Blank Check with Griffin & David - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Patrick Willems

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

Our Sam Raimi series concludes with his most recent film - not to mention the first MCU film we’ve covered on the main feed - it’s time for Doctor Strange 2! Patrick Willems joins us to address the important questions: What was Raimi *doing* for the nine years between this and Oz? Does Kevin Feige and his Marvel Machine overpower Raimi’s creative voice? Should “Wandavision” have been released after this movie? Is Schnipper’s on 8th Ave the ideal place to debrief after seeing a movie in Times Square? Should America Chavez have been an adorable hobo riding the rails in between dimensions instead of a human MacGuffin? All that, plus Ben deploys his “nerd alert” buzzer instead of shoving the guys into a locker. Patrick’s new film Night of the Coconut is available on Nebula (nebula.app/nightofthecoconut) or goto curiositystream.com/patrickhwillems and sign up for a discounted annual plan with free access to Nebula with your subscription. You can watch more of Patrick’s work on his YouTube channel. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

you break the rules and become a hero. I do it and become the podcast. That doesn't seem fair. That's Wanda, right? Wanda Maxima. Now, here's the thing. Looking at the quotes page for this movie, which let me just check my notes here, it's called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He's in it.

This is a movie where if you look at a quotes page even having seen the film twice all of this reads like gobbledygook it's Greek here are some quotes here Baron Mordo careful Steven this path exacts a heavy toll he says that pretty chewily this path exacts a heavy toll. Okay? Sure. He says that pretty, she would tell the, this path exacts a heavy toll. Heavy toll.

He puts a little butter on that one. Reasonable. Reasonable line, right? Here's another one. Black Bolt, I'm sorry. Now, the context in the movie is very different. I'm sorry. Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It's all loud.

When it's just written like that. Black Bolt, I'm sorry. How about this one? Scarlet Witch, and then brackets, see zombie strange. Dream walking, you hypocrite. These are great quotes. I gotta say, I've been wondering for the past, I don't know, month at this point,

what you were gonna do. No, I had two guesses. Okay, okay. And you didn't do either. Okay, what were your two? I thought, the one that, in the movie when I saw it, I was like, I bet Griffin's gonna do this.

Was, the line is, this time it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me that's the best line in the movie great yeah I just didn't know how to fucking butcher that one with podcast more than podcast yeah at that point though does it sound like anything I think Rachel McAdams nails the sort of like go back to hell line but again that doesn't really no translate into your podcast back to hell and you could tie it into the title this is another one I just think this was transcribed poorly like the way the way this I not It doesn't really translate into your ridiculous... No. Podcast back to hell and you could tie it into the title of the miniseries. This is another one where I just think this was transcribed poorly.

Like, the way this... Not to note fucking IMDB quote submission artists, okay? Captain Carter, I could do this all day. Underneath, gets bisected by her own shield. Good moment. Just rude. But rude. Rude.

Just like, give her the fucking quote. I'll give her the quote. Yeah, don't undercut it. Well, she does get bisected by her own shield, though. That's pretty funny. Spoiler alert. Yes. For, you know.

The biggest movie of the year. A multiverse character in the biggest movie. Well, no, it's no longer the biggest movie of the year. As in, we have delayed this episode so long that it's no longer the biggest movie of the year. Well, I was going to say, I don't remember a damn thing about this movie. You saw it maybe three weeks ago? Yes, you have to remind me as we go along. I've seen it twice, and even I,

I remember the movie. We've, yes. I also see it twice. Right, some of the details are fuzzy. This was another thing where- I remember he's very funny. We had a couple delays, a couple cases of the vid, unfortunately.

Yeah, call us Kid Vid. Call us Kid Vids. And yes, yes, there were a couple delays. Not in the scheduling of this episode. Coming out, hitting your ears, just in time for the Disney Plus launch. I think that still just feels strange. Every time they tweet out, like, Dr. Strange will be on Disney Plus launch, I think that still just feels strange. Every time they tweet out like, Doctor Strange will be on Disney Plus in 15 days.

And you're like, isn't that movie number two at the box office? Aren't you just taking money away from yourself? What the fuck are you talking about? But also, they're kind of right. Like the life cycle of the movie is sort of like, I guess it's pretty much, it made its fucking $400 million very quickly

and it's done. Well, yes, but I think that is not indicative of how Marvel movies do universally. I actually think it's indicative of general unhappiness with this movie from Marvel fans. I think so, too. I think Shang-Chi had more lifeblood at the box office by the point they put it on Disney+. Not that this movie has done poorly in any sense. Obviously, it is a big money-grossing hit, especially when you consider that it's a Doctor Strange sequel about the multiverse. A thing that would have sounded ludicrous even a few years ago, etc.

It would have made double what Doctor Strange made, right? Doctor Strange won overperformed. It did like 270 domestic. And we were all having to deal with like the election happening like at the same time. It was one of those, I saw it right around when Trump got elected movies. He's also a freaking wizard, which is kind of corny. Doctor Strange made 232, Griffin. Okay, sorry.

Yeah. Worldwide number2.32, Griffin. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Worldwide number? $6.76. Okay. But not the $1 billion that Dr. Strange will make. No, I do remember feeling, though, and then, you know, fucking Black Panther comes out and Captain Marvel crushes this as well. But it was like, that was pretty high for a first movie.

At that point. No, no, it's true. Not just a first movie, though. Doctor Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch was not one of those things where you were like, this is a home run. Doctor Strange, to me, felt like the real sign of like,

oh, Marvel has become such a thing that even this is going to be a colossal hit. But general people, like normal people, shouldn't care about it all. Let me say a couple things. This is Blank Check with Griffinal hit. Which general people, like normal people, shouldn't care about at all. Let me say a couple of things. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I do. It's a podcast about filmographies. David was very fast and very on it. And he was looking for me to compliment him and tell him he did a good job. I'm more like trying to see how abstract my I'm David can sound at a certain point. Yeah. I just sort of sound like a weird, like alien noise. It's like my father's signature over years has morphed into just a line he just kept on simplifying it to the point where it's

literally just a line now he's like some medieval peasant it's like make your mark here on the paper right my mother by the way signs checks at restaurants with a fucking family crest with a quill wax upax up her fucking ring. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career, say an Evil Dead trilogy, and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear,

and sometimes they bounce it to the multiverse, baby. This has been a miniseries on the films of Sam Raimi. We're saying goodbye. We are. A delayed goodbye. A delayed goodbye. A delayed goodbye. We've already moved on to the other series, but this is that one thing we had to pin down. Which we've announced.

We've shook around DeFosse. This was the one we kept on struggling to schedule. And the miniseries has been called Podcast Me to Hell. Today we're talking about Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Our guest today is Patrick Willems. That's right. Hello. The Patrick H. Willems YouTube channel, but also director of the new film just premiering on Nebula, Night of the Coconut.

Thank you. Another way in which this fucking timed out well. It's actually, what's the actual date of its premiere? Well, as of our recording, it comes out in two days. And so it'll be out when this episode drops. Okay, fine. But it just recently premiered. Yes. And look in in the description there'll be a link so you can watch hell yeah getting that bc bump uh i'm saying i love it when we do that i love it because it was

like oh fuck this thing timed out dr stranger episodes coming out six weeks after the movie comes out will anyone give a shit and you're like oh disney plus patrick's fucking movie everything works out great all this to say patrick had a premiere last night i got too drunk and with the karaoke my voice is about griffin and i were out until about 4 a.m yeah patrick and i were out until 4 a.m i would say i woke up today around 5 a.m so like there was a one hour window of you guys sleeping and me sleeping. That's you assuming that I got to sleep. Well, that's another good point. Right. It was hard to turn the brain off last night.

I could have swung by and woken you up. I could have tickled you. Don't think I would have appreciated that. Really? No. But. I had to introduce you. I had to set the podcast because I want to bring this up.

Yes. You did a video. You do a, there's a video series. I'd say it's sort of unofficial series you've done where you will take your parents to see the latest entry

of a franchise where they have no familiarity with the previous. These are like Patreon goals. Right. And so we did two. We did one for Avengers Endgame. Yes.

I think they had seen Iron Man 1 and we skipped to that. And then we did F9. did one for Avengers Endgame. Yes. I think they had seen Iron Man 1, and we skipped to that. And then we did F9. And they hadn't seen anything. They now, I will say, shout out to my parents, on their own, they went back and watched the first eight. Fucking cool. That's great. Now, the Endgame video, you're sort of talking with your parents and going like, what do you know?

Right? You always do this thing of like, I just want to test you. Through cultural osmosis. Right. Right. What's reached you and you have that thing that's kind of sweet where your dad reveals that he was like more of a marvel fan growing up than you ever kind of knew yeah was he just one of those guys where it's like he gets older and it's just he put childish things away or whatever i

think his thing i think he like went to college you know in the 70s and is like i don't know i want to play sports and do drugs and so like my like because my mom read comics all the time when she was i just it's just but like she never went returned to it so it's just vestigial right also never had any impulse to go see the movie no of these things decades later no like my father bragged to me once about the fact that he was like he showed me a college photo from his fucking college yearbook and he had a spider-man shirt and he was like and that was cool at the time people weren't wearing shirts with things on them and i was like graphic to use the hot new thing you know tim conway and 30 roger's like you know shirts didn't have words on them back then i think about

that joke all the time this is truly what my father said to me but i was like you have any affinity for spider-man at any point in your life so you're like asking your dad and it's like what characters do you know he's like spider-man you know point in your life. So you're like asking your dad, and it's like, what characters do you know? He's like, Spider-Man. You know, he's like, obviously. And then he was like, Doctor Strange. I fucking love Doctor Strange. And your dad outs himself as this like,

heartbreaker. He's like, that was the one I really liked as a kid. It's like remembering deep cut shit. Was your dad, you know, a child of the 60s? Because Doctor Strange was a bit of a sort of cool counter-cultural thing. I mean, that is 100% the thing. That's what it was speaking to yeah you know my dad

I'm being serious I'm so surprised Patrick finish your thought and then I can give Ben a little context but yeah you know my dad was like you know he grew up in like Long Island in like the 60s and stuff like that and like you know went off to Oberlin

like grew long hair and a mustache and all those things and yeah it's like obviously the the guy he would be into is just like the psychedelic guy right right and just the thing is like you know you read the the lee ditko stuff and it's basically that like which is really worth reading it's really really good it's really fun there's like one like omnibus that collects the whole run. And what's fun about that is back then, for a very long time, comics were just very episodic. It's like each issue is a self-contained story. And the Lee Ditko run is clearly the one where Ditko just absolutely did whatever the fuck he wanted.

And did a 20-part serialized story. Like every issue, it just continues in one long like journey around the world and it's just an excuse to like go into your dimension have a bunch of shapes sure just like mushed up against each other yeah i mean it's not just that but he builds out this in sort of bananas you know quasi-spiritual canon where he's just mixing up you know psychedelia and eastern mysticism and egyptian stuff like sumerian stuff right you know you mix it all together and you make this weird mythology right and because no one fucking read dr strange he didn't even have his own it was a strange

that was the thing with all those old issues it's like it's strange tales and half the issue with dr strange half of it is, like, Nick Fury aging. Sure, sure. And, like, Roy Thomas talks about how, like, you know, people come up and be like, man, do you guys, like, do all kinds of, like, LSD and mushrooms? And they'd be like, what? No, we don't do any of that. You know, but, like, everyone reading them was like, these guys must be whacked out of their head, man. Damn.

All right. I have a total new appreciation for Doctor Strange. Look, we're going to get into this. Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer, I would say. Oh, well, that have a total new appreciation for Doctor Strange Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer I would say The two sort of psychedelic heroes I will say, in terms of Ben's Have any of you guys read the Sean Howe book Marvel Comics The Untold Story

No It's the best Going through basically oral history of the whole history of Marvel from the 30s to today but the sections on like the the 60s section is basically just like they should just make it a tv show it's it's it's just mad men but they're making comics and then but the 70s stuff is fun because it talks about you've got these guys like jim starlin the guy doing like the cosmic stuff and they'll just be like yeah we would just like walk around we would just like you

know take lsd walk around manhattan at 4 a.m., just generate a bunch of ideas. Like Ditko, totally straight edge. The other guys that came in afterwards, they were really going for it. Right. And so I think, Ben, that's your jam. Yeah, I gotta like, gotta check this stuff out. Like Adam Warlock. Adam Warlock, right.

All that cosmic shit. Yes. It's just funny. I truly think your father is the only person I have ever witnessed in any form saying Doctor Strange was my favorite as a kid. Right? It's just a thing that, like, you never fucking hear. Sure. And especially, like, Doctor Strange is one of the only Marvel characters of that tier, arguably, who didn't get his own fucking animated series in the 70s or the 90s.

Yeah, there's only that really weird TV movie, right? Yes. I think that's about it. Live action TV movie. I mean, he would like, he might pop up on a Spider-Man or something, right? I'm sure he did. He'd make a guest spot. But it was just like, they were going like fucking Ghost Rider, Silver Surface guys on show, Fantastic Four have their own show, Spider-Man.

Like everyone, Dr. Strange was just never in that fucking. and like fucking Ghost Rider, Silver Surface guys on show, Fantastic Four have their own show, Spider-Man, like everyone. Doctor Strange was just never in that fucking. I will say, I remember, you know, Griffin, to bring up your favorite topic, toys. Yes. When I was a kid, like, you know, 90s Spider-Man, Fox Kids cartoon, I think Doctor Strange was in one episode and I had the action figure of Doctor Strange

from like the Spider-Man animated line. Okay, yeah. And it was a really good figure. And I and he had a cool like rubber cape that you could bend into poses. Cool. Cool. But but yes, it's like, right. He's in like one episode.

It certainly felt like every other character that Marvel attests at that point of being the titular role was either like has some notability or looks fucking cool sure like even ant-man where everyone was like now they're scraping the barrel you're like ant-man exists as at least like a fucking joke but also ant-man has a power that we all love right we've all easy to understand i shrunk the kid right you're just like he was an original right the dr strange thing absolutely felt like is this breaking point i remember saying to you we saw the trailer david in some in front of some fucking movie it was anyway the trailer for the first movie sort of semi you know self-serious like teach me you know all that and the final like money shot of the trailer was him standing in front of the fucking window with the cape right and i said i can't believe that's the money shot that they put

in like it's a mic to get the fans going he's got the cape he's got the window and it fucking worked it was a hit and it only is when you step back and go like oh obviously fucking covid and director switchover and everything six years in between those two movies yes although he has appeared in three other films no more than that four because he's in Thor Ragnarok. Right, Jesus. Remember, he gives him a big beer. Yes, and he has the gloves on. It's the one with the gloves.

It's the one with the gloves, and then he's in both Avengers films, and then he's in Spider-Man No Way Home in a very seamless and smoothly integrated appearance. Right. It doesn't feel like them being like, I don't fucking know. One of the things about this fucking movie is it like has to be a doctor strange sequel it has to be a no way home

sequel it has to be a wandavision sequel that's the thing it's not really a no way home sequel at all it really doesn't acknowledge a little bit right well because i guess the order flipped of what was supposed to be there's just no discussion of no Way Home at all. Apart from the very vague, like, I'm aware of the multiverse. Yeah, he's like, I recently dabbled in the multiverse. Do you know that, because I fucking already complained about this thing in previous episodes,

the thing in fucking No Way Home where Ned suddenly becomes the greatest sorcerer overnight because his grandmother fucking read a book once or some shit. She's like, the grandma's like, our family's kind of magical or whatever. That was supposed to be fucking America Chavez. That was the entire point was

this movie ends, she's in training, and then in the next movie it's like, we need help. We have to open portals, find Peter Parker. She was going to pop up. Yeah, because she fucking opens portals. Who cares? Who fucking cares? There's got to be an easier way to make these movies. Yes.

Billion dollars can't be wrong, right? I mean, that's what they would always say. But yes, I would love to know. And it would just be for my personal enjoyment. What on earth happened? And I'm sure COVID is to blame. And I'm sure the vagaries of actor scheduling and all this stuff is to blame. The Spider-Man thing also some like the sony right but how they how to untangle the weird chronology

of this spider-man and wandavision yes which in my head should just play in a different order and i think maybe it was initially planned to like it feels... It should go... Sorry, let me get this right. This, Spider-Man, or this, and then WandaVision should come after this. Correct. And it's the biggest problem with this movie in an MCU sense. It is not a problem with this movie

if you are just sitting down to watch a fun sci-fi horror movie, in my opinion, or fantasy horror movie. Yes. But if in the larger sense of like, why is Wanda behaving this way? It would just make a lot more sense if WandaVision is her reaction to this. Correct.

Right. Correct. She's looking for vision in other universes and then she fucking makes her own reality. That's when she fully does the full break from reality. I am going to create my own universe. Rather than this being, WandaVision being in between Endgame and this. Right. Look, it is the single biggest issue with this movie is like this feels

like... I don't think it's an issue with this movie. I think it's an issue with the MCU. I think it's both. It doesn't really bother me with this movie. Sure. I mean, you have to say both, I guess, because this is part of a you know, two dozen film series. So yes, plus TV shows. This is very much a moment that exposes

what you're saying like there has to be a fucking better way to make these movies and it's one of those things where it's just like covet fucked up everything it did and it makes it just like one division wasn't even gonna be the first show to come out right correct and that wasn't it was gonna be falcon and winter soldier which would have been a sizzling way to kick it off. Right. And I think they fucking... God, what was the problem? I don't know, but WandaVision came first. I think it was because they didn't want to introduce Julia Louis-Dreyfus until after

Black Widow came out, but then that ended up getting flipped as well. That may have been part of the problem. I mean, everything we're saying, we just sound like addled fools. Lunatics! And it's disgusting. Ben, do you think this is interesting? Do I think this is interesting?

Ben, yeah. Let's keep going. Have you seen WandaVision? No. Have you seen, did you see Spider-Man, colon,

No Way Home? I did on a plane. You saw it on a plane. And you saw this film? In theaters. I saw it in theaters, yeah. Oh, I just remembered. I have a story

about my theater going experience. Oh, boy. Did Doctor Strange appear? I yelled at someone. Oh! Who? I saw it in theaters I just remembered I have a story about my theater going experience Oh boy Did Doctor Strange appear? I yelled at someone Doctor Strange? Teens Youths What were they doing?

Here's the deal Were they SPs? They were stinkies I'm going to the theater It's like a Tuesday It's like pretty deep into the run Of the movie This is a bad site

This is where you might get a rowdier group Not an audience but a few kids Who are just here to hang Now I'm in the process of quitting smoking cigarettes So I'm a little on edge I'm a little on edge Ben's getting very animated I go to Williamsburg Cinema, which

can be a hit or miss kind of experience. Yeah, it's kind of just no frills, you know, movie house. There's no food to be eaten there. There's no reclining seats or anything like that. It's a movie place. They show the movie. I sit and unfortunately

then shortly thereafter three 15 year olds sit right behind me. Cool. They start with the plastic bag of candy, loose candy they have or something. They're going about with that and they're whispering to each other. And it's fine.

I'm not like the kind of person where I want to feel like an old guy shaking my fist at kids. You know what I mean? Sure. But at some point, they just started talking actually about like oh yeah you know wandavision did you watch oh they're just they're like just talking sifting through marvel lore yeah i like listen you know i don't know how we can debate this i though i lost it and i said shut the fuck up oh wow he went right there here's the thing everyone

else in the theater then also got scared and it's like there's a guy scared of you yeah there was a guy kind of near them who like had been eating candy and all of a sudden he slowed down him grabbing the like the like chocolate cover almonds or whatever he had. Right. I felt so bad. I felt so bad. So this is, you were just a little on edge from the smoking. And of course you were so scared of the multiverse. Yes, I was. And I needed to really take it in.

Yeah, right. It was sort of a work assignment for you. Right. But here, all right. And I'll leave it to you guys because I don't want to take too much more time with this other than I just think sometimes people when they're talking at theaters,

they need to get yelled at. Yes. And I probably went a little too far. You might have had a Will Smith size. I think you just, you gotta first do the like, hey, can you be quiet? Or hey, can you stop talking? Yeah.

And then if, you know, if things don't change, then maybe you can be like, hey. I just saw Red. I did apologize to them afterwards. And at least, you know, I said I'm sorry. Okay. For overreacting. They just looked at their shoes and said, uh, and just walked away.

But they did shut up. Don't talk to me. Have you watched WandaVision? I think WandaVision would make more sense after this movie. They say start on that. Shut the fuck up. You know, we have a saying in our family. Use sports.

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Find out how at Airbnb.com. I feel like force majeure global events, right, finally sort of like cast a wind across the house of cards that Feige's been so carefully assembling. The puzzle pieces of all this movie made all the more complicated by now the TV shows having to, like, fit in between these things. Right. And it does just sort of show, like, this movie feels a little bit like a real Jenga tower of, like, do you maybe need to rethink this a little and start making these things a little more self-contained?

Or just slow down a little bit. Slow down? You know? I mean, the thing that just is still so weird to me is that they made a Doctor Strange movie, 2016, and it was very successful. And then Doctor Strange is a supporting character

in four other movies. And then he finally gets a sequel, and he's a supporting character in his own movie, where basically, he doesn't really get the emotional arc in the movie. Not really, no. I mean, he gets a very mild arc of sort of like, you need basically he has he doesn't really get the emotional arc in the movie not really i mean he gets a very mild arc of sort of like right they said you need to get over rachel mcadams and i'm like he does yeah but whatever whatever like just let the guy get it get a proper movie

also i feel like they've i don't want to say totally cracked it, but they've gotten a little bit better at figuring out, like, how to, like, who is Cumberbatch Doctor Strange? Yes. This is the thing. I think I'm more pro this movie than the two of you. No, no. Here's the thing. I am pro this movie. Right.

But it is almost exclusively because of Sam Raimi directing it. Mr. Sam Raimi. Yes. As opposed to, like like the MCU of it all I don't know that I can really be too pro MCU of late even though I've enjoyed movies like Shang-Chi and this

because I'm with you Griffin where I'm sort of like I don't really know what the plan is anymore it more feels like we'll do a movie, X person will be in it, we'll force some fucking thing in there to to delight people so the illuminati thing sort of feels like that here right yeah i mean we saw this movie together for the first time david we did we went to the press screening for

whatever i'm not trying to show off two months ago yeah um and i was saying to you like the stuff is really good i just get so fucking bummed out by the Marvel shoe leather. And your response was, I just don't even think about that stuff anymore. Like, you were sort of like, that's just white noise to me. I'm not judging it based on how well it does that stuff or not, because all of that feels like jury duty. I mean, right. Like, as a comic book fan, I'm always intrigued by it. But as a cinema fan, I am not particularly.

I'll say we all recently seen jurassic world dominion i i so i saw this a second time the day after i saw dominion you've seen dominion an interesting you've entered the dominion oh i i've entered which is a is is in my opinion a very bad blockbuster a bad movie yeah um but in domin. But in Dominion, like, so like in Doctor Strange, when it's time for the Illuminati to show up, you'd certainly feel them, you know, the script presses pause a little bit and it's kind of,

but in Dominion, it's even more egregious, how like where it's like, it's time for an action sequence and it's like, okay, pause. The dinosaur's gonna chase, you know, and you're just sort of like, is there,

does this have anything to do with anything in the movie?'s like yeah you like dinosaurs don't you you pig come on look it's chasing you're enjoying this and i'm like this doesn't you know it truly feels like the movie grinds to a halt for any action sequence yes yes no this i mean this movie feels to me like fucking sam raimi is the one in front of the subway car holding on to fucking 20 webs attached to buildings. A little bit. Right. Certainly there were reshoots and there's all kinds of like, Jesus, what's going on with this movie? And he's both like trying to like fit into the demands of a Marvel movie and trying to make his own thing.

And the weight of his first film in nine years. Right. Have another hit. This also was so funny about it because, you know, you look at all the interviews that he does for this movie. And to be clear, this is like,

this is the case in every interview he's ever done. Yeah, it's true. He is like this always. He's a good salesman. Like, people, like, you know, I was so excited he was finally back. So many people were so excited.

And, you know, and before the movie came out, I remember people, like, on Twitter, like, getting very nervous, like, because they'd be sharing these clips of him talking. People would ask him, so did you really try to put your own style into this, make it a Sam Raimi movie? And he was just like, no, I'm just trying to make it a good, solid, crowd-pleasing chapter in the Marvel series and just do another episode for them and make the fans happy. And it sounds like he like he just like went in trying to make it totally anonymously that combined with all the

reshoot stories and shit we're just like feige just squish him is this gonna be oz the great and then you're like no he's actually just be polite like in the interviews because it's the same thing if you look at like 2002 interviews and obviously spider-man is a sam raimi movie and every interview he's just like no i was just trying to like honor like stan interviews and obviously Spider-Man is a Sam Raimi movie and every interview he's just like no I was just trying to like honor like Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

and do what they would have done he seems embarrassed about his thing yes right like he never wants to acknowledge that he's like up to his old tricks

I think JJ's been joking about it like for all these fucking months but even as far back as Darkman he's like it was really time for me to just put the camera down

and step back take my little box of tools and put it was really time for me to just put the camera down and step back. Take my little box of tools and put it under the shelf. Just tell a good adult story. Right. And then you watch the movie and you're like, what is he talking about? And the only ones where it's actually true are those, you know, this is the end of our miniseries. We talked about those mid-90s dramas. And like, he even, you know, he sounds like ashamed of himself in those press tours.

Yes. Right? Where he's like, I really want to grow up. Right. And now it's more back to the just like, he's a nice guy in a suit who's like, well, Marvel's really a good enterprise and people have fun at them. And, you know, yeah. But I remember, Patrick, I think we were hanging out when the story broke. We went to some movie and then we were at Schnippers afterwards.

Yes. I will say, Griffin. And laughing at Schnippers. Schnippers, baby! Look, when you see a movie... Just like, what a weird fast food reference that no one's gonna get. Schnippers! 40th and 8th, baby! Times Square movie!

Excuse me, if you see a movie in New York at the AMC 25, you go to Schnippers after that. That's the place to go. That's what happens. Then you get diarrhea. But it's fun diarrhea. It's diarrhea yeah but it's fun sometimes yeah right it's all organized you know it comes it's very timely yeah right it's on a schedule exactly they have a bunch of like private restrooms there you put in the code oh another thing i love about that

place individual stalls yeah no actually griffin to me the funny thing about inviting me on this episode is that i feel like this movie kind of represents the entire history of our friendship. That's true. Because the first time we met was you did an appearance in a video I made. I basically, I was like, I'm going to do this three-part thing and say literally every take I have about the MCU and then never talk about it again. Put it in a box. Yeah. And so we met,

and we did a whole conversation in that, and then skip ahead to, I think it was, like, I don't know, a couple years later, and then we had gone to see Weathering with you. Right.

Not a bad movie. No, it's a movie I like, a movie whose ending kind of baffled us. I love that movie so much. It's a very bizarre movie. Yeah movie whose ending kind of baffled us. I love that ending so much. It's a very bizarre movie. Yeah. It's kind of like,

what is it saying at the end here? Right. I don't know. It's fuck you, kind of is what it's saying. Kind of. Yeah, which I love. Yeah, like it's not

our responsibility to fix our fucked up planet. No, I'm going to turn into a cloud, bitch. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. So we went to Schnippers and then what happened was, and I actually, I want to get this part on the record.

You went to the bathroom. I checked my phone. And suddenly a bunch of people texted me like, do you see the news? Raimi directing Doctor Strange 2. And you come back and I say, hey, did you see the news? And you say, yeah, Kirk Douglas died. And this happened at the exact second. And my mind was going a mile a minute

just dealing with the Raimi news that I just went oh yeah sure whatever but no no Sam Raimi and so I would like to apologize to the estate of Kirk Douglas he was 103 years old it's okay I like threw away that information so quickly because all I want to talk about is

like why is Sam Raimi now after after like nine years, he's going to direct a movie again and it's a sequel to a superhero movie? We couldn't get over this. We spent two hours only talking about why is this happening? Why is this happening? And also like, I didn't think that was

a move they had in the playbook. Well, if they haven't gone... I think it is there now. I think that's Feige's latest thing. It used to be he would hunt for the big stars, right? Like it was always the people who would never do a movie. Right. And like sometimes he gets the Robert Redford.

Sometimes he doesn't get the Joaquin Phoenix. Right. Who he like tried to get. Yes. Jolie. He had like his crown jewels, like people who you'd never imagine would ever do a superhero. And now I feel like he's more thirsty for the like, what if I can convince an A-tier director. That's the fucking story

on Fantastic Four now. Yeah, that, like, he liked Sam Raimi had, like, a sure hand and did not, he didn't have to, like, look over his shoulder on every shot.

Right. Which is funny because the response from some Marvel fans is, why didn't you reign Sam Raimi in? Right. I know, it's so, God, this,

this, everything about this movie is bizarre. And, like, it's, reputation is a cultural object and how it gets to this point, whatever. But, obviously, Scott Derrickson writes and directs the first movie, right? Yeah. That is, like, he's got more of a hand on that film than I feel like a lot of directors on those first movies. Also, one thing.

Him and Robert Cargill is his co-writer, right? It was, like, truly, like, they fucking were with that thing every step of the way that's pretty much i think that's the last marvel the only marvel movie in like 12 years to shoot anything on film uh yeah because derrickson likes that i mean it's also it's that movie is fairly light on um you know crossover business right like i don't remember much of anything in that regard right that movie kind of the thor beer thing i is that is that the post-credits but then they reuse it right they redo it right um no that the thing i kind of like about doctor strange is a lot of it plays like this is how

sony would have made this movie in 2004 right and it's like you know they had like some john i can't say his name right sp Spates? Sure. Spates. Yeah. Like sort of spec script that they were working off. And it does feel like, right, a pretty down-the-middle origin story kind of thing. It's got a fun ending. Yes.

He does the time loop thing. You're like, oh, that's clever. Yeah, good effects. Dormammu looks cool. The effects are cool, right. It's one of the only Marvel movies that was actually benefited from 3D. But at the same time, it's sort of like, oh, man, McAdams is here with doing nothing.

You got Mads Mikkelsen as a villain who's kind of a nobody. You have an entire movie just teeing up Chiwetel. Controversy that like feels like a bit of a self-own on their part, even though she's like obviously compelling in the movie. But it- And Chiwetel, yeah, Chiwetel's there

and you're sort of like, it's them being like, well, he'll be villain number two. And then by the time two rolls around, they're like, we got like eight things to do. He can show up. I know. I mean, don't even bother me right now. It's fucking crazy. Right.

Yeah. But yes, they do their fucking Feige keynote, you know, next phase thing where they announce all the fucking things. They announce it's Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. It was at Comic-Con, right? I think it was at Comic-con when this was happening one of those you know yes powerpoint but it was when they were outlining and then wandavision and wanda will be in this and all the fucking shit right and uh derrickson comes out and he's like i want this to be marvel's first real horror movie right and uh fucking foggy has some junk where he's like don't make it too scary so then

when derrickson quits it was like that's weird that's surprising do you think foggy freaked out about the horror thing and that was sort of the thought for a long time derrickson has recently done some interviews where he said like uh not not to get too dark about it but that he had like unresolved trauma from his childhood he was in therapy it sort of bubbled up and he had a breakthrough as he was developing it and he was like i can't do a blockbuster i need to work on myself and that the black phone is kind of the movie of him processing his childhood i didn't know about this at all i didn't know that i mean this is very recent he's like there was no animus like there was no pushback on what i was trying to do i quit i know it seems insane to people but i was just

like i'm i'm finally working through shit that i've been suppressing for 30 years oh i i totally assumed this was marvel being like you have to like put in all of these things and you can't make what you want cargill has said that that they that their script was not what marvel wanted i'm sure you know like that marvel wanted you know something that's tied to a bunch of things and all that and whatever. Like, imagine there's a world where they could have stuck with it and, you know, found a middle ground with them. And instead they were like, let's go do the black phone. And, you know, that's right.

That's all cool. But that whole thing where you're just like, because the thought was, oh, he wanted to do his shit. He's coming off of having done this movie successfully. And Feige was like, know your place to then go to ramey you're just like is is this just for hire does he want ramey does he want those fingerprints especially because feige was like working at marvel during spider-man yeah you know he was no of course he he i'm sure he has a lot of respect for ramey for that reason they knew each each other back in the day. That's when Feige was the eager,

like Avi Rod's eager assistant, who's like, well, in the comics it says this, right? That's how I would imagine younger Feige. Let's actually, let me, I got the dossier up. Let me give you a little bit of Raimi, you know, in between Oz and this. The nine years. What's up with Sam?

Yeah. First, he's working on something called Earp Saints for Sinners, which is based on a comic book. Okay. That maybe eventually, no, I guess it never got turned into anything. But like-

Wait, is it like a supernatural Wyatt Earp thing? Yeah, it's like Wyatt Earp fighting outlaws in like sort of post-apocalyptic Vegas. Okay. Sick. I don't know. It sounds like kind of a lot of things okay uh then he signs on for a a war movie called the outpost okay based on a jake tapper non-fiction book about like soldiers in afghanistan or whatever cnn guy the cnn guy himself didn't that get made uh it did it was made by rod lurry

right with scott eastwood and laundry jones and orlando bloom and went nowhere right david pointed at me well because laundry boy this is the most fascinating thing about this period and we're gonna keep exploring this but just like he was throwing out so many different things where it felt clear like he doesn't know what he's right he's kind of seeing waiting to see what you want to do a fact-based war movie does he want to launch a new potential franchise right right uh the next thing is something called love may fall which is based on a book uh by matthew quick who's the guy who wrote silver linings playbook yes um that was gonna be at sony and that's more of like a straightforward like big old drama like a lady has a meltdown and

moves to jersey and goes on a quest with her high school teacher and there's a heroin addict i don't know like emma stone was okay attached uh and then it fizzled and has never been made then he was gonna remake a prophet yes we mentioned that briefly the wireless i think dennis lahane the mystic river novelist wrote some sort of adaptation of it that was gonna be at sony now it's at paramount it's it's filming now with russell crowe i think i'm not sure if it's begun filming but russell crowe is definitely attached and i think it's a music video director now doing it yeah uh andrew on wubulu okay and i think stephan james from like beale street and uh race yeah has been attached i mean sounds kind of cool it does a prophet is pretty remakeable yeah and that was like that was a fascinating announcement that was

the one where i was like oh that's an interesting story yeah yeah yeah and i guess was it more pre-oz that he tries to do king killer chronicles and warcraft right right right right um so there's more i mean there's a lot i know king killer chronicles in here okay something called world war three that was a right wb movie based based on a non-fiction novel about the future. Predictions for the 21st century. Like a fun premise for a movie? Yeah, like who the fuck would ever want to watch that? Forget that.

Then something called Stormfall. Okay. A heist during a tornado. I mean, that sounds kind of cool. So is it like Hurricane Heist, but a tornado? Yeah, exactly. Tornado Heist. Much better.

No further stuff. Then an untitled Bermuda Triangle movie, another kind of disaster movie that Skydance is working on, has never really... Ryan Reynolds apparently was circling that one. I don't know. Scott Derrickson actually came aboard at some point. And that's still kind of percolating and chris evans will supposedly be in it okay shrug then king killer chronicles

that's like fantasy books right i've never read those um that oh right the name of the wind and now i think that's on tv i want to say showtime maybe yes it's a show i think it got turned into a show maybe not uh and then the last but wasn't that also supposed to be with lin-manuel miranda wasn't the whole thing that he was going to produce it because it's his favorite it's his favorite right um and he was gonna he was on a call i I don't know. But it has not. Whatever. Raimi has left that project. And then The Last of Us, which is now finally going to be an HBO show.

Yeah. But that was going to be a movie. And Raimi was the first choice for that. And I think that's at Sony as well. And that went into development hell. So just like he clearly is like i don't know i don't know but it's all genre mostly genre stuff with a couple more and a couple of the genre things sound a little more sober and grounded like and nothing i guess king killer would be the closest

but like nothing too franchisee no warcraft is the only one I remember where it felt like it was far along when he left. Yeah. Right. Like he was just sort of like, I don't think my vision matches with theirs, but they were in sort of, you know, serious development. I mean, the other thing is somewhere along the line, maybe it was earlier pre-Oz, Drag Me to Hell era,

he gets Sony to get the shadow rights for him again. But at that moment, it was sort of like, oh, he might produce this and not direct this. And a crazy thing now to think about is when that's announced in like 2009 or whatever, I remember thinking, you can't do another shadow movie. It's only been like 14 years. Sure. And now it's like, you know,

of course they could do one every five years. Like. And now it's like, you know, Corey, they could do one every five years. Like the moment a movie bombs, they immediately announce who's going to reboot it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, of course he's produced many films through ghost house. You got,

uh, evil dead. You got poltergeist. Yeah. That poltergeist remake. Anyone ever saw that? Sam Rockwell's in it, right?

No. Yeah. Yeah. Did, was it Gil Keenan who directed that? That sounds right. Yeah. I never saw it.

Uh, don't breathe. Big hit. Big hit. The I never saw it. Don't Breathe, big hit. Big hit. The recent The Grudge remake, big not hit. Yep. Something called The Unholy? I don't even know what that is. I don't remember that one.

Don't Breathe 2 and Crawl, which is... We saw that together. We saw that together. That's Alexandra... That's the alligator movie? Yeah, it's pretty fun. So good. He also produced Rake.

Remember Rake with Greg Kinnear on TV? Rake with the steak on his face. He has a steak on his face. And that's... And of course, Ash vs. The Dead.

Yeah. Rake is a remake of an Australian show, right? Yeah. My parents got into that at some point. Rake puts a steak on his face in The Australian

when he puts a shrimp on the Barbie. That was the big difference. Exactly. He's got a big shrimp on his barbie face. It is one of my favorite moments in the history of this podcast

that somehow Rake came up and you and I said, you know, Rake with the steak on the face? Right. I think it was in our As Good As It Gets episode and Gethard was like,

you are the only two guys who would ever say, I remember that. You know, Rake with the steak on his face. But, like, that's what you think of, because, like, Absolutely! I've been watching! You're the third guy! If you're ever scrolling

through, like, IMDb for, like, Sam Raimi's directing credits, there's that one in the middle where it's just like, what is this? What the fuck is this? He directed the pilot, right? Yes, and, like, ubiquitous subway ads. He obviously also does the pilot for Ash vs. Evil Dead. He does, right.

And I will say, a thing I heard from people who worked on that show is that they were like, it was kind of a nightmare because I think the blockbusters broke him and it would be like seven hours trying to pick the right knife. And I don't think... On set, when you're there. seven hours trying to pick the right knife and i don't think on set when you're there when it's not just the blockbusters too it's like it's probably been a long time since he had to work to a schedule yes not to say that he's like some insanely but like when you read in the dossier where he's like simple plan we only had 60 days or whatever and i'm like oh that's like the last small movie he made yes and that was a lot of time right how long did drag me to hell take to shoot that's a good question and And I don't remember the answer.

No. And the other thing I heard is that movie went over budget and he put his own money into it. Right. I mean, I just listened to your episode and that came up. Yeah. Right. So even that, which felt like, oh, he worked on a tighter. It's like apparently that one got out of control even a little bit.

But yes, as for Seville, I think he only does the pilot. He had no involvement after that. I think that was really like a Bruce and Ivan and Tapper thing. A little favor sure right right but it was like oh his episode which i think had already like double or triple the budget allotted of all the other episodes and more time and is a longer episode they were like he went like a month over schedule like it was like the rest of the production was trying he works big yeah i guess drag me to hell being sort of the outlier but still right

but it is that thing a lot of guys we've talked about in the show and some of the big examples of guys we haven't talked about like peter jackson or whatever where it's like he can't go back to small again right you wonder if part of him signing on for dr strange is just like i need someone to give me 200 million dollars right i can't go back to bootstrapping it um now i'll say that jj and his dossier says that he could not find any evidence that wandavision was actually ever supposed to come out after this correct as much like that has been erroneously kind of rumored but he doesn't think right thought that after seeing the movie because it would have made more sense dramatically it would have made more sense dramatically i'll certainly say that i think i

dr strange was initially going to be in wandavision right and then that never came to pass maybe covid was it gonna be dr strange all along that would have been stupid but uh no i think honestly i think from what i remember like it was more them saying like we realized it would be dumb for him to show up like this is about her but i went back to that the press conference announcement thing, and they clearly outline WandaVision. And then they're like, and Wanda will also then appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse. Right, right, right, right. She was certainly always attached to this movie. Spider-Man is the one that got majorly flipped.

Right. Where this should have come out a year before Spider-Man. So, yes, Raimi, of course, announced February 5th, 2020, that fateful kirk's douglas's death and patrick and griffin's viewing of uh weathering with you um truly yes we just spiraled for like an hour and a half our burgers were long done oh yeah just going like what does this fucking mean is this like is this is this a concession is this like an admission of defeat from sam raimi that he just has to fucking the thing that confused us sam raimi that he just has to fucking the thing that confused us the most is that he by all accounts did not have a great

time making spider-man 3 because of studio interference yes yes and then did not seem to have a great time making oz because of studio interference and then finally after almost a decade decides to make a movie again with the most controlling of all the most notorious, like notey, like operation that exists. Although Marvel is at least known for, they produce things that work and people tend to have an okay time making these movies. Like when they actually do it, it's rare that people are like absolutely burning the bridge as they leave.

Like, it's not like the justice league debacle where like Warner brothers clearly like swung in halfway through that movie and was like, this has to be something completely different. Yeah. Right. You know, like that was the most crazy example. Yeah. Yes.

And also just the weird thing of like he's working with the studio that has basically built their whole model off of like kind of the template that he had established. Yes. Like way earlier. It's like. Yeah. Like he doesn't need to do this. No. But also toned it down so much.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Waldron, who wrote Loki, the TV show, used to work for Dan Harmon. So he knows from multiverses, right? Can we actually, there's something I wanted to bring up. I think he may listen to this podcast. Really? Not sure.

He follows me on Twitter. Wild. Shout out to Mike. So I've been wondering with this movie, and recently, is the influence that Dan Harmon has had on the MCU seems like... I can't think of that a lot. Yeah, seems really wild. Because I feel like it begins with,

he's brought in to do Punch-Up on the first Doctor Strange. Right. And then there's this thing where obviously community has... Right, a lot of his writers from community... Well, for Medial Chaos Theory, it has, like, it kind of introduces, like, darkest timeline and stuff like that into just, like, the, like, pop culture, like, lexicon for, like, this era. And then you have the thing where, like, Chris McKenna, like, main writer on community, writes the Spider-Man movies and is, like, one of their...

At least one Ant-Man, right? Yeah, I think two. Maybe both. the spider-man movies and it's like one of the at least one ant-man yeah maybe both yeah and then michael waldron from rick and morty yes uh does does loki and this jeff loveness who was right around rick and morty uh ant-man the wasp in quanta mania uh-huh man three yeah yeah i think jeff definitely listens to this podcast hello jeff uh jessica gow who's the showrunner on she hulk is another rick and morty person uh fucking uh obviously the russos right sure who directed much of community right and that's everyone by all admissions it's like they got hired because of paintball too yeah yeah um yeah uh look you're right i think it's because dan

harman's been always been very good at like translating very nerdy comic book thought into like funny entertaining it's funny that he's just kind of become a farm team now for like they just pluck yes and also you know working for someone who's in charge and will get his hands into your script and move everything around and like so being able to deal with that maybe that's similar to being able to do with feige although harman and feige seem very different yeah disposition wise like you know i don't think kevin feige like works insane like night hours or like growing a giant beard yeah like feige seems like more like a guy who like wakes up at 6 30 in the morning and it's like all right i got 18 meetings today maybe whereas harman goes to sleep at six o'clock in the morning and has a vodka iv drip at all times um yeah no it's it's uh it's fascinating but um loki's another one where i

feel like this was maybe at some point supposed to be pre-loki i can't tell you that i couldn't tell you i just simply don't know it's the weird thing of like the way they've rolled out like rules information about the multiverse. Yes. Because when they announced this movie, like I just fully assumed that, oh, he's going to go into just weird psychedelic dimension. Yeah. Absolutely scary. You open portals in the sky and you zap through them.

Lovecraftian fucking. Right. Because that's what he does in the comics. Yep. And it never occurred to me that it would be like two like, you know. A branching timeline movie universes and like that kind of multiverse yes and then it's just kind of been this thing where it's like okay so loki establishes like variants yes and uh and so you can have like you know richard e grant

loki and female loki and stuff like that and then, like no way home establishes the rule of, okay, what if we can go to, what if like people from other franchises show up in this thing? And now, and it's like, it all counts. Yeah.

And so I'm like, if this was supposed to like come before no way home, yeah. What was it going to do? Was it going to not have, was it going to have like no Patrick Stewart or Krasinski? I don't fucking know no because that was the other thing with all the rewrites or reshoots and all the stories and whatever you're like i bet fucking

post no way home they're going in and they're adding eight bazillion cameos to this i bet you're gonna see fucking there were a lot of wild rumors about this movie yes the tom cruise one being the biggest which you can google it's the yeah he was gonna be what's the superior iron man right and that emily blunt was gonna be black widow that they were gonna do sort of the alternate casting people people who almost played a lot of that which sort of sounds like fun jokey shit yeah like i'm not saying that that would have been good or bad like right and then there was like are they gonna do edward norton are they gonna do nick cage ghost rider norton would be a true coup that would be amazing both banna and norton yeah yeah but the normal would have been fucking bring back ghost rider they should bring

back he has a flaming chain and he's a flaming skull it's a motorcycle they haven't cast a new one they do have just just have cage do it yes no well there is a ghost rider in each robbie ray is no no but he's yeah he's a different right he's different they don't have johnny blaze we should have like a buzzer i can hit it's like all right enough enough we're being too nerdy too nerdy too nerdy um what i do know is that they threw everything out rainy and waldron had this like it's you got to start in like three months right and they say they like they just tossed away the script and started a new and i believe it uh by and large the thing i remember hearing is that i know waldron was the one coming

up with the illuminati and all that like he was the one who which is a comic book concept like you know the thing just to mildly correct the thing i heard ramey say in an interview was they were like set date have to start not enough time to redevelop the script and then the pandemic was like okay you know what actually you can get your hands in there and you can restart everything now uh i guess i mean well let me let me see what else is in this dossier covid right covid did eventually push everything back to but their original thing was february announcement may start day yeah and covid push May start date. Yeah. And COVID pushed it to November. Right. And so they just like wrote it on Zoom. Yes.

And, you know, I think they had a nice time. They seemed fond of each other, Raimi and Waldron. Raimi said, we had a deadline to start shooting with a script that I didn't have anything to do with. And everyone had to jump in and start over. It was very rushed and panicked. And for us, the COVID delays were a blessing because it got us more time to work on the script. And, you know,

I've really appreciated these interviews that Sam Raimi has given where he's like, they're like, do you love the MCU? And he's like, I saw like Black Panther, Iron Man. That's one of them, right? You know, like where he clearly was like, I saw like Black Panther, Iron Man. That's one of them, right? You know, like where he clearly was like, I watched some videos.

Like he said, they showed me the relevant parts of WandaVision. Yes. Like my favorite. I didn't watch it all. I watched like a highlights reel. Right. Right.

When did WandaVision air? It was like January 21. I mean, like I imagine there was, there was not actually WandaVision for him to watch yet. Right? No, no.

Cause this, it was WandaVision straight into this. January, right? No, no, because this, it was WandaVision straight into this. January 2021. It was truly a thing where like, because WandaVision started filming pre-pandemic

then was on ice for a long time. Then they finished it. Yeah. And then I truly believe it's like Elizabeth Olsen wrapped on WandaVision on a Friday,

started on Doctor Strange on a Monday. And then like two weeks into Doctor Strange, COVID outbreak, London case is bad. the movie's on ice for another two months can I just say it's funny to me that this is the first

main feed Marvel movie you've ever done and it's wild I know but yeah it's just because we've done 27 Marvel movies phases 1 to 3 but also clearly this means oh we've got to spend an hour plus just discussing

like the studio stuff and like the marvel of it all patrick's right we got to talk about the movie yeah i think this movie is so interesting when you compare it to spider-man 3 where the man 3 by sam raimi yes spider-man 3 for me to bottom, feels like a Sam Raimi movie. Every single second of that movie feels like it has his fingerprints, his house style, but some of it is just not well done. Right? It's Rush. It doesn't all hang together right. You can feel.

It's not like there's scenes where you're like, oh boy. Right. What's this anonymous garbage? Absolutely. And you're like, this is sort of Raimi, but he can't find the right pitch. Even though you can listen to our episode, Topher Grace talks about being like, I was on ninth unit. You know, it was a whole. But it feels like tip to tail Raimi and the things that people will mock, like the dance sequence or the handling of venom or whatever.

Right. Feels like Raimi having resentment for the things that the studio is pushing on him and doing them in the most rainy way possible which then upset people right whereas this movie it's like he's trying to both show he could play by the rules do the thing that fits into their model and then find his personality there's scenes in this that feel completely anonymous watching this for a second time i would like go through cycles of just being like i'm so fucking bored and i felt this the first time watching it too i mean i don't know how you feel but i would say especially in the sort of first chunk yes which is the most concerned with like setting all the pieces out i would feel like every 10 minutes there'd be an alternation for me and i like something would happen and i'd be like fuck yes

there's the guy there's the guy right but it feels like in the scenes where it's like rainy you just have to do this he's not fighting against it anymore. No. He's playing by the rules. There's not a lot to it. He's picking his battles. Well, so what's the stuff that he... The stuff to me that feels a little anonymous

or whatever is... The first action sequence with Shuma Garath. I think it's the best action sequence in the movie isn't it not Shuma Gareth I disagree with that but it's not technically it's like Garganto

it's Shuma Buzzer Buzzer Nerd Buzzer 2 Nerdy 2 Nerdy it's Shuma Gareth

they do not name the thing technically Marvel has to say guys excuse me I have the comic here that has the original Shuma Gareth story that I've been reading recently

Shuma Gareth rules he's one of my favorite Marvel characters. He's like an evil demon. He's an evil eye tentacle man. But like, that originates inside the ancient one's head.

And it has, but like, his true form is a tentacle thing. But like, this is just a tentacle monster. Yes. Look.

Look, guys. Look. They don't name the monster in the movie. Uh-huh. In the press notes and I think, you know, it is called Gargantos, which is a name they made up because Shuma Garath's rights are owned by, I have to look this up, not Marvel, for some insane heroic signatures.

What? Do you remember how Shuma Garath is a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom? Yes. A really good character. One Shuma Grath is a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom? Yes. A really good character. One of my mains. A fucking great character. But just of all the choices, how did they land on that one? Because he's cool because he's different. I think they were just trying to find, like, are there other kind of

fighting types we can imagine that's not just like punch, punch, punch? In this current zone, I sometimes see him go into where he's like, his eyes are darting back and forth. It's like watching a tennis match. His hand is slowly curling into a fist. And he's like, do I need to fucking noogie these guys?

Am I about to say shut the fuck up? You're confused, but you're also like, should I be bullying them more? It's one of those weird things. You know how Marvel used to do like Conan comics and stuff like that? For whatever reason, Heroic Signatures owns some sort of like little bit of marvel comics characters including shuma gareth rom uh space knight shit but i mean i just appreciate that they weren't like we're not gonna do shuma gareth because we don't know the right so we'll do a monster looks exactly like it but it's not it. This monster looks so fucking good.

It looks great. Especially, like, watching again this time, the first time watching the movie, I truly felt like I was so nervous about, like, are we about to watch Oz the Great and Powerful? Sure, it's just gonna be boring. Because if it felt that anonymous

and that he was that drowned out in his style, I was gonna be so fucking depressed that I, only watching the second time, was I like, style, I was going to be so fucking depressed. Sure. That I only watching the second time was I like, God, I was fucking white knuckling that entire time. It's, sure. I think the Shemagorath action is really fun and I like the end of the eyeball getting plucked out. I mean, with like the, I mean, also one thing

that I just appreciated about that is like, you know, we've seen a lot of, you know, Marvel battles in like cities and stuff like that. And I feel like in this, like like you know we've seen a lot of you know marvel battles in like cities and stuff like that and uh i feel like in this like you know the shots hold a second or two longer than marvels usually do the compositions are a little cleaner the action is moving like geography yes sometimes that is not true it's not always true like in the opening one i think it's that's like pretty clean in the crucial sequences it's true right the action i was trying to think of that's a little more anonymous to say like when wanda attacks the uh you know uh what's it called

yeah and she's like shooting lasers and there's a shield that feels a little bit more like and the b team can do this it's the rain to pick his battle shit he's like that's what i'm saying how many of these fights can i get it's a couple minutes and then we're into wanda going through a mirror and reassembling her body and all that where you're like oh right you know yeah this is every 10 minutes he'll like fucking the other metaphor to steal from remy's visuals that i think of fucking toby at the front of the train just trying to hold everything together right and then the other thing is like this movie feels like the fucking zombie doctor strange just being like i refuse to die i'm whatever body i need to take i will find some way to will this back into being my fucking movie but like that opening sequence

the cold open defender strange america chavez i was like jumping on incoherent jumping on blocks and i understand whatever i will say have you seen it on 3D? No. It's actually, I was, so it's funny, when you guys wrote that. Usually it's kind of hard to see a movie in 3D. Like,

it's the opposite of this. This is the weird thing. Even 4DX will be like, we have one 3D showing a day, the rest of the time it's 3DX. Here's the thing, Lincoln Square. And you won't believe

which one we dropped. Yeah. I mean, Lincoln Square on IMAX, it was IMAX 3D. Wow, that's cool. That's where I saw it.

I was like, I was very surprised. Like, a friend was like, on the big ass screen. Yeah, like, oh, you know, IMAX, it was IMAX 3D. Wow, that's cool. That's where I saw it. I was like, I was very surprised. Like a friend on the big ass screen. Yeah. Like, oh, you know, I don't know, like 6 p.m. opening night or whatever. It's funny. While you guys were at the press screening, I had like, like I knew multiple people who were at that press screening. And I, you guys are white knuckling it. I'm sitting there just like waiting for the responses being like, please, please let it be okay.

And then Griffin, you, you and multiple friends were just like, it feels like you can see Raimi there. And I was like, all I fucking care about, fine. But I will say, 3D post-conversion, obviously, but also the first movie I've seen released this way in a while. I think Infinity War was the last time they did, like, the IMAX will be the next 3D. And honestly, like, it'sMAX will be on next 3D. And, honestly, like, it's pretty solid. I believe it. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

Like, that opening action scene when, like, the bus is, like, flying at the camera and he cuts it in half and stuff like that. His visual style is really well suited for 3D. And even the opening scene,

which, you know, just, like, them running around through, like, whatever dimension. In 3D, it's, like, cameras flying through stuff, stuff's moving by the camera. It's like, it feels like it was designed that way. Doctor Strange and Ant-Man are the two Marvel franchises that actually work in 3D. Very given to it. Yes.

Right. Yeah. I mean, the first movie I saw in 3D and I remember looking pretty good. Yeah. Like pretty fucking good. And the portals and the shifting, all that stuff like works well the same way Ant first act of the last movie i saw in 3d in fact really yeah because it used to be the press screenings they would be like here your glasses i mean i guess we saw like the avatar man in 3d yes right or whatever you see elita battle angel in 3d i saw elita battle angel

in 3d so that's okay so there you go yeah but like the last time where it was like take your plastic real 3d glass you know not the very nice dolby you know glasses like you know but anyway yeah david dr strange yeah he you know in the opening sequence a different dr strange and there's america chavez and they're being chased by kind of a mummy ghost guy sure let's talk about it because america chavez you know essentially like the human mcguffin of the movie right is um you know obviously like she's a pretty recent character in the comics right i think i mean at this point she's like 10 years old but yes right i mean but not just strangely i don't know he's like 60 years old but the other thing was like uh correct me if i'm wrong about this but like i thought she was even more recent and it was like she had like one appearance like 10

plus years ago and then she was sort of revived like five years ago here's the timeline with her is I think she first showed up in this like mini series that I think Joe Kelly Joe Casey yeah called like Vengeance I think she just popped in that right the thing that I know the character from is she's one of the team in the Kieran gill and jamie mckelvey young avengers right which was 2013 yeah okay which is like a great series but like she is a completely different character in this movie like her in that series is she's basically kind of like grumpy just like like kind of like it's doesn't it's sick of everyone's bullshit yeah because if you got kid loki there and she's just like when he talks too much she throws him through a wall sure like that like her

that's her whole vibe and it's like clearly that you know she does make star-shaped portals that is cool that is her power yeah but like the you know you can see like in these movies you know with like cassie lang and stuff like that they're like okay we're building like this new generation of like the younger heroes that can like be funny thing where you're like what's Feige's big picture plan now and it's like six different teams there's clearly the young team

there's the Thunderbolts bad guys team yep right but this is a funny one to me because and this has nothing to do with the actress is it Sochi Gomez yes I believe so yeah sure but I like Nothing to do with the actress. Is it Sochi Gomez? Yes, I believe so. Yeah.

Sure. But I, like, I don't know who this character is, really. In this. Yeah, it's like, it's not just that she doesn't resemble the comic book version. It's just that, like, usually Marvel's pretty good at, like, introducing a new likable character that you want to follow. She's plucky. She's plucky. That's what I got for you, I think. But also sad.

She's a little sad. She's an interdimensional traveler from when her parents are gone or whatever. This movie is having, like, it struggles with a couple big choices. It's like, what's the decision here? What's the take here? And they're like, we'll get back to this later. She's not plucky. She's not plucky.

She is plucky. we'll get back to this later she's not bucky she's not bucky she is plucky um she's it's a perfectly she's she's charming but like it you're right patrick that it's sort of like i'm not walking out of there being like i can't wait for more american no it's like you know like i don't think anyone maybe the take could have been she would be like more like a tramp like a like an interdimensional train you mean like a tramp. Like an interdimensional tramp. You mean sort of like an urchin? Like a little... Like riding the rails.

Spree kid. She has a little bindle over her shoulder. Maybe like a hat that the lid is sort of popping off of it. Like it looks like a can opener opened it at the top. Could she ride a boxcar through dimensions? Yes, absolutely. I mean, let's talk about... She's got kind of like a

jean jacket that's yeah all these uh writers listening uh um guys you know where to find me the the dr strange characterization right the constantly shifting what is the right way to play this character in every movie sort of like different swings at it uh the first scene post the bus fight where they're eating pizza yeah i like the interplay in that dynamic and i was like okay this is fun and i realized like in that moment i got excited so the value of her being in this outside of the functioning as a human mcguffin right which is like oh they're doing the fucking the wolverine thing like wolverine's always best with a teenage girl it's the perfect counterpoint is a mentor for his self-seriousness yes his burliness and you're like dr strange's

arrogance is best punctured perhaps by like a 16 year old girl who's like i don't fucking know why this is good and it solves him not needing to be snarky you can kind of make him straight man but allow him to be funny and yeah have him be a little stuffy have him be like right but then i feel like that dynamic is immediately dropped for the rest of the movie well it's not so much dropped as it's just like there's no time for much of a dynamic because there's so much other stuff they have to do i mean there are other scenes together in the movie are like the thing where they like look at the memories you know and they're sort of like and that's just kind of like a little which is like the most rick and morty gag and in

the whole thing the uh the like the the voice that's like you know your memory is projected you step on a on like a little like circle and like your memory is project on a screen i'm sorry i don't want to be that fucking guy but like especially watching this a second time i was just like what is their fucking business model you You're telling me your store is come in and we'll let you relive your memories. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

But they have like a try me portal. Yeah, they'll give you like 20 seconds. Outside, like four of them, like multiple. It feels like they should have cut it off at some point, been like, you've gotten your 20 seconds.

Yeah, I would have been funny to have to like add eight dollars for more or whatever. Right, because if I, I would just go once a day and just get a little memory. Yeah. A little freebie memory. What's the model for any of these things on our phones?

So often I see someone load an app and they're clicking eight ads away. And I'm like, it's probably like a dollar to remove that. And they're like, well, I don't pay for apps. I'm like, well, okay. It's a principle thing. Yeah. But it's the thing with, you know,

America and Steven in this, where they're together, it's like a little buddy dynamic. Yeah. And then, once the Illuminati stuff happens,

they get separated. Yeah. And then Wanda takes her, and they're just gone for the rest of the movie. And then he's just hanging out with Christine. The biggest flop of this movie,

which is a movie I like, is that the, you know, the crowning end moment for their dynamic is when Zombie Strange is like, look, America, you've had this power and you're all along. You know what to do. And that needs to be a big moment, right? That needs to be her being like, he's right. And instead it's just kind of like,

look, America, it's been about two hours on the clock. It's kind of time for you to just fucking use your powers correctly. But also, like, this movie strands Wong on the side of a mountain sleeping for an hour. And then he wakes up and he's like, OK, time to fucking. He's sleepy. Let him sleep. He's the sorcerer supreme now. He's in so many of these goddamn movies.

I love him, obviously. We love fucking Bandit Wong on this show. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. But it is one of those things. And their interplay is always so fun. It is. And I was excited for him to like fucking be in more of this movie because he keeps on making these small appearances.

The other thing is it's like, OK, but this is his main franchise now. And it truly is like he sort of invested in it. He makes the sort of plea to Wanda. She's like, I'm going to knock you out for a little bit. And then an hour later, it cuts to him waking up on a mountain and being like, thank God I landed here. Let me just climb up three steps and I'm back in the movie. Look,

these things are hard to... Not needles to thread or whatever. Look, in the plot of the film, America's... You know, that all happens, right? Then we're with Stephen Strange and he's been dreaming of this, sure, right? Because when you dream, you're actually imagining another like life i think a cool concept that also raises a lot of questions raises a fair amount of questions i don't know how many dream sequences

marvel has had that i was trying to think about yeah i think very few if any so at least they haven't really tread on any unfortunate territory is there like a whole universe where everyone has like forgotten their homework yeah every single day fucking look So is there like a whole universe where everyone has forgotten their homework? Yes. Every single day. All fucking day. Look, this is not like DC where there's 52 universes.

There's like... Infinite. There's like a universe where you actually stepped on a cracker and nothing else about your life is different. There's a universe where you are homework. Yes, that's the thing. It can be as...

Oh my God. It can be as minute as you live next door to where you are homework yes that's the thing it can be the worst it can be as minute as you live next door to where you live or as massive as you are homework you are a pile of terrifying and everyone is homework oh boy uh and then there's this sort of like emotional arc for dr strange where his his erstwhile his former girlfriend, were they ever together? They were together. Or were they just kind of like bantery friends? Yeah, in the first movie, what was your guys' impression of their relationship? I don't remember.

My impression of their relationship, there's the scene after the car accident where he's like an asshole to her and she's like, I'm done. Right. Where he's in his fancy apartment or whatever yeah but earlier on you see them like you know talking at work they do banter and he's like i want this on the music or something right it's a music joke i think they're like jeff and britta to tie it back to community like you think they have sex but they've never really written down what they are commit to it and she probably he's annoying right my impression was that like maybe they had dated like briefly like a couple years ago it didn't work out because he's an asshole and uh and they're still like flirty yeah but that's it but like in this movie begins and it's as if like she was the great love of his

life yes and yeah this is a fair complaint patrick i'm not i'm not objecting i just do like the idea of like in a world where a lot of people puffed out of existence for five years yeah you might come back and be like fuck like that was what i was supposed to do oh yeah right yeah i mean there's stuff here that i find really compelling like it's like a big part of this is like you know uh it was like like, is he happy or not? And this. Yes. I think this movie does not actually pull off. It's like they set it up.

And at the end, they sort of like offer a coda to it. But I got excited that moment where I was like, oh, that's actually an interesting emotional spine for this. Which is Wanda's going crazy trying to find the universe that she wants. Yeah. And his job is to stop her. Right. But could he in the process get distracted by the possibility of is there a universe where i didn't fuck this up like he also has his own

thing he's searching for it's right a dangling temptation and of course every time he goes for a new universe dr strange is always like no we always fuck it up or people are like you always fuck things up right you know when the illuminati show up they're like oh you the single most surprising thing about this movie is that 70 of it takes place in one alternate universe yes this is what i was i truly i think we were talking about the tom cruise rumors or whatever i thought this movie would be like every 10 minutes baby we're in it's rick and morty style baby like yeah that's what they wanted you to think like when they put patrick stewart's voice in the trailer yeah everyone hears that and it's just going like man, if they like let us know about that, what what are they holding back?

The trailer has three different strangers in it. And you're like, oh, we're going to be like 20 strangers. And that's the thing. Like, I didn't want any of that. Like going on. I was like, I like the thing, the trailer that I cared about is the shot where the camera flies into Elizabeth Olsen's eye. Yeah. I was just like, all I want is right you want the visual

fucking trailer said from director sam raimi and i'm like they're promoting it that way yeah it's cool see i thought with enter the spider verse and going so silly yeah that i didn't think they were they were gonna really go in like an absurd way with this movie like i felt like that had established, like at least for me personally, like just going crazy and having a ham universe. I didn't expect it really as much in this. The wildest thing about this movie though,

is just like the multiverse thing. Five years ago, you would have tried to explain to any lay person and their eyes would have rolled back in their head. They would have just glazed over. Right. Spider-Verse nailed this so fucking hard. Right.

And found the perfect way to like set this up, find the emotional value in it, explain it in a way that made sense to everybody. The fucking device of let's do this one last time, you know, just fucking worked. And now the ground is laid for everyone to fucking dine out on this thing. And this ends up being like what was supposed to be marvel's big entry into the idea of multiverse now ends up being this sort of like latecomer to the party right well we're like we've seen all the things you can fucking do with this i mean also obviously everything everywhere all at once is eating this movie's lunch a little bit it's a funny thing that they came out so close to each other um that's true everything everywhere all at once what's the universe where

these relationships are healthy but that's of course more right a thing of like where there's lots and lots and lots of different universes and there is zany as you can imagine and one of them is just rocks and one of them is raccoon chef you have that one sequence where dr strange raccoon yeah uh the one sequence Doctor Strange sort of is grabbing onto America yeah and they zap through a million but you know

sure black and white they're made of paint right I mean there's a bone universe yes and I do like when America I like the little jokes

of America being like you know most universes don't have money yeah right you know things like that I'm like oh that's cool but I like the weird

the universe they land in is you're like what's the deal here so there are a lot of flowers. Stop signs are reversed. People kind of dress in black. I found... Fuck, I have to find it.

I forgot about this until just now. But I actually saw a good thread about what he thinks is going on in this universe. Because it's a very British universe. And he had this whole theory... How would you know that? I want to find this thread because it was so good because it does just kind of read as non-specifically weird and random but people are like dressed up in this sort of like old fashioned raincoats and hats kind of way um okay also pizza pop is huge in britain pizza pizza balls right uh so his concept was like okay so in this world the 838 i think is its number uh reed richards is the smartest guy in the world

not tony stark right like he's introduced when we see mr fantastic it's like and they're the smartest person in the world right um and so reed richards's ultron was not evil it worked okay boring robots right uh-huh um and so thanos is not a problem i'm trying to find um captain carter is the the the shield sure she's british not american the dominant cultural force is britain new york looks like london everyone wears flat cap hats and scarves the illuminati's hq is the british museum which it is like that is the set they use it just looks like the british museum uh so it's like a tony stark free world where instead reed richards is the dominant intellectual personality and that's why it has this kind of refined feel with like interesting grass growing

and trees right like it feels a little more natural rather than like a war mongering businessman which is also just our world so like we live in the tony stark world basically um and of course uh the biggest piece of evidence he has for this is that um wanda is not from like a destroyed sokovia in this movie i don't know like this is the kind of thing where i'm like look i don't really care about this but then I occasionally stumble across some super fan who's delving into this. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. I don't even know if it's something they thought through. You want that more in the movie. Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, I wasn't thinking about what this multiverse was at all, really. Like you say, I was just kind of like, oh, the traffic lights are reversed. Okay. Especially because that sequence is so good. In two seconds, you're like, I get what this Especially because that... Pieces are balls now. That sequence is so good at like in two seconds, you're like, I get what this universe is.

I get what this universe is. Right. And the place where they land, you're like, what's the deal here? It's just kind of a mashup of things. But like that... Anyway, I just found that a little interesting.

I do, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad I found that thread. Anyway, Ryan Broderick. That was Ryan Broderick. Shout out to Ryan Broderick. But yeah, they end up there, right right there's nothing really in

between him meeting America and that well no Wanda like you know the he's like I know a witch and he goes to see Wanda cold open fucking alternate universe battle sure and she shows up at the wedding but not Shemagrath

my favorite sequence as Gethard said so great to see fucking Raimi New York back yeah yeah it's true can I point out one thing that made me really happy

about just that Raimi New York scene because the thing that Raimi's always been so good at that they basically stopped doing in the MCU

is just showing innocent bystanders and civilians at all Raimi's so I mean obviously like in the first Spider-Man there's a whole montage of just like New Yorkers reacting and talking.

That's right. Spidey go. There's so much stuff in that. And it's a thing where in the MCU years ago, I like when I rewatch all the movies, I noticed this shift where, you know, not not to like, you know, do the uncool thing of heaping praise on Joss Whedon right now. But Whedon did spend a lot of time like focusing on civilians

saving civilians civilians reacting to things Justice League the worst version of that the worst version exactly but the first two Avengers movies did a good job of it

they saved the farm yeah did they? I can't even remember yeah they like Flash pushes the animal in a truck

good job guys Justice League go yeah but there's this shift in the Russo era, when that comes in, where you just never, ever, ever see civilians again. No.

There's a thing in Infinity War when the Black Order is attacking New York. Tony Stark helps one person up off the ground, and then all civilians are gone. Then every battle it's like in the fields of Wakanda, in, I don't know, a crater in a field in upstate New York.

And also, so many of our civilian characters are becoming superheroes as well. Like, you're like, there's no regular humans. Okay, Pepper Potts is going to become Rescue, and fucking Jane Foster's going to become Mighty Thor. Yeah.

And now, just like, the smallest dumb touch that made me happy is there's like a wide shot when like, you know, I don't know, Gargantua slash Shuma Garath is like doing stuff. And you see some people look up and they clearly ADR one guy going, wow, you can see his mouth open and the ADR in the wow. And I was like, oh, he he's really putting in the effort to show people reacting. Yeah. And I think like that that sequence is devoid of quips yep yes this movie is fairly light on self-referential defeatist marvel humor yeah

and even like the fucking spider-man like i that joke works for me because it feels character-based rather than the movie deflating. Which is like the one thing where they say meet the Illuminati and he goes like the Illumawati. Like that feels weird because there isn't like any of it. It also feels weird because like that's a word he might know. He knows that shit. It's a word that's used. He can say who are these people. I do like him roasting Reed Richards though.

Just because Krasinski is such a nothing in this. It's such bad casting that yeah the fans demanded it they were delighted people rioted in the aisles with glee look it obviously looks like that footage was shot five minutes before they started screening the movie or 10 years ago like one or the other absolutely was not in the same room as other people it doesn't i mean probably not no there's a i sort of get the sense that like everyone worked with patrick stewart sure and there was a lot of subbing in and out of every other character i mean like there was this whole thing where people were like scandalized when elizabeth olsen was like i've never met

uh john krasinski and i was like yeah guys movies are often made this way. It's not like some national scandal. Another thing that you and I have heard is that because of WandaVision and Doctor Strange, back to back, those shoots being interrupted by COVID, all this stuff, Elizabeth Olsen was committed to a TV show, an HBO show. Yeah, she's in some HBO show.

And that she was not available for the reshoots. Yes. Her storyline is a little more fixed. Most fixed. I have heard that. The thing about Scarlet Witch in this movie, if I can talk about Scarlet Witch for a minute. I think we need to.

She's the villain of the movie. Right, because the next thing after Shemagrath is, I know a witch who can fucking stop this shit. And she's like, hey, what's up? And he's like, how are you doing? We're friends. And then she's like, yeah, yeah. And then how does she reveal herself again? Oh, she, what's up? And he's like, how are you doing? We're friends. And then she's like, yeah, yeah. And then how does she reveal herself again?

Oh, she knows America's name? Yeah, she says a name that he didn't say. I think it's America. They do it really quickly also. They do it very quickly. And then she's like, actually, I'm in a burning forest of my own emotions. Because I got the dark hold. All the marketing was sort of hiding that she was the villain.

And then they just turn it immediately i i do want to just quickly say well i remember this uh i think this isn't as much of a problem in print it is funny when a character's name is america and people make statements about her we have to save america yes yes america's gonna be okay like i don't think it is. America's in trouble. I think Dr. Strange might be wrong about that one. Yeah. So Scarlet Witch is a massive problem character. She is in the comics, and she has quickly become one in the movies.

Because her power set has never made any sense. Because Stan Lee just said, I don't know, she makes ultra's probability. Later writers were like, she has control over reality? What do you mean? Like, that's infinite power. The power is both too great and too vague.

Yes, in the 60s, she would wave her hands and a rock would fall down. And by the 2000s, it was like, the whole world is at her command if she wills it. Yeah, she can create and then, she can rewrite the entire universe right away and then wipe out the entire mutant population, which was a bad move that i will always be mad about and the answer of why is like magic like you know which is this very even within the fungible world of marvel a

very very vague concept and then she's also magneto's daughter right she is in the comics yes in love with a robot uh the other thing with her is that very often they go to the wall in the comics of she does something that fucking alters the universe so much why she went a little crazy she was upset you know women be crazy yes uh there is this sort of you know 100 like it's like a well motherhood is such a powerful thing that like it made her mad most wanda arcs or stories that are all cured by wanda's powers end up having this woman under the influence thread of just like she couldn't handle the pressure and the marvel cinematic universe made the exact same mistake with her on her introduction

they cannot define what her powers are yeah she's weird yes and it's defined as like she cannot mess with your brain right and she can move shit around telekinetically. Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. And then she's in a bunch of movies and she never does anything except kind of fly around and move shit around. Right. She never does anything like where it's defined what she can do.

She almost beats Thanos. She's very powerful. Right. And then like Civil War, she's responsible for civilian casualties. Well, it's not her fault. She like moves like a bomb up and then it explodes. But they already go to this thing of like, oh, fuck, is she a problem? Right.

Does she need to be watched? The thing with Wanda in these movies, and also I want to be careful how I word this because I know there are a lot of fans who care deeply about this character. And are very upset about how the direction she went in this right yeah but my thing with her in these movies and this is just a product of like the way marvel makes these movies is she has so much character development always happen off screen between movies i know so it's like infinity war opens with her and vision like they've run off together and they're in love and you're like right and even the thing like uh age of ultron ends and she's on the on the avengers and then next movie she she appears she immediately like fuck on the avengers and then next movie she appears

she immediately like fucks this all up and like causes that we never get to see her like functioning on the avengers she's the marvel character who most has a jurassic world characterization we're like every time there's a new jurassic world movie you're like what fucking happened in between these two like bd wong just always looks different has an entirely different vibe and ethos it's true you know it's so i i like elizabeth olsen a lot as an actor she's such a talented actor she seems very eager to be not in these movies anymore that was one of the most heroic press stories of her being like i'm gonna watch these movies and i'm very happy to have more time in my schedule yes right i just think it is like every time they come to her and they're like the demands of what we need out of you are entirely different than they were last time and we didn't let you

play the fun part and from the moment she signed up for this role in uh age of ultron she always said the thing i like the most is her building the family of course that is the most compelling scarlet witch storyline it is right like what she initially is from most compelling Scarlet Witch storyline. It is. Right. Like, which she initially is from the Vision and Scarlet Witch books, but like, yeah, like that she imagines these children into existence. Right. And was like, I don't think they'll ever let me do that. Right. But so WandaVision feels like the one thing, aside from the fact that she also gets to play in genres. I think WandaVision was also just very dramatically successful. I really like WandaVision. Yeah, and comedically getting to do these different styles and whatever, that's the one that really played to her strengths. But a problem with how these fucking movies

are made is that they had no ability to gauge what the public response to WandaVision was. That's true. They're making this long before WandaVision premiered. And or even just how it came out in the edit, like how things were playing. I think they didn't understand

that there would be a much greater sense of audience sympathy and empathy for Wanda going into this film. And I think Sam Raimi has been handed Wanda's your villain. And he's like, great. And I think he uses her very effectively as a truly scary villain in this movie. Yes. But he's sort of divorced from the larger mcu like ocean right and so he just makes this movie with this like really intense like freight train villain that they are constantly trying to get out of the way of yeah and every fucking way he uses her is cool like when she comes through

the mirror it's great and reassembles herself it's frightening yeah when she like invades the mind of other wanda and makes the storm in the teacup and all that. Yes. It's really, really impressive. There's the moment at Carmitage where she freezes and everyone's frozen and then she appears behind the one guard's head and whispers into his ear. It's cool. It's cool fucking shit. Then she's all zombified and kills the Illuminati and then she's chasing them down the tunnel. It's great. He's reigning hard.

There's a moment even where he does the evil dead camera thing where they're all hiding out in that room. Oh, and they do like the camera like whooshes one way and whooshes the other way. The camera is her presence. It's the energy. I mean, he also does that later where he has the camera like attacking Rachel McAdams, which I love. I mean, it's just all the Raimi stuff. So like I think he understood that assignment. But right.

But like he's more divorced from Wanda large at large. And then because of Olsen unavailability, whether or not it was the right thing to do, they can't really rework it. But I remember watching this movie. Sure. She's revealed as a villain right away. And I'm like, OK. And then she starts attacking Carmatage. And I'm like, oh, she's like killing people.

And I'm like, yeah, there's she's going to have to go. There's no returning from that. Right. Right. Like you have the sort of like, oh, the Darkhold made her crazy, but like almost immediately watching the movie, I was like, oh, this is it for her.

Like, there's no redemption from this. She's not going back on the lunchbox. No, I mean, you can, of course, now in the Marvel world, you can always just snatch someone from another reality, I suppose. But like, it kind of felt like I was like, this is it.

This is Elizabeth Olsen saying bye. Because even in the moments where she's sort of full evil dead, dead-eyed energy, the movie does not play like, oh, she's possessed. It plays like she's making choices that she has justified in her mind.

And she's overcome with this evil energy, but it's like, she knows what she's doing. She ran the calculus. This was her choice. Which I think pisses a lot of people off who care about this character. Especially because in wandavision the way it ends up is like she does a bad thing by like controlling this whole town and then she stops at the end and you know everyone's mad at her and she kind of walks away and then you'd think there it's like there's some recognition like she's learning the lesson like okay i got out of control that was

crazy i didn't even know what i was doing it was sort of unconscious and then you have the post-credit scene that's like oh then she went and tracked down an evil book to do worse stuff well she gets the evil book in wandavision she's at the end agatha gives it to her right it was agatha all along it was agatha um but uh i would say the only thing in this movie that really you know sticks in my craw or i don't know phrase we overuse is that you know early on they pose the thing to her of like well what are you going to do with the other wanda whenever you find this fucking like family yeah universe and she's like you know forget it and then of course like that is the question and then at the end of the movie that's exactly what snaps her out of it and you're like

she's smarter than this she would have had to think about this absolutely you know so it just is kind of annoying that they don't have some further elevation there or at least some dialogue from her yeah something that's another fucking good sequence when like uh she first enters and you're seeing it from the perspective of that universe's wanda and the photos start moving all that shit the storm in the teacup i love that yes it's really good it's really good i will say a thing that was like a little bit of a sticking point for me and this you know people might disagree with this is in wandavision that whole show doesn't take place over like that much time right because they're like things are suddenly happening and like yeah i guess so i can't

remember how long does she actually have the kids for? Because it seems like a few days. Yeah. And so, like, if her motivation, at least for me, if her motivation was getting vision back, a person that she actually had a long-term relationship with. Well, this is again why reordering it would make a lot more sense. I get wanting kids. But, like, you did also magic them out of nothing, and they aged up to, like, eight years old in a day. They always acted like superficial sitcom children like they were never characterized right and they're annoying i like kids i love children they're annoying they're annoying like when she's back with the kids and they're like i'm like oh god i'd be

fucking like they're singing songs right right like they're not whereas vision like it's so sad in infinity war where she has to kill him and she you know does it and then thanos rewinds it back so it feels so like pointless that she had to go through that it's so awful yeah so like that would be like a and of course that is the thing that sets up wandavision right that's what she's upset about right but it would you know like her looking for vision and instead of course they don't mention vision in this much she says viz one and like waldron has said like look that had been done in wandavision we thought like it just Her looking for Vision, and instead, of course, they don't mention Vision in this much. She says Viz one time. And like Waldron has said, look, that had been done in WandaVision.

We thought it just wouldn't really make sense for us to go back to the well. I get it. But it feels weird that he's not in it. But then it feels a little odd that the character we actually love... Especially with the white Vision now out in the universe. He's out there. And so Vision is not in... She's just a single mom in this other universe.

It seems that way. Well, because in this universe you know ultron didn't fail and so that vision doesn't exist right yeah yeah just fyi okay i think that's the internal logic that's going on there um but uh but then but then it's weird that the kids are the same ben wants to kill me he just sent me a text message saying that i'm uh meet me outside you're dead stop stop stop this is like right these are the questions that are hard to reconcile with this movie i just have to call my mom to pick me up because i'm scared yeah okay yeah no go ahead the answer is when you know because recently the story came out of like feige is about to take the whole marvel

brain trust to a cabin and they're going to spend a week and they're going to plan out the next 10 years right and it's this thing where they're like the building blocks of like oh how do we get to this and that and the yada yada yada yada uh where where this movie just starts to crumble under like decisions made six years ago yeah absolutely um i'm sure they have some plan i hope it's not Galactus or something. Like, my ultimate fear is that they're going to a cabin and they're like, and it's all going to end up with a big dude

coming to threaten the Earth again. Because it's sort of like, how many versions of that are we going to do? I mean, it seems like they're going to do, because this introduces, have you guys read the Hickman Avengers stuff? Yes. So this movie introduces the whole, like,

incursion thing with the Illuminati basically having to decide to like destroy these other universes. Right, universes are crashing into each other. And that is like this long run that eventually leads up

to Secret Wars where like in that one Doctor Doom becomes a god and remakes the whole earth and Doctor Doom does not exist in this world so that will probably not happen. But like planting that seed here,

I assume that's where they're going down the road? Yes. I guess. I mean, I don't know. That really gets me excited. Silver Surfer would make an appearance though, right? If they did the Galactus? I have to imagine.

I mean, he could appear at any time. Mr. Norrin Rad will eventually show up. Get him out. He's the best. Dust him off. Did you know that Silver silver surfers given last name is rad no he's rad with two d's well of course this is just proper talked about i feel like a lot over the years and you and i have talked about this as well um of just like is there

going to become a breaking point for these movies the thing that happened with comics where they became so built around these crossover events right that are going to forever change the universe as you know it and in order to follow the event you have to read 30 different titles because all of them have a piece of the thing aside from alongside the main miniseries title you know you need to be able to track all this sort of shit and this thing was a boom to uh sales because suddenly people are picking up more things weekly it's the whole you know they used to do it once a year now it's every three months you gotta buy fucking eight issues just to keep track so as like the comic audience the comic buying audience contracted they got the people who were on the hook to buy

more titles and it worked for a while until a lot of people started feeling really fucking burnt out and just being like, this shit is just unwieldy, overwhelming. I'm tired of reading things I don't care about, having to follow characters I don't like, expensive.

And then it sort of like causes a problem again, right? And it's always felt like the thing of like, when is the buy-in going to be too great on these movies? When is the mythology

going to be too fucking tangled where it's impossible to just fucking pick it up and enter into it? We might be there. I mean, if having the TV shows makes it so much more complicated now. I know. Because it's like now instead of watching a total of maybe six hours of stuff per year, it's like, oh, you've got to watch 40 hours.

Second one ends, the next one starts. It's just like fucking constant with the TV shows, whereas the movies are at least like four months apart. There was like 10 days between Moon Knight ending and Ms. Marvel starting or something. Moon Knight was very, very tied to everything that's going on in Marvel. But I think back to, and by the way, like, you know, it felt like a couple earlier moments. This has to be the tipping point where this shit becomes just inaccessible

to the public. It cannot be this mainstream anymore because it's gotten too gnarled and whatever. And then it's like, Endgame was such a triumph

that you had people who went like, fuck it, finally I'm gonna watch these 20 movies. WandaVision coming out during the pandemic, I think that had

a cleaner emotional arc. Everyone I knew watched WandaVision. Obviously we the pandemic. I think that had a cleaner emotional arc. Everyone I knew watched WandaVision. Obviously, we were all captive to our couches. Ben didn't watch it. Not everybody. A lot of people who don't really watch that shit were texting me being like, you've seen WandaVision? It's good.

And then we're like, goddammit, I guess I have to watch all these movies. And they're all on Disney Plus now. It was a novelty. It was the first one. Oh, that's interesting. And it was different. It was different. It was the first one. Oh, that's interesting. And it was different. It was different. It had a whole concept.

Well, I mean, until it ended up with people shooting different color energy beams. They do eventually. For a while. The deal was for people who hadn't watched it, right? Who spent their time,

I don't know, doing anything else, having sex and wearing sunglasses indoors. Being cool and their last name is Rad with two Ds. In WandaVision,

Wanda creates a sort of bubble reality for herself where Vision, her robot boyfriend, is alive, and they have children together, and it was presented kind of as like sitcoms over the years. That's what I was going to ask. It has that very, like it has like, I love Lucy. First it was like Dick Van Dyke,

and it was like, you know, Bewitched. The idea is that she grew up loving sitcoms, and sitcoms are her comfort food. So every episode of that show essentially moves to a different era of sitcoms are a comfort food. So every episode of that show essentially moves to a different era of sitcoms. That's interesting. There's like a Brady Bunch episode

and a Malcolm the Middle episode. Like it takes on the different styles, but it's sort of the evolution of the family growing across the evolution. And then in the final episode, it's like,

it was a witch all along and they zap each other and it's a little boring. But she gets a new costume that's more comic accurate at the end. She does get a new costume. And they finally say

Scarlet Witch for the first time. Actually, every single one of these shows pretty much ends with them getting a new, more comic accurate costume at the end. They do love to do that.

Yeah. So what I was going to say. Okay, but then let's stop talking Marvel and just do a little Raimi before we're done. Yeah, absolutely. This is time back into Raimi,

okay? This was a thing I forgot to say in the Spider-Man 3 episode. But I remember because those movies were just like so accessible. It's a boy who likes a girl. You introduced to one villain. You understand their trash.

He's got a gift to the curse. Right. First two are just like those are movies that anyone in America can understand. Right. Right. I remember Tobey Maguire going on to promote spider-man 3 uh on the daily show and john stewart was like i love these movies they're so much fun so what's this one about and he was like well we got like three villains this time and one of them there's like a meteorite that has an alien on it and it lands and attaches myself to the suit and john stewart goes see this is the moment where you lose me.

He's like, this is the exact moment where I just can't engage with this comic stuff. That's too much of a buy-in, right? And to watch this movie where you're like, the buy-in is now so great, where just most casual viewers understand, oh yeah, multiverse, this and that, alternate reality, bubble, like, you know, alter kids, whatever.

Watching this, I was was like it's crazy that now this does not seem like too much of a buy-in no for most people and yet also i feel like a lot of the response to this movie has been like this is maybe the moment where i'm getting tired of having to keep up with the stuff and track it i think part of the response is more people who are like i am bought in and you did not do what i the bought-in person wanted weird and like that's the weird thing that they have usually done a good job navigating like we're gonna satisfy the fans we're gonna satisfy the casual family viewers and get kind of dragged along or whatever everyone's gonna be happy and this one that seems like the fans were kind of like a little grumpy about it

yes uh and maybe the casual family people were like what the hell's going on this thing and then uh the rainy heads were like crash zooms we love it like you know this is cool um just yeah just because like there's certain things we should talk about that we haven't talked about yet the illuminati we don't need to talk about that i just like the ruthlessness of him being like enjoy your little fan service. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Like, that's what I like. Especially because, like, I was so annoyed when Krasinski showed up because it's, I mean, look. You're just annoyed at how good he was?

Exactly. But, like, this guy seems too smart. My take on this is just, in no world do you cast the guy that you almost cast as Captain America as Reed Richards. Yes. It just doesn't work. You're right. It's a bit of a misunderstanding. And it's never been his energy. No. That's not

his fucking energy. He's either a nice everyman or he's like an action jock. It's truly that one fucking Photoshop that has lingered for years where it's just like, oh, if you combine you're gonna big old fantastic and it's just because he's married to Emily

once was like what if it was the two of them people like that he's a director sure they like that he almost was a Marvel guy that he's proven that he can be action hero adjacent now but you're like this is fundamentally not who he is yeah his take on Reed Richards is just I don't know like bored a nice

guy I guess he's sort of giving the exact same performance in a quiet place which is a guy you don't want to do this yeah it's not a good idea i'm trying really hard sound bad like you know who else we you know like anson mount was the biggest surprise for me because that brought me true delight it really i mean for him obviously you know he's having a great month or so but so good in strange new world yeah but i but like in humans is the thing that like marvel i feel like would most the most shameful thing ever existed like like the worst thing i actually know this isn't the worst thing jeff lobe is responsible for uh ultimatum is very bad comic but um but so but like that was like their big

move to be like see marvel TV can play with the big boys and shoot things with IMAX cameras. Such an embarrassment. And also just for people who don't know, when they didn't have the rights to the mutants in that whole side of the universe... That was their plan, to have the Inhumans kind of sub in there.

You have to have the Inhumans take the role of mutants in this universe. They announced Inhumans as a movie. The comics doubled down on Inhumans for like three years and at some point five years like don't make me fucking do this put this on TV we have to stop with the mobile talk there's so much I know we have to stop because we don't have a lot of time but the Black Bolt thing it's like that's the character he never wanted to fucking touch he didn't want to have to put these in the movies he punted that off to TV to put Anson Mount in the proper costume

and do it. And the thing that's most satisfying about it is Anson Mount fucking spent six months building some fucking... He made up his own sign language because he was like,

well, Black Bolt wouldn't know ASL. Also... He's not from A. He's from M. Moon. From what I heard from someone who worked

on that show is that he had like just done like clown college and so was really eager to like use his his new like physical comedy skills black ball is cool his voice is loud his name is black agar boltagon yeah he's cool so it's nice to see he got loud voice bad loud voice i took my six-year-old cousin my little cousin george to see this movie uh we needed a couple bathroom breaks because we got a very large soda and it's a bit it's actually not that long a movie shout out shout out sam raimi it's an even two hours yeah i truly the entire basically all of the uh illuminati

dialogue happened during a bathroom break oh sure i was astounded by that like oh that's really it's five to ten minutes. Less. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Less. I mean, we like walked in. The dialogue itself. Then you've got the sequence of them dying. Wanda was fighting the fucking big cave troll monsters, right?

Right, right, right. And I was like, I guess this is a good time to go to the bathroom. Right. We came back. The introductions were done. Right. And they were cutting out of the scene. Right.

And then I had to be like. Listen. This is these five guys. Right, right, right. Do you know this from the comic? That's an alternate version of the character. You know, this is a character from a different movie.

And by the time I had like finished explaining it to him, they were all dead. Yeah. It's quick. They spend so much more time killing them off than they do having them exist. The killing off is fun. It's really fun. I mean,

Black Bolt's death in particular. Yes. It's like impressive that like they were, they were allowed to do this in one of these movies. Also, just really funny. Funny. Which it's like impressive that like they were they were allowed to do this in one of these movies also just really funny funny which it's it's when he covers his mouth so his head explodes his own head yes yeah and it's like kind of gory like you can see the like lump of like brain matter like sag down in his mask it's good yeah and this is the thing these little touches the eyeball coming out of schumacher wrath this stuff rainy loves his fucking eyeballs in places in his mask. It's good. Yeah. And this is the thing. These little touches,

the eyeball coming out of Shuma Gareth, this stuff. Raimi loves his fucking eyeballs in places they don't belong. Oh, yeah. And then the final sequence with the zombie where it's just

a little nastier than you normally would see in what kind of movie like this. I like Derek's scene. I like the first Doctor Strange. I think his main priority was how do we make magic look cool? Right?

Right, right. So all the hand gestures stuff and there's sort of the like yeah fiery ember of this sort of thing the whole like like finger yeah thing but that movie is really about him trying to develop a visual language of what his spells look like right and this movie from that first action sequence

you're like Raimi is really thinking like 12 dimensionally about like if you could do anything what would you do so sometimes you make a fucking like green lantern construct of like big fists yeah to punch with or to pick up a lamppost or whatever right and then sometimes you take fucking music notes like it is just so much fun to watch him someone one of our great sort of just innate visual cinematic thinkers, right? A person who thinks in images and motion. But the musical note battle,

which I have to imagine is like the kind of thing he's bringing to the initial pitch, right? Like, here's an idea I have, right? You know, that is the most, like one of the best action sequences I've seen in a movie recently. No Marvel qualifier. I was so delighted by that

because one, it looks cool but two i never would have thought of something like that no it's so incredibly clever and it's such a good version of the sort of like i'm in this room and i don't have a gun you know i'll grab a candlestick and try and bash a guy with it but like 10 levels beyond that where it's like well what if i could pull the musical notes off of that sheet of paper it's it's the thing i went on a weird rabbit this is the the sequences he finds the other evil dr strange and they have a big battle i i went on a weird rabbit hole for some reason of watching a fucking green lantern eclipse the ryan reynolds movie yeah sure but it's like he does the thing that movie completely fails to do

which is like oh what makes dr strange powerful is that he's smart enough to think of how to apply ryan reynolds his magic ability just makes like a gun out of green lantern but it's that thing it's like why is dr strange more powerful than other wizards because like he's inventive he's inventive a hundred percent which ring me is as well and of course like the thing i've noticed about like the musical note battle which I agree is delightful and such a fun surprise and the thing that these movies never do, is, but I've talked to people who are not like Raimi heads, who are more like

bigger Marvel fans, and they were just like, yeah, I don't know, I thought that was dumb. It was like kind of like childish and silly. I didn't know why it was there. Not depressing. Yeah. It does have a Dance Dance Revolution vibe. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. dancing yeah it does have a dance dance revolution vibe sure nothing wrong yeah like just the energy of that and then what follows it's it's like a mission impossible

sequence where tom cruise only has a piece of paper to defuse a bomb with where he's like okay so i got it down with the musical notes like fuck now i have to get myself to mount wonder gore to fight what can i do and he starts doing the uh you know dream walking right where he's going to possess a body and like uh rachel mcadams is like don't you need a body possessed and he's got the zombie corpse it's so good that we've totally forgotten about i had genuinely not thought about uh and it's a nice and like the lightning strikes the hand the lightning music is really kicking into Beetlejuice seance. There's a crash zoom on the eyes

with a light on the eyes. And then you've got this wonderful shot of Benedict Cumberbatch in his seance going like this that is so funny and so delightful and so well acted by Benedict Cumberbatch who is good in this movie. And like it's

just the goofiness real goofiness not mcu goofiness of he's right behind me isn't he like the kind of thing that clearly you're you know the people you're talking to are like too goofy for me right yeah like it's like crossing some line that like clearly they mostly don't cross right it's like i mean look we saw this at a critic screening yeah so like well we were all clapping and cheering this is what i was gonna say like the the reveal of the illuminati members like that got like a more muted response the two moments where i remembered the audience like hooting and hollering were a zombie well no okay go ahead yeah i was the reveal of the zombie

you could feel the energy in the room where people were like are they gonna fucking let him do this and not only are they doing it but he's setting it up full like evil he's got makeup on you know it's makeup yes it's not a huge monster it's cumberbatch makeup he's doing a whole physical performance giving a dead eye performance too like it's specifically this is how raimi does this is what it looks like this is how you have to move this is the energy batch in interviews talks about like sam raimi like yes what i want you to do you know like he does imitations of raimi clearly explaining the performance to him yes and you know they're they're little touches a lot of

them we've talked about the other thing i remember the audience like hooting and hollering at was the sting of the x-men animated series uh score when patrick stewart shows up the i think what you called in a recent video you did a great video recently patrick on the um hula hoop sequence from hud sucker proxy i mean it's ramey season we all gotta talk about you gotta watch a great video great breakdown of one of and you sort of break down the fundamentals of ramey style and that sort of thing um What I think you call the superimposed visual collage. Yeah. The thing he does,

it's when Mordo is explaining. Right. A thing that, like there was like a viral tweet where someone was like, this is the most amateurish transition I've ever seen. Like, go back to the early 2000s.

And he's literally laying images and cross fading them and the music is getting sort of like... Yeah. You remember the audience getting amped about that? That's interesting. Yeah, at least our row was just fucking letting him do this i know like a big shout out to bob maraski who like was able to give this the editing rhythms of a rainy

movie and the construction the scene construction this is also the first marvel movie in recent memory with a final act is the best act in any memory possibly. Like, I don't, when's the last Marvel movie where you're like, it ends best? I mean, I don't, like, Endgame has a,

you know, fun, like, but like, in terms of not, like, But even Endgame, the time heist is the best part. It is. That's the middle. Sure.

You know, yeah. Actually, I'm gonna say it might be the first Doctor Strange. Which has at least an inventive end. It's smart. The weird thing in the first Doctor Strange Marvel's thing I feel like is usually

creating like fun likable characters that we enjoy watching and then the big set pieces get kind of samey and boring. Shang-Chi syndrome where you're like this is an interesting dynamic. Bunch of monsters. And then Doctor Strange is like the character stuff is kind of just a like a warmed over Tony

Stark but the action scenes and visuals are actually pretty cool and innovative and that third act where it's like oh it's like the backwards city being destroyed it's like him going and like Dormammu and stuff like that he has to defeat Dormammu through logic which is fun

in this he dreamwalks of course into a dead body and then a voice goes like that is forbidden and then there's a bunch of little monsters that show up and start flying around no explanation we don't need it we get it he did something that violates some sort of you know cosmic law david and what happens then those little monsters just fly away they certainly don't cling to his body forming a demon cape but that's what's so good is initially they're a problem right and they're they get and then like i can't remember who it is i think it's long or something you know someone's like your doctor's no it's right it's rachel mccadams yes

it's like you're dr strange and he's like right i will use them as a cape to fly yeah it's pretty cool and they have kind of a stop motion look to them they look like little you know army of darkness fuckers like they look like little you know rainy bastards yeah and they're going which is like the whole time but that's why the whole zombie strange thing feels like a metaphor for sam rainy a like getting his mojo back yes you know and finding a way to like i i'm going to will this into being my movie right and like you know yeah like i said you know america's big awakening is a little whatever but it is fun that she's getting motivated by a doctor straight zombie that like talks like this you know that looks all it's just like well he's able to take some

of the perfunctory scenes and just make them it's such an annoying like the power has been within you all along right like at least he's saying it from the body of a corpse yes yes that's fun right but then you have wanda's big moment and like i think elizabeth olsen plays all this stuff fine she's a talented actor yeah but like that's where i'm sort of like you know it it's a little wanting in the large i just don't care about the kids that much and i feel kind of bad about that i don't i don't care about the kids and i think you're right that i mean i care about the fact that she likes them that's good but like me she feels connected to them 25 when you're just like well now she's gonna have to fucking die at the end this movie like that is the thing right there's no undoing this not right yeah she's she's totally unredeemable. Irredeemable at this point.

Yes. Then at the end of the movie, he's like, well, I'm Doctor Strange. I actually really like Wong's little line where he's like, are you happy, Wong? Wong's like, you know, life throws what it does at me, but I am, you know, I'm feeling okay.

It's way better than that. I can't remember how it goes, but it's a really nice line that's well delivered. You're just like, oh, right. That's what they were sort of trying to set up was the thing here he only meets one christine he ends on fairly good terms with her i i like i'm gonna defend it i like the idea of dr strange going to every universe and they're like you're an asshole yes which has sort of been the dr strange arc yes and at the end of the day he's like i'm an

asshole it's okay yeah i'm not bad yeah not bad. I'm just kind of annoying. I'm happy with that. I've been reading a bunch of like 70s Doctor Strange comics. And the funny thing there is like the Marvel kind of formula is usually like, okay, it's these superheroes, but they have like real personal problems and personal lives and we can relate to these things. And Doctor Strange doesn't have any of that really.

Like he gives up his entire past life to just be like, I am just going to be a sorcerer who lives in a house with one man. Right. Like, it feels like way more like a 30s pulp character than any of the Marvel characters. Like, he doesn't really...

Like, the appeal of Doctor Strange was never relatable problems that we all share. It's just, oh, he goes to cool, like, trippy visual dimensions. Yeah, exactly. Right. He's not a guy who, oh, he goes to cool, like trippy visual dimensions. Yeah, exactly. Right. He's not a guy who like

has to figure out his emotions. The Stan Lee thing where he'd be like, what's a culture I haven't commented on before? What's like a, what's a world I haven't played? And we put a West Village guy.

Right. Mysticism, magic, like, but yes, he, I think that's one of the reasons why you will rarely meet people who are like, Doctor Strange was my favorite. But there's, they're out there. they're out there they're out there of course

at the end of this movie he gets his third eye which is that a thing yeah in the comics I mean it's cool as hell I'm fucking love to see it but like Joey my brother text me being like what does that mean I was like nothing he's just got like more magic power you can see into further dimensions also when the eye opens there's like a fucking

guitar yeah it's cool yeah but then the weird thing shows up played by charlie's theron and like it's one of those things that these movies do a lot where it's sort of like next time he's gonna have a really normal dr strange adventure we promise he's gonna go to the dark dimension it'll be totally like you'll meet fucking nightmare or whoever well the weird thing eternity one of those guys the thing with the ending is like, like evil Doctor Strange in that one universe has the third eye. He does. Which seems to indicate like he used the dark hold,

it like took hold of him. He's not doing great. He's like cursed. And then at the very end of the movie, there's a very Raimi ending where he seems like he's doing fine. He's walking down the street and then suddenly he like writhes in pain

and there's a big sting. It's a very Raimi ending. Yeah. You thought he was in the clear of the guy's curse forever. Exactly. And then suddenly we skip to the mid-credits scene. And, oh, never mind.

Everything is totally fine. They did the same kind of thing in, I feel like Marvel has gotten lazier with their post-credits scenes. Definitely. Very definitely at this point. Like, what should I, I don't know. It almost always undoes the ending. They're like spinning some wheel. Like, whatever.

It's the same thing in the Eternals one and it's like and now a famous person you'll recognize will walk in in a costume and say hi I'm the new person you have to know about now the Eternal one is it's brutal right just like go home and read my Wikipedia article so you know this stuff for the next one but like Clea's cool Clea's a main part of

Doctor Strange but like he meets Clea on an adventure she doesn't just walk up to him on the street and say I'm here now if they announced Charlize Theron is going to play Clea in Doctor Strange. But he meets Clea on an adventure. She doesn't just walk up to him on the street and say, I'm here now. If they announced Charlize Theron is going to play Clea in Doctor Strange 3, I go, oh, that's cool. The way this is set up gives me zero joy or excitement. And it just feels like it undoes the integrity of the movie. You should have lots of joy for Marvel. Well, they do then have the single best post-credits scene they've ever done.

It's finished. It's really funny. they've ever done it's finished is really funny Bruce Campbell is the pizza man it's the other for me missed opportunity of them not jumping to more dimensions is when they set up Pizza Papa I was like oh my god he's gonna meet like 10 Bruce Campbell's and each one he's gonna torture in a different way

it would be funny it's probably a movie that's longer, but like that would be funny. Now, can I say, because I think I know we have to play box office game. We do. But important thing. Michael Stobart's performance in this was deeply moving

and made you cry. His agent really did some good work to get him that. There's a Marvel sequel thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in the last one. You give me a whiff. Your sequel option. Because there's the like Captain Marvel yeah if they exercise your sequel option because there's the like captain marvel where it's like jean-marie lee pace clark greg all of them have insane billing in that movie but at least like lee pace shows up in a dramatic like dramatically

in that michael stillborn is in one he'd sit in a church view it's incredible yeah he's good good wig uh i i like the bit of just like uh my little cousin was like wait so people know he's dr strange and i was like yeah and he was like why aren't they asking him questions it's a fair question which was smart and then it's like watch you hey george wait till you fucking see stalberg he's got some questions for this fucking guy no i think the last important thing to bring up is to your point dr strange isn't valuable isn't human in that same sort of way he's sort of icy and detached but he doesn't have the demons of a tony stark you know um the the dead sister thing which is fascinating because it is so similar to ramey's own older

brother's death when i saw it first i was like that's not strange mythology at all i looked into it it is it is uh there's this sequence where he he the doctor strange like prove you you're another doctor strange he talks about a sister who fell through the ice but it's true of course the sam ramey lost a sibling that way a brother yes uh i don't know if it's exactly like falling through the ice but he drowned yes sender is that it was sander yeah um and uh it does feel like something that ramey is including you know as a sort of like this was the because, because he says like, Sander's the one who got him into comic books, right? As this little homage. And his entire career is sort of trying to honor Sander in a lot of ways.

Yeah. And it's also like, oh, we're now on like Doctor Strange appearance number six or seven. And you finally sort of found the spine of this guy, which is just like that was a death you couldn't prevent. And he keeps everyone at a distance now. And he wants to exert like high control versus like the what if episode for Doctor Strange on the Disney Plus show. I have not seen. Was what if Doctor Strange lost his heart instead of his hands? Sure.

And their idea is what if instead of the car accident fucking up his hands, Christine Palmer died and he went crazy trying to find a way to keep her alive. Right, yeah. Which is, like, felt like them just teeing up this movie of being like,

we need to now make it seem like the Palmer thing is the thing that haunts him the most. Interesting. Yeah. I think the Dead Sister thing is a lot more effective. I think Cumberbatch plays

that scene really well. Really well, yeah. He's a really good actor. He's a really good actor. And he's especially good when I feel like he's being evil Doctor Strange and then being dead Doctor Strange. Like, he's having a blast with those. He is. Yeah.

I think it's a good movie, but I also think there's just so much bullshit around it. I think it's a mess with some really fun stuff in it. I mean, at this point, I would be kind of excited if they announced that, like, Raimi's directing Doctor Strange 3, but it's just going to be, like, it's not a crossover movie. It's just a Doctor Strange movie.

I know. But I think the fans would be mad, wouldn't they? Or at least some of them would be. But you know what? They'll still see it, and it'll still make $900 million. It's quite possible.

It doesn't really seem like the Bloom is Author or is box office-wise. Not really. possible. It doesn't really seem like the Bloom is Author is box office wise. Not really. No. The box office game is pretty simple. It's just from a few weeks ago. May 6, 2022.

This movie opened to... $187 million. Yeah, good number. Yeah, it's made $930 million worldwide. Yeah. Number two is an animated film. Number two is an animated film.

I think you saw. I did. I took my cousin George to see it. The nice guys. No. The good guys? No. They're not good.

The bad guys. There you go. Don't really know anything about it. You saw it and you don't really know much about it. Evidence of what impression it made on me. I will say, oh, just interesting thing about Marvel tipping point. Luke hasn't hated Doctor Strange. Oh, he didn't like

it yeah halfway through he turned to me and he went first doctor strange is a lot better and i went sorry george yeah i went like this movie's a little confusing right and he went it's not confusing it's just trash wow and afterwards his big review was did he hold his nose and say pu pu the other thing he did was the scene where uh sherman grath the the fucking big fight scene he like when they go into that battle he like wiped like sweat off his brow went like right and i went like what you're nervous about this and he was just like no i was worried that he was gonna kiss the lady classic can you take him to every movie and just report back yes absolutely but anytime there's

kissing and then the final christine palmer like i'm sorry i fucked it up thing he was like tell me when it's safe to look at the screen he was covering his eyes he was so convinced a kiss was he's the anti david yes he's the anti david kid um but he just said every marvel movie is good except for this one whoa i don't know if i agree with him on that i don't either but i just thought that was interesting it is interesting number three at the box office he loved the bad guys though Is a film that I feel like George has seen. Sonic 2? Sonic the Hedgehog 2. He also loves it.

He was aghast that I had not seen it. Good movie. Knuckles is in it, for example. One evidence of it being good is that. Sure. Super Sonic? Yeah, he shows up. Yeah.

Number four at the box office is um a huge hit that everyone liked no it's a terrible franchise entry that's probably killed a franchise it's a terrible franchise entry probably i mean if they announce a fourth one i really will be like what are you guys doing but i watched it thinking like well maybe this thing kind of ends with a sort of like graceful note where they could have a sequel if it works or they could end here if they doesn't no it doesn't totally ends on a nothing note and uh you know there's like two more movies supposedly going to come oh oh oh oh oh unfortunately you're talking about the secrets of dumbledore i'm talking about fantastic beasts the secrets of dumbledore yes watch it on hbl max now let it slide over you right into the garbage number five the

definition of a jury duty franchise where even the people who are invested in it are like yeah i gotta go i got the notice in the mail there's a new fantastic beast movie coming at me for six months yeah number five of the box office is um we mentioned it uh dr strange's you know a surprise competition in the multiverse oh everything, everything, everywhere, all at once. Which is a genuinely delightful success at the box office. It's made $63 million domestically, which is pretty good. I don't love it as much as some, but I like it. I want to see it again.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty fantastic movie. I also want to see it again. We had a bad experience at the theater with loud people when we saw it saw it then yep uh which disrupted a little bit which i think fuck up no that's the thing i think i was like a little more heightened too oh yeah i i feel bad almost now the more i tell about it we don't have time it's okay we don't have time we all support you all right good um we have to do our ramey rankings oh and then i'm gonna run out of here and you guys can talk for as long as you like. But I got to see Elvis.

David has to see Elvis. Another thing, George amped by the Elvis trailer. Whoa. He's a star power. The guy sang songs. I know. And you had to explain the hip swing thing to him, right? Absolutely.

Didn't know Elvis was a real guy. No, did not know. All right. Here are my rankings. Number one, Spider-Man 2. Number two, Evil Dead 2. Number three, A Simple Plan. Okay. real guy no did not know all right here are my rankings number one spider-man 2 uh-huh number two evil dead 2 number three a simple plan okay and then i have number four evil dead number five quick and the dead uh-huh number six spider-man okay number seven drag me to hell number eight army of darkness that might be a little low number nine doctor strange 10 the gift Number nine, Doctor Strange. Ten, The Gift. Eleven, Spider-Man 3.

Twelve, For the Love of the Game. For Love of the Game. Thirteen, Crime Wave. And Oz sitting there at the bottom. Wow. So that's my list. I'm going to go pee. Okay, David's going to pee.

I'm trying to organize this. Patrick, do you have any Ramy submission thoughts as I... Ramy submission thoughts? Yeah, so I don't have a a tight ranking uh I didn't come in prep yeah I will say I have the same top three

as David in a different order uh I think that's pretty Raimi's like one of my guys yes I uh

I am I am I was very happy to be asked to be on this series I'm just like like like ever since like I was like I don't know

13 or so yeah he's been like one of my favorite directors um my my top one is evil dead 2 okay followed by spider-man 2 followed by a simple plan then i think i go drag me to hell oh oh yes yeah that's up pretty high after that then maybe spider-man 1 then army Then Army of Darkness. Then Quicken the Dead.

Then the first Evil Dead. I don't even know where I am now. Yeah, you're doing this all off-dome. I am. I haven't seen Oz since it was in theaters, and I barely remember it. It's shit. It should be at the bottom of the list.

We'll put that at the bottom, and then I'll say above that, For Love of the Game, then Crime Wave, then The Gift, then Spider-Man 3, then Doctor Strange. Did I do them all? They're not numbered, but I think I ranked all of them. I think you did. Am I forgetting one?

This is my ranking. I think I have them all. Evil Dead 2, number one. Spider-Man 2, Simple Plan. Then I go The Evil Dead. Spider-Man 2, simple plan. Then I go The Evil Dead, Spider-Man, Quick and the Dead, Drag Me to Hell. We have the same seven in a slightly different order. Right. Then Army of Darkness.

Then I go Spider-Man 3, rank higher than you. A little higher. For Love of the Game. Oh. Crime Wave. Oh. Then Doctor Strange. Whoa. Crime Wave, then Doctor Strange.

Okay, you had Doctor Strange. Then Gift and Oz. Am I forgetting anything? No, that's the full list. 14 movies. Yeah. Oz is the pits. Wait, what about the Quibi show?

Wow. With the golden arm. We don't have time for this. David has to go. You guys talk. Yeah, I know. I just want to say, I love Sam Raimi. I think he's really cool.

And it's been so much fun talking about his movies. And I want to make another movie in a year or two. Yes. That's mostly what I want out of this guy. Yeah. I want him back in the game. Get your juices flowing good. Do Doctor Strange fine.

Now give me some movies, buddy. It's like I texted you. Time's passing. Feels like a Raimi movie. That's all you need. And I was just like, this thing's going to make a buttload of money. And even if it's a little divisive, there are enough people who are so excited to see him doing his thing again that hopefully that will reinvigorate him and allow other people to give him money to do his thing. Patrick, it was lovely to see you.

You too. You guys talk as long as you want. I'll listen to the episode when it posts. I'll probably wrap it up. I don't know. I think you guys could talk for 10 more minutes, but I got to go. Bye. Enjoy Elvis.

What do we think? Is it going to be good? I'm into it. I hear it's deranged in good and bad ways. Yeah, sounds I gotta go. Bye. What do we think? Is it gonna be good? I'm into it. I hear it's deranged in good and bad ways. Yeah, sounds good. Bye. Look, I think we should end the episode. Oh, wait, can I ask one thing? Anything.

That's not about nerd shit at all. Is it about Ben? It's about Ben. Ben, do you have any congratulations shirts I can buy? Yeah. Because I see you like once a year sometimes through like a computer screen like the first time i was on the show and i'm very invested in congratulations and i'm just like i wanted i've wanted a shirt for years all right we'll make it

happen okay thank you and i swear i'll have stuff online available for purchase some fucking day yeah some fucking day uh patrick neither coconut yeah i i made a movie that also involves a multiverse yes uh with a you know a budget a tiny fraction of what this movie costs um and uh yeah uh it it's out there uh on it's on the streaming platform nebula it comes out i mean it is currently available it's currently out it's very silly uh and and and people should really watch i mean it is currently available it's currently out it's very silly uh and and and people should really watch i mean all of your videos but the the the hud sucker one in particular is such a good fucking coda thing i mean people were asking us why we didn't do hud

sucker as a bonus episode or at least that or whatever it's like you might do the coins you might do the cons but that's one of my favorite movies of all time and that sequence is the highlight and we are like the two lunatics who are like, let's talk about my favorite. It's my favorite. I would never argue it's the best, but it's my favorite. Yeah. It just like same for me. It's just like it ticks all my boxes for like these little things that I just that just like really connect with me on the blind check part of it where you're just like, I cannot let believe they let the Coens build a miniature New York City at this scale. And the thing that I love is similar to like what happened five years later with the Wachowskis.

Joel Silver comes in and is just like, I love you and I will protect you and let you do whatever you want. Right. But like Matrix makes sense on paper as like, if this works, this will be a huge blockbuster. And Hudsucker, you're just like, what's the version of this that you thought audiences would respond to? It's a movie that has the word Hudsucker in the title. Yes.

That was never going to be a hit. What a beautiful film to appear for this world. Thank you for being on the show. My pleasure. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for her social media help in putting the show together. AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing.

Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork I can feel my brain starting to shut down uh Layman covering the great American novel for our theme song go to blankcheckpod.com for links to all sorts of nerdy shit patreon.com slash blankcheck

for blankcheck special features where we're doing the Batman commentaries uh we've already announced this on twitter but for people who don't know next main series bob falsi it's gonna fucking rule and i'll say it we have insane guest book yeah it's wild it's you truly they're gonna be a couple stunners but uh one of my all-time favorite directors uh some of my favorite movies ever made uh really excited to finally talk about them one I've wanted to do

since almost the beginning of this show and so far we've done a few episodes they've all been a delight they've all been a delight Patrick I will tell you off mic who we have booked

do you know one of them I told you one of them you haven't told me any of them but I have a guess and I'll talk about it off mic but gonna be

fucking bangers that's that's that's the end of the episode. And as always, I just I'm going to put this out back into the universe again. I'm seriously in earnest starting the campaign now. It's not just idle thought anymore. I want to play Herbie in the Fantastic Four movie. in the Fantastic Four movie. Should we have a Dossier cue?

Like, Dossier time! We should have one, but is it that? No, I think it is that. Yes.