a really good point from the very beginning
when you see the like magnifying glass set up in
the Fortress of Solitude with like the big concentric mirror
rings to give him some therapy, like, oh yeah, we
are full on silver age, goofy. This is the stuff
Grant Marrison likes to pull from, and it is. It's

(06:36):
not quite camp. It's got an honesty to it that
reminds me a little bit of a the Adam West
Batman of like we are not embarrassed about how ungrounded
and ridiculous this stuff is were but we're not like
being gonna be sarcastic about it either. It's just like
this is the way this world is, and it's all

(06:56):
elevated and broad.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
But not.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Stupid for it nice.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, I mean you could definitely in comparing it to
a completely well comparison kind of end there. But in
like the do you remember the Dick Tracy movie from years.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
Ago with Warren Bath I didn't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, So, like they tried to lean into the Dick
traciness of it, and it's one of those nineties early
two thousand's when they were doing comic book adaptations, but
they it was the type of lean in that was like, oh, no,
this is you're leaning in, but you don't quite get it.

(07:38):
You don't quiteet Like Warren Baty clearly understood who Dick
Tracy was because he read it when he was a kid,
but I don't think anybody else there was like this
is it all felt like, well, this is a paycheck.
We're doing our thing in this movie. They were leaning
into very specific aspects of it. It wasn't you know.

(08:00):
James Gunn was like, I'm not trying to do the
boys here. And it's that type of hyper reality that
if you ever watched Slither, I guess uh cause you
probably haven't, but I still see a lot of things
like Slither in this where you're like, oh, the parent

(08:23):
Clark Kent's parents from Kansas, Well it borders. I think
the important part is that it borders on caricature. It
gets right up to that line of this is a
hyper reality. But that was I think that helped with
the folkseness of when he was like, parents aren't here
to choose who your kids are. We let them make

(08:47):
fools of themselves. We just give you the tools. And
that type of wisdom I think would have come off
as really it would have either come off way too
corny if if they had leaned in in the wrong way,
or would just come off as deeply pompous if it
was any of the other previous DC movies that we

(09:09):
would have seen, Like could you imagine someone like Themyscira
saying that to a wonder woman?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
No?

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, And like I don't really want to hear Kevin
Costner saying that either, But this version of Jonathan Kent
is able to play that. So I want to go
back to what Mouse said, especially given that quote about
this version of Superman is bumbling all so, which I
think is an excellent point. This version of Superman he
gets his askig most of this movie, and it's an

(09:35):
interesting I like the opening crawl of like, we're going
to force you to read about this is the this
is the gun verse that we're setting up with, you know,
everything from three centuries to three minutes ago, and now
Superman is going to get wrecked and be kind of
a dummy, which works. I mean, this version of Superman.
It's not an I mean not an accident that Frank

(09:57):
Grillo is in this playing basically the same character he
always plays. But this version of Superman is much closer
to Captain America, which is to say, he's a good person,
and his flaw, if anything, is a certain amount of
self righteousness, a certain amount of complete faith in what

(10:18):
he's doing is right, and an inability to kind of
like get out of the way or compromise, which is
generally a good thing, but puts him on a collision
course with everything and everybody because he's got a very
specific set of ideals, and that is a difficult character
to write. I remember many many years ago now us

(10:42):
listening to Marcus and mcpheley talking about, like, how do
you write a character like that when you're not leaning
into some specific they are evil or they're a jerk,
and like Superman does come off occasionally as arrogant, but
just be because he's so sure of himself, not because

(11:03):
he is whatever invincible the boys like super Saiyan like evil.
He's just really trying to do the right thing and
he's got a very specific idea of how what that
Auto look like and that's refreshing. I think that I
think it leads to bumbling. What was your thought about

(11:24):
bumbling Superman?

Speaker 2 (11:26):
I thought it was interesting because it's like, the one
of the problems that Superman is that he is invincible,
and oftentimes that renders his physicality to be somewhat like
non dynamic, like the Henry Cavill Superman is very assured

(11:54):
that type of movie, and movies that have Superman, some
Superman media, especially comic books, just sort of devolve into
like punching battles. I think it is I think it
is telling that Lex Luthor has managed to algo all
of Superman's weaknesses and there they are plenty, because an

(12:19):
invincible person probably does not think about defending himself a ton,
and so gunn Is I think, I mean he's thought
about this character, probably more than anybody who's ever written
Superman has, and down to the specificity of like, he
has real weaknesses because of his seemingly unlimitless power, and

(12:47):
that we're gonna we're gonna show you that instead of
tell you that and then have him kick everybody's ass
and then you go, how, well, what the fuck does
what's the point of this then, as opposed to it
being like the sort of moral quandary of, uh, it
should Superman kill or something like that. In this movie,

(13:08):
it's like we can't even get to that level of
complexity yet because this person doesn't really even know how
to use their body like we we are. We're dealing
on a much more elemental level of how can Superman
accomplish a prime objective, which is save everybody, which is
like almost impossible to do while also kind of facing

(13:35):
the consequences of saving everybody means sacrificing my body, which
is invincible at all times, and then that being weaponized
against him by Lex Luthor, who is able to, like
to a t describe all of his various weaknesses and
punch him into a computer and like orchestrate battles against him.

(13:57):
I thought that was a really smart, interesting way of
creating a vulnerability and a character who is invulnerable. Yeah,
and so that that that that part of the the
the all the combat stuff I really liked in this movie,
which was crazy because all the combat for every Superman

(14:17):
movie is really honestly kind of dull and boring because
of that invincibility. It just is a kind of a
less than the comic books, but it's definitely in live action.
It is something that hamstrings that character a lot, where
you go, well, what the fuck does he do? Like,
how do we challenge him? What do we do?

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Well?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
In every case, it's been We're just gonna have to
get Ryptons like Kryptonians to come down here and fuck
him up, or somebody's gonna have to have kryptonite, or
Doomsday is gonna have to come and kill him, like there,
there's there's no other way here. It's like, well, what
if Superman had to like stay on his feet while
a dog while a super dog nipped at his heels

(15:01):
and a baby is going down a proton river and
it's like I have to save all of these people.
That becomes the conflict.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Yeah, we were talking about like Superman stretching himself so
thin because his first directive is save everyone down to
save the squirrel. Like he's not thinking like the way
Lex does in like a computer algorithm style, highest priority,
highest efficiency. He's going on complete emotion of save people,

(15:35):
prevent people from being killed at all costs, and that's
stretching himself is what makes him interesting frankly, of because
he is. It's I mean, there was a bad Superman
video game, but it had its idea in the right
place of you don't have a health bar, the city
has a health bar, and you know you have to

(15:56):
go around like saving I think might be the Superman
Returns adaptation or something didn't really work out very well.
But the idea of after a certain amount of damage
to the city, you lose. It's not about you, it's
about your goals of try to protect everyone, and seeing
how that comes into conflict with Lex's goals and the
United States Government's goals and the Justice Gang's goals is interested.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
There's a podcaster that had a really interesting cake Sarman.
She said, Savik I think, and she basically said, the
time Superman is most effective is when he's written as
a firefighter and not a cop. And the idea that
exactly what we're talking about, the way the conflict is

(16:42):
set up, and the way that a lot of the
tension and a lot of this comes from the all right,
can Superman make it in time to help? Say, for everybody,
can Superman solve this puzzle? And of course the other
thing is eventually can Superman ask for help like There's

(17:03):
there's one question that I think the Snyder movies and
for a little bit the Christopher Reeves, but it happens
a lot, and I think it happens a lot in
Marvel where eventually you're like, yeah, but why are these
folks not here? Like the Eternals set up such a
horrifying dynamic where they never really went into like, hey,

(17:26):
why didn't these folks help Thanos? Why didn't they like
fight Thanos again? What's happening now? Like that just it
made no sense in this moment. It was exactly what
you're saying of Superman's directive of I'm trying to save everybody,
and it's an I'm trying to save everybody, not oh right,

(17:46):
there is a group of people that, yeah, they can
take care of this. The side character of this dimensional
imp where he's like, eh, it's fine, they've got it.
Where one of them major play points that has helped
resolved is when he's like, oh, I can trust these
folks in the Justice Gang to actually go out and

(18:08):
take care of business without like murdering everyone there, right,
which I was like, okay, okay.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah, I like Superman sort of slightly adversarial sort of
having to learn to work with other heroes. And it's
to your point about why the Marvel keeps falling down,
is like there's too many of them and why aren't
they talking to each other? And you can't get away

(18:35):
with just like the Marvel Pop, like they all have
to fight each other and have misunderstandings and that's why
they aren't helping whatever. But this setting up this world
of like it's a world where meta humans exist. Superman exists,
various other meta people exist. Superman is different. He is
more powerful and also an alien. These other ones I
have various other kinds of powers, but are mostly not aliens,

(18:58):
and they all have different priorities and that will put
them in conflict with each other sometimes. But Seeing is
sort of the beginnings of what will become the Justice
League of America or Justice League whatever international, whatever it is.
Seeing the way Superman is not a member but is
a grounding and reinforcing force for them to aspire to

(19:26):
something greater than corporate sponsorship is really nice, and that's
I'm curious to see where that goes.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
I think this film also does an interesting and I
think it's as you were saying, it's laying some interesting
groundwork to like have greater questions, because I think in
this one we had the seeds of what does what
do certain symbols mean? So the idea that at the

(19:51):
end where the kid has the Superman flag, it wasn't
an idea, It didn't become the idea of a savior.
It is the idea of inspiring that type of hope.
And like, that's at least what I kind of got
from the end of the movie. But it also sets
up that interesting question of how does how does symbolism

(20:16):
start interacting in this world as well? Like we we
have the idea of the internet and like the bots
and the monkeys on a computer, which I found that
that was a great like, oh yeah, Lex Luthor would
one hundred percent be like, no, we can just use monkeys.
Why would we actually.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
Like literal infinite monkeys in front of Internet typewriters. Yeah,
that felt like a very Morrison joke also.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
One hundred percent. But then we also have a very
Morrison idea of the power that can come behind the
I mean, in some ways the mundane of these lines
on a piece of paper or this line on a flag,
and what does that imview in people what that start
saying and how does that take on a life of

(21:03):
its film? And it's again that I thought it was
a really interesting like green Guy Gardner started talking about
I'm a man of the clot, Like I wouldn't even
say it was a potshot at the Jesus imagery in
the previous ones, but it was definitely one of those like, right,
the lanterns are a symbol, Guy Gardner doesn't necessarily fully

(21:27):
represent that do we know of how Jordan is in
this universe?

Speaker 5 (21:30):
You know?

Speaker 1 (21:31):
It's it's a whole bunch of those seed questions that
I think were there very intentionally but didn't overshadow, Like
it wasn't one of those Hey, look we have this
file with all of these we hired graphic designers to
make people's symbols for unknown meta humans for some for
some reason. No, no, we're just allowing people to do

(21:54):
their thing.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
Yeah, we did a nice job here, a gun did
of Everybody has some thing to do, and so it's
not just a cameo of like, oh, gulp, shitdow is here.
You know this guy. And even like the post credit scenes,
aren't you know we're teasing Darkseide or something It's like
they if you're in the movie, you have a couple

(22:16):
of lines, you do something specific, we get a sense
for who you are. I really like the Guy Gardner
stuff of he's alluding to the green lantern prime directive,
but there's no other green lanterns around right now, so
he could just be spouting bullshit, and like the other
Justice Gang members, don't know or care what his deal

(22:37):
is really, and he has to work through even what
his deal is, like he doesn't want to get involved
in politics. But I love that it's them who show
up to the war zone and not Superman, and then
they start to think through what they could be if
they're not Maxwell Ward's public relations pawns.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, I read that a little differently. I read that
as this is the reason why Kyle Chandler and Aaron
Pierre aren't in the movie, because the only the only
lantern that would break the prime directive is Guy Carton's Gardner.
Because there is a Hal Jordan, there's a John Stewart,
there is a Guy Gardner, there is very pointedly not

(23:18):
a Kyle Rayner. I saw an interview with James Gunn
who said he hates Kyle Rayner. No really like a
dog shit green lantern horrible characterized.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
I was gonna have beef with James gun so fast.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah. I think the reason you like Kyle Rayner is
probably the reason he doesn't like Kyle Rayner is that
there's a lot of like pomp and circumstance for no reason,
is what he would say. But the the the the
Lanterns thing is happening, and it does seem like at
least Guy Gardner was being positioned as the one that

(23:55):
breaks the rules and is the one who is like
I mean the idea of like trying to Deputie as
a team of heroes on Earth without any oversight from
the Guardians of OA and getting involved very pointedly in
a political dispute.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
Oh yeah, absolutely, like the if you're going by the
Guardian rule book, you know, you don't associate with other heroes,
you don't get on super teams, you don't deal with
earthly affairs. You're here, you're the force field around the
Earth to deal with interstellar threats. Like if the internmensional
imp shows up, sure, if the Kaiju shows up, sure,

(24:33):
if there's an alien invasion, absolutely, but no, you shouldn't
be doing like a press and whatever sponsorship bullshit, Guy
Gardner's up to I agree.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Nathan Fillian was talking about his sort of his his
understanding of Guy Gardner, and he was like, he was like,
Guy Gardner is the green Lantern that if you're in
trouble and you like request a green lantern from the
Guardians of OA and Guy Gardner shows up. It's like
a monkey's paw where you're like, oh uh, like like

(25:05):
this is going to cause a whole set of other problems.
But that he simultaneously and I think this is head canon.
I don't think this is actually anything that James Gunn
told him. Is the green Lantern that the Guardians would
ask to do some type of clandestine like uh kind

(25:29):
of off the grid mission that they needed accomplished in
that sector of the universe. So like very much playing
on this sort of like blurred line. But I thought,
really really uh interesting.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
I think you're right. Nathan Fillion has a really really
good sense for Gardener because he comes he's a he's
an egotist, he's super annoying. He's kind of a goof
in this movie, but he's not a bad person. Like
he's flawed and obnoxious, but he also you can tell

(26:07):
he's trying. He's written in a similar way to Peacemaker,
like less of a psychopath, but in that same vulnerability,
is attempting to do the right thing, but has a
skewed sense of what that is. And I could absolutely
see him, like you said, going off doing something at
the request of the Guardians that nobody knows about the

(26:28):
cow that Jordan is going to have to then unravel
fix later.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
I think you've just hit on one of the most
kind of on a meta perspective, one of the most
effective things about how James Gunn presents a lot of
these movies and characters, that there is a sense of
character and vulnerability to everyone where And I think maybe
that's the exactly like even with Lex Luthor of having

(26:55):
Like in most films, the third act breakdown is generally
loud and bombastic for these types of characters, especially the
very cerebral ones. In this he tears up and he's
like his utter defeat, is not saying anything and just

(27:16):
quietly being he doesn't have a final line, you know,
And it's one of those Oh even every like every
named character, even some of the unnamed ones, have little
character arcs and have the like Ali had his own
like arc ended with his death, but it still was

(27:38):
like like it was a It was one of those
like oh yeah, you actually feel for it. You you
understand why, like you you get this, you know. It
was something that to do a different, slightly different point uh.
One of a friend of the pod Jay, our friend Jay,

(28:00):
was talking about how one of the things he really
appreciated about mister Terrific in this film is that he
was unapologetically black in a non Hollywood sort of way.
That this was a very this was a represented like

(28:23):
we had a character who was able to express a
type of a a not a media archetype of the
incredibly smart, cerebral black engineer from in the early nineties,

(28:47):
late eighties, early nineties and early two thousands. One of
the media narratives with black men in it, outside of
the stereotypes of the thug, was really the pushback when
it came to no, we have just a lot of
engineers like Jordie LaForge, we had, I mean, obviously static

(29:07):
shock mister Terrific.

Speaker 4 (29:09):
That just clicked for me that this absolutely is Jordi
LaForge in terms of not great with human emotions, very
good with machines. Nice guy, but standoffish, like will take
a while to kind of break through to develop a
real friendship with him. He would be much happier being

(29:31):
left alone.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And one of the ways that he was interacting with Superman,
he let his guard down around Superman, like you saw,
like that very human side of a movie. He's like,
come on man, I like in the last in the
in the second post credit scene where he's like, come
on man, and he like walks away being like it
was one of those moments where it was very much

(29:57):
a It was the that type of reaction that was
incredibly humanizing for a character who's like, I'm not good
with emotions, but now, yeah, you are. You're just you
have emotions, you just aren't versed with dealing with other
people's very well. And it was an incredibly I think

(30:19):
I could feel almost and this might be putting words
in the mouth of the director and the actors, but
it almost felt a little more of a collaborative invention
between the actors and the writing, right, so the actors
were allowed to populate this film with these characters in

(30:41):
a very textured way that is very evident in the
final product.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, I feel that way absolutely about Guy Gardner and
mister Terrific both like I'm all on board for their
spinoff seeing more of them. They managed to do like big,
broad archetypes of characters, but they also feel really really
realistic and in a way like they're not hamstrung in
the same way, there's there's certain now that I've seen

(31:09):
a lot of James Gun media, there's certain little things
that he'll do, like this is the humanizing scene, and
like Lewis and Clark talking about the Mighty crab Joys
and their little punk music or whatever, Like all right,
I feel like I've seen that specific scene from James
Gun in every one of his movies ever, where they
have like a little aside, almost a tarantino esque small
talk about something unrelated to humanize them. It's fine, but

(31:34):
getting a little bit more in character about the world,
the way we hear Guy Gardner talking about his his
vows and the man men of a cloth. Seeing mister
Terrific talk about his own machines and the stuff that
he does in ways that we're not completely expository and
still felt like we were learning about them and not

(31:55):
just the rules of the world was really nice. So
I'm very excited to return to them. How are we
feeling about Kara in her one scene and like what
that looks like?

Speaker 2 (32:12):
I don't know if she was fucking drunk, dude, I
was underage drinking as far as I as far as
I can.

Speaker 4 (32:17):
Tell, underage over or to say what age she even is. Yeah,
I'll be interesting to see what her backstory. We were
talking about the you know, in some versions she is
intended to have arrived on Earth first to take care
of Kalel gets detoured or frozen you know, you know,
black hole or whatever, and by the time she shows up,

(32:39):
he's now older than she is, and so she's stuck
with like the mission she wasn't expected to perform. She
can't do it. She's completely directionless. I did not like
the dog based humor in this movie when it was
about like loll, it's poorly trained loll. We don't know
how to control this animal. Well like that doesn't I

(32:59):
don't find that particularly funny. I do like the reveal
that it's not his dog. She's a terrible dog owner.
She's a mess. The dog's a mess. They need help
and he can't really do much about it. And that's
why this dog is so unruly is this foster situation.
He alludes to it, so that was I didn't save

(33:20):
it for me specifically, but I like where that's going.
And I'm interested in a directionless Cara, especially if she's
aware of the full message of the Kryptonians or dicks
they are intending to, you know, say in Style or
Invincible style or whatever any of the evil versions of

(33:41):
super races that we've seen a million times before. I
like this nature versus nurture thing. And if she's like,
I don't want to repopulate the new planet with super people.
I don't want to do this. My home sucked. I
don't have the benefit of human folksy parents to give
me a different set of rules. But I remember the
destruction of my planet, and she's just kind of despondent

(34:05):
and directionless. That's a really interesting all their take when
and it's nice to not have to put that on
kal El also because that often muddies the water with him.
And that's very much with like what we saw with
the Henry Cavill movies of what does it mean to
be a god among men? Like that's not what we're
doing with the Superman. It doesn't matter. He's folksy, he's human.

(34:27):
So let's give the rest of that story to another
Kryptonian and we can explore that separately. That gives you
more space to work.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
And if I am remembering correctly, Okay, Google has confirmed
apparently this take is based off of Supergirl, Woman of Tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
It's the Tom Midi's book YEP, which is all about
in every Tom King book. I don't even need to
read it to know it's about being despondent and directionless.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Well, and I like the one of the things that
I remember for I've only read the I've read everything
but the last one of it series. But one of
the things I really appreciated about it is like the
fact that when Kara apparently meets meets Clark for the

(35:13):
first time, she's like he tries to speak Kryptonian into her,
and the idea of like why are you doing Like
she doesn't trust him because he's like, you're speaking textbook
to me. This is this is clearly a trap, Like
this is clearly not a real thing, and like if
we're basing part of it on, oh, Clark is trying
to be like trying to save everybody, and he runs

(35:35):
into his comic, his cousin who is having an existential
crisis and like dealing with trauma. What a like, I'm
excited to see this superman help someone with trauma. Imagining
the Zack Snyder Henry Cavill person trying to help somebody

(35:55):
like deal.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
With this just doesn't come absolutely, And I like the
I love the idea, the competing impulses of this. Kaleal
desperately wants connections to his home planet and his Kryptonian
side that he knows her a little about, So of
course he's going to try to speak Kryptonian to her,
and of course he's going to try to like bond
on their shared culture and tell me about the House

(36:17):
of l and the whole time, she's like, they're dead.
It said they sucked. I don't want to talk about this.
That's really interesting because the very way he would be
trying to help her is the thing that's going to
trigger her the most, And so we have this really
interesting clash of styles. So yes, I think those two
opposing characters are really interesting, and you're able to mine

(36:39):
a lot of story there without needing a bunch of
extraneous Kryptonians.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Hunt and I think really the and while it might,
I think it was just an homage to some of
Alan Moore's, not Alan Grant Morrison's work with the Three
is being able to in some ways dropped in media
arrest to the idea metas and metahumans and gods in
this world and like kind of that All Star Superman,

(37:06):
All Star Superman of it allows us to say stuff,
allows him to say stuff like, oh, yeah, she's like
going to Red Sun planets, like oh this this version
of Superman has been off planet. This world is used
to a certain amount of weird stuff happening, and they
don't have to spend some of that screen time being

(37:30):
explaining oh right, there's this whole deal and there's this
we have to give science pseudoscience explanations or gobbledee gook
about you know, the Star Trek gobbledygook of why is
this planet filled with people with the same hat like
they they don't have to do that. They're allowing the

(37:51):
world to be like, look, it's gonna get it's gonna
get weird. Focus on the right stuff.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, I appreciate that because it it helps. And this
is again we've talked with this many times as DC's
version of the world versus marvel version of the world,
and Marvel when it starts out being we're the world
right outside your window, and then you get the snap
and by the time you get to Thunderbolts, like, this
is so far away from my world that you cannot

(38:19):
try to get me to care about this as a
realistic parable or analogy for what's going on, Like it's
just too far removed, and it gets weirder and weirder,
whereas DC is like it's gods and monsters, it's mythology.
There is a mythic time happening superimposed on this. The

(38:39):
world is different from ours, don't worry about it. Now
we can play in archetypes and symbols, and you can
have an analogy like you would in Star Trek, because
we are not asking you to say, this is your
New York except Spider Man but also Daredevil but also Glack.

(39:00):
This is coming every four years. But also it gets
too complicated, so being able to just like throw us
into there's Aliens and the Amazons are back there somewhere,
and Superman just showed up a couple of years ago.
But the world has been weird forever. I think gives
you a better starting point to do whatever you want.

(39:20):
And I actually am more invested because it's not there's
not this like rubber banding back and forth of no, no, no.
Everything else is legit. We still care about what Congress
has to say when they're trying to regulate meta humans
versus Here's this room of people. It's got a couple
of like US government positions you recognize, and also a
couple of like argus is here or whatever, Like I

(39:42):
don't know what that is. It doesn't matter because it's
the superversion of this. We're leading with that, so we
don't have to pretend like it's realistic, then break that
and then try to repair it. It's not realistic. It's okay, Yeah,
it works better for me.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
Very funny though that Rick Flagg is he has a
scene that is literally identical to Crossbones arresting Captain America
and be like, don't shoot him.

Speaker 6 (40:09):
Here, like take him away first, Like, bro, it's just
Crossbodes again, except this time Peacemaker killed your kid, so
you're even more man.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
You're not just in it for the love of the game.
You got like a personal stake in this well.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
One interesting one other. I don't know, I'm maybe I'm
gushing too much about this movie. But one of the
things that I have found really interesting about the uh
uh Jarvinpoor and Borrovia conflict and kind of that's interesting
the way it's written. Like if we look at when

(40:45):
they were shooting and when everything went through, this script
was finished and like submitted apparently in about twenty twenty three,
so this was about this was like the annex of Georgia,
and like Kate, it's very also Ukraine coded, and I

(41:06):
think it speaks to I think it really does speak
to the how we have just the way in which
these not timelessness, but the way in which this narrative
can be applied in so many more like non niche

(41:26):
directions that everybody went, oh that's yeah. I mean no,
it's not like this was. I mean, like this is
either Putin or you could say any strong any of
the strong men dictators that we've seen, and I don't
to I guess not exactly transition, but to speak to
some of the people talking about how woke this movie is,

(41:48):
I mean it's as woke as saying fascism bad.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Yeah, which this is the same idea and everybody's like, oh,
the Simpsons predict so much, Like, no, these are just trends,
Like this stuff has been half forever. It's not new.
It's current, but only because whatever history has repeatd itself
at rhymes or whatever. So yes, it's definitely the things

(42:13):
that James Gunn would be pulling from from current affairs
as of twenty twenty three. You could also pull from
in nineteen forty.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
You could pull from nineteen ninety with a lot of
you can pull from the eighty. Like it's yeah, one
hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
And to be like James gun is like, I mean,
he's like a terminally online dude, But it's just as
likely that he was reading Dune and was like, the
Fremen storyline is interesting to do a backdrop to to
have like a geopolitical conflict in which there are unarmed

(42:50):
indigenous people being overtaken by a very highly militarized, technologically
elite state that only cares about the lands that they occupy,
as like you could be yeah, you could be reading dude,
you could be reading Phenoon, you could be watching the
news right now. It's like a timeless the people who

(43:10):
are like this is definitely about Israel, and like what
did the brown people do to Brovia? Are like telling
on themselves because.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
The point is nothing is the thing. It's so broad
and it's so obvious that like, no, they didn't do
anything like that. That's the point. They never do anything.
They're just there on land that has resources that other
people want. It's always that Yeah, I mean we were
joking about it, like no, this Superman does not kidnap

(43:41):
landlords and like hang them out windows or whatever. He's
not nineteen thirties, not yet doing the tenement cleanup Superman.
He's just like usual, trying to be a good person,
human kindness, save people Superman.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
But James Gunn is also very spiteful. He's online a lot,
so I think that he probably will have Superman dangle
a landlord out of a window in the next movie
just to be like, hey, fucking fuck you.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
Just keep turning it up a notch, I hope.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
So, I mean real estate scams. Superman fighting against real
estate scams has been a movie plot, and it.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Was the movie spot in this one too, Like this
is class I like the Lex Luthor like no, no, no,
beating you up isn't the pretext for the real estate scam,
the entire real estate scam, which involves a war and
the annexation of a country.

Speaker 6 (44:35):
Is a pretext for killing you. Like that, that's perfect
Lex Luthor. But he's got his priority straight, I guess
the like the like.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
The first movie being about like launching a bomb into
the San Andreas Fault so that, like Lex Luthor could
annex California, or like, fuck was he up to.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
In that movie turning California into island so he could
have more beach front proper?

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, it's like that. That's that's because there's so many
people too who are like this woke bullshit, like Superman
nineteen seventy eight is so much better, And it's like,
but what was the plot of that movie and what
was the bad? What was the evil of that movie?
Was fucking capitalism was like private property. He's actually less

(45:23):
incisive in that way than the fucking nineteen seventy eight
version of this film. Is like, yeah, it's it's it's
such a weird you know, it's a it's like a
misunderstanding of popular culture. It's this like weaponization of culture
for what is like a movie that's doing so much
more interesting stuff when it comes to just storytelling than

(45:46):
it is like politically the idea of it's not.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
A politically interesting movie, Like, it's just it's a pretty
broad strokes, yeah, neoliberal basically whatever that's I'm there's I
want to learn about the dc UN. I don't need
this to like reflect on our world in any kind
of like any more than it already does. So yeah, sorry, Tom,
go ahead.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
The way that they're setting this up, it's interesting because
Gunn I think he was on Michael Rosenbaum's podcast or
somebody's podcasts, and he was talking about like one of
the things that is one of the things that Marvel

(46:30):
is afraid of that the MCU is afraid of is
secret identities. The MCU begins with a film in which
the main character declares his identity. At the end, Iron
Man like rejects this idea of the secret identity. They

(46:51):
didn't want to be hamstrung by that, and so as
a result, you don't really get a character who has
a secret identity until Spider Man, which is something that
that Marvel very much didn't own during that period.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
Right, and he immediately spends those movies getting a secret
entity revealed and then redconned and revealed again, like they
can't handle him.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, and so in this movie, he he wanted there
to be like a baseline of like meta humans exist.
We know meta humans exist, and some of them exist
out in the open, like Guy Gardner in the Green
Lantern Core and the Justice Gang and Hawk Girl though

(47:38):
she's still hidden, we don't know who she is.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
Is I like the difference between well, yeah, Guy Gardner
like essentially has a badge number, like he is a cop.
He doesn't wear a mask, He's just a guy. And
mister Terrific definitely does wear a mask. Like how useful
that mask is concealing his identity is up for debate.
But and Hawk Girl's got a helmet and you know,

(48:02):
moves fast and screams a lot of things. Yeah, and
so those are and I like, you know, seeing her
in her apartment looking different and like, so clearly there
is a real attempt here to have public versus private
persona and different flavors and different levels of that, which
is really interesting. And your absolute are something that Marvel
has abandoned entirely. I'm not sure why it is.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
I think his interpretation of it is that it's it's
kind of of this pesky thing that you have to
you have to write around constantly, and to eliminate it
and have it be normalized from the get go allows
you to focus on different parts of the story as
opposed to that being the entire story, which can get

(48:52):
tires of mertitious, and it does to a degree, like
if you watch like can Yeah, if you watch like
all those Batman movies, at a certain point you're like
just be like, I'm Bruce Wayne, like who gives a
fuck about this? At a certain point because.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Yeah, and they are able to leap frog this of
like many of the christianher Reeve movies like The Will
They Won't? They just love us know who he is,
like that he's boring, and so to be immediately like no,
she knows, don't worry about it, but the public doesn't.
That's a more interesting place to be.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
And it's interesting too because there is there is. It
builds in this like accountability that every character has to
have and if they don't have that, then they they
are like potentially a little bit more dangerous, like the
the accountability of being a space cop with a badge

(49:45):
number who is subordinate to the Guardians. Is what keeps
Guy Gardner like relatively in line.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Hasn't blown up the planet?

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The I mean just like doing birds
up through the through the.

Speaker 4 (50:05):
My favorite seeds.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, so funny. Or the the accountability that's built into
Superman having this this like desire to maintain a secret
identity causes him to maneuver in the world in a
much different way and also causes him to be like,

(50:28):
especially with his arch nemesis, to be oblique and in
all of these various ways, and to go through the
trouble of the fucking glasses and shit.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Like that, and I love that just throw away a
line of lex been like maybe I'll kill that reporter next,
I'll go find Clark Kent, Like.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
And the beauty of he's so arrogant that he's got
such a blind spot. He would never put it together
that Superman even has a secret identity, that Superman, God
among men, horrifying conqueror would care to live as a human,
even when Superman straight up tells him at the end
of the movie that he's like try to be human.
He would never put that together unless it was like

(51:08):
slapped him in the face. That's really that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
The fact that he has Superman's DNA, Like, oh, who's
somebody who just doesn't Yeah, Clark Kent probably has never
had a blood tech Like it's.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
One of those like, oh yeah, but he wouldn't even
think to look for it. He's so busy cloning the
Kryptonian weapon of mass destruction, he doesn't care.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Didn't even try and put glasses on that. No like
has looked at him.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
Hasn't been a gimp mask the whole time. I'm never
going to put glasses on him.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yeah, And there isn't like in the previous version of this,
there isn't a build up to creating the Hall of
Justice and organizing the Justice League. The Hall of Justice exists.
We have these scenes with the Secretary of Defense and
stuff like that that indicates that there is already some

(52:02):
kind of regulatory partnership between meta humans and the government
in a way where you then circumvent basically the entire
conflict of civil war. So that like Gun is doing,
and it's not like a send up of the MCU.
It is like signaling and signposting to the audience that like,

(52:25):
we're not dealing with any of that. Actually we're dealing
with totally new, untread territory. And what he's been teasing
in interviews and stuff is that you haven't even you've
already met the main character of this first phase. It's
not Superman, and you probably don't. You probably won't see

(52:49):
it coming when it's revealed that this entire thing is
building to a story and the culmination of a character's arc.
The character of whom we know know but who we
don't know, is the center of what's going on. It's
mister Terrific of the upcoming crisis that's going to happen.

(53:11):
It's probably not mister Terrific because he already he's getting
a show like the people who are getting who are
probably being exposed early. So like the Lanterns, mister Miracle,
mister Terrific, Supergirl, Superman, it's probably not any any anybody
in that orbit it Honestly, it could be fucking Jimmy Olson.

Speaker 4 (53:30):
Like it could be Hawk Girl. Yeah, I mean, just
like because she's so her, we don't know what her
backstory is, and like there's so many like is it
are we gonna get the ran Thanagar War? Are we
getting Vandal savage because it's the freaking Egyptian reincarnation thing. Like,
there's so many different ways to go with the Hawk
people that there's a lot of space to mine there.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
That's cool.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
I like that a lot, and I like the different
stories we're able to tell. I found Jimmy Olsen the
jokes like the Unruly Dog jokes didn't land for me,
and the Eve Testmoker jokes didn't land for me. Because
why is Jimmy such a dick? I guess, like the

(54:14):
you know, she's brilliant, she's taking selfies of all of
the evil plans, but also she's completely obsessed with this
guy will not give her the time of day, and
she's so out of his league. Like I like the
allusion to Jimmy Elson being in situations that don't make sense.
A turtle boy or having a hot girlfriend both equally

(54:35):
implausible for Jimmy Elson, but the fact that he is
so like he's only kind of got the one speed
in his relationship with test Maker, which is massively like
dragging his heals the entire time. I found tiresome and
kind of insulting. So I am not opposed to seeing

(54:56):
more of this Jimmy Elson, But I think that character
needs tweaking and more di because he has one joke
that the whole movie shouldn't really land for me.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Apparently, according to James Gunn, the whole that thing is
Jimmy Olsen is the problem. Like he actually was like, no,
Jimmy has problems. The mutant toes thing was actually like
according to James gun at least he was like, no, no,
it's Jimmy this whole thing. It's like, this is his fault.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
So we're aware that Jimmy is being a dick and
we're not because in the movie it feels like that's
trying to be played for laughs and not played for Wow,
there's something like deeply wrong with this kid.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Well, I will say that is one thing that's like
there are a couple of spots where it's a little
unclear about like what's going, like the along with Jimmy,
some of the just some of the way that the

(55:56):
entirety of Superman's like everybody publicly turned on Superman in
like ten seconds of a video being like now, when
I say ten seconds, like it did not take very
long for the entire public to go, oh, clearly Superman
is the bad guy, right.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
I mean that's very I mean that was part of
like the political like infinite Monkeys and infinite typewriter spreading
hate speech online, the like secret the Pizzagate nature of
the secret harems like that.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
That was sure, but like we also had like worked
it's on the nose, but I mean the human characters.
There was play. There was a montage of like this
the Nimby Lady. Well see that's my bias, but there's
one lady who was crying while looking at Superman, being
so horrified that he was there, and like people throwing
stuff at him. And I was like, you all found

(56:46):
this out like literally thirty seconds ago, like you went
from this to and it was one of for me,
that was one of those like well that was a
little fast, you know.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
Yeah, But I could have probably used like we saw
Luthor trying to from a Planet Watch to the government.
Would have been interesting to have like ad campaigns for
Planet Watch as like a prime knowing that Maxwell Lord
sponsors the Justice Gang and there's this like private public
partnership whatever like sponsored super teams already. If Luthor had

(57:21):
also been like, not only do you hate Superman because
I'm telling you to you also love my guys, because
I'm telling you too, that might have been interesting to
just like give that a little bit. More of the
public is primed to turn against the alien. But even
saying that phrase, like, yeah, it makes sense that people

(57:41):
turn real quick in this world because this is a
thing that happens in real life. Also, it sucks, but
I don't I didn't find it unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
I think that there are probably a couple of things
going on with Jimmy Olsen. One of them is that
this is very much gun referencing obscure comic book arcs.
I think he's signaling that Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl are

(58:11):
going to get together, because there was an arc in
the seventies wherein Jimmy Olsen was sort of like a playboy,
bachelor whatever.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
He constantly is getting weird powers or getting you know,
getting girls. They're turned to all kinds of strange things,
and even back to like Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen in
the Jack Kirby Forever People Run where he's like randomly
involved with all of the new guns.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, So I think it's signaling that Jim that Jimmy
Olsen has main character energy and this.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
Guy is that it would actually make a lot of
sense of Jimmy Olsen is the centerpiece of the coming crisis.
I don't want that to be the case, but.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
I meant it could be. And I like that actor that.
I think he does a good job in this movie.
And I thought I was totally like, this is a
Rugpool situation because the there's something weird going on with Jimmy.
We don't understand it. He's not interested in these women

(59:17):
who are very interested in him. He has this frankly
like rude. There were not like laughs in my theater
when Jimmy was being like a dick to this woman.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
Yeah, they weren't in my theater either, which is weird
because I'm happy about because I found it distasteful. But
they're like the way the beats are set up in
the movie, like if there were a laugh track, that's
where you drop the laugh track. So it's odd to me.
So I agree that there's like a rug pool situation here.
He's got so many contacts in his phone. If the

(59:54):
answer is he's got he's carrying a torch for Kara
and she's off world the whole time. That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
There was a gasp or a collective realization when we
realized that Eve is much smarter than anybody's giving her
credit for, including Jimmy Olsa, because she is taking selfies
in front of very privileged information, and she's the one
the smoking gun that blows open the entire lex Luthor thing.

(01:00:25):
And so I think it. I think James Gun is
playing with your expectations and subverting them at the very end,
the same way it kind of does with the fucking dog,
where you're like, why is this dog so goddamn misbehaves
like this is uh? This this dog need What the
fuck was that guy's name that used to fix the dogs?

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
Oh Cizar, Oh yeah, he needs a dog with dog whisperer. Absolutely,
And that was truly in the theater. I like that
when thinking about that rug pull, I like that there
is specific a line where Kall has to say I
brought the dog because I didn't want it to kill
my parents' cows. Because when I see the dog in

(01:01:09):
Smallville with the cows, I gasped, like, oh god, I've
seen enough James games Gun movies that one version of
this is there is a laugh beat with a cow
carcass because the dog's like just so unruly and it's
like made hamburger of these things. I'm thrilled that that
did not happen and no cows were harmed in the
making of this movie. But I'm interested that they specifically

(01:01:31):
put that line in for me.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
And also Jimmy doesn't figure it out. Lois does, yeah,
because he's he is looking, he's so superficially looking at
this woman, and he's he doesn't have the reporterly instinct
to probe deeper. Lois Lane has to come in and
be like, this woman's a fucking genius. Actually, And there

(01:01:57):
is something where we get this sort of early characterization
of Jimmy Olsen that I think is leading to some
other revelation about his love life, because the fact is
he's in love with someone, but just not any of
these people. And I do think it's probably okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
I would say that in one of the things that
just to I agree with you, I would push back
a little bit about his reporterly instincts. I think it
was more to show Lois's showcase Lois more than showing
that like the lack of from Jimmy, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
He should be able to though he's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Something wrong with him. He's distracted right very much, putting
over a lowis line.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
One hundred percent. I mean at the end when Perry's like,
how long has that been going on? And Jimmy's like
like three or four months? Like clear, Like you know,
it's one of those things that I mean, first of all,
I appreciated about and I think I said it last time,
but I really appreciated that the reporter in the Daily
Planet are like actually journalists.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
There's a great shot of Perry like side eyeing Superman
as he's walking past him towards the end, like yeah,
he's not gonna be in the dark about this forever.
And and maybe it's at the end it's like, oh,
it's because he figured out the Superman's dating Alas Lane.
But you know, yeahs aren't gonna last.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yeah, And I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Think one of the I mean to talk about Rachel
Brosnahan like she did. I still really like that his
Girl Friday version of Lois Lane. You know, she's a
pure Litzer Prize winning journalist. That is Lois Lane's whole thing,
and her the effect that she is the one who's

(01:03:52):
willing to get in front of the story each and
every time, not necessarily as a reporter, but just her
as a person like really, oh sorry, what on me?
Really like sold it to me here? Because you get
you get to see again her have these moments of

(01:04:14):
breaking the story in that crisis moment actually showing like
on the conspiracy whiteboard, her going to the Justice Gang
and being like, hey, y'all, like I didn't I didn't
take this to the newspaper first. I took it to
you because you are the superhero Like you are the
local superheroes that I can get to.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Yeah, the speaking truth to power or to powers. You
just like facing off the trading bars with Guy Gardner,
Like that's awesome. One of the best shots in the
movie I think is that you get the lowest side
view of mister Terrific when he puts her in the
force field and then beats the hell out of all
of these Lex Troopers, which is just a really really

(01:04:59):
well shot fight scene. Like it's very cool to watch
and it you know, she I would have liked to
see her take out one or two of them herself.
We don't have a specific like she's General Lane's badass
army brat daughter, Like it's the one piece we're not
clear on if that's part of her, this version of her,
but seeing her as like you know, embedded reporter watching

(01:05:23):
super heroics, that's a really interesting film piece. I mean,
also the characterization is terrific, and how his combat works
both close and just manipulating the spheres is just cool
to watch. It's well shot. But then I like their
interaction and using it gives her something to do as

(01:05:46):
our audience stand in, but also as the reporter, the
front line eyes on the scene. Yeah for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Yeah, and the and the what it was really interesting.
I thought about the Lowest Lane characterization and just sort
of like how civilians and meta humans were being characterized
as I think it would have been cool if she
took out some guards, But I think that James Gunn

(01:06:14):
is trying to establish kind of like a normativity in
this world of like these are these are the superheroes
and they fight the people with guns and superpowers, and
then these are people and they're vulnerable and they are
about to die all the time. Like the amount of

(01:06:35):
insert shots that I mean, they're they're they're short, but
there are a ton of them with Superman and children
It is I think, very specifically oriented to to get
that across of like there is a real vulnerability in
this world that people have when you know, evil billionaires

(01:06:56):
released Kaiju into the into Matrial.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
I think my favorite one of those shots is Superman saving.
Like there's a bunch of like water orange blocks or
something and he gets in front of them and he
cradles the girl's head. Oh yeah, it's like the very
specific like I am now a car seat, not just saving,
but being really careful and very specific about it. Yes,

(01:07:23):
his focus is not on the damage around him. His
focus is on preserving this person's welfare, not just their life,
and not just in like the random like grab somebody
by the arm. We're not gonna worry about dislocated shoulder.
Suspend your disbelief. It's a very realistic cradle their heads
so that they are safe, the way a real person
would need to be held to be safe. It's cool.

(01:07:45):
That's a nice attention to detail.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Yeah, and I also liked that to Teddy's point about journalism,
it's like the superheroes are doing superhero shit, but the
stuff that the journalists managed to figure out is like
a magic trick as well. Where where Lois Lane is
like calling banks and calling sources and calling people and

(01:08:09):
trying to figure out where this money is going and
like cracking open this case about this this large geopolitical
conspiracy where an American billionaire is basically trying to annex
foreign land somewhere and is like doing so by participating
in profiteering off of but also continuing to foment war

(01:08:32):
in an unstable region. And that was all found out journalistically.

Speaker 4 (01:08:39):
That was all super heroics involved.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
There, and and and I think that's something that it
is just missing from the superman ethos of like there
are there are so many ways of exposing corruption back
to like the origins of like landlord abuses and stuff
like that, and one of the important ways to do

(01:09:04):
so that has been under attacked, undermined and kind of
like totally delegitimizes the press, and the press has a
very important duty and they're when it's done correctly, are
are kind of like fucking superheroes in their own way.

(01:09:24):
Like millennials can kind of figure this out because or
or kind of like remember a moment where journalists were
very revered because we remember the fucking the journalists who
would report on like broadcast news wearing bulletproof vests in

(01:09:46):
the middle of Iraq in like war zones and shit,
and you're seeing there being like, holy this is this
is like a super person because this is insane, this
is insane, this is so unsafe, and they they're only
doing this to get like the news back to people

(01:10:07):
and also doing it probably for fame and shit like that.
But a lot of those a lot of those people
didn't become like like the people who are now anchors
and are like the most famous journalists in the United
States were not people who cut their teeth doing like
on site reporting in outside of the green zones in Baghdad,
Like that's not happening. Those are like field reporters who

(01:10:29):
were doing it out of a sense of like informing
the public about what the fuck was going on, and
that sense of like, man, journalists are really doing a
service for the polity in a way that no one
else can do is imbued into the DNA of this
movie in a way that equalizes it with like superheroism.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
Which that was It's it's not an accident that Clark
Kent's the secret entity is news reporter, Like that wasn't
just a convenient He's going to be in the right
place at the right time because he's telling the news.
Like no, he's that stuff is also heroic to do,
and you're right, that has been lost and it's nice
to see it back in this for sure. And it's

(01:11:16):
different when you're a reporter versus a photographer like Peter
Parker very much is just in the right place at
the right time because he's taking pictures of stuff Clark
Kent is writing about, you know, lead pipes or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
I also like the detail that Clark Kent is a
bad writer.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Yes, he's a good journalist when he's not like completely
ethically hamstrung by interviewing himself. But his writing is like
boring and way too overblown and not modern enough. Yeah,
that's clover.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
And weird to orroburrows this. But to bring it back
to something we were talking about earlier, it's weird how
the art reflect acting life in certain interesting ways in
terms of unexpected news, like the way news it breaks
and the way things are going. Just talking about how

(01:12:13):
I don't recently I've run into a news source that
I did not expect until maybe six months ago. One
hundred percent wasn't a news source. It is this an
instag Have you all heard about this instagram account? La
Taco No no so La Tacos was, as you might imagine,

(01:12:37):
initially a uh an instagram about hey, here's all of
the roving like taco trucks and like here's where they are,
and here are like reviews about the different taco spots
around La. That's what La Taco was.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Also is major service to humanity, Like that's.

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
Just as important reporting also one hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Percent well in the to speed run the point. Recently,
La Taco has started doing like award winning journalism, like
talking about the ice in La, talking about right, there
were some other there were some other things that were happening,
but like I think like eight months ago they did

(01:13:24):
some other human interest story, but like the ice rags,
like really they did a spin off of for La
Taco News because there are people who were like so
like but Tacos They're like, all right, we were doing this.
But it reminds me a little bit of BuzzFeed like
ten years ago, fifteen years ago. It reminds me of
just like what vice used to be.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
And oh yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
This idea of how right the what journalism is and
why it's important to people is really in Superman, where
oh right, it can still be reflected in the real life,
just not necessarily when it's Box or when it's AI.

(01:14:09):
Not to continue to raise the alarm, but when it's not.
Just we prompted these AI lms to produce thirty articles.
So here you go. These are There is a stark
difference and there is a real h serve as you mass.
It's a perfect where the service, not just the product

(01:14:32):
of news is an incredibly well not is because there
have been some horrible abuses, let's say, can be an
incredibly heroic thing to do.

Speaker 4 (01:14:44):
Yeah, humans keep independently reinventing investigative journalism every time one
of them gets turned into a soulless product. So thinking
about cameos and potential keystones for lynchpins for the crisis
or whatever, and potentially investigative reporting. There's a woman in

(01:15:07):
the military base that's around the black Hole machine who
runs up to mister Terrific and be like, can you
turn that off? It's like can I turn that off?
And we were bouncing around the idea of is that
Natasha irons because all of the Lex Troopers look a
whole hell of a lot like Steel Suits, And you know,

(01:15:31):
she could just be a throwaway character. It might not matter,
but knowing you know, Steel spin around a lot in
Superman media recently, Natasha Irons is a great character and
it would be a really easy way to spin off.
It's also very much like hardware from Milestone. If you

(01:15:53):
put the Irons family in the employ of evil billionaire
and have them have a reckoning of their being exploited.
They don't want to serve these interests. They realize their
machines are being used for evil, and like, I'm going
to go private and superhero and remove myself from the

(01:16:14):
system and not try to like fix the system from
within the system. That's a really interesting story. So I
could very much see that woman, you know, taking some
bootlegged pieces of Lex Corp tech and rebuilding them into
a steel suit. Now, whether or not that feels too
much like iron Heart or whatever is a perhaps conversation

(01:16:36):
for another time. But she looked a lot like Atash Irons,
That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
Yeah, there could be some easter eggs in here, I
think in terms of the just to very quickly and
then we'll get to the award winning Ron Tomatoes review.
We've already talked about mister Terrific, we talked about Superman,

(01:17:03):
talked about Lewis Lane, Nicholas Holt as likes Luthor and
think he did a great job.

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):
Yeah, yeah, he's straight up.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:12):
I'm interested to hear his interview with Rosenbaum because he hits.
I could see him in the action comics run. We
love of the Paul Cornell like so arrogant, so self assured,
so brittle as a human, and like the he gets

(01:17:32):
a lot of good written material for him, like the
chest move of the algorithmic, you know, calling out commands
to beat up Superman. Yeah, that's not a difficult role.
I think he's like set up for success really well
by the writing, but he does what he needs to
do to get across that very specific kind of arrogance.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Yeah. And the this was like a year ago and
he still had his bad hair. I think he was
probably shooting the Order where he plays a member of
the KKK, So it was it was a while ago,
and I think he told Michael Rosenbaum that he was

(01:18:18):
his favorite lex or something like that, and people were
like they didn't believe him, and then you watch this
movie and you go like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:18:24):
He's playing Michael rosenbombs like lethora, Like that is the
closest comp for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
Yeah, so I thought he did a great job. Interesting
casting note is that he and David corn Sweat tested
on the same day for Superman, and it's interesting. Nicholas
Holt would have been uh bizarre. I think it would
have been bizarre. But I I don't think.

Speaker 4 (01:18:51):
I don't think he would have been great. I don't
think thinking about his first class performance as Beast McCoy,
I think he would have been a great Clark Kent,
I think he would have been. To find Superman. I
love the meta narrative of your actor playing Lex Luthor
is the one that lost the audition for Superman, like
just to building in that is defined by envy. It's perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Yeah, and it wasn't. It wasn't even an audition. It
was a screen test.

Speaker 4 (01:19:18):
Like this is just like Tom Hilson losing his thorough audition.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Yeah, they were in the suit, This was in front
of executives. This was like one step before the phone call,
which is wild. Also, and notably, Nicholas Holt has been
acting for three decades. Nichols Holt received the most compensation
among all of the actors. He got two million for

(01:19:44):
a role, and then Brosnahan and Kornsment both got seven
to fifty k for their roles. But that was just
them negotiating from a position of this guy was in
like seven movies last year, like what are you doing? Yeah,
Anthony Kerrigan, NoHo hank from Barry as fucking morfo. That

(01:20:04):
was that rule that he managed to convey so much
with so little screen time. I loved that character and
the the kind of like the the jokes that they
are that that worked for me was like when Metamorpho
told Guy Gardner that he likes to name Justice k Uh.

(01:20:29):
That was really cool.

Speaker 4 (01:20:31):
I like the line of like he is a disembodied
squidhead being like, wow, Superman, you're so weird, Like, yeah,
Superman is really weird. You're right, squid guy. It's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
It's so funny. The engineers in this, which is crazy
because the actor uh Maria Badia was already told that
she like like about the authority basically, so that's already

(01:21:08):
part of her backstory going into this was that there's
like this whole other thing that her character is a
part of, and that that's going to be part of
this phase essentially.

Speaker 4 (01:21:21):
Well, even planet watches like that looks like the authority logo,
like what are we doing? And that's what we're doing.
That's cool, And she's great, and I think she's hamstrung
a little bit by her dialogue all being basically expository,
like her only job is to tell lex things and
then she's got one line about I sacrifice my humanity
and like that's a tough line to deliver. I think

(01:21:42):
she's really good and I'm looking forward to seeing her
mix it up with you know, Midnight or or whatever
in a future movie. I think she's yet, but she
didn't have a lot to do, but she'll be very
cool moving.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
And I know it's probably not going to happen because
it just doesn't seem like that type those types movies.
But while she was absorbing information in the Fortress of Solitude,
I went, oh, this is how brainiac come started, right.

Speaker 4 (01:22:10):
Yeah, And she could have absolutely downloaded brain ac in
the process.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
Yeah, and there could like there's also potential for because
I think that I don't know that we're gonna see
general Zoh. I don't know if if if if Gunn
wants us to be like like retreading old DC territory,

(01:22:37):
So I think like brainiac for sure, and also maybe
a fucking showdown with Apollo. Maybe the authority are bad.

Speaker 4 (01:22:46):
Like sure, yeah, yeah, we're playing in the space of
like corporate sponsorship other super teams. If we're gonna do
any kind of boys style commentary the authorities, where where
you're gonna do it? For sure? I like there's a
little homage to the Reef Superman movies where we get
the Clone thrown into the black Hole through a window

(01:23:10):
and it looks like the old Phantom Zone slices weirdly, like, Okay,
so he's Bizarro, but they gave him the Ultraman name,
but the hood looks like Doomsday and so just like
a lot. But he's also got the Superman Returns hair,
and so it's just like a lot of different images
kind of thrown together, and so we thinking like, is
he going to come out the other side of that

(01:23:32):
black hole into Earth? Two go nuts, get put on drugs,
become Ultraman, put together a crime syndicate, and then come back.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
Yeah, Ultraman is in this movie. As is a different
version of Superman played also by David korn Sweat, a
clone version which is worth noting. Alan Tudic plays. He
is credited as Gary Was, but that was the name
that he suggested as just a name that wasn't for.

Speaker 4 (01:24:08):
Yeah, we two. Dick is just all over these this
entire dc U now, which is great. He's always wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Yeah, but that's the cast. Uh. I thought the casting
was incredible for this film, like the the the the
Eddie Cathegio Redemption, and the Anthony Kerrigan. Just like somebody
finally recognizing how talented that dude is. The Rachel Brosnahan,
uh like resuscitating her after Hollywood shoot up and spit

(01:24:41):
her out because she was on TV for too long,
like that bullshit that happens to actors all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
It was. It was incredible And and I thought David cordenzwea,
I guess we didn't even talk about him. It was
a great Superman. Oh yeah, yeah, and he's gonna be
He's gonna be around for a really long time. And
this is this is kind of the same thing. Well,
you know, not to jinx it, but this is also

(01:25:07):
what we thought about Henry Cavill when Man of Steel
came out, where it was like, Oh, he's gonna be
around for a really long time doing this. This does
seem like he's in better hands and that he's in
a more functional universe that's gonna scale appropriately. Because it
was also that Henry Cavill was Superman and then nothing

(01:25:32):
else because he kept shooting every movie three times. It
was just like it was this weird thing that fucked
his career because they kept being like, the movie doesn't work,
we have to reshoot the movie with a different director,
and so they did Justice League like on the weekends
while he was doing Mission Impossible. Like it was just

(01:25:55):
it ruined his prime years in this like very kind
of bizarre way that I don't think will happen with
David corn Sweat, you know, hopefully not. And he's cool
every I know him as a guy who gets murdered
by me a goff in the movie Pearls. He plays

(01:26:16):
a projection in the movie pearl who gets driven out
to a cornfield and it's brutally murdered and it's so funny.
That's Superman. The He also I didn't see this, but
he was in a mini series Ryan Murphy one called

(01:26:38):
Hollywood where Ben Platte tells him he looks like Superman.

Speaker 4 (01:26:44):
He's wonderful in that. Yeah, I mean that that whole
series is really good. But he lived by the Cornfield,
died by the Cornfield. That's awesome. Yeah, it makes sense.
Like in the run up to this, I'm like, why
isn't why are they just using Tyler Helklin and one
it's like the TV contamination bullshit. But also Tyler Helklin

(01:27:04):
is now in this weird like he's too old for
Hollywood to be a leading man because he's like over
thirty five or whatever. So you're absolutely right that corn
Sweat is set up to be doing this for the
next fifteen years or whatever or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
It's significant. He's five years younger than Tyler Hoachland. That's
three movies. Yeah, yeah, it is weird. How I mean
it is weird. How you know with these things like
you have to broke, like you have to broker like
ten years of your life and make sure you're doing

(01:27:43):
projects in between so that you come out more of
a Sebastans stand than a fucking Chris Evans. Have like
opportunities to do other things besides, like managing your career
as a as being one of the main superheroes in
a franchise is almost impossible, it seems like. But with

(01:28:04):
that said, we'll do a quick Rotten Tomatoes review go down.
This is like a pretty interesting movie in so far
as the sort of like online discourse of like super
Wokeness didn't affect the audience scores much. The audience score
for Superman is a ninety two percent, which is higher

(01:28:25):
than the critics score, which is an eighty four percent,
still pretty high. As of today's recording, it's made four
hundred and twenty six million dollars. It's one of those
movies that, in order to be profitable, has to break
a billion, which it probably will in you know a
couple of ye.

Speaker 4 (01:28:42):
Yeah, I heard something about how like it's not performing
as well overseas, and like, yeah, it's a very like
America centric movie. That makes sense. Yeah, it's a shocker
that Captain America did as well as it did outside
of America, but that being a period piece.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Not a ton of CGI also in this film.

Speaker 4 (01:29:01):
And I'm well, I mean there's a ton.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
Of a ton of CGI, but it's not like like
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I think broke
a billion dollars and it was very popular overseas in
that way of like it inverging on sort of animated movie.

Speaker 4 (01:29:23):
Yes, and you know, we've seen like the things that
come out of China's big budget, Like they are incredibly
cgi heavy in ways that feel I mean, I don't
think they look good, but they also just look like
Marvel movies. So you're right, And like you can tell,
they built some real physical sets for this, Like the
interior of uh, Mister Terrific's little orb is a real set,

(01:29:46):
which is nice. So and this is in line with
James Guns, like we're taking a while, we're shooting this
and finishing it early, so the VFX people have a
year to work on it. It looks a little better.
As a result. I wish they'd done more like physical
dog stunts, just because that is going to not going
to age as well with the VFX. But overall, yeah,

(01:30:09):
it's it's a better combination of practical and VFX.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Just for reference, the number one movie in the in
the world this year, it's called Niza to sequel produced
by Beijing and Light Pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
That's the one about the fire God.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Right, I don't know what the fuck it's about. All
I know is it's animated and made two point two
billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Yeah, this is the Okay, so I have seen the
first NASA. It's a he's a uh anyway, sorry continue
Fire God.

Speaker 4 (01:30:50):
That's cool, Fire God.

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Yes, yeah, no, it's just like the the the the
love for animation is much It rings much more with
international audiences than with American audiences. The so let's look
at some of these top critics. What freakin' rags do
we want to look at? Uh? What about time out?

(01:31:18):
I hit CBR after Timeout says a puckish and political
but wildly overstuffed blockbuster. This is a theme throughout these
I've scrolled through this a lot of people saying it's
over stuff, a lot of people saying there's too many elements,
a lot of people saying it takes away from the
sort of central thrust of the story, all of the
place setting that's happening.

Speaker 4 (01:31:40):
It is trying to do a lot, frankly, because I'm
not massively interested in Superman, just generally the I'm I
think we know this this episode. We talked a lot
about the place setting and a lot of things being
set up in a lot of the world, and the
central Superman story of it. It's like, it's Superman. You
know him, you love him or or you don't, whatever,

(01:32:01):
It's fine. That's totally kind of bog standard. And if
you're familiar with that already, kind of like a spider
Man homecoming, like, don't worry about it, He's spider Man.
We're not going to see Uncle Ben again. Then it
doesn't feel like an additional like cognitive load to get through.

(01:32:22):
If you're not, I could see it being a little overall.

Speaker 2 (01:32:26):
Yeah, la times. I love this because this is just
a guy that I guess doesn't like Superman. But it's
a positive review. This Superman installment is a decidedly intentional
throwback that will likely please a generous segment of fans
but disappoint many others due to its innocent nature and
dramatic simplicity.

Speaker 4 (01:32:45):
Hm oh no, it's a Superman movie that's kind of innocent, like, yeah,
that's that's Superman, bro.

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):
That is Superman. I think this is also kind of
like an accurate take because there is that the toxicity
of the sort of like lost cause snyderdom that is
just hate bombing this movie because it's not as because

(01:33:14):
it's innocent, because it's hopeful, because it's this like different
version of Superman that's not you know, dark.

Speaker 4 (01:33:21):
And it's very pointedly like the bad guy in the
movie is saying, what if Superman were the evil conqueror,
like all of this, from injustice to all of it
of like, oh, big evil god among men, Like that's
the bad guy position in this movie. That's refreshing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
I want to read this review because I this is
I thought this was a strength of this movie. David
gordon'swat takes on the blue and Red Mantle admirably and
glimpses of Gun's signature sense of fun shine through, but
a lack of humanity, originality, and cohesion means the movie
around them just doesn't work. I thought one of the

(01:34:00):
things that I was afraid of going into the movie
was that James Gunn only makes movies like Guardians of
the Galaxy, which I know isn't true because I saw
his movies before Guardians of the Galaxy. But I thought
that because Suicide Squad was so tonally similar to Guardians,
that Superman was gonna be tonally similar and it wasn't

(01:34:23):
even remotely that, and so this reviewer being like, it's
not like Gun's other recent movies. It's kind of like
this different thing, and there aren't as many jokes in this.
It's not like a big jokey, jokey movie as opposed
to like Guardians of the Galaxy, which starts with a

(01:34:46):
totally ludicrous set piece with Chris Pratt going to retrieve
this orb and you're realizing, like, this guy is useless
and this whole movie is going to be like this
kind of high jinks type of thing, whereas I'm like, like,
how does that translate to Superman? And I hope Gun
kind of plays this a little straighter than those other

(01:35:06):
films because it just doesn't seem like it's gonna work.
And it's totally at points just humorless, just absolutely humorless,
and I think it needs that.

Speaker 4 (01:35:18):
Yes, And it's absolutely sincere, and it's it's it's really
refreshing that it's not a super glib, jokey film the
whole time, because that's not what Superman is. Like, you
can have some humor, but that's it needs to be
just kind of forthright and honest, because that's who he is.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
I don't I I don't. I can't imagine what this is. Uh.
The Ringer, which I don't really like that much, gives
it a negative review. Basically, Gun is trying to tear
something down and build it up at the same time,
and all of that lavishly subsidized indecision becomes hard to
take after a while.

Speaker 4 (01:36:00):
What is he tearing down? The Snyder verse? Like, what
is he tearing down? No, he tearing down fascism? What
I'm punk I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
What is he trying to tear down? Oh my god,
this is so crazy. This guy, this guy is upset
that gun. That gun doesn't go into Superman's backstory.

Speaker 4 (01:36:32):
Wow, everyone needs to see Superman's backstory ever again?

Speaker 1 (01:36:37):
Do we need to see Batman's parents get shot again?
Do we need to see the rocket and a planet explode?

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
Right? Do we need to see Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:36:45):
Especially like he does. He gets there's like, to me
belabored explanation of that in this movie, like he says
it all and we see the parents and like it
gets explained to us multiple times.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
Uh whatever, Okay, Oh my god, this is let me
just read this because this is so crazy. There's nothing
wrong with rib nudging, of course, and Superman's desire to
give the audience a good time. Isn't all bad that
sentence alone.

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
What a horrifying Oh yeah, this movie meant for entertainment.

Speaker 4 (01:37:18):
Well you know, I'm damning the faint praise, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
Okay and okay, So some forms of shorthand are more
eloquent than others, of course, and Gun's reliance on electrified
snatches of John Williams's vintage theme music feels counterintuitive in
ways that cut to the heart of the movie's flaws,
the contrarian impulse that compels Gun to puff up and
scoff who cares when it comes to depicting Superman's backstory,

(01:37:41):
and also to revise Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster's Joel
Schuster's Space Moses origin myth by revealing jor L, played
in holographic form by an actor not worth spoiling here,
sent his son to Earth with less than benevolent intentions,
bumps up against the commercialistic desire to not alienate the
faithful basically got to trying to tear something down and

(01:38:02):
build it up at the same time. And all of
that lavishly subsidized indecision blandly shot, mechanically paced, and punctuated
by the kind of forced comic banter that needs ace
deadpan comedians like Bradley Cooper a Dave Bautista to work
becomes hard to take after a while. Also spoil the
actor the play Darling.

Speaker 4 (01:38:21):
Yeah, very funny. They're like, I'm not spoiling it, but
I am good to dame drop Bertley Cooper.

Speaker 2 (01:38:25):
Anyway, Uh this ever is.

Speaker 4 (01:38:28):
This guy likes Snyder. That's what I'm hearing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
That is so crazy. And also like that the the
Kryptonian thing I thought was was very cool. I thought
that the the decoding the second half of the message
and it being like because the Kryptonians are different from Earth,
like the that element of the backstory I think is

(01:38:52):
like very interesting. And then also and I think that
this movie really appeals to fans of Smallville. Also, the
ending being kind of like you gotta just accept that
your family loves you and you're from Smallville, Kansas was

(01:39:15):
like a very elegant way to wrap up this film
and also was also very pointedly and I think well
done the transition to us meeting Kara, who didn't have that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:30):
Yeah, and see what happens when you don't have that
for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
Yeah, that to me, to take issue with that and
also to take issue with somebody trying to make an
entertaining Superman movie is crazy. But let's end it on
a positive note. We gotta find what Peter Driver.

Speaker 4 (01:39:47):
Said about I gotta know what Travers has to say
about this. I'm sure he loved Christopher Reeve a man
that You're totally right that this movie is very much
is like a spiritual success to Smallville in a way
that Superman Returns was so like hackneyed in its attempt
to be a love letter to Christopher Reeve movies, you know,

(01:40:11):
because it's not specifically it's equal to small Villa. It's
you know. And I like the idea that I always
prefer a version of Lex that that did not know
Clark Kent as a kid, like I think that's kind
of hackneyed to have their origin story all tied up together.
It's much more interesting to have Smallville boy come to
the big city and encounter this kingpin who's the embodiment

(01:40:34):
of everything that he's not going to have them be
really different. It's cool if like Lex and lois already
hate each other because they've been like dealing with each
other in Metropolis the whole time. But tonally, yeah, I
still felt small villa adjacent. I think that is down,
Like we said to Nicholas Holt, pulling a very rose

(01:40:56):
and balmy version of lex which is still one of
the best less ever. So good for him.

Speaker 2 (01:41:03):
Yeah. So Peter Travers, remember he left Rolling Stone and
we're like, what happened to him? And then he went
to see Peter Travers is independent. Now he has a
wow called the Travers Take. Uh. So this is this
is insane and this the first sentence of this is
gonna make you so mad.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
This is how he starts his review of Superman. Crypto
the Dog is a full fledged star.

Speaker 4 (01:41:34):
God damn Trevors.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
Someone else do you need to know about Superman before
you and your friends rush out to see it starting
July eleventh. You should also know that newbie soupy David
corn Sweat is doing fine as the flying dude in
the cape and red booties.

Speaker 5 (01:41:50):
There's something a little off about Courts, as if he
hasn't yet fully formatted into a sales corporate version of
how Superman should be.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
He can be funny and endearingly clumsy and also slow
on the pickup, which knocks the Dudley do write stuffiness
out of him. His goofball charm feels relatable, leaning toward
the sweet, sexy buoyancy of the late Christopher Reeve. He
loves Christopher.

Speaker 4 (01:42:20):
Reeve, of course he does.

Speaker 2 (01:42:23):
Uh. Yeah, he gives it a three out of four.
I don't think he'll ever give a Superman movie a
four out of four if Christopher Reeve is not in it.

Speaker 4 (01:42:32):
That makes sense that he's just like a lifer for
Christopher Reef. I will say they were selling little crypto
stuffed animals at the movie theater. He's right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
He also says Brosnahan gets my vote as the best
and sexy, sassiest lowesst ever.

Speaker 4 (01:42:50):
All right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
That's pretty high praise Margot. Margot Kidder was like no slouch,
like she was legit.

Speaker 4 (01:43:00):
And Amy Adams didn't have enough to do in those movies.
But she was also really good for what she had
the ability to accomplish. But yeah, I think Brosnahan kills
it for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:43:09):
Well, I think that's something to be said for David
Cornswetat and Brosnahan's They had they had chemistry beyond Hey, look,
Henry cavill is large and attractive.

Speaker 2 (01:43:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:43:23):
Two, there's credit at least in the first one. They
let him keep his chest hair also, but yes, I
think that you're right. Corn Sweat and Brosenhan do feel
well matched and there's actual chemistry there.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
He also loves Edie Gathegu who played mister Terrific. Calls
him steam stealing this dude, and this is how he
ends it his review. What sends Guns Superman soaring over
redundancy and overkill is the affection he feels for his
mad cap characters, especially the Man of Steel himself and
krn Sweat's uncalculated, cynicism free portrait. That's Steel quickly melts

(01:44:00):
into something full of hope and abiding affection. This Superman
isn't afraid to show his heart. He calls it the
new punk rock.

Speaker 4 (01:44:08):
Maybe he's right, Uh, that's adorable.

Speaker 2 (01:44:15):
Hope.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
Punk feels a little bit hackneyed in this it is.
It's not it's not punk rock. I'm sorry, but I
see where they're going with it. I'm not gonna let
Guns corporate, you know, Like no, it's actually Superman's punk rock,
Like no, dude, just because you used to be punk
rock doesn't mean everything you like is punk rock. Like

(01:44:37):
the self awareness of the crab Joys is funny, but uh,
that's adorable. I'm glad Travers liked it, and I hope
you all like it as well.

Speaker 2 (01:44:45):
DearS, Yeah, so is this just bad?

Speaker 4 (01:44:50):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
No good?

Speaker 1 (01:44:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:44:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
Actually pretty good?

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
Yeah, actually pretty good. Uh that'll do it for this
episode of it. It's just bad. We'll see on the
next one. By It's just a.

Speaker 4 (01:45:09):
It's like for pirates, quote your brain, Robin Nala is
no joking opening your mind with the probots as you
woken hitting Hydra halen hairs had for a time, for
a hell of reasons, for more than with the soldiers
with them and for all seasons.

Speaker 2 (01:45:19):
Listened closely while.

Speaker 4 (01:45:20):
We share our expert season customic comics, culture, Dean Street
tuition to the Multiversity and the Mouse. It's like we're
teaching perfect balance. When we snap and benit gens into
your ears, does the shoulders when we speak Purple Men,
versuasive speech for Randy Savage Randals with the Immortal technique