Blank Check with Griffin & David - Wonder Woman 1984

Episode Date: January 3, 2021

On the week of its release in December of 2020, Griffin and David discussed Wonder Woman 1984. Together they examine the heated online discourse, Wiig's film career post-SNL, the state of the superhero movie and of course wish stones and how they work! Special thanks to The Great American Novel for the new studio version of the theme song! Please check out their music on Bandcamp and Spotify. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch @ shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

nothing good is born from podcasts and greatness is not what you think. Who says that? Is it Wonder Woman? Yeah, guess who says that? What do you think? I'm doing a Chris Pine impression. I don't. Well, I thought maybe. I don't know.

Pascal, I suppose. I was more. It wasn't to do with your impression. I was more like, oh, boy, do I not remember this movie that well already? My podcast hasn't been what you think it has we all have our podcasts she's got that whole group of lines that are all like real kind of these these rueful i keep using rueful is 2021 the year of rueful i think so i think yeah rueful i feel like i also said rueful in one episode and you were like taking it back and you went rueful

and it's like you you kind of rediscovered the word and now you've been running with it no but you had this moment of just like rueful nice to see you again old roofie yeah well hey no she's got all these lines that like are prominent in the trailer and i guess she says in the movie but i can't remember even when she says them that all feel like inspirational quotes on driftwood that someone sells on etsy right uh yes right yes and they are rueful they are rueful they are rueful. They are rueful. Folks, it's 2021.

Oh! And can I say, 2020, you don't need to rest in peace. I don't mind if you rest in discomfort. Wow. Because, man, 2020 2020 not good yeah more like 2020 see ya wouldn't wanna be ya

right yeah definitely more like rest in pieces yeah right that's definitely what I should have said the first time it is no longer 2020 is that a good thing i mean by by by the standards of how years have gone recently no look it tend to tend to only get worse it's a good thing it's a good

thing in the way that like sometimes you need to get rid of some stuff after a breakup you know it's like right symbolically it's good to kind of close the door and be like, I should get this out of my house. There are too many memories involved in this thing. It's not like I have particularly high hopes about 2021, but I certainly like symbolically closing the door on a year that objectively drank duck piss, you know? It's a real duck piss drink of a year.

Yes, duck piss. Rude to ducks. Do they have bad... I know they have corkscrew dicks. That's, I think, just what I think of. It makes me feel like their piss would be sour, the corkscrew. The corkscrew dick. Right, right, right.

You ever had a duck egg? They're, like, dark. No, David, I hate eggs like dark no david i hate eggs oh right you hate eggs sorry sorry yeah right this is this is an incredible incredible start to a fresh year of podcasting with us covering a massive new release movie i really feel like i've set us off on an incredible foot griffin was like you know what let's do wonder woman first it'll kick off the new year. The discourse on that one is raging.

Like what better time? Right. And then we're like, so ducks have weird dicks, right? 2020 LMAO. Minute four is how sour do you think duck piss tastes? Should we just start over?

No, no, this is all in. This is all in. You really in you i mean do you feel like do you feel like this is going to hurt us ben do you think people who are going huh i've been looking for a wonder woman podcast are going to turn it off at this point can i be honest yes i don't think it's gonna help hey but i like a challenge we'll find out look let me tell let me tell folks what this is okay this podcast isn't duck piss talk it's blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin

i'm david we could rename it that i guess it's something to consider but well we'll see yeah we'll see let's let's uh let's leave it open to a vote. A legally binding vote. Look, this is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they lasso the lightning and ride on it. Baby. Sure. Baby. Now- Yes, that's's true this is not really part of that but this is absolutely a blank check movie this is the little bit of table setting i want to do for people who don't remember good point or or jumping on on this hot fresh very welcoming new episode which is uh this podcast is usually ducks piss well yeah we

should just double down on it we should just keep on invoking it non-stop throughout this entire episode um usually this podcast is about filmographies as we said and and director driven and we'll pick a director and we'll cover all of their movies in order in a little miniseries. But a couple of years ago, we felt like we needed to do Batman versus Superman Dawn of Justice. I'm sorry. I said the title wrong. Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice. Mm hmm. And it just felt like such a blank checky thing that even though we were like i don't know if we

ever want to cover zach snyder this seems like such a colossal sort of like bizarre auteur driven blockbuster uh we recorded it we lost a lot of the audio we released a trunk first and only time we've ever had tech problems it's never been a thing since that time never never come up never 2020 perfect year in terms of tech yeah yeah absolutely yeah rest in peace i mean you you are always pristine people start have started calling me producer griff because they're just like i assume you've been handling everyone's audio recently right you just fully are engineering and editing every episode because you're just so on top of this stuff yeah yeah yeah this is the point that i was trying to make was that after the success of the mcu warner brothers wanted to play catch up and they made this very bizarre decision to pretty much put one filmmaker in control of the whole extended

universe and sort of overseeing it and have everyone else have to fit their movies into his vision we have to talk about this okay and we're going to right right right that's this is all important right right right and then they've sort of backed off from that but then it's become a weird sort of sideways thing and we've gone back and forth on whether or not we still feel obligated to cover these movies. Now, this one felt important to cover for a couple of reasons. A, because we love the first Wonder Woman. And B, because Patty Jenkins has only made three films. She's one of these people where we very easily could do like a monster fill-in episode on Patreon and just say like,

Patty Jenkins is a filmmaker we cover every time there's a new movie. And I think that would be fair. I think she's an interesting enough filmmaker doing blank check projects on a huge scale. She's a good person to sort of put in our back pocket in that way. But yes, let's talk about the larger sort of state of the DC thing. So this is the thing. And yes, because Patty Jenkins, as you say, is now absolutely a blank check filmmaker, I would say. But when she gets Wonder Woman is the absolute opposite.

Someone who made a film that should ostensibly have gotten her a lot more work and then struggled for you know 10 plus years to even get a job in movie making but right the dc extended universe launched in 2013 with man of steel a movie we've never covered and should no we're putting a lot of things on our plate that we might have to throw on patreon at some point in the near future. I mean, I guess maybe we do Snyder one day, but God, that just feels like a nightmare. Snykids. Yeah, the Snykids. And yes, of course,

well, here's just a bunch of things to say. So when Man of Steel comes out, it's a year after the Avengers. So it's a year after the MCU thing has gone from experiment to juggernaut and,

you know, has gone from, oh, what are they doing over there to like, oh, we should try what they're doing over there.

Right. And there was this thing of like, you know, oh, we're very carefully just trying to relaunch Superman. Superman is a crown jewel. We're just trying to relaunch that.

And then like six weeks after Man of Steel comes out, they're like, the next movie's Batman versus Superman. We're building the whole universe out. as a crown jewel we're just trying to relaunch that and then like six weeks after man of steel comes out they're like the next movie's batman versus superman we're building the whole universe out we're going to 100 this is this is the problem it's it's the dual problem of and people i guess maybe forget it but like while the marvel kick thing is kicking off dc or warner brothers is having this great success with these critically acclaimed Christopher Nolan Batman movies so entirely self-contained completely unconcerned with larger world building

outside of those movies yeah right like Kevin Feige is making Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and so on sign these seven picture deals with these balloon salary you know like like you can't do that with christian bale you're not gonna say like hey so you've done two or these do you want to sign on maybe do like six more where you do some cameos and shit and like we do you know like not gonna happen so man of steel comes out that's that's a nolan produced you know and he he identifies snyder as he thinks he'll make a cool superman movie snyder has this you know ian rand fucking i am a you know alien among humans and i like he has a pitch at least he's got pitches let me just say a couple quick things just a button with a couple

quick fine points here one is there were a long list of directors who were apparently in talks like darren aronofsky and matt reeds who later goes on to do batman and even affleck met with them right aronofsky one of those guys who circled so many comic book movies yeah and it was always everyone would always get excited and then it would never come together but apparently really wanted to do this and it was like goyer and nolan had a pitch they had a take on how to redo superman and the pitch was very much we can do for superman what we did for dark knight like the plan was not build out a whole thing out of this extended universe right it was like redefine superman and there was also the looming specter of the lawsuit

from the schuster uh estate they had to do they thought they were going looming specter of the lawsuit from the Schuster estate. They had to do. They thought they were going to lose a bunch of the rights. They had to do it. And Zack Snyder, by a lot of accounts, became the choice because they were like, we know he can handle a movie of this size. We know he will be able to get this up and running quickly. Yes. But then they're in bed with him and they double down and they're like do you want to be

our grand architect well i and i guess you know there's it's like they green light the sequel right away even though the movie disappointed but it did okay you know it still did good it was very successful i think public perception was split but you also announced a sequel that isn't Man of Steel 2, as pointedly now we're going huge. But I think they, didn't they initially announce, that's what I can't remember, didn't they just initially announce like there'll be a sequel? Yes. And then it was, I remember at Comic-Con, Snyder presented the logo with like Batman behind it. And it was like, like oh and everyone freaking out and so right like maybe initially they were like and then who whatever one of our brothers gets

involved they're like we need a universe now boys you're gonna introduce wonder woman it's all gonna happen the comic-con thing was six weeks after that movie came out that's the thing i think people forget by all accounts it was like a scramble internally because as you said it's like 2008 is iron man and the dark knight right and then 2012 is uh dark knight rises and the avengers so like one year dc is the dominant force and marvel has an outside hit experimenting with a weird thing and then four years later dc closes the book on their most successful franchise and marvel just supercharges and so the next year they're scrambling and by all accounts their plan was man of steel 2 and then they sort sort of did the Hail Mary pass like the week or two before Comic-Con and went like, what if we just fucking go for it? Right.

And they did it, and they were legends. Yeah. As we keep talking about this whole enterprise, obviously one of the original sins is just them doing it all too so quickly like you know trying to launch everything in one movie that's a superman sequel holds up suicide squad holds up following it with this suicide squad which is bad and also has all this extended universe crap that's also separately bad and not helping matters but it's also fascinating like we had no intention of covering suicide squad and then you saw and you were like you don't understand how weird this thing was and i was like i guess we got to do it

and then at that point we had sort of backed into it where we're like it's not just the snyder strain we're interested in i guess it's this whole enterprise. Excuse me, but I do step back from it because to some degree, I think we felt a little burdened, like, oh, we've gotten ourselves trapped in this expectation that we have to cover every DC movie.

Then we skipped Shazam because we were like, who gives a shit? And then that ended up being one of the best ones and one of our favorite superhero movies in the last 10 years.

So we feel like idiots and we told Ange, like you should do Birds of Prey because we're just sort of over this. But then we both definitely liked Birds of Prey more than most of these movies. I mean, Ange liked it more than us. And I think she was absolutely.

I don't like that movie. Fair enough, fair enough. But the point is, I think we've had this uneasy relationship with how much we want to be in bed with like the commitment of needing to do every dc movie and we and i for two things one we should never commit because every six months there's an article and there was just one in the new york times where they're like yeah we're gonna do uh 50 movies a week and batman is gonna fucking be in a sitcom that's on

hbo max where his dick is out and it's gonna be great we're doing six different tv shows on hbo max that all interconnect and each one is based on one item on batman's utility belt bat shark propellant on hbo max yes I mean it's so like I met we will never commit we're not gonna put a ring on it now that you're saying it yes we

have covered every single DC extended universe film except for Shazam and Man of Steel those are the only two we haven't done and Man of Steel

right there's two right okay but and Shazam is possibly my favorite although I do love my good boy Aquaman and I do enjoy the Adventures of Wonder Woman but no I think Shazam is possibly my favorite. Although I do love my good boy Aquaman. And I do enjoy the Adventures of Wonder Woman. But no, I think Shazam is my favorite. You know, the James Gunn Suicide Squad movie is coming up.

I'd like to do talk about that. Maybe we wait. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But it's also like another thing where Gunn's a guy where we've covered both Guardians on Patreon. And he's only made two movies outside of that. So you're like, and he's certainly a blank check guy it this is this is the thing i butt up against i

was thinking about this a lot while watching wonder woman 1984 which is what this episode's about but i do think to some degree no i've said it i think i don't know maybe i have it i don't know this podcast is bad it's worse than duck piss no shut shut up. I think all of this table setting is necessary because to some degree this movie represents such a zoom out moment of just like, not just Warner Brothers and how they're run under AT&T, but also streaming versus theatrical and also just like superhero franchise building. And also, I think like the state of online discourse around movies, because I cannot remember the last time people have gotten this kind of apoplectic at large about a film it feels like different the way that people are angry on this one yes it does and i don't really get it but we can talk about that i have i have thoughts and theories and they are simply just

that i look i have thoughts and theories not just about this movie but about three big movies that came out really close together that were much hyped, basically. And all got very different reactions, but all basically like, like was sort of a fairly common thread, I would say. And it's perfectly reasonable to not like any of those movies, but it did also just kind of feel like everyone was like, ah, which I understand.

Totally. I think it's bad. Right. And, uh, look, ah, which I understand. Totally. I think it's bad. Right. And look, I went on this whole sort of thing in the old guard episode and people really push back at it because they felt like I was being sort of like a judgmental or gatekeep about the way that people watch movies, which is not my intent. It is more that I feel like I've spent a lot of this year and it's we're too in it. It's impossible to fucking come up with a thesis here. But sociologically,

there is a major shift going on in how people consume entertainment and talk about it. Right. And it's been supercharged by everyone being stuck at home, watching everything on their couch, nonstop trying to distract themselves. And then also spending even more time online. But, but the shift has been happening gradually for a while that having been said, like you said, soul,

Mank and Wonder Woman were the three listed. No, no. Mank, Tenet and Wonder Woman. I don't think soul falls in that bucket. So soul, soul has gotten maybe, you know, there's, there, there's always going to be discourse, but that, Tenet, and Wonder Woman. I don't think Soul falls in that bucket. I agree. Soul has gotten maybe, you know, there's always going to be discourse.

That's what I was going to say. No, I think those three you threw out completely correct and fair. I think the Soul thing was also fascinating to watch where it was like Soul and Wonder Woman both go up on their streaming platforms Christmas Day. both go up on their streaming platforms christmas day it feels like overwhelmingly especially in the first 24 hours wonder woman won the battle of the eyeballs right everyone was watching that thing right away yeah it was for the whole family everyone could watch it you know wonder woman who doesn't like wonder what right your soul it's like some people don't want to watch a kid's movie they don't know what it's about anticipated sequel to a beloved movie like one of the sort of more well-regarded uh films in one of the more the most dominant genre at popular cinema and it also is like this big budget sort of spectacly movie the idea of people getting to watch it at home i think felt like a christmas

present to people like finally here's a real movie in this year where the things we've been getting on streaming have felt like kind of uh damaged goods you know like write-off sort of shit uh by and large and uh everyone was just going wild buck wild about wonder woman flipping out but it was also just astounding to watch how loud the discourse was by like noon on christmas day and not just among film twitter people but like the people i specifically follow in order to follow people who don't talk about movies all the time like like like piece of shit yeah lame worst movie i've seen the last 30 years and i'm like you write for politico and you watched it within two hours of waking up on christmas morning like like it was just Santa came and

he brought us one totally but but then i feel like by the end of christmas night or maybe the following day i saw the sentiment of like why is everyone watching wonder woman soul is on disney plus and it's good don't watch the movie that makes you mad watch soul and soul was then being positioned as like this is the alternative this is actually the good studio film and then like 24 hours after that the soul backlash started and once again like i totally understand all of the soul backlash i think it's a flawed movie that i do like a lot but it's just the cycle is so fucking quick these days. And you speak about how, yeah.

It's all available at our fingertips. It is. Not for free for free, but obviously like with the click of a button and, uh, the internet's out there and people are bored. Uh, it's a boring time in general,

the holidays and more boring right now. A lot of people are alone or haven't traveled or you know just with their whatever um so yeah uh these are all things um but also people just kind of think this movie's dog shit so i can't really no argue with i mean there's a lot i would say it's more dog or just duck piss but yeah ben how dare you fuck up the duck piss joke it was so clean up until this point and then you tripped on the word it was perfect we had a perfect run of everyone loving this perfectly executed bit i want to i want to say one thing on the onset here because i fall into this trap sometimes where i'll like I'll say something people are like

why is Griffin projecting what he thinks other people think or why they don't like a thing or this kind of thing and I feel like it's like it comes with the territory of more people listen to our podcast now right we have a podcast that's casual and conversational by design but now more people listen to it and they take more stock in it. And so when I throw out some sort of like half-baked thesis I have, it sometimes hits people like I'm trying to pass legislature, you know? Like I'm making some sort of sweeping judgment because I love coming up with theses. And I think about like, I had this exact thought while watching Wonder Woman weirdly, but when I was in like

middle school and we had to write like a formal essay for the first time and it was on like Romeo and Juliet and I handed in some like, you know, four page essay that was filled with dumb jokes and puns. And also every sentence began with like, I think, or I don't know, or I kind of feel like, and my teacher pulled me aside and she was like this is unacceptable complete rewrite start over like not even an f like not applicable like this is not an essay and i was like what's the problem she's like first of all you can't make fucking jokes second of all uh you can't start your sentences off with i think or i feel or maybe and i said why and why? And she was like,

part of like writing an essay is you're really selling an argument. Like you're absolutely certain that this is the case. You don't want to hedge at the start of a sentence with like, I don't know, maybe, you know, right. And I have this very distinct memory of turning to her and saying, but I'm 13 years old. I don't know what I'm talking about. Why would I assume that I have the right take on Romeo and Juliet? And she just sort of was silent when, I don't know what I'm talking about. Why would I assume that I have the right take on Romeo and Juliet? And she just sort of was silent when I don't know, because that's how essays work. But I think I think about that because anytime I can tell you make it right. Anytime I say anything on this show that rubs someone the wrong way in terms of like, I think people don't like this because of this or this is why this is good and everyone has it wrong. I do want to frame that I always think of myself as that 13-year-old boy in a class that's like, why is anyone taking my opinion seriously? I'm just saying what I think, right? But I bring this up because to some degree, digging into this movie and what works in it and what doesn't work in it and why people are so angry about it is going to get into

a lot of conjecture, right? Because it's difficult to try to parse to a certain degree even what this movie is trying to do in certain areas. I want to hear what you guys think. Forget the discourse. Sure, people don't like it. That's fine. That does seem to be where the chips have fallen

for old Diana and company. But, you know, I don't know what you guys thought of it because we haven't talked about it because you've been keeping your opinion a secret i have you saw it as a professional critic you were sent a screener early and you were part of sort of that second wave of critics that's the other thing was like first wave of early tweet reactions very positive then there's the second wave of critics writing long-form reviews and you were on the upper end of those those started to get a little more me dana stevens justin chang we're the wonder woman crew joe robinson loves it a lot of our friends love it and then the movie

drops and people are really negative yeah i i you know there was some dissection of the sort of way that warner brothers you know rolled it out where people who work for whatever, where some people saw it first. And like you say, they'll tweet a reaction and it's a very positive reaction. And they were like, you know, this is the sort of the game they play. That's an old game. That's not new. Marvel does that. Like that's been happening for years.

Like there's nothing new about that at all. Yeah. Like who cares? Like whatever. That's just that's just how it works if you you know i wouldn't take early tweet reactions too seriously you know maybe there's sort of some fun in trying to parse enthusiasm but usually they're going to be enthusiastic but even as you said like i mean walter walter cha had a really good thread on Twitter the other day about like, you know, a practice that's probably going to fall by the wayside now because of how much everything is changing. But how, especially for like big populist blockbuster movies, critics usually saw them at screenings that were filled otherwise with like people who won a radio contest. Like even just to make sure do that that critics would see a movie with a crowd that's more excited that's it's something that's fallen

out of fashion but that was very much like the way the studios operated in like the 90s and the early 2000s yeah i would say if you're going to what is called a voucher screening now that's a bad sign that's usually a sign that a studio does not have a lot of um faith in the movie or it's a sign that you're seeing the movie later because you know there's there's always preview screenings that they can fit you into if you like missed a screen but like walter's point was just that like the entire psychological attack there is like let critics see it with people who are very excited to see it and are reacting positively to the movie so they sit back and go i don't know i guess it works even if i don't like yeah they look studios are gonna try and sell you on their movie

they always fucking do this there's always shit like there that's right yeah that's always been true and the most crucial thing is they want you to see it in the theater and yeah that's true for the smallest indie you know if you want to this is again pre-covid if you want to fight them and say like hey can you just send me a link i'm busy i can't make the screening whatever they really don't like to do that because they want you to see it in a theater because they know theaters are better yeah um but i didn't see this in a theater i saw this on my television um no no can i throw what it has did most, although it did okay the box office and we will talk about that.

It's okay being a relative term. Right. But I mean, far and away the most successful pandemic movie. Can I throw out like a take number one? Because you're saying we've been playing our opinions close to the vest. We haven't really told you what we thought of it. We definitely, I don't want to speak for Ben. I definitely like it less than you do. I think it uh we definitely i i don't want to speak for ben i definitely like it

less than you do i think it's a mess i like it more than most people and a lot of that is me falling into my griffin trap of i cannot help but give a movie a lot of points for being from this compellingly weird right right even if I think it is unsuccessful, I'm so fascinated by so much of what she was trying to do that it's like, I prefer this movie missing the mark by a lot to a movie that succeeds

at far more modest ambitions, especially in a genre that has become so cookie cutter and on rails in so many ways. This is such a compellingly gonzo series of decisions made in a completely overstuffed movie that feels very individualistic to me in certain ways hell yeah i agree but i don't think it's a good movie i'm compelled by it i don't think it's a good movie i don't get that i i like it but i but again like you know people really hate it so i and i when watching it was not thinking like this isn't like when i saw the last Jedi, you know, at the big press screening and the crowds going wild.

And I'm like, damn, this thing fucking annihilated like this. This thing is going to rule. Everyone's going to love it. There will be no, you know, disagreement on that one. When I saw it, I was like, man, this movie is weird and doing a thing I did not expect at all. And, you know know i'm sort of impressed by the intentionality i was not sure how it would go over in general yeah um and it also felt kind of lacking in uh how to put this in a nice way. Just kind of like cheesy girl power crap,

which I don't think is a Patty Jenkins problem at all, but it can be an MCU, or it's a comic book movie problem. It's a corporate movie problem where the person looks at the camera and is like, you know, like, you know, whatever. But anyway, but maybe I'm wrong about that too. It's weird. Like, I feel movie is is is and isn't like i saw some on twitter call it like

kind of like the ultimate tote bag feminism movie and i think you know that's a weird thing to say i don't get that at all that that feels like a criticism of what wonder woman or whatever like of of what i'm talking about a thing that's annoying that's only been building up for years this movie is bananas there's that's not what this movie is that's so much of my thing i mean like you know this is this is a a gripe of mine that i go back to very very often right but like i like big eyes more than almost anyone on the planet. I understand that that is not a loved movie. Right.

But what, what continues to piss me off is that like very critics, very few critics stood up for that movie in any kind of way. It made no dent at the box office. And then people were so fucking like cynical and outraged when they announced that tim burton was doing dumbo and i was kind of like what do you fucking expect he made the exact movie you've been asking him to make for 10 years the small little indie movie without special effects and no one gave a shit about it, why wouldn't he just take his ball and leave and go back?

But that's my point. So I bring up this example for that exact reason, David, where I just, there's a part of me that wants to say to everyone who is outraged about Wonder Woman 1984, I completely understand

if you despise this movie. I don't even particularly like it, but I do worry that the viciousness of the response is going to discourage anyone from being this weird. I, I, I, I,

I will push back slightly against that by being like, at the end of the day, it is a superhero movie. There's going to be billions of them. Like, I know what you mean though. I know the fear is like, whatever, to be billions of them like i know what you mean though i know the fear is like whatever like a person like jenkins doesn't get to write around check as much even though these movies make money

bob right like that warner brothers that a studio it's like the last jedi thing an unambiguous success obviously right at the same time one that caused a corporation to panic and be like ah is that too weird should we just like you know do like luke skywalker like ah you know like that just that vibe yeah yes that's that's my fear at the end of the day they're all fucking superhero movies there's too damn many of them i'll say this bend way in tag in wish logic is a weird thing to explore in a movie love it it's definitely like playground kind of like remind me of like yeah well i get ultimate wishes plus four because right and infinity plus one situation yeah i mean look look katie rich texted me halfway through this movie and she was like, I don't get it.

He wished to be the rock. And I'm like, Katie, it's a wishing for all infinite wishes thing. He's just doing the six-year-old like, well, if I got a lamp from a genie, that's what I would do. If he became the character Monkey Paw, then I could be like, oh, okay, this guy's a villain he's got a name he's got a costume fists he had he became a little crumpled up fist but this is like another example of where i'm just sort of so confused by the state of like blockbuster superhero discourse where as many have pointed out like anyone complaining about the fact that i cannot believe this movie is about a wishing stone is conveniently forgetting

that the entire marvel cinematic universe is about a guy who builds a glove to fit five wishing stones yeah that's like the silliest thing in the world which no one like the russo brothers aren't gonna sit down and be like oh the infinity stones are real and they're a metaphor for no they're gonna be like yeah they're magic fucking rocks one's a power rock one's a space rock that one good gets you to space like come on right and david what has always been my biggest complaint about how the mcu handled thanos that he wasn't in love with death and like that's the kind of thing they took out all the richard donner vibe operatic superhero goofiness where i go like if we can't get to

that point then what the fuck are we doing here and to that degree i love that this movie is unabashedly just about a magical wishing stone i love how goofy that is i agree with ben though that the problem is not that it's about a wishing stone I think the rules of the stone are so incoherent look I'm gonna come out and say it because I know this is against this is like when Ben went from you know being a wet boy to a sandy boy yeah but

I don't give a shit about the rules who cares what be careful what you wish for we get it it's bad you're gonna get something good but it's not gonna work out who cares i think the movie fails at even making that point clearly like i am not asking for internal logic this is a movie about a world where gods exist and they made a cursed stone i get it i don't need to understand the chemical properties of the stone i don't need fucking like you know a

bill of of instructions with the stone but i do feel like watching this film every 20 minutes i was confused trying to recalibrate how the stone works even just to the degree to jump way ahead there's the whole stretch of the movie after pedro pascal becomes the stone where it feels like in order for a wish to happen he needs to talk someone into saying the wish they need to say i wish but even if it's something that he wants it feels like oh he's the stone which means he can't make the wishes himself and then he starts making the wishes himself again no he doesn't he only can make the wishes himself once he is connected to everybody by satellite i'm so before then before then he's cursed that's why there's that ridiculous even i will i cannot defend scene where there's a like a powerpoint an 80s powerpoint explaining the satellite where it's

like yeah technically it's touching people and like it's like okay all right i guess that you know that's that's how we're gonna make this uh third act scale versus him just walking around and touching people well but i david it feels like he's he's granting people wishes and getting something out of it but then at some point he's like going to his driver he's like boy wouldn't you wish that traffic would part like the red sea and the guy's like yes i wish that and then it's like he's kind of getting his way so yes there's a lot of mixed messaging around how the mechanics of it work it's the dual he thinks that if he becomes the stone that it's it's the it is we're gonna talk about this movie soon but jafar wanting to be a genie where he's like oh

the genies are the most powerful i should be that and it's like no if you're a genie you can only do what someone asks you to do yes because even though you have omnipotent power you are bound by laws of genie hood he's like i should just be the wishing stone no no no not only are you going to need other people to make wishes that you want to have happen but you are going to have an insatiable need to grant wishes because that is your purpose yes great it's a banana so silly love it he's a stone he shouldn't have become the stone david this movie's silliness is the main thing it has going for me in its eyes you don't have to sell me on the silliness that is

my entire defense for the portion of this movie that i like is the silliness but i do feel like the movie does not even like i'm not saying i didn't get it obviously i understood but i feel like the movie does not clearly set up the monkey paw aspect in terms of just like when you get montages of all the wishes happening they focus on wishes that are bad in the first place right and i've seen so many people saying like well i don't understand the movie's all about how everyone has to give up their wish as if no one wished for something that was actually like positive. And then the response to that is, well, the entire idea is that if you wish for something positive, it's a monkey paw. It would get cursed. It would somehow fuck with you.

But when the movie. But you're seeing people who are like, I wish that person would die. And then they die. I wish all the Irish would be thrown into paddy wagons. person would die and then i wish i wish all the irish would be thrown into paddy wagons like the movie so front lines bad selfish wishes that because it's a movie about selfishness i understand but i just think it's one of these things where it's like a movie even if you were able to infer what a movie is trying to say sometimes especially with like populist you know entertainment if a movie doesn't say the thing clearly it is hard to process it emotionally you understand

intellectually i guess this is what they were trying to do but it's it makes it hard to actually engage with it and that's like that's a perfect example of it where it's like you need to show some good wishes and then people getting the fucking bad end of the stick. You can't just show people who are like, I'm a racist. I wish I had more nuclear weapons. Well, I would reply and I already feel ridiculous how much I'm defending this movie that nobody likes, but that we've been watching the opposite for the whole movie because Chris Pine is here and we know that he's here in this cursed way and she can't think about it.

And no one's thinking about, you know, the bad stuff, but that's what the Chris Pine wishes. It's this wonderful thing that's happening to her that we immediately know is terrible because he's not just back. He is in the body of someone else. And,

um, because he's not just back he is in the body of someone else and um i think that's a very crucial decision the movie is making to communicate so what a terrible thing this is but other people are like why the fuck is that happening but that's but this is my issue with it david they don't treat that as the bad end of the monkey paw right they treat she's losing her power as the repercussion they do which i don't think is necessary because two reasons one what you're saying and two we've been there like there's so many of the and i know there's so many superhero movies now that it's hard not to go back to the same wells but like like haven't like obviously spider-man did that i feel like there's just a lot of movies that have done that it almost always happens on

the two it's like spider-man 2 happens on the two yeah and like happens on the second act for 20 to 30 minutes and there's a moment where it's like oh wait what i'm wounded you know and there's a what's going on my My vision isn't working. And then you're like, yeah, well, can we just fucking get to your powers working again

when the score's going to kick in and you're going to kick some ass, right? You know what I mean? Like, we just know it's delaying the inevitable. I also feel like

so much of what they got right in the first movie is like, you know, on paper, everyone being like like how are you ever going to make a fucking wonder woman movie right and for so many years this movie was in

development hell because it was just like how do you fucking execute this character in like a post gen x landscape everyone struggled to do superman since christopher reeve that was a more innocent time at least in terms of like the tone of movies and whatever and here's this character who's a literal god and is perfect and is statuesque and all this sort of shit like how do you do it right and how do you make there be any sort of tension or conflict with someone who's who's really kind of the superman issue right right and i think what was so smart about the first movie is she really approaches the character on an ideological level, right? She's fighting ideological battles.

It's not the tension of whether or not she will successfully be able to beat this guy because she's fucking Wonder Woman. It's the question about whether or not she can win moral arguments. an issue with this movie is that when you get to that shit of like the weird body swap nature of Chris Pine being in some other dude's human shell, you cannot tell because they tie it so much to her losing her powers, whether that's just a riff on I like 80s body swap movies. I'm making a weird 80s comedy. Or if there's supposed to be some moral reckoning there, because it feels like they truly spend so little time being concerned about who the fuck this guy was, which is why I think it makes people so uncomfortable. It was not a thing that made me uncomfortable. And like the extrapolations that people have made about like the inhumanity of how the Christopher Paloha character is treated is like I would never go that far.

But I understand why people are spiraling on it because the movie's attitude to it is very strange. That's fair. Like is it being John Malkovich? Is he inside? But then he doesn't recognize her later in the movie. He seems to have just been like oh i lost a portion of my life he's shut down right he's right i also think there might be like a kind of general like that was a mania that we all forget you know like right like because like the whole world just

goes insane for a week so maybe everyone's just like i don't know i mean i look i another idea i like a lot on paper and i even like a little bit in execution is making one of these superhero movies where i mean someone tweeted yesterday uh i'm gonna keep citing tweets and not giving credit because there's been too many tweets about this movie and i can't remember who said what but someone tweeted something like what kind of superhero movie is this is it one of those we need to close the gates or one of those we need to get the port the orb right right and it's like one of those things where like portal in the sky right these movies tend to fall into is there an opening that we need to close or is there an object we need to reclaim or is it both of them at the same time?

And I do like that this movie, the threat is essentially is society going to eat itself alive? Right. I like that. Absolutely. The third act of this movie is like strange days where it's just like everything is just going to shit and we're all just like tearing each other apart. I think that is compelling. just like tearing each other apart. I think that is compelling.

I mean, these are the reasons I cannot throw this movie out with the bathwater because it's just like there's shit going on there in the ways in which I think she so successfully, Patty Jenkins, analyzed in the first movie. What are all the things

that are getting tiring about superhero movies? And what are the fundamental tenets that we've moved away from that are the only reasons to be telling these stories in the first place? And I think she isn't as well calibrated on this one. But I am so compelled by how much she is clearly trying to answer these questions. riff and people need to view it through the prism of recognizing how goofy those movies were and how

much latitude those movies had by not being invested in reality and owning that they're based on baby books where silly things happen i mean like you know as everyone knows superman ends with superman flying around the earth backwards so fast that he turns back time a thing that doesn't even make sense if you're six no like you know when you're six you're like why would the earth going backwards reverse time wouldn't it just like make tidal waves like something terrible like but you're just like whatever i get it right and when super and Lois Lane fly for the first time, she has an internal monologue poem set to music. Like all this stuff where like it's very easy to clown on, but also isn't that what we should be doing? That's the vibe.

Right, right, right. Agree with you there. And like, of course, Donner was kind of inventing a genre that didn't exist. And I think was, you know, even though comic books right around when Superman came out were starting to get darker and Gwen Stacy was dying, but still, like, he's more tapped into, like, these are silly, fun, operatic, you know, right? Like, that's what the tone should be, right?

This is Superman here. Well, they don't sing, though. I don't get it. What do you mean? That's an old well for Ben to return to the opera malapropism the malapropra anyway

so yeah so that's part of my but also I mean I really liked the interview she gave with the times which I was talking to you about where she said she wanted to end a superhero movie where nobody dies and she wins with a conversation she wanted to have um this villain who's this you know obviously trumpy 80s businessman but also he's an immigrant who's pretending to you know imitate he's imitating success that he's seen and he's

frosting his hair he's trying to look like he's white like um but beyond that the thing you said about ideologically like how the first wonder woman movie is very much like you say like she is fighting war and she is fighting man's yes cynical nature right and she is an icon of uh goodness in that right yeah this is the same you know it's it's the same thing. It's just that rather than do a World War II movie, which I imagine plenty of people expected. Yes. From her, right?

She's like, yeah, I'll set it in this other time of great cynicism. And I'm going to try and directly say, like, this is the tidal wave that's crashing on our shores now like this is where it's building up like this is the this is the sort of sinful time like yeah these are all interesting ideas i love all this stuff i'm like for the first time in a while taking notes now because i have so many specific things to unpack that i want to make sure i don't forget them here's the thing i'll say fair enough i think it was in that New York Times interview, she said that she, like, that people always criticize the ending of the first movie and it bums her out because she wasn't happy

with the first movie either. And that was like the one big thing that Warner Brothers made her change. That she didn't want it to be that much of a CGI fire and brimstone fight thing. But I was like, this thing can't lack that. We're going to need a showdown. It can't end with a conversation. And she really wanted to. What I really like about the ending of the first Wonder Woman and why I've always defended

it is I feel like she threaded the needle. I feel like she did both at once. If you look at that final sequence, despite the fact that it's got dodgy CGI Peter Thouless and all this molten lava, right, right. But she's barely fighting him. It is still fundamentally a conversation. I think people just get so turned off by the fact that the visuals are aping what they've seen in 8,000 of these movies, even though dramatically what's happening texturally is exactly what she was trying to do.

I just want to say, the entire problem, I think, I assume for people, it's just the visuals and the weirdly sort of low stakes-y, which it's because it's Crowbar did, I would assume. But what I love is what you're talking about and the pine sacrifice stuff that is, I think, very effective and beautifully done like you know which is happening at the same time okay so i'm gonna try to organize my thoughts here but here's let's let's talk about the pine thing right now okay because this movie was shot two and a half years ago right that's like another weird thing with this movie is that it was shot summer 2018

it was supposed to come out christmas 2019 they pushed it back because they thought they would need more time for the effects and then like november 2019 patty jenkins was kind of like oh we finished it early i guess we could have released at christmas too bad well at least people get it in the summer and then the world ended so then it's this weird movie that's now been finished for so long that's sitting on a shelf that's keep keeps on getting pushed back two months at a time yada yada yada it's had a lot of time for people to think about it and build up expectations in their mind, including like a trailer that played for so long that people were so fucking jazzed about, right? Like, I feel like overall people love that fucking trailer and like,

oh my God, Blue Monday, this fucking rules. But I was thinking back to the moment when the sequel gets announced, the title gets announced, the supporting cast gets announced, the villains get announced. A lot of those details get announced. The Chris Pine thing did not get announced until the movie was filming. Because I specifically remember it was like Patty Jenkins tweeted a picture of him on set in the outfit, like with the fanny pack and said, look who's back. And the internet went like,

what? Wait, he's back. How are they handling this? What is this? What is this movie about? And then there was so much time where that answer was not clear because the movie was sitting on a shelf,

right? Correct. They wanted to keep it a secret. And then once you see the trailer, it's not explicit, but there is maxwell lord sort of going like you can have whatever you want and there's him kind of just appearing and you're like okay so it's not like i mean he this is mystical and this is this isn't like right i don't know

like a wormhole opening and it's also not like i'm his grandson or right like whatever that would be now here's my issue I feel like the first Wonder Woman movie in a way that these films rarely do successfully set up and landed the execution of Steve Trevor kind of being her Uncle Ben of that being like the really impactful it's a formative right right and it kind of like it guides her compass for the rest of her life as a superhero as a human being where she's not a human being she's a god but like i feel like she's a god you know more so than than uh you know most spider-man adaptations certainly more so than i think marvel ever handled the Bucky thing. I think that worked so well. And his sacrifice, as you said, was so meaningful

that the moment that picture went up and it was clear he was in the movie, I got really nervous, right? And I've remained excited about this movie, but that was always the element that was really nerve wracking to me. My hope was like, please tell me he's going to be like Gusteau and Ratatouille.

You get to have Pine be in the movie and get to have them have scenes together. But it's just a projection of her mind. I don't want him to be undead because I think his death being permanent is kind of important. And then I sit there watching this movie and every single scene that he was on screen i became more and more convinced of how disastrous bringing him back was but but wait but they did gusto him they that's what they do they don't because that's what he is no he's well i disagree with you because his death is permanent he's a vision he's he's not real. Like he's, she summons him out of her mind and then he goes away.

But, but in Ratatouille, you literally have like, you are having conversations with yourself. But I'm saying like, he's not undead. He's not back. He's not returned to the universe for good.

He is this phantom because she has to get over him. Like, I don't know. Again, I'm defending this because i liked it and nobody else liked it like so i cannot or not nobody but lots of people didn't like it but i found it to be this very powerful be careful what you wish for fantasy of a person you lost like not like like i wasn't like crying tears but i'm like yeah man that's what i'd wish for i get it like and you know what it wouldn't work out and, man, that's what I'd wish for. I get it. Like, and you know

what? It wouldn't work out. And it's that that's what grief is. And like, if you're going to make three movies, which supposedly she will, I get that as the second movie is that that's the temptation. That's her humanity, you know, like, you know, presenting itself in physical form. Like that's what she craves being human. I think it's this great metaphor for like, she wants to, you know, be a normal person, which is to me,

the classic superhero. It's the Superman thing, right? Like that, you know, the superhero dilemma. I wish I could be normal. Sure.

And there he is, but it's not going to be normal. And he's, you know, he's dead. He blew up. He exploded. Here's my hot pitch.

Okay. Yes. You said you had, you told me this, that you had one of your classic rewrites yeah where you think it would it would it would help the movie like overall and i i ran i ran this by ben as well and was like workshopping it with uh with him okay yes i i think one of the main assets like of the first wonder woman is that it is so focused in what it's saying.

Right. To a degree that some people could clown on it for being like, oh, it's sort of corny and simple. But it's like she understands you've got to just have a really clean spine to these things. You want the hero's mantra to be like a sentence. You know, you want that to be the thing that's guiding every one of their decisions. And you understand the ideological battle that she's fighting. And this movie, I just feel like there's such an overabundance of ideas that it's very hard to keep track of what the actual thing going on with Diana internally is. Which is a complaint I've seen from a lot of people. To a large degree, Diana feels kind of lost for a large chunk of this movie.

She gets caught in weird narrative cul-de-sacs she doesn't get a ton to do i think part of that is sort of like the batman returns ambition of like can you have this sort of three-way narrative can you give the villains kind of complete arcs i think both of the villain arcs work better than diana's arc works in the movie like you say classic superhero see i mean, Dark Knight has that problem, right? Like so many do. Totally. Dark Knight has the exact same dilemma for its hero. He wants to be a regular person.

Right. And I think with Batman, that's often a sequel thing because you do all the psychological heavy lifting in the first movie. And in the second movie, you're like, I guess we've kind of solved this guy. It has to be more about... I have to stop you there.

I still don't know what's up with Batman, though. Did something happen to him? Oh, David. Was there like an issue early that made him into, you know, being a bat guy? Like, was there something sad? You don't have to answer this now, but yeah, what's up?

No, I can't answer it now because you're going to be so devastated you won't be able to record the rest of this episode. You're going to be shocked when you hear what happened. I can't imagine. I wouldn't be devastated at all unless, of course, it involved, you know, maybe a Zorro movie or something. But apart from that, I don't have a lot of emotional buttons that can be pressed. David, David.

Anyway, pearls get to me. Oh, David. I don't even know how to tell you this. Not only might it involve a Zorro movie, but in certain interpretations, it involves an ironic use of bats through art. I don't even know how to. Oh, David. God, this sounds so sad. It sounds like something that you should definitely just portray every five years on screen.

It's going to crush you. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. You're building to your big fix. I'm sorry. So Batman, as a certain degree once you've set up the foundation your first movie he he doesn't become a cipher but he sort of becomes like a detective in a procedural right like the movie is just watching

high functioning batman solve it's a lot of what what do you think batman he's like we should do this it's like all right well you know he's here right whereas wonder woman and superman are characters who are so elemental and are so like godlike that they need to represent shit right like that that that has to be the thing of like what's the morality of them and all this sort of shit and this movie i think it's like you can at the end of it parse like oh i guess these were all the different things they were trying to say. But like when she gives her big impassioned speech at the end of the movie and she tells everyone you have to renounce your wishes. It feels like an odd sort of thing to frame because we've only focused on the negative wishes. And she's telling everyone like you can't get what you want, which is a weird thing coming from someone who pretty much has all the power in the world isn't vulnerable and all this

sort of shit no but she doesn't because she wants to be a regular person with a nice guy on a ranch and let's be honest i'll say it chris pint quite handsome she'd like to to look on that face every once in a while but you know what she can't have it instead she has to be an icy museum employee who also occasionally maybe fights crime is in malls who knows well this is another fundamental problem with the movie for me this is the bigger problem perhaps an unavoidable problem because of the whole extended universe i'm assuming i'm assuming what you're gonna say yes first of all you realize, there's a very good reason why no one has ever made a sequel with the same lead character set 70 years after the first movie, because it is just such a gulf to gap in your mind of like what has happened. Right.

Right. right and especially when because as as i think we're both in agreement on when you're kind of fucked by the bricks laid out by the extended universe you have batman versus superman which i know petty jenkins to some degree is in a bubble and ignores a lot of the snyder brick laying but also she's a little reined in you have that movie where diana it's so hard for batman to find the world's greatest detective to find one picture of her because she's been laying so low for the better part of a century that you now are stuck making these sequels where the great thing is they're free because they're prequels they're set before you don't touch these movies the bad thing is Wonder Woman can have so little impact on the world at large she's a DC hero who has to basically be like a famous blur like she can't even be

wonder woman she's like a used car salesman doing local tv commercials yeah this this is the whole thing though with the extended universe with everything about their approach everyone mocks the sort of sameness of the mcu and the dictatorial status of kevin feige but he's the one who's gonna be like well yeah if you do that you're gonna have this problem 10 years from now and no one no one in fucking batman land is like well wait what's wonder woman been doing for a hundred years if we're saying that she was in world war one it's like oh i don't know like just clearly everyone's like ah whatever she was doing something who cares like well i guess now you just have this problem where you like so she was really on board with stopping world war

one right at the end of world war one and then she what like got really into a dinner by herself all the time ate dinner with the rudest ass waiter who's like are you alone and she's like yeah i'm alone he's like i guess i'll clear your plate away the noisily fucking i'll pick up every plate and bash it together just to make it clear i'm clearing plates i don't think and to some degree this is bumping up against perhaps the limitations of gal gadot as an actress who i think is very effective when used properly i don't think the movie accurately conveys the weight of that existential loneliness yeah it just feels like oh she's having a bad month right like that's the problem all that stuff is framed like i don't know if she's not great at ennui

that's just really not her and i don't know if this movie needs some fucking like up married life sequence where you like do a montage of 70 years of her watching everyone she loves dies like there's the only moment where you get like a glint of it kind of working and it's so quick is the photo of her with old etta candy on the nightstand and i'm like i need more of that i need more of the fill-in of her living what must be like a fucking cullen family vampire life where every 10 years people realize she's not aging she picks up she abandons everything and starts fresh like i need that emotional weight it's a good pitch and honestly i they should have done it and i have no idea if this was a problem but again that kind of sounds like Captain America.

Yeah. Which, of course, you can repeat it. It's fine. But it is crazy where I'm like, is there a certain point, Warner Brothers, when you're announcing you're going to do six of these a year, that you might want to start thinking about the fact that a lot of comic book stories have been put on screen at this point? Right. There might not be too many new angles here outside of the

marvel thing of we've got this world that you love and we're gonna bounce new characters off each other we're gonna bring someone in who kind of you know like you know they think because they have the world but dc doesn't have the world they've kind of avoided the world which is fine you know like that's that's an approach but anyway that's that's a large yeah if anything dc's largest issue is that they are not wholly embracing treat everything as a standalone make it a fucking multiverse make it whatever it feels like they're doing it in some ways but in other ways it gets really fuzzy yes Yes. But this is... But your big pitch.

So this is my big pitch. All that was important setup for what I think emotionally doesn't work in the movie and what I think actually would execute the intent of the film better. So much of it, as you said,

is also like, oh, here's the 80s, like, you know, this fulcrum point in American culture where things went from being bad to horrific, and we're still feeling like, you know, the ripple effects of today. I make it very clear, I'm not saying that things weren't horrific before the 80s, but so many of our specific modern cultural issues start from reagan era america right uh and this sort of uh dramatic reformation the me obsession all this sort of shit right that she's trying to do with this you know very sort of broad perception of what the 80s represented uh but so much of the movie as you said should be this kind of thing of like diana just being

done just being dead inside not knowing what to do and also questioning like how fucked is humanity innately right like is there a thing worth saving here in world war one it's literally the idea of a war and world in in wonderland 1984 i am completely on board with it being people making shitty wishes and like attacking each other in the streets and it not needing to be something that literal. Right. Right. It does feel like if the movie is going to be about her making a selfish monkey paw wish at the expense of humanity because she feels like she needs something for herself. And especially with the way this movie starts, it feels like what organically the story should

be is her wishing to bring Themyscira back. Okay, like bring the whole thing back? Yeah, because you have this gift in the universe which is the island was destroyed everyone she grew up with was destroyed her family was destroyed she's from this idyllic place and then she came to the land of man and tried to fight against the innate shittiness of our species right and by the end of wonder woman one she kind of wins but if you're making the movie that's it's 70 years later and she's beaten down and she's miserable and especially when the movie starts with like oh here she was in the competition there were morals here there were rules here there were lessons here there was a structure

here that worked it feels like the movie should be like i regret ever coming to the world. I regret ever coming to the mainland. I should have stayed on Themyscira. I miss my mother. I miss everybody. I want to go back there. Feel like shit. Just want to go back there. And the movie is her abandoning humanity in order to go back to her world and give up on it.

Yeah. When did Themyscira get blown up? I literally forgot that that when did that happen okay so I was trying to pinpoint when it happened and I also can't remember if it happens in Justice League or it happens in Wonder Woman but it definitely happens it doesn't happen in Wonder Woman there's no way I don't remember Justice League at all apart from that steppenwolf is in i don't know like the mascara at some point getting a box i remember that he gets a box but it definitely in wonder woman she just leaves the mascara it's not blown up her uh robin wright dies doesn't she or someone right dies is it is it that

they tell her that she can't go back if she leaves am i misremembering is that what it is i just i should have rewatched the first one but i just distinctly remember there is like a rule set up in that movie about why she's never going to be able to see her mother again that's the thing i don't remember right and it's been a while since i thought uh that since i saw the first one but right like that i was wondering at watching 84 where i'm like um yeah is she not allowed to go back i forgot what the rules are like what are the rules of her leaving she clearly has not gone back right and there's a reason why famous gara is only a flashback in uh justice league as well wait, I feel like, I'm sorry.

Once again, it's like Wonder Woman I haven't rewatched. I should have done for this episode. Justice League, I will probably never rewatch again in that cut. I swear to you. We're going to watch a different cut. I feel like there's a, we will unfortunately be watching the Snyder Cut. We have to, we have no choice. We are legally beholden.

But I feel like there's a scene in Justice League and I'm sure people are fucking yelling at the podcast right now in which you see Connie Nielsen like mounting the army to fight against Steppenwolf and he comes in and fucking slays everybody no he doesn't kill everybody I I think you're you're transposing something here he doesn't he gets the mother box, but then he leaves. Because he's always fucking leaving. That's Steppenwolf's whole thing. He loves to leave.

Gets the box and gets out of there. He does it in Aquaville, Atlantis. He does it in Themyscira. But no, he doesn't kill. And let me make something clear. People would have lost their damn minds if he killed all the fucking Amazons. I might be misremembering something something but I want to make something incredibly clear yes

I hate to see Steppenwolf leave but I love to watch him go he thick he thick space elevator he's absolutely in it

he is thick he's gonna look different in the Snyder Cut right yeah now he's sharper

he's gonna be shinier or something right yeah excited for that excited for that excited for that movie to come out and fucking blow I this is my

throwing my marker down I'm like nothing's gonna stink this is getting weird everyone's like excited for it yeah I mean I don't think I don't think it's gonna be good that guy is not my my tempo but I am excited to watch it it's just such a bizarre cultural occurrence it's gonna be good that guy is not my my tempo but i am excited to watch it it's just no me too very excited why not occurrence it's gonna be four hours long right is that true yeah it's

four one hour episodes it's being treated like roots the mini series uh my my point is i've clearly fucked this up and i can't remember the details but i still think i just remember that conclusively there is some reason why the door is closed to her. And I feel like the movie would work if it was about her choosing Themyscira over her sisterhood and her you know people is not addressed in this movie at all and i don't really know why there's the the sort of opening sequence because patty jenkins said like we needed to see it yeah um you know especially because some people maybe haven't even seen wonder 111 you need at least some uh reminder that this is where she's from but there that's that sequence is very much a kind of like you need to be selfless like it's a moral lesson that she's learning not any wider universe shit but that's the weird thing for me just in terms of like what is the story trying to be it does feel like this is a movie

about her becoming increasingly disenfranchised with the modern world and her isolation and loneliness within it. It just feels like the movie wants to be about her missing home more than it's about. I can't meet a guy. And I know that's reductive for me to frame it that way. But I feel like the way the movie presents it ends up feeling a little bit. Well, reductive. presents it ends up feeling a little bit well reductive i think that the the reductiveness right is like where you're like you're saying the scenes where it's like oh you're alone you're walking home alone like a lot of that stuff but you know the movie is there's the loving pans

over the you know the the pictures of the ranch and the watch and all that stuff you know like i i see it more and people were like why isn't she over i'm like she's an immortal fucking person like 70 years is like you know 15 minutes also she's still sad about it to give her credit i i would never get ever chris pine neither would i especially not chris pine and wonder woman that is like primo qd chris pine that's like chris pine with all the dials to 10 like yes very very charming look visually i agree with you 100 but when he re-enters this movie and i realize how they're setting him up and i got that on an easy pit in my stomach i went well but their chemistry

is going to be so good it will waylay my fears and i don't they don't have the same energy they have in the first movie and i think a lot of that is just script issues. I'm not blaming either of them as performers. That's so much of what makes the first movie work is just that shit you can't bottle and you can't fucking pay for of just like their back and forth actually just crackles for me, in my opinion. And in this movie, it feels a little more boilerplate of just like, yeah, this feels like what most love interest dynamic scenes are like in these movies i think you are right i i mean i think they're perfectly cute and he's got some fun scenes or whatever they don't they don't have crackling chemistry partly because there's just the weird kind of like what is this like you know chunk of them reuniting and then he becomes like helper

boy and the whole audience knows he can't stick around like that's been set up pretty much for minute one anyway and also it's just hard to do a meet cute twice like so I don't mind his thematic purpose I'm more defensive about that but I can't

disagree that yeah you know they're not as fun to i mean i don't think godot is utterly lost in this movie like i think she does a good job with the big final you know speech like there are moments where i'm into her she's also just a very striking movie star type figure like she's you know even though maybe limited as an actress like just look you know my whole she's like the female john wayne it's that same thing where it's like she's got this limited strike zone but within it she's so fucking effective on screen um and uh you know so that's but like you know there are moments where it i don't know she feels a little lost like you say or just unable to play

whatever ennui she's supposed to be playing and that sort of translates as bored or just detached and i guess the character is detached but like you know at a certain point how compelling is that it was such an asset for the first movie the the sort of like single minded focus of Wonder Woman. It plays to Godot's strengths as an actress of just being in the moment. Right. And being sort of objective based rather than having to play introspection. Right. And an inner sort of struggle and whatever, because it's just that movie is like, you know, oh, I need to find Ari's or I want to eat this ice cream right now. Like everything is so experiential for her. Right. And it's like those are both ends of the spectrum, whether it's like the big stakes of the movie or the little character moments.

There's so much about her living in that moment. And I think, yes, it is not perhaps the best thing to put this character through or the best thing to ask this actor to do. The fish out of water stuff also cliched, but just a cliche that works and that she leans into because yes, Gal Gadot is kind of otherworldly. She's just like, again, very striking,

very beautiful, very put together. So she does kind of seem like a bit of an alien walking through these, you know, new places and so that's fun and they don't know everything is they use all that really well one that's an inescapable issue of well you can't replicate that now like you know you can't replicate it two scenes of chris pine not understanding how 80s clothes works but it's not the same thing

right it's funny because i'm thinking about marvel and like i compare these movies to marvel because that's what warner brothers has in its head i you know not that not that i think perry jenkins has that it is in her head but uh as much it's funny how marvel also initially sort of struggled with the sequels iron man 2 is bad yeah you know the thor sequel yeah people are wrong about the dark world yeah um exactly uh there's another obvious one that i'm forgetting griffin help me out uh slightly disappointing second movies maybe not um because like winter soldier is kind of where it turns start to turn around i feel like yeah they do but then beyond like beyond you know it's like i just after that i feel like then they kind of crack the second movie and again everything in marmula marvel marmula everything in marvel is formula to some

extent that's why i said marmula but like you know what like guardians 2 ant-man and the wasp these movies are just like good oh avengers age of ultron is the other yes yeah of course of course of course um you know, broadly seen as. But, right, like, it's just like, yeah, just plus, you know, more of what people liked. Right. Similar stakes, like, you know, and then some nice university table setting stuff,

you know, like, they just sort of figured that formula out, and it's a tough formula. And to be very clear, when you read interviews with, like, Chloe Zhao talking about working on The Eternals, who fucking knows? But it does sound like perhaps she has been able to make a movie that's a little bit different. Very excited. When we talked to Nia DaCosta off mic, the things she told us about working with Marvel were very exciting, like genuinely exciting. And it sounds like they really are hiring her for the right reason and bringing her

in to do the right sort of shit. If there was ever a time where Marvel was going to enter a period of a little more experimentation with the flexibility of their world, it would certainly feel like it would be now post-Endgame where they don't really have anything to prove, right? Right. That's the part of it. They can try. They can be weird right that's the hope that's the hope excited by you know some of their hires and some of the choices and all that sort of stuff genuinely optimistic want to see it happen because i want to see uh that level of flexibility within the genre the the problem

that plagues marvel so often is the the fast food thing where it's like they got the quality control down. It's going to taste the same wherever you go. It's never going to be awful. It might be better, but it's never going to be, you know, a five star restaurant or whatever. Right. Even though obviously there are movies in that franchise that we love and movies that taste very much like a mediocre burger. I will always prefer watching a movie like this where it's like she's making unsafe choices even if those choices are ultimately proven to be unsafe because

uh that's not how a story works you shouldn't do that it will lose the audience i like that sense of just like let's let's fuck with this right and and you talk about the tonal thing i go into this i watch this movie and i know that you liked it and you're curious to hear what i think right then the public opinion comes out and people are vicious about it i prioritize watching soul i don't see wonder woman until the 26th so i've seen a day of like the fucking echo chamber before I watch this movie. And I'm very much like, I really want to like this. And also on paper, everything that I see people complaining about sounds like the kind of shit I usually defend.

This sounds like some fucking Ang Lee Hulk weirdness or whatever. Right. Not that they're the same movie, but the same sort of like a flagrant disregard of commercial expectations for how these movies should operate. Right. The opening, I'm so fucking on board. I'm not even talking about the Themyscira thing. Love the opening. But like the mall, I was just like, this is the exact movie I'm ready to defend to the end of the earth.

Is her doing like, you were saying it's a Donner thing, but i even feel like it's even more like a richard fleischer superman thing you mean lester right yes yes i think there's that yes there's fully that element too i mean i didn't want to say to anyone like kind of get ready for almost a superman three vibe partly because superman three also has magic rocks um but like yeah a little bit of that right you know hiring a comedian to be the villain and like all this sort of shit yeah and and for me i'm just like i like the audacity of like the movie starts and everything about what she's doing it it feels to me totally in control of its tone that whole mall opening i'd say even maybe like the first 25 minutes in general.

Right. You can dislike that tone, but like you look at cues like you have Hans Zimmer doing a score that sounds far closer to as good as it gets than the first Wonder Woman. Right. I love this score. It's not unintentional. It's not like she's lost control of the wheel.

She's decided, I think this movie should be a goofy comedy, right? I think this movie should have the vibe of a Police Academy sequel. I am so on board with that, partially because I think these movies are now increasingly plagued with a sense of self-seriousness that is exhausting. You also just look at the extras, the background actors in the mall and it's just like everyone's on the exact same pitch tonally the movie is a complete perfect conversation with itself whether or not you like that tone she's not fucking up she's doing what she's trying to do i agree and it's like yeah it's like commando or whatever everyone's like wearing the right clothes every you know there's just like uh just it's it's also just like cutesy and low stakes which i like it's like a bunch of goofs

are robbing a store and it goes like you know they're idiots but she's essentially going to clonk their heads together great right just just not enough of like stopping a guy wearing like a mask holding a bag with a dollar sign on it like saving a kid from getting shot like all these movies should have these scenes right it's like these things where we're getting away from what these characters are supposed to represent and i don't mean like based on the fucking material but i mean like culturally why we even care about telling these stories it i will say though like you know justice league has that sequence that feels

very smushed in where she rescues people in a museum or whatever you know and she like yes does all the wonder woman things and it feels lazy and undercooked because it kind of feels like zach snyder is not that interested in it he's like she'll she'll do a thing he's got a very cynical take on superheroes i mean that's the weird thing with Zack Snyder with like how much people read the Randy and stuff into his work. He also makes these superhero movies that are all about like superheroes are like these fucked up fascistic nightmares and we shouldn't trust them. So that stuff always plays insincere with him. Whereas you watch Patty Jenkins do this mall sequence and you're like, she believes in this. You can think it's corny,

but she believes in this and it's something that she actually finds fun. Right. Okay. So you like that. Yes. But then. I love the early development of Barbara. I like having wig, you know,

I think there was that question. Truly doing Jim Carrey from batman forever down to like frizzy hair glasses like oh i don't know i guess i'm kind of i'm nervous over here i mean there's the meme that's been circulating of like pre-conversion edward enigma pre-conversion pre-electrification jamie foxx and amazing spider-man 2 like there's a grid of five of them that all have like the same glasses guy pierce and iron man 3 yes yes right they're all styled so similarly but guess what i think that trope is potent it pretty much always works for me i also find it especially potent when you hire someone who's a comedian and they can play up the comedy of that

rather than playing it too fucking heavy. But people hate this. I feel this is another thing that people don't like, right? It's too goofy or too silly. I don't know. I like it. I know a lot of people don't like it because they feel like that's not who Barbara was in the comics. I am admittedly someone who doesn't read Wonder Woman at all, is not very invested in the

history of the character, cannot speak to that at all. I'm just thinking on the level of how it works within this movie. And I feel like when Wig was announced and people were like, how is Wig going to fit into the tone of a serious comic book movie? I was excited when I realized, no, the challenge of this movie is, can Wonder Woman fit into the tone of a Kristen Wig movie? That was exciting. That moment where I had that breakthrough.

I think she's genuinely funny, especially in the early sections of the movie. Can we do just like, uh, yeah, like a two minute sidebar on how weird wigs career is. If you look at her 10 years as a movie star, it's, it's a weird career because I feel like she just mostly rejected the path she

could have taken. But then there are the occasional moments you know what I mean? Like where she's like okay fine I'll do a blockbuster and it rarely works. Yeah. Alright so let's do two minutes. Right so obviously big SNL star

she has two scenes in Knocked Up that hit so hard that Judd Apatow goes write whatever script you want I think you're clearly a movie star. She spends five years writing this screenplay. Bridesmaids comes out in 2011. Is that correct? 2011, 2011. Insane that it's almost 10 years ago now.

And it's this seismic cultural thing and it feels like, okay, she's got the keys to the kingdom. Yeah. And like, just, it is also just though that crazy cottage industry of supporting roles for SNL players, especially that really dynamite cast,

you know, Sandberg, Hayter, all those folks. So, like, Knocked Up is essentially her first movie. She's in Unaccompanied Minors before then with Feig, but that's a tiny role. And she is really funny in it. Like, I'm just going to read you everything before bridesmaids yeah please it's a weird list the brothers solomon walk hard semi-pro these some of these are one scene roles you know forgetting sarah marshall she's a yoga instructor something called pretty

bird ghost town she's a surgeon in that adventure land which she's really good in yeah uh ice age dawn of the dinosaurs apparently she's a beaver. I had no idea. Absolutely. Whip It, key supporting role, really good. Like a lot of really good supporting roles here, and then a lot of movies that don't exist. Extract, which doesn't exist,

but I remember kind of enjoying. How to Train Your Dragon, which she's in all of those. Date Night, MacGruber, Despicable Me. She's in all of those, I think. Yes. Yeah, she's in all of those I think yes yeah she's in all of them all good things the long you know the Ryan Gosling Jarecki movie

the Fred Durst Fred Durst what am I saying Robert Durst Robert Durst whatever his name is Paul and then Bridesmaids so like just like four movies a year

yeah also Jarecki should do a five-part hbo miniseries investigating fred durst i just want to say that but yes she was doing so many movies they were mostly small parts they were a lot of her working with her same collaborators and then bridesmaids it's like you're a movie star you played like a realistic human character because a lot of those movies are obviously a lot broader or her playing more like extreme character types but she was like a sympathetic lead she was a romantic lead she drove the movie she's got good dramatic scenes she's got great comedic scenes she wrote the movie she gets an oscar nomination kristen wick's gonna do whatever the fuck she wants and then she seemingly starts turning most big things down melissa mccarthy takes the movie star gauntlet

is like i'm ready to run with this. I'm ready to make my own cottage industry of what a Melissa McCarthy movie is. And Kristen Wiig, it feels like completely rejects the temptation to define the Kristen Wiig vehicle. 100%. She does a Jennifer Westfeld movie. She does movies that truly, she becomes really like a Sundance star. Hate ship, love ship, ship girl most likely to like all these Sundance movies that don't really make a mark yeah don't make a mark at all in 2014 she has the skeleton kins and well skeleton twins and welcome to me neither of which in my opinion are good but neither of which are bad bad they're both no worthy and interesting sundance movies that don't pretty much always good like i i even win those movies that miss i question why she

takes on certain projects but i rarely question her acting choices yeah i agree with that the only thing i question is that she just does not want to play sympathetic characters she's playing usually really tough brittle interesting naughty like mean people like she which is like in bridesmaids obviously she's playing a fuck up but she is you know you're with her if you had to deny what what the wig movie star persona is right or at least what it seemed to present itself to be before she sort of like backed away from it. It is, you know, like incredibly fragile, insecure person spiraling deeper and deeper into trouble, trying to cover up and project a sense of confidence, right? Absolutely.

And it's like, sometimes it's really interesting. She essentially does that in a big budget film, or rather, let's say a mainstream film three times over the course of a decade she does it in bridesmaids she does it in ghostbusters and she does it in wonder woman 1984 yeah when she does a big movie in the other years outside of this it's usually weird supporting parts where she's playing weird character things like zoolander 2 or anchorman 2 or fucking walter mitty well she's not funny that she's the girl he wants to be with i'm assuming yes right and she's got the object of affection almost no comedy to play she's not bad in it but it's it's her playing an entirely normal straight level person i i think she's very good in the diary of a teenage girl which is a real role that she sells really well.

Griffey nomination for me. She's great in that movie. I think she's in The Martian, which everyone is in. She's definitely in that. And does what she's supposed to do. And everyone in that movie is a total pro who's doing a good job, but not to kill her stuff. She's in that thing Masterminds

that came out five years after they shot it. She downsizing which she's funny in but like it's tiny part 15 minutes right she's in mother which she kind of rules in yeah she absolutely whips growth in that movie yeah um she i she's like the weird neighbor and where'd you go bernadette like it's like that like that's the kind of role where I'm like there is no way you need to be doing like no and one of those things where maybe you just wanted to work with Cate Blanchett or Richard Linklater I get it but like this is you're playing an annoying neighbor you could have played that 20 years ago practically I know the other thing that's so bizarre about it is you go like even if you didn't want to be a like mainstream comedy star you should be finding your own where did you go

bernadette where you play bernadette right like you could absolutely be doing like a dramedy of that size with a good director based on a best-selling book where you're the lead it's odd you know i to some degree i just i respect like her seemingly just being like sure i'd love to work with richard linkletter i don't care I don't have any ego right which I think she doesn't and that's just fine but but look she's got this movie coming up next year called Barb and Star go to Vista

Del Mar which I'm excited for it's her and Mamalo writing together for the first time since Bridesmaids and seemingly her first time trying to create a real comedy around herself since correct and starring together Mamalo's in it yes um as well that's her writing partner as you say like um so you know cool cool that's great like i'm into that you know and i will forever contend that she's great in ghostbusters which obviously somehow

became the single most loaded movie of all time but that felt like this one is this one is it now this one's taking the reins last year i took it from ghostbusters and then now wonder woman took it from uh everyone's gonna fucking yell at me whatever whatever i liked it um but wig it's a weird career you seem to like her performance in this i think she's fine i think she's fun um i like her a lot i think she vibes she too gets a little lost when the movie asks her to suddenly just become the terminator yeah exactly but i i think she does everything she has to do really well and it was just exciting for me the first third of the movie watching her be this kind of funny in a movie

again because it happens so rarely. I would genuinely like found her performance very funny. I also like the way that she looks at the end of the movie. I'm totally in favor of that. I think that final battle is completely lackluster and stupid. I think that's an issue this movie has overall. The thing I value so much about the first Wonder Woman is like the action sequences are so clean and have such good character story beats. And in this, it absolutely feels like sort of second unit generic, just like the claws explosions. Especially, especially that one. That one is the two sequences that really just kind of have nothing.

Yeah. Are that one that the cheetah fight which is like happening at night there's not a lot of stakes because it's kind of obvious wonder woman is going to beat the shit out of her like there's not really a sense of danger it's also one of those weird things where like the cheetah makeup is almost entirely practical and yet it looks like it's bad cgi because there's so much bad cgi going on around it, because the way she moves is not practical. And then also the car chase thing in the middle, it's not like it's abhorrent, but it's very boring.

I couldn't tell you anything. We obviously don't want to dig into this too deeply, but it just feels like such a colossal misjudgment to send Gal Gadot to the Middle east in a sequence i i agree i i was annoyed about that just in general and and in general the treatment of the middle east in this movie is like so fucking hot shots part duh like right that's the thing i sort of was like oh are they trying to do more 80s movie thing like like like fucking commando like any like you know schwarzenegger movie of that era where like half the time it's it's either a latin american bad

guy or a middle eastern bag of right you know right and this movie does like yeah but like you know come on dodge that shit who come on i don't know i i guess there's this oil subplot that that's how they get thrown but like i just feel like there's other ways to do this. It's just like none of that should be in the movie for 5000 reasons. It's also just like, I don't want her. I don't need this character in this movie franchise as been set up to be tied to actually complicated, heavy issues. World War One is so long ago and so cut and dry in terms of who the good guys

and the bad guys were. Sure. And also that whole movie is operating more as a genre riff on war movies rather than dealing with war in a realistic bent. I had the exact same thought as you

where I was like, this movie is so into being a riff on 80s comedies down to questionable geopolitical aspects and weird sexual politics like it feels like it's an 80s comedy down to all the weird problematic blind spots that 80s comedies have if you re-watch them now and i can't tell if that was intentional or just was like i we don't give a shit the movie's not about that we're not going to dig into it but then the reagan stuff the cold war stuff yeah she's now said it's pointedly not supposed to be reagan but it's i was gonna say

yeah it's not reagan but i i guess i was right i was like this this isn't reagan this is i guess just the president like how which is what comic book movies always used to do like x-men there's always just some white guy with glasses it's always just like well i'm the president of course you know and like um but right of course everyone said he looks enough like reagan that's the problem that people are like oh it must be reagan he's not he doesn't sound like him but he look he's got a haircut you know like it's sort of emblematic of the problem with this movie overall for me where it's just like it's hard to parse what your intent was here because you look at the guy and you're like well this is either the worst reagan impression or you're

trying to not have it be reagan but if that's the case then get someone to look even less like reagan than you did you know right um he's just close enough that it's confusing but also far enough away that it's confusing i mean he's not reagan he's 80s president i guess that's the defense right like and it's like 80s president you know is gonna have a reagan vibe but he's 80s president yes um yeah so look the villain of this movie who we haven't talked about we you know we don't we're not going through the plot like we you know we do not need to we we've covered lots of things that are important but we haven't talked about maxwell lord um much and he is the driver of the thing along with the fucking rock so pedro pascal griffin who rolls i mean i

really enjoy him i just i love him so much i i'm i'm only gaining respect for him every single new project I see him do. He's kind of my favorite sort of actor where he's like sort of almost backwards stepped into being a star. But it seems to just be completely selfless as a performer where it's just like, what do you need me to do for this? I don't care what size the role is, what the energy is. I'm going to match whatever this project needs me to be. He can do fucking anything. He fits into anything in any size. That's the thing. And you know what I haven't seen yet is The Equalizer 2, a movie I've been meaning to watch, which he is the second. I think he's the villain. I can't remember. But he's like the second lead, his second build or whatever.

But when you think of Pascal, right, you think of like, look, no no one talks about this movie but he's kind of fun in the great wall like yeah being the silly european you know guy yeah um he's in a brief scene and if beale street could talk uncredited i believe fucking he's terrific him right um he's in triple frontier as like the fifth guy like not one of the top three it's affleck isaac honem are kind of the biggest three yeah and then like headland and pascal are kind of the like all their guys who are like and he's like shaggy and weird he has kind of messy hair and a mustache. And like, like you say, serving the movie, like not trying to take it over. He always knows exactly what movie he's in, which is like the greatest compliment I can give an actor. You never feel like he's not on the same page as the project.

And not only that, it sometimes feels like he gets the project more than everyone else around him. I agree with that. and i think that's true in this movie he's done the only other one thing i wanted to say i um he also he wasn't he in graceland did you work with him on graceland griffin he was on graceland episode run on graceland anyway i did not i was on one episode of that show i i worked with uh the fucking mary jane's friend from the play in spider man 2 that sounds great yeah it was incredible great pascal was in it was was in narcos for three seasons which is a show i fell off with quickly and i know that's a big show never watched

much like jason momoa it does kind of feel this like this crazy thing where you're like oh he's famous from game of thrones and it's like he's four episodes yeah he's in like it's seven yeah but like yeah he was in one season and he wasn't even in every episode but it was kind of one of those performances where you're just like oh i'll buy whatever this guy's fucking selling like he shows up two minutes in you're just like this is great he's talking about his paramour he's wearing like a robe like this is the best who who is this guy give me give me everything uh never watched game of thrones but he's also one of these guys where he's like maybe he he's 45 he's like a new york actor who's just been like a sort of completely kind of anonymous character actor for a long time and then he had that breakout kind of late and he has run with it in the best possible

way like the most interesting way such an odd bodied you know varied body of work rather and when i see him in interviews he just seems like a fucking normal interesting person interesting right i'm just famously right so all in on him. And this, I just was like, he's in the best version of this movie. And from minute one, he's high energy right away. Yes, and also his character is the most interesting sort of idea this movie has because it's so different than the samey fucking types of villains we usually get in these films, you know? Yeah. fucking types of villains we usually get in these films you know yeah um i the other thing i want obviously he is the mandalorian as we all know he is that that is the way it is the way right um

and obviously you know it that's a performance that is being done in conjunction with a stuntman and even he will talk about it really and he's not always in the suit but although it sounds like season two was more him than season one. I believe that is true, yes. But the episode that I really loved, the penultimate episode with Bill Burr, I liked all the episodes, which I thought that episode was very good anyway,

but he also played, so there's a whole extended sequence where he has his helmet off because he has to pretend to be an Imperial guy and he's playing it as a guy who doesn't know how to use his face to interact with people it's and it should not be possible to pull that off it's like how do you do that without seeming like a bad actor right how do you make it clear that the character doesn't know how to use their face not that you as an actor don't have control of your face. He's incredible.

Even if you just look at it as a vocal performance, it is astounding how much depth he gets out of Mando who barely speaks and says everything almost in a monotone. Right. It's true. Sorry, but back to this movie. Yes. So he's Maxwell Lord. He's the opposite of that.

He's full energy. No monotone from movie. Yes. So he's Maxwell Lord. He's the opposite of that. He's full energy. No monotone from Maxwell. Right. And it's like, you know, obviously people make the Trump comparison, but there's also, I think, a lot of Max Shrek here. Right. I mean, Batman Returns has more and more become a weird touchstone that directors now aspire to when they make these movies, because despite it being hated at the time,

or at least, you know, controversial, everyone's kind of come around to like, oh, wow, this thing actually, they used to let personality into these movies. And so much of that idea in Batman Returns that's so compelling is the like, you have these two villains, this one who's so sexy, and this one who's so monstrous, but the real villain in the movie is just this shitty guy in an office who doesn't value human life. I always complain about how villains, you're like, what are they doing for the rest of the day when they're not doing their villainry?

You know, what are they eating? Are they, like, hanging out reading a magazine? The samey Marvel thing of just like, who the fuck is Malachite? What is he doing the rest of the day? And this guy, you're like, I get exactly who this guy is. I understand exactly what drives him,

what he's trying to do, what his failings are. And I can imagine every minute that he's not on screen. A hundred percent. Great point. And Malachite, the greatest example, right, where he's just like,

okay, okay, okay. I gave the big speech. I haven't read that pile of New Yorkers, but I don't want to like, he's like walking around. I just say, I don't want to make the time for that.

I guess I'll just, I guess I'll just play video games. Like, what does he do? What is, you know, I also think this is another really potent idea in the movie is you deal with Wonder Woman being a literal god, right? This odd status of, I guess, her being like the Jersey Devil where she appears every once in a while and beats up a bunch of crooks and then disappears.

Right. No one can ever get confirmation. I guess someone helped us. Right, right. But as you said, it raises all these questions of why wasn't she stopping other shit and what is she doing and how has it never been leaked and why is no one ever get her on camera and all this other shit, whatever. But there's something to the fact that you deal with a literal god, right? This figure of worship in this genre that's about us like turning to more powerful people and asking them to solve all of our problems. And counterpointing that with an entirely human person whose giant

failing is that he wants to be seen that way that he is selling as a brand i can give you everything and that he himself is hollow right is unhappy and unsuccessful and is just trying to perpetuate the idea that he should be idolized and trusted right that's good shit that's that's good shit on paper like that's that's that's compelling shit to build this movie around good shit on paper good shit on screen i think almost every time he's on screen the movie pretty much works for me outside of questions about internal logic of the wishing stone this has been this weird year without superhero movies right after like yeah two decades of their them controlling like the populist increasingly right overrunning everything else right and this idea of like people feeling so like you know either burdened by them or singularly obsessed with them there's

so many people who are just like yeah i like only go see marvel movies in movies in theaters. And I go like, are you a big Marvel fan? They're like, no, it's just like those feel like the only movies that you need to go see in theaters. Like they go like it's renewing their passport and they're sort of like on the hook for it, but they don't even love it. And then you have people who love it and dislike anything else. All this sort of weird, complicated shit. Right. And then we have this odd year where after Endgame, which very much feels like the culmination of whatever this shit has been for the last 20 years, suddenly all these movies get put on ice. Right.

The like endless churn of this shit is just stopped. And there's like a moment to step back and reflect. And you have people doubling down and going more like hyper into the rumor mill of everything, including like spreading these insane, bizarre, fake rumors that are now constantly being combated. And you have people who are like, now that we've gone six months without having to like, you know, the government mandate that we have to go see one of these movies, like I'm actually more angry about these movies than I usually was. Like I see that response too. And I think there's just this whole thing of like reassessing these movies place in

our culture and how far they've gone then you have this movie that is so unconcerned with how these movies are usually supposed to work and is like messy and misshapen it comes out on a streaming platform the last like big you know holiday of the year that everyone's hated and people are just like just make me feel good just i want to sit down and i want you to make me feel good and instead you get this movie that's kind of like cinematically got the vibe of a sitcom has a magical fairy tale plot and feels like six episodes of a wonder woman streaming tv show put together hell like i also last part but i think to a certain degree that's the other thing as people were so excited about like i get to big bring the big screen home and i don't think this film feels as cinematic as the first one i think this movie feels a little bit more like

the shit we see on streaming and i think that's a point of disappointment for people too. I'm not saying that people's gripes with the movie aren't valid. I'm just like trying to analyze why it, there is such a level of anger as opposed to just, this is bad. And it feels like the last time I remember this level of anger at a movie like this outside of things like Ghostbusters and Last Jedi, where there's like the contentious back and forth,

but this kind of thing where it's just like 99% of people are just furiously dunking on it was Spider-Man 3. And Spider-Man 3 is a movie that similarly is just this director being like, I don't know, I'm sort of tired of this genre. Is there other things I can do with it? But that movie also has 40% shit the studio made him do at gunpoint that feels so dispassionate. I don't feel that with this movie. That's the problem.

I was going to say the problem with Spider-Man 3 is partly right. The studio is like, well, but wait a second. You can't you can't go crazy because like that movie is probably better if they just let Raimi go nuts. It's probably not a you know, it's probably still alienating yes um because like you know peter parker dancing around and all that that's that's ramey stuff like but if you let him just do what he wants and you don't have to like do a whole green goblin subplot and do a whole salmon subplot and do a whole venom subplot all in the same you know like then maybe maybe it's a more coherent movie uh and yes i don't

think look as much as people might be like well come on wonder woman didn't it didn't even gross as much as aquaman there's just a cultural phenomenon thing with it that's beyond any other of these dc movies totally the snyder thing being its own separate kind of more insane thing. But like the fact that it was the first Wonder Woman movie, the fact that it was just kind of well liked by everyone, that she just kind of nailed it. Yeah. And that it played not like a superhero movie, that it like held well at the box office.

Yes. Had good word of mouth, kind of became a growing phenomenon like you you get to do whatever you want and that's what this is she got to do whatever she wanted blank check status and if we go back around to this whole conversation we have at the beginning of like why are we covering these dc movies are they should they still be a thing you do step back and it is like we were doing dc movies because it felt like this weird case of the blank check was Snyder trying to build the cinematic universe and everyone trying to do it under his shadow. And now it is very much not become that. But in a weird way, DC has become significantly more director driven than the Marvel movies on mass.

They are for how misshapen many of them are and they don't fit together, they are very much movies that are defined by their filmmakers and all have very different vibes and interests and sensibilities by and large. And I also think it's that thing that I kind of want at a comic book movies,

which is just like, you go to a comic book store, you can have three different books with the same character that all have wildly different art styles and different sensibilities. And the DC movies, for good or ill, because they don't have that quality control, have that thing. And this is an ultimate blank check movie because it is that weird case like sort of – I mean, Coogler with Black Panther is another example where you're, everything that works about this movie, you kind of have to give credit to this one person. This isn't machinery working. This movie should not have been this successful on paper.

She tapped into something. And then she was uninterested in trying to give people just the same thing as a second course you know which is always going to sort of piss people off i think to a degree but i'll always sort of fight for the right for people to fucking fail on this scale uh and i fight for the right to party so that i see differently absolutely it also is just like you know people want to talk about like you know her as uh an emblem of uh you know gender in uh filmmaking improving right the the women uh uh suddenly getting more opportunities as directors. And you're like, the most progressive thing is that people hate this movie

and she's got three humongous movies lined up. The thing that used to be unfathomable is that a woman could direct a movie that was a flop and be able to bounce back like they were Brett Ratner. You know? And it's like, i love that she's got three major movies lined up and she's gonna make a fucking sequel to this and that she's got good will which studios never used to extend to women in these positions it's true it's a beyond the

fact because like obviously in the sort of downtime between warner brothers announcing that this is coming out on hbo max and warner brothers announcing then announcing the hbo max plan the larger plan um and the movie coming out there's that jenkins interview where she's critical of warner brothers she doesn't like yeah the uh hbo max plan people are saying like well she took the money like no her agents negotiated her a proper payout for a movie that wasn't going to get released in theaters like that's not she didn't take a buyout like yeah she also said like i never would have agreed under other circumstances these are very very bizarre specific times we're living agreed right and like they you know they they did that release you know they figured that out in what

will quote unquote the right way where they're like hey we need we might need to put it on streaming okay then pay us the residuals we would have gotten from a blockbuster release yeah let's okay sure you'll get this you know like yada yada yada um whereas with the other movies they were just kind of like we're gonna going to do it. Yay. Everyone's excited. Like, you know, without announcing it to anybody. Anyway. So there was that the interview kind of gave the vibe of like, oh, there's bad blood here. And then, you know, Disney's announced that she's doing a Star Wars movie. Yeah.

Okay. Maybe she's just going to be like, you know what? I'm getting out of this mess. And then when they announced day of this this movie's release that they're gonna do three with her that feels like them being like we whatever we were we're in and we gave her what she wanted whatever that might be right like yeah whatever the story she wants to tell is or we right like they they they ponied up i also think it's like she's you know saying that she's gonna do cleopatra with gal gadot which i now wonder if that's the movie that's going to fall off the map.

The Rogue Squadron thing. Yeah, that definitely is. I don't think that movie's going to happen. And no one should make a Cleopatra movie. It's cursed. But also, Rogue Squadron is so far off. She has admitted that there's like nothing there, that just that she wants to make a fighter pilot movie. They don't even have the beginnings of a script.

It's going to be years before that thing happens. And I think. Well, they're claiming 2023, but it does seem vague to me. But that's them trying to work on Hyperdrive. I mean, they're you know, I think that deal was signed like four days before the fucking disney investor thing and i think they have nothing outside of her saying i'd like to do a movie about people if you know x-wings it's an obvious rogue squadron yes that makes sense right why not uh i think warner brothers sensed if we don't lock her down we stay in the position of having to wait eight or nine years for her to make another movie if she

lets both of these movies come first right and they sense maybe the vulnerability in the cleopatra thing and the fact that star wars was further off and it's like you could make this her top priority right now i also think and this speaks to fucking at&t wanting to turn warner brothers into netflix there is that aspect of just like any publicity is good publicity they don't care if people hate this movie they like that fucking 50 of people who have hbo max watched it within 24 hours that's the thing they've been trying to make happen is just people watching whatever number right because they don't care if it's emily in paris they don't care if people are watching

shit just to come up with fucking twitter jokes they just care that they got the eyeballs in paris well it's a huge question and we're still dealing with the ripple effects of it we are we i mean they really are there's gonna be a second whole season she's still gonna be in paris i assume also please it's called emily and perry emily and perry um are there things we haven't talked about i guess there's just the big showdown that is, you know, Lord giving this increasingly demented speech with a wind machine blowing in his face,

which I really enjoyed. Um, I enjoyed partly because as you say, there was no portal open. There was no, um, you know, knock down drag out fight that you needed to have with him.

Like, I don't know. Um, but like, I think think i think the flaws you're pointing out here are are well i acknowledge that like you know there's a logic problem that the movie can overcome a lot of the time but you know for your big soaring finale yeah you probably need people to be dialed into exactly what the fuck is happening finale yeah you probably need people to be dialed into exactly what the fuck is happening right and i don't know if they are right i think it's just a little too scattered at that point

i like her sort of making this plea to the world i like the idea of her sort of like weaponizing the media in order to reach out to people it does raise that question of i guess what you said are we just supposed to treat it like everyone wakes up the next day and goes like man i can't remember i remember last tuesday there were those five days where i was out of commission i think possibly yes yeah but i'm not sure they they keep it vague i also like the the pedro pascal flashback like i like love the the specificity of showing how much this guy is a fucking act and an act that comes out of self-loathing and a feeling of discomfort within society. Right. The sense of otherness, like him arranging the candy and the weird sign on the door when he's got the little office like that shit. I find very emotionally impactful.

It is weird that that's the character you end up feeling most for the entire movie and it gets to this problem for me like so i'm sitting there i'm really trying to like it i'm finding the things i like i'm going like maybe this execution isn't there but i get what she's trying to do and i'm with it and for me it's like when you get to the scene where Steve is saying to her, like, you're losing your powers. People are killing each other. And it's just because I'm here. You need to renounce your wish. And she has her sort of like, you know, a teenager like, I never get anything I want.

This is the one thing that makes me happy. Why won't anyone let me be happy thing? Sure, yes. It is a tough scene to swallow. And it is that kind of thing of like the balance of how you make these godlike characters feel vulnerable emotionally. But at that point, you're sort of like,

this is sort of like a radical entitlement thing where then when you mirror that with at that point, you're sort of like, this is sort of like a radical entitlement thing. Where then when you mirror that with at the end her saying like, I get it, but I'm sorry, none of us can have good things. I gave up my good thing, even though I had my good thing for longer than all of you have had your good things. Everyone give up their good things right now. There's this element of the movie that feels like it's tapping into the same exact things that are frustrating about Gal Gadot doing the imagine video. Well, that video was great.

No problems. Definitely wasn't so incredibly horrifyingly boring and cringeworthy. And I had to turn it off. Well, and in tune too. Everybody was hitting the notes. Yeah. I mean, the, look amount look no we can no i'm sorry we're two hours a night we can't get into the imagine video there's too much insanity we just can't do it you agree it's too much too much but i think

that comparison genuinely came to me in that moment. The thing of just like everyone needs to be happy and make these sacrifices, I say, as I film this video from my poolside, whatever. Right. Nice. Right. There's that kind of energy, which is the thing that's been driving people, understandably, irate throughout the pandemic. And I also think that's another reason why this movie has so much anger against it is It's like, Calcutta didn't really do a movie in between Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 2. She became such a big cultural figure after that. And I feel like there's now a sort of reckoning with the things that annoy people about her.

That's possible. There is a weird... I won't say weird. There is a venom to how people talk. The movie she did, by the the way that you're forgetting is justice league but uh apart from that she didn't really do a movie right right um but uh and of course but griffin soon there will be a death on the nile it'll happen one day and we cannot forget that she was shank in ralph breaks the internet but as she is as a live action actor she shank she shank shank rules we have no

choice but to stand but justice league is the only movie she had released with her face in it in between these two films and people write justice league off and they just go like well that is not her problem if she's actually one of the better things about it but um yeah people definitely have a lot of problems with her and that's fine and uh there's a lot of good reasons and some you know that maybe are less fair i have no idea i i i like her i'm like her as wonder woman though like i well you know i love her as uh she's great in those and that was where when she popped where you're like, oh, this is like,

this is someone who is overqualified for this role. Like, this person seemed, even though I've never heard of her and I don't know who she is, like, this person

just kind of has a lot more presence than you might expect from this kind of, this character who's like, oh, she's like the hot lady who runs the races.

You know, like, and that's part of the magic of Fast and Furious in general, is that it gives you know, these characters more to do and more depth and more, you know, they're high quality blockbusters that I love. But yeah, apart from that, like, you know,

I like Chris Wonder Woman. I don't want to get a cup of coffee with her. I mean... No, I think she's certainly got her issues as a human being. And she's got her limitations i didn't know but i but i but guess what fucking everyone has their issues everyone's complicated the world is terrible i all people are also this is a movie podcast i can't weigh in on actors as people because it's just it's as we know it's like we're just you're just gonna be disappointed most likely i agree i'm gonna let you down this is i mean most likely i i tend to holster my nihilism to

some degree on this podcast and as you know all too well when we're not recording i completely stress you out with how negative i am about everything at all times especially in regards to my faith in humanity at large but it is is a thing that I think when like a celebrity backlash shit happens and I don't get it, you know, save for things like Kevin Spacey or whatever, right? Where it's like,

I get it. That was a little more than a backlash. Dare I say it. Maybe let's cancel that, man. Let me be frank. The guy's a fucking psychopath, but I,

I, I come from a baseline of just thinking that everyone's a bad person you know yeah i just i think with rich famous people that's the other thing and fame breaks people's fucking brains and they stop being normal people uh not the tangent we want to go on in this podcast this is the final thing I want to say. No, really, no. This is the final thing I want to say. Although people have corrected me a lot in the past that in our original Wonder Woman episode,

I said that Gal Gadot erroneously was an ex-Massad agent, which of course was me confusing Fast and Furious with real life, a problem I have on a day-to-day basis. She was like an instructor. She was like a pilates instructor right yes yes i don't know obviously stuff we don't want to fucking get into because it is impossible to discuss keep going keep going what's your point here's i want to say when i've been trying to defend the weirdness of this movie while still saying i

don't really think it's good but i admire its weirdness some friends of mine have pushed back gone like, but don't you feel like there's all this stuff that feels like studio notes and box checking and this and that? And I think that is, look, who knows, right? We don't know what fucking went on behind the scenes. But I do think there's two things going on, okay? One of them is, I think Patty Jenkins is innately a populist. I think she wants to innately a populist. I think she wants to make big, colorful movies. I think she is someone who understands the value of making something that is done in broad strokes with bright colors that hits very elemental themes in an unsubtle way.

It's a thing. Her favorite director is Pedro Almodovar. She likes color. She likes boldness, vibrancy. Like, that's absolutely what she likes. And she's talked about that, like, Superman the movie is the movie that made her want to be a director. That was her Star Wars when she was a kid. That's, like, the primal text for her. You know, I think about, like, my insane experience working on the Mulaney pilot for NBC.

like my insane experience working on the Mulaney pilot for NBC. And when NBC passed on it and people said to him, why aren't you just doing this at Hulu? Why aren't you doing this at Comedy Central? Any of those places would give you the money, you know, a smaller budget to do this. And he said, like, part of the idea for me is being able to do this on network television. Like, part of the challenge for him was, can you do Seinfeld?

Can you do it with content restrictions and the ability to, you know, sell car ads and all that sort of shit. And I think Patty Jenkins has that thing innately in her that she wants

the challenge of making this type of movie writ large. And I think if a lot of the things that people think are weird in this movie are sort of checkboxy, where studio notes,

they would be executed in a way that was far less bizarre right right like if it was a studio note that you have to bring chris pine back to life it would not have been done as a body swap thing no right there's no way that was no this feels like a movie where she very much got to do what she wanted to do i don't know this for sure but like it might the studio might have been like are you sure because like pine probably didn't have a sequel clause no i you know it might have been like fuck we're gonna have to pay him you want pine back i think this was a movie where they kind of couldn't push back on her and you also imagine that like if they were trying to mitigate risk on this movie and it was on the shelf for a year before it came out they would have made her cut half an hour out of this movie. Like if they had any control over her, right, they wouldn't have

let it be two and a half hours long and this bizarre. The final thing I want to say, and I tease to you that I was going to make this a longer spiel, but I just want to throw it out as a threat. I think there's an interesting through line when you look at the DC movies, excluding the Nolan Batman films, but including Green Lantern. I think there is an interesting through line of how high Jeff Johns credit is on the film and what the public perception of the movie is. And you were saying to me, it feels like he's a guy that Warner Brothers kind of went, can you be our Feige? But Geoff Johns is a dude who like his first job was working as Richard Donner's assistant. He's always wanted to be a movie guy. And it does feel like to some degree he's used comics to try to break into movies.

And there is this thing of just like he was not really involved in Wonder Woman. And that movie was so big. And suddenly he's the co-writer and has co-story credit. And he wants to make himself part of it. He was the main writer, along with Greg Berlanti, who obviously has gone on to do better DC stuff, on Green Lantern. He was very involved in all the Joss Whedon drama,

on Justice League, in the rehiring, and all that sort of shit. And Aquaman, which is the other one, the one exception where he has a big credit on it i think he has a story credit he doesn't have a screen just but i think you and i can both agree the strong suit of aquaman is one is the visuals is the world building it's not the script it's not the script it's a fucking mess right and it's like it works the script you're like okay like i guess i'll go along with this but you're like shazam

and the and the first wonder woman feel like the movies that jeff johns was like i don't need to bother myself with that those are the smaller ones to some degree yeah i mean obviously he was not as involved with the the snyder movies in general right the you know their man of steel but no he was involved in bvs he was involved in bvs he was involved in bvs and he's an executive producer but he's also an executive producer on wonder woman on the first one i mean you know like he he that's when he was in his sort of honcho role that is ill-defined right like you're there you would whatever he he's the feike-esque figure sure um now i'm looking it is funny that he this is actually griffin this is his first screenplay credit

uh ever this is his first ever screen he's not screenplay credited on green lantern weird okay but he's got the producer of that movie okay yeah i mean he was obviously and that movie is i mean he was the green lantern guy like his green lantern run in the 2000s was this like hot run he was kind of running quarterback on that movie i mean he was very right on with that yeah the only movies he has a producer not an executive a proper producer credit on are justice league and green lantern wow uh which i think are two movies that are unsuccessful as they're the two that he was the most hands-on with one could say the executive credits he has are on you know he has one on shazam as well but like that that's

that's his role as dc honcho and then wonder woman 1984 he co-wrote with patty jenkins and someone called dave callaham who's like become the hardest working man in show business now right but now is like he wrote uh uh whatchamacallit the uh why am i forgetting his name shang chi movie yes and he's got like five other big movies right this this guy is also is writing the disney hercules live action movie is something that doesn't relate to this podcast at all i was about to say gonna say he's all the moral combats are there uh this will be the third uh he's writing spider verse two like callum is now writing everything uh he was brought on late johns and jenkins developed it wrote it and then callum came on later. And Jenkins doesn't even have a screenwriting credit on the first movie, even though clearly she did a lot in shaping that.

I just think Johns might be a little bit of an issue. And there does seem to be a thing where the more hands-on he gets with these movies, the more muddled they become. I got nothing against the guy personally. I like a lot of his comic book work. I've started to view him as a little bit of a red flag when it comes to the movies. You know, Goyer used to be the great villain, right? Like people would say like,

oh, he's the one who messes up, like even though he has credits on movies people like, but yeah. And now it seems to maybe be shifting to Johns. Those are both comic book nerds. And Johns is obviously a very accomplished comic book writer. Like beyond, you know,

he really, his flash stuff, his green lantern stuff is yada, yada, yada. Yeah. Um, and his other thing that he,

I would say has had, he's had more success is in the TV world in, uh, those CW show, the flash being his creation. A lot of those shows he, he's worked on, which is, those are good i would those

are successful and fun i usually fall off with them but i i have no beef with them and they've got their whole sort of thing going and berlanti is viewed as the auteur of those even obviously yes sometimes i mean some of those shows he's very hands-on and some of those shows he just sort of put his stamp on uh to help them get made but berlanti gets the credit for those shows he's very hands-on and some of those shows he just sort of put his stamp on to help them get made but berlanti gets the credit for those shows i think john's is probably better at episodic comic book i you know issue level storytelling right yeah you know this movie i like it a lot more than you do but it's got like you said kind of a weird episodic vibe to it yeah um and it's quite long and it's oddly structured and i'm not gonna throw all the blame at jeff johns because i like again i like the movie and for god's sake maybe it's all patty jenkins's fault i don't know but like

i think you're right to to cock an eyebrow perhaps at his stewardship of this whole ridiculous enterprise i don't know i just i don't know i don't know it's a that's david you put it perfectly all it is is a cocked eyebrow and i look at aquaman and green lantern in this movie and i see certain through lights you know uh and and shazam and wonder woman are like the ideals of what i want out of this universe i put birds of prey number three after that and those are the movies that by all accounts he was not really touching um i agree i also love aquaman i can't wait to see the trench can't wait to see aquaman 2 sure my whole thing with these DC movies is I think the whole thing is a fucking ridiculous disaster yeah but I kind of like some of these movies kind of

you know what am I supposed to say like yeah am I just a sucker for this stuff do I just like it when they kind of take the weird swings I don't know kind of is it exhausting that we have to keep coming back to this well a little bit not so much right now just because they're like you said it's been kind of a weird year no superheroes anyway so i guess like it's a little more fun but like you know are we gonna talk about the matt reeves batman movie i don't know i mean it's like that's another question where you're just like do we need to i'm excited for that movie i like matt reeves is it better to just hold off and maybe try to do matt reeves someday but then like at what point does matt reeves have enough films under his belt that it feels like there's a real thing to talk about

there at this point i don't know i don't know yeah i mean what else is coming the gun movie obviously the flash movie with the machete is doing that is happening i believe yes we don't want to do that one it's got like michael keaton in it and that's crazy and and here's the other cynical thing people like to hear us talk about these movies because they're new big release movies and people want to hear takes and episodes always do well for us but there's some degree of like we we feel somewhat captive to covering these movies sometimes we don't feel like it and then sometimes we fuck up and we skip shazam and it's the best right so that's that's you know that should be the lesson learned for us we should the lesson is we can't skip cyborg when it comes

out eventually and yeah and let me look this up 20 years cyborg is well what are you talking about ben cyborg is dated for 2018 it came out two years ago i guess it was dated for i believe it was once officially given the release date of april 3rd 2020 which as far as i know it didn't come out then i i mean i'd have to check it was kind of an hectic time i want to say there was even an earlier release date because there was a point where they were happening that they were going to come out before Black Panther. There might have been. And I just am now imagining a scenario where Warner Brothers is like, we released Cyborg 2020.

You know, the pandemic, it was a hectic time. It came out. Yeah. April. Yeah. It came out April 2020. It was good. It was good.

You might have seen it. It was good. He. Okay. You might have seen it. It was good. He was announced April 2014. And on 2014, they announced April 2020 as the release date. So you're right. They gave themselves six years. And instead, Ray Fisher has been starring in a lawsuit against Warner Brothers.

I was about to say, that didn't really work out. I feel like there's some tension in that relationship. Yeah. In which he tweets constantly, like, awaiting further results from investigators. It's all so wild. Like, we saw that movie, and my takeaway was, like, he's probably the best performance in it. You liked him. And then his takeaway is, like, they threw out every scene I shot.

Right. Yeah, I think he's good it's a shame i want to see him do more shit i found him really engaging in him he's like the one performance that kind of worked for me he's something new you know and i like him more but yeah he's something new yeah you want to do the box office game we gotta it's it's the biggest hit of 2020 there is one um so this movie opened on christmas day to 16.7 million dollars i guess people are going to theaters it's also a little bit higher than ever i was gonna say all time middle of winter on a holiday and the movie is available to watch at home and yet it had a bigger opening weekend than tenant there it it shows that there

perhaps is some future to day and date it's encouraging and depressing in that way of people just being like i want to do something and obviously the argument is like when it's safe lots of people are going to want to do something people aren't going to be like you know what i love what experience i've really settled into being on my couch why would to be like, you know what I love? What experience I've really settled into? Being on my couch. Why would I leave? Like, you know. So it opened number one. There it is.

There was a member variety breaking down. Like there were a lot of private rentals. Like a huge amount. The vast majority. Which has become obviously a bit of a model for theaters trying to stay alive. Not the majority, but a very large size. No, but a lot. A lot. A good chunk.

Number two at the box office is another movie like it's only 40 of theaters that are actually open right now something like that and obviously a lot of major markets are not yeah okay um but yeah no number two opening to 2.2 million dollars griffin it's a new movie it's a movie i liked i bet you haven't seen it yet but i think you will like it. Is it News of the World? I imagine you'll be watching it. It's News of the World. I'm very excited to watch it. Yes. I'm ready to be in the warm hands of Hanks.

Yeah, not a masterpiece, but just a good, solid Tom Hanks is trying to keep the world from crumbling just through decency moving, right? David, frankly, that's all I need right now. Exactly. I think it's pretty good. And it's an interesting departure for Greengrass,

which I appreciated away from the shaky. And it's a reunion. I mean, Greengrass got one of Hank's greatest performances in Captain Phillips and this is a good movie.

It's good. You'll like it. It's out I'm excited to watch it number three is a family film it has almost made 100 million dollars at the box office worldwide worldwide oh it's the crew's a new beginning it's a new age okay it's not just a beginning wrong yeah yeah crew's a new age oh you oh wait i'm sorry you got that incredibly like vague ass basic title wrong who cares everyone got that title wrong no but there's also like a covid brain fog thing where i feel like i fucked up bill and ted

in the game recently uh the tenant episode coming out next week and there was some other movie that i totally misremembered the title of uh uh i don't try to remember yeah anyway number four is a movie that you bet and i have you know semi-seriously discussed just renting a theater to go see monster hunter we want to go hunting it's hunting season season it looks like badass yeah it looks it does like the best really it does and if this is just a normal time it's just oh god it's like ngs or whatever it should just be the movie where we go to the kip's bay to see it and we're like why is it in the smallest theater what's going on we get drunk at that pizza parlor beforehand it'd be the best fucking best night of my life god is that place still open absolutely our delivery from them all the time fuck yeah that's great that place rules there's a pizzeria i love it's a little secret and it's

got kind of a secret bar in the back and i've been ordering delivery from them constantly a because their pizza is good but b also because i don't want it to close i want to be able to go to that bar eight years from now hell yeah um absolutely we got to go back there number five at the box office it's a new release uh it's a movie that i think is going to get much discussed the more people see it um but right now it's really just in theaters i think it's going to be on vod very soon uh it made seven hundred thousand dollars what's the movie uh it's a it's not a netflix movie right it's a studio movie this is only yeah it's it's a specialty i believe it's a focus oh it's promising young woman promising young woman yes gary mulligan yes which is a movie that i like a lot of things about i had some problems with it especially the ending but i also saw it at sundance in january and like i you know was talking about it with fran who just saw it the other like and she's like you know in this and i'm like oh right like

i want to see it again like it's it's been a year like um but i feel you know it's interesting it's worth seeing i assume you will watch it griffin i will watch it yes absolutely the next three months are going to be me just watching everything uh for the blankie awards that i haven't watched for the last nine months when i've only been watching the simpsons and mary tyler moore right um you've also got fatal which one is that oh that's hillary swank yeah dion taylor's kind of secretly an interesting filmmaker I need to dig into him a little deeper but that there's something going on with that guy people say that movie is crazy uh which is not necessarily a bad thing but he made Black and

Blue which with time I actually like even more uh he made the intruder which is kind of a mess right but that is the intruder the uh quaid yeah yeah right but it's like he's churning him out he works really fast meet the blacks with mike epps he made which is the purge parody right he made something called supremacy with i don't know fucking yeah danny glo, I don't know, fucking Danny Glover. I don't know. There's something with that guy. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm compelled. I'm building an auteur narrative around him, slowly but surely. I'm going to watch Fatal.

That's cool. That's cool. You've also got Pinocchio. That's the new Matteo Garone Pinocchio that's dark. You couldn't keep Benigni away. Benigni just keeps on needing to be Garone Pinocchio that's dark you couldn't keep Benigni away Benigni just keeps on needing to be part of Pinocchio movies absolutely god we should do Benigni

you've got Elf you've got Christmas Vacation you've got The War with Grandpa still holding on Griffin what's it up to like 25? 18 in four months. Three months, sorry.

And in 11, I just want to shout it out, the Polar Express. Oh, boy. And it's 842nd week. It is funny to see those like, oh, like top 10, Polar Express number eight made like $300,000. And then you look at box office total, 180. Like. Right. like three hundred thousand dollars and then you look at box office total 180 like right they're numbers that don't make sense because they're logging them as if it's one continuous release it's so weird yeah what a weird time yeah may it end hey david you know i don't know

if you've heard anyone say this before but but my saying about 2020 is rest in pieces. What? You want that thing in pieces? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This year sucked duck piss. I wish 2021 is better.

Oh, no. Ben's eyes are bleeding. Oh, fuck. Ben's the stone. That's our new plot development. oh yes no ben's eyes are bleeding oh fuck ben's the stone that's our new plot why were you touching pedro pascal 2021 we've decided we needed to shake up the podcast so ben's become the stone now that's the new bit um folks speaking of 2021 and and slight, I want to say our artwork has changed a little bit on the podcast. And we want to thank our buddy Joe Bowen for doing that. And we got some other new artwork changes coming soon to Patreon and also perhaps some new merch designs.

But Joe has been such a great friend and collaborator of the show. And we should just say also, because we didn't really talk about this publicly when it was happening, but we have gone independent with our show. Hence, the artwork change. For a number of reasons, we decided we wanted to take on doing the show ourselves. So, we also want to thank Audioboom, who kept us alive for years. Yeah. Took a chance on us, honestly. Absolutely.

And it's still continuing to sell ads for us. Yeah, still doing work for them. But yes, Blank Check is now a Blank Check production. And speaking of 2021, glow up, Leigh Montgomery, another dear friend and close ally of the show, has done a new recording

of the theme song. People don't know, I like texted him to write a theme song on like the Tuesday before the Saturday our episode was going to come out. Wait, you're saying

you left something to the last minute? A communication? I don't want to talk about it. Okay. I don't want to talk about it. But that wonderful theme song was done very uh

quickly and scrappily on garage band he's actually gone to a studio with his band the great american novel and re-recorded the theme song for them and we love it and we love him for it and uh people should should check out the great american novel in general go to his band camp buy his music it rules so if you like the blank check theme, then you should listen to his other stuff. Yeah, check it out. Both are listed in the description. Yes, absolutely. Spotify and Bandcamp. But folks, thank you for listening. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. And go to our Shopify page where the Talk and the Walk Gossip Man shirt is available. Along with coming imminently a restock of the Comedy Points and pins. We got pins coming soon and some more stuff to come in the future. Tune in next week for Tenet. We're finally ready to perform a temporal pincer movement. We were going to do tenant first but then we decided to invert the release schedule yeah we inverted we inverted we rolled it one might say

so tenant next week then we're doing the final three zemeckis's that closes out january and first episode february a sparkling new mini series no palette cleansers in between because we're doing these two little new releases here. Yeah, they had a palette cleanser kind of. Just early. Early cleansers. Yeah. An early cleanse.

And as always, Magical Wishing Stone Innocent.