The Bechdel Cast - Batman Returns with Karen Han

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Karen Han put on their masks and discuss Batman Returns. Meow! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @karenyhan on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus

only on Apple Podcasts. Hey, everyone. Jake Storielli here from John Boy Media. I want to tell you about my podcast, Wake and Jake. I've been a sports nut my whole life, and there's nothing I love more than talking about it. If you're a sports fan, Wake and Jake is the place for you. Covering all the hot topics from the sports world. A lot of baseball, a lot of postseason coverage, mock drafts, awards, guest interviews, all of it.

New episodes every Monday and Wednesday. Come watch along on the Wake and Jake YouTube channel. Or listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Jamie, life's a bitch and now so am I.

Thanks for telling me, I guess. You're welcome. I just want you to know I underwent a transformation recently. I'm actually running for mayor, but if things go south even the smallest bit,

the first little snafu I encounter, I will then pivot and threaten to kill everyone's son. All the small children in Gotham? Oh boy, does he 180 quickly on that one. It is wild. I'm trying to figure out who I'm most spiritually connected to. I love Catwoman, but I don't know if I could do what Catwoman does.

I do feel very connected to Christopher Walken's big old son. You mean Chip? Who also talks like Christopher Walken in his two lines of dialogue. This is what I wanted to say. I'm so sorry to interrupt so early. But literally, as soon as I started talking, I completely forgotten that part of his character is that he sounds like his father. And so they're like, get away, dad, just run. And he's like doing a walk-in impression yeah the idea that that would

be a hereditary trait is so funny to me or it also like begs the question of like how long did he spend only with his dad so that he's like oh that's like the normal way of talking like i uh i had so many questions about the sun but the sun was just like damsel time and time again and we don't talk in this community enough about damseling christopher walken's big old son his large adult son yes it's a disturbing trend in media it's a very harmful trope and i won't stand for it oh my gosh i think that i'm team large adult son but also there's but i'm also team the clown that's like hey penguin are you sure we want to steal everyone's son and then just gets shot immediately oh there's so many good i'm also

on the side of the the stilts clown that gets knocked over by the Batmobile. God, this movie fucking rules. It's the best. It's so good. The Batmobile just has devices specifically for knocking over people on stilts. He's thought through everything. Yeah. Every contingency. He's like, we got to have something in the Batmobile for this. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Alfred, what if, and this is going to sound wild, but what if I needed to feed a clown on stilts? We have to be ready. I really don't think I appreciated just how much work Alfred has to do until this movie specifically. And also, I'm sure we'll get to this, but at the end when Batman picks up a cat, you can see it in Alfred's face where he's like,

well, I know he's not going to take care of that thing. So that's my cat now. I'm going to have to do everything for this cat. Yeah yeah who's scooping the litter at the end of the day it's alfred it's not bruce wayne it's alfred yeah oh my gosh this okay let's just get into it welcome to the bechdel cast my name is jamie loftes my name is caitlin durante and this is the show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. Originally conceived as a just kind of one-off joke in Alison Bechdel's comic Dykes to Watch Out For, has since been kind of co-opted into the media metric that we based an entire show on where wow yeah calling us out um we there our version of this test is

as follows two people of a marginalized gender have to have names they have to speak to each other and that conversation has to be about something other than a man. And ideally, that's it for this episode. Yeah. We're done. Yeah, we can. I feel like the nonverbal, like the nonverbal communication is strong. And could it be more narratively impactful? No.

No. Brings her back to life. Kind of amazing. That's pretty big. Yeah. Huge. Okay. So we are covering Batman Returnman returns 1992 a christmas movie

that came out in june i thought was kind of interesting but in any case let's get into it because clearly we are like absolutely at the mouth thing with thoughts yeah so let's get our in here yeah we must oh also oh cat on mic literally flea is right there i really whenever flea is represented in movies it means a lot to me he was sitting in my lap the whole time riveted he loves a movie cat as he should should. That's wonderful. So Flea is our honorary guest, but our real guest for this episode is culture writer and screenwriter Karen Hahn. Hello. Hi. I'm so excited to be here and also so excited to talk about this movie with you guys because

again, I think we're all going like fully feral. As Catwoman would want. Yeah. We're so excited that you sent us that because we were we reached out to Karen being like hey we want to do you know it's it's holiday movie block and I don't think that we've ever like brought this movie up even though it's overtly a holiday movie yeah I mean the thing I think just because like the iconography of Catwoman and the penguin are so strong like you tend to forget that there is it's like Christmas in Gotham and also I feel like they forgot about that again as

you say like they put it out in summer basically they were I think they were like we'll have our like superhero tentpole but then it's like oh it's like actually a Christmas movie but I mean that's now when I watch it I will watch it when it's cold yeah right it feels like that's how people view it now and it's also like such an it's like an anti-christmas movie too oh it's so fun it's a perfect film it just gets better every time i watch it it really does so what's your relationship your history with the movie karen i well it came out the year i was born so I did not watch it in theaters or around the time when it debuted but I watched it sometime in the last 10 years which I know is not a super specific time frame uh but that said it must have been post like Nolan Batman um because I know like I

started I watched these like after I saw the Christian Bale movie but then watching this I was like holy cannoli like this is really really good and also this and the the batman that precedes it with jack nicholson at the joker it's just like there's so much great stuff going on in both movies that it's kind of shocking and i was saying this to caitlin before we recorded that it's like i can't imagine any exact green lining this movie today like you would describe some of the elements and be like no no no no we can't do that that's too silly or that's too on the nose or that's just weird but that's what makes this movie so fun and so memorable it rocks I'm realizing this is the third Batman movie we've covered on the podcast because we did the 19 is

it 89 Batman like six years, one of our first episodes. It was a really long time ago. I was like, how did I see this movie originally? I was like, oh, it was literally for this show. This show's been on for 100 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we've covered The Dark Knight a few years ago. And so this is our third Batman episode.

And I'm not mad about it. I mean, if there's one thing about Batman movies, it's that there's 500 million of them whether you like it or not and I like a lot of them so Jamie what's your relationship with Batman Returns so I had not seen this movie before that's so exciting it was really um I have had a hell of a couple of days just like watching this movie uh two and a half times uh I I really yeah I really loved it I feel like every time I say I haven't seen a popular movie I'd like to remind Bechtel cast listeners that when we started this show a big thrust of the promise was that Caitlin has seen a lot of movies and I had not seen a lot of movies

over the years we it doesn't come up as much but um there's still I still haven't seen a lot of movies um but this yeah I'd never seen it before but I really enjoyed the first Tim Burton Batman it's great I knew that this was like hailed as like one of the best superheroes slash just sequels in general and yeah I totally agree with you Karen like it's I don't know like this is like Tim Burton allowed to like Tim Burton out at the peak of his Tim Burton-ness with like the biggest budget possible and I just but the thing is like he nails it yeah like it's so uh it was really I think that like I mean and this is not an original observation by a long shot but it's it's so like fun to watch a superhero movie that's like fun to watch.

And you kind of forget that they were supposed to be fun to watch. And I like a lot of like serious superhero movies. Like I enjoyed, you know, Robert Pattinson, Batman, but it's not I wasn't laughing, you know, and I wasn't supposed to be laughing. But like this was so fun and such a like cool otori kind of movie i loved all the behind the scenes stuff that was uh going on that they had real penguins they have real penguins and animatronic penguins and people dressed up as penguins they had every kind of penguin it's wild it was so And then I read, I just was like, how do we end up with this circus? I had a theory.

And then I checked it and it was right. I was like, I bet that Tim Burton was just like, I just want a circus. Because you're like, a circus is very obviously not necessary to the plot. And it was, I guess it was originally written as a band of performance artists. And Tim Burton's like, that's going to have to be a circus, honey. I won't do it without it. Make them clowns. It's got to be backflipping clowns.

A lot of them are going to have machine guns. They wrote out Santa with machine guns, which would have been awesome. You can't win them all. But yeah, I just I fell in love with this movie a million percent. It's so good. And also I brag just saw Danny Elfman in concert a couple of weeks ago. So I was like triple pumped because I forgot how great the scores to his Batman movies are. So good.

He's such a weirdo in like the best way possible. And also like one of those composers where whenever you're listening, you're like, oh, that's Danny Elfman. He makes no effort, I think, to blend in. He's just like, here it is. Here's Danny. And you're like, yes, here he is. Danny Elfman loves a horn. He loves a French horn.

And he loves an aww. He loves one of those. Yeah. My second favorite Danny Elfman score right next to of course spider-man 2 oh my god obviously his best and the best superhero movie i also wanted to say i think this is the first time that i can say i'm following in alfred melina's footsteps to some degree given that he was i think when when it was announced that he was gonna be on this podcast i like started crying like i lost my mind alfred melina is our friend and yeah was a be on this podcast i like started crying like i lost my mind alfred melina

is our friend and yeah was a guest on this podcast famously our esteemed guest incredible haven't heard from him since uh but all good that's all right and we we soldier on uh but yeah i hadn't seen this movie before and i absolutely love it. And I can't wait to introduce it into my holiday rotation. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Caitlin, what's your history with Batman Returns? I saw it for the first time probably as a freshman in college. I was like, oh, there's all these Batman movies I missed when I was a kid.

I got to watch them. And so I saw I watched all four of the ones from the late 80s into the 90s. It's a fun time. It's a fun time. Batman Returns is easily my favorite one. And I would rank this probably my number two superhero movie of all time. Behind what? Right behind Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse.

Oh, see, I would put it, I mean, mean spider-man 2 is always gonna be number one for me but this is like top whatever yeah top of the list top percentile 10 out of 10 on caitlin's romp-o-meter because spider-verse is kind of unbeatable in a way also yeah but yeah incredible movie i love it so much there's lots to discuss like oh my gosh i can't wait to dive in beginning with why do they have a baby cage at their house they're do you feel like they like went onto craigslist or like rich craigslist or whatever and we're like we require a little baby cage if anyone knows where we can get one of those or they like hired someone to make it after they saw that their baby had little webby hands they called their go-to blacksmith they're like hey they commissioned they've got a guy for sure oh yeah they definitely have a guy it scares me to think

what rich people have access to but anyway but this movie talks about that so much this i was so surprised at how deep into like social commentary this in a way that like yeah i mean i guess i wouldn't say it doesn't feel it just like fits into the story very naturally in a way that sometimes i feel like it's not like a here's the moral of our story kind of thing it's just like it's naturally baked into it woven right in yeah i love it so yeah i love this movie I'm so excited to talk about it. And should I do the recap and we'll go from there? Yeah.

Okay. There's going to be a lot of interjections because every frame of this movie, I have something to be said about everything. Okay. So let's take a quick break first. Okay. And then we'll come back to recap. So we'll be right back.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning.

In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, this is Jimmy O'Brien from John Boy Media.

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Listen to Jimmy's Three Things on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it on the Talkin' Baseball YouTube channel and new episodes drop every Tuesday. And we are back. I mean, it is wild to open your movie in the way that this one opens, where it's basically like a silent sequence of these two very rich people deciding that they don't want their baby anymore and then throwing it into the sewer. You've got a rich pregnant lady. Yeah.

Screaming because her baby doesn't look the way she wants it to look. Yes. They put it in a cage. The baby eats a cat and then they throw the baby in the river which is wildly as it was as the movie was going on i was like oh my god was the baby eating a cat foreshadowing of him phasing off with cat woman i think maybe so also i was like what is this the creature from Shape of Water eating a cat? Wow.

Well, Doug Jones also in this movie, so. And if he's not, he should be. Okay, so we see this happen. Then we cut to 33 years later. So Danny DeVito is supposed to be 33 in the movie. Yes. Okay. That made me laugh. Actually, that's a really good point also i can see my audio

peaked like right as i laughed at that that's a really good question big big question i guess penguin people age differently oh yeah he was like almost 50 already by the time this came out, right? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. If you live in the sewer, you age like a president. It is what it is. Actually, you're right. Like he's got a lot of city miles, a lot of road miles on him. Like he's not lived an easy life. No. I get it.

He's had it rough. So look, it happens. Yeah. It's still really funny yeah so he's he's dwelling in the sewers people seem to know about him or there's rumors about his existence this you know half man half penguin person it kind of had phantom of the opera vibes oh yeah absolutely but like more charming in a way also his whole just his underground water layer is like straight out of Phantom of the Opera. Yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of like in a different world, you're like, Oh, I could, I could see myself getting horny for the penguin, you know, in a different world. I mean,

in this world, I was, I was kind of horny for Colin Farrell penguin, but only cause I knew who was in there. Yeah. Sure. Well, also like he was,

he was funny. Like the funniest part of the movie, arguably. Yeah. When they show him like the crime scene pictures, he's like, Oh, come on.

I was like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He kind of, he kind of pasta meatballed out a little bit on that one. I liked it. But I do want to say,

I feel like I am like, I am, I love, I love this penguin. I would let him into my house. No question. I would say, yeah,

yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would, I would vote for him for mayor. Well, before the pivot, but not post-pivot. Before the pivot. There's so many elements. I mean, and there's like stuff about the penguin that we definitely need to like talk about when the moment comes. Sure. There's a lot to unpack. But his whole, like, I think, like, coming off the L.A. mayoral race, you're like, oh, yeah, just a guy trying to buy the seat of mayor and almost doing it. And I was like, is this going to be Rick Caruso's pivot? I kind of just hope he goes back to building malls. Literally, I watched this with my partner last night and he was like, oh, like, I would vote for the penguin over Rick Caruso.

And I was like, you're right. I would, too, honestly. At least he's got a story. he's much more sympathetic right and he's not like rich brain pilled no he's he's so quick to go back to the zoo ultimately his loyalties lie with the zoo the zoo a problematic entity all its own but who knows that better than the penguin exactly i mean like i guess i assume he's like freed all the penguins that work for him like even liberated them from the zoo right i think yeah but then he uses them as pawns in his little um that's true you know destroy gotham scheme i am very conflicted about this because he does that but only arguably in a moment of extreme desperation and then he is really like caring of them and then they are very caring of him in turn like

they become they know to do like oh shit we gotta be pallbearers now and like they know to do that i that scene makes me cry i'm not like it's 100 seriously it makes me cry they make the animatronic penguins frown i paused it i was, how is this penguin frowning? This is wild. Like, yeah, I thought that was like the penguins. It was unclear. I was like the penguins kind of have like some Minions vibes where you're like. Oh my gosh.

They just are like invested. That's rude to the penguins. He's their Gru. But I understand where you're coming from. He's Gru? Is that what you said? I'm just always looking for who's the Gru of the movie. He's their Gru. The Gru test. he's grew is that what you said i'm just always looking for who's the grew of the movie the grew test i mean all throughout my recap is just full of minions references so oh thank god

yeah oh terrific cool cool cool okay sorry sorry for uh derailing immediately we have a lot of thoughts about the penguin specifically we'll get to them yeah yeah yeah we'll wait we'll be so good no worries okay so then we meet selena kyle played by michelle pfeiffer who is the assistant to a prominent businessman and like energy mogul max shrek played by christopher walken and now my blood pressure is skyrocketing you're just like oh there's a character named shrek my favorite quote that because i was like okay you know look shrek culture it's come it's gone it's come back but my favorite one was it's nice to see you out in the real world away from shrek i'm like i feel like i could relate with that people should sit i wish someone would say that to me i would go on a date with them that said this

is an extremely shrekian movie we got shrek we got minions yeah we got it all we got clowns there's so much what don't we have okay so max shrek gives a speech to the people of Gotham during a Christmas tree lighting event, but he's interrupted when a bunch of goons, or minions, aka the Red Triangle gang... You need to get, like, a minion soundboard

for this episode. Like, whenever you mention it, it's just, it's, like, not the air horn noise, but I actually don't really know what minions sound like. But anyway. Oh, well, what don't they sound like? That's a good question. You know, banana.

Banana. Bellow. Bellow, banana, et cetera. I'm learning so much. It's like the time of year. Holidays, you're like, oh, my Spotifyify wrapped list is gonna really bum me out soon mine's always like horrendous so bad right like it's if you're proud enough to share it it's you don't have an interior life it should be really embarrassing i feel like yeah i definitely

share it like for public shaming purposes yeah right as a way of holding yourself accountable yeah here's what i did i guess yeah yeah i think that it's very possible because i played it a lot as a joke and then it's such a short track that it comes on a lot oh no but there's a track on my like go-to playlist that's the um the minions singing the universal theme song where they go ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba It's so funny. But I think I probably listened to it 300 times this year.

That'll do it. A few years ago my most played song was the Lonesome Cowboy credit song from Toy Story 4. Because I genuinely was like this is a good song what happened to you that year that you were in particular really and i but i also think that once i had stepped away from my computer and left it on repeat without knowing it so that did jack up the numbers but

that's not to say that i didn't listen to it a lot because i definitely did yeah oh i gotta really i gotta revisit it i can't conjure what does it sound like he was a lonesome cowboy beautiful i'm crying there it is i'm getting teary-eyed it's all about making friends yeah i've never sounded worse on a podcast disagree no this is this is raw and uncut uncut gems right here yeah all right so the minions so penguins minions show up to wreak havoc on the city so the city lights up the bat signal to summon batman of course played by michael keaton who shows up and stops the minions he also saves selena k, who is being terrorized by one of the minions. I know I said that we would be so good during the rest of your recap.

But number one, I pointed this out again to Kayla before recording already, but I wore my Michael Keaton shirt specifically for this recording. There's his face. Hello. It's really good. Great pic of him um and also the shot of him when the bad signal is lit is like one of the best shots i've ever seen where it goes off on the wall of wayne manor and then like he stands up in front of it and you're like it's just so good it's so good amazing it also reminded i was like oh yeah

superhero stories like it's fun when they're very simple too because you're like what is bruce wayne in the middle of doing is he just like hoping that someone will commit a crime yeah so he has something to do he's just sitting there he's just hanging out there's not a light on in the room there's no evidence as to him having hobbies no no i think that that's a beautiful i was like let me give the script way too much credit and be like well maybe that's them saying that uh you know billionaires have no interior life they're all essentially sitting in a dark room at all times well i mean yeah i think you're right but who am i to cast stones? I also do that. Mark.

Yeah, people of all classes can sit in a dark room. It's very egalitarian. Yeah, it's a great equalizer. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So during this havoc that the minions are unleashing, Max Shrek is kidnapped by the penguin, who of course is played by Danny DeVito.

And he is mad at Shrek for polluting the city. And he blackmails Shrek into helping Penguin. It's so hard not to make a Shrek joke. He's making Gotham his swamp. Yes, he really is. Yeah. Gotham is getting a bit swampy. Who's Don? Shrek doesn't't really i think part of the i think his his son is his donkey he is kind of his donkey right which makes it even

more amazing when shrek is like take me instead penguin take me yeah it lends new depths to the motion picture shrek now shrek would totally do that for donkey also he would he has i've seen it we have evidence okay i have to say i love how talkative flea is and he is such a cute voice it's so sweet thank you oh he knows that cat woman's about to appear on screen yeah flea loves to chat he loves to he loves to weigh in and he knows that uh this is a good time has he always been a very talkative cat yeah i've never i've only had like mostly coincidentally i've i've had three black cats in my lifetime and i've never had one that made any noise and Flea is so loud. Always has been. He's a screamer. That's wonderful. Okay, so Penguin blackmails Shrek into helping him figure

out his backstory. He wants to know where he came from, who his parents were, what his real name is, and he no longer wants to be seen as a monster. Meanwhile, Selina has to go back to the office where she discovers dirt on Shrek and all of his shady business stuff. And just then, Shrek shows up and realizes Selina knows all of this incriminating information about him. Do you think he wants her to get out of his swamp he kind of shows up and he's like get out of my swamp exactly yeah yeah yeah by throwing at the beginning of shrek one exactly yes and he gets her out of his swamp by throwing her out of a window that scene is awesome oh so she falls to the ground. She is lying there, presumably dead, but then a bunch of street cats.

And I like to think that they are, you know, Rum Tum Tugger, Bustopher Jones, Magical Mr. Mistoffelees. It's a crossover. Wow. Every bed. Wow. Everyone showed up. I'm as a Skimbleshanks girly. I but I maybe he comes later when there's a random circus train in the middle of Gotham because he is the railway cat. He has a job. I love Skimbleshanks is a union man.

I love him. OK, so these cats from the movie Cats seem to bring Selena back to life. She returns home. She's chugging milk she's throwing away her stuffed animals she makes a new outfit because guess what she's cat woman now she ruins her dollhouse question mark yes she makes it goth i was watching this and i was like i do think like every woman goes through this at some point in her life it's like you either become goth or you become emo it's like you become like adjacent to the to that scene every woman goes through this every single woman she turns her hello there sign into hell here i cheered oh iconic i cheered so good there's so much, like little plants and payoffs in this movie that you're just like, who thought of that?

It's the production. I forget the production designers like the Tim Burton guys, Bo something. I'll look it up. Yeah. Okay. So she's becoming Catwoman. stages a situation where he saves a kidnapped baby at a public event so that he can save it and be seen as a hero by the people of Gotham, which works. And everyone loves Penguin now. And he goes to City Hall or whatever. And he learns that his real name is Oswald Cobblepot.

He learns who his parents were, but he's like, I forgive them for what they did to me. And so people continue to sympathize with him. But Bruce Wayne slash Batman, who, by the way, we're like 36-ish minutes into the movie. And it's only at this point when he actually starts to become a character. Because prior to that, he's barely in the movie he's kind of like not in the movie very much and it doesn't i know that like that was yeah i mean i get why that was like a criticism of the movie at the time but in retrospect you're like well okay he's sort of the most boring person it works 100 and also like i don't know that's the fun thing about his. Michael Keaton is also a weird choice for Batman. But, like, one that I love and 100% back.

But, like, he's, like, a little awkward. He doesn't have, like, the leading man features that I feel like everyone else, they want Batman to have. Yeah. Even just, like, thinking about Batman, the previous movie, where, like, the Joker's goons or whatever come to his house. And he's like you want to get crazy let's do you mean the jokers minions you're correct yes the minions uh banana they come to his house and then he like has this moment where he's also being like very kind of aggressive towards them which is not i think like you never see batman in other movies being like

uncool but he so is as michael keaton and like the whole first scene or the second scene where he meets selena and he is just totally tripping over his words just because he's instantly like oh she's like she's hot i have to talk to her it's so good yeah it's i i and again it's like it like in a modern context like scans more with like how a weird guy with too much money would probably act yeah yeah right i love you alive girl yeah yeah yes okay so so bruce slash batman he does not buy this whole like penguin is a sympathetic character thing he thinks penguin is up to no good meanwhile catwoman goes out on the streets and starts being a vigilante not hero exactly because catwoman is famously sort of a good guy and sort of a bad guy maybe that's over oversimplifying we will talk about her at length but she blows up a store but

it's like empty yeah it's empty and it's Shrek's store. So we're like, woohoo. Yeah. You're like, oh, I guess that was a victimless crime. That's fine. So Catwoman is on the streets now. The next day, she shows up to work as Selina. And Shrek is surprised to see her back in his swamp because he thought he killed her.

Yeah, he thought he drowned her yeah he thought he drowned her in the swamp well guess what but also like shockingly unconcerned that a woman who has fallen a significant distance out of a window is just like back and not talking about that and he says something like well if she tries to blackmail me i'll push her out of a higher window but until then i have better fish to fry yeah it's it's like, I don't think you do. The Shrekian logic here is kind of all over because it's like, okay, so he didn't check to make sure she had died. Right.

Like if he looked out the window two minutes after that, he'd see her body being swarmed by cats, which is highly unusual. But you know, he's a he's a careless guy. So I was like, okay, whatever. But like like there are things that happen throughout the movie that you just think is going to get a big reaction from him and he just does not blink such as when penguin bites someone's nose off he's like yeah he's like come over here let's sidebar and i was like oh my god he just like does not yeah i mean i don't hate

it but i was like yeah sometimes his reactions to things i was like well i thought that that would have mattered more to you i think the nose biting is especially funny because everyone else freaks out and it's only christopher walken who's like all right whatever he literally takes him aside he's like i think we should run you for mayor i was like did you just see what happened it's really funny oh it's so good okay so selena is back at work and she meets bruce wayne who is there for a meeting because shrek wants bruce to help fund his new power plant which is actually not a power plant it's gonna suck energy out of gotham rather than generating energy anyway he they meet and there seems to be a spark between Bruce and Selina. And then meanwhile, Shrek is trying to have Oswald Cobblepot run for mayor because the current mayor of Gotham is trying to stop Shrek's bogus power plant, I think.

Yeah. But they need a catalyst to drive out the current mayor. Some kind of like city crisis. So Penguin's minions unleash more chaos on the streets which is basically just like a circ they just like militarize the clowns or the penguins anytime they need shit to get stirred up they're like all right all right we're just gonna give the penguins guns yeah and people will not know what to do and it's true they don't know what to do and it's true they panic yeah yeah so the the clown gymnasts are flipping around and causing chaos it's great

separately cat woman is wreaking her own havoc on the city she this is when she blows up shrek's department store then batman and cat woman have like a face to face for the first time they fight for a bit then catwoman like each i mean well she likes it's like a very sexually charged movie oh my it is the horniest movie i've ever seen there's like a scene where he says like i'm hard like you're just there are a number of times where i'm pretty sure she puts her hand on his penis and he's just like, all right. I wonder if that's a ratings thing where it's like you can imply that her hand is there. But if he reacts to it, then you're getting a hard R. Yeah.

Not sure. Who knows? I didn't hate it. But again, very, very hor horny movie and for younger me definitely I was like oh wow like what is going on here so then Catwoman goes to Penguin to be like hey help me get rid of Batman and Penguin's like sounds great he's horned up oh yeah there's that scene that ends with like I mean because it's like as the movie goes on Cat He's horned up. Oh, yeah. There's that scene that ends with like, I mean, because it's like as the movie goes on, Catwoman's horniness, they just keep kind of cranking it up and up and up and up. To be fair, they're also doing that for Penguin.

Like everyone's getting hornier as it goes on. But like Catwoman's becoming a very, you know, like specific kind of horny. But there's a scene that ends with her licking herself and Penguin just sitting on the bed going like, just being horny. He's been in the sewer for 33 years, as we now know. Like, we don't know how much action he's been getting, but I have to assume it's not that much. And if you've been down there for 33 years

and this is all you're thinking about, I think he's justified. It really is Phantom of the Opera vibes in that regard as well we're just like i need a girlfriend finally he does sort of uh in a future scene he is kind of going like r slash incel a little bit oh yeah oh he's a complete full-on predator yeah Yeah. But we'll talk about that later. Yeah. Okay. So Catwoman wants to get rid of Batman, but she, as Selina, goes on a date with Bruce,

neither of them knowing about the other's alter ego. They're chatting. They're talking about duality. They're like basically telling each other who they secretly are. Then Selina lunges at Bruce to kiss him. They're making out. But then Bruce has to leave abruptly because Penguin is trying to frame Batman for kidnapping the Ice Princess during the new Christmas tree lighting ceremony since the other one got ruined. By clowns.

By clowns. By clown gymnasts. But don't worry, this next one will also be ruined by the same people. So Bruce puts on his bat suit and heads downtown. It sucks so hard. It's what a horrible place to live. It also feels like it's perpetually

in nighttime almost like i know logically that there are daytime shots but it's just anyway it's always under the cover of darkness i also appreciate that at one point the mayor is like yeah i know that you citizens of gotham probably think that you know these streets are really fucked up and scary but don't worry your elected officials and law enforcement have everything under control and it's like no you don't you're attacked by clowns every other day how well could these public services be doing they're the way that gotham looks i think of like all the batman franchises i've seen i think i mean i've seen like one from every whatever but this is my

favorite Gotham visually because I love the Nolan movies but it does kind of just look like Chicago right I like them for that reason though like I do think this is still my favorite Gotham but I I'm very sentimental watching the Nolan Gotham because I like grew up a lot in Illinois and I'm like oh there it is oh that's the best nice I was like maybe if Gotham looked a little more like Boston I wouldn't be so critical because every movie has to be made for me specifically. I mean, I do feel like you would feel very differently about it if Gotham looked like Boston.

I would actually be so thrilled. Have either of you seen The Menu? Not yet. Not yet, but I do want to. Spoiler alert, there's a character from my hometown. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Although I couldn't really suspend my disbelief

to believe that Anya Taylor-Joy could be from my hometown. I was like, I don't think that there's beautiful people like that in Brockton. But she came from Brockton. Yeah, Jamie. Jamie, you're beautiful. I'm not Anya Taylor-Joy's swan neck defeating Ralph Fien finds at a restaurant beautiful

but you know who is who is but her it's true she is like an alien she is she is a gorgeous alien i really love her yeah she came from a different like the sailor moon planet or something it's i do appreciate her her even being fictionally connected to Brockton. It's an honor. There was a show a while ago that was specifically set in the town in Illinois that I mostly grew up in. But they didn't shoot any of it there and didn't really make an attempt to make it look like it. Not that there's that much going for my hometown in Illinois. But I remember everyone that I went to high school with, we were watching the trailer.

We were like, what the hell is this? This is not at all. This doesn't look like our hometown at all anyway rude brockton gets constantly disrespected because of like there have been like some movies shot sequences there but it's only like oh we need somewhere that looks like it sucks and is not safe so there were like a lot of key scenes from Catherine Bigelow's dumpster fire of a movie Detroit was shot on the streets of Brockton because they're like we just need a place that looks like it just blew up and so then they shot it in Brockton rude Adam McKay shot some of the scenes where like Timothy Chalamet is hanging out with his dumpster friends and don't look up in brockton i'm just like no fucking respect oh unbelievable that's so funny they're like okay dumpster

sequence where can we go like what the fuck okay so the second tree lighting ceremony is being interrupted by clowns so br Bruce puts on his bat suit and heads downtown to save the day but Catwoman shows up and she and Penguin successfully frame Batman for murdering the Ice Princess so now everyone hates Batman

which is a pity because she seems nice she seems very nice yeah also there's a sequence where Penguin hijacks the Batmobile. Amazing sequence. And he's like crashing it into things. But then Batman regains control of his vehicle. He's like doing it from like an arcade Batmobile.

It's really fun. It's really, really cute. It's awesome. Then Penguin is able to gain more power and popularity with his mayoral campaign but while he's giving a speech bruce wayne slash batman leaks some audio where penguin is talking about how he's playing this stinking city like a harp from hell and so some wine everyone turns on penguin and hates him now so he returns to the sewer to plot his revenge this is where he goes from semi-successful mayoral run to i'm going to kill everyone's

first born son in about two minutes i think he could have recovered the campaign could have recovered i mean it reminded me of like, some key moments in the Trump campaign. Seriously. I was saying the exact same thing. Yeah. It reminded me. I was like that. Well, there is his Billy Bush tape.

Yeah. Basically. And against all odds, he was famously the president. We don't need to talk about it. Oh, so Penguin's campaign tanked, but Trump's won't. What's going on here? Makes you think. Okay.

We're all about Penguin rights in this chat. So while Penguin is plotting his plan to kill a bunch of babies. To go very Plagues of Egypt egypt with it yeah yeah while that's happening bruce and selena go to this masquerade party although it's called a max skirade party because it's max shreks party um get it get it it's a real stretch it's hard it's a mouthful when he walks in they're playing an instrumental of super super freak it's amazing but also the implication that super freak like exists in this universe which i'm glad to know that it does yeah i wonder if it only existed as an instrumental

oh interesting could be um okay so they're dancing and Selina is telling Bruce about how she's there to kill Shrek. She said, no more swamp. No, I'm going to drain this swamp, she says. And then they both say something that makes Selina realize that Bruce is Batman and he realizes that she is Catwoman. So they're like, oh oh my god what do we do now but just then penguin launches his attack he shows up he kidnaps max shrek again classic well as a second choice he loves to repeat a bit he tries to kidnap chip but then shrek is like no don't hurt my donkey take me me instead. Not my donkey.

I wish that Chip had gotten to talk there. He could have been like, Dad, let him take me. I can't do a Christopher Walken, but like... Honestly, his Christopher Walken impression is shockingly good. It's just subtle enough. Who was that guy? He killed it.

I don't know. He used to be in MMA or something, was my impression uh andrew bruniarski he is an american actor and former bodybuilder best known for portraying leatherface in the remake of the texas chainsaw massacre zangief in street fighter and steve latimer in the program and obviously uh chip in batman returns his most iconic role yeah wow okay so while that's happening penguins minions are stealing babies all over gotham but batman stops this somehow i didn't even catch how he's able to stop that but that he puts an end to it so penguin sends out all of his little penguins like literal

penguin birds with rockets strapped to them to blow up gotham and i would classify this scene as a bit of a march of the penguins oh yeah okay wow yeah a bit of happy feet marching out onto the streets of me yeah i think that's all the Penguin movies. Well, there's also Surf's Up. Is that what it's called? Surfing Penguins? Oh, I forgot about that. Madagascar has penguins in it.

They are not the main characters, but they feature prominently. It's true. Yeah, really famous penguins. Yeah, they got their own spinoff, right? I thought so. Yeah. My little cousin loved that show the madagascar movie is okay i haven't revisited it in a while but i loved it when i was a kid

yeah the second one does a polka cover of new york new york which is one of my favorite versions of it like not ironically it's very good and that's gonna show up on your spotify end of year list this year it probably has already full disclosure yeah um okay so there's a march of the penguins but batman shows up he jams their signal and reroutes their gps's to send them back to penguin's sewer layer penguin escapes batman catches up with him they fight rockets start going off meanwhile catwoman fights with shrek in the penguin lair she's trying to kill him but batman shows up and he's like no let's put him in jail and he's trying to like appeal to her humanity he's like we could be together batman was pissing me off in that scene i was like leave her alone let her finish him seriously i totally agree and also like takes the very ill-advised tack of saying her real name and

then taking off his mask in front of max shrek in order to try to convince her and i was like if anything that makes the case for killing him even stronger exactly like he can't be out there no it is really funny though when shrek is like why, why is Bruce Wayne dressed up as Batman? Catwoman's like, because he is, you moron. It's good. Anyway, so Catwoman kills Shrek via electrocution and then presumably scurries off with one life left of her nine lives. Penguin shows up. He's dying.

He dies. So sad. And then his little penguins drag him into the water so sad and karen's crying i i do cry every time he dies in this movie like this is not a joke like i cry in his death scene every time yeah it is sad they give him like a real proper tragic hero or not tragic villain send off when he pulls the umbrella out and he's like, oh, picked a cute one again and then just falls over.

I was like, oh, he's an angel. Egot. He should. They should just give him the Egot. Just give it to him. He's such a good actor and I feel like we all forget that because he's so good at being funny and weird

and it's always sunny and stuff and posting his feet to twitter but he's such a good actor he's so this performance is incredible he's amazing yeah um okay so then the movie ends with bruce he's driving around with alfred he thinks he sees cat woman in an alley he gets out he finds her cat which looks exactly like flea by the way he takes it home so that like we said alfred can take care of it and then bruce wayne says merry christmas alfred goodwill toward men and women and then we go oh we're like feminist icon. He nibbles a little bit there. Wow. It is a really funny final line. It's so funny. And if you see Catwoman in and then, you know, like if because we live in the future that she never comes back and it's setting you up for a movie that never happens.

Yeah. OK, let's take another quick break and we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning.

In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and then a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, this is Jimmy O'Brien from John Boy Media. I want to quickly tell you about my podcast.

It's called Jimmy's Three Things. Episodes come out every Tuesday, and for about 30 minutes, I dive into three topics in Major League Baseball that I am interested in. Breaking stories, trends, stats, weird stuff. Sometimes I make up my own stats. Sometimes I do a lot of research, and it ends up I was wrong the whole time. So that's something you can get in on. Use Jimmy's Three Things

podcast to stay up to date on Major League Baseball and to make you just a smidge smarter than your friend who's a baseball fan. You listen to me and then you go tell him, hey, I know this and you don't. So I make you smarter than your friends. That's what Jimmy's Three Things is all about.

Listen to Jimmy's Three Things on I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You could also find it on the talking baseball YouTube channel and new episodes drop every Tuesday. And we're back. Karen, where would you like to begin?

Uh, uh, Oh, that's such a good question. Um, there's you like to begin? That's such a good question. No pressure. There's so much to talk about. I mean, I guess we'll start with the penguin because he is fresh on my mind. I just love him so much.

I would give him a little kiss. I don't mind that. He's perfect. conversation to be had about him as it pertains to our show and the analysis we do here is um the physical othering and ableism that is present in his character yeah even though no specific disability is referenced when it comes to his character and i'm pretty sure that having penguin-like features to my knowledge is not a real thing no right but the the syndactyly or what is it with his hands I think is the real thing but obviously again they don't put like a name to any of what's going on right right even so a villain in a movie having atypical physical features and looking different from everybody else is just inherently ableist. And in this case, I would say also fat phobic because Danny DeVito is wearing a fat suit as the penguin character.

So there's just all of this, again, physical othering of his character but this movie does something interesting that i feel like a lot of movies don't do when it comes to physically othered movie villains where the movie will other the villain in some way usually with like very ableist under and overtones but it's usually not something that impacts the story or the character it's just like a trait that exists in a void for that character but penguin's whole thing is that he was discarded by his parents because he was physically different which led to a lifetime of isolation and resentment and longing which turned him into the villain that he is. Right. So you have this character who's like affected by everyone in the community being ableist toward him. Yeah.

And yes, it does turn him into a villain. I don't know. I don't know what to make of it exactly, but it's, it's tough. I think like, especially for the time period,

like it feels pretty forward in that respect where again, like the fact that he looks the way he does it feels pretty forward in that respect where again like the fact that he looks the way he does is not supposed to indicate that he's a villain like i think especially because of the way that tim burton uses iconography like everyone looks a little bit weird yeah um sure but and especially as you were sort of saying in the penguins case like he is like this specifically because everyone else discriminates against him because of the way he looks so it's not there as a storytelling shortcut or anything like that it's not there in the sense of like i think it's discussed the most with like bond villains where there's always some kind of physical deformity that has no bearing on their personality but just means look at them they're

evil which is not the case here and i also feel like the depths again the fact that danny devito is such a good and empathetic actor like goes a really long way towards selling that point because like then they they have those direct like rips from the alpha man where at first like when he's being reintegrated into society he's like i'm not a penguin like i'm a man i have a name and then when they reject him because of the tape and also, I think, because of inherent bias, he's like, I am not a man. I'm a monster. And it's like, again, it's because of the outside influences that he is doing these bad things more so than that being like an inherent part of his personality. Yeah.

Right. I yeah, I like was it is like a tricky i mean it's like a tricky topic yeah to take on in any regard and it's like so present in comic books in general that i appreciate it like even though it's like certainly not like a perfect attempt to address it but like i thought it was like like you're saying caitlin and an intro like it was trying to give context to like he is not a villain because of how he looks he is a villain because of how society treats him because of how he looks and yeah you know it was interesting and and I don't know what no actually we'll come back to it I lost it um oh I also I saw some reads it's tricky because it's like i certainly see and like can

acknowledge a lot of the ableism that's built into the character yeah and then there's also moments where it's like they're just trying to make him look more like a penguin and so it's like two things kind of are happening at once i i uh saw that at the time of this movie's release and and rightfully so i mean and we've talked about uh anti-semitic tropes and villains a number of times and i think that yeah um some of those are certainly present in the penguin as well for sure a point that didn't register with me was like here is a villain who's being given anti-semitic styling who is determined to steal babies around christmas and you're like yep that is certainly what's happening um so i yeah i think that it's like i totally agree with you karen i think like danny devito's performance is like so much of like what humanizes this

character i like that you get so much context into why he is the way he is yeah danny devito so perfect it's hard he's perfect and a dna devito i think again not to keep just talking about his performance but the fact that he never plays also like a joke goes a long long long long long way towards this kind of coming off better i guess because i think you could very easily play it as like oh he's so funny and weird look at him but i don't think he ever plays it that way in the movie yeah yeah for sure the thing that puts me off about him the most as far as his like villainous qualities is his like predatory like sexual predatory behavior where like he says stuff

like oh i'd like to fill her void and he just like is actively groping people and sexually harassing them i viewed that though i didn't view that as like tying into anything that had to do with his physical appearance i viewed that as like him getting corrupted by power the second he gets a little bit of power. Because that's like what I think is like the coolest part about his character is like he at the beginning, it's like you can totally see like he wants to fuck over Gotham because he's been so thoroughly rejected and isolated from the society he should have been growing up in.

But then the second he gets a little taste of power, he immediately is like horrible to everybody in all the expected ways, which I think is like an awesome, whatever. It's a good arc. We know this arc. Sure. Oh, that was what I was thinking. It was earlier was, I feel like, I mean,

and there's plenty of criticisms of Tim Burton. I wasn't even going to get into them today really because we've talked about them in previous episodes but I do think that like something that he dealt with well in a lot of examples especially in this like era of his is like taking an othered character and building them out to be someone that you can empathize with even if ultimately they're like doing the wrong thing and so for like 1992 it's like yeah i guess like the penguin in tim burton and mark waters hand because this was written by the guy who wrote heathers um like you've got two i thought it was

daniel waters oh sorry daniel waters mark Waters is his brother who directed Mean Girls. Right. Yeah. Whole Waters dynasty situation. Yeah, apparently. But yeah, Daniel Waters wrote Heathers. Tim Burton liked Heathers, and he liked that Daniel Waters had no knowledge about Batman and didn't care about Batman canon. And it's just like we're two people who were known for dealing

with humanizing misfits well yeah and so for 1992 i think that they did a pretty good job but i also you know totally understand all the criticisms around the penguin as well right yeah i think i mean i don't know it is very of its time in a way. Like even thinking about the like phone sales calls that Selena gets where they're like, ooh, if you wear this at the office, your boss is going to invite you to stay late. Like it's so gross. And Max's whole treatment of her. And then even to an extent like Bruce, where he's just like he sees her and he's like, oh, that woman's hot. I want to talk to her more. Right. I think it's rare and maybe it doesn't even happen for a man to come into contact with

Selena and not immediately say something, even though like I think the most egregious thing is like the two security guards are like, I don't know if I should arrest her or fall in love with her. Right. You're just like, oh, my God. Like, OK, you can blow up those guys and then she's like you're paid too much yeah um also watching her is very cathartic oh yeah absolutely also penguin turns on cat woman the second she's like yeah i don't want to have sex with you or

marry you and he says and i quote you lousy minx. I ought to have you spayed. You sent out all the signals and I don't think I like you anymore. And then he tries to kill her. Has her airlifted out of the scene. I mean, it's an incredible, incredible way to get someone out of your life. But also like he has no little to no social interaction with people. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not trying to write off the behavior.

Like you should not behave that way towards anybody right anyway but that no i agree i think that that's like part of why this character is like kind of endured in spite of like all this stuff is like yeah i don't know i feel like i complain about modern movie villains a lot and like the movie doesn't go out of its way to like redeem the penguin like he's still a villain but you also know enough about him that you do feel a little bit bad or or in karen's case are full on crying when he does die because it's like well no like he know, grew up extremely disadvantaged. He was raised by penguins. He's not interacting with people. You know, he's dying a very horny virgin.

Like there's a lot of things that he lost. The mayoral campaign. His dad was Pee Wee Herman. Like he has a lot of baggage. Oh, wait, his dad is played by Paul Rubens. Yeah. I did not. And Karen wasn't lying.

Doug Jones is in this movie he plays a clown oh my gosh yeah he's the tall he's the quote-unquote thin clown oh which hey i mean describe doug jones in a better way it's true like it's right there yeah oh my goodness but like i but but but by the time penguin dies i i just like I feel like it's kind of a weird lost art in big movies to have, you know, poetic villain that. Yeah, it's like there there's so clearly a path you can see where he his life would have been fine or like he would have been redeemed in some way. And that's what makes that storyline powerful that he is not on it or did not manage to get on it right and then like the first person to like accept him into society it happened to be like kind of the most evil guy um yeah like nobody around him has his best interest at heart yeah he was only doing it because he was being blackmailed and he that is

true also was like oh i can use him as a political pawn so i can build my power plant yeah right like if if i don't know I mean it's like Penguin by the end you're like yeah he's the villain you know he's not going to make it out of the movie but also we're frowning and it's sad. And he's supposed to be 33 years old. Oh yes. The last thing I want to say

about the Penguin. I feel like I love I think almost across the board really like the like political like corrupt politics commentary in this movie yeah and like those areas of the penguin i kind of am like kind of above criticism for me where it's like commenting on how like people are so influenced by media narratives that make them feel like good people where it's like these are the same people that have rejected and been afraid of penguin his whole life but then there's this false media narrative constructed by the penguin to be like i'm good now you should feel so bad to

have been so horrible to me in the past and they're like yeah we love the penguin now we're gonna vote for him and then like he's like oh whatever fuck you um that's absolutely true yeah i i was not i keep interrupting you but i i was thinking about that too like in the scene where he goes to his parents gravesite and it's like a whole like media circus out there like there are a lot of journalists there's a huge crowd that all are just wanting to gawk at this yeah and it's like he's uh so there's so much about this movie that you're like oh it's like rejecting all these things where it's like he he's crafting his own redemption arc while being completely unchanged and like people buy it because and people always buy shit like that they want to yeah are we to understand that penguin killed his own parents like he knew who

they were and he at some point went and killed them. And that's why they're dead. Or did I just kind of fill in some blanks? I thought they just died. Yeah, I didn't think that he had killed them. Okay. Well, that's my headcanon that he did already know who they were and he went and killed them. He killed Pee-wee.

I mean, that's going to dock him a few points in my book. You really can't be killing Pee-wee I mean that's gonna dock him a few points in my book you really can't be killing Pee-wee Herman but um also like the fact that they brought Pee-wee Herman back for the Gotham TV show specifically like because they were like oh we gotta get him in it's a great cameo anyway he's canon he is he's Batman canon now he is oh it makes me so happy also Jan Hooks is in this movie I love Jan Hooks okay so oh yeah yeah but and that's like just like that they're like running him on this like law and order campaign like just all this stuff where it's like oh yeah i love that the people of gotham are uh also always kind of like

not like complicit in the downfall of their city but like they kind of fall for everything and you're like well guys i mean you really should have been reading between the lines on that whole penguin redemption narrative uh but you know i guess you're gonna get attacked by a clown again yeah just desserts but like the like oh our city's so full of crime narrative also like something that we see a lot in our contemporary society and is not always true. Wait, yeah. Can we talk about, before we get to, because Catwoman I know is like going to consume so much of the discussion and rightfully so. But I was reading about like the creative production of this movie and a lot of the back and forth that happened between Tim Burton

and Daniel Waters. And something that I liked, because Max Schreck, I wouldn't have known this because I don't know about comic books, but is an original character added to this movie. It was not part of Batman canon. And they added him in specifically. Named after the actor, Max Schreck,

who played Nosferatu. Fitting. Yeah. I liked that, you know, they wanted to have like, you're kind of like political villain to, to counter to the penguin, which is like more kind of a classic comic booky villain.

And they said that they wanted to do that specifically so that they like indicate they're like, Oh, the greatest evil is often just like an elected public official or like a business person. And it's true. And it's true. And it's true. I just like, it ages very well in that regard.

I really, I really liked it. And I mean, I don't like the character of Max Schreck is so despicable, but like, it just like, it fits in Gotham. I would prefer that to like another cartoony kind of villain. And Christopher Walken plays the hell out of him. Oh, yeah. Oh, he looks so goofy. He looks great. another cartoony kind of villain and christopher walken plays the hell out of him oh yeah oh he looks so goofy he looks great yeah like it's amazing he's hot he's oh my god christopher walken's hot and then every time everyone in this movie is hot and then we're always like

what happened on the boat christopher walken what happened yeah i cannot forget that that he probably does know how natalie wood. I can never forget that. TikTok, you know, you got to let us know you're getting up there. He has to drop that on the Dune 2 press tour. He's like, he's getting too... There's been too many true crime podcasts about Natalie Wood. I just want to say this now. This is the best Christopher Rockin' I can do.

I love it. It's perfect. It's perfect. All right. Shall we talk about Catwoman? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

That costume. Oh, my God. It's Hachi. So my notes are all over the place with her but i guess just like okay generally speaking or to to kick us off first of all well i love cat woman yeah incredible character amazing michelle pfeiffer as cat woman is iconic just like she's the best one she really is oh yeah so good what i like about the selena slash catwoman character is i mean she's contextualized much like penguin is where you get the sense that selena is constantly being undermined by men in her life and her mom her own mom her mother um she's constantly being disappointed by

men in her life she is inundated with pressure to please men and kind of adhere to rigid gender roles you know all of this shit that she's dealing with that like she's literally like putting a pink collar job the whole thing where she keeps saying like i'm an assistant and it's like a secretary like that whole distinction is so good and every yeah everyone keeps calling her secretary right and then like it worked when she tries to offer some input in a meeting she's shot down shrek doesn't want to hear what she has to say he says something like you know we haven't properly how she used to feel that way about Fiona, too. And she, I mean, she really set him straight.

She fixed him. Exactly. Okay, sorry. I thought love was only true in fairy tales, but. But true beauty lies within. So everything about Matt. Point is, Shrek undermines Selena. He's horrible to her. And then she goes goes home you see a bit of her interior life she has all of these messages on her answering machine from

people again either like disappointing her undermining her like laying on this pressure this kind of like societal patriarchal pressure and then when she goes back to the office and is murdered by her boss that's obviously like the catalyst that turns her into cat woman you know skimble shanks is like meow meow and she's like a cat woman he's like back from work back from the clown train i work on and then she criticizes skim gimbal shanks for not paying rent which if true is wild because he we are to understand that he has a job yes that's right he's one of the few cats that makes money so yeah he should be paying rent he's rich um he works on a train what is he gonna use all that cat money for he's a cat and he takes it so seriously that's the whole song is about how

seriously he takes his job and exactly how he does it yeah he's like i'm on time every day and the train just kind of can't run without me oh i saw it uh at the pantages a couple weeks ago incredible and he didn't tap in the stage adaptation. What the heck? I know. Mr. Mistoffelees tapped and well. Mr. Mistoffelees is a classic tapper. But he's like not a tapper in the movie, but he is a tapper on stage. I knew that, but I didn't know that there was no Skimbleshanks tapping.

I mean, it was a lovely dance, but I did walk away disappointed. It's a lot more of like this. It's a lot. Yes. Now, is Skimbleshanks taking up space? Of course. During the number. He's taking up space the way that Sebastian Maniscalco does during his specials.

He's back and forth, back and forth. But it just wasn't quite the tap number I was expecting. Yeah. I'm sorry. number I was expecting. Yeah. I'm sorry. Catwoman. Yes. Okay. Another little context-y fact.

And again, I don't want to get in the habit of having to get to Tim Burton too hard. He has a lot of baggage. Yeah. But I guess when they were developing the script, according to scholarly journal wikipedia burton's only instruction uh to daniel waters writing the script was that cat woman had to be more than a sexy vixen and like so he it was a definite point of like we need to understand how she gets from zero to cat woman it's not just sexy lady and suit do crime and be a girlfriend yeah which is why i think she really works in this movie like Like, she has more to do.

Like, I think that's kind of the fatal flaw of, like, the other, like, film Catwoman that we've seen where they don't have as much to do or there's kind of too much assumed that we would know about her already that she falls kind of flat. But this Selena's like, she rules. I understand her top to bottom.

Like, she's great. And she has, like, a real, like, struggle. Like, I'm trying to i i are honestly most of the robert pattinson batman movie i know i liked it but most of it's already left my brain but uh colin farrell left the strongest impression in that movie yeah i liked him and i love zoe kravitz but it's like her cat woman was so cool that it wasn't like oh i wonder if she's gonna get out of this it's like well she's was so cool that it wasn't like, oh, I wonder if she's going to get out of this. It's like, well, she's so cool. She's probably going to get out of it. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, I genuinely was like, I don't know what's going to happen to her.

She's very chaotic. Yeah. The stakes are so high for her. And you know that right away. And you also like, I guess I'm curious what you both thought about this. Because I, you know, I think're we're to believe that like Selena is like unraveling as the story goes on she's like losing her you know grip on reality but I thought that for the most part that was like well contextualized enough that it didn't super

bother me like when she goes nuclear on her house I was like yeah totally yeah there comes a day you just died and came back like of course yeah yeah i'm not gonna call that overly emotional behavior i think it makes sense yeah right because she's reacting to all of the stuff that she had been dealing with prior to that the most drastic being that she was murdered by her boss but But to me, I see her transformation as an extremely liberating and empowering moment for her. Because she comes in, she destroys all of the pink stuff, her dollhouse, her stuffed animals. She's spray painting things black to make her house goth. She pulls out the one black leather coat she has and she's like this is my outfit now so she's like rejecting femininity like

traditional femininity in this way but i don't think the movie's saying like feminine things bad yeah i don't think so either it's more just like she's i think fed up with the expectation to adhere to very rigid, hyper feminine gender roles. Yeah. And she's like, fuck this. Like, I'm going to break out of this prison, basically, of gender role constraints and unleash havoc on the world. What I don't quite get about her character is while I think she has a really cool internal conflict, like you mentioned, Jamie, as far as like she's struggling with this dual identity. She doesn't really know who she has become. This transformation is like really messing with her mentally and emotionally.

Her external conflict doesn't really make any sense to me. She wants to take down Batman for why? I assume that she wanted to take down Max Shrek and knew that and felt that Batman would be an obstacle for that. Because obviously what she was trying to do is assassinate a businessman, basically. And Batman is not going to allow that to happen on his watch no matter what. That makes more sense. That's how, because i was like a little unclear

on that at first but then i was like oh selena is one thing i actually really like about her is she goes full girl boss babe she like she is like very strategic in the way she does stuff where it's like if she has to manipulate like emotionally manipulate batman in one scene to like neutralize him temporarily and then go over to the penguin you know like get what she needs from him and it's like all very strategic and like Batman is such a like I was gonna say loser he's not a loser but like he's so like lawful good that you know and his whole thing is he doesn't kill people and she although he straight up does some kills i know which i think batman heads don't like i don't care i don't know it works in the movie i'm not that mad about it i

like that daniel waters like he has so many quotes uh about being like saying like i don't care about pleasing fans comic book fans mean nothing to me like good for him they should have let me kill selena but it makes more sense if batman kills people and you're just like man damn daniel to borrow a phrase um he just he just doesn't give a rat's ass uh when it comes to that which i do appreciate i think that more honestly more uh screenwriters for like big franchises um they should hire more people who don't give a shit because that's the only way you'll get new stuff Tony Gilroy this is why Andor is good because he hates Star Wars

really? I saw this Andor is so good it's like shockingly good I gotta watch it still there's an entire arc about the prison complex like it's wild it's really really good maybe less fans should be hired

and this is how i'm gonna get to write a big franchise movie i'm like i don't know you should hire me i don't know anything um but like batman is so like they're you know all the obvious observations about batman have been made also on this show uh where it's like he's a billionaire and but like yeah but i think for this that doesn't even really come into it that much. Those are the kind of obvious criticisms of him. But like that scene at the end where they're like, he's coming in lawful good. And he's like, we just need to like arrest him to the police and it'll be fine.

And Selena's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like this guy lives above the law and so do we. And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, this guy lives above the law and so do we. And he's like, no, cops are amazing. I love Gotham PD. And like, Commissioner Gordon is my best friend. He's my only friend. My only friend is a cop. Sorry.

I was like, God, so pathetic. But like, whatever. But I just loved how like, I don don't know like in a way that totally fits like it cartoonishly explicit that conversation is and that he doesn't win her over like that was I was sort of like nervous that whole scene of like oh god is he gonna win her over is she gonna be like you're right let's just bring him downtown and like get him locked up or another fear this was like a spider-man 2 based fear where i was like is is batman gonna get the killing blow on max shrek or something because i always forget batman's not supposed to kill people so i was like oh is he gonna get to do it

that would suck because it's so clearly selena's kid she should get to do it yeah but none of that happens batman is literally like knocked out for for selena to get her killing blow in honestly his part in the final scenes is so funny because he gets knocked out and then you see him sort of like in the distance sort of standing up and like looking around to see what's going on as these six penguins uh escort the body of the penguin into the water like can you imagine being bruce wayne in that moment being like huh like what's going on oh the penguins are like having a funeral service and then batman goes over i guess i'll save myself and he like oh i gotta go and then batman goes over to like the rubble and like clear some of it away and he sees max shrek just as like a yeah like a burnt to a crisp dead dude great cat woman's nowhere to

be seen. It's really good. It's awesome. But I liked, I totally agree with what you guys are saying about Catwoman and her, I guess, spectrum of femininity. Because I think that's one of the fun things about this movie. And I think something that will be relatable to anyone who has ever sort of questioned how to present gender in any way. Yeah. Where the scene where she saves that woman from being raped

on the street she's like oh you make it so easy always waiting for someone to come save you i think that's like a sort of thing that we all wrestle with where it's like even if you want to present in a very traditionally feminine matter or that's what you like more and what you want to do like the stereotypes that have been laden onto these particular aesthetics are so loaded. And what people tell you about like when, for instance, like someone is sexually assaulted,

like so much of the language is about like, oh, well, what were you doing in that situation? What were you wearing? Yeah. Yeah. Where,

I don't know. It's, it's interesting to watch her struggle with that. Like they obviously don't go all the way into, like, just talking about gender politics in this movie. But it's a very interesting thing to touch on in general because, like, the iconography of Catwoman in this movie where she turns into this, like, all leather, like, girl. Like, dominatrix style. Yeah. Like, has such an impact on how we now perceive like quote-unquote strong female

characters because they're like oh like they have to be sexy but also shoot a gun and it's like no like that's not what constitutes like strength for any character or like you don't have to present in one way or the other to be considered strong but anyway right Because her sexualization is something I was grappling with because she when she transforms into Catwoman, she becomes like, I would say, one of the hottest movie characters of all time. Oh, absolutely. A sexual awakening for I think most people who feel sexual feelings. One of the IMDb trivia things for this is that people kept stealing like the one sheet of her like and like to the point that they had to like start putting like cops out to watch like buses and like signage posts and shit to make sure they would stop stealing them wow our tax

dollars at work people guarding sexual images of michelle pfeiffer like a friend of the show Sammy Junio had this to say Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman is a gay awakening for a lot of queer folks and gay awakening is also what I announce into my empty apartment when I get out of bed for the day so sammy making a goof shout out sammy but i did i mean my my feeling on it was like i understand why like it almost feels like the sort of thing where it for me it really works in the context of this movie and i understand how like people could take the most base interpretation of it and lift it for other movies in a way that is like net negative but i don't think that that's michelle pfeiffer catwoman's fault i feel like no no no right it's a very like mr hollywood takeaway to be like okay so you know she people really liked this character

and it's probably because she was wearing a skin tight suit and had a gun and it's like well that was a part of it but also I like but also the other stuff it's not nothing it was definitely a a good chunk but also it's like the character was well written she was really strongly motivated and like yeah I I sort of viewed like her being sexualized I don't think it's ever like endorsed by the movie explicitly like especially when it's um Shrek or the penguin and and I I don't know I felt like her sexualization at least with like the outfit and her behavior was more like she's like all of a sudden confident and like sexually confident and like into herself in a way that more about her yeah and I liked that like the visual representation of that and

obviously it's a very like you know western beauty standards uh visual interpretation of that but i thought it worked that it's like oh this is like a woman who has felt so pushed down by all these different forces yeah and now she's finally like oh i'm fucking hot and cool and i can like do whatever i want and that's cool that's fun to watch that is and that's like yeah that's what i was grappling with where like on one hand you could easily argue that her sexualization is very much on her own terms this is how she chooses to present this is a manifestation of her newfound confidence but on the other hand you could argue that it was the male screenwriters and directors who chose to present a female character in this way right but

but because like her being sexualized in this story isn't predatory in terms of like the way the camera views her yeah it's not like male gazey lingering cinematography it's more just like and this is how the character is now presenting it pretty objectively in my opinion so yeah yeah i was like pretty fine with it yeah i totally agree with that i was also objectively into it because it's like oh yeah michelle pfeiffer in a cat suit. Also, her performance. There was a really good. It was from, I think, five or so years ago for the 25th anniversary of this movie. It was a really nice piece by a writer we've cited many times in this show. Angelica Jade Bastian in Vulture wrote this nice ode to Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman.

And just like how her. We'll link it in the description of this episode she she directs you to several ways that Michelle Pfeiffer was talked about in the press where I think that also and this gets me into like Lolita podcast brain kind of but like how I think a lot of like the takeaway of how Catwoman was presented was shaped by how the media talked about it versus what actually happens in the movie. Yeah. Because all you know, Jennifer's body problem. Yeah, right. Where, you know, in context, she's taking control of her own sexuality and presenting the way she wants to present. But the way that like she was profiled at the time, the way she was

talked about in the media was very very it like had nothing to do with Michelle Pfeiffer's performance which I think is like really awesome her performance is great yeah and I mean that's just very indicative of the way women tend to be perceived because people tend to value women for very specific things like their physical appearance and not their skills or artistic talents or brains. Yeah. What do we think about the Bat-Cat Relish? I love it.

I don't hate it. It feels a little like half-baked kind of, but it seemed to me that Bruce likes Selena after like he meets her in Shrek's office. He has such a crush on her. Because I think he thinks she's fierce and powerful and cool and that's what he is. Like he's

drawn to her confidence. Yeah. Yeah. He literally wants her to like step on him. Like I. Yep. It does kind of like that's the kind of he's like this like shy weirdo that's the kind of he's like yeah this like shy weirdo that's like yeah i came to this super freak party hoping you'd be here like she wants him to step on him yeah and she would yeah but she's busy yeah she's booked and busy she's busy killing max shrek she's literally like there's a bedroom in the other room if you want to like get this done yeah wild i don't i love how horny she is and he's like

i forgot superhero movies could be so horny it's so they're so like so funny the scene where they like first fight and she's like you can't hit me i'm a woman he's like okay you're right i'm so sorry and then he she kicks him in the face i wrote all of this down because i love this so good it's great it's the first fight between them they're fighting she's holding her own but he knocks her down and then she says how could you i'm a woman and then he's like oh i'm sorry and then he like goes to help her up but it was a trick she kicks him she gets the upper hand and knocks him over a ledge yep so he's like dangling there holding on by her whip and then

she was like as i was saying i'm a woman and can't be taken for granted and that's when she says life's a bitch now so am i and we're like she's got a lot of great lines it's really fun really really fun i i really do like how like cartoony the script is even at the beginning where it's all of her like single lady lines are so weird but funny where she's like it just it's literally sounds like a comic strip where you like walk in you're like honey I'm home oh wait I don't have a husband I'm like that's a Kathy strip and then like the single cam like laugh track yeah yeah like it's it's so especially because they like go so hard against it in the in the rest of the movie that it like totally works oh i loved that she uses the clown taser

at the end she kept the clown's taser oh plant and payoff baby um the only thing that kind of like pinged for me and we just talked about something similar on the don't tell mom the babysitter's dead episode where a female character's weight gets just kind of mentioned there's a moment where selena is like she and bruce are talking and they're kind of commenting on the news coverage like the media coverage of Batman and Catwoman and Selina says something like oh you know there's like this rumor going around that Catwoman is thought to weigh 140 pounds as if she thinks that's too much and she doesn't weigh that much and she resents that people think she's she weighs more than she actually is the 1992 really jumped out in that moment because you're yeah i honestly was like confused by that line at first because i was like what is what even being said because that's just

like it's whatever i mean that i do we've talked about that before too is like that that's like the kind of shit that like gives young people eating disorders oh absolutely as someone who famously uh had my ed my ed cranked up to an 11 by an offhand line in a family guy episode uh you really can't be it's like the numbers specifically that really yeah bugs me where it's like totally yeah i don't know yeah that that was like a very bizarre one it's just a lazy choice to make like the one female character in the movie mention her weight or be concerned about her weight and as these movies always do act in such a way that women being concerned about their image and their weight just happens in a void has nothing to do with the societal pressure

that we place on women uh for how they look so yeah that line uh that line bummed me out there is a really funny um i sent it to you caitlin there's a really uh dana schwartz like three years ago yeah uh live tweeted this entire movie and also called out that line of like what are they saying here like truly what oh no yeah and then if you think about it for a second you're like oh i guess in 1992 brain where it was like that messaging was kind of like approaching an all-time high yeah because we're in like the what is that kate moss quote whatever that era yeah yeah food doesn't taste as good as skinny feels or whatever the fuck yeah yeah remember we were you know the the words that uh shaped and

haunted us um yeah so yeah I also clocked that fortunately it's one line and doesn't really come up again yeah yeah oh the last i think one of the last things i have is um the scene where she goes on the date with bruce she makes the first move and it's intense okay it is maybe she it is possibly a surprise kiss because she lunges at him she does lunge at him however he has just said that he wants to he wants to kiss her so i felt like maybe i'm giving cat woman a pass on that one she came in hot yeah yeah yeah but i'm gonna give her a pass she came in hot the vibes but he was like i cannot wait to kiss you will you let me and she's like i see that and i raise you i'm gonna kiss you by pouncing on you like a cat she's like I might actually eat you

um but yeah I don't know I think that like their relationship like it doesn't I I just it's like so nice to see a horny super horny like horny woman visibility I love it incredibly Incredibly horny. It's good. Yeah. I do like, because we talk about the trope of a woman using a frying pan as a weapon. She uses a frying pan, but it's to smash up her own apartment. I liked it. Yeah. Followed by the line where she says, I don't know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel so much yummier. Iconic.

Iconic. So good. I'm going to start saying that to flea and he's gonna love every damn second of it or i'm disowning him absolutely oh the stakes are high yeah the stakes are high for mr flea i will say every time i watch this movie so right after she transforms into catwoman and then she's on the prowl as you might say on the streets of Gotham the first thing she does as Catwoman is to save a woman from being sexually assaulted by oops one of the few people of color in the movie yeah which unfortunately is very in line with like Tim Burton aesthetics because his movies are so aggressively white that he's

even defended it um which he's like why would i put non-white people in my movie and we're like tim yeah what did he say wait what this was i'd have to look up the exact quote we've discussed it on the show before i think that this was around because he it was like to the point where he had to like walk this back this was in 2016 did it have something to do with the miss peregrine's peculiar children house peregrine's home for peculiar children yeah okay he said this to writer rachel simon in 2016 and it was on the miss peregrine's um press tour he said quote nowadays people are talking about it more, he says, regarding on-screen diversity. But, quote,

things either call for things or they don't. I remember back when I was a child watching the Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, okay, let's have an Asian child and a black child. I used to get more offended by that than just, I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right?

And I said said that's great i didn't go like okay there should be more white people in these movies unquote it is just like the most white boomer privileged guy shit this is the same as like every time anyone complains about their people of color cast in anything like star wars or something where they're like oh and the the logic of like oh they can have their own movies and it's like no like this is not you can't talk like this you can't don't stop stop talking like shut your mouth tim burton so that's like especially uh remembering him making those comments like seeing that you're just like this is like a very intentional choice this is intentional absolutely so cat woman is saving another woman from being

sexually assaulted and then the woman's like oh my gosh thank you but then cat woman yeah kind of victim blames the woman and is like well you make it so easy you're always just waiting around for some batman to save you and so it's always at this point in the movie when you see her save when you see catwoman save this other person and i'm always like oh she's about to go on this like vigilante almost like the movie teeth where she's like i'm just gonna good shout out for like protect women and save women from these predatory men and i always think that that's the direction the cat woman character is going to go in but she quickly abandons any sort of like allyship to other women and then just like goes after shrek which i don't know i mean it's just i guess it's just like me having certain wants and

wishes for the cat woman character yeah... I certainly would have liked for that to be the direction that she went in. But, like, it's sort of the same point as, like, when I mentioned the scene earlier where it's, like, you can understand why that is her reaction to saving that woman. Like, it's not right, obviously. Right.

But the way that she... Like, the social conditioning around her, basically, is telling her this and is also why she rejects that kind of more feminine aesthetic as Catwoman. Yeah. I honestly wasn't like super bugged by that. Like I think it makes a point. Yeah. Yeah.

I see what you mean. Yeah. I think the only thing that I felt like in this movie was like characterizing the was it like Ice Princess or like characterizing her as such a bimbo very ditzy as a as a proud bimbo and a bimbo apologist I just feel like yeah making her just kind of a classic bimbo yeah it's a little cruel yeah I mean it's such a small part of the movie but unless she gets murdered yeah it's always like a while like a movie where it's like oh we can only have one woman we're really thinking about in the movie like we can't characterize more than one that would be whatever i feel like the only other three years old guys i feel like

the only other woman besides cat woman and the ice princess who has any significant screen time and it's not as though this woman has a lot but there's a minion of penguins she has a little dog love her she seems to be one of penguins like right hand minions yeah she's high up she's high up she's high up in the ranks what's going on with her but she doesn't speak until the very end and it's her who's like giving the countdown is like of like oh the penguins are gonna reach their destination yeah t minus 15 seconds she's really just there for fun yeah i loved her she's there for love of the game she is like droning through narrating the height of the action of the movie she's like the penguins are going in a different direction uh looks like there's a bat mobile coming towards us i just uh that that's the kind of like tim burton character

i really like of just like woman who is bored by something very exciting that's always so fun i uh yeah i liked her the dog is so cute yeah it's like a little busted it's very cute it's a good dog it's a good boy um feminist icon the duck boat love the duck boat penguin oh my god the duck boat we haven't even talked about the duck boat it's so good it's so it's so big i love like it's perfect when a movie is just like and we just talked about the many ways in which Tim Burton is a relic at this point but I do love to watch a director absolutely abuse a big budget it's so fun like it's so like the it's canon that he was just like, no performance artists. Let's go bigger.

Let's go full circus at the zoo for no reason. We need animatronic penguins. We need people penguins and we need penguin penguins. There's no way around it. The animal rights stuff in this movie. We can't go there because probably not good. Michelle Pfeiffer put a real bird in her mouth. Wow.

So we wish that bird the best and hope it went on to thrive um but it just like this would be so the duck boat the duck boat is wonderful i love it i'm obsessed with the duck boat the train yeah why is there a train i i do want to shout out the penguins they're so cute they are so cute they're very good they frown when the penguin dies so cute it's so sad they're sad for their friend it's true they're literally it's it's literally like if gru died what would happen well it's exactly like if gru died They would be beside themselves. They would not.

Is that canon that they are like especially devoted to Gru? Because they've had like other masters, right? Yeah. Don't get me started. Yeah. They've had a lot of, they've worked for a lot of people, but Gru is special to them. But they love Gru. Okay.

Because Gru takes all their boxes where it's like usually their bosses are really evil and also abusive towards them but grew is evil and nice to them so they love grew he takes care of them okay oh wow all right they kind of grew up together they grew up together they grew they grew up and they glue up together there was i i was sitting okay this is my last tangent of the episode i promise i was taking a mega bus from rhode island to new york last weekend because yeah i'm kind of a fucking celeb uh but hell yeah i was sitting next to this college student who was talking on the phone with one of his boys for the duration of the bus it was it was really long and obnoxious but it was just like he was such a bro with like

three brain cells that he was really like getting some good quips and every once and again like he was just he was objectifying his classmates the whole call oh boy but at one point he was like yeah you know christina she kind of really uh glue how do i she glue up over the summer did i say that right she glue up and then you could hear the guy on the other line be like yeah no i get it and then he just like i was like oh god that's incredible she glue up he couldn't think of the word glowed amazing he was literally coming from brown university it was oh brother This is how we get Max Trex out there. Blew up over the summer. It was nasty.

Yeah. All right. Well, Batman Returns. Does anyone have anything else to say about Batman Returns? There was supposed to be a sequel where Catwoman, Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman, had her own story. It was supposed to also be done with Daniel Waters and Tim Burton. where Catwoman, Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman had her own story. It was supposed to also be done with Daniel Waters and Tim Burton. And it follows her to a more Las Vegas-y location.

It sounds like it would have been great, but it never happened. Damn it. Here's my last thing to say. Well, I guess I have two last things. One of them is I do think it's funny that people complain about Batman not being in this movie enough because ultimately it is a cat woman movie like batman is fairly incidental to what goes on in the film this is a movie about

cat woman and the penguin like it's their movie they are the two far more strongly motivated characters and batman's just like well i'm batman so i have to stop these people but yeah exactly like he is called to the scene like he did not create the scene yeah i kind of like that this movie is like comfortable with batman being a little bit boring like yeah yeah because i don't even think batman is like obviously he's like not a boring character but i like that this movie is sort of like, he's not the most interesting character in the movie. Yeah. And we're comfortable with that.

He returns. But, you know, kind of to a more incidental degree than you would imagine. Right? Yeah. I totally agree with that. Yeah. I love it. My second point is that Danny DeVito is hot.

We should recognize that more, I think, as a society. Absolutely. His energy. Oh, my God.ito is hot. We should recognize that more, I think, as a society. Absolutely. His energy. Oh, my God. He's hot. He's a socialist. His politics are kind of immaculate. What is hotter than that?

Yeah. And he's single, I think. Not divorced, but I guess, I don't know. I know that he and Brett Perlin are separated, but they are not divorced. I don't find that disqualifying. Yeah, that's fair. If he comes up on Bumble, I will not hesitate. Oh, no, no question.

Yeah. I'll keep an eye out for him on Raya. Yeah, I'm on Raya. Wow. Okay. Have I had any luck there? Not one iota I've still not used a dating app so I was just throwing bumble out there because I know it exists it exists yeah I was on one of them I went on dating apps for like a month and then

I was like I don't think I enjoy this and so I stopped they're not great yeah anyway wow we sound like selena kyle at the beginning of the movie of her like it's a good note to wrap up on because uh this movie's so horny so now exactly does the movie pass the bechdel test i agree with you jamie i would argue when selena talks to her female cat whose name we know because it's miss kitty that passes because here's the conversation selena comes home cat goes meow selena says miss kitty back from more sexual escapades you refuse to share so they've talked before it's establishing a relationship they have a close bond although miss kitty is withholding. Miss Kitty says, meow, meow.

Selena says, drink your dinner. Kat says, meow. Selena says, what? How can anyone be so pathetic? Yes, to you, I seem pathetic. But I'm a working girl. I got to pay the rent. Yeah, Selena.

I mean. And that passes the Bechdel test. That passes. I don't know what to tell you it passes flying colors i feel comfortable with that i feel ecstatic about that is there much else outside of that no there is a brief interaction between cat woman and the ice princess but they don't actually speak to each other on screen yeah at least yeah not really it would have been fun if she could have had a little tete-a-tete with uh penguin's board associate oh yeah sure but i don't even know if we if that character get the name i just really liked her i don't think so uh wikipedia

just lists her as the poodle lady okay love that yeah that's great i support that ice princess is nice she seemed really nice i would have loved to get lunch with her sweetie pie yeah yeah she was great absolutely yeah r.i.p truly oh my gosh r.i.p but who among us has not wanted to vault into the giant tree at rockefeller center it's true it's true yeah and you know like if i've got to go at the hands of danny devito you know it's gonna be memorable for sure exactly exactly people will talk about it after the fact okay so how about our nipple scale though which is a scale of zero to five nipples in which we rate the movie based on looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens i'm gonna go like three and a half

i might be bringing some of my bias in to that score because i do love this movie so much as we've discussed there are there's some things about the coding of the Penguin character, its ableism and anti-Semitism that is so present in the coding of so many villains. This movie is kind of no exception. Whether it's intended or not, it's worth acknowledging. Yeah, exactly. A few other little missteps here and there but so the screenwriter uh daniel waters was brought in after another writer who i think wrote the screenplay for the

first batman movie sam ham sam ham his name is sam ham that's gonna bring some baggage with it if you grow up with that name he was exactly he was originally involved in the development of the sequel of Batman Returns and had written I don't know if he wrote a full draft or if he was just sort of like outlining the story but basically he was replaced by Daniel Waters or he just like his involvement didn't happen the whole way through the development process but he had written a version of Catwoman that Daniel Waters changed because Sam Hamm's version of Catwoman was just like a quote fetishy sexual fantasy femme fatale right Daniel Waters changed her to a and again this is pulling from wikipedia here scholarly journal um her to a, and again, this is pulling from Wikipedia here,

scholarly journal, changed to a working class disenchanted secretary, writing her as an allegory of contemporary feminism. Right. And I feel like the movie kind of nails it. It works. And we're speaking of white feminism from the early nineties. Yes.

Yes. But Spice Girls feminism. Yeah. But it works. But Spice Girls feminism. Yeah. But it works. But it works, at least for this movie. Certainly doing more than a lot of superhero movies are doing now. Still to this day. If there's a woman in it, it's feminist.

Right, right. And they're like, yeah, sure. It's like, let's just like have her say some sort of t-shirt quips at some point. And then Thor is Natalie Portman now until she isn't. And that's awesome. But not really. Yeah. Don't worry.

Not really. I didn't see that. We would never let a woman be Thor. No, no, no. So I just appreciate that the movie takes a lot of time to characterize the Selina Kyle slash Catwoman character. It gives her an internal life. We see her at work. We see her at home.

We understand all of the context for why she becomes Catwoman and just all of the societal pressures that she's fighting against. Could she have been more of an ally to other women? Yes. But I think, you know, look, this is also how long does this movie take over? This takes place over the course of like a week. Three days. Yeah. I think, you know, she would have gotten there.

You know, she just needed a little more time. Yeah. She just needed more time. That's what she's doing now. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She's still Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman is still canonically out there.

Right. Yes. Absolutely. So I'm sure she does all sorts of incredible work the character she plays in ant-man is actually catwoman everything about that interesting right she's an ant-man what a crossover right i only saw the second one so i was confused well she's not in the first one oh okay then i was just confused by them anyway so all of the characterization she gets she's given an internal conflict which a lot of female characters are simply not given in movies and she she's just like a more

interesting and fun character than batman in this movie yeah i think she and penguin are kind of tied for like yeah most like well characterized compelling characters for sure yes so uh with all of that in mind i'm going to give the movie a 3.5 nipple rating i'll give one to michelle pfeiffer i'll give one to miss kitty i'll give one to feminist icon the duck boat and i'll give my half nipple to the line life's a bitch now so am i yeah yeah i'll go i'll go uh three and a half as well this movie fucking rules yeah it's the best outside of a bechtelcast lens if i was just watching this movie i'd be like yeah greatest thing i've ever seen cool great uh but yeah i

mean i think that like we've we've kind of singled out the stuff where it's you know maybe a little dated in some areas and there's certainly tropes that we've discussed in the past that are present here um and you know deserve acknowledgement and calling out. But in terms of a superhero movie in 92, this movie's doing a hell of a lot of cool stuff. I love Michelle Pfeiffer. I love her Catwoman. Undisputed

top tier Catwoman. No one's doing it like she was doing it. So I'm going to give it three and a half nipples. I'm going to give two to Michelle and the remainder to miss kitty yeah let's do that no yes all right i'll give it a neat four i'd like from not this specific angle i would just give it a straight five out of five i think it's great i think it's a perfect movie um i mean we've talked about its flaws but it is a perfect movie uh four uh if i

had to distribute them one for pre-catwoman michelle pfeiffer one for post-catwoman michelle pfeiffer one for the duck boat and one for a dainty debido perfect perfect of course also it's time for cat woman facts with caitlin finally cat woman as far as i know has two nipples and that's cat woman facts with caitlin nice you're welcome thank you good for her good for her karen first of all thank you so much for joining us oh my gosh oh thank you for having me this was delightful our pleasure absolutely iconic movie to discuss we've had such a nice time please come back anytime oh anytime literally just ask me anytime oh please i mean truly like tomorrow would be great yeah what are you doing let's let's do bat nipples next time i have not seen bat nipples so

that would be fascinating for me it's like it's a pretty wild ride it's not this movie it's not i wouldn't compare it to this movie but it's got a lot going for it oh yeah that's clooney batman is that right yes yes i think so okay because then there's it's val batman after that right yeah yeah i always mess up the order oh i forgot there's a val batman yeah too many batmans anyways karen Karen where can we find you online and what would you like to plug you can find me on Twitter at Karen why Han as long as the platform is

still active and you can find me on Instagram at the Karen Han and I would love to plug my book as of recording it is coming out in a little less than a week it is

called Bong Joon-ho distant cinema it is coming out from Abrams slash little white lies it's just all about Bong Joon-ho's work it is coming out from Abrams slash little white lies it's just all about Bong Joon-ho's work please buy my book thank you please I I can't fucking wait truly congratulations thank you so much it's wild because like some of the pre-orders have started arriving already so which is terrifying to see that it is out in the world like some people have it it's loose the juice is loose yeah one of my favorite

right up there with life's a bitch and so uh thank you so much for coming on and truly yeah come back soon come back anytime thank you so much for having me and truly it would be an honor and a joy to come back on the show i can't wait we'll email you tomorrow amazing you can also follow us on twitter as long as that platform exists and yeah or instagram at bugs of cast you can uh follow our patreon aka matreon five bucks a month gets you two bonus episodes. It's usually just me and Caitlin kind of choosing movies around a theme.

An amazing theme. So, of course, it's December. We're doing our holiday roundup. So we're doing Lindsay Lohan, Netflix movie, you know. We're bringing the hits. We also just did Mob March, which we observed in November.

Oh, nice. We had to put our thoughts on, just because I feel like people have been harassing us about The Godfather for so long. And by that, I mean people who have never listened to our show and don't think what we have to say should be taken seriously. So we put that behind a paywall. I think we did a pretty good job. We both liked the movie, so fuck you. Young Robert De Niro? My God. Hot. Young Al Pacino? all uh i think we did a pretty good job we both liked the movie so fuck you uh young robert de niro my god hot young al pacino oh my god also hot get inside me all right let's uh that's all at patreon.com slash back to cast for five dollars a month yeah uh and then you've also got our

merch hey you're not sure what to get your loved ones for the holidays? Consider going to TeePublic. First get them a copy of Karen's book. Yes. And then go. Oh, well, thank you. And then go to teepublic.com slash the Bechtelcast for some merchandise. I'm actually someone who has received Bechtelcast merch for a holiday, and it was a great gift,

so I would recommend it. No way. Yeah. And we didn't even plan that. No it. And we didn't even plan that. No. We didn't even plan that. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Anyway, life's a bitch and so are we.

Bye. Bye. Maltese investigative journalist, who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles,

two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer this season on the new podcast, Rip Current.

Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. Hey, everyone. Jake Storielli here from John Boy Media. I want to tell you about my podcast, Wake and Jake. I've been a sports nut my whole life, and there's nothing I love more than talking about it.

If you're a sports fan, Wake and Jake is the place for you. Covering all the hot topics from the sports world. A lot of baseball, a lot of postseason coverage, mock drafts, awards, guest interviews, all of it. New episodes every Monday and Wednesday. Come watch along on the Wake and Jake YouTube channel or listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.