The Big Picture - Can ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Salvage Marvel’s No Good, Very Bad Year?

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Joanna Robinson joins Sean to talk about all things Marvel, from its rocky run of recent movies to changes in leadership to streaming series delays, before digging into the most anticipated entry in years, James Gunn’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.’ Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Joanna Robinson Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Guardians. We need to talk about Marvel. For many years, the most reliable brand in entertainment that has really been struggling for a variety of reasons,

perhaps the most anticipated Marvel movie in some years, James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is out now. To discuss the year in Marvel and Guardians, Joanna Robinson. Jo, you are a mega expert in this field. In fact, tell us about the book that you have written about Marvel. It's so funny because usually I sort of brush off expert, but I do feel like after spending over four years writing a book about something, I get to claim it. Yeah, I wrote a book called MCU colon, The Reign of Marvel Studios. It's not

a Marvel thing if you don't have a colon in the title. Yeah, The Reign of Marvel Studios is coming out in November. And we spent over four years, my co-authors, Gavin Edwards and Dave Gonzalez and I spent over four years interviewing over a hundred of people connected to this universe, doing scads of research to try to paint the picture of how Marvel took over Hollywood. And I agree with you that we are in what I like to call a wobble right now. I would not count Marvel out completely because they have rebounded time and time again. So I'm not saying they're out, but it's definitely feels like the end cap of an era. Absolutely. This year that we're in right now. And I think tracking that history of the founding of Marvel Studios,

the launch of Iron Man through the massive, you cannot argue that it wasn't a triumph film event that was Infinity War and Endgame. And then this post Endgame era and what's going on, all the factors that play into where Marvel has found itself now. It's really, it's like, it's for Marvel fans, sure, but it's also like a Hollywood industry story, which is fascinating to me. And you didn't ask me on your show to promo my book, but- Yes, I did. Of course I did. It's what we're talking about today, you know? It's the Hollywood movie business.

Let's get those pre-orders up, you know, just like those pre-release ticket sales that Marvel is so reliant upon and that we use to prognosticate about the successes or failures of this brand. You know, this is actually the 10th movie, Guardians, since Endgame was released, which seems like more than I would have guessed, honestly. And there have been some big hits in that time

and there have been some less big hits. The most recent film is one of the least big hits that they've ever had, not just in the last 10 films or even in the last five years. In the last 15 years, since this whole thing has been going, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania, earned $475 million or so in the international box office. That sounds like a lot of money to any common human. It sounds like not a lot of money to Bob Iger and Bob Chapek and Kevin Feige and the powers that be at this brand. Now, I am one of those people who has a very bad opinion that I didn't think that movie was that bad, but most people thought it was quite poor.

And the reaction to it was extremely negative and it felt like a kind of a floodgates moment where this thing that certainly i had been speculating would arrive finally arrived like for years i was like this is just like any other trend in hollywood where a certain kind of genre or story type is huge for a stretch and then the audience kind of cycles out or grows out. And so that film, the reaction to it, and its sort of lack of success felt like a turning point for me. So it's interesting that the movie

that comes immediately after that film is one that is like, not necessarily in its storytelling, but in its identity is like pure Marvel. It's something that soared because Marvel entrusted a very unique filmmaker with odd characters and made something that 50 years ago, you never would have guessed a Guardians of the Galaxy movie would work.

But that is the most emblematic of its power was the rise of Guardians. Take me back a little bit to the Quantumania moment a few months ago and sort of like, did you have a similar reaction? Like, oh, this could be a very dark time for this thing that has been so massive in the world of entertainment. it felt like it was chipping away for a while and i agree that i think if quantumania had been a huge hit special a hit we would say like oh okay you know they got it back and um but it wasn't as for the reasons that you outlined, critically, fandom-wise, box office-wise, etc. And then there's all these, what else is happening?

It's a damage to the brand more than anything, because if you take from post-Endgame to now, as you say, there have been some hits, there have been some misses. But I think in those first few films you see coming out of Endgame, there was just a tremendous faith in the brand that if Marvel Studios is slapped in the front of a movie, you were going to go see it and you were going to give it the benefit of the doubt. So I think some of those sinking scores we see recently on Rotten Tomatoes, etc., has less to do with like these films are demonstrably worse than the films that came out of after end game more. It has to do with people having not letting that Marvel studios shine sort of float something, maybe even a little higher than it deserves. If that makes sense. And I think that the proliferation of Disney plus content,

which we'll talk about in a second, but that is really hurt the brand as well, because again, there's a lot on Disney plus Marvel that I love. And then there's just a lot that is a miss. And sometimes that wide range of quality happens within a season of television where it'll start really, really high and then end with a big question mark sort of thing. So, yeah, it feels like a troubling time for Marvel. And what you say about Guardians is so true. This was a huge creative risk they took years ago. And if you talk to people who work at Marvel, as I have, like most people will identify not Iron Man, but Guardians as the most important Marvel movie,

because as you say, it was like proof of product that they could do something so weird and that the fans would hang with them and not only just hang with them, but it was such a massive hit for them. And so the fact that Guardians 3 was supposed to be the first movie out of Endgame, which would have made the post-Endgame era kick off in such a strong Marvel brand place, but because James Gunn was briefly fired, et cetera, et cetera, it comes out years later. And because of COVID and all these other things, it comes out years later.

And so the question that I have, the big question I have is if this movie is a hit, which I think it will be, because I think it has a lot of things that people are looking for in a Marvel movie. If this movie is a hit, does this feel like it's steadying the Marvel ship? Or does it feel like it's just furnishing James Gunn's reputation as he leaves Marvel to go run the competitor, DC?

I don't know what the narrative is going to be, but I can see a way in which there's no way for Marvel to win out of this. Either the film doesn't do well and it's another loss for Marvel, or the film does really well and they go, those idiots, they let James Gunn slip away and go run the competition. I don't, you know, it feels like a slight lose-lose for them. It's a fascinating old school Hollywood paradox of one figure jumping from one studio to another while actively promoting a project with their old studio. And we'll get into Guardians Volume 3 a little later in this conversation.

There's still a lot about Marvel that kind of needs to be contextualized and characterized, I think. I think that that oversaturation that you suggested on the streaming service over the last three or four years is pretty critical. It's easy to forget that effectively two years went by with no films after the second Spider-Man film,

which immediately followed Endgame and the massive success of Endgame. And so from summer of 2019 through the summer of 21, there were no Marvel movies. And then the first few that started to come out, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, those films had smaller box office in part because theaters were in a complicated state during the pandemic. And so it's just this fascinating collision of reasons why this whole enterprise has been kind

of deflated over a three or four year period. You know, you can't overlook the fact that people getting out of the habit of going to the movies. And then I think if you're, if we're being really candid, most of the movies since Endgame are, are deeply flawed. Um, there are a lot of things I like about a lot of them. There are some I like more than others for personal reasons. I'm maybe more fond of Multiverse of Madness than some people might be because I love the Sam Raimi touches. You know, reasonable people can agree or disagree that Eternals is one of the worst movies of the post-pandemic era. But I think it's really interesting that this is a movie that should have come four years ago and then didn't for the reasons that you just described where Gunn, you know,

became this object of controversy for old tweets many years ago. He comes back, but in the time when he comes back back it just feels like the marvel brand is very very different so we're now past the point where there have been i think about 10 shows have aired on disney plus and many more are meant to come but have since been delayed in fact there's still no dates on any marvel upcoming marvel shows is that right secret invasion is dated yeah okay and then nothing else after that and at least seven of those shows have any upcoming Marvel shows. Is that right? Secret Invasion. Is dated? Yeah. Okay. And then nothing else after that.

And at least seven of those shows have been announced. And I don't know if some of them are happening. Some of them are being pushed. And then you note the transition from JPEG to Iger and him sort of resetting the board more broadly on what the mission of streaming service is. It's really interesting what's happening there because Secret Invasion is coming out what the mission of streaming service is it's it's really interesting what's happening there because um so secret invasion is coming out at the end of june loki season two was supposed to come out this fall but we'll talk a little bit about why that

might be complicated and then it's possible that's it plus the marvels which is coming out november the week our book is coming out thank you so much disney for that cross promo um did you choose that date first? Yeah, we were on that. We planted on that date and then Disney followed us, man. No, but that's it. It's the Marvel Secret Invasion and maybe Loki season two. And that's a fascinating difference compared to the glut that we've had over the last couple of years of as Bob Iger leaves Disney for the first time. Disney Plus was his project. So this demand for content from Marvel, from Lucasfilm, et cetera, the squeeze to join the streaming race comes from Iger.

He leaves. Chapek takes over. Chapek is, as many people have talked about, more of a numbers guy than a creatives guy. And so that era, like the Scarlett Johansson thing that came out around Black Widow, all that sort of stuff, Bob Chapek wasn't a relationship guy the way that Bob Iger was. And so some of the behind the scenes Marvel drama starts coming out in a way that it never really had before. That weakens the brand a little bit. Iger comes back. There's some cleaning house that we can talk about in a way that it never really had before that weakens the brand a little bit. Iger comes back.

There's some cleaning house that we can talk about in a second, but Iger's back. And even though he was the one who demanded the content in the first place, now his messaging is we're going to retrench. We're going to slow down and we're going to just put out good things now with our brands. Cause our brands matter and add like completely ignoring the fact that the content like glut was his idea in the first place um yeah we're in a place of retrench which is what i mean i love this for marvel like i would like

this for lucasfilm as well i would like all brands to just calm down slow down and make sure the thing is great before they put it out there that would be because we want all the things to be good, right, Sean? We do. You know, I've cited many times in the past on this show about how I got everything I ever wanted when I was 12 years old and how that has been like my worst nightmare in some ways now. But in part, it's been because it's just being pumped at me with irregularity. So I think slowing things down is theoretically beneficial. Guardians 3 excels for completely different reasons, which I think is interesting and maybe not indicative of what Marvel's future holds, but we can get to that in a minute. I mean, you know, another critical thing that happened, of course, is that Victoria Alonso, who, you know, was effectively the second

or third in charge at Marvel for many, many years was kevin feige's right hand especially in the sort of post-production aspect of the business was unceremoniously dumped quite publicly uh i guess last month um and that that was a massive story in the business and it came at a time when a couple of different things were happening and so there was quite a bit of subterfuge around that story. But one, she was nominated for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards for a film that she produced for a different studio, for Amazon. And it was also coming at a time when something that I've certainly been very critical of on this show and that many journalists have written so well about and reported about, which is the struggles of the visual effects aspect of the Marvel films, you know, certainly dating back

many years, but especially in the last five years, there's been a bigger outcry. And the folks who work inside of the industry have been speaking both anonymously and on the record about the pressure and the, you know, sort of dire circumstances that they're working under to complete these films with not enough resources, with not enough time, et cetera. And so since that was a huge part of what she managed, there was some correlation made there too. I don't know, you've talked a little bit about the Alonso story, but it does feel like all of these things happening simultaneously,

it feels like there's been a strong reset at the highest echelons of power at Disney where they're saying like, okay, enough fucking around. We have to get this back on track. I mean, that's certainly optics of Victoria leaving and also Ike Perlmutter, a longtime CEO at Marvel was also pushed out by Iger as well as John Turretts and like a couple of people in the C-suite

that have been there forever. The Victoria Alonzo thing is really fascinating to me. When it happened, we had to do a rewrite on our book to include it. And that means I talked to Disney and I talked to people in Victoria Alonso's camp and I talked no one I talked to said it had anything to do with the VFX struggles, which are quite real. Absolutely, the VFX houses are overextended. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that content glut we were talking about. out. Another reason is if you look at the various projects inspired by Guardians, the cosmic era of Marvel is so much more VFX dependent than it used to be. So the VFX demands are higher per project

and there are more projects. And there are like, I spoke to one VFX artist who said, we are literally running out of VFX houses to produce all of the content that not only Marvel, but Marvel is the biggest client. But not only Marvel, but all the streamers are asking for in this content glut. And so, yeah, Victoria Alonso, because she's head of the VFX departmentzo thing is political because it has to do with her speaking out against Bob Chapek and Disney at a GLAAD event about Disney and Florida, which is an ongoing drama, as we all know, and the Don't Say Gay Bill and stuff like that. Her increasing resistance, Victoria Alonzo as a queer woman, to cut little bits of queerness out of Marvel movies to make them palatable for international audiences. That's in the mix too. It's quite

complicated. Maybe you could buy my book and read more about it. But again, it's one of those behind the scenes. It was so shocking because it was so abrupt. It was so public. And Victoria has since settled with Disney for, I'm sure, a massive sum. So she will not be doing a tell-all about all of this, right? Because she is, I'm sure, signed an NDA with all that money. But she had been there since the beginning. And it really undermined the reputation that Marvel had earned of being a kind corporation, a friendly corporation. This was a very nasty, dramatic public thing. And again, it's just like chipping away at the brand's reputation, which is really interesting. Yeah. Maybe these are coincidences, but more likely these fissures are often the byproduct of extraordinary success and then mounting pressure to match that success.

Absolutely. I'm sure. I don't think this happens the way it happened if all the powers that be weren't feeling so much pressure and feeling those diminishing box office returns of those diminishing Rotten Tomatoes scores, et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah, it's a really fascinating time. Also, we should talk about, briefly, the departure of so much talent, right? Because, like, Robert Downey Jr. leaving, Chris Evans leaving, Scarlett Johansson leaving, like, those are major factors Chadwick Boseman dying deeply tragic but also Marvel then has to like I don't mean to be callous about it but like that for Marvel is sort of a narrative scramble for them no question Brie Larson has publicly been talking about how she doesn't really want to do Carol Danvers for much longer because of the negative fan feedback uh Zoe

Saldana is like I'm out Elizabeth Olsen is, I'm out. Elizabeth Olsen is like, I'm out. And so there is this like exodus that has left fans, I think on a certain level, feeling like they're watching the JV team, like the varsity team is leaving. And all the pieces that Marvel had put in place, like Carol Danvers, like T'Challa, et cetera, et cetera, to feel like the new varsity,

they're leaving as well or have left. And again, that just, it's so many things all coming at them all at once. It's no one thing that has put us where we are. It is truly fascinating if you step back and worry a little bit less about whatever the conversation is online and think more about how in the long tradition of studios,

talent would leave and go and work on other projects at other studios. And then where once you felt like, well, we'll just have the Three Stooges forever. We'll just have Charlie Chaplin forever. We'll just have, you know, when, you know, United Artists formed and then they left their studios that they had been working for the that sense of loss is really critical and then there's of course a a really thorny aspect of this story that is essential to talk about that we

haven't really gotten into on the show thus far but that is that jonathan majors who is you know this this new phase of the storytelling has effectively been built around as the Kang character um you know that has run into some real challenges because on March 22nd Majors was arrested and charged with assault and harassment after what the police in New York described as a domestic dispute Majors was widely celebrated for his work in the last five years especially on this show I've been a huge fan of the work he's done on screen and had been touted i think as like one of the next great performers in hollywood and this story of course is very troubling we don't really know what the truth of the matter is and it's going to play out over the next couple of months uh from a legal

perspective but in in the intervening time since he was arrested he's been dropped by his management he's been dropped by his pr company He's been dropped by his PR company. He's been dropped from commercial endorsement deals. He's been removed from boards that he participates in. There are a couple of films that he was either going to appear in or was notably up for that he is no longer up for. He does have a lot of completed work. I saw him in a movie at Sundance called Magazine Dreams in which his performance was very strong

and widely acclaimed and had been cited as a possible Oscar contender. That film is slated for December release. I'm not sure if that's going to come. And this era of Marvel storytelling has been built around this character of Kang, who is all powerful, and there are multiple variants, which we saw in the last Ant-Man film. And so now Marvel has this other issue that they have to navigate that is arguably more sensitive than anything that they've yet encountered and more complex. And so I'm not sure if there's much to say about the majors thing, but it is sort of a one more struggle in a long line of complicated stories that are kind of, I guess, challenging the most successful media entity in the world right now.

Yeah, I don't think you and I are very interested in saying what Marvel should or shouldn't do, et cetera, going forward, but we know that this is a huge problem for them that they're facing, that they're grappling with right now. And what's unprecedented in this for Marvel is I, I would argue they've never hung so much of a franchise on one actor as they decide to hang it on Jonathan Majors after his Loki performance and his Ant-Man Quantumania performance. I was told by someone who works for Marvel that it was not the plan to make Kang the

center of everything until they saw the dailies in Quantumania and after his performance in Loki, which was so strong. They were like, this is it. This is our way forward. We've lost our varsity hero team, but let's center around this guy, Kang, and this incredible performer that so many people are reacting to. And I would argue more than Downey is Iron Man and like more than Brolin is Thanos, like this hanging everything on this guy who was going to then crop up in all of their properties leading up to something called the Kang dynasty has put them in a very unusual position. They don't usually hang so much on one person or one thing the way that they did here. And yeah, it's put them in the bind. We don't know what they're

going to do. I've heard conflicting stories about they are going to replace him. They're not even considering replacing him, et cetera, et cetera. We don't know, but it is just one more thing. Yeah. There's just a lack of information at the moment about what would be the appropriate next step for them. So we'll just have to wait and see in that respect. Guardians is fascinating in the context of this conversation about the struggles that the studio has been dealing with over the past few years, because, you know, you identified this as a kind of unfranchising, which I think is really, really interesting. And Guardians itself,

even though they have been hugely intertwined with the Thanos Infinity Gauntlet saga, they've been critically related to Thor in the storytelling throughout the movies, this is kind of just a sideline story. It's a team-up story. It's a sci-fi saga in a series of films that up until the last few movies did not seem terribly interested in space.

And so it kind of was able to distinguish itself. And, you know, as it gets to this third film, which was supposed to come out, as we said, a few years ago and is now finally arriving, it felt to me like a fascinating respite from everything that I was annoyed by with Marvel because there was no desire to explain anything or introduce new heroes that I had to care about in a meaningful way. It just felt very locked in on the characters that we'd built a relationship

with. And for that reason, it is by far my favorite Marvel movie of the last four or five years um it it definitely is it's not quite maybe in that upper echelon of the Marvel films but it is what I had sort of hoped they were going to be able to do in the aftermath of Endgame which is more sort of side stories or conclusive you know trilogy stories with characters that I liked told by filmmakers whose work I enjoy who clearly were more or less empowered to tell the stories that they wanted. This felt like a film with not a ton of interference in terms of how it was being told. It's impossible to tell that, but that's just the sense I get from watching it. You know, Gunn is the writer and director of all three of these movies. What'd you think of Guardians 3? Oh, I really liked it. And I think,

I think you're leaving aside the Sony Marvel co-pros of Spider-Man, right? When you're talking about MCU movies. Yes. Yeah. I loved, loved, loved the Latino at home. A lot of people fold them in. I, when I tend to think about them, I think about them as something other, but I just wanted to clarify that. So like, I think that I agree. I think this is by far the best post end game Marvel movie, like by far. And I think a lot of that has to do with that unshackling because Guardians, I think a big problem Marvel's facing right now is that sort of burden of the genius initially of Marvel is the extreme franchising that no one had ever done on this level before. And then just like any comic book tangle,

any comic reader knows this. Eventually you just start cracking and groaning under the weight of this interconnected universe. And the fact that guardians was made in the first place to be completely separate in case it tanked so that they could just be like, well, that was like a weird little side thing we tried. No worry about it. And yes, they like, they did fold it in, as you said, to the Avengers stuff.

But it could be easily unshackled again. The only thing you really need to have seen to understand this movie are the two Guardians films. And I would really recommend the holiday special because there's some characters introduced there that are in here. Why is Maria Bakalova here? You have to watch the holiday special to know that are in here um why is maria bakalova here you have to watch the holiday special to know that um but other than that i mean that's not very much homework at all really um yes okay maybe you need to watch avengers endgame and infinity war to understand what's going on with gamora but like it's it just doesn't feel as burdened as some of the other things do and i'm wondering if maybe

that is the future if maybe they either because we know Secret Wars is on their schedule either there's just like a huge universe reset that they're planning to do anyway that's a classic compa move or you know we're bringing we've got massive IPs winning the wings like Fantastic Four and X-Men that they haven't really launched yet like maybe we just keep all this stuff separate can we do do that? You know what I mean? Oh, that's a big and interesting question you've just posed to a nerd like me. I think, you know, readers of the comics over the years

were sort of trained to anticipate the big crossover issues. And I think viewers of these movies have also been trained to expect interconnectedness. And so I felt a sense of relief without having to worry about the interconnectedness in this film. But I think if you play that game

over the course of the next few years, people will get mad. I think people want to see Reed Richards and Wolverine nose-to-nose disagreeing about something. And if we don't get that, there's going to be some angst. But nevertheless... Is that like nose-to-collarbone if they cast an actually canonically short Wolverine?

A very, very good point. And especially if my beloved Adam Driver is cast as Reed Richards, it's going to be more like nose to belly button. Wait, and can I just say something about, to your point about James Gunn, that has been such a long, and you know this as a massive film fan, this has been such a long conversation you know this is a massive film fan this has been such a long conversation about marvel studios do they let their creatives actually be creative do they let their creatives cook james gunn and then before love and thunder taika waititi and then ryan kugler were sort of held up as these three examples of creatives that were allowed to cook what happened love and thunder and taika is more complicated to talk about. But what happened with Coogler and Wakanda Forever is that burden of franchising, right? He had to launch like a couple other shows.

Why is Ironheart in that movie, John? Yeah, why is Ironheart? Why are we launching the like untitled Wakanda show, like presumably with Dora Milaj in that movie? There's just like a lot of things that they're trying to spin off. Why is Julia Louis-Dreyfus in that movie? Such a shame. I really want to see the version of that movie that does not bear that burden.

Because there's a great movie in there. I agree. But it's just sort of weighted down by the expectations of the franchise. So Kugler, who is an incredible artist that we admire, who did his thing with Black Panther, is doing his thing plus franchising with Wakanda Forever. Gunn is like, I'm leaving. So this is just my swan song. I can do whatever I want. Plus, you fired me.

So you hired me back. So now I'm going to make something that's even gunnier than ever. Like, this is so dark emotionally. This is so much more violent than I think a Marvel movie usually is there. I don't really care about swears in general, but there's the first F bomb in the MCU is in this movie. Um, and it just felt like gun was like, all right, you want me to come back and finish this thing? I mean, I've gotten all my actors to come out publicly to say they, they demand to have me back. You're going to have to hire me back and you're going to let me do what I want to do.

And I mean, that's a great thing for this movie. And it underscores another sort of crack in the Marvel method, because as we were talking about content expansion earlier, there's this scalability question with the Marvel method of like so much of Marvel's quality in the past depended on Kevin Feige overseeing everything. He's less of a studio head and more of like a shadow director on every single project. A very creative producer. And he physically cannot do that with all the content, you know, so they created something called the Marvel Parliament, but it just dilutes that creative juice if you spread it out over these various producers who are very talented and have been working at Marvel for a long time. But you spread it out, it's no longer this guy.

But Gunn can, at this point, run his own Marvel movie. He's got the practice. He knows what he's doing. Well, that makes me think, I want to stay on track with Guardians Volume 3 but what you're saying keeps like reminds me of something that I think is so critical James Gunn is a very specific

flavor as you say and this is the gunniest version of a Marvel movie that we've yet seen but James Gunn was a truly inspired choice to direct really any Marvel movie

but especially a Guardians style film in part because his sensibility has always been with exploitation movies and fantasy movies and the kind of like under-the-surface, uncool, deeply influenced by both big historical texts, but also Grindhouse and, you know, EC Comics and science fiction novels, and all of the things that I think make

that feel coherent inside of movies like this. Marvel movies in recent years have come to be seen as prestigious as a huge business drivers. Like the fact that we have gotten to a place in our culture where these characters have like insane emotional ties to people's adolescence in a way that is like also correlated to massive corporate media culture is really weird. I mean, if you are a comic book fan, when you were 10 years, when I was 10 years old, this just seemed impossible. But so Gunn, who was one of those kids, is a very inspired choice because he's still willing

to do it in the way that feels true to that kind of culture. Over the years, I think that Marvel has made some really interesting but often unwise choices in terms of trying to draft similar independent filmmakers, but with very different sensibilities than someone like Gunn. I don't want to make this sound like only a middle-aged white guy who read comic books should make comic book movies. That's not really my point because I feel like Coogler

was a similarly inspired choice. He was sort of like a mainstream thinker who loved comic books. And so he was able to kind of use his portal. But there were a lot of other filmmakers. If you look at Captain Marvel, if you look at Shang-Chi, if you look at the sort of the origins

of where those people came from as filmmakers, they didn't evince a lot of interest in this kind of storytelling. And if you watch the movies, you can see that there's like a disconnect between one part of the story that they're trying to tell and then the other part of the story that Marvel is trying to tell. Now, this is like a textual read on my part, but watching this third Gunn Guardians film,

I mean, this is just like, it's practically a Roger Corman movie. The way that it's set design and production design, theorman movie the way that it's the way it's set design and production design the way that the kind of gloopiness and the you know there's the sort of like planet that is entirely a kind of bleeding organism brain the all white sort of foam plastic feeling inside of the second act it's an exploitation movie in so many ways and that feels so appropriate for a story like this. And for some reason,

audiences, like mainstream audiences, have decided to accept that this is how these movies should look, which I think is wonderful. I mean, I love movies that look like this.

Like 70 science fiction movies that are made on the cheap are fantastic if they're well told. And this is a well-told movie. So I think it's interesting that he in particular, you know, is moving on and is moving to DC and that this is his swan song and it feels uncorrupted. It feels disentangled from the MCU storytelling. And it's going to be probably,

if not the best reviewed, probably one of the most liked movies that they've released in the last three or four years. And then he's just not going to be a part of this anymore i find it to be such an interesting evolution in his uh career as a filmmaker to go from like being fired by disney and kicked out of your own franchise to head of the game over at dc you know him to him picking up suicide squad doing what he did with it like suicide squad wasn't a massive hit but like it's a big film industry game changer in terms of the power players involved in all of this. And I think that to your point about the like the gloopiness and the real sets, what's so fascinating to me is that Guardians inspired this what they call the cosmic era that comes from the comics, but like the cosmic era of the MCU that we're in so things like multiverse of madness quantumania love and thunder these very space-based uh digital background digital character uh films that we're seeing i have you know like the the criticisms that we have about the vfx how burdened the industry is and

how shoddy some of the effects look at the end of the day and in some of these projects the fact that love and thunder and in some of these projects the fact that love and thunder and quantum mania were shot in the volume which i feel like is increasingly a terrible idea like the further we get away from the first season of the mandalorian um the fact you know so the fact that gun is using like real sets it's so funny that he inspired all of that they hire all these rick and morty writers who I really like and admire. But the question is, is Rick and Morty what we want the MCU to be? Gunn is doing something very different. And the physical sets, the physicality of this movie was so refreshing to me.

But what's hilarious is that on top of that, the star of this movie is Rocket Raccoon, who is a digital effect, an incredible digital effect. An amazingly rendered digital effect, though. That's the thing is because he's a character and not a fight sequence, you can sense the care that is put into making that character feel, if not real, realer. It's also, but it's also like the time and the budget, you know, like when She-Hulk came out, the TV show She-Hulk came out, and some people were so critical of the look of that character, of Tatiana Maslany as that character. And then you put Bruce Banner, the Hulk, in the same scene, and he looks so much better. It's because they had years and movie budgets to create the digital libraries to make that effect look great. The same is true of Rocket Raccoon. And they had a TV budget and way less time to make she hulk

look good and so it doesn't look as it just simply does not look as good and so rocket looks incredible in this movie and again you're just sort of like okay slow down take the time do it right and then it can be amazing so i think some of the reason though that some of this work looks so good, both digital and practical, is because both Gunn and a lot of the craftspeople who work on these films and his crews, you know, have origins working on Troma movies and then making movies like Slither, like smaller, you know, gross out movies and even movies like Super, you know, the movie that I think got him the job as the Guardians director. And when you are making a movie like that with a budget under $5 million, and in some cases under $500,000, you have to problem solve. You have to know how to get creative in the face

of these challenges. And so many of the criticisms that we've had from Marvel recently is like, well, you don't have the resources to make this stuff look good. It's like, welcome to movies. Like this is making every movie is feeling like there's a crunch. Marvel has been very fortunate to have so much financial success, but now their challenge is more like, do we have enough human hands to help make the work? Um, this film, you never really feel that. Now there are times when people are like, that looks cheap or that looks stupid. And this movie, like all Marvel movies has to me, what I feel like is an unnecessary CGI explosion fest at the, in the third act of the film. I just, I'm begging the studio.

I'm here on this podcast today begging the powers that be. End one movie without a big fight in space or against a green screen or in the volume or what have you. Just one movie. Don't do it and see what happens because it's now

redundant to the point of frustration even in a movie like this that feels personal and sincere and you know really sappy at times like the huge relationship that gun and the cast have to the characters and the story that they're telling and guns kind of big theme of you know like all the freaks need to just um team up and be together and and fight whatever we perceive to be evil it's like a very sappy old school idea but very effective in these movies like i was weirdly authentically moved when when the when the florence and the machine song dropped i was like this is just really great movie making you know i felt great watching it so i just i i'm i So I'm begging against begging.

No more third act CGI fest. And there are some great, I mean, there's a old boy-esque hallway fight scene in this movie that is fantastic. Very cool. In 98% of movies, that would have been easily enough to be a conclusion for a film like this.

So to not do that, I found to be frustrating. I mean, let's talk a little bit more specifically about the movie. And then I think we'll end up starting to spoil it as we get deeper into our conversation. We haven't really talked about what the framework of the movie is, but it is like most good Marvel movies, a more or less focused mission adventure. In this case, Adam Warlock, who's a character who's introduced in this series, arrives in Nowhere, which is the sort of, is it a moving planetoid or just a ship? Like, what is Nowhere? It's the floating head of a celestial.

So sometimes it's planet-esque, but it can be, you know, turned into a ship in this film as it is, if it needs to be. I love when a celestial is decapitated and it becomes my home. That's one of my favorite things. Remember how in Eternals, like, a celestial baby is being born out of the planet and it just stops midway through and we don't know if anyone has noticed that yet? Yeah, it's sort of bursting out of the ground. Yeah. It's fantastic. That was a very normal movie.

It was really coherent. Remember how Harry Styles shows up? And I would like to make some bets about whether or not we ever see him in TMCU again. Never to be seen again, Joanna. Yeah. Adam Warlock, this character, who is part of the Sovereign, the Sovereign's colony of people, arrives to seemingly assassinate the guardians but more specifically rocket raccoon on behalf of the high evolutionary who's a character that i don't we haven't seen

the high evolutionary before have we no um who is a you know for our purposes as kind of dr frankenstein mad scientist figure who's trying to perfect societies and create a world that feels more perfect in his mind and his vision. And so after Rocket is attacked by Adam Warlock, he needs to be saved. And in order for him to be saved, there's sort of a MacGuffin trail to find what is needed to save him. And while they're attempting to go on these series of missions to save Rocket, we see a series of flashbacks that reveal his origins, how he was created and how he was kind of birthed and shepherded into the world, why he's so smart, why he is so good with mechanics and machinery, how his voice changed.

And I assume that that's Bradley Cooper's voice through every stage of Rocket, though I didn't double check that. Did you look into that? I think it is. And it's pretty hilarious when it's uh younger um can i ask you a quick question this is going to be a spoiler for another film but have you seen the film dungeons and dragons honor among thieves oh you know i i was opening night at south by there you certainly were uh the bradley cooper cameo in that film is one of my favorite

things in movies in recent times i feel like it's not enough as being made of this. I love Bradley Cooper. He's genuinely a huge fan. Yeah, he's great. Well, something I would say about the high evolutionary just really quickly is that it locks in this trilogy wide idea of like a bad dad, bad God, sort of like Thanos and then ego and then the high evolutionary are these like bad dad, bad God, sort of figures looming over the franchise, which just underlines exactly what you were saying before about this idea that James Gunn is like so interested in the found family in the sort of like freaks that stick together idea. But I like that there's that thematic connection, you know, that Marvel villain conversation has gone back and forth over the years. What is it? It's strength. This is its weakness.

This idea that these three movies so satisfyingly have connective tissue there is something I really liked about the movie. Quite literally connective tissue. When they travel to a planet that is made of organic matter. I don't know how to like, this isn't a movie that to me, and I'm sure you will do this on the ringer verse, but I don't know how you get to three hours of deep textual analysis on a movie like this because it feels like a silly sci-fi adventure quite purposefully.

Challenge accepted, Sean Fennessey. I saw the runtime of this week's episode and I was like, in their bag they are at this exact moment. And I appreciate it. I just appeared in a four-hour episode of Bansplain. So, you know, let ye cast the first stone. But I think I was just kind of along for the ride. And part of it was maybe because I had my anxiety relieved knowing that it was unlikely that I was going to be introduced

to a series of characters that I needed to remember for the next episode in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you know? I think the only example here is Adam Warlock. And I actually wanted to ask you, Will Poulter, is Adam Warlock here? I loved this. And Adam Warlock is one of those characters like Vision, like Wanda, like a few others who's like so overpowered. The question is, how do you possibly fold him into a story with far, you know, like he makes mincemeat out of the guardians of the right at the beginning

of the movie. Right. So how do you do this? And the idea is just like, make him an enormous baby, like make him completely hapless mama's boy, like, and,

and bring the great Elizabeth Debicki in for that, for that dynamic. What did you like as a comics fan, what did you think of James Gunn's version of Adam Warlock, which is quite different? Yeah, I thought it was funny. He's definitely a lot dumber than the Adam Warlock I remember from the comics.

You know, Adam Warlock has this interesting ability in the storytelling of the comics where if he is alive for too long, he effectively becomes evil and then needs to die and is essentially like when he dies, he's reborn like in another dimension or another galaxy. And then he has to travel back

to where he was previously. And then he comes back and he's a little bit more pure. Very unusual character. I can't remember if Adam Warlock is a Jim Starling character, but it's from that sort of era of intergalactic storytelling.

And so he's very strange. He's kind of a perfect fit for james gunn though because he's painted gold and he's meant to have an infinity gem in his forehead he's incredibly powerful as you said but he kind of sort of looks like he was in like a karalko marvel movie in 1987 too you know he doesn't cool. He doesn't even look that good. Like you can see the paint on his face the same way you can see the paint on Elizabeth Debicki's character's face. And that doesn't bother me because it's all done with purpose, right?

It's like, it's all done with a kind of intent. It's homage. It creates this sort of like a silly, surreal world, this HR puff and stuff kind of world that of, of, of movie making that i think is okay if you do so with intent as opposed to just we didn't have enough money i think the plot idea

as far as i can understand it is sort of he was like taken out of the oven early right that's why yeah the high evolutionary needed him and i just i think this is like a brilliant swerve on james gunn's part as long as like purists aren't too fussed about it. Yeah, I agree with you. This is this is like pulpy pop art is what we're talking about here. And it all works because it all feels so creatively purposeful. woke, like Bowdoin and Fleck or Daniel Justin Cretton or whoever, these other indie filmmakers that they hired. The Marvel method of pre-visiting your movie before you're almost even hired to do it and you just have to do the talking scenes and they'll do the rest, that's a little bit of

an oversimplification of what happens over at marvel but it you know it is something like kate shortland talked about like people have talked about who've worked at marvel and like um gun is so different the way that they've let him really take the reins and so it just feels coherent more so than some of the other recent marvel projects i think yeah i'd like to know how involved he is. I'm sure he's talked about this at some point, but how involved he is in sort of the visual choreography of the set pieces, the action scenes, the fight sequences that are so common in these films. You know, there's a lot of gunfire in these movies,

Rocket in particular. Groot in this movie is extremely violent. He goes apeshit a few times. Completely. That was one element i didn't like it's you know it's a lot to accept having uh witness baby groot rise up from a wee twig uh but i get the impression that he is sort of meticulous about the way that those sequences play out and with that in mind i mean that's something a lot of filmmakers that's not even

a skill that they have they probably don't even think about cinema in that way or at least how how it's done i think about this a lot recently because it's a real wheat and chaff moment in this kind of filmmaking because so many films need to be sort of cgi and or fight sequence reliant you know we have a fast x film coming very soon i've always been a little critical of the way that they stage a lot of their biggest sequences but john John Wick 4 came out this year. And John Wick 4 is, that is the Beethoven of action sequence choreography. I mean, with the teams that work on those movies, whether you like those movies or not, it's almost impossible to deny the artistry that is going into the work that's done there. I thought in particular that sort of tunnel fight sequence that you were describing, is just invigorating.

It's really well mapped. You know where each character is moving. You know why they're moving in that direction. It had a little bit of the how many stormtroopers can we kill Star Wars vibe to it, you know, where all of a sudden a thousand stormtroopers have been murdered in the span of 30 seconds.

But that's pop sci-fi movie making, right? You know, it felt very consummate with that. Yeah, and Gunn, I mean, to your question, Gunn has talked a lot about his storyboarding work on these projects, which I don't, you know.

Again, I think a lot of other Marvel directors take umbrage with this idea that they're not really directing their own movie. And I just think it's like true to varying degrees depending on which director

you're talking about and which project. And Feige even said very recently, he's like, or actually, I can't recall if he said it or if it's just sort of a rumor behind the scenes that he wants to hire more guns and fewer people who are, you know,

experts at like the kitchen table conversation in Captain Marvel, but not so much in, you know, the larger cosmic shoot them up-up aspects of it. So I thought it was really interesting thinking about, listening to Van Lathan and Bill Simmons on the rewatchable, they talked about Iron Man. Yeah, yeah. Van had a very strong opinion about how Tony is the character

who sort of informed everything that came afterwards, that they built this entire franchise of films around in many ways, not just the Tony Stark persona, but the way that he communicated, you could feel that level of communication from every hero, that at a certain point,

Steve Rogers was quippy, you know, that Carol Danvers was quippy, like characters that maybe I don't even think of as quippy as from reading the comics. Gunn already had a kind of, that was sort of already his writing style.

You know, he already wrote with a kind of, you know, like awkward jokiness. And so he was a good fit and he was a good fit for writing a character like Drax. He was a good fit for writing a character like Gamora

and her interplay with Star-Lord. That's another thing that is missing if you don't cast the right filmmaker. You know, like thinking of the kitchen table conversation, I think, is really fascinating because if these films are trying to have a somewhat consistent tone, when an Eternals comes along, where like none of these people have ever spoken to each other before, like when they're speaking and talking in the film, it really, really sticks out um and so i'll be curious yeah yeah yeah i mean he's been having every character he plays he's been having a conversation with himself for many years so that's he can he can operate independently i think to your point again there's an exception

made for gun here at marvel studios he wrote all the dialogue for the Guardians in Infinity War and Endgame, right? Like, Marcus and McFeely. I don't think I knew that. That's really interesting. Yeah, Marcus and McFeely are the screenwriters on those films and they did all the Captain America movies and they're fantastic

and they're ace star Marvel writers. So it's not like they're like, well, Marcus and McFeely can't handle it. But it was just that the Gunn, I would argue the Gunn flavor is different from the Downey strain which i agree with van um and also van has read my book but like that downy strain that runs through all of of those movies and and all of those actors performances but um the guardians flavor is something slightly different and i i i that's why I think they made that exception for him

when you know when Spider-Man comes in when all these other characters come in they don't bring in those writers but they brought in James Gunn for the Guardians so we haven't said the name Chris Pratt yet right Chris Pratt's the star of this movie yeah ostensibly one of the biggest stars in Hollywood he is Star-Lord

the first two films are fully oriented around his story his origin his parents falling in love with gamora the complexity of you know being associated with the ravagers this entire arc of star lord and you know star lord is still at the center of this movie and the movie is being sold on against chris pratt's fame but he his persona and his public reputation has changed a lot in the last three or four years. And I don't want to say there's been a backlash. I think that's probably overstating it.

But people don't seem to have the same darn isn't he great Parks and Rec kind of appreciation for him too. But the movie, and this is sort of heading into spoiler territory. So if you don't want to hear any more about the making of this film, um, or the storyline there in, you should probably turn the podcast off. But there was a version of this movie where a lot of characters die. Chris Pratt dies or Chris Pratt disappears, or we're left hanging with an expectation that star Lord may not be back in

the MCU. Just like so many of those other characters that you're talking about. We'll never see Black Widow again. We probably won't see Steve Rogers if not for a while. We're not going to see Iron Man again. If we had just said okay this is the end of Star-Lord because James Gunn is gone so be it. But the movie goes out

of its way at the conclusion to say Star-Lord shall return. And that struck me as a very purposeful business decision. Yeah. In part because of what you outlined about the loss of stardom throughout this cosmos of stories. What do you think about why they decided to retain Star-Lord?

Right. So it's wild to me. And there's a couple of decisions made in this movie. I think Gunn really smart. I would be fascinated to see what this script looked like you know the post-endgame version of the script versus the many years later version of this script i would be so fascinated to see the differences but there's some very smart things done with star-lord's character in this movie that I feel like plays into that changing public perception of Chris Pratt. And again, that might be a very online conversation,

the changing public perception of Chris Pratt, because I think that has more to do with like Chris rankings on Twitter than it does necessarily like people going to the cinema. But I think also there's just like a lot of people who are just watching the Terminal List on Amazon and like Chris Pratt rules. Like I agree with you. It's not.

Yeah. People still like him. I do think though that Bloom is off the rose in terms of him as like a lovely young male ingenue in Hollywood. Yes. And, you know, my personal feelings are more of that vein. But, and I was so aggravated with Star-Lord post-Infinity War. And there's a line in this movie where he's like, I lost my temper and half the world vanished. He takes ownership for this thing that Star-Lord did that drew me absolutely bananas.

And that mollified me a bit. And the fact that he is in this yearning love-lorn space rather than the swagger of Star-Lord that we've seen before, I think that is a really smart place to put Star-Lord and I don't know if that was always the intention but certainly I think it helps round off some of the edges of that sort of Chris Pratt, you know, I don't know how to describe what has happened to the Chris Pratt persona, public persona but I think this movie is sort of somewhat in dialogue

with it actually um but i think that business decision i think the way that um our ringer verse producer steve allman put it is he was like it was a contract signing announcement was the post-credits scene i was like yeah and it would like that was the biggest twist of the movie for me because i was just sort of like they set up so many characters. And first of all, I love that nobody dies in this movie. I was going to ask you that.

I'm not so sure I agree as a number one, they should have killed Chewie fan. But I think that it would be nice. Well, they should have killed Chewie. If they're going to do that, they should have gone through with it. Not like, that's what I'm saying about it. I mean,

there was a part of, I had a little bit of a flash on that moment watching this movie where I was like, none of these characters are going to die in this massive intergalactic battle. I think. And they really push you right to the edge with Star-Lord. I mean, they really are like, they make you believe for a second. Yeah, I was convinced. Yeah. His face gets all bloated um i think that um i i guess i think it bothers me when i'm watching a character die and

i know it's just for contractual reasons and we saw so much of that in end game that i was just sort of like okay guns like what's another way a character can leave? All right, Mantis is off on this whatever spiritual quest and Drax and Nebula are going to raise a bunch of kids, I guess, and we don't have to come back and check in on them. And then Gamora's fine with her Ravager family because Zoe Saldana's done. I just kind of, he was like, what else can we do? We did the death thing. Like, what else can we do? And I thought that was kind of interesting. It was fun. I want to give a little bit of love to Pom Clemente. Am I

saying that correctly? I believe so. I thought she's phenomenal. She's fantastic in this movie. You know, I rewatched volume two before our chat too. And, you know, Mantis was introduced in that film. She's quite good in that movie but she's given a lot of emotional burden in this film I feel like and her relationship

with Drax has always been very funny and very fascinating but she's really great and you know Rocket is clearly the heart but she's kind of the

she's kind of the veins of the movie in a lot of ways it kind of seems to be flowing through her yeah and so I thought she was really wonderful

I want to talk to you a little bit about James Gunn's use of music because It kind of seems to be flowing through her. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I thought she was really wonderful. I want to talk to you a little bit about James Gunn's use of music. Because he's well known for his needle drops. Some might say his over-reliance on needle drops. This film, I would venture to guess, features more than any other he's done. I'm not totally sure if that's the case. But just off the top, sitting in the movie theater, I counted Radiohead, Beastie Boys, Space Hog,

Florence and the Machine, The Flaming Lips, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, The Replacements, and Faith No More. And Heart. And I'm sure I'm forgetting some more. And these are not obscure album cuts from these artists these are massive

hit songs or songs that have become you know cult favorites so uh you know it's easy to criticize filmmakers for using songs like this to replace real feeling and supercharging viewers by making reminding them of feelings that they have about songs and then kind of transposing that onto the movie sequence. I think Gunn is kind of guilty of that, but it doesn't bother me. But I was curious what your take is on that. Yeah, I think that, so one of my favorite Marvel stories is that sometimes Marvel in the earlier days had to like fight the New York creative committee over like certain things that they wanted in the movies and the creative committee was very down against

the soundtrack in the first Guardians movie and Gunn had to fight for it and when I interviewed him about that he was like that's one of the things he's most proud of course what a victory lap for you to have to fight for your awesome mix volume one and then it's like one one of the best selling soundtracks of all time that has ever existed on a movie. Right. And you're like, I was right. You know, and so then, of course, that becomes like a hallmark of these Guardians movies. But I think there are ways in which it's done really poorly. Like if you think about the first Suicide Squad, not James Gunn's Suicide Squad, that soundtrack. A friend once described that to me is like like baby's first playlist made by a

fedora like that's how they described the soundtrack to the original Suicide Squad it's just like the most obvious like eye-rolling picks for that I think tying the soundtrack in the first two movies to the mixes made by Peter's mom is a way to easily get away with what Gunn did needle drop wise in those first two movies. And then the Zune era is sort of like a cute continuation so he can use more contemporary music. It starts with Radiohead. An acoustic version of Creep. I was in. I was in for it. I was pretty mixed on a lot of the other ones.

And then the Florence and the Machine really got me. Like I got really emotional with the Florence and the Machine needle drop. It's a great movie moment. Yeah. I agree. I think, you know, I love the Beastie Boys, right? Beastie Boys, I did a whole episode of this movie podcast about Beastie Boys. I,

Ad Rock, MCA, Mike D, these are like heroes, like genuinely. They're licensing a lot of music right now. They're songs

and I have some, I think I understand why, right? They're not, no longer active. MCA tragically passed at a very young age and so they're not

creating new music and a great way to kind of continue to grow revenue is by licensing your music when you're not actively making music but their songs are everywhere in the movies right now and this movie this one of their songs is using a pretty critical kind of team-up sequence in this movie but i do think we need a slight moratorium on bc i want the bc boys to get money it's not about that i just what i don't want is for them to be like the new uh you know like what what the who became to truck drivers in america you know or the csi watchers like i don't want my favorite band to fall into that category of licensor when did it start was it star trek the star trek movie like When did it start? Was it Star Trek? The Star Trek movie?

Like when did it start with the BC Force? I'm not sure like what the first what the native one was. When I heard Sabotage and the Minions trailer I was like

okay. I see where we are. Yeah. And they just appeared in another animated film that I watched. I can't remember what it was. But I think there have been

four or five drops already this year. The hmm I don't I don't mean to keep I don't think I have been knocking Captain Marvel drops already this year. I don't mean to keep... I don't think I have been knocking Captain Marvel. That's actually a movie I quite like.

But the no doubt just a girl needle drop in that movie is when I think one of the most offensive needle drops that's ever existed in all of cinema. So like... I have a lot of strong thoughts about that. Actually, this movie is an interesting follow-up to that. I wrote a column about the kind of 90s-ification,

the sort of like grave robbing of our youth culture that Captain Marvel participated in that I found pretty lame, honestly. But this movie is an interesting,

it's also guilty of some of that. I think it's also guilty of, like Radiohead's Creep, I like that song a lot, it's pretty obvious, Joe. Pretty obvious. It's deeply obvious.

It's so obvious. I think it's just the way that they use Bradley Cooper in that. Like that's what sells it. Yes. You know, I was terrified for our pal Mallory Rubin to see this movie because it is a kind of animal lover's nightmare. I also don't know if this is for kids. You're a dad. I know you're not taking your baby to the movie, but like this is so upsetting for children.

Like the whole Marvel ethos for so long has been like these movies are four quadrant movies. They're for everyone you know and and uh nick pisolato uh auteur nick pisolato just announced that you know blade's definitely going to be in our movie and so um hold on let's just go back for one second mia goth delroy lindo maher shalali and nick pisolato chris ryan and i will be arm and arm on opening night i just want to put that out there for you i'm so happy for you guys. Great. So I have a lot of questions,

but I'm thrilled for you. The weird thing about that is the first blade movie is fucking awesome. So I'm not, it kind of falls into the, like, I'm not sure I need a blade movie thing, but nevertheless, I will go see it,

obviously. But yeah, that's going to be in our movie. And I think Deadpool three is going to be some, you know, and so this is PG 13. Deadpool 3 is going to be something, you know. And so. Is this PG-13, this film? It's a hard PG-13.

It is. Yeah, you mentioned the F-bomb. Yeah, just the one F-bomb. Yeah, it's a hard PG-13. I just don't, like, again, I'm not usually like a pro-clutcher and I'm not a parent. So, like, my, you know, radar for this sort of thing is probably off. But I don't think I would take a get to see this movie. The animal cruelty stuff alone is just, you know, really upsetting.

I mean, the amount of seven, eight, nine-year-olds who love Spider-Man movies wanting to go see this. And, you know, Guardians, the characters are very cute. Rocket is very cute. Groot is very cute. These are kind of merchandising icons. My little sister Grace visited me, I want to say, eight years ago. When did Guardians 2 come out? Was that 17?

2017. So six years ago. So she was probably 13 at that time. And we went on the Guardians ride, which had once been, I think, Tower of Terror at Disneyland. Yes. And has since been converted to the Guardians kind of elevator ride. And when we got off the ride, when you get downstairs, there's this sort of merchandising den. You know, there's this room full of things to buy and many soundtracks on sale.

But I definitely remember buying her at least one Groot plushie. And that's the audience of these movies. So when you see this movie and the, you know, it's obviously a strong theme of kind of animal cruelty and kind of bioterrorism and genome fracturing and, you know, messing with the natural form of all life forms. It's really intense, violent, scary, traumatizing. I would not show the movie to a seven-year-old there's like multiple cronenbergian like body horror moments and this you know like like not just like his pals which are like you know walking talking wheeling body horror but like the moments taken directly from the fly like in those fly like chambers like this is upsetting yeah uh. As far as I know,

Mallory Rubin left some permanent like grip marks on our pal Steve Allman's arm when she watched this movie, but she made it through. Yeah, for sure. Where should we wrap this conversation? What like, this is good for Marvel.

The guardians three is good and it's going to be a big success. I, here's what I think. I think of secret invasion. She's coming out the end of june not too long from now which they are hoping is there and or i have heard if that's good then i think you know this will we're back on track yeah we'll reflect well on them and if the marvels which has been massively delayed and they're doing a bunch of reshoots and stuff like

that which is typical for Marvel. It's not an example of an emergency, but it's an example of them wanting to make sure that they get it right. If those things are good, like, yeah, we're back, baby. Right? And there are properties coming. There's like a Daredevil TV show. You know, there's like heroes that we are invested in that are coming that people are excited about. There's Fantastic Four.

There's X-Men. There's Deadpool. You know, like blah, blah, blah. Who falls under the X-Men umbrella? Don't get mad at me. But if Secret Invasion isn't good and the Marvels isn't good, et cetera, et cetera, then this just looks like a James Gunn success rather than a Marvel Studios success, I think. I just want to remind the listener here. I may have read this list once before but the cast of secret invasion includes sam samuel jackson of course is nick fury ben

mendelsohn returning as a scroll kobe smulders back in the mix agent of shield kingsley benedir fantastic actor emilia clark perhaps you've heard of her joanna olivia coleman don cheagle Joanna Olivia Coleman Don Cheagle yeah and Martin Freeman so that's good that is great you know and the trailer looks good but a lot of trailers look good so who knows but you know I like and it's a short season um it's a true mini-series oh which is again good news because I think a lot of those Disney plus shows really just sort of started to decline in the back half so make it short make it strong let you know Amelia and Olivia and all the rest of them cook and uh we'll have a great time but I I mean I really enjoyed Guardians I thought it was going to be good I didn't think I would feel quite as much as I did watching it and that's

a good thing we love to feel at the movies. So here we go. A little bit of gunology here now. So he's going on to run with Peter Safran DC. He's made one DC film and one DC series. This movie is going to be a success. I'm not sure if it's going to be a mega success, but I think it will be looked upon fondly. It certainly sounds like he's making a Superman movie,

which is bold. And I would say pretty risky. It's just not who I would pick to make a Superman movie, personally. Agreed. Now, I think all of the reasons why I thought he was such an inspired choice for Guardians and for Marvel, I think Marvel and DC, of course, have very different modes of storytelling and different iconography and different personas in their characters. I'm going to assume that Gunn is going to make an effort

to gunify a lot of these DC characters to kind of bring some of that sincerity and sappiness, but also some of that kind of violent outsider, anti-authoritarian, kind of, you know, punk rock, for lack of a better phrase, ethos to this world. Now, this is a, Batman fits the bill there, but every other dc character is kind of conservative in their construction and kind of old-fashioned

and i'm really curious to see how he infects this world because it doesn't really feel like a fit even though i was actually quite fond of his suicide squad Squad movie. Yeah, but Suicide Squad's a perfect fit for him. Like, that's lock and key. Superman, I'm baffled by this decision. It feels a little like, okay, I have keys to the kingdom. I'm going to take, like, the top prize, which I can't begrudge him necessarily. But, like, after, with love and respect to Henry Cavill, after Snyder's take on Superman, which was so far and away from what I like in Superman I was really hoping for a Superman that felt like uh like the the point of Superman is that he is kind of uncool and that he's nice and all that sort of stuff and that doesn't seem like something a story James Gunn would be interested in but

I'm I'll be thrilled if he proves me wrong. And maybe he'll just try to build his weird world around a Superman that we recognize. I would just like to see a Superman that I definitely recognize. Putting you on the spot, but who's your dream Superman writer-director? Oh my God.

I, do you have an answer for this? Oh, actually, okay, I have an answer, but what's your answer? Noel Baumbach. Wow, that's the most fantasy answer you could possibly give. I love that. Well, I mean, what? He's an angsty New Yorker who's just trying to fit in,

even though he's different from everyone else. Even though he has incredible powers, he just wants to be normal. Why don't we weaponize the blockbuster power, the cheesy, corny, dopey, waving, like feels of waving green power of Steven Spielberg and give us a Steven

Spielberg Superman. You know, you've got to imagine he's circled that, right? I mean, he must have because it's an outsider story. It's a feeling of displacement. All these themes we saw in The Fableman

so beautifully in all of his films it's about the fracturing family it's about finding love and being confused by it can you hear the horns and see the golden light nuclear anxiety

yeah and aliens I mean he fucking loves aliens yes where is the Steven Spielberg Superman movie Joanna what the hell

it's a great call where is it thank you let's make it okay I'll call Steven Joanna thank you for doing this thanks for being here I'm glad that we both like this movie Spielberg Superman movie, Joanna. What the hell? It's a great call. Where is it? Thank you. Let's make it. Okay. I'll call Steven. Joanna, thank you for doing this.

Thanks for being here. I'm glad that we both like this movie. What a relief. Yeah. And I'm glad that, you know, you spared Amanda from it entirely. What a kind thing to do. We'll talk about it on Monday. Don't worry. I'm making her see it.

I mean, Amanda notoriously hates the Guardians films. So I thought as an opening shot, especially for a movie that I liked a lot, let's just, let's have a warm, frankly, I was more interested in talking about Marvel with you, but that's a whole other story. Hey, we're doing succession pods together, which has been so much fun with Bill Simmons.

This season is just rocking and rolling. We've already seen seven and we're not going to say a goddamn thing about it to the listeners of this pod right now. What else are you doing? Oh, well, I will be talking about this movie at length with Mallory Rubin on Monday. We also did, as you already alluded to,

a really lengthy Ring of Earth podcast about magical weapons, which was very cool and fun. Mallory and I are also covering Yellow Jackets over on the Prestige feed. And also speaking of soundtracks, the Trial by Content podcast that I do in honor of Guardians. This last week we did Trilogy Cappers, the best Trilogy Cappers. And this week we're doing best movie soundtracks.

Wait, what won the poll for Trilogy Cappers? It is not. We are speaking in the past. It has not gone yet. But, you know, what would you vote for? What would be your best trilogy capper? In the poll, I'll tell you what the four in the poll are. I mean, Return of the King, right?

It has to be Return of the King. It's Return of the King versus Return of the Jedi versus Last Crusade versus Logan is sort of an interesting. Oh, Logan. Yeah, it's the capper of a Wolverine trilogy. Oh, I love that idea. Yeah. This is the episode that went up today? Yeah.

Shit. Logan is a great call. I mean, Return of the King is obviously the answer, despite having nine endings. Or is it Return of the Jedi, which was my suggestion? Who could say? I don't know if you heard the podcast in which Amanda revealed that she had not seen Return of the Jedi, but the listeners of the podcast are outraged. She then thinks she did actually see it or whatever, but I don't think she has.

And it's 40th anniversary, and it's in theaters right now. Exactly. I think she would like it. You don't think she has and it's 40th anniversary and it's in theaters right now exactly i think she would like it you don't think she's a great film it's return of the jedi yeah there's some great films that amanda wouldn't like but this is a great film that i think amanda would like you know i agree i don't think amanda admitting that would stand up in court given the events of the rest of that podcast which were just absolutely deranged. Has Amanda seen it? Court sessions, though, is a good idea for a podcast. So I'm going to file that away. I love that.

Joanna, thanks so much. Great to see you. Can we order your book now? If you go to themcubook.com, it'll take you to an ordering page. And yes, I would be delighted if you were to order my book now. Fabulous.

I'm going to go do that right now. Thanks to Joanna. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner. You just heard his voice for his stellar work on this show. Next week on The Big Picture, as I said, Amanda will go see

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and we will ask her what she thought of it. And I think we're going to have a mailbag as well. Not going on in Hollywood that we haven't had a chance to dig into yet.

So send us your questions. Really anything you want to know. We'll answer them. We'll see you then.