Blank Check with Griffin & David - Suicide Squad

Episode Date: August 6, 2016

On the day of it’s release in August of 2016, Griffin and David discussed DC Comic’s latest offering Suicide Squad. But did Jared Leto going so method for The Joker pay off? What’s up with Katana’s sword and does it by any chance capture souls? What’s this talk of Marvel paying off critics? Together the hosts examine Will Smith’s performance as Deadshot, Warner Bros. Pictures desperate strategy for the DC franchise and offer up their own ways to fix this mess of a movie. Plus, did Orlando Bloom stage his dick pics with Katy Perry and just how did the the lantern turn green for the Green Lantern?

Oh, I'm not gonna kill ya. I'm just gonna podcast ya. Really, really bad. Just great. Better than him. Better than the real thing. I've always said I should have been in the running. Even better than the real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Griffin Joker Newman. I'm David Enchantress Sims.

And with us, as always, is a man who goes by many names. Some people call him Producer Ben. Other people call him Slipknot. They call him Killer Croc. They call him El Diablo. El Diablo. Captain Boomerang. Sure.

They call him Rick Flag. They call him Amanda the Wall Waller. Who calls him Rick Flag? Everyone calls him Rick Flag. Fools walking down the street can't stop yelling out, Yo, Rick! I don's walking down the street. Can't stop yelling out, yo, Rick. I don't appreciate it. No. Don't call me Rick Flag. Do not call him Rick Flag.

Let me say this. He is not Katana. No. He is Professor Crispy. Is he Griggs? Who's Griggs? Ike Barinholtz. Oh, yeah, he's Griggs. Is he GQ Edwards? Yeah.

Scott Eastwood's character. Yeah, and of course, he's our own Harley Benn. Yeah. Oh, man. Hosley Quinn? Hosley Quinn? Hosley Quinn's okay. All right.

Hello, everyone. Liz and Joe and Ben Hosley. Here in the room with the two friends. Room where it happens. You're here. You're refreshing your podcast page. What? I thought this was an Elizabethtown episode.

What the what? Look, Desperate Times. Fucking, we had a meeting. We dialed up the red phone. We came to the Oval Office here at the UCB studios at 3 o'clock in the morning, and we said we must record Suicide Pod. Correct. This podcast is called Blank Check.

It's usually filmographies. We go through directors who have had early success, and then the way they cash in those checks that Hollywood gives them. Yeah, that's the truth. Whatever. But sometimes something comes up. And God, we'd be foolish if we didn't talk about this movie within its four days of relevancy. That's the thing.

Yes. That's the thing. Yes. That's the thing. No one's going to be talking about Suicide Squad two weeks from now. We're going to all have Pete's dragon fever. We're going to be Florence Foster Jenkins-ing all over town. All the Kubros are going to be out there, you know?

The people who are fans of Kubo and the Two Strings. I hear it's good. I hear it's a low-key charmer. I haven't seen it yet. Laika has yet to fail so far. Yeah. But today we're talking about the 2016 David Ayer motion picture, Suicide Squad.

Now I saw this movie at a press screening. Yeah, we're recording right now on Friday, the day that the film technically came out. It's out. It's out there. People are all suiciding all over town. You saw it this Monday? I saw it this Monday at a press screening. And, you know, I think I didn't think it was going to be great, but I didn't think it was

going to be what it was. And I came out of there and we were recording a podcast a little while later and I said, guys, we got to talk about this movie. So we're going to talk about the movie. Great story, right? Yes. I've seen some people online accusing us of avoiding Elizabethtown. They go, oh, Denim Invasion, Suicide Squad,

you're just pushing off the inevitable. Elizabethtown is in the can, baby. Yeah, we talked about it weeks ago. I was mad. Yeah. Yeah, he hated it. We bought a zoo already. Like, this is, we're just, we're pushing this in because we need to get it out there. But don't worry.

Elizabethtown is coming next Monday no matter what. No matter what. I wonder if there would be. What would cause us such another podmergency? If the cloud collapsed. Okay, that would be bad. I think Florence Foster Jenkins might surprise. Is that what it's called?

Oh, you're saying if we saw another thing in the next week that we had to talk about first? Yeah, exactly. If there was just something that blew our minds that bad. Yeah, FFJ might do that. Florence Podster Gencast. Do you even know what we're talking about, Mr. Ben Hosley? Florence Podster Gencast. It is a movie where Meryl Streep plays a lady, a real life person.

Based on a true story, much like Suicide Squad. That was, oh. Based on a true story. Wow. Who was famously bad at singing opera, but got to sing an opera? She's very wealthy, and her husband was very well connected, and he supported her in her dream of being an opera singer, despite the fact that she was objectively horrible. And she became he would like rent out venues for it and

she sort of became this cultural phenomenon that people would go to see like she was like the original room you know she was like the room i mean that sounds like a great underdog story yeah yeah exactly yeah someone bought her way all the way to Carnegie Hall. Yeah. Yeah. It shows you that the little person can make it in this world. Yeah. But I don't like the little guy. No. No you like the big guy. That's true.

Yeah you do like the big guy. Were there any big enough guys? There was a pretty big guy. Oh there was a big guy. We'll talk about the big guy. Okay. So David saw it when we were getting ready to record our We Bought a Zoo episode. He came in and was explaining to us how bad it was.

I said, I can't see it being as, like, and I'd read the reviews. The reviews had cracked at that point. And I was like, see, I look at the trailer and it doesn't look that exciting to me. But I can't see it being a calamity to the degree that you're explaining. The stakes seem so much lower, too. You know, you've got a Batman versus Superman that, you know, you've got two very well-known characters. You're having them, you know, like, you've got a lot to-known characters. You've got a lot to do there.

Aside from the Joker and Harley Quinn, you're dealing with characters that no one's going to be upset if you fuck them up in the same way. And they haven't really been depicted that much popularly. There's some hardcore fans who are going to be invested in Harley Quinn or whoever.

But, you know. Joker and Harley Quinn or whoever but like you know I mean you know Joker and Harley Quinn are the main two and the other two it's a Captain Boomerang most people you know they don't know from Captain Boomerang yeah there's so many jokes one could make but the main thing to say about Captain Boomerang is no one's ever heard of him so you said that to us

Ben and I went I guess we gotta see this thing we went last night at the time we were recording this we're like 14 hours off the film. And we saw it with the three hosts of Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood. Great podcast. Great friends. Yes.

Two of them have appeared on this podcast. We'll get the third one. Yeah, we'll get him. We'll get him at some point. We need to find a movie that he wants to talk about. There just needs to be. Yes. It'll happen.

But we saw it with the three of them. So it was five dudes who on a weekly basis yell about movies on a podcast. True, true. Seeing this movie together, which was a pretty good experience. And three of whom, and I'm probably going to lump you in here, are really invested in Will Smith's career. Yeah, you can lump me in there. Four people. Are you invested?

How do you feel about Will Smith's career, Ben? Yeah, right. So four. Four. You like Will Smith, but you don't keep yourself up at night worrying about his next choice. I do not. I think the four of us do. I think Gerard, James, John, and I.

All three of them have J names. It took me that long to realize that. It took you that long to realize that? Yeah, J. John Jameson. Okay, so we all have now seen the film Suicide Squad. Correct. Where do I start? Did not like, would not watch again.

Right, F. Yeah, F. F minus. F minus. Bad. But we're not just here to pile up on it because this, you know, in the same way our- It would be easy to. It would be very easy to.

And we, you know, we're going to take some do-dos on certain elements of this show. But I think the- Most elements. The reason we're so fascinated by this and that we want to talk about it, even though it doesn't really fit into the narrative of what our show usually is, the same reason we want to do this, you know, that lost emergency episode for BVS, DOJ, in 4DX, is because there's never really been anything like the way Warner Brothers is going about trying to construct this DC universe, cinematic universe. Right.

And how much they are failing every single step of the way. Right. That it's kind of like the most high profile, high budget, years long calamity that has ever happened in the film industry, I would say. It could prove to like, I mean, they make money least, these movies. They don't make enough, perhaps, but they at least probably earn their money back. I mean, I think barely. The thing they threw out for Batman v Superman was it needed to hit $850 million to break even.

It did. I wrote about this for The Atlantic this week. I mean, the thing, the new, I wrote about this for The Atlantic this week. I write for TheAtlantic.com. The new margin for these things is a billion dollars. That's like kind of a nice, big profitable mark you want to hit. But what's insane is with these DC movies,

it's not even like, oh, that's where we get a big profit. It's like that's the point where you get any sort of substantial profit. Yeah. At $850, they're like cutting their losses, you know? At like $900, they'd be like, okay, we're not sweating it. And at a billion, they're like, okay, we made some money. It takes a billion to make some money for these movies.

The movies tend to cost, I've been looking into this, they cost about $350 to $400 million to make and market. And a studio know you can go by the rule of thumb that they take about half of the money a movie makes yes in china which is now the second biggest market they only get 25 percent because uh that chinese government but this movie may not even be coming out in china i think this movie was banned china doesn't like suicide i heard that they're not they don't like ghosts yes don't like ghosts. Yes. So Ghostbusters, Crimson Peak, a lot of movies don't get to make it into the Chinese market. I read that Warner Brothers changed the title.

This movie kind of has a ghost, too. I mean, Enchantress is sort of ghosty. Yeah, and they got a ghost sword. And a ghost sword, sword with a ghost. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. Whether you'd even pick up on that watching the movie without paying close attention, I don't know. I don't know.

It'd be tough to pick up on the scene where he goes, this is Katana. Her sword captures souls when she cuts them. Inside the sword is the soul of her dead husband. You might be wondering why she's talking to her sword. Well, let me tell you. I like that Katana in this movie is kind of just the bowler

from Mystery Men. Yeah, right. What do you mean? Mystery Men. Good movie. That's a good movie. Good movie. No, but, right, right. What do you mean? Mystery Men. Good movie. That's a good movie. Good movie. No, but what I was going to say was, oh, I read today that in submitting the film

to the Chinese board, film board, Warner Brothers changed the title because they were like, Suicide Squad's never going to fly. That's a no-go. So they're calling it X question mark, question mark, question mark. X question mark, three question marks.

I swear to God. Because in the film, the technical name for Suicide Squad is Task Force X. Yeah, Task Force X. And they're calling it X? Even Task Force X would be a better title. Yeah, but it's X? So, as we've been saying yeah you've got this Marvel movie franchise

right Marvel Cinematic Universe yes it's doing very well for itself it hums along spitting out a couple movies a year yeah they do well

they tend to be well liked by critics yes you know there's a spectrum there but they tend to be pretty you know get a pretty hearty thumbs up so then they

make The Armanis Steel with Zack Snyder's Superman. Doesn't do that well. Well, an important thing to throw out is DC at the time that Marvel was like clocking away, even when not Marvel Studios but just Marvel was licensing out to other studios and all those films were doing well,

DC only succeeds in getting off the ground the three Nolan Batman movies, right? and those are great but nolan is an artist you know and he's very controlling over his property and he didn't want other heroes coming into it no so that wasn't gonna happen right they try to do the one off with green lantern which was them very much trying to do like an old marvel movie where just here's one hero and his own thing. It's an origin story. Didn't work. No.

But they were going by the formula that was test it. Yeah. They just failed at it. How did his lantern turn green? It was always green. What do you think Green Lantern's about? That's the color of will or hope or whatever. It's a hope?

It's like imagination? I'm not very good on Green Lantern. Yeah. That's the color of will or hope or whatever. It's a hope? It's like... Imagination? I'm not very good on Green Lantern. Yeah. The concept of the movie is that he gets a Green Lantern, not that he's a guy with a lantern that magically turns green. That's what I always thought. So you think he's just like... He has a lantern.

He's just your regular old lantern man. He's a lantern man. Just a guy with a lantern. One of those lantern men. His lantern turned green. I swear, I always thought that. No, no, the concept of green lanterns, an alien lands in his backyard and goes, hey, you want a present?

Here is a green lantern. Plug this ring into it, and ooh. He's given the lantern pre-greened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm glad we clarified. All right, so, but you know, they make Man of Steel. It's not a critical success. It doesn't make a ton of money, but for whatever reason, they decide.

But that was the thing. Dark Knight Rises ended, and they were like, okay, now we get into it. Now we're going to do the other ones. Oh, and they'd also tried to do Superman Returns, and that, we both agree, is a very underrated movie. But that's in the middle of the Nolan. But when Man of Steel was set up, it wasn't clear at that point that they were going to do an interconnected universe. No, no. point that they were going to do an interconnected universe. No. There were some little droppings, but it was like, that's very much a standalone movie

with some odd references to other characters. So, that's right. But they decide financial sort of success and critical sort of success, be damned, we're going in on this. Snyder! By all accounts,

they were already sort of prepping and breaking story on Man of Steel 2. Right, right. And the movie comes out early or late June. Yeah. By the time Comic-Con happens, which is a month later, the response to the film has been pretty mixed at best, right? Yeah. And it did well, but not like insanely well. But nonetheless, people are like, well, look, it's a franchise era and they're going to make another one.

I heard that they had the Hail Mary pass idea to do Batman vs. Superman five days before Comic-Con. Because they wanted to announce it there and get everyone pumped up. What were you going to say? Well, yeah, it was 2013. Yeah, it was a simpler time. And all they did at Comic-Con, apart from I guess talk about Man of Steel, was

Zack Snyder was like, and by the way, click. And they'd just play a video that was just the Superman logo and the Batman logo. And he was like, we can't talk about anything else right now because it's still early stages. And the early stages was like, in the last 100 hours, we've decided this is what we're doing. Right. And then Batman versus Superman comes out and we talked about it. And you can listen to snippets of that conversation. Yes.

In a past episode that were recovered from a mangled core by our great producer. It's a lost episode but it's a little bit out there. We have our thoughts on that but let's move past that. But then they also, on the schedule, when they planned out this they put Suicide Squad on the schedule. Very early on, which was surprising. Very early. They were like, and you know what we're also going to have is a Suicide Squad on the schedule. Very early on, which was surprising. Very early. They were like, and you know what we're also going to have is a Suicide Squad.

And everyone was like, Suicide Squad? You're leading with that? Curveball. Yeah. Curveball? Because already DC was eschewing the trend, or at least the format that Marvel had set up of like, you're going to set up each of the characters in their standalone movie,

and then you get to the Avengers. You know? Yeah. All in due time. Like long game, sort of like patient play. Marvel was very careful after, I would say, an early misstep in Iron Man 2. Yes. Where it seemed like, you know,

they were just kind of messing with the movie to kind of set things up. And then they were like, okay, well, you know, there'll be Thor, and there'll be Captain America, you know, you're going to get to know everybody, and then we'll do it in Avengers, and then they're all going to be there. But let's also say, like,

that was probably the biggest gamble in the history of filmmaking. We talked about it on the BVS. Yeah because Marvel went out on their own went to Merrill Lynch. Yeah we've talked about that. Got a two billion dollar loan to self-finance their own movies and and if they had failed if the movies had failed or even like three of the five had failed. We talked about this exact thing. Did it make the Lost Cut episode, though? It did? Okay, I don't know if it made it. I just think it's insane to point out

that if those movies had failed or even a couple of them had failed and they had lost money, those characters would have defaulted to Merrill Lynch. Right. That was the nature of the deal was Merrill Lynch would have gotten control of Iron Man, Hulk.

All that stuff. Right, which is insane. They took a big risk and it paid off, like, hugely, right? And you get to the Avengers and it's like, well, now we don't have to

set up each character separately, which really ties into what we're talking about here today. Indeed. You can just make a movie where you hit the ground running and it's just about

what's it like if these characters are together. We know who they are individually. What's the movie about them being together? So, but they put this on the schedule and according to recent reporting, which you can read in the hollywood reporter uh-huh uh david ayre who had directed like end of watch he directed the war movie fury

what else i thought it was called furry uh he did uh street king did street kings a while back not not great did you do harsh times he did harsh Times as well. So he's kind of- And did Sabotage. That movie is fucking weird. Yeah, he's a weird filmmaker. But he mostly does these very gritty, very male films. He wrote Training Day, which was his big thing. He wrote The Fast and the Furious, my friend.

Yes. He was one of the writers on the original Fast and the Furious. He was kind of like, he wrote Dark Blue, he wrote SWAT, he wrote these sort of gritty crime dramas, very street level LA set stuff. He's ex-military, he's very into sort of machismo, weaponry. Loves guns. He loves guns. Dude fucking loves guns. But he's not my favorite filmmaker.

He's not mine either, but I find him to be a very interesting filmmaker. Some movies he's made have been at least interesting. Others... He has a sense, a visual sense at least. I am interested by the films of his that I don't like. He kind of grosses me out a little bit. He does too, but it's an interesting voice. He's a particular voice. He's tapped as the writer-director and he has six

weeks to write the script. Because they are so strapped for time because they put this on the schedule. So that's problem A. Which maybe. That's not great. Give them a little time. Especially as complicated a movie as this.

Creatively, for the sake of your larger universe, maybe don't put Suicide Squad before, you know, Wonder Woman and The Flash and Justice League. Like, there's this whole thing about this movie exists to try to subvert the formula. Right. And it's like the formula doesn't even exist yet. Not that the films are too similar, right? But the idea when Guardians of the Galaxy which not that the films are too similar right but the idea that Guardians of the

Galaxy. No they are. Well they Guardians of the Galaxy also had the marketing hook of like these are the worst you know like these are

the worst heroes we got. This is a ragtag group that shouldn't even be together. And that was like the 10th Marvel movie at that point.

Yeah. That was when they did their curveball. Right. Essentially. So we already like had a formula established to subvert. Suicide Squad is subverting something that hasn't been established yet.

It's also making a movie about how crazy is it these villains have to be the good guys when we haven't even seen them be bad guys yet. That's the other problem. Which is such a fundamentally flawed concept. The movie keeps having to be like, they're the bad guys. But to have this be the third film in your universe is insane. And they don't even seem that bad because, yeah, like you said, they're just sort of rude. They're all rude.

And they also all have tragic backstories that make it clear why they do what they want to do. Or do what they have to do. Not Captain Boomerang, though. Hey, he's pretty tragic. He loves unicorns too much. What's that? I don't know. All right.

The unicorn thing bugged me because they obviously thought they were being cute, but it doesn't matter. They were trying to get directors to come in with interesting takes on DC properties. Apparently, David Ayer came in, had an idea for Suicide Squad. They liked it. They were like, great, let's put it on the schedule. Sure, he gave them this pitch. They put it on the schedule. And also, I don't think they were near being ready for Wonder Woman.

No. So they wanted another movie this year. They put it on the schedule. And also, I don't think they were near being ready for Wonder Woman. No. So they wanted another movie this year. They wanted a second DC movie in 2016. Suicide Squad. How are they coming up with the schedule? I imagine them in a boardroom throwing darts. I think so. Well, it's this weird thing where it's like... Ben, I think so.

It's a lot like, can we do like June 6, 2017? Ah, Marvel's already got something there. It's a lot of planting flags and then maybe moving flags around and then filling those gaps up. It sounds like a lot more effort went into that. Than making the films? Yeah. Than writing them at the very least. The productions seem difficult, but the writing seems to be very quick.

No, there is this thing now where there's squatters rights where all these studios, okay, Disney knows they're going to be making a Star Wars movie every year for the foreseeable future. So they've just planned their flag and been like, we have December 21st or thereabouts every year from here on out. Marvel knows they're making at least two movies a year. So Marvel is similarly staked out the dates. Right. But Marvel's not like putting the cart before the horse. They're just like, we're going to hold this table and we'll put something there.

Right. We have a lot of movies we're developing. We'll figure out what we put there later. But they have dates into like 2021, right? They do. And animation they do that with too because those films take a while to make. But DC was literally just like, okay, we have no films in pre-production. Let's map out dates for the next eight years and then come up with films to fill them in.

Oh, good. You know? That's a smart way to go about that. Because they're like, you know, a couple really coveted dates to launch like a big blockbuster and they wanted to just get some of them. Sure. But Suicide Squad got like pushed up way early in the production pipeline. So he had little time to make it. Yeah. And then he made it.

Yeah. He gets this big cast for it. Little time to write it. Little time to write it. Then he made it. Yeah. He gets this big cast for it. A little time to write it. A little time to write it. Then he made it. And I'm just going to really very rapidly recap the supposedly torture production reported by

The Hollywood Reporter and other sources. He made it and they didn't love his cut. They thought it was a little grim. Yeah. And then there was this trailer that like a trailer company made that was like all wacky with like Queen on the soundtrack. And they had like Hot Topic like flashing visuals. Yeah, Dayglo

like tattoos and stuff. And they were like, ooh, we like this. Because people liked that trailer. They were like, that looks fun. Unlike Batman vs. Superman, which was so dour. Well, this is the other thing. I think Warner's maybe getting a little nervous about how grim Batman vs. Superman was, how long

that movie was. Yes. So they go to the trailer company and say, why don't you make us a cut that's maybe a little more peppy? And they test airs and the trailer company's cuts simultaneously against audiences. The trailer cut wins. Which is insane. By all accounts, this is the first time in history. In Hollywood.

They've asked a marketing company to recut a movie to make it more like the marketing. But reportedly they keep Ayer around. They're always abiding by DGA rules. They're making sure he's the director. And he goes along with it. Maybe because he wants to make a Suicide Squad 2. I have no idea. He's already got his next movie set up at Netflix with a $100 million

budget with Will Smith. Yeah. But a lot of the battles the studio won. So the studio wants exposition leading with all these like crazy fun visuals, you know, so that's in there. Yeah. Like a lot of stuff like that. It's like file card, sort of like flash card kind of like quick stat info.

Like, you know, Killer Croc is a crocodile, loves to eat fish. He likes BET. Blah, blah, blah. But can I say something? Those quick flashes. Wiggles. Wiggles. Those quick flashes are so quick, I couldn't read all the shit.. Blah, blah, blah. But can I say something? Those quick flashes. Wiggles. Wiggles. Those quick flashes are so quick I couldn't read all the shit. No, no. You pick up

maybe one little joke and then maybe. They have like 40 things written on each still frame. Well, it's doing that like more is more, right? Just like overload, overload. And so, and then it's also, this wasn't specific in the, but it's also pretty obvious that they were like, let's file this down as short as we can.

Yes. Which it shows. It's a little incoherent. And they did a lot of reshoots. I don't know where the reshoots were. They did some reshoots. We don't know. The movie feels ramshackle, but it isn't like, I mean, because the rumor at the time was like, oh, they're going to add in more jokes.

The movie doesn't have any jokes, so it doesn't feel like they added in a couple funny scenes. I don't know where the reshoots were. The scenes that I've been hearing chatter about, the stink of reshoots are like the bar scenes. Which is probably the best scene in the movie by default. Whatever. I wasn't a fan of that scene. I'm not a fan of any scene in the movie,

but I think it's the one that comes closest to working by its own relative merits. I don't know. I don't know what they reshot. They certainly added stuff in. I don't know. But anyway. So here it is.

Can I point out a couple other things? And it's going to make a lot of money. Yes. Well, it already last night did $20 million. At the time we're recording this, it's looking to make about $140 million opening weekend. By the time this episode drops, you'll know how much it made and we'll be crying. I'd like to point out a few more things to contextualize. Shoot.

Because I think this movie is a weird case. One is that Suicide Squad, because I hear a lot of people going like, well, I don't know. I haven't read the comics. Like, what's Suicide Squad like in the comics? Suicide Squad was never a big title. No, but it got revamped recently, right? Yeah.

It was created in the 70s. It was always just sort of a great idea, which was make a dirty dozen with bad guys. Yeah. It was kind of like the Thunderbolts in Marvel. Yes. Yeah. But it was, you know, in the 70s and 80s, it had like short runs. It was always kind of a cult property.

They revived it. Revoived it? They revived it. Is Captain Boomerang here? I almost called him Captain Kangaroo. Captain Kangaroo Garam? They revived it recently and the new version, which now featured Harley Quinn,

was very popular. This, I mean, movie A, the lineup in this film is not reflective of any lineup that's ever existed in any version of the comics. Is that true? I don't know. That's true. They're now doing a new Suicide Squad run with this exact team. But a lot of these characters have never been part of the Suicide Squad.

They certainly have not been part of the Suicide Squad at the same time. But they have existed as villains. In DC. In various comic book films. I just wanted to clarify that. And this movie does not in any way loosely or tightly adapt any specific storyline from the comic books. Fair enough.

Even more so than most comic book movies we're getting now where it's like Civil War is like 25% based on the Civil War miniseries, but really its own thing. And they threw some other stuff in there. Right. This movie doesn't even have a starting point of what it's riffing off of. I think you just came in with this idea. And this is the big thing. The DC Universe films are so much trying to define themselves in opposition to what Marvel's doing. I guess so, yeah.

They're succeeding in that they're defining themselves as bad. Yeah. Right, which is kind of the problem. And let's make it clear. Okay, so David, you and I both are Marvel guys. I'm more, when I was a kid, read a lot of Marvel comics, didn't read as many DC comics. Those are the characters we care more about. That's fair.

With the current spat of Marvel films, I think you and I are both kind of mixed on them. I mean, some of them we love. Some of them we don't care for at all. Yeah. I have a lot of problems with what they're doing to the film industry at large. Agreed. As seen in this film and the interconnected universal monsters, you know, like cinematic universe and all this shit. All these Marvel universes.

And I think the Marvel movies- Get ready for the Lego Ninjago movie. Yeah, right? I think the Marvel movies are also getting to a point where they're starting to collapse under their own weight. I think the universe is becoming a little too big. I mean, the thing about it is, I didn't particularly like Captain America Civil War.

We both saw it and enjoyed it while we were watching it, and I've disliked it more the more I think about it. The more I think about it, I didn't particularly like it when I saw it. We watched it, we were both fine with it. We were fine with it. There were elements, obviously, that I enjoyed, like Spider-Man, and there's good stuff. There's good stuff in it, yeah. And were fine with it. There were elements, obviously, that I enjoyed, like Spider-Man.

There's good stuff. There's good stuff in it, yeah. And yet, I didn't really like it, and yet, I got to admit, certainly one of the better blockbusters of the season. Probably the best I've seen this summer, by default. Oh, I would put it way behind two movies. Which are your two? Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond.

I haven't seen Star Trek Beyond yet. I'm seeing it tomorrow as of this recording. Those are the two I actually liked a lot. Yeah, I'd say Ghostbusters. Oh, I liked Neighbors too. That's kind of, that doesn't quite count. Yeah, you're right.

I'd probably put Ghostbusters and then Civil War. Sure. And Ghostbusters is even still a movie I have a lot of grievances with. Interesting. I have like no,

I think I'm like at the highest possible. I thought that was like great. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I mean, I just think the one thing that no one's really talked about with Ghostbusters is that the Ghostbusters are women, which I don that was, like, great. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I mean, I just think the one thing that no one's really talked about with Ghostbusters

is that the Ghostbusters are women, which I don't... That was a problem. That was a problem. You know, the whole time I was like... Because usually they're men. But isn't that weird that no one's talking about that? Yeah. No, in all seriousness...

Oh, speaking of penises. Oh, yeah. Okay, can we do a little penis report? We got it. Okay. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do- penis report We got it okay Just some setup There are people in my life who know That I'm talking about Cameron Crowe movies right now

There are people in your life who know that you talk about Forced by me Talk about dicks I usually initiate the conversation Yes in the podcast I like to talk about dicks just fine Especially leading men Showing their dicks just fine. Yeah. Especially leading men showing their dicks because we say all women have to show nudity.

All actresses end up doing nude scenes at some point or another. Very, very few exceptions. But men aren't showing those wings. Our male movie stars aren't showing those wings. Orlando Bloom. Oh, I haven't seen this. Oh, oh, Ben.

Ben. I'm going to have to load it. Ben, Ben. So Orlando Bloom is currently dating Katy Perry. They're on some romantic getaway in the tropics together. He was caught on the beach with a fully clothed Katy Perry. Sure. No, no, no.

She's like in a swimsuit. Well, a bikini. I don't know. Fully clothed. That's as dressed up as women get, right? As a bikini? Mm-hmm. Sure.

Terrible, awful, the worst. Yeah, I don't really know what the... So first there were these pictures of Orlando Bloom in the nude. Uh-huh. Paddle boarding. With a black box over his genitals. And who knows if the black box is indicative? We can't tell how big it is.

Well, also maybe his penis is a black square. We don't know. We don't know. We haven't seen it before. But then it turned out that it wasn't, that he has a pretty regular male organ, sex organ. Now, let's say this. The thing we're stumping for on this podcast regularly is dicks in movies. Yeah, no, we like dicks in movies.

We want movies to show dicks. I don't love the idea of a paparazzi sneaking up on the beach, getting a picture of a wang and exposing it to everybody. I think he's being very deliberate. I kind of do, too. For one, I mean, he's literally just like walking around. He's like tugging on it. He's in like four locations. When we say he was paddle boarding, he was using that as the oar.

It's important to mention. But I just want to get on a soapbox a little bit, too, because I'm tired of pretty penises all the time. What about crooked dicks? What about chokes? Well, Ben, you're not going to be happy with this dick. I'll say that.

It's quite an attractive dick. This is a pretty perfect looking dick. That's the problem with Hollywood. You're really seeing an erect... Well, actually... He looks like a semi-flats. Yeah.

Ooh. That's a nice big dick. That's the thing. It feels like he was kind of batting it around a little bit so that it was at like 15%. Oh, I get it though.

I think he was trying... A partial sauce? I've heard this batted around on the internet that he knew that there were paps around taking pictures of his lady. His career is not at its peak right now. He's getting some press. What does he even do?

Is he in movies? He rubs his dick. I've seen this theory around that he was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to whip it out and then they'll leave her alone and they'll just be taking pictures of me. Oh, that's interesting. And also, I'll get some nice publicity. Well, that's the other thing.

He might be thinking, you know what? I got a nice looking dick. I mean, that's the thing. It's pretty inarguable at this point. It is a very nice looking dick. We're talking size. We're talking form. We're talking angles.

Is he manscaping? Yeah, no, We're talking size. We're talking form. We're talking angles. Is he manscaping? Yeah, no, it's pretty trim. It's pretty trim. Nice. Now, the thing is, we already have recorded the Elizabethtown episode, as we previously mentioned. This is coming right in between Denim Invasion and Elizabethtown. Here we go.

Here we go. It's coming in between the two Orlando Bloom, Cameron Crowe. There we go. Okay, Ben is currently looking at the penis. There's one. And he's nodding. He's nodding solemnly. He's got a sly smirk coming across his face.

We've got two images out of many. Okay, shaking his head, but it looks like he's nodding. He's nodding solemnly. He's got a sly smirk coming across his face. We've got two images out of many. Okay, shaking his head, but it looks like he respects the dick. I'm going to say the coloring of it is surprising. Well, no, if you see now, you come see the thing. It's just his shadow is making it look darker than it is. If you see, it's actually just a regular white man's dick. I'm not going to lie. We should mention it is a white man's dick because we didn't know, much like we didn't

know whether or not his penis was a black box until now, we didn't know if his dick was Japanese. Who knows? If it was Haitian, but he does in fact have a Caucasian dick. He also has a very lame looking circular sort of tattoo on right above, sort of right next to his treasure trail there. Yeah, not doing his dick any favors. No.

No. You want clean lines leading dick any favors. No. No. You want clean lines leading to the dick. Also... Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's weird. You want clean lines drawing your attention, your eyes to the dick. So, anyway, I think that's enough,

but I think that was a good little digression on Orlando Bloom's penis. It has nothing to do with Suicide Squad. The penis report. It's an interesting question because, you know, obviously, like, people get very worked up

about, like, stolen pictures of celebrities. Of course. You know, I don't know. It's a weird line. Like, can we all just, like, go have fun

looking at his dick? I think we can. I think the weirder thing, this manipulation where celebrities and their publicists are, like, making up stuff.

Yeah. Like, so that then gossip like making up stuff. Yeah. Like so that then gossip places pick it up. And like if that is something that he did like purposely, I mean, I'm sure you guys are joking, but like even they throw around. No, I'm not really joking. I think it's entirely within the realm of possibility. Like the Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian thing is just a farce. And like, it's just for like press and publicity.

It's so weird. At one element, it's a farce. Either like she was lying before for publicity or this feud now is for publicity. And the amount of, you know, I'm not going to say anything on Mike, but the amount of couples that I have, you know, as someone on the very, very far out peripheries of like the entertainment industry, the amount of relationships I've had confirmed to me were just publicity stuff. Just made up. Yeah, just very well covered. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson?

Yes. That's crazy. Yeah. Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan. They just did it for the headlines. All these bullshit Hollywood relationships, you know? Yes. Good looking dick, relationships. You know? Yes. Good looking dick though.

Nice dick. Okay. Alright. Suicide Squad. So the film begins with Amanda Waller. No it doesn't. The film begins with Deadshot in prison. This is important because they introduce Deadshot three times in a row. They introduce Deadshot like eight times. And they give him a flashback

near the beginning and then they give him another one like in the middle of the movie. Okay, this is what I'm getting to, okay? So the very opening of the film is Deadshot in a prison cell. Yeah, punching a bag. Right. And I believe he's talking to Ike Barinholtz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The great by Ike Barinholtz

who I think is actually good in this movie. He's fine. He gives some personality which a lot of the other actors, you know, are not able to do within the conf good in this movie. He's fine. He gives some personality, which a lot of the other actors are not able to do within the confines of this film. Yeah, he gives some personality, and then his character literally disappears. Disappears. After being ominously threatened.

After being told, like, you're in trouble. What? I know. I know I'm like, oh, there's going to be some Joker torture scene with Ike Barinholtz. No. Well, you have the scene where he's rubbing his head, and then they just cut out of there.

Yeah. No. It doesn't happen. Nothing happened. Okay, Ike Barinh where he's rubbing his head, and then they just cut out of there. Yeah, yeah, no. It doesn't happen. Nothing happened. Okay, Ike Barinholtz and him are talking, and Will Smith is like, I swear to God, when I get out of there, I'm going to, like, fucking shoot you. And he's like, prove it. It's like an intimidation scene.

He's trying to get him to freak out, and then they show him being pulled out of the jail cell and, like, beaten by the guys, right? Right. Then we cut to, and what song is playing? I don't remember all these fucking music cues, but it's, Then we cut to, and what song is playing? I don't remember all these fucking music cues, but every new character introduction comes with an obnoxious needle drop.

I mean, this is probably already been talked about. So I rarely take notes during movies. Oh, you took some notes. Of one thing, I wanted to keep a tally of the number of pop songs used in the film. There's so many. There are 18 used in the film. And let's many. There are 18 used in the film. And like, let's not even talking about the soundtrack for the film, which includes a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody

by Panic at the Disco. Are you kidding me? I am not kidding you. I am not kidding you. There are 18, like, needle drops in this movie. Yeah, like the budget for music rights must be crazy. Because they're all big songs. Yeah, no.

Of those 18 drops Every single one of them is the song Happy Birthday. Go ahead. Of those 18 drops 10 of them are in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Right, right, right. Which means you're essentially getting a song every 3 minutes. And it's Like one song will play out in its entirety. And they're cut off. No, no.

Some of them cut off and it's like There'll be 30 seconds of silence and then they start another song. You don't own me. That's the second scene we get is Harley Quinn in the cell and they're talking to her and they're like, man, you're pretty, but you're all kinds of fucking crazy inside. Right. We get it.

It's crazy. Okay. Then we cut to Amanda Waller. And what feels like it was supposed to be the beginning of the movie. Maybe. I don't know. Or maybe it's going to be 25 minutes in in one cut. Like maybe i don't know or maybe it's gonna be 25 minutes in in one cut like i don't know my read is they put the harley quinn and deadshot scenes in before the amanda waller

stuff because they were like the audience is here to see will smith and harley quinn the movie definitely buys into those two characters as the stars of the movie let's give it to them as quickly as possible i would say like the movie had a dollar. Yes. Right? And it spent 45 cents on each of them. Tosses like five cents to Viola Davis

like a couple cents to Rick Flagg and then it tries to split the last cent between all the other characters. It's like uh oh we've only got one cent left like ah

let's smash it into pieces. You posted online that the movie reminds you of Mulaney's joke about the birthday sign which we referenced before in this podcast because it's such a good metaphor.

It's such a good joke of trying to write a happy birthday sign and being, a big ass H, a big ass A. Oh, no. And then you do the P where one P is under the first P. And then you go to the second line and you're like, God, don't worry about it. It'll be fine. I haven't learned anything.

A big ass B. It's such a good joke. That joke is better than Suicide Squad. No question. I would watch that joke end to end. Yeah. Like stretched out to the Suicide Squad length more than I'd like to watch Suicide Squad again. So the first three minutes of this film just feel like a montage.

They feel like a trailer. Yeah. It's just jumping from one thing to another. A lot of quick cut assemblages of different things. So it's this lady, Amanda Waller, played by Viola Davis. In the film's best performance. I guess so. I think.

I wouldn't say so. I said to Ben the second movie ended, I think she's actually good in this movie. I don't agree. But. I think she's actually good in this film. I think she's holding her own. Ben also was surprised that I was that abusive. I would say Will Smith is easily the best performance in the film. He's just such a movie star. I think she's holding her own. Ben also was surprised that I was that abusive. I would say Will Smith is easily the best performance

in the film. He's just such a movie star. I just think... Yeah, man. I think he's kind of on autopilot, and I don't say that in a negative way because it's just like

he so naturally can do these things. Not that he's not trying, but that it's like it's safe zones for him. Yeah. I thought Harley Quinn, I don't know the actress's name. Margot Robbie.

Margot Robbie. I thought she was great. I thought she was okay. I was fairly disappointed by her performance because I'm a big fan of hers. I like her. I've liked- Of course, she and Will Smith were together in the film Focus. Which she's excellent in.

Yeah, which is a fun little romp. Yeah, it's like a movie that's really elevated by two insane megawatt movie star performances. It's an okay film. In an okay little caper. It's like an okay little caper, but you like a movie that's really elevated by two insane megawatt movie star performances. In an okay little caper. It's like an okay little caper, but you have two movie stars. You have one guy who we've known as a movie star for 20 years, and a new exciting player on the scene holding her own against Will Smith. And also maybe the only major Hollywood film to have an interracial romance that isn't the plot point. Sure.

And that is that sexualized. What about Bringing down the house? Just joking. I just wanted to bring up that movie again. I wanted to bring down that movie again. Yeah, bring it down. You brought down this house. In shame. Great. This is a very

as Will Smith called it on the red carpet, a rainbow cast in Suicide Squad. In which everyone plays into the worst stereotypes possible. Yes, indeed. Yep. But anyway. Oh, no, but I was just going to say,

I went into this film thinking, I don't think I'm going to like it, but I can't see Margot Robbie not working as Harley Quinn. She's a great movie star. It's really smart casting. There's a lot of excitement about that character.

They clearly put a lot of attention to it. And I put a little bit of the blame on her. Not blame, but I was a little underwhelmed by her performance. A lot of it is I just think this movie mishandles the character so greatly. And not just in terms of fidelity to the source material, but in terms of functioning as a character on its own in this movie.

Yeah, that's all totally fair. I think she's fine. She's got some presence. Yeah. Everything's bad in this movie. Will Smith's an amazing movie star. Viola Davis I think actually does a good job. I think she's fine. She's got some presence. Yeah. Everything's bad in this movie. Will Smith's an amazing movie star. Viola Davis, I think, actually does a good job. I don't agree. I think Viola Davis is folding her arms. You know, she's fine. Oh, boy, can she fold them now. She folds her arms great.

She's one of the best folds in the biz. I would say she's given roughly 20 to 30 better performances. I'd agree, but that's, I think, more a testament to how many good performances she's given. I think this is on the low end of her. I think she can make really great stuff out of bad material, such as the film Doubt. She's very good in that.

Such as the film The Help. Yes, sure. Great, great. Poop Pie the movie. Right, yes. Poop Pie the picture. I would say in this, she is very flinty and hard-edged and folds her arms. And then she does more of that.

And then she's in another scene and her arms are folded and she's real mean. And then she pops back in for a new scene where her arms are folded. And then she shoots 80 people or whatever for one second. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. No, let's go ahead and get ahead of ourselves. There's like 20 minutes of the film, 15 minutes or so, that's like Viola Davis at dinner eating the shit out of some steak. Very nice looking, delicious

steak. In a restaurant that I'm gonna assume she owns. I like the idea of her character on the side owning a fancy restaurant. Because no one else is in the restaurant. No one else is in it. There are like three scenes in this restaurant. The end credits scene happens at the same restaurant, right? It does. She's really like ciphering that steak, right? Yeah. She's really like

cyphering that steak, so to speak. Oh, yeah. She's Joey Pansing that steak. It's a handsome steak. It's a handsome steak. Much like Cypher's steak.

Very well photographed, looks delicious, she eats it well. Maybe most of my compliments for the film, yes. Her performance might be the steak eating

is really exemplary and I haven't seen such good staking since her boy Joey Pansing. He put a pair of pants on it. No kidding, me too. and I haven't seen such good staking since our boy Joey Pants. He put a pair of pants on it.

No kidding, me too. It's always funny. Always funny. So it's now her sitting with David Harbour, the great David Harbour. Good actor. Wonderful character actor, and another gentleman. Some military guys. They're government officials, and her opening line is, you know, like the world's changed since Superman's gone.

And you see a dude selling dead Superman t-shirts outside. And it's like, okay, this movie's really in the wake of the last film. Right. When Superman died. It takes place weeks after the end of Batman v Superman. And you all remember at the end of Batman v Superman when Superman died, and it hit us so hard emotionally because we all believe that Superman is actually truly dead. Even though Henry Cavill is announced in the cast of the Justice League movie.

Yeah, because they're not going to make a fucking Justice League movie without Superman! Wait, Superman isn't dead? What the fuck? You were so moved when he died. When he died, did the Rumble seats, like, did they make you cry in some way? Did they cut onions for you? They stabbed you in the heart.

Why didn't, did you? They should do some money in shopping onions for you? They stabbed you in the heart. Why didn't... Did you... They should do some money in shopping. We should have seen this in 4DX. You guys should have seen this in the Rumble. That's what it's called. Right, 4DX. You're right.

We should have seen it in the Rumble. We should have seen this in 4DX. It would have been the constant smell of gasoline or whatever. Yeah, or shit. Just fucking diarrhea piped into the theater. This movie feels like being in a room filled with diarrhea. Really? So she's...

Or, no, gunpowder. That would have been perfect for a movie theater. Or, like, fucking used condoms, because the Suicide Squad's so wicked. Yeah, or dead pigs. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so Amanda Waller is in this fucking restaurant, and she's like, the thing, I just have to point this out, because this drives me insane.

Point it out. She goes like, you know, Superman's gone. We don't have someone to fight for us. Sure. We're lucky. Now that we live in a world with metahumans, the first big guy we got, Superman, happened to align with our politics. Sure.

But what if the next guy doesn't? Right. And she's essentially saying we need to create a backup plan. A deterrent. Right. Something that is capable of combating someone as powerful as Superman if they decide to fight against us. Right.

Excuse me, the last two movies were about how much the government hated Superman. Right. But then he sacrificed himself to stop the poop monster. But she says, like, we're lucky that his politics aligned with ours. The first movie ends with him taking a satellite out of the sky and being like, I don't fucking work for you. Right.

I'll do what I want to do. Fuck you. And the second movie is people, like, vandalizing a statue. Yeah, no, I don't fucking work for you. I'll do what I want to do. Fuck you. And the second movie is people vandalizing a statue. Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. I think in retrospect, she's like, you know what? Well, that's the thing. She should be like, you know what? We didn't handle Superman the best.

That's exactly what she should say. In retrospect, he was a good guy. But we're going to handle it better next time. You know how? There's this prison. And it's full of jerks. Put it in a hole and I threw away the hole. Which is the dumbest line of dialogue

I have ever heard. Bar none. There's so many lines like that that I threw away the hole. That's like the whole movie is those lines. Put him in a hole and I threw away the hole. Um, so she's like. Who is she? Fucking Jeremy the Nowhere Man from Yellow Submarine? Yeah.

Able to pick up holes and put them in his pocket? Maybe she is. Is it fucking Outcast Blue Meanie? What is this, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote? Thank you, Benjamin. You are welcome. Four trillion comedy points. So, here's my problem.

She's like, yeah, well, what if the next guy, we need to be able to deal with him? For example, what if he's vulnerable to boomerangs? I got just the guy, Captain Boomerang. What if he is in a swamp in Louisiana? Killer Crocs on the cake. Like, she comes up with the worst list of supervillains that you could get to combat. Well, yeah. An alien with, like, omnipotent powers.

And the way the scene's constructed is for like 10-15 minutes we're just watching her in this restaurant dropping files in front of these people and then you cut to a little flashy sort of like commercial for a hero. It's like a trading card. You get a trading card with their stats and then you get a little glimpse of what they do.

It should have been a PowerPoint presentation. It should have been a PowerPoint presentation. That's what those videos were. Show don't tell. Ben, you like old-fashioned technology though, and this, you know, a lot of folders, paper. I mean, I do. I'm an analog guy. I was gonna say. Which is why he is the man in charge

of a digital podcasting network. Where one of the podcasts is literally called UCB Digital. I would have loved to see her flick on a projector. Yeah. An overhead projector? Oh, with that kind of sound.

Slides? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. She'd be like, killer croc. He's a croc. But this is the thing. She's like, let me explain all of these guys to you. Dead shot.

And then we get this long flashback movie. The second introduction to dead shot now. Where it's like, oh, you you know the greatest assassin who ever lived oh he kills only for money you better pay him he's got a daughter though she's nice she knows he's bad but he like no you see her in both the second and third introductions

oh does she call him on the phone? but anyway we don't have to do everything but then Harley Quinn oh well the deal with Harley Quinn of course is that she was made crazy by the Joker here's the Joker. Here's the Joker. You know, we get this very long sequence for each of them.

Yeah. And then she's like, Captain Boomerang has a boomerang. Anyway. The first time we're ever seeing Flash in costume in a movie is one second and a Captain Boomerang cut away. He has a boomerang and then the Flash caught him and there's the Flash catching him. He's a drunk Australian. He's crazy. And then you've got Killer Croc. Well, you know, he's a guy who turned into a crocodile and we're like,

he did? His power is essentially that he looks gross. Like he's a garbage pail kid. He doesn't seem to necessarily be stronger. Yeah, he's not even as big as I thought he was going to be. He's played by a very big actor. But you know what I think part of the effect is there? He's a very tall man.

I think the makeup they put on him broadens him so much. Broadens him a little bit. That it makes him look shorter and squatter. Sure. He doesn't look as tall.

Yeah. Then there's El Diablo. What's El Diablo's deal? He has fire. Makes fire. Anyway, and then there's Enchantress and we're like,

who the fuck's Enchantress? Well, this lady who found an Aztec god in a bottle in an excavation and the Aztec god in a bottle in an excavation and the Aztec god took her over and you're like

why didn't we hear about the Aztec goddess first? That's a cool fucking story too. She seems really like all you need. I don't know if you need the boomerang guy. He seems like a C-list

you know, like just just let's work all our efforts on Aztec goddess. Captain Boomerang's power is that he has two boomerangs. One is a regular boomerang.

Right. And one has like a camera on it. Right. So he can look at things. And he's basically just like Deadshot. He's just really good with a boomerang. And also, and I'm going to borrow this joke because I was just listening to Fighting in the War Room, another fun podcast. Matt Patches said that his power is that he can just produce a beer.

He can just like pop a beer out of nowhere for some reason. He's just like, oh, I've got a beer, don't I mates? Enchantress is a witch who looks like Pigpen, right? Yeah, she's got this sort of sentient cloud of dirt that just sort of hovers around her. She's

a DC character who I'm in my knowledge of her wears clothes. Correct. But this time she's not doing that. No, not at all. She's got a little bikini. Almost a near Orlando Bloom performance here.

She's blooming it. She basically has black boxes floating in front of her. Can I tell you just very quickly my thing about the Orlando Bloom penis? I know we got off the subject. Uh-huh. The dick is great. I'm happy that i've seen it now but like the fact that we got to see it whether or not he constructed the the event and

you know wanted it to be released for press or to deter people away from her or whatever it was i get you i wish it had been in a movie instead and when i'm looking at his penis which i'm now doing on an hourly basis you know i gotta check in again and see if I still like it. What's the background on your phone? The first thought that comes into my head is, not like this. That's an extreme callback, guys. Not like this.

Not like this. APOC. Lights. Hey, and let us know what dicks you want to see on the big screen, guys. Yeah, please. Hashtag, I want to see that dick. I was going to say.

Enchant. No, no. I was going to say hashtag dick flicks pics. Which dicks do you want to see in flicks? Make your pics. Pick dick, pick flick dicks. Flicks dicks. That's great.

Netflix, net dicks, pics, tricks. So all of that in a hashtag. Yeah. That full sentence. Okay, so we get that set up. that in a hashtag. Yeah, that full sentence. Okay, so we get that set up. It is a little haphazard. But yes, Enchantress is the only one you need. Enchantress seems a little more powerful than the rest of them.

Enchantress is a 21-year-old doctor, right? Who likes to go spelunking. Kara Delevingne, how do you? Yeah, Kara Delevingne. Who likes to go spelunking, and then every once in a while, Viola Davis has her heart. No, this is the thing. Right. Okay, so in those cute little flashcards, it says, like, has an ancient brother called Incubus who is a thousand million years old and wants to kill everyone.

And I remember glimpsing this and being like, oh, that seems like a problem. That's a lot of information. So they ask her, right, how do you control that? And oh i got a heart right here got a heart in a suitcase a suitcase poke it when i want to yeah it's really a efficient measure of control she like pokes it with a chopstick practically yeah and then they're like that's all you do to control her and she's like no i did another thing i teamed her up with a guy to be her security detail who i knew would fall in love with her that's like a terrible idea. What is that controlling? That's adding

more chaos. And also, Amanda, how can you know the mysteries of the human heart? I mean, these things are so unpredictable. So she teamed Enchantress up with Rick Flagg. The most charismatic and exciting member of the Suicide Squad. Who is a man with guns and a flat top haircut

played by Joel Kinnaman, who's in the military. Yeah. Yeah, Joel Kinnaman is a man. He's very good with weapons, we're told. Because the team was really light on that, you know? Yeah. Not enough weapons training in the team. We got that guy whose superpower is best at guns.

Yeah, shoots guns. And the dude whose power is... Boomerang. Shoots boomerangs. And we got Harley Quinn who weaponizes her sexuality. And has a mallet? Yeah, she's got a mallet and a bat. She's got both.

David, she's versatile. Yeah, wears something that's below hot pants but above a thong. Kind of like a wedged short. I don't really know how to describe what she's wearing. I just kept on thinking, like watching the movie, I was like, there definitely was some PA who had to in between every take go like... Like wedge it back up into her butt?

Sorry, Margot, you know what I got to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they just have to pull, like give her a wedgie. Yeah, no, no, for sure. No question. I think our friend Chase Mitchell said that, he tweeted this, something along the lines of, the Hispanic character in this film

is a gangbanger with tattoos all over his face and the Japanese character in this film, Katana, who we'll talk about in a second is a samurai and if there was a Canadian character in this film he would be a bottle of maple syrup. Can I add on to that?

That's a really fucking good joke. It's a great joke. He's very good at writing jokes, Chase. Can I add on to that? That's a really fucking good joke. It's a great joke. Well, he's very good at writing jokes, Chase. Yeah. Can I add on to that that the Native American character in this film, Slipknot, is also killed immediately and his death is immediately forgotten? So this is, I knew. Much like we did. True.

Maybe that's the point. No, probably not. I knew that Adam Beach was in the film because I'd seen him on the posters. He's on the posters. And then when Amanda makes this presentation, oh, and by the way, she makes her formal presentation at the Pentagon, and we get a very useful title card saying the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., when the Pentagon comes on screen. I don't know if there's another title card in the movie. It really made me laugh.

There are a couple. Because there was one that said- Midway City. Yeah. No. And there's one that said, like, Cressor Laboratories, a division of Wayne Enterprises. Oh, yeah. That's right.

They do say that. Which is just like, they just want to make it look like, see? We know how to connect stuff. Interconnected. Yeah. Anyway, but she makes the formal presentation. But, David, that title card was helpful. Because, I mean, it looked like Washington, D.C., but there are so many buildings with five sides on them.

So many colossal five-sided, like, perfect shapes. Polygon buildings? Yeah. Anyway, she makes the presentation, mentions all the characters we just mentioned. Again. And then Adam Beach's head is among the heads. She does not mention him. Doesn't mention him. They're definitely with shit cut out.

No, of course. head she does not mention him doesn't mention him they're definitely with shit cut out no of course and then he shows up later and rick flag basically off screen is like this is slipping on his powers he can climb anything no they said his ropes can help him get away from any situation and you're like what and then he's like then immediately something happens he's like i'm out of here like tries to climb away and then they blow up a little bomb in his neck, and he's dead. Yeah, so they, in the comics, his whole thing is that he's, like, created a better rope that's, like, indestructible, and he can use it to, like, climb out of situations. Good rope. In this movie, his ability is pretty much that he's got rope guns.

Yeah, he's got a rope gun. Not even, like, a grappling gun, but he's just got, like, a gun that shoots rope, and he ropes from one place to another. He ropes from exactly one place to one other place before his death and he ropes from one place to another. He ropes from exactly one place to one other place before his death. And that second place is his death. He ropes to his death. Slipknot! So they're controlling Enchantress

by poking her heart with chopsticks. Everybody else is controlled by having a little thingy in their necks that could blow up if they disobey. They inject it. They get the gang together. It's controlled by an app. Yes. Which seems you know, a little too easy to countervene. I don't know.

Every character has an on-the-nose pop song played during their flashback introduction and also a different on-the-nose pop song played during the recruitment of Rick Flag meeting everyone one by one. And Rick Flag, ooh, he doesn't like these weirdos. He doesn't like the job he's been given, even though he's in love with an Aztec witch.

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, ah, these fucking freaks. Anyway, back to this ancient goddess of death who I share a bed with. Yeah, right. Her name is June Moon. Yeah, Dr. June Moon to you. The lady that Enchantress is inhabiting.

So anyway, the film is about them trying to be ready to deal with a problem, right? Uh-huh. After they get the team together, they kind of get them all out of prison. Immediately, they cause a city-destroying problem. Correct. Because her method of controlling Enchantress,

poking, heart, that goes wrong right away. What a surprise. Immediately. Enchantress, they send her on some mission. She's like, actually, I don't want to do that. I want to take over the world. Bye. Leaves. Enchantress is never part of the team. She's doing solo missions

before they assemble the team. And they're going like, once we assemble the team, she will be part of it. Right. And you also think they lock up all these people, right? But June Moon's allowed. Lock the gates. They did lock the gates. On all of our favorite characters in this picture. Right, right. Yes.

But they're letting June Moon walk around in the world and be part of society. But if she, during a dream, happens to say Enchantress... She just got whispered Enchantress. And then she loses all control and that's how

she gets her brother out and she doesn't like it though june moon doesn't moon she complains she's like oh do i have to become enchantress again and i would like them to be like yeah like he wouldn't be around otherwise like it's only because of enchantress also we don't need june moon yeah the rule at any time when you conjure something by saying it is you say it three times yeah Yeah, you should have to say it a few times. I wanted her to be like, Enchantress, Enchantress, Enchantress! Yeah. That'd be good.

Would have made it better. Every time she says it, it just kind of- Or they could have said something like, It's morphin' time, you know, and then proceeded to do it. Right. Like the Power Ranger. Ooh, I would have liked that.

Every time she says it, it feels kind of tossed off. Like, they don't choose the, like, tortured, like, Oh, God, Enchantress, like, oh god, Enchantress or her like, Enchantress! It's kind of like being like, hey, could you get me something off that high shelf? And she's like, okay, Enchantress. What a dumb movie.

So Amanda Waller creates the problem. She immediately creates the problem. There's no time to even have one successful mission. This problem immediately. Or put them through training as a team to get to know each other, do some trust falls, fucking anything. They meet on the job. They like bring them all to a camp. Scott Eastwood is introduced and not really introduced and just does nothing for the entire film.

Because I asked Richard, our past guest Richard Lawson, when we left the screen. I was like, oh, Scott Eastwood, who is he? He's like ninth billed in entire film. Because I asked Richard, our past guest Richard Lawson, when we left the screen. I was like, oh, Scott Eastwood, who is he? He's like the ninth build in this film. And he's like, oh, he's the guy who died at the end, the military guy. And I was like, oh, that was a character I didn't realize. So from what I've heard, he was originally cast to play Steve Trevor, who is Wonder Woman's boyfriend. Okay. And the Wonder Woman film, which was being made after this, as they were locking down the script and prepping on that, you know, in the very early stages.

Well, that was the decision. Oh, it was originally going to be set in the present. So now suddenly they couldn't use Steve Trevor because they've established him as being in the 30s or 40s. So now they were like, well, we've already signed a contract. They gave him a really good name, though. What's his name? Oh, you don't know his name? GQ Edwards.

Yeah, they never say it. And he like lines, but all the- You know how people are called GQ all the time? Yeah. That's his name. Well, but to be fair, it's initials. His real name is Gentleman Quarterly. His name's Gentleman Quarterly Edwards. That's a normal name. Oh boy. He has a ton of screen time. And I watched this movie and I was like, he must have been on set every day for two months. Yeah, in fatigues, he probably did all the nonsense, like basic training David Ayer probably made him do. And when I say that they introduced his character at this point-

Jared Leto probably sent him a bag of shit. No question. Yeah. Jared Leto definitely fingered his butthole. Jared Leto, I don't know, murdered his dog. With peanut butter. He was like, ah, I don't know, like, murdered his dog. He was like, ah, I'm the Joker. Yeah, sexually harassed

his uncle, you know? When I say they introduced him at this point in the film, I mean, literally, at this point in the film, he walks into the movie. But they never, like, say anything to him.

Right. He's just sort of a guy around and he's ninth build. Is he really ninth build? I think. Okay. Well, he's up there. He's in the building. He gets his own card. He's build above Katana, who's got a

split card. Yeah, well, she is. It's her first movie, so that's probably why. But yes. Also, I mean, she doesn't build. What's the deal with her sword? Oh, well, so they all get together. So they bring them all to the base camp where you're like, now we're gonna get some crazy cool training montage. And then immediately

there's like a FaceTime on an iPad with Amanda Waller. And she's like, this is your first mission. You gotta retrieve someone. Here's the location. I trust you. They get on the plane. That's a Samsung device. Oh, I'm sorry. It's a Samsung device. Fair enough. They get on a plane.

And then Rick Flag's like, by the way, this is Katana. She like hops on the plane at the last second. She's my bodyguard. She's not a criminal. I know I say I hate you weird supernatural freaks, but she's with me. This is her sword. It captures souls. When she slices through somebody, she gets the soul in her sword. What does that

mean? She could cut through all of you like blades of grass. Also, her husband died. He's in the sword. And then we get a very brief flashback where she's like, I will kill you, Japanese businessman. And the Japanese businessman is like, no, I don't deserve to die. She's like, yes, you do. You're a gangster. And he's like, well, maybe I am.

I don't know. And then she kills him. And we're like, what was that? Who is all this? I'm sorry, what? The husband? Did I hear something about a husband living in a sword? DC does acknowledge that souls exist.

Oh, God. That's why you like these movies. Yep. Because you're- You believe in the soul? He's a big soul truther. Yep. Is this a new Ben bit?

Yeah. Yeah. People don't acknowledge this enough. The soul taker? I've mentioned that as his nickname every episode. Are you serious? You're only noticing this now? I always call him The soul taker? I've mentioned that as his nickname every episode. Are you serious? You're only noticing this now? I always call him the soul taker.

Absolutely not. Ben believes strongly in the existence of souls because he wants to believe that he can collect them all. That's right. That's why we call him the soul taker. Ben wants to have all of humanity's souls within the palm of his hand. You want to catch them all? Into a geode of sorts. Yeah.

Or a crystal. Have you ever wondered why Ben wears a baseball cap all the time? Because he's got a bunch of souls under there? Yeah. Underneath his hat Yeah. Or a crystal. Have you ever wondered why Ben wears a baseball cap all the time? Because he's got a bunch of souls under there? Yeah. Underneath his hat, he hides a crystal

that captures the souls of many. So that's Katana. Good job setting her up. And the hearts. He captures hearts. Yeah. Yeah, but it's a different thing that captures the hearts,

if you know what I'm saying. It's that... Wait, wait, Ben, Ben, Ben. We're all over the place. Guys, guys. Please, Ben, please. What? It's a children's podcast. Come on. Oh, you're right. Excuse me. It's that. Wait, wait, Ben, Ben, Ben. We're all over the place. Guys, guys. Please, Ben, please. What? It's a children's podcast.

Come on. Oh, you're right. Excuse me. It's for families. Okay, so. Like Suicide Squad, which is PG-13. It's a family movie.

I would like to say I support Mike Birbiglia. Mentioned him twice in a row or whatever. We're going to mention him in a future episode, I guess. His crusade about how Don't think twice.

Don't think twice is rated R for like, I guess they smoke pot? Can I say fuck, like, twice? Maybe. And this movie is rancid. This movie is, like, wall-to-wall violence. It contains the Joker, like, laughing amid, like, a bed of knives.

Yeah. He, like, builds, like, a Game of Thrones on the floor and then lies in the middle of it, like, around him. Like, it's art. It's knives and guns. We haven't even talked about him. what do we fucking say about it uh well-known character the joker yeah one of the most famous characters of all time yeah and here's the thing the last time it was done it was maybe the most iconic and beloved performance of the last 15 years definitely a big deal yes uh won the oscar the actor died before the film was released, which elevated to an even more sort of mythic place. Quite sad.

As if the performance itself wouldn't already become iconic. Now it's his final statement. Right. And it was really such a radical reinterpretation of the character. It was so different than how it had been played before. Yeah. And they brought the scariness back into it, which had been a sort of dormant element because he had always been played

as more theatrical and silly. And even the Mark Hamill character, which is creepy and unnerving, he's very like, oh, well, I'm the Joker. Yeah, no, he's more old school. Yeah, there's that thing. Ledger put a lot of weird,

grimy sort of energy into it. And it's generally a Madison character. And then now, everyone just does fucking Ledger Joker. And in the comics, the comic version of the Joker is so influenced by the Ledger Joker. If not literally, it's that sort of vibe is what they want of like

the scuzzball thing. You know, the dirty sort of like, because the Joker always used to kind of be natty and theatrical and very like... No, part of his thing was that he was sort of like well-dressed and sort of apportioned and then his sort of like well-dressed and sort of apportioned. And then his sort of psychotic violence was sort of in conflict with that presentation, kind of. I don't know.

This interpretation of the Joker is essentially taking all the Ledger shit, including his voice, which is almost identical to Ledger's voice. It's similar, although it has no modulation. It's basically just one high-pitched voice. He does one of the four voices ledger does you and I were saying the other day the thing that's interesting about Ledger's Joker is he sort of does this peewee Herman thing or he's got like three or four voices that Will cycle out at weird moments you kind of don't know when it's like gonna go from this into like Right, whatever we're combining peewee and Joker the poker the the poker He's doing the ledger voice, but then like aesthetically, the idea is to make him some sort of modern crime lore.

Like he's sort of got a Scarface thing going on. I sort of on film spotting a podcast I listen to and love a lot. They said today, I thought it was pretty smart that it feels like it's Ledger's Joker combined with Alien from Spring Breakers. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that sort of like weird sexuality and that grimy sort of style. I would say some, yeah, that's pretty good.

That's a pretty good read. Right, yeah. But I really, one, I mean, the big problem is obviously there's no time spent on the character, so we really have very little read on like what his deal is. I mean, he's got maybe obviously there's no time spent on the character. So we really have very little read on what his deal is. I mean, he's got maybe one full scene in the movie, but all the scenes are kind of cut off at some point.

It mostly happens in flashback montage. Flashback, they're these sort of choppily edited, sort of like overexposed, like kind of silly looking. There's this one scene that really sucks where Margot, I mean, Harley Quinn is dancing on a pole in his club. He's basically like an L.A. crime lord. I mean, like a mid-level crime lord in this movie. And common. And he's talking to Common, a decent actor who's been in bigger projects and bigger roles than this one. And he's like 10th building this.

Also has solo card building. And he's playing some guy. With like a bull nose and this is after Viola Davis Amanda Wallace been like you know don't you don't mess with the Joker and

you don't disrespect his lady or whatever but the Joker by the way at this point the film has had no presence in like a present tense kind of way it's just people talking about the Joker

and cutting to like montages of stuff but the Joker is not part of the team he's not part of the plot of this film at all. Right. He's kind of completely superfluous to what's going on.

Yeah. The only thing that matters is that he made Harley quit. Right. And that Harley is very devoted to him. But she was his psychiatrist and he drove her crazy and he tortured her and she jumped into a vat of chemicals to turn into a Joker lady. Nothing he does in this film has any real bearing on the events of the film. It just has bearing on Harley.

It really weirded me out because the idea is he wants Common to have sex with Harley Quinn, I guess, and Common's not into it. And then we don't even really see what the... I guess he shot him,

but we don't even see that. But I couldn't figure out if he shot him because Common wouldn't sleep with her or if he shot him because he was trying to trick Common into sleeping with her so that he could have motivation issues. I mean, so I guess he's, like, playing a mind game. I just interpret it as, like, Common had some aside, like, you're a lucky man.

Basically, like, establishing, like, you have a very attractive girlfriend. Yeah. And then the Joker's such a sick freak that he didn't appreciate that and is going to fuck with him. But that to me seemed so boring as the Joker is going to be like, don't look at my girlfriend. What kind of nonsense is that? He's supposed to be

weirder and more unpredictable than that. That's the other element to talk about here and we're not going to go into it too much because everyone's fucking talking about it, but Jared Leto's year-long campaign about how method he went for this movie, you know, and sending everyone the shit and fingering their assholes with peanut butter

and, like, all of that for a performance that, like, he's probably in the film for 10 minutes on the nugget. Yeah. It's mostly scene fragments, like, not real scenes. So, like, you know, maybe that helped him flesh it out

because he didn't have real scenes to play so it made it feel like a consistent character. But the characterization is so like gimmicky you know and like ticky and there's no there there.

And like Ledger's Joker part of the interesting thing was that he was kind of a mystery that we couldn't figure out where he was coming from. He's like a we can't see inside him

like he's like a weird black box but not the black box of Orlando Bloomstick. Yes. Right, he's like a, we can't see inside him. Like, he's like a weird black box. But there was a, not the black box over Orlando Bloomstick. Yes, thank you. There was a weird inner consistency to his inconsistency

as a character. It felt like the guy was trying to keep everyone on his toes. Right. This Joker is very one note and also very superficial in how he's played.

It's not a very good performance. It's not a terrible performance, but it's violently uninteresting. He's certainly going to be in more of these movies. So I think that's why he's in this film. They're setting him up so he'll pop up in something else. That's what's so confounding about the way they're making these movies

is it's like, so this is how you're setting up the Joker now in such a piecemeal kind of way and then the next movie you have to factor in the responses to what people. Yeah right. Do you just run with this? This is what you're gonna run with? This?

Like it'd be weird to change it now but also they haven't really done enough with him yet that anything's too locked in other than the surface elements. I like the tattoos. He had a cool tattoo on his forehead. That said damage.

You get it? Because he's crazy. And then Harley had like cool kind of like almost like stick, poking stick kind of tattoos on her legs. Yeah, I like that. Those are cool. He had a mouth on his hand, and he would put his hand in front of his mouth,

and it was like he had a different mouth. Yeah, you get it? Because the Joker smiles. Oh, I thought he liked the Rolling Stones. No, that's Amanda Waller's. Ben stood up and held both fists in the air. Oh, my God. Good joke, great dick.

Exactly. Good joke, great dick. Ten comedy points. If not more. Hey, you want to give more? Give more. Remember,, great dick. Ten comedy points. If not more. Hey, you want to give more? Give more. Ten more. Remember, you owe Ben ten million comedy points.

Wait, it's ten million? That's our future episode that people haven't listened to yet. Oh, right. Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves. That's a spoiler. We're doing things DC Universe style. We're introducing characters and bits in the wrong order. Oh, we should also mention spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Suicide Club.

Suicide Club? Oh, wait. Squat. Squat. Squat. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Suicide Club. Suicide Club? Oh, wait. Squat. Squat. Squat. So the reason I think we're now digressing into the Joker is after this team is set up and Enchantress does a bad thing and makes her brother Incubus show up, and we'll talk about Incubus in a second.

I think Ben really wants to talk about Incubus. Yeah, Ben wants to talk about Incubus. Then the rest of the movie is them dealing with that. Yes. The next hour and a half. Well, the first mission they're sent on turns to be- Getting Amanda Waller from a skyscraper, and when they show up to get her,

which we're not told, but then they show up to get her, and we think they're showing up to get Enchantress. Right. They walk into the room, and she's there, and she's like, what? And Brickflag's like, they're going to be really pissed. And she's like, look, I had to stay late at work. Like, that's what it was.

And then she shoots everyone who she's working with. Dead. The explanation is essentially that they have to send them out to rescue her because she stayed too late at the office and now it's dangerous outside. I guess. But then they're going gonna have to go get Enchantress, who's like eight blocks that away. Are they supposed to just chaperone

Amanda Waller home? I can take care of myself. Also, people keep getting into helicopters, and the helicopter will take off and be destroyed in some way or another. Shot down, blown up by monsters. Including Joker's helicopter, which Joker tries

to rescue Harley Quinn when they're on the rooftop. He said he's coming for her and he broke out and he's got his men and whatever. And he gets her in the helicopter. She's dangling from a string, from a rope. And then, aren't we all dangling from a string in life? And Amanda Waller's like, Deadshot, take the shot. And his whole thing is he never

misses. And he misses on purpose. And then they shoot the helicopter and the helicopter crashes. Every time that a helicopter crashes, no one is injured. Okay, so all the other characters... Everyone walks out of the helicopter fine. Hardly because she's still dangling from the rope and has continued dangling on the rope for five minutes while the helicopter's moving and not climbing up at all.

Gets, like, falls off. Or does he push her off the helicopter? I don't know. I don't know. She gets off the helicopter before it blows up. So she just sees the helicopter crash and she thinks everyone dies. And once again, much like Superman's death,

we go, boo-hoo-hoo, I'm not buying for one fucking second that he's dead because they're not going to interest a new Joker and not have him meet Batman. Oh yeah, Ben Affleck's also in this movie. Yeah, he plays Batman. He punches Harley in the face, which is one of three moments in the film where a man punches

a woman in the face and it's played as a joke. And one time they're like, I don't care if you're a lady, I'm gonna punch you. And one time is one of Slipknot's two lines is when he's getting out of the van and the woman's saying stuff, he punches her on the face. He's got like an FBI, you know, special ops woman who's escorting him out of the van and he punches her in the face and goes like like an fbi you know special ops woman who's escorting

him out of the van and he punches her in the face and goes like what she had a mouth on her and the movie's like what else you could do this movie also uses the words bitch hoe slut and pussy a lot sure a tremendous amount yeah well you know they're bad they're bad guys yes all squad. Well, okay, so here's my biggest problem with the movie. They're not really bad guys. No, that's the other problem. They're not really that bad.

We've never seen them be bad. Because we haven't seen them be bad. The worst things we've seen them do are... They kill people. Deadshot kills people. He does it for hire. We don't know if the people he's killing are good or bad, really. Sure.

He's being hired by mob people, so there's a good chance that everyone he's killing is a criminal there's a flashback he's killing a witness okay in one in that in his scene he's killing i'm not saying anyone should be killed by deadshot i want to make it clear my political stance is that deadshot shouldn't kill anybody yeah but in a movie and in a movie landscape that fetishizes shooting people that much, watching someone wantonly shoot a bunch of people weirdly doesn't feel that bad if it's removed from context. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah,

I know I do. And also they kill, Batman kills like 8 million people in Batman versus Superman. Yeah. Thank you. He leaves like a way, a wave of death in his wake. He's awful.

As a Superman. Yes. Yeah. Does he kill people? I don't He's awful. As a Superman. Yeah. Does he kill people? I don't know. More in Man of Steel. But you know Captain Boomerang just fucking is a petty thief. Wait, was he in this movie? Yeah.

He's the guy who has a boomerang. He had a boomerang. Do you remember that guy with the boomerang? Nope. But all of them, you don't really get a sense of what they've really done. No. And they don't behave that horribly. They're just kind of like all-

They're jerks. They're kind of jerks, but they're not even the worst. They're kind of funny. Amanda Waller seems pretty bad. Yeah, she's the worst one in the film, no question. She's pretty bad. I mean, I think that's David Ayer trying to be like, you know what? The government.

Yeah. Who are the real criminals? But I think this is the biggest issue with the movie, okay? I think it's one issue with the movie. I'm going to tell you. I'm using this as a lead up into what I think is the biggest issue with the movie. Okay. And this is my suggestion. Griff's fix.

This is how I would fix this movie. Okay. I know they only had six weeks to write the screenplay, but if you had brought me in and shown me the screenplay and said, how would you fix this? This is how I would restructure it with all the elements that are already in the movie, okay? The biggest problem with this film is that Will Smith plays Deadshot.

Okay. Because Will Smith is one of our greatest living movie stars. He is an effortlessly charismatic and compelling actor, and he's like the sun. Like, everything gets drawn into him, right? Deadshot is not the leader of the team. He's not the worst person on the team. He's not the character

who has the most exciting backstory or anything. No. But the film has to make him the central focus because he's Will Smith and you're not going to pay attention to anyone else. Sure. Like your eyes are naturally going to be drawn to Will Smith. Right.

You need Will Smith or someone of Will Smith equivalency playing the Rick Flag character for this movie to work in any sort of proper narrative way that's a fine choice the Rick Flag character needs to work and the structure in which this film works in my eyes is if the movie is like the fucking Mighty

Ducks and it's like here's the guy who's being kept like being forced to babysit a bunch of ragtag like kids that he hates I don't agree with you you don't agree with me not at all Like being forced to babysit a bunch of ragtag kids that he hates. I don't agree with you. You don't agree with me? Not at all.

Why not? You can't make a Suicide Squad movie and then have Rick Flag be the best character. Rick Flag's boring. Fuck Rick Flag. You make Rick Flag the lead character. I disagree. Not Joel Kinnaman. I'm saying make Will Smith Rick Flag. Will Smith would never take that role.

It's so boring. Make it better. No, because then he's taking over the movie. The main character in Suicide Squad needs to be the normal person who is leading the squad. Can I tell you why I think this? No, that role should be played by a great character actor who can bring some funny charisma to it, not be the lead of the movie. No one cares about Rick Flagg.

I disagree with you strongly. No one's ever going to care. I disagree with you strongly. I think Rick ever gonna care. I disagree with you strongly. I think Rick Flag needs to be the central character because making him the central character allows the other characters

to be actually bad. None of the Suicide Squad members can actually be that awful because it's an ensemble film and they're all supposed to be sympathetic and relatable in some way or another.

Uh-huh. So you make Rick Flag the fucking main character. When I say Rick Flag, Rick Flag is an abstract concept. Rick Flagg. Not Rick Flagg as he exists in this movie. I'm saying hire someone like Will Smith,

make Rick Flagg an interesting character, make it that he's a military guy who has a girlfriend who's possessed by a witch, and Viola Davis comes to him and says, I can fix her if you do this job for me. And he goes, what is it?

And she goes, you gotta be in charge of this team. And he's fucking Gordon Bombay. He's Emilio Estevez. He doesn't want to deal with it. He hates them. He resents them. Thank you. But I don't agree with you. I don't think you should have made a Suicide Squad movie. But I think that's the version that is the most

functional. No. Here's what the movie should be about. It should be about the Joker who should be the villain of the movie. It should be about the Joker who should be the villain of the movie. It should be Rick Flagg leading a team to take down the Joker because he has to be established

as the big bad. It's like, okay, what force is bad enough that you need to bring in all the other bad guys to take him down? The Joker.

If you're introducing him in a new universe, make it clear he's the top of the pyramid. No, I disagree with this. We're disagreeing on everything. No, no, no. I'm so right about all of this.

You're not. I'm 100% correct. You're not. The fix, No, no, no. I'm so right about all of this. You're not. I'm 100% correct. You're not. The fix, number one fix, don't shoot this movie all at night. Number two fix, I don't know, what the fuck were you doing? Katana's not in the movie. Katana makes no sense. There's a lot of fixes.

Right. Number three fix, why is the villain a glowing CGI man incubus? You're focusing on small details. I think the very structure of the movie is wrong. That was my joke that I was making. But no, I think your movie is, you've got the Joker, he's out there. Yes.

You can still have this sort of Amanda Waller misled idea of like, oh, we can corral the villains into a team and it's going to work. You have the Joker take over the team like you have Harley Quinn there like have him fuck up the team like I think

that's third act twist I think that's third act twist is once they get to the Joker they realize that Amanda Waller's the real villain and they team up with the Joker and Harley to take down Amanda Waller yeah I don't know look I think Rick Flagg has to be the audience surrogate character I think that allows the rest of them to be scoundrels. You want them to be really bad.

And you want to be a film about him realizing that everyone's a human being. I think. I don't even know. I don't even know if you need a Rick Flag character. I think if Rick Flag isn't the audience surrogate character, then there's no reason for him to be in the movie. Yeah. I don't really think you need Rick Flag at all.

Okay. But I think if Rick Flag isn't in the movie, then someone like Deadshot needs to be the leader of the team, which makes him more heroic than he should be. I don't have a problem with the general idea they have, which is Amanda Waller is kind of a bad guy almost. Deadshot is

a villain in that he is an immoral man who murders for money. But he's not deranged. He's a murderer who takes credit cards. No, he's not crazy. And so if you put him on a team of deranged people, now I don't know why you're including Captain Boomerang, these characters who have no characterization at all,

but if you put him on a team of genuinely deranged people, like your Killer Croc, your Enchantress, your Harley Quinn, that's all you need. He can still be a bad guy who is also, like, at least sane. And that's your audience surrogate. I think, I disagree. I don't think in a movie about villains

who kill people, the audience is gonna wanna be the surrogate of the boring guy who bosses them around. That guy sucks. It's about him learning to accept them. He's just a military guy. He's boring. But he doesn't have to be boring. It's about the audience to accept them. He's just a military guy. He's boring. But he doesn't have to be boring. It's about the audience accepting the bad guy. Make him, give him a name.

That's what he functions on in circuit because he accepts the bad guys and we accept it through him. That sounds like fucking hand-holding shit nonsense. Yeah, like the Mighty Ducks. What if his superhero name is Red Flag? Because. He's a bad sign of what's to come? Yeah. I think Rick Flag,

the movie starts with Rick Flag, his girlfriend gets captured by a witch, he's in love with her before she turns into a witch. That's such a quick fix, right? Don't have Rick Flag! Don't have Enchantress be the villain! That's a mistake! She's not a villain! She's on the team! Uh-huh. Okay? He falls in love with her, he's a military guy,

Valdavis wants to assemble this team because the Joker's a threat. She goes to Rick Flagg. She's like, I know about your situation with your girlfriend. I have the cure, but I need you to do something for me. What is it? Assemble this team. I fucking hate villains. I work for the military. I don't want to do it. You have to corral them. Learn them, you know, teach them into something good.

Whole fucking main, like, thrust of the first act of the movie is training. They get all of them together you have them bond that would be the classic three act structure certainly is have a training right

and rather than doing all these fucking flashback things you have them another mission but you have them get to actually know each other so they become a dysfunctional family

rather than this movie where they're all just together suddenly they're together for an hour and then El Diablo is saying shit like I already lost one family. I'm not going to lose this one.

They're not your family. You don't know them. You know them from now on. You don't like them. You've had no conversations. These are some guys that you were hanging out with on a helicopter. You guys mentioned how he lost his family, right? No, we haven't gotten to that yet.

They mentioned that after he's had the flame out. Yeah, they mentioned that after he's had like three flame outs and like a bunch of shit has happened. Before he's turned into a fire skeleton. He does. He does turn into a fire skeleton. That was a great scene. Like an Inca or Aztec fire skeleton. Yes.

But you see. He also writes the word bi in flames. Yeah. And he makes some dancing sexy ladies in flames. He's like the Bob Ross of fire. He's the worst. I just think this movie is them getting to know each other they're training them

in a long term way and then fucking Entrantius like but no Entrantius is part of the team reluctantly he's with her

then they go to try to attack the Joker and they realize the Joker and Harley Quinn are closer to them and then Amanda Waller was really setting it up

for some other fucking system they were fall guys whatever it was what if they were teens? Well, that's just a different movie. Yeah, it's Teen Team Supreme. That's just Runaways. But if they're teens,

you know, then it's like... They should make a Runaways movie. Or if they're babies, what about... If you could do it right, it'd be great. Baby Suicide Squad. Well, Suicide Squad babies would be great. It would be great. I mean, baby Harley Quinn, adorable. Suddenly the pants make sense. Can I tell you a big complaint I have with Harley Quinn in this movie?

I have so many complaints. I don't think she's crazy enough. Is that insane? I think she's just like a little kooky. But even within the structure of the team, Captain Boomerang is set up as being crazier. But like, none of them do anything. Well, that's my point. This is the problem.

They don't have any. We know she's crazy. Yeah. Because she says things that are in her head sometimes, I guess. It feels like she's doing a bit. It feels like she's fucking Jared Leto bragging about how crazy he went for the filming of the movie Suicide Squad. We don't see her be crazy because that would involve her like knifing someone and that

would be an issue. Why? That's what the movie should fucking be. Why would that be an issue? Just them all knifing each other. What else? then why make this movie if you don't do that why make a movie where harley quinn's part of suicide squad if you don't make her freak out well but like harley quinn who's not a character i've ever liked and i like her in the animated series i'm not crazy about the modern sort of yeah i'm certainly not i've never been a big fan of her but harley quinn is defined by the joker i

what does harley quinn even do on the end? She's never quote unquote crazy, except for she's in love with the Joker, which is an objectively crazy thing to be. She's crazy. No, I think the idea is that she's as much of a loose cannon as the Joker and not like she's crazy like she has Minnie and Devil going like, but at any moment she could do anything. She could murder people with impunity

in the same way. You should feel that sense of danger of like, I don't know what she's going to do next. Right. Captain Boomerang's got a bit of that. You don't know if he's going to pull out a unicorn or a can of like, I don't know what she's going to do next. Right. Captain Boomerang's got a bit of that. You don't know if he's going to pull out a unicorn or a can of beer. You don't know. He's crazy.

Captain Boomerang repeatedly runs away from the action in the film. Yes. Which makes sense. He only has a boomerang. As do most characters. El Diablo like ducks out a couple times. El Diablo doesn't do anything for most of the movie.

He's like, I don't do fire stuff anymore. There are people shooting each other and he's just standing there in the middle looking at them solemnly. He could be quite helpful. Yeah, and also, they could shoot him. Sure. Either one.

He's not fighting, and no one's fighting him. The villains in this movie, apart from Enchantress, are blob people. Let's let Ben talk about Incubus. Yeah, they're people with black tar eyeball bodies. Yeah, they're blobs. They're blobs. Ben, do you want to talk about Incubus? Sure all right so we meet the brother okay he he uh he the brother of enchantress right he inhabits some rando right some subway rando

we've all been on the subway and someone's tried to put an aztec god inside of us yeah of course yeah okay so right you're thinking okay okay, cool, another witch, right? A warlock. Uh-huh. But what is he going to look like? Is he going to look similar to ancient interest? Ancient, you know, a little lady, but she's got a lot of dust. Right.

But then you get a sense of what you're working with. You got yourself an ancient god, okay, and he happens to be big. Very big. Very big. Quite big. I would put him around 15 feet. Yeah. Something like that. You're not really sure what he's made of.

You're not sure of what the people they make, the blobby people are made of. We don't even see them really being made until later. He's kind of fiery. He's orange glowing. He kind of looks like a knockoff Gods of Egypt character. He's sort of like that sort of robo-transformer, but like also ancient Egyptian look. Yeah, I was going to say a little like destroyer from Thor

when he like lights up from the inside. But he's got a human face. I would say that the CGI is goofy. Yeah, especially on Enchantress. Oh yeah, when she's twerking? She like hits her like ideal form quote unquote and stops being a pig pen and then starts just being like a showgirl yeah she starts being like a vegas showgirl and she's doing like the britney like i'm a slave for

you dance yeah but without the snake and and her whole body appears to be cgi yeah uh and she's got the sort of kate blanchett in Lord of the Rings when she's getting really hyped up about the ring voice. That sort of like, I am Enchantress. I am Cara Delevingne. I would say that the audience chuckled mostly at her appearances. Didn't take her very seriously, I think, as a threatening villain. Yeah, can I throw out another complaint I had about this movie?

There's so many problems with this movie. Harley Quinn in particular. None of her jokes land in the film. Yeah, what's a Harley Quinn joke? There's the one where she's just like, kill them all. Just kidding. That's not what the voices in my head said. They said something else.

Like, she has, like, a very long joke that's something like that. The audience we saw with laughed at a couple points. Like, genuinely. A couple Will Smith jokes really landed. Not like jokes, but like he's got some good one-liners and some good line deliveries. Yo, jokers must be crazy. He says that a bunch of times, yeah. Some version of that.

Yeah, and he says, welcome to Suicide Squad, and he punches an alien. But there is... He doesn't do that. Yeah. There's also the part where he puts on sunglasses and he says, you know what the difference between you and me is? I make this look squad. He does say that. There's also that part where he says, squad robot.

I squad bot. I did not murder him! That's what the robot says in iRobot. The pursuit of squadiness. Uh, he, um, yeah, anyway. Uh, I suicide like a butterfly, I squad like a bee yes thank you ben uh there is no harley quinn joke i remember getting a laugh from the audience in the theater last night ben's

laughing really hard at his own joke it was pretty good it was pretty good um but but right i don't remember them laughing at anything and the the editing is so bad the timing's so bad they cut off all her jokes jokes prematurely but also it doesn't work. They're badly written and I don't think she I watch this movie and feel her feeling uncomfortable. You know? Because even the accent

is a lot more consistent in Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah her accent is a little in and out in this. There's scenes where she sounds totally Australian and Wolf of Wall Street she's pretty immaculate while While being cartoonish, pretty immaculate. But she's supposed to have, Harley Quinn is supposed to have, for whatever reason, this sort of like Brooklyn gal

accent, you know, like, ah, puddin'. Mr. J. Mr. J. Yeah. Which is, what's that voice actress who's great? Whoever plays her in the animated series. I forget her name. I'll look up her name. But there is a thing. I watched this performance,

and it feels like Margot Robbie could not find a strong enough handle. Arlene Sorkin. Arlene Sorkin. Could not find a strong enough handle for the character, and so she's sort of throwing stuff at the wall. Will Smith is such a veteran at this point. He can turn straw into gold.

He can do it. He can make any character engaging to watch. I liked Will Smith in this. Yes. point, he can turn straw into gold. He can do it. He can make any character engaging to watch. I liked Will Smith in this movie. But I think Margot Robbie, while being a great movie star and a very good actress, isn't quite at the level that she can put, as they say in the film, 12 pounds of shit into a 10 pound bag. Yeah, but you also...

Great line in the film, by the way. And the bag contains killer crap. You also feel bad because she... I feel really bad for her. Like you said, she doesn't get the moments you kind of want from her. Yeah.

You know, she doesn't get some big quote-unquote hero, you know, a big villain moment. But they give her the final moment where she takes down the villain only because they were like, oh, right, we should probably let her do it because she's the character that the audience likes the most, right? Yeah.

The one they're most excited to see in the film. Right. But it doesn't really make sense that she does that. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Her character makes no sense. She just wants to get back to the Joker. It's very difficult to make a movie like this work where the romance that she's so obsessed with happens all in flashbacks. In like five minutes.

Right. And it's mostly the Joker being like, I'm not gonna kill you. I'm just gonna hurt you. And we haven't like properly really like established the Joker in the film so Harley Quinn doesn't really make any sense without a sense of who he is. You know, unfortunately that is a character that exists only

in relation to the Joker. And I know people are gonna throw out that like, well now in the comics they made her more independent. She stands on her own and it's like, yeah, but that's in the comics, they made her more independent. She stands on her own. And it's like, yeah, but that's in the comics. The whole point is if you're reading an issue now, you know, that's coming off of 20 years of past,

like, you know, sure. Each issue is subverting the history of what the characters have been. This movie feels like that to me a little bit where it's like, look at how we're flipping the script, but it's like, yeah,

but we're not, this isn't issue 500. Like this is the first issue of all of these characters in this movie for the sake of this movie and these actors playing them this is issue one and you're flipping scripts that haven't been written yet you are and yeah which is why i think you're saying is true make them the mighty ducks just make them really bad treat them like garbage pail kids don't make them all have tragic backstories and just make it like rick flag has to be in charge of a bunch of fucking crazy weirdos. Allow them to be crazy and weird.

That's what we want to see. We want to see them be insane. They should have done this. This should have been the ninth movie. Agreed, 100%. After all of them have been in separate movies. At least enough of them had been. At least you'd had Deadshot in a movie.

You'd had Harley Quinn in a movie. You'd had maybe Amanda Wall. You know, you can introduce new characters. Would it not have been cool if in like five DC movies, there were villains who at the end of the film were defeated but not killed, and then the ninth movie is all those villains together now? That would have been cool. And we're seeing it from the other perspective.

But wait, what if it was, who's the villain in Man of Steel's general zaad doomsday lex luther this is the problem a lot of these villains can't really recur that's what i'm saying the if starting now if flash had captain boomerang in it whatever you know maybe not even as the main villain in the flash gonna be i don't i have no idea it's probably gonna be some sort of version of Reverse Flash, Professor Zoom, or something like that, right? I have to imagine. Yeah. I don't think they've announced it yet. That movie is a little more encouraging to me because I like, I have no idea how to pronounce his name, but Rick Famuyama.

Who made Dope. Yes. And could be good. But it's another movie where they fire the original director, and I think they're in a bit of a time crunch and you wonder, like, oh god, is this going to work out? But I think this new director choice is a lot better than the original director choice, who is someone who had never directed a movie before. It was a perfectly good choice. Rick Payne is like a really good stylist, and what's her name? Chrissy Clemons is in it, who I really, really like. She's great. She's a great actress. Cyborg, though.

Yeah, Ben's all about that cyborg. Cyborg isn't, who I really, really like. She's great. She's a great actress. Cyborg, though. Yeah, Ben's all about that cyborg. I mean, aren't we? Cyborg isn't like till like 2020 or something, right? It's going to be a while until we get a cyborg movie. I mean, how did he become a robot? We'll be well. Yeah. And that's how.

We'll be well into our second Trump term when cyborg comes out. Now, now. None of that Trump talk. Seriously, though. Well, I mean, we would if he won. We will. Oh, God. After Suicide Squad makes 140 million, I have no faith in humanity.

Hey, man, Deadpool made 400 million bucks or whatever. Deadpool is a movie. I mean, Deadpool is a movie that has characters and dialogue that implies a history and it tells a story and that story concludes itself. Like, Suicide Squad feels like a two hour trailer to me. Not just in the way that it's edited, but in the fact, like, the leaps it makes that it assumes that you're gonna fill in. It uses the shorthand for everything.

I mean, like, you have no organic character development. You just have scenes where they go like, oh, by the way, I never told you about this. I killed my entire family on a fire. Now I'm telling you this an hour and 45 minutes after we met and then you go into the final battle knowing that like they just throw shit at you yeah Deadpool and not

a movie I love functions as a movie the quality of that movie we can argue over I think the movie is Deadpool it's one of those things where I think it's a genuinely awful movie that barely functions but certainly in comparison to this yes it has more of a story. Yes.

Yes, although... There is a narrative to Deadpool. Yeah, although... You cannot like that narrative and you can argue it's poorly executed. It was the most labored, awful flashback. I hate that anyway. Okay, but it is... You see a dick in it.

You see a dick in it. Very briefly. But this is the most scattered flashback structure. Oh, no, no. It is the most poorly structured film I've ever seen. But I mean like the most scattered flashback structure. It is the most poorly structured film I've ever seen. It reeks of one that we saw Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four I like more than this. Unquestionably has better moments. Batman vs. Superman has better elements than this does. I like Batman vs. Superman way more than this. I don't like Fantastic Four more than this. That's insane. That's insane. This is question that our blankies have been asking. That's insane. This is a question our blankies have been asking on Twitter and there was

a poll, a vote. Which movie did you hate watching more? Elizabethtown or Suicide Squad? Elizabethtown. Wow. Are you kidding me? It's not even close. So that's a fascinating sneak preview for next week's episode. Uh huh. Not even close. Elizabethtown lost me So that's a fascinating sneak preview for next week's episode. Uh-huh. Okay, wow.

Not even close. Elizabethtown lost me so hard so fast. Suicide Squad, very quickly I was like, oh, this is probably going to be a bad movie. And then it was. The first 20 minutes of the film, I was like, this is bad. This is quite bad. But it is bad in a different way than most movies are bad.

I'm kind of giving them props. And then 45 minutes it just like completely collapses and it was ben and i were just looking at each other and sighing and just like are you fucking kidding me it's like not fun to watch it's really gross like it's just like a gross movie it makes you feel like it's quite spiritual like a fucking men's rights yeah i should say it's quite sexist. There's these extended weird sequences where Enchantress shows the characters there, like Hart's desire. And Harley Quinn's desire is to be married to Jared Leto. Well, as seen earlier, she goes,

we're fucked up. I keep on saying fuck, but they don't say fuck at all in this movie because it's PG-13. But she says, we're all weirdos. We're all broken people. None of us are normal. Life isn't like a washing're all weirdos. We're all broken people. Like none of us are normal. Life isn't like a washing machine.

There isn't just a normal setting. Like accept it. And she's telling everyone just like accept that you're weird. Own your weirdness. And she goes like, we all might be, you know,

ugly on the inside, but we're beautiful on the outside. And then she turns to Killer Croc and she goes, except for you, you're ugly on the outside. And he goes, no way, honey,

I'm beautiful. And she goes, you're right, you are beautiful. Yeah, that's true. That's a whole thing that happens what the fuck is that conversation are you kidding me but then they have the enchantress yeah yeah yeah makes them see what they want in their heart of hearts and what she wants is literally her pushing the normal button on a washing machine and that's jared leto out of makeup and they have two babies what does croc really white baby he wants bet He wants to watch BET. Because the actor who plays him is black.

Yeah. So that must be the only channel he wants to watch. BET. The black channel. Hey, remember when like two months ago. That joke, like there wasn't even a snicker in the audience. It landed like with the harshest thud. And then like I heard someone behind me just lean over me like, what did he say?

You can also barely understand what Croc is saying. It's hard to tell what he's saying. And then the other person's like, BET. The other person could barely repeat it. It does work, though, when they show him in a cell.

Watching BET? Yeah. That was a nice climactic emotional fulfillment. But it happens two minutes after the original joke. Also, that actor playing Croc, it's not like a delayed payoff. It's like we just heard him say he won it

and then you just see he got it. That actor playing Croc, whose name I can't even attempt to pronounce. Adewale Akinuye Bagje. Thank you very much. Has been good in a great many things. He's Mr. Echo in Lost. He was on Oz for a zillion years.

Fucking phenomenal on those shows. He's a very good character, actor. He's obviously often called on to play villains because he's a big guy for a zillion years. Fucking phenomenal on those shows. He's a very good character, actor. He's obviously often called on to play villains because he's a big guy with a deep voice. He's heavy duty in G.I. Joe, Rise of Cobra. He was Curse in Thor, The Dark World. Oh, right, he was. You know, he's been around for a long time.

This movie, he's just buried under makeup. The makeup is itself very, very good. Yeah, the makeup's good. But it feels like he's doing an acting class exercise where it's like, and now play a snake. And his the makeup's good. But it feels like he's doing an acting class exercise where it's like, and now play a snake. And his movements are so exaggerated. And I always thought the thing that was kind of interesting about Killer Croc was that he was

a dude who looked like a crocodile but otherwise kind of functioned like a guy. He's not literally a crocodile. You know what I'm saying? And in this movie, he does the most exaggerated walk in the world. I mean, we were saying after the movie, when we were talking to the Black Man Can't Jump guys, he got given props.

He did pick something, and he stuck to it. Sure. You know, it's a consistent characterization, but it just speaks to the scattershot nature of this whole movie, which is not aligned with... No one element is aligned with any other element. Right. This is the last thing I want to talk about, because this episode's long.

But I... fucking this movie. But also, el diablo fantasy sequence have you are you going to mention that because i just want to say him with his kids again no that's the thing we get this whole thing of like oh he's like a gangbanger yeah a latino gangbanger with tattoos all over his face great and then he burned his house down and killed his wife and kids in a fit of rage great and he already had all the tattoos before he did it. Yeah, that's the thing where he's just like, hey, what's up? And it's like he's got like a skull face. He's like otherwise dressed like Bryan Cranston in Malcolm

in the Middle. Like he's wearing like a polo tucked into like dockers, but he's got the skull face. And we see, and so I'm like, oh great, a Latino villain. What a great representation, you know, of a not very often seen Latino hero. He's also a skeleton, but go on.

He had just turned into a fire skeleton. And then in his fantasy sequence, much like Harley Quinn wants Joker to just be Jared Leto in his American Psycho costume, is that his wife will come to him with a beer and kind of like kneel by his legs. Yes. What the fuck? Oh, my God, yes. That his wife will come to him with a beer and kind of like kneel by his legs? What the fuck? Oh my God, yes. And then she's going to put the kids to bed and they're going to fuck.

Boom. What a great fantasy. So here's the thing. That's right. The last thing I think we need to talk about is like the entire culture around these DC movies and the backlash and everything. You know? Because like our friend, recent guest, regular guest on the show, Richard Lawson.

I'm throwing this out as a microcosm of one incident. He posted a very bad review of the film. He did. Because his job is he is a film critic. He sees movies and he writes his opinions on those films. He's not the greatest. No, you're our greatest film critic, Ben. Ben, yes, you are our greatest film critic.

Richard, who is our second greatest film critic, Richard Lawson, right? Posted his review of Suicide Squad, which was his job, and he was entitled to hold any opinion of that film he wanted. Or was he? Or was he in the pocket of Rotten Tomatoes? Well, that's this fucking thing, which

Rotten Tomatoes isn't a company that, like, hires those critics. They're just a site that aggregates things. And people of Rotten Tomatoes? Well, that's this fucking thing, which Rotten Tomatoes isn't a company that, like, hires those critics. They're just a site that aggregates things. And people think Rotten Tomatoes is biased. They're also partly owned by Warner Brothers. The company that made Suicide Squad. If they were biased towards anyone, it would be Suicide Squad. Oh, boy.

So this dude fucking tweets at Richard Lawson and goes, hey, thought you should see this. Some of the people are spreading it around the Reddit forums. And it was Richard Lawson, and goes, hey, thought you should see this. Some of the people are spreading it around the Reddit forums. And it was Richard Lawson's Twitter avatar with the word faggot written over it in big letters. Oh, God. I didn't even see this. When did this happen?

This happened the day the reviews broke, the embargo broke, on Monday or Tuesday, whatever it was. Fucking Reddit, man. Right? And then a bunch of emoji middle fingers. Okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Richard goes, wow, thank you. Sure, great.

And he goes, there are a lot more that people are spreading around. Do you want to see more of them? The guy's account name is like DC Movie News or something like that, right? Right. And his real name is listed underneath. I'm not going to say it because I'm not an asshole, but it ties together into this thing, right? And Richard, he goes, do you want to see more?

He was like, LOL, a lot of them being spread around. Do you want to see more he's like lol a lot of them being spread around do you want to see more and Richard responds yeah there's nothing I love more than being called a faggot for writing a bad review of a movie and the guy goes okay cool and then sends him four more pictures great thanks guy now the irony of this is that Richard's

avatar is Neil Hamburger and they just thought it was a picture of him. Wait, is that literally they're just taking a picture of Neil Hamburger? Yeah, there is a weird feedback loop to that where like I feel like

Neil, who's the guy? Greg Turkington would love that. Greg Turkington would almost appreciate this bizarre irony. A hundred percent. But I got into like, you know, I started attacking this guy on Twitter. Yeah, you sometimes will roll your sleeves up and you'll feed the trolls.

They call me David Schwimmer because I feed the beast. And I rolled up my sleeves and got in with him because this is my fucking friend. No, no, I understand. I mean, that's also awful and egregious. I didn't know that was happening. I mean, I'm not stunned to hear it was happening. But I take a pretty firm moral stance on these things

where I'm not like, oh, I'm just going to go back and call these other people names. I just try to talk to these people and go like, do you realize you're interacting with a real human being who has feelings? That you're not just yelling shit into the ether. And that this is like a slur, you know? That you're throwing out to a man.

We understand. Yeah, right, okay. And he just is like a slur, you know? That you're throwing out to a man. We understand. Right, okay. And he just kept on responding with like, well he was asking for it. Like literally he literally asked like, sure in sarcastic terms, is that what he means? Do you not understand sarcasm? Anyway. And he was like, well still, he didn't have to write

that review. And I was like, he did because that's his job. His job is to review. And he goes, well he didn't have to write the review and make it that bad. And he was like, because, still, he didn't have to write that review. And I was like, he did because that's his job. His job is to review. And he goes, well, he didn't have to write the review and make it that bad. And he was like, because he didn't like the movie. Have you never not liked a movie before? That's why I just think he's biased. And I said, look, if he had loved the movie, would you think he was being paid out by Warner Brothers? Because if he hates it, you think he's being paid out by Marvel.

And I guarantee you, Marvel doesn't fucking care. Warner Brothers doesn't fucking care. If they're making money, Marvel doesn't fucking care. Warner Brothers doesn't fucking care. If they're making money, they don't fucking care. They want us to like the movies. They want the movies to get good reviews. But it's certainly not something that... And the Marvel thing is,

they've constructed this kind of pyramid scheme where because there's enough general goodwill towards the movies, the people will go see all of them because they like the last one. They want to see how the new characters are introduced. They buy the merchandise and it makes them read more comics

and all this sort of stuff. But the key to that is that they like the characters in the last one. They want to see how the new characters are introduced. They buy the merchandise, and it makes them read more comics and all this sort of stuff. But the key to that is that they like the characters in the first place. And these DC movies are just rushing through all these characters and not letting us form connections with them and then expecting that we're just going to go on because it's the same ostensible format as these other things. But I'm getting to this fight with this guy, and he was like, What's your problem? Why are you defending him so much? Get a life or whatever. And then he was like, what is he, your boyfriend

or something? And it's like, well, great. Okay, so now we're in this circular thing, this whole thing, fuck you. He blocks me, of course, right? Before I say anything mean to him. I'm just trying to reason with him. And then this same guy, if I'm not mistaken, I recognize the name, is the one who then started a Change.org petition

to shut down Rotten Tomatoes. Because the bad reviews are hurting his feelings because he wants the movies to be good. Look, I mean, I'll admit, like, I went on Reddit the day the reviews broke. Out of a little perverse fascination. I've never really poked around the

DC movies forum or where I found it. And it was interesting because obviously, of course, there are the truly harmful nasty people. And then there's obviously this, of course, there are the truly harmful, nasty people. Yeah. And then there's obviously this, like, a lot of people who are really invested in these movies being good. Yeah. And they're really sad that they know they're not.

Right. And it's just heartbreaking. You can't be that invested. They care about those. You've got to be less invested. It's not going to be good for you. You're not going to feel good. They care about those characters

and they really want the movies to be good. And hearing the public decide the moves on it. And you can see them saying like, oh my God, like, we really,

I really thought this one was gonna, you know, work out. I thought Suicide Squad was gonna be a lot better. Like, seeing the reviews break

and just being like, ugh, this is terrible. Some people saying things like, okay, well, let's not go after critics again. We've gotten so much hot water last time over Batman vs. Superman. Obviously, some people saying things like okay well let's not go after critics again we've gotten so much

hot water last time over Batman vs Superman obviously some people are ignoring such you know yeah a lot of them are freaking out because Devin Farachi gave it a positive review which like blew their tiny minds it's like a paradigm king of them all they think he's the king of Marvel trolls or whatever because they don't even know how to fucking conjugate bias. All this insanity. And that was our burger report. God, it's so, just take it easy, guys. It's okay.

But here's this element of it to me. Okay, right? The Marvel characters, we've gotten such deep bench characters portrayed in loving ways at this point. No one thought we'd get Black Panther, you know? Sure, right.

You know, the biggest live action film of the year, that lovingly introduced and get black panther you know in like you know the biggest live action film of the year that lovingly introduced and played with respect yeah you know we have fucking ryan coogler making a black panther movie with like five of our best living actors in it it's great right and and dc people are like we still can't fucking get wonder woman working yeah sure i understand that frustration if those are the characters that you grew up really loving i love batman i'm not that attached to that many other DC characters. There's been a lot.

Yeah, no, yeah. Batman, we've got enough interpretations of it. Yeah, there's been a lot of Batman. But if you're a fan of any other DC character, you're, like, kind of out of luck, you know?

Right. I mean, Superman's been, like, hit and miss, and the other ones have barely been covered. Right. But there's this thing that comes out now,

I think, of, like, the DC characters have always been a little more dry. Mm-hmm. You know? They have always been a little more dry. You know, they've always been a little more mythical, whereas the Marvel characters were a little more psychologically relatable. The whole revolution of Stan Lee was like

making the Marvel characters be more like real people rather than these sort of demigods. And look, pick your choice. I'm not going to argue which is a better approach or which isn't. But DC's approach to making these movies has been we're going to make these movies the gritty, real, serious, adult-minded ones. Right.

And that comes out of, like, I think the success of the Nolan Batman movies, which were, that's one character that actually can withhold that sort of psychological exploration. It was done in a patient, like, probing way. Sure. And they really dug in. It wasn't serious for the sake of being serious. And it was also that character had been done so many different times before that you could take a radical departure to that but i watched something like suicide squad and i get bummed out about the fact that it's like in trying to prove that their characters are serious they're making movies that no kid would enjoy and i know we said this in our

batman versus superman episode but like putting aside whether or not it's appropriate i just think these are like unpleasant movies for children and the DC fans are like, well the Marvel movies are fucking Disney, they're for babies. Sure, they're too cute, yeah. Fine, if you think they're too cute, you want to be a little more grounded, that's fine. But I think the Marvel movies work for multiple age groups and the DC movies are working for one specific group

which is who are angry and feel like they're being betrayed by the world. I mean, certainly look, we spend a lot of time on the internet, we're exposed to the worst of people. Yeah. And I'm sure there are normal, boring people out there who like the Suicide Squad.

We were in the theater last night with a bunch of guys wearing DC shirts and all of them seemed like totally nice gentlemen. Yeah, sure, whatever. And I own fucking too many Batman shirts. Like, you know, I mean, I'm a terrible person, but that's a side.

You're quite bad. I'm quite awful. I would say you're quite bad. You're Rick Flag Theory alone. But here's the crux of this thing for me okay another time i fed the beast you know my god schwimmer came back schwimmer came back um i when batman versus superman came out and this guy was like rallying against all the critics like that yeah you really shouldn't feed i shouldn't feed the beast you shouldn't i shouldn't yeah especially once i'm

on a superhero show and once you're on a super. I don't know what you're talking about. Once I'm on a superhero show, I have to stuff you in the bees because it's going to be the most hypocritical thing in the world if I fucking engage with all these people when I'm on a thing that they'll probably be angry about. But hopefully not. August 19th. The tick. Watch it on Amazon. August 19th. Yeah. I went to this guy and I just said,

hey, I'm just curious, did you like Batman vs. Superman? And he said, I liked it a lot. I thought it was great. It's the best version of Batman we've gotten so far. He would fucking scare the shit out of little kids. And I said, are you citing that as a positive thing? And he went, yeah. And I went, why is it a positive for you that Batman would scare children?

And he said, this character is not meant for kids. These characters aren't meant for kids. They're grown up characters. And the thing is like, you know, all these characters in comic book history, there have been adult interpretations and there've been kid interpretations and there've been interpretations in the middle.

These characters have exist for decades. And the whole point is they're open for reinterpretation, but the DC, both the fans and the creative forces behind these films, the thing that seems to be driving them is, we're going to make the versions of the movies that don't make you feel like a baby for liking these characters. Because Marvel, you can go like,

I mind fancilizing myself a little bit by watching all these movies of people in spandex, and the DC movies, it's like, no, because they're fucking badass. Yeah, they're trying too hard. They're trying too hard to appease the insecurities of the worst fans of their properties. We should just go make a movie for people who love these characters.

And if it's sometimes they're grim and it's sometimes they're realistic and sometimes they're silly and it's sometimes they're broad. I get you. I just think the palette of like these films is so narrow and so disturbing and I think it feeds into a gross thing culturally. Make America great again. Yes. Make our superheroes great again. Yep. Make our superheroes great again. Yep. Make our superheroes mean again.

August 19th. The tick. Cutting you off. Yeah, we got to stop. Enough ranting. Okay. That's been Suicide Pod. That's been Suicide Pod.

Tune in next week for episode two of Suicide Pod. What, Ben? I just want to say one quick thing. Please. Favorite part of the movie, actually, for me. Sure. Hands down. Yeah. Joker, of the movie, actually, for me. Sure. Hands down. Yeah.

Joker, Henchmen, Panda Suit. Yeah. David, your favorite part? We're all going to walk out after we say our favorite part. Ben is walking out of the studio. He took my favorite part. Really? That's your favorite part?

No, no. It's Killer Croc wiggling as he jumps into the... Or it's Joel Kinnaman eating a chicken wing. Well... That was pretty good. Did that get a laugh in your audience? It did. Ben and I laughed.

No one else did. No, it's Killer Croc wiggling as he dives into a sewer. Okay, do you want to take off your headphones and now walk out and give me your favorite moment? I'll tell you what my favorite moment is. That's fine. You go ahead and do that. And as always, my favorite moment in Suicide Squad was that steak. SideSquad. Was that steak?

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