The Big Picture - The Comic Book Movie Death Rattle and ‘Supergirl.’ Plus: ‘Jackass: Best and Last’ Goes Out With a Bang.

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Sean and Amanda open the show by covering myriad movie news headlines, including the status of Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Artifical’, new footage released of Tom Cruise in his highly anticipated film, ���Digger,’ and the Academy inviting 529 members, including Jacob Elordi, Teyana Taylor, Josh O’Connor, and more. Then, Sean and Amanda use the new DC film, ‘Supergirl,' which they found creatively and technically empty, as a springboard to have a wide-ranging conversation about the decline in importance of  superhero movie culture. Finally, Chris Ryan joins the show to discuss the (potentially) final film of the ‘Jackass’ franchise: ‘Jackass: Best and Last’, a movie they all thoroughly enjoyed. (0:00) Intro (0:49) Movie news (23:42) ‘Supergirl’ (45:12) What was the superhero movie era? (1:03:23) ‘Jackass: Best and Last’ with Chris Ryan Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan®️. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there®️. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture A Conversation Show about two new movies, both signifying the end of something beautiful and painful. The first is Supergirl, the first superhero comic book movie in nearly a calendar year and the second feature from James Guns, D.C. Studios. The second is Jackass Best and Last. It is allegedly the final installment in the decades-spanning five films self-harm extravaganza, which Chris Ryan is going to join us to discuss, thankfully. But first, let's get into some movie news right after this. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do?

Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-214. Please play responsibly.

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news has been transpiring. Do you feel ready to break down each and every component of this news? Most of it, yes. Okay. Let's start with the debut. This is one of the only movies that we did not mention when we had our little side text chain about potential Oscar contenders last week. We didn't know the title of the movie. We didn't know when it was going to come out. But it has been on the slate for A-24 for a long time. It's Jesse Eisenberg's new movie as writer-director. He has also written the words and music to this alleged musical, sort of a musical. It stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. We have a trailer. You know, as I recall, Jesse's previous film, not your favorite movie of that year. That's not fair. I liked it. And I even liked Kieran Kulkin's

performance. Oscar winning. And once we decided in like July that he was going to be the Oscar winner, I think it was actually a teller ride, but it was at least. least six months in advance, and he steamrolled through the season, I just, I didn't think it reached that level. And I was also annoyed with the lack of interrogation of that decision. But I like Jesse Eisenberg. I liked the movie. Okay.

Cool. I like everyone involved with this movie, Julianne Moore, Paul Giumani. Nervous about singing. You know, that's a blanket situation for me. Okay. I don't like it when people sing. You know, Paul Jimani doesn't have an Oscar. That's true.

because you and I denied him one for the holdovers. It was us personally. That wasn't. I claimed no responsibility for that. You know, I do like Jesse's last movie quite a bit. This movie looks interesting. You know, there's a very famous episode of The Simpsons in which Marge joins a local theater production of, I believe, a streetcar named Desire.

I think the name of the episode is a streetcar named Marge. And this movie's plot looks eerily similar to that episode of the show. Well, in which Julianne Moore plays... a middle-aged woman who discovers her soul and creativity in a local theatrical playhouse. And that's funny because, you know, obsession was also inspired by a Simpsons episode. And I feel like this is going to keep happening. So the Simpsons, the well runs deep. We have all come of age.

People who grew up with The Simpsons both like interpreting and regurgitating old culture and then inspiring new culture are now being given like small to medium-sized budgets. Yeah, yeah. This looks like a nicely mounted film. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. It's coming this fall, and I suspect will be at some of the film festivals. Right. This feels like a tell you ride movie to me.

Does it not? Absolutely. Okay. That's just the guess. That's exciting for you in the mountains, some musical singing. Julianne Moore hanging out. Julianne Moore seated like fourth row, third row at the Knicks games. Yeah, well, a long time Knicks fan.

Exactly. But once again, there were certain individuals. who will not be named, who displaced her to the third or fourth row, but she was there with dignity and with purpose. But what we really are respect about her is in 2017 when things were bad, bad, bad. She was in the front first row with her husband in like game 48 against the Hornets. And, you know, she was showing out. So she earned this title as well.

I'm a little mad that she didn't get courtside for the moments of actual glory. But, you know. Let's get her court side at the Academy Awards. What I say? Okay, next thing. Artificial. Status. Status check.

This is a film that does not have a distributor. It has a director. It has a cast. It has a completed scenario. Right. It's a movie about Sam Altman. We talked about it last week. As of June 21st, Netflix, A24, and Focus reportedly passed.

Mooby is reportedly pursuing and neon is also possibly circling. Is this movie going to come out? Gut check. I Yes That's not a very confident Yes I mean

They're releasing the The Looney Tunes movie now right? Yes they are Coyote versus Acme But they never released Batgirl Right They never really Batgirl yes

Was deleted from the hard drives So I'm trying to think of other Recent instances Now those were both Like tax justification Quote unquote tax Justifications I believe that's the case

For Warner Brothers of that it was cheaper to do a write-off, given their various debt restructuring. Who can even know what's going on at Warner Brothers, which is something we will discuss later in this episode. But so this is different because this is content. And as we discussed, I don't remember at this point when that episode was last week. Several years ago. It's really about who is not compromised enough by big tech money to take. this on. And we went through the list and we knew that, you know, Netflix, Disney,

um, Warner Brothers, Paramount, whatever's going on there. We're never going to compete. We didn't think that Universal would be in the mix because they don't take on this type of controversy. A-24, we had some wobblings about. Then would you like to move to the next? It's just amazingly well-timed information that Google invested $75 million into A-24 and it's to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools. Now, they went to Great Paines to communicate that this was separate and distinct from their film library and their film content, and this would not be a generative AI filmmaking structure. However, you know, there's optics here about that, and people seem a little bit mad. Right.

Anytime AI is associated with the film business or any creative arts, people are going to get mad. And this kind of association, in addition to, you know, thrive capital being a major investor. Exactly. And also in A-24. Yes. It was 2024, I believe. Yes. So, you know, all of those relationships, I think, make all that a little bit dicey. And so, yeah, I mean, Luca, he might just find himself without a chair in this game of musical chairs. It's possible. This does happen. Sometimes these movies just go away.

And, you know... It does. But it does also seem like such an opportunity for some upstart or someone. You have Luca, you have Andrew Garfield. Those are big names. You have that this is a very negative movie about Sam Altman at AI at a time where there are many people who seem ready to receive that. Yeah. And now you have the controversy of, as we said, the movie they don't want you to see. Yeah.

So the question is if there is anyone left related to the movies or anyone left in a distribution capacity who is untouched by, and not just AI, but really tech at this point. because big tech has put so much of its money into, like, making AI happen. And yes, that was a mean girls fetch reference. So I don't know. I mean, like, it would be really fun if someone gets creative. It does feel a little bit like we're going to make, you know, someone live stream it, like Rob Mahoney on his Instagram. But I don't know.

I would crowd fun for that. It's tricky because it's obviously an expensive movie. It's a big budget Hollywood. drama, you know, it's not a small indie. And so 10 or 15 years ago, this sort of thing, when this sort of thing would happen, movies could more quickly find homes because in addition to the fact that I think some of the kind of like shingles inside of the majors were more adventurous in terms of the kind of movies that they would put out, there were some more small companies, small distributors that would be able to take on a movie like this.

Catchup Entertainment is taking on Coyote versus Acme. You know, it's a very thin pool. Even a bunch of the new studios, you know, Roe K, Black Bear, a bunch of the distributors who kind of emerged in the last 12 months, it's proved a little challenging for them to really gain a foothold. And so taking on tens of millions of dollars investment in a movie like this, I mean, I'm sure Amazon will eat some of the production cost to give the movie away. I don't really know how all of that necessarily works, but it does remind me a little bit of the state of the Mets roster where we've just got a lot of guys who are making a lot of money and we just need other teams to just take those guys away from us forever. And so I don't have to

think about them anymore. And one of the only ways you can get people to to do that is to pay down some of the salaries. And this might be a similar situation where to get this movie off the books. Right. You might just have to pay down some of that budget. I mean, that seems incredibly likely. I assume that anyone who does take this movie will get a discount. As Matt Bellany put it on his episode. I've just been Googling

the various investors in Mooby and Neon. That's your famously Sequoia Capital. Exactly. Which is a major investor. or not a major investor, no one sent me the, you know, deal sheets. But it's in AI, in OpenAI specifically. So that's tricky. Yep. And then I'm looking because Neon recently got an infusion of capital.

That was through, well, reportedly through Department M, which is a production company. But where their money is rooted is unknown specifically. And that's the thing. Like you said, all of these places are compromised in one way or another. You know, if we're being really honest, every movie studio forever has been compromised by where their money comes from. You know, the great wealth that engenders artistic opportunity. Very rarely comes from, you know, charitable organizations.

That's not how this works. Yeah, a paramount of Gulf and Western company. Like, we all know. Yeah, this one is extremely challenging because it's the subject matter of the film is rooted in the origins of the money. And so, you know, it's just, it's a fascinating story. A Fascinating Test Case. In addition to the fact that it's a director who we really like, and so we really want to see the movie. And who needs to win?

He does need to win. I mean, that's not really fair. Challengers was like two years ago. But if you're only as good as your last movie. Yeah, queer and after the hunt, neither went over super well. So we'll see what happens. We'll keep checking in on this. Sense and Sensibility.

The new retelling of the famed novel. It's not a retelling. It's just the last retelling. New adaptation. Latest adaptation. Reboot. Yeah. It's a reboot.

It's a prequel. It's just like, Austin is like Shakespeare. People are just doing interpretations of the cortex over and over again. Trailer came out. Yeah. You say what? Well, this we saw in Vegas at CinemaCon. I just have to claim like a personal, what's it called in golf where you take a penalty or you take a mulligan?

A mulligan. Okay. Yeah. You have to take a mullion on the film? Yeah, or I don't know. I don't know if that's the right sports comparison, but I'm too close. I'm too close to the 95 version, which is not to say that anyone can't do this. Let's use Chris Ryan's golf game as a way to portal into this metaphor.

It's what everyone was hoping for when we talked about a Jane Austen adaptation. Chris lines himself up on the first tee of the golf course. Yes. He pulls out driver. Uh-huh. He looks down the fairway. Yeah. He gets his mind clear.

He bees the ball. Takes a big old whack. Yes. First swing of the day. Shanks it far right, right into a tree. Okay. Hits the tree, bounces all the way back at him. In the parlance of golf, he can take a mulligan.

That first shot doesn't count. Okay. He takes the second shot. He pipes one right down the fairway, and he's off and running, and he's going to have the game of his life, the round of his life. Okay. So is that what you're saying you're going to do here? I think that my opinion probably shouldn't count. Oh, wow.

Like, I think that I am just... What a joy to hear that out loud. I am just in this one case, and maybe you could learn for me as we talk about all the rest of the world of cinema, which is catered to your interest. No thanks. But this one's catered to mine, and I'm too close. I am too close to the Emmet Thompson in 1995. I've seen it too many times. I have...

Like, it's my comfort film. I put it on when we had to stay up until... Had to. But the can ticketing system was such that with time zones, we needed to stay up until midnight a lot of nights in order to be able to get tickets, which for me at my phase of life is difficult. Put on sensibility one night just to hang out. And that was the 1995 version. So I don't know how to respond to this. I can't respond to this.

I would say that Daisy Edgar Jones does not bring the same things to cinema that Emma Thompson. does to me. Okay. But Emma Thompson's version was also an adaptation. So I'm not trying to keep people away from this. I just have one truth. And that truth is Angley's 1995 sense and sensibility. Okay.

Thank you. This new version is directed by Georgia Oakley. As you mentioned, Daisy Edgar Jones, George Mackay, Katrina Balf, Frank Delane. Good cast. We'll see. Yeah. What if I love it a lot more than the Angley version? Then what happens?

I don't know. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Okay. Timothy Shalamee and Selena Gomez are going to star in an animated alien movie. Okay. Cool. I don't know. Get that check. Of all the ways that Timothy Shalame has been getting checks in the last three months. I have fewer problems with this. We need to get some of the Timothy Shalemay money to Mitchell Robinson to keep the Knicks together next season. Do you think we can make that happen?

So that's attention? That's a issue. Yeah. Yeah. He's a free agent. We need Mitch back. And who's the problem there? Is it Dolan? The problem is the collective bargaining agreement of the National Basketball Association. Okay.

Which if you exceed the second apron, enter the second apron financially, there's dramatic penalties involved. And we're trying to avoid that. Okay. Trying to maintain flexibility and keep the penalties. You go to the dunk tank. Okay. No, you're disallowed for making certain kinds of trade. No.

No. I've thrown a ball at a target and put someone in a dunk tank, but I've never sat in the chair. We should figure out a way to bring a dunk take into the big picture in 2027. That's one of my goals. Will you sit? Sure. Okay. I like water.

Let's put a pin in that. This movie's coming from Illumination. Okay. Timmy, it's coming in April 2027, which is very soon. Yes. And this will come on the heels of his Oscar win for Dune Part 3, no? Yeah, totally. One month later?

Who is best actor right now? It is, it's June? Is it June right now? Are we recording for June or July? Where am I? We don't know. No, this is the June 26th episode. It's June.

So we're at that six-month mark. All right. Who's best? I mean, it's Ryan Gosling and Project Tell Mary. I mean, nomination, yes. Is there anyone else on the board? And is Sebastian Stan from Fjord? I think that's in play.

Yeah, that seems impossible. Not a lot else that we've seen out there. Do we think that Jeremy Strong is going to run in Best Actor or Supporting? It feels like supporting. Yeah. Feels like the A story is Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison and Social Reckoning. Okay. And then obviously, of course, Jeremy Allen White is the large hut.

Yeah, road to the hut. Yeah. Rod of the hut. Right. Stinky. Stinky, yeah. But, you know, also jacked. Did you see the Bear season four yet?

It's out? Yeah, it came out yesterday in full. No, and also they made a new season of the agency starring Michael Fastbender. Yes, and they dumped that all in one shot as well, just like the bear. I don't know. I haven't seen any TV in six months, but I'm going to get into it. All right, turn it back around. Let's come back to binging streaming TV because that's related to some of what I want to talk about with Supergirl.

You know who best actor is. Sure. Yeah, here we go. It's Tom Cruise. That's right. We segue it ourselves. Digger footage was released this week, as was a clip reel of some. highlights from Tom Cruise's career, which was then, I'm sure, very organically shared by several dozen notable people on social media, including our boy, Glenn Powell, JJ Abrams.

Michael Mann noted how excited he is about the film Digger online. Okay. Obviously, just watching Tom Cruise be entertaining in a clip reel. That's just something I like. I can't pretend I don't want to just watch highlights of Tom maniacally smiling and delivering dialogue. I love that. There's very little digger in this compilation that was circulated. It's a three-and-a-half-minute video,

maybe 20 seconds of digger. Do you think they're hiding this for some reason? The digger footage? Yeah, because the film's coming out in three months. I don't know. I don't know. Hiding is what I would use. I'm sure that they have a very carefully calibrated release schedule

of when they think they want to put this stuff out. And because, as we know from the poster, Digger is a comedy. Yeah, it includes some of the jokes. We've seen footage from Bigger's. They did show a Twits at CinemaCon. A big extended trailer we saw. So with a trailer for a comedy, you end up putting a lot of the jokes and the setup in the comedy. So maybe they think they can just sell Tom Cruise instead of having to sell this movie.

I mean, I think that's probably wise. I think that's what they're doing. Yeah. So do they need to put it out? that soon. I don't think so. It's really interesting because you know, I liked what we saw. And I'm not, as you know, not the biggest

Noreatu fan, been really cold on him for the last 15 years. I do think that there's a lot of like straining in the marketing and everything around it. But I love a strange love and over the top satire that has big scale and a big performance. Like, I'm kind of, I'm into that.

I'm into the idea of this movie. And they're not really, as you say, selling the movie. There's plenty of time. A trailer can come out in three days and, you know, we can dispense with this conversation. But I found it interesting that they were basically like, also there's a movie coming out. Like, you love Tom Cruise and that's the most important part of this marketing campaign. Well, I mean, I think it's savvy because of the footage we saw what I responded to most was Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise stuff. And I'm a little more nervous about the innery, too, of it all, even in what we saw.

Because, sure, in concept, you know, a big concept, big. big-ish budget. Yeah. Apocalyptic comedy. I'm interested, but, you know, who's doing it? Yeah. But the other half of it is who is doing it is Tom Cruise. And, yeah, I, you know, lit up as soon as he was on the screen because he has a movie

start-up. So they, big guess, marketing-wise, they know what they're doing. It's so funny because, you know, in that clip reel, too, there's plenty of movies that don't really have a lot of cultural weight, you know, like rock-of-es-es-reel-reel-react. you know, like Rock of Ages is featured in that clip reel. Like that's not, that's not a movie anybody really cares about and is not one that's, you know, he gives an amusing performance in that movie,

but it's a blip in his career. So it's interesting the way that they kind of pick and chose how to highlight his magnetism as a movie star. You know, obviously we'll be very digger forward in the month of October. So we'll circle back. Film Academy, Ampice invited 529 new members.

Okay. Including some of your goats, Jacob Allorty, for example, the Saftees, my boy Zach Kregor, whose barbarian was announced on 4-case steelbook. What? Congratulations. We did it. Disney somehow decided that this would be a good idea. Thank you to them.

Tiana Taylor invited, Jenna Ortega, Joshua Connor, John Bernthall. He's going to say John Bernthal. Many other people invited, you know, yet another year in which hundreds more people are joining the Academy and we're getting, I think we're over 11,000 now. And a lot of young people added to the mix here. Some names that I was surprised were not previously in the mix. And so we'll see how that affects voting for Tom Cruise in nine months. I'm excited for Josh O'Connor.

Yeah, sure. He needs a win. I would love, hey, hey, that's mean. I agree that people didn't, were not as kind to him as they should have been. It was the role. He wasn't him. Yeah. He wasn't supported.

And he was wonderful on the press store. So I love to know how much of his time. I would love to see his voting process. They should open up his ballot and just follow him around. And then he's gardening. And then being like, I guess I'll watch this short film. He strikes me as a man with very good taste. Amazing taste.

But also like maybe not fluent with this like the streaming interface. Oh, interesting. You think of him as like kind of an older. gentleman. He doesn't know what TikTok is or he didn't for many years. But neither do I. I mean, what does that mean? Right. No, but I think he literally like didn't know what TikTok was. Someone asked him, will you do a TikTok with me? And he said, I don't know what that is. That must be such a great way to be alive. I completely agree. And he's got great clothes and a little earring. I'm going to start fantasizing about that. Okay. One last piece of news. The Blair Witch movie reboot lands a 2027 release.

Now, this new movie, which features producers and stars from the original film and will be associated with the original film. some ways, but has a completely new filmmaker. I know it's been in the works for a long time, but it feels very responsive to the moment in horror that we are having with a young filmmaker with a lot of YouTube experience and leveraging some history to make something new. And also trying to recreate a generational phenomenon in the horror genre. You know, watching back rooms, I think many of us thought, okay, so this is Blair Witch for young people.

Yes. And Blair Witch was Blair Witch for me, and it was very powerful. You cannot reheat a souffle, but, you know, try and make some money. It's a tall order because, you know, they've tried with this movie before. Adam Wingard had a remake or sort of like a reboot circa 2017, I think. Obviously, Blair Witch, too, Book of Shadows went down in the annals of terrible movie sequels. But the original Blair Witch, there's something special in the... there's still a chemical association with a feeling of that movie.

So I look forward to seeing what they do with it. That is coming out next fall, I want to say. Speaking of chemical associations, would you like to talk about Supergirl? I'd love to. Can I please foreground this conversation in a blanket statement? Wonderful, yes. It's not directed to you. It's directed to the listeners at home.

Sure. the sweeping declarations that I am perhaps too fond of making are going to come with like context I know that the Spider-Man movie comes out in one month and I know that Avengers Doomsday comes out in December and that in all likelihood those movies will be very big I look forward to both of them Spider-Man more than Avengers but I honestly look forward to the Avengers movies

I do think that this conversation that we're about to have, though, is in part about something ending. It doesn't mean it's the end of superhero movies or comic book movies, but the era in which they basically dominated our adult lives feels like it's wrapped up. And it doesn't mean that something new can't start. It doesn't mean that there won't be movies like this again. There will be.

There'll be a lot of movies like this, because movies like this can make a lot of money, especially if they're done well. but I felt like a like a certainty, like a calm actually when this movie ended where I was like, all right, the ability to do this specific thing, which we will get into in one second, I promise you,

does feel now ended. And I'm trying to be sort of measured and dramatic at the same time when I say this because I've spent a lot of time talking about these movies for the last 10 years and you've watched me twist myself in, knots about their relevance, their power, their loss of power, you know, what they mean to the box office, what they mean to creativity, how movie stars were sidelined for years playing with these

projects, what it meant for generations of filmmakers who got shuttled into these stories. You've heard it all for me. Mm-hmm. You know, you've mostly sat patiently. Sometimes you've winged about it. Sometimes you've enjoyed it. I've seen all the movies. Yep.

I've been sort of on the other half of that conversation. And I think that I care or not even that I, I mean, I do care less, but I'm less interested in the subject matter, which gives me more distance, I think, than you have to talk about it, which just makes me, you know, a different perspective than yours. But I agree with you. You know, it honestly, it just feels like I have to spend less time on this. And that makes me happy. But there was a time when doing this job. it was so central to the culture of movies and to the culture around movies, which are symbiotic, but different things, that I just had to consume it and know about it.

And at this point, and with this movie, we went to the screening. We had a drink. Like, then we went home. We're going to podcast about it. And then we never have to talk about it again. And they live within their container, which I think is a hell. healthy way to consume entertainment. And to me, this is a little bit of the undoing of the superhero fan culture or the mainstreaming of that, the throttle that that has on the way we consume

and talk about entertainment. That's it. And to be totally fair, to be totally clear, I have always objected way more to the fandomification of movies and our universe than I have to the movies themselves. Some of them are not very good. And some of them I enjoyed. Like, I can turn my brain off and be stupid and watch people fly around. So I'm, yes, I'm happy and I'm happy to hear you say that. But this isn't like a victory dance. And I can hear you anticipating all of the discourse and the people yelling. And many of those so-called fans sharing their opinions. And you guys can do that. Well, they've been in a... in a defensive crouch for two or three years because they feel it's slipping through their fingers.

And I think they will very understandably say, well, there have always been bad comic book movies. This isn't really supergirl's fault. It's more just a moment of kind of finality. And let's use it to get into the movie because then we can kind of circle back to some of the grand eloquent theorizing around it. This movie is directed by Craig Gillespie, who has directed many movies over the last 20 years, including Dumb Money, Cruella with Emma Stone. the Oscar-winning I. Tanya, Lars and the Real Girl. It stars Millie Alcock, probably best known for House of the Dragon as Supergirl, Mattias Schoenarts, Eve Ridley, Emily Beecham, David Cromholtz, David Cornswet, returning as Superman, and Jason Momoa, who returns to the DC universe, not as Aquaman, but as Lobo, who is a character that you now know about. No, I've known about him for some time, because you and Chris have said Lobo for about a year and half. And so when he showed up on the screen, I had a real. once upon a time in Hollywood moment,

just being like, lobo! Lobo is in the movie. Here's the story. Kara Zor-L. A.k.a. Supergirl joins forces with an unlikely companion on an interstellar journey of vengeance and justice when an unexpected adversary strikes too close to home.

If that sounds vague, it's because the movie is very vague. This is an attempt by the James Gunn DC universe to not just add a layer to the super man story that he started last year with his version of that film. But to build a bench, you know, to tell more stories with new characters in this world. And it's a very old-fashioned version of that. It feels like a Marvel movie from 2014, where you've got a new character who maybe was teased in a previous film, but we didn't really learn much about them.

And we need to send them on an adventure. And in the course of that adventure, we will learn a lot about what happens. into them and why they are the way that they are and why they are on a mission to ultimately become heroic. They are reluctant at first but they will eventually get on board with... Right, and we will physically get them back to the main stage and the main

characters so that they can join the team. Yes. This is a very tropey adventure story structure and it's very unsuccessful. It's unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. Let's identify some of them. I can give you two.

Fire away. Well, I mean, I think there are two problems. And one, you've identified that it is so tropey and formulaic, while also unspecific. And so the places, the villains, the side heroes who are actually secretly the main heroes, come out of nowhere, have no backstory, have no development. And so you're just not invested in either Supergirl or, in any of these people.

It just doesn't do the fundamental thing of making you invested in the story or it didn't do that for me. Maybe some people will but I'm coming in as a blank slate

don't know a lot about Supergirl. I think I turned to you about 20 minutes in and I said, what's her damage? And I think for these movies to be successful

as movies, they do have to separate themselves from the homework and the lore and be able to create like a basic on-ramp for you to be invested in the stakes. And this just doesn't really do that. It's not that interesting.

And then it is also just on a practical, technical, filmmaking level, hot garbage. Yeah, it's really not good. Yeah, like looks very bad, very groaning script. There was a music cue where I almost, you know, slid under my seat. But also like a music cue that is supposed to communicate to you, a sense of triumph and all the themes of the movie.

So I would say it's both creatively and technically empty. Yeah, it's the brownest movie of the year. It takes place on a series of nondescript desertish planets. We don't really have a sense of the geography of the story. We know it's intergalactic in some way, but we don't really feel like we know how far from Earth Cara is or why, you know, she's, it's her birthday week. The film takes place during her birthday week.

You know, I think she probably acts the way that you act during your week, you know, just getting shithoused, going to bars, pub crawling. And we know it's her birthday week because of the elegant expositional storytelling of David Kourdeswet as Superman, FaceTiming her or Zoom calling her. I'm not really sure what the technology is on unnamed planet. Videophone. Sure, videophone ink. And honestly, they didn't even, they just, they put him on like a Sears photo drop to videophone her.

they didn't even like make it at his home. I don't know where he is. I'm so confused. I mean, maybe he has Zoom backgrounds on his version of Skype, but he's just like, hey, it's your birthday.

Happy birthday. Yes. Cal L is, is Cara's cousin. And I guess they're close. Kara was some years behind Superman and her arrival to Earth. They weren't classmates in arriving to Earth to to realize there's,

superpowers together. And she's, you know, she is a little bit less interested in following the kind of dopey, sincere, but very powerful mission that Superman has. And one of the problems with the movie is that, like,

I think James Gunn really got Superman. Superman is like a hyper-sincere Boy Scout. And I think that that could be a very powerful tool in telling a story. And what's not that interesting to me is a character who's like, oh, so over it,

and burnt out and, you know, like sarcastic, like Gen X-E, like, oh, God, okay, guys, I guess I'll go kick your ass now. And we've seen that many times in superhero movies before. And this is just like, it just feels, and the thing is, like, it's not, again, not Supergirl's fault. Like, this is kind of based on Woman of Tomorrow with Tom King, a series about Supergirl. It's somewhat in keeping with that characterization. It's just, and people rave about that series. I haven't read it. But it's a movie we've seen.

You know, we've seen this over and over again and done better. And so it looking the way that it looks and it having this really rickety foundation where it feels like the movie's been kind of chopped up. And you can feel the places where the edits are moving quick. And we're trying to get to the next stage of the story because we don't have enough material to make this stage of the story coherent enough. And, you know, you could just kind of feel people in the screening squirming in their chair. a little bit. And that was notable for us at our screening because that was a captive audience

that we saw the movie with. It was one part press screening, one part fan screening, one part fan screening. I would say one part press screening, two parts press screening with also a baby. Yeah, two parts fan screening with plus a baby. Yes. Who was not interested in the movie. No. The baby needed to be walked around in a stroller during the screening. That was a choice. The baby kept going back and forth. Listen, sometimes parents do need this. It's hard to see movies when you have a baby, I don't blame the parents for that. I do have some questions for Warner Brothers and I got yelled at by a trivia person. But anyway. There was trivia. A lot of people wearing Supergirl T-shirts. Yes. So it was a home crowd

and it was pretty much silent. There was no laughter and definitely no cheering at moments of triumph. Possibly because there aren't really any moments of triumph? There are battle sequences in which Supergirl and Lobo and Ruthie emerge victorious, Ruthie E. Ridley's character who is the who plays a young woman who has witnessed her parents be murdered by Krem, who is the Mattiah Shonarts' villain figure. We have also witnessed that. We witness it as well in a flashback. And her brother. And her brother. And she is seeking revenge on him.

Simultaneously, Krem has also shot a poison dart into crypto, supergirl's dog's neck. threatening his life. Yeah. And so while Ruthie seeks vengeance for her family's death, a supergirl is seeking an antidote for the poison dart. I guess that's a plot of a movie. You know, it's a real thin gruel relative to even...

Superman, which I thought was real good. Like, I really enjoyed it. I was very charmed by it. And so you chose to go to the bathroom in an inopportune moment. I did. Which is, listen, life happens. But you went to the bathroom during the five minutes of the film when David Corencewet meets Supergirl and shows up as Superman. And he's there in person.

It is Supergirl Kara arriving on Earth and that kind of like Ice Winter Palace that we saw in Superman. The Fortress of Solitude. Yes. And because she has just come from Cryptonite? Krypton. Krypton. Right. Cryptonite is the element. Since she has just come from Krypton, she does not speak English. And this scene actually just does really give her the only character development that I responded to, which is that, you know, unlike Superman, she was born somewhere else. She had a life somewhere else.

So she's been put at this place. She can't communicate. She doesn't know anyone as opposed to Superman who has grown up and is an all-American boy as much as he is, you know, an alien with Superman. hours. So, but anyway, so she's there silent. And it's David Corenswet acting and speaking to her in English and talking to her and welcoming her and doing all his Superman stuff. And the movie just comes alive. He's really good as Superman. And it's really unfortunate that the best scene in the movie, Supergirl, is a movie

in which Supergirl does not speak. Yeah. And I don't think that it's really the fault of Millie Alcock. And I do understand why she was cast in this part as a kind of subversion of, the like, you know, Galgadot, like six foot tall Amazonian, like beautiful, long sweeping hair. Like, there's clearly a decision to kind of upend that expectation of what a female superhero should be. And her performance style is, like, kind of interesting and does feel a little bit unpolished. Where she is doing, she has kind of like, gosh, it's almost like all the characters from Heather's became one person, you know?

and where it's like a little biting but then a little soft. Yeah. And you can never really figure out when she's going to decide to be one or the other. I just don't think that the script serves her very well. No. I don't think the way the film is shot serves her very well. I think that she is checked out from the movie, which is probably 80% a performance choice and in the script,

but also thus hard to pull off because you are. trying to communicate this sarcastic, spiky, unlikable person, but also you have to be the hero of the movie. Yeah. So I don't think the script serves her. And then I did sort of wonder if maybe she became aware of the mess that was swirling around her at all time. Also, presumably, she's just on a green screen for large swaths of this. Yeah. The other thing is, like, this is a Craig Gillespie movie for better or worse.

And I think it's more usually for worse. And he's got a lot of stylistic habits that feel borrowed from better filmmakers and especially trying to deploy them in a movie like this is very obvious and uninteresting. James Gunn is somebody who uses needle drops really effectively. He has kind of made one of his signature components

as a filmmaker is having these kind of counteracting needle drops. He didn't invent that. A lot of filmmakers have been doing it for real, really long time. Martin Scorsese probably does it better than anybody. Craig Gillespie also apes a lot of stuff for Martin Scorsese. He tends to use slow motion. He tends to use these really diagrammatic camera movements

where there's a real like, oh, wow, quality that you're supposed to have while watching them. But they feel they're very rarely rooted in intention. They're just moves. Like, if you watch Cruella, it's the same thing. There's a lot of flashy stuff going on in Cruella, but it never really psychologizes the characters. It never really puts us in a place

where we feel like a deeper sense of understanding of what the world is. And in a world like this, which is just like junk trader Mad Max Fury Road, like low, low, low grade Fury Road, it's not elevating anything. It's not making us feel differently about the story that he's trying to tell. And so, you know, you can see why somebody like this gets this job, right? He's like a safe pair of hands. He's run a lot of big movie productions in the past. And so, you know, in theory, he'll be able to handle this $100 million superhero movie.

But it's just boring. Like, one, this is a lame complaint, but, like, not finding a woman to direct Supergirl is just weird. Like, it's just, it's 2026. Like, what are... I mean, I wanted to talk about this because you, you know, invoked Gagadat and Wonder Woman. But I was thinking through all of the standalone movies about a woman superhero. And across both Marvel and D.C., with the exception of the first Wonder Woman, which I was really delightful. By, even though...

Fun movie. And looks good and at least until the end and all of the slop. And is definitely helped by the Chris Pine supporting performance. But Fizzy. All of the standalone girl movies are not good and not well handled. And that's a real bummer. And I think that says something larger about the machines and also... Yeah.

And it's depressing. I think Black Widow is not bad. I think it has some things about it that are... cool. I didn't see it on a big screen and so it's a little, it's harder to judge that one particularly. The movie that this movie reminded me a lot of is Captain Marvel. The original Captain Marvel movie with Brie Larson.

And I can almost feel them Millie Alcock and Breerston giving somewhat similar performances or they almost don't know what movie they're in. And you know, that movie was directed by two filmmakers, one of whom was a woman, is a woman, but I think I'm not

trying to be some like progressive saber rattling about how like women need to direct more of these movies. It's more just like, for the perspective of the story, why is like a middle-aged British guy directing this movie? It's very strange. I mean, and that was not like my argument either that only a woman could have made those good. It's just that this is an entire, not even subculture of movies now, but an entire,

like the dominant culture of movies and they just have not figured out how to make successful, like women characters, both. Yeah. both by male or female directors. You know, it's an industry issue, not any individual director. This episode is brought to you by State Farm, upsizing to a large popcorn, smart move.

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I think there's also, you can see other components. A woman Anna Nogera did write the screenplay for this movie,

but there's a moment in the movie where Kara has been felled by Krem with Kryptonite, and the only way that she's saved before he cuts her head off is that Lobo shows up out of nowhere, And it's a real like, we're in the Supergirl movie. We shouldn't, just having Lobos save her and the climactic moment of the movie just feels like real retrograde stuff that I felt like we were past.

And I feel like James Gunn especially, like, knows better then. He's really smart about this stuff. Part of the reason why the Guardians movies are so good is because they feel kind of new. They feel like iterative of something from the past, but they feel like an elevation of that thing. So, you know, when I'm making these proclamations at the top of the episode

and trying to put context around them, it's because movies like this keep happening. You know, we keep getting Captain America Brave New World. We keep getting lousy movies. And this is a lousy movie. It's not good. And it's supposed to be a big summer tent pole. And we're coming off this wonderful 12 weeks of movie stuff going on.

And the projections for this movie are going down and down and down. The word of mouth is very bad. some very funny posts of reviews from influencers who are like, even I cannot tell you that this is good. And they hit them with an Inception 6 out of 10, you know? And it's like from an influencer, that's tough. Yeah. So, you know, I've been trying to process and think about what all this was.

I wrote about it in the newsletter this morning. I'm curious what you think it means. I have been drawing the comparisons to the big budget musicals and to the Westerns in the mid-20th century a lot where those were really the dominant forms, dominant genre forms in the movies for about 30 years, 35 years. And they kind of expired. And when they expired, the new Hollywood filled the vacuum where they broke it and they filled the vacuum. Yeah. And I do see this in a somewhat similar context.

I don't know if you think about it in that same way. Sure, in terms of it is a genre that like came to prominence at one. point in time and we've just been making tons of them and interpolating other genres into the genre and it's really a framework. So yeah, and certainly it's been dominant. To me, the influencers the influencers leaving you is kind of, it is very important because for a while superheroes and the superhero genre were too big to fail. But that required a participation of everyone, of the studios, throwing all of the money at it. And then the fans, all of the fans, all. also doing their work to keep it up.

And, you know, like, it was a group effort. And fascinating from like a, both an economic and cultural perspective. And I think what has, like, weirded me out so much about fandom culture is just how much it felt just like a gross capitalistic exchange, right? And all of these people were just doing the work for these companies and accepting less. And now that pact is broken, which, you know, I'm happy about. But it does seem like what happened is they lost the fans or they lost that magic agreement of we're all just we're going towards the same cause and we're all going to pretend that this is working. And it's cyclical. It's not working.

It will be back when Spider-Rane comes out. Like, it's going to come back. And it will absolutely be there for Avengers because we were there in the room at CinemaCon, which many longtime cinema con attendees said to us, like, that was very strange. It feels like they brought a lot of fans into the room. CinemaCon didn't used to be like this, but they had to, you know, fanification of the industry event. So it'll definitely be a thing. There's a very naughty conversation to be had, too, about sort of like, what is the media and what is the responsibility of somebody who has a platform to talk about things and so on and so forth?

We don't have to unpack all of those things. And also, like, it's not an accident that we, the press, were also at an influencer and fan screening. Because who Warner Brothers or who any studio decides to show their movie to ahead of time. And for what reason, it's their right to decide. But it is more valuable for them at this point to show it to people who are going to post positive things. No doubt about it. The fact that it didn't seemingly didn't work on this one is fascinating.

But, you know, this was true. I saw Masters of the Universe last month, and it was the same thing. I was at a fan screening. Me and Rob Mahoney and Steve Allman were in a fan screening. And that's cute. That is how it goes now. That is, because that is effectively all that is left in that space.

Now, here's the thing. I agree with what you said, that there was a very transactional quality to the rise of fandom, influencer culture, but I do think that it was born out of sincerity. I do think, and I think that as negative as I have been about this stuff

for the last six years, if you listen to the show before 2020, you'll hear a person who's frequently like, this is so fun, and I loved this, and I was never in that cohort of fandom influencer, but I understand if you're 27 right now and you were

nine when Iron Man came out, and you grew up loving those movies, and you watched the Dark Night Happen. You watched the Ramey Spider-Man trilogy. You watched how James

Mayolgold kind of screwed up Wolverine and then fixed it with Logan. You know, you watched movies like

even Superman last year. Like, I think a lot of the fandom is sincere and hard-earned, and it did

eventually become this thing about access and lore, and it became a really kind of like overheated

engine. And, and ownership also, because there is this very strict version of fandom and sticking to the canon and what can or cannot be included

that always gets toxic. But no, I think you're totally right. And, you know, this is why it wasn't all bad and it was both a very smart, creative, and certainly financial decision to take something that, like, a lot of people love and are really passionate about and then give them what they want.

And for the most part, do it well. And like, you know, because we live in capitalism, that can't exist on its own. Then it just has to keep getting bigger and bigger and more people have to, like, be brought along for the ride because we always have to keep growing forever. That's right. But it's, it's smart. And it's also influenced, you know, many other movie companies. Like we have, we've got Nolan Bros. Now. We've got A24 bros.

We have Barbenheimer. We have like the eventization and the, as you call it, the hyper niche. you know,ification of pop culture where what you do is you find a passionate fan base and then you try to sort of things. Colleen Hoover, same thing. And that's not new, but this superhero era proved that it can make you like a lot of money. The problem is, is that like no money's ever enough. Yeah. And I think the up until the right trajectory of all this stuff, obviously ultimately soiled it. It always kind of ruins all genre exploitation. from the studio side, I think

something that I've heard frequently from people who do like these movies but know what's been going on for the last five years, which was brought on by COVID streaming, but most specifically, that Marvel in particular

had this 12-year project to get a story told the Infinity saga. It wasn't always as perfectly mapped out as it might have seemed at times. It changed a lot. You should read John Robinson's great book about the MCU, which details some of the stops and starts along the way. But they finished a story.

They did a thing that had never really been done before, a serialization of movie going that is wildly commercially successful, sometimes artistically successful, and no doubt generation defining. And they did it. And it worked. And even irony poisoned dicks like me were like, oh my God, this is so fun. Right.

And then they kept going. And you know why they kept going? You know why they kept going? They've got shareholder interests and they're part of a massive corporation and they've got their livelihood. And I don't blame them for keeping going. But if they'd stopped. I mean, the thing that I hear from the people is if you'd stopped, you would have been Irving Thalberg. It would have been like this is one of the greatest achievements in American commercial artistic history.

Yeah. And now we're like, well, fuck these movies. But more, more, more, you know? I mean, that's what it is. That's the problem with TV as a medium. Yeah. It's a problem with many things and not just artistic endeavors, which is, you know, no one ever knows when to stop or market forces will not allow you to stop. It's true, but, you know.

But you're right that that run, even though someone had to, by someone, I mean, Chris Ryan had to explain to me why people were cheering when Captain America got the hammer. It's like that just a hammer. It is just a hammer. But it's not powerful? Of course it's powerful. What's it made of? It's a North mythological tool called Mjolnir. What is it made of?

Which element? I'm not sure. Cadmium? No, I was trying to remember what's the... Xenon? No, no, no, no, no. What's the Wolverine one? Adamantium.

It's not made of Adamantium. Okay. He's from Asgard. But you got... Adamantium is an earthbound... That you know. True. Yeah.

Fair point. Have you been to Asgard? No, have been. Do they have minds there? Like, what's going on? A wonderful question. Yeah. I feel like we should get you in the writing rooms to some of these films.

Because you're asking those salient questions. Anyway, it didn't mean to me what it meant to a lot of people who were on that project and who were from that original fan base. And not even from that original fan base because you've talked a lot about how your little sister, she's like she really, really grew up with those movies. And that is a defining movie-going event for her. So that stretch through Endgame did create a whole world and did bring a lot of people to the movies and train them to watch movies in a very specific way. That's right. And they were thrilled. And they were jazzed.

and it worked. And then they kept going. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands, championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities

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You know, Spider-Man will clear a billion, doomsday will clear a billion. There'll be other stuff next year. I'm not even sure what it is that is coming after this. But this stuff's going to keep happening and doing well. But they're making way for Minecraft. You know, they're making way for another kind of movie that is going to start doing this. And obsession in backrooms is kind of baked into this as well. And this sort of like demand for something new that is originating from something that feel like that younger people feel like they have more ownership of.

And now what has happened is, you know, 25 years in, these are not the movies that belong to Gen Alpha. Yeah. This is like my thing and maybe Gen Z's thing. But it's not for 10-year-olds anymore. And so there's something kind of fascinating about Doomsday coming around and being this, I compared it in the newsletter to how the West was won, the 1962 kind of mega Western that featured lots of very familiar but aging Western stars in this film that is directed by three different people in this beautiful format. But it's like a slow, rickety old Western. Doomsday might end up looking like that. You know, Robert Downey Jr., is he in his 60s?

Like, I mean, these guys are getting old. But he's got a lot of tinctures and stuff. I mean, he looks amazing. He's a beautiful man and I love his work. You're saying that Infinity Vision is going to be the most beautiful format we've ever seen. There's something very trump coded about Infinity Vision. Of course. Yeah.

Very, very like Trump coin crypto. Yeah, the whole thing. I am, I'm really, really interested in this stuff, not just because of my adolescent interest in comic books, but because it does hit that meeting point. of how I think the movie business more than any other artistic business is a very public thing. It's a very analyzable thing. And you can look at what's inside of the movies and see what was going on in the real world. I wrote about how I genuinely think that the rise of superhero movie culture was attuned to a post-9-11 world where we had good guys and we had bad guys. We had terrorists and we had the American way.

And movies about superheroes could be dichotomous in that way. like I really believe that there's something to that. That wasn't going to last. We've cycled through multiple political presidential administrations over time. We've seen the rise of totally different political movements. And one of the reasons why I think this has stopped being as relevant as it is, is that people every day fight online about truth, justice in the American way, and we don't need avatars to do that.

And like whether they're on the left or the right or in the middle, they are the ones who are like, Today I stand a thwart history and I say no mas, you know. Right. So there's all the, I find all this stuff in the stew to be really fascinating, but that's all, it's all external. It's all being in the ideological mind fields. It's not really like, it doesn't change the fact Supergirl is just a bland, forgettable superhero movie.

Yeah. It's not good. That's the other problem. It's just not good. They didn't do it well. No, they didn't do it well. There have been a series of five, ten years. What was the last very good superhero movie?

I liked Thunderbolts. It was, yes. I guess it cleared the bar of if you had a good time watching it. It wasn't bad. Yeah. I liked that. I liked the Batman. Don't remember that.

Yeah. I liked, you know, some things about Dr. Strange in the multiverse of badness We're getting into that, like, there's stuff I enjoyed about it. Right. But what has happened is that there's more stuff like, like Thor God of Love and Thunder, where you're just like, well, this just stinks. Like, this is just terrible. There are more and more movies that are like this that are like Supergirl, you know,

that are like Craven the Hunter where you're like, this just stinks. Right. Like, it's just terrible and it's going to be forgotten instantaneously. And there's been a much higher preponderance of those. Yeah. And I wouldn't overlook that. That just like when things are quite bad, people check out. You're right.

And when there's nothing to hang on to, then you don't. Then you find new audiences. Let me ask you an unanswerable question. Okay. In the parlance of the rewatchables, if COVID didn't happen, and if the only way to really get Marvel storytelling was through streaming shows, didn't happen. Wait. Oh, it didn't happen. Yeah.

Like, if you didn't have COVID, then why would you need to stream at all? They did. They were going to make the streaming shows. regardless. But they became the primacy of Marvel for like 18 months because Black Widow went straight to VOD and the other movies basically had to take a pause. And they couldn't launch new heroes like Shang Chi. They failed to kind of effectively do that in the imagination of the fans. So if the pandemic doesn't happen, is any of this different? Does this have a longer shelf life? Are you divesting creative and technological and filmmaking resources to the streaming show still?

You are. Then that's, then no. Because I do honestly think that there was always going to be a downslope because you finish endgame and, you know, when you find an ending, stick to your ending. And of course, they weren't going to do that. And also just, you know, as you said, there are cycles. People get interested in new things. People grow up. Your sister's a grown up now.

You know, it's like, you know, life moves on. I should ask her if she's going to see this movie. But I do think that some of it is just like they're all quite bad. And it is because they're using less resource material. They're more the effects and the number of people who can work on the effects and how much they're being paid. And it's just. There's a resource constraint going on now. Yeah, for sure.

So I think that as long as that continues. And also if the streaming shows exist, then in this web that they've created, everyone, the show. and the movies and everything still have to speak to each other, and you become, it's always sunny guy, you know? That was a big, big problem for them. Yeah. They clearly made some major mistakes by putting too much of the necessary understanding in the streaming series,

which people just clearly were not engaging with at a certain point. And it's a numbers thing, right? Just of the more you try to do, the more that can go wrong. I mean, I always think of the Matt Damon on Bill Simmons podcast just being like, making a movie is really hard. Everything can go wrong at any time. And so you multiply that and you add in all these streaming shows and all of these things. I just, the numbers are against them, which is fine because they have billions of dollars from the other stuff.

So they could have just retired. But I guess they don't like the beach. No. No. And people want to work because they feel a sense of purpose. I don't, I won't take that away from them. I don't either. To me, it's not about the individual people at Marvel or DC or even the movie studios per se.

It's much more structural. Like there was no way they were ever going to be able to turn the faucet off. The same way that they didn't turn the faucet off on thoroughly modern Millie in 1967, even though it was like, you know, in Thoroughly Modern Millie, it made some money. It got some Oscar nominations, you know. These things are, they're systemic. They're not individuated. And so it's the same way I'm like Supergirl.

Yeah, they kind of fucked it up. They fucked it up. Well, you know, it happens. But it does, it will auger change in the business pretty meaningfully over the next 10 years in a way that I find interesting. Hey, two things that I want to say to you. One, appreciate you hanging with me on superhero movies for 10 years. Oh, you're so welcome. Two, I promise to not make the Spider-Man episode this.

And I promise to not really do this anymore about this genre. Because I feel a sense of finality. The same way that like all my box office freakouts in 23, 24, 22, I've kind of put those. I put those to bed. And I'm putting this larger concern to bed. I feel I've written through my idea too. And I'm like, I've figured it out. I figured out how I feel about it.

I feel like we need like, you know, some sort of like bell or, you know, like a situation, like some sort of thing here, like a ceremony to like set you free, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Let's release the demon. Sending forth. Congratulations. Thank you.

I feel whole again. Yeah. And now, you know, I can enjoy Deadpool 4. Oh my God. I forgot the about it. You know, like there'll be plenty of more stuff for me to like. Okay. Spider-verse movie, you know, those are my favorite movies.

Spider-verse movies. They're good. They're very good. Yeah. Okay. I think I, anything else you want to say as we close the book? It's been a great ride. I loved every minute of it.

I'm sure you did. Okay, let's bring in CR and talk now about the end of something else. Jackass best and last. Okay, CR has appeared magically. Hello. Hi. You showed up like a, like a bull. I did.

In a ring. To gore you guys. You're going to take us out with your takes. We just spent an hour plus doing an emotional. rending of superhero garments about Supergirl. What's a Kara? I think you'll find it's Kara. Kara. She did not

rise to the occasion, so to speak. You will, though, as we talk about Jackass Best and Less. Okay, weird movie. This movie. Easily one of the best times I've had at the movies this year. I'm not sure that that makes it a movie. No. No, it's definitely not a movie, but we had fun. We had a lot of fun. The three of us saw it together

last night. This is the fifth installment in the Jackass film series, although there have also been the bad grandpa, bad grandpa, dirty grandpa. Yeah, and then there was, because a couple of them, and I would put this in the category, as many people have noted,

is this is a .5. It's like a degree, a clip show, some greatest hits, some very poo forward stunts, which I think is probably where those guys have wound up where, like,

in their 50s, they're like, what we can do is experiment with poo, but we can't really get, you know, thrown out of moving vehicles anymore. That's right. The movie, which is probably 40% new stuns and gags

and 60% retrospective celebration of some of their greatest works. And where they're at now is that they have to downshift physically into what they're allowed to do, able to do to survive, especially Knoxville, Stivo, Danger, Aaron, Chris Pontius, Dave England, the guys who've been around for the majority of these movies. Now, I'm not sure if we've ever podcasted about the jacket. movies. Now, Chris and I certainly have at least once and maybe even twice. But it was, it was very fun to see the movie with you too, because you were, you dug it. You were having a

grand old time. But it was funny to see when we laughed. And sometimes, and I think I laughed at different things than the two of you did. And then I also laughed when you guys really lost it, but I wasn't laughing at the movie as much. I was laughing at you. But we were talking on the way out that I guess we haven't podcasted about Jackass, but Jackass is very important to my life because I live with three men. And I do feel like there are some things that I don't understand that's happening in my house. And it like grows every day. And it does often remind me of Jackass. And I feel like it has been a skeleton key to understanding the primal urges and relationships of the people that I cohabitate with and also predictive of what's to come. But there is something,

you know, this is a very poop forward movie as is my life on a day-to-day basis at home. So there's something cyclical about it in a way. And there was one, I mean, there are many different types of poops that you see over the course of Jackass Beston. This is the most scatological of the Jackass movies. Yeah. And many of them are really saying something. Many of them are, are quite gross. But there was one where I was, some of them I was like judging the texture based on like what I dealt with,

you know, earlier throughout the day. And I was like, oh, I never thought about using crunchy peanut butter in that way. But yes, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. But see, like you don't know. Also, Zach still only one arm. So I am changing all the dirty diapers in my house.

Okay. Let's try to break up the jackass experience into three distinct strata, fine, whatever you want to call it. There is pure pain. There is a giant hand smacks you in the face. There is you launch yourself to a rocket and you fly off into the ocean. I don't like saying that in this new film,

a man that has to walk on a balance beam while a shock collar is attached to his penis. So that to me falls in the second category, which is Dick Pain. Dick Pain is a category of jackass stunt. There is as low grade as a robot just hits you in the nuts. Or just nuttacket. Like lots of guys doing dicktops. A lot of taps throughout the entirety of this franchise. And then the third is

shit, vomitous, you know, smell anxiety. Like this, like we're exposing you to a bodily orifice that will make you ill in one way or another.

Now, number one is my favorite. Number, the glee of watching another man get hit in the face and then his group of friends laughing at him. Yeah.

That to me, is when Jackass is that it's very best. I would like to add to like a subcategory of that where like a hit that sends someone flying into the air. So it's really like when someone takes flight. I think you and I are Knoxville originalists.

Yeah, of course. I want to see him strapped to the back of a rocket. I want him to see him with a bull. We are in our, we've, I don't think anybody's ever seen the footage that opens this movie. Is that right? That was crazy. So insane.

Which is so fucking nuts. I don't even want to spoil it. I am, I go Knoxville and then probably like, I would say Steve and Pontius, while I respect what they are capable of, are like a little lower down the power ranking. Yeah.

For me for like just pure nudity running up to guys and being like, here's my penis. Or just go for it. Yeah. Not something you've done? Things that I'm pulling out of or putting into my bum. Yeah, that to me...

In terms of like penis, and I understand that testicles are different than penis. Oh, good. But there was some ball. Listen, the bad grandpa. Like, I know about penises in one way, but also, like, I'm having to learn about them in new ways. Well, I mean, enumerate them. What are the ways in which you know about them?

I'm not Mallory. So, but so I found Jackass instructive in that way as you also try to, like, I don't know how to teach two young kids about their penis. See, it's the exploration of the male body. Right. But you guys, I think, laughed the most of anything, if I recall at the. a stunt involving just like very, very, like, elongated anatomy. I don't want to spoil anymore. And that physically being on display.

And that was when you were looking at him going. And you were losing your mind. That was the most giggling that I saw. It had also the element of jackass that I think that they've probably lost as their celebrity has grown, which is their ability to go guerrilla filmmaking. Yeah. And I have to say, I mean, obviously Knoxville in the course of this film has several emotional moments, say, realizing that he can no longer do this.

And, you know, I think not unlike Mission Impossible 4, they never really truly turn the franchise over to a new generation. And YouTube sort of market corrected for a lot of the prank stuff. But the guerrilla filmmaking side of this and the moment where I found myself getting very emotional is towards the end of the film, there's a multifaceted stunt that they do. And they go to the control room and Spike Jones is there. And I was like, I can't believe that this is. one of our great filmmakers, like one of the greatest filmmakers of our lifetimes.

And the thing that gives him the most joy is still the thing that gives me the most joy, which is seeing Dave kicked in the nuts 50 times. Yeah, by a contraption that is a wheel of spinning shoes. Yeah. Yeah, I felt a little sad during that sequence, seeing Spike is the only time Spike is really on screen. You hear his voice a couple of times through some of the retrospective stuff. But he hasn't made a movie in over 10 years. And he was, that was one of my.

My guys. Yeah. That was, you know, going all the way back to the music videos. And obviously, he is a critical part of this because he comes out of the skate culture and skate videos that all these guys are born out of. And they all, all these guys have this interesting thing now where, especially that first generation of jackasses are skate and surf punks. Mm-hmm. And they're not like ideological punks. They're, they're anarchy punks.

And it's like, it was a very particular flavor of dude that I certainly knew. They're very prevalent in California. And the mischief and the sense of glee that I always felt like Knoxville and Steevo. And then the other component is Bam. And Bam Margera is featured in this movie and he's had a lot of troubles over the last 10 years. And Ryan Dunn is featured in this movie. He's no longer with us. So there's a little bit of a tear drop in the film too.

But they do actually kind of get the band back together for one specific stunt in the movie, which is maybe like the funniest idea, if not the funniest execution, but the dark room with the snake. Yeah. Which I enjoyed. And it was nice seeing BAM be very scared of snakes because actually, as you noted on the 2010 movie draft. It's an incredible content.

Yes. I was surprised they didn't take us back to that moment. Me too. They describe it. But yeah, I mean, I really enjoy the sequences where like jackass is happening out in the wild. There's one that I think has been pretty big on YouTube, so I'm not hoping I'm not spoiling anything. But we're Brad Pitt.

Oh, yeah. Gets abducted outside of Pink's Hot Dogs. What era Brad Pitt is that? That's, that's, 01. It's like summer 01, so he has the rusty Oceans 11 haircut and vibe. It's just post like Fight Club. That's so fucking cool. But wasn't that stunts on the show?

It was. Like, I see, you know, I knew about that. And that's sort of, I mean, that is how jackass comes into like Amanda's pop cultural orbit and is more of a frame of mind than me having every single stunt memorized. But I remember them abducting Brad Pitt. Yeah, it was interesting to see how. how they picked and chose what their most iconic moments were, or what were the launch pads for discussions between Knoxville

and Jeff Tremaine, the longtime director and producer of the series, and Stivo, and, you know, the kind of the godfathers of the thing. And I think the fairly uneasy integration of the new class of people, which I think they struggled with in Jack S Forever 2, where it was like, it's cool to watch, you know, Zach Holmes or Jasper do stuff. And I did watch, I really enjoyed watching Jasper get rammed by a ram for 20 minutes in the movie.

That was one of my favorites. That was one of the best bits. But Rachel doesn't do, she doesn't get anything to do. I related. She just wander around in the back. Yeah. Not ideal. They don't even let her be in like the grocery cart.

Yeah, let her get rammed by a ram for Christ's sake. But I just, I like watching Knoxville get throttled. Like that's just that there's a primal quality to this series where when he, like when he gets gored, which we saw. You know, it's from a previous film. But when he gets gourd and he gets, he gets hit once and then they're like, we got to do take two. That sequence of filmmaking. I was like, something is alive here.

And he gets knocked out and everybody is like, that's why he's Knoxville. And that is the thing that I guess. And then he's put in the, like, literally an ambulance doing like tricky dick fingers on the stretcher. He's like that bull didn't like magic. It's funny. It's like if you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. like this was is been done like other frank shows there are other fear like fear factor there are things on youtube you can watch of people being like i'm i'm jumping through a play glass window

you know whatever these guys are kind of stars um and it is really weird to be in my late 40s um a little bit younger than these guys having watched them for most of my life like half of my life and seeing a little bit of the toll it takes on them you know uh and I think that this is like an appropriate place to end it, you know? Yeah. Do you think it is the ending? I mean, no. Who can say?

I did wonder, you know, this is a paramount film and a paramount franchise, though conceived over previous owners. And you start to wonder how risk averse or not the new ownership is going to be. So like, will they be able to get away with all of this stuff? I don't know. It's a really interesting question. And it dovetails with, I think, a lot of that Knoxville's. Emotionality around the movie like he's done interviews over the last couple of years where he's talked about how he's basically been told like you cannot get another bull oriented concussion like your life will be in jeopardy if you keep doing this to yourself and he's really sad about it and he has this like

Really complex relationship to being punished on screen and knowing that it's kind of his calling like it is his art and the films have made this very smart association with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and the history of kind of physical It opens with basically a big dance number this film does. Yeah, so. That is sort of Jamirquine-inspired. Yeah. The sliding rooms.

And so it's weird to have like big feelings around jackass that are not hilarity, but this was true when Chris and I did the jackass Forever conversation too. I don't, there's no other movie that gets me just moving around as much in my seat. You know, like reacting so profoundly.

It's pure cinema. It really, in that way. It is pure cinema. It is like cover my eyes, crying with laughter, like wanting sequences to go on forever, wanting sequences to be over in one second. And I do love these things. And I'm not joking.

It captures something about like the male urge. Like that I don't understand and don't have, but have never seen so clearly articulated. I'm grateful for the work. And then also, I mean, this one of the final... stunts is the premise is based around colonoscopy prep. So we are all of an age, you know? And then we're recognizing that and seeing it and so are the people on the screen and,

you know, life comes out of you fast and it's horrible. I hope this isn't a hip of violation. But Chris and I have both had colonoscopies this year. And the prep is the worst part. I had to do it for a different surgery recently. Like, it's horrible. I'm traumatized by that drink. The drink is the worst thing I've ever had in my entire life.

When you see them chugging it, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. And there's something so ingenious, though, at being at colonoscopy age, which many of those guys are, I mean, like, let's just do a gag built around this. You know, there's something very real and honest, even though the gag they do is let's play Twister. Like, you know, all the stuff that I love about early jackass is why they can't make any more jackass. Because this show airs, I don't remember seeing the box before. I don't remember it either. And so they basically put Knoxville in a cardboard box and throw him down the stairs.

And he's like, I herniated two discs. And I'm like... Yeah, they said they couldn't air it. Sean sat on his wallet weirdly for like six months and had like crippling back pain. Imagine throwing you down the stairs. But they said they weren't allowed to air it because it was too replicable. Oh, too replicable. And that people could figure out a box and tape yourself in it at home.

But it is like the origins of the show are so wonderfully adolescent in that way where that is the kind of thing. you would do when you're 11 years old with your friends. Well, that's what he's going to miss. He's going to miss having a reason to get together with these guys and come up with stupid shit and get paid for it. I know. It's a wonderful thing. I think it should be celebrated. It is not really a movie. And yet, like, it didn't really matter. I had a great time. It was 90 minutes long. I was happy to actually be watching the retrospective stuff and to be reminded of it and to be seeing it in a room with a lot of other people laughing. And it kind of, I feel like normally I'd be pretty cynical about this. I'd be like, this is a cash in or

whatever. But I'm like, these guys might die. So if this is the best they could do, it's fine by me. It's also just like, you know exactly what you're getting when you're going on these movies. So, like, there's nobody in the theater who's like, oh, I can't believe I'm being subjected to this. He's like, you knew what it was, you know what it is. Enjoy it or don't watch it. It was like a family reunion. It was like the slideshow projected at a family reunion. Well put.

Any closing thoughts? Do you want Jackass New Blood? Like, do you think Paramount will leave this alone? I don't think they'll leave it alone because money is money, right? But whether it will ever get back to, I know, there's something. specifically about when Knoxville tasers somebody and then starts giggling

when they're in extreme pain that you cannot replicate. There's never going to be that specific feeling of anarchy and mania. They also have to have a certain brat. I mean, like they talk about how when they brought on the new people,

they would talk about what they're scared of. And Tremaine's like, I can't believe this guy's just telling me everything he's scared of. I'm definitely just going to have him put in all of these situations. And he does. You know, I don't. I, I, I, I, we always have, like, the previous TV seasons in the movies, so. And also, you can come to my house.

That could come to your house. Maybe that's where the next season is happening. Jackass 6. The Dobbins Barron household. Okay. Well, CR, fortunately, you're sticking around because you're doing another episode with us. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support.

Next week, I think we're going to have three episodes. But you're not sure. This is the magic of podcasting. And I'm not going to even tease what it might be. It'll be a solo pod by me direct to camera. I stand with Supergirl. See you then. Spotify.

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