The Big Picture - ‘The Flash’ Is Here! Is It the "Greatest Superhero Movie Ever"?

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Hugely hyped and also facing controversy around its star, ‘The Flash’ arrives at a complicated moment for superhero stories. Van Lathan joins Sean and Amanda to talk about the movie and DC’s future. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Van Lathan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons from The Ringer, and this is a podcast called The Rewatchables. We have been doing it really since 2017. It started with how much we love the movie Heat. We decided to structure a whole podcast with categories, most rewatchable scene, who won the movie, Apex Mountain, what age the best. But here's the thing. If you want the full archive, you can hear them only on Spotify, for free, by the way. So make sure to follow The Rewatchables on Spotify.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. 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 Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about The Flash. Joining us today is one of the co-hosts of Higher Learning,

the Midnight Boys in the Ringiverse, and so much more. It's Van Lathan. Hi. What's up, guys? How are you? I'm great. I just read that Quentin Tarantino draws the lines, draws the line at killing animals in his movies. Amanda, do you feel the same about killing superheroes on podcasts?

No. Well, friends, today we convene to talk about a film that was described by the co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios, James Gunn, as, quote, probably one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. We're going to address that situation today on the podcast. We can't help but talk about this new movie without talking about the pre-release hype and also the contents of the film. So, Van, I will pose it to you first.

Is The Flash probably one of the greatest superhero movies ever made? Nope. Okay, Amanda, what about you? I agree with Van, which may be the only time I get to say that on this podcast. I agree with Van in a world sense, but I don't know where it's going to go from here. Yeah. No, it is definitively not. I thought this film was quite poor.

You didn't like it? I didn't like it. There were actually, upon reflection, there are some things about it that I did like. There are also some things about it that I deeply

did not like. And so, it's a challenging thing, particularly because, for me, this is a film where the first act doesn't work and the third act doesn't work.

The second act, I thought was actually quite successful. And I don't know why there's such a radical shift in the tones and intent of the movie from act to act. Now, maybe that's just an outcome of our modern movie making where we're trying to satisfy so many different kinds of audiences for these films. But I ultimately did not think it was successful. But Van. Yes.

I think maybe you did. I liked it. So, okay so okay so i liked the movie i really liked it okay uh and i think i cannot talk about the film and not talk about the narrative around the movie which was i was getting so much gas from my warner brothers people and i do have warner brothers people as we all do. David Zasloff? No. As a matter of fact,

I'm having less and less of them than I used to. That my expectations for the movie were really high. And then the reviews came in from people that I knew that had seen the movie. And they bottomed out. When I got into the film,

I think the movie had a certain freedom that most comic book movies don't have with me is that I knew that there wasn't going to be much world building because I know that James Gunn is taking over DC and doing his DCU thing. And I wasn't sure about the future of any of the characters in the movie, which gave the movie something that comic book movies don't normally have, some stakes. I didn't know what was on the other side of this. So I just watched it, right? And as a comic book movie fan, you don't get to do that that much anymore, right? And also, I'm of a certain age. And being of a certain age, there are certain things in this film that some people are going to feel

are ridiculous that nearly brought me to fucking tears like okay like i'm just gonna be honest with you i'm gonna be honest with you certain things that happened in the movie that other people that like steve shout out to steve allman from the midnight boys pp was next to me that literally slapping his leg that he thought it was so bad that it just worked on me. Interesting. Yeah. We'll get into the details.

Let's keep broad strokes up top. Okay. Amanda, what did you think of The Flash? Does my opinion even matter? Can we just talk about the experience? I love where you're at right now. Well, does it? I don't really think it does.

I have some specific opinions that I'll share later, but I would more like to talk about the experience of watching this film next to you. Okay. As you had

what I can only describe as a small emotional meltdown during and after the film. And you and I stayed in the theater afterwards as you just contemplate you at one point you were like you can just have the podcast and you do whatever you want i think i said i was gonna quit the show and i'm out you're out because this is so miserable but two hours later i saw

across the spider verse and i my faith was restored in some ways. This was coming on the heels of what upon reflection was a pretty dark May here at the big picture after the nightmare of Fast X after my struggles with The Little Mermaid. God bless you guys

and the work that you guys do. Thank you. Fast X. We're making a lot of sacrifices. It was really tough. And Sean is taking it all personally which makes for good content but I think made for a really tough. And Sean is taking it all personally, which makes for good content, but I think made for a really tough 4.45 to 6.45 PM on the day that we saw.

You were there for me. You listened to me. You were a sounding board. I think you gave good advice. Thank you. You were very, you were a very good partner. Thanks.

I actually met Jessica Clemons. She of the, the ringer verse at that very moment which was great but I think she may have she met a broken man and so I'm hoping to restore her faith

you didn't dig Little Mermaid just to let you know Juneteenth is next week we're taking names we're taking names any implication that my disinterest

in the Little Mermaid people should go back and listen to the episodes we've made about other Disney live action films which I continue to think is just the most pointless endeavor aside from making money.

I didn't really like it. It's not very good. What were they doing with Under the Sea? Why is she singing along? We need the crustacean band. I'm very upset. This is what I'll say.

My problems in the movie had nothing to do with the spectacular and amazing performance to me of Hall hallie bailey she's great i just don't like when they do these movies i didn't like aladdin i didn't like the lion king the lion king was a just goddamn abomination it's tough it's tough you know what i mean and so i just don't think that they're executing very well that's what it is i think we're

on the exact same incredibly important i love that it was made. I loved her. I loved all of that stuff. But as a film, I got to keep it gangster. It wasn't very good. Yeah. Representation matters, but good movies also matter. And that's something that we're keeping in mind here on the show. The Flash, I didn't think was a good movie, unfortunately. And I didn't think it was the absolute bottom of the barrel, but there were a couple of sequences that I did feel were at the bottom of the barrel and I struggled with. Let's give the listener some context for this film because it has been long gestating.

It is technically closing out or concluding or sort of at the final stages of the Zack Snyder version of the DCU. I have one more. We have one more? Aquaman. Yes.

Will that be wended into the James Gunn? I feel like maybe, but you could make an argument that this one kind of is too. It's unclear. To your point, it's unclear. It's unclear whether or not Blue Beetle and Aquaman are part of what was being done then or what we're doing now. We don't know what's going on. Amanda is either confused or mad. Somewhere in between.

Van said Blue Beetle, and I've managed to block that out of my consciousness, but then I realized I'm going to have to see that this summer and I just, I felt sad for a minute. But please continue. Well, maybe Van will come back

and he'll hold our hand through the Blue Beetle as well. I've heard actually decent things about the Blue Beetle. I'm willing to believe again. You never know. Nevertheless, this film is sort of a continuation

of some of those stories that we've seen before around DCU characters. It's heavily influenced by Flashpoint, which is a 2011 DC storyline. This also features notably various representations of other characters in the DC universe we've seen before, including Ben Affleck's Batman, Michael Keaton's Batman. That's also right. Supergirl, which is actually my favorite part of this movie, but we'll get to that. And a number of other figures we've seen in previous films.

The story is effectively this. Barry Allen, the Flash, as portrayed by Ezra Miller, who we'll get to momentarily, travels back in time to prevent his mother's death, which traps him in an alternate reality without metahumans so barry enlists the help of his younger self in that reality an older batman aka michael keaton and the kryptonian castaway supergirl in order to save this world from the restored general zod yes played by michael shannon from man of steel and return to his universe safely with his mother intact and his father not imprisoned now that might seem like i gave the whole movie away but i also feel that the trailers basically gave all of those things away, and that is one of the things that I actually struggled with with this movie, which is that

there are actually quite a few surprises in the movie if you've not seen any of the marketing materials, but if you've seen even just one of them, a lot of those surprises were basically ruined, and I understand why they used them to sell us the movie. Michael Keaton is one of the best parts of this film.

But imagine if we did not know that Michael Keaton was coming back and he showed up in the way that he did in act two of this movie. I think I would have had a different relationship to it. And that is related also to this James Gunn proclamation. We've heard a number of other people say that this was a great film before it was released. The truth is, in modern movie going, if you're a fan and you host a show that is oriented around fandom, having too much information is a bad thing.

And in this case, I thought it was a really a bad thing because it made the bad thing seem worse and the good things seem less interesting or surprising. So I struggled. So there is a, so we're at a real inflection point with the superhero movies. You, you Martin Scorsese's and you Tarantino's are going to get your way.

Where the car is sputtering. Okay? Everybody in tangential to it knows what's happening right now. Okay? We're running out of not great stories because the comic books are full of great stories. But we're running out of ways to execute them. We're running out of, not great stories because the comic books are full of great stories, but we're running out of ways to execute them. We're running out of viable stars. Like, we're literally running out of people to put in comic book movies.

This is the way it goes. And we're also running out of ways to market them. With this particular movie, there is, number one, we know that all the actors from the past are, like a lot of them, no longer have homes. We know that the Superman from before doesn't have a home. We know that Batman is not around. So we're not quite sure if this is a movie for the Snyderverse DC films or if this is a movie for the future of the DCU.

Also with your lead here, you have a lot of issues, some very serious issues that we've talked about on The Midnight Boys. You guys do one search on Ezra Miller, you're going to find all those issues.

So anybody that might be turned off by the movie, you then have to rope them into coming to the film by saying, Michael Keaton's in the movie. And if you like Batman 89, you might see Michael Keaton.

Also, all these other people, some people that never even got a chance to play the characters that they were supposed to play are in this movie. So y'all have to come to see the movie because Ezra's Flash. You can come see the movie if you want to see, which is something that we always kind of wanted to see. And I'm sorry, that's a huge, huge spoiler. So, you know, do whatever you do in post, but that's kind of what ended up happening. I do want to get to that specific detail because it speaks to a general audience's relationship to these movies, such as Amanda versus a fan's relationship to these movies.

Because that was an interesting thing that we saw that I think, and I may actually just have Bobby bleep out what you said and save it for a later part of the conversation. But there's a high level of alienation. Pardon the pun there with the Superman reference. I get it. Yeah. I got that. Yeah, he's an alien. Yes.

That comes from showing something like that. Because I looked over at Amanda when that moment happened and she was mystified. Like I could not understand what that was. But respectfully at that point in the movie, I was just like, uh-huh. I mean, because that's just, that's I was just like, uh-huh. I mean, because that's just, that's cutting from person to person and thing to thing

and everybody's sad because it's hard to be a superhero. You know? And you're just like, well, okay. Guess we're wrapping this one up. Right. So,

does it really matter? No. Yeah, but they threw all of that stuff into the trailers because these movies are like, they're more like little financial institutions

than they are stories now. They're like, you know, they're kind of selling you stuff. And look, there's always going to be some of that, right? There's always going to be some of that. I'm a kid. I got a Transformer. I'm playing with him. Transformer movies comes out.

I go see the movie. I deeply relate. There's always going to be some of that. The point that we got to was a point to where you could tell a really awesome story and mess around with the genre and play with actual filmmaking while doing that and we're kind of on the back side of that yeah so this movie suffers from not just the execution of it but the marketing too so to your point sean i say all that to say they had to give you all the tricks because the most important thing

was to get your butt in the seat. And they really didn't feel like there was any other way to do it other than give you the film and the trailer for it. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, it was disappointing. There are not as many people in the world that are as plugged into movie news as someone like me. So I just, I knew a lot before I sat down. And so because I knew a lot,

I expected more. And I really didn't get more. What did you get? What did you get out of this? This again? To me, I understand that books have like a lot of different stories to tell, but I feel like I've been told this story,

which is of someone who lost someone significant in their life and then activates the multiverse to try to undo it um like eight million times at this point it seems like the only movie that they're making this one in particular because of the inclusion of other characters including ben affleck who you guys have just fast-forwarded past several times and was one of the real highlights of the film for me personally he didn't do anything what did he even do i tried to start to applause in

our screening when he showed up no one else wanted to join in um listen i was trying to have fun man you know everyone else the paul descended upon our screening very quickly and i was trying to lighten the mood it did feel like everyone realized within 15 minutes like oh this isn't that good but this just i mean this seemed like we saw spider-man No Way Home with all of the garbage DC accoutrement. So that is bad, I guess. But also like I've seen it a million times before and like they're just going to keep making it. I don't know. We're in a multiversal epidemic, which is something I think that we should discuss at a certain point in this conversation.

Because there's become an over-reliance on it. And it just so happens that it's at a time when the two big comic book publishers, their films are focusing on these kinds of stories. And so inevitably it's just going to feel like overload. And then also we're coming out of everything ever all at once. And also simultaneously the animated Spider-Man films are doing this at the same time. So it just feels like we are inundated with these stories. So I understand that. I think, and you alluded to it, Ezra Miller has just been mired in these controversies

over the last few years, arrested twice in Hawaii for assault and disorderly conduct, appeared to have choked a woman in a video that circulated on social media, was accused of grooming a teenager. There have been these very, very upsetting and difficult stories following them around for the past couple of years.

And so it's inevitable that anyone who is aware of those things is also sitting down to watch this film and seeing them on screen. And it's hard to separate some of those things. We've seen this happen with a lot of well-known figures in Hollywood in recent years. But also to Van's point about marketing,

Ezra Miller notably did not promote this film and was not involved in the press cycle beyond, I believe, attending the premiere and kind of giving one quote. But they made a decision not to have Ezra Miller. And when you don't have your star there to promote, I mean, that's a whole other wrinkle of just trying to get people into the theater. Yeah. You know what? I think something interesting happened to me. So I liked the movie. The movie worked for me.

But the movie had a unique potential that it couldn't hit because of their performance. Because of their performance, they weren't that good in the movie. This is what I said to Amanda as we walked out. I thought they were annoying. Annoying. They weren't that good in the movie. This is what I said to Amanda as we walked out. I thought they were annoying. Annoying. They weren't that good in the movie. And I think there are two reasons why I might have felt that way. Number one is because

you have to have chemistry on Tom Hanks level to pull off some of the stuff that the script was asking these characters to do and not come across as grainyiny number one number two subconsciously i was looking for the performance to be good enough to warrant me participating and watching it i was looking for like uh a 81 point game or or or, or, or something like that. I was looking for the performance to

be good enough for me to be like, okay, I can see why this is undeniable. And every single time I looked at it, it was like, Oh, that wasn't funny. That didn't work. That scene didn't work. I'm like, there was something that was kind of pulling at me a little bit. I completely agree with you. I think we both agree on that. And that I think that, again, we were kind of led astray with some of the pre-release hype that we thought might be able to justify at a minimum,

but that Ezra Miller's performance would have been interesting, or there would have been the charisma that maybe people saw in the perks of being a wallflower. You know what I mean? That there was this sort of like, um, this unusual nervy energy that they have, you know,

shown in previous performances. The Barry Allen character is a very tricky character. And if you don't do it right, it can be quite grating. Yeah. And I, I found the performance quite grating. And so it was very hard to just connect to the movie emotionally,

because when you're with Michael Keaton's Batman or when you're with Sasha Kaia's Supergirl, I actually just felt more interested in where those stories could or should have gone.

And by the end of the film, I may have even said to you, I don't know why they didn't just make a cool Supergirl movie. That would have been a lot of fun. Breaking Supergirl

out of a prison and setting her free in a battle against you know alien warriors I would have actually been just much more interested in that story than whatever kind of like save my mom story they set out to tell here so I don't save my mom story Sean is a savage I mean that's what it was save my you know you're not interested in save my mom's stories not done like this i mean i don't know what are the best save my mom stories as i was saying that i was trying to think what's a good save my mom's story i could throw up in sean's face right now well okay here's an

example of uh save my parents story there are allusions made in this movie to back to the future there's a very funny joke about how eric stoltz is the star of back to the made in this movie to back to the future there's a very funny joke about how eric stolz is the star of back to the future in this other reality that barry allen travels to um that's a fun joke for us movie fans my wife actually was just watching still the michael j fox documentary and she did not know that michael j fox was actually recast into back to the future that eric stolz had the gig to start so So, if you don't, that's another example of like an inside joke that if you don't know the context,

maybe it works for you, but it probably doesn't. But if you compare Back to the Future to this movie, it's like comparing, it's like comparing it to Ben-Hur.

You know, like there's just no, they're not even in the same medium. They're not even in the same lineage of storytelling. So,

yeah, it's a bad save your mom story. Okay right so yeah i i so okay it's a bad save save your mom story okay so okay let me pull back a little bit because you guys are going nuclear okay um i've just been applauding ben affleck so far facts you know like ben ben looked really well let me also say michael keaton he did he did he's in good hands right now he's in great hands right now um Michael Keaton had three vests at one point and I thought that was cool yeah he had an ascot right on the skin yeah yeah I thought you were supposed to wear that like over a shirt no you wear that right on the skin well I think that was maybe to signal so like illicit yeah I mean

sometimes you just wear a scarf on a... You're not supposed to wear a Ascot Raw. You're supposed to go... I don't think you're supposed to... I've never seen that done. He had it right on the skin. Yeah, I thought it looked nice.

Oh. He did. He looked great. And he looked great and he really pulled off an older Bruce Wayne like really, really well. This is what I'll say.

Okay, so comics to see that to see that there are a lot of comic book movies right now that are using the multiverse at the same time it's not that surprising to a lot of comic fans because comics go through these types of facts where everything gets cosmic and everything gets time traveling and everything gets multiversally then everything gets mystic where it's demons and stuff um so this happens and then every battle becomes like a world battle so knowing that everybody's going to the multiverse right now really kind of wasn't that that um that shocking to me because after you go to space it's the only other place you could go first everything starts here boom then everything goes to space and and then it's like, okay, now we got many worlds.

Many worlds theory. Everyone's talking about it. Okay. What I will say about this movie is there are some, it's kind of like Flashpoint, but then it's nothing like Flashpoint. Flashpoint is simply one of the best stories

like ever told. And the point of Flashpoint, which it's not as, Barry's going back isn't as intentional as it is in in in this movie the point of flashpoint um is how the natural order of things uh how time affects how incidences in time affect the natural order of things and what it means to change even one thing. That's the same concept as across the Spider-Verse. The canon events, yeah. Right, right.

Here, though, the intentionality of Barry's action changes the whole movie. And it changes the entire story. Because he is warned that he does it anyway. And then the whole rest of the movie is essentially a glorified cleanup effort until you realize that you can't clean it up, that you have to let it happen. Here's a critical storytelling moment in Flashpoint. that world that Barry Allen goes to, young Bruce Wayne dies in the alley that night,

which then leads to Bruce Wayne's father taking up the mantle of the Batman, and Bruce Wayne's mother goes insane and becomes the Joker because of the grief over her son's death. Now, that's an interesting storytelling choice that they made to redefine these core characters. So the reason I think that's so

interesting that they used Flashpoint here to tell this story is Flashpoint could have been the perfect jumping off point for the new James Gunn era of DC storytelling, because they could have said, let's do all of this different. Let's do it in a way you've never seen before. Instead of let's kind of close the loop on this era by using this story. And so it's impossible to determine what will be coming in the future and how it does or does not affect some of the future movies. But it felt like a huge missed opportunity to me when I was watching it, basically. So who's the guy that plays Negan in Walking Dead?

I love that guy. Oh. The comedian from Watchmen. You guys know this guy yeah yeah ah what the hell is his name he has three names it's like a dot dot dot yeah jeffrey dean morgan jeffrey dean morgan okay so jeffrey dean morgan shows up in batman versus superman as thomas wayne at the beginning of the movie he's thomas wayne i'm thinking to myself because they vary because the one thing i never need to see in another movie ever is Batman's parents die.

Okay? You know why Batman is Batman. Like, let it go. When he shows up, and then later on in that movie, Flash time travels in that movie, in the nightmare scene, I said to myself, he's going to play Thomas Wayne's Batman in Flashpoint. Everyone saw that. Like, everyone saw that coming. They're going to do a movie. We already got the Flash time traveling.

Amanda has zero clue. Anything that I'm speaking. I saw Batman versus Superman and I was reflecting on the fact that there are a lot of vests in that also. No, I'm serious. They put both Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck and Ben Vest in there.

It's like peak swole for Affleck Henry Cavill still gets more swole for Mission Impossible uh not Dead Reckoning um anyway but they're like bursting the vests almost you know I have no idea what you're talking about look it up you don't know what we're talking about they also put they also put irons in the vest oh he was in the vest as well okay so what I'm saying is that like everybody saw this coming and everybody thought that was going to be awesome. Once again, this is the part of this where the disintegration of the storytelling mechanism over at Warner Brothers DC just kind of infects all of this stuff.

It just didn't have enough momentum to do any of that. Like what they ended up doing now literally was the bare bones of what the infrastructure they still had around, right? And they even, you know, brought some people back to life for this joint. So like for me, I really think that I enjoyed the movie

because it was fun. It was superhero mayhem. The action scenes were exceptional to me, which is something that some of these movies haven't been getting right. And they did just enough narratively that towards the end,

I bought it. It was just executed well enough for me towards the end. I thought the scene at the end with Barry and his mother was incredibly moving. And I thought that... I'm a mother of sons, you know? Yes. And I thought that the fact that...

Knox and Chris Ryan. Yeah, Knox and Chris Ryan. That Kara Zor-El and Batman actually died in this movie, like, for real, and we couldn't bring them back. I am all for the deaths of characters in superhero movies. It's just got to mean something

if you're going to keep telling the stories. And so I felt like that grounded the movie in a way some of the other movies haven't been grounded in and just be honest with you i had fun like i had that's allowed the movie yeah i i'm i'm honestly delighted that you did enjoy it because this would have made for a very one-sided and boring conversation i am constantly surprised by what you like and don't like in a good way um i i i did not feel that the third act of this movie was visually coherent or interesting and in fact it felt to me when we get to the big cgi illustration of barry's realization that once again i can't figure out if the studio ran out of money or the

filmmaker couldn't come up with a better idea but it it just seemed like a bear ate a can of paint and then threw up. Like, that is what the sequence looked like to me. You're talking about just visually? Yeah. So, we're in the middle. Okay. Wait, yeah. So, what's that little nether world that sort of looks like a…

So, the little nether world, I don't know what to call it, because, like, it wasn't… They made that up. Yeah. Okay. There's a thing in DC called the Red, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. That's like Beast Boy and all of that stuff. It connects all the world, the animals and stuff.

Beast Boy. So Beast Boy is a member of the Teen Titans. Ah. Yeah. I'm not a Teen Titans person. Yeah, but he turned into different animals. Is Squirrel Girl a member of the Teen Titans? Ha.

Wrong. Good though. Because you called Is Squirrel Girl a member of the Teen Titans? Ha! Wrong. Good though. Because you called me Squirrel Girl last time. No, I just remember and then I went home and googled it and I found out it wasn't a compliment van. That is a massive compliment. Hold on, wait a minute. Hold on, wait, wait, wait, wait. What's wrong with Squirrel Girl?

I don't know. It was just some illustrations that it was like not what I wanted in the Google image when I pulled it up. If I was to put Joanna Robinson on a call right now and ask her if being called Squirrel Girl is one of the coolest characters. What's up? Why? Because she is. This is what I'm saying.

We're looking at an image of Squirrel Girl right now. Let me see the image of Squirrel Girl right now. Let me see the image of Squirrel Girl that you pulled up. She's flexing hard alongside her trusty squirrel. But look, Squirrel Girl is cool. She can talk to squirrels. She's smart. Squirrel Girl is awesome.

Okay, thank you. If you're listening to this. Thank you. It's really one of the most popular. She's an Avenger. Oh, okay. Great. Squirrel Girl is a Marvel squirrel girl i do prefer the

avengers and i would like to ask some follow-up questions later on about michael keaton's roles in the dual universes and whether that's their um time is caving in on itself oh interesting his role is the vulture you mean in the spider-man films? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. So what I'll say is this. That world, I don't know. I would love to interview somebody from the movie because I have to believe that the CGI looking the way that it did

was a narrative choice. Okay. I have to believe that they weren't trying because that's like Matrix 2 level. Remember the Burly Brawl from Matrix 2?

That's like Matrix 2 level CGI. I can't believe that what they wanted to do was render all of those people in a realistic, Na'vi way. I don't think they were going for that. Because if they were going for that, it's such a monumental failure. That's kind of one of the things that I kind of had to just like, okay, this is how this world looks. Right. You know what I mean? Like, this is how this world looks. Right. You know what I mean? Like this is how this world looks.

This is a crazy thing though, because I like talking with you about this stuff because you are well read on it so that you're willing to forgive creators and imagine a kind of like a sign and intentionality to the decision that they're making. I have a hard time doing that. I just feel like we've seen enough of these things now at this point. And this is not an assault on the VFX artist. It's an assault on the overall decision-making of the studio and perhaps the filmmaker to say, this is what we're going to settle on.

This is how this is going to look. Now, there's two strands of it. There is this world at the conclusion of the film that we see Barry go into a couple of times during the story that is sort of like spinning fast and showing all of these various potentialities of reality. But they're moving very quickly and it's kind of hazy and it's it's colorful but it's it's not sharp there's not a there's no definition to the figures and then we start to see a lot of those potentialities kind of come together and become

more realized and we see what they could look like if they were to come to the fore and that's where we see some of these cameos and we see some of the history of potential DC storytelling. It does have a kind of artificial intelligence mid-journey style like awkwardness where it's almost surreal. But even that I found to be quite ugly and off-putting. And we saw it on a beautiful big screen.

I can only imagine what it would look like on a television. It would look terrible, I think. So when something like that happens, it just makes a movie feel like a failure to me. And that was after I was actually quite enjoying the Michael Keaton, Batman, Supergirl team up. You know, Michael Shannon's kind of mailing it in in this movie,

but even Michael Shannon mailing it in, I'm still like, at least it's Michael Shannon yelling on screen, which is something I enjoy. And it just, I almost forgot all of the things that I was digging about it as the movie was concluding. Because it just reminded me of this really unfortunate era that we're in with these stories right now. So, I don't know. I know you've been distressed by this stuff over and over again. But this one in particular kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Can I give a slight meta take that I don't think you're gonna like sure i just i i do not think

that multiverse stories are suited to like movie storytelling i just it does not the stakes are never there and it all becomes jumbled and there is something about the way that like we go to the movies and we expect it to be you know between two and now four hours long I guess and for there to be but you know a first second and third act and maybe that's an inflexibility of my mind I'm willing to hear that but I think that there is just something fundamentally lost in the translation from the comic book experience of the multiverse and just the way that I understand that you guys consume comic stories. as major singular events rather than just another exciting story in a world of opportunity. And it doesn't.

I'm done. I know that it's very popular. I thought Spider-Verse was way more successful. And I guess we can say now that The Flash was the film that we saw in a double bill with Spider-Verse. I'm sure that worked against it for us in many respects.

The Flash or? Seeing these movies on the same day. That worked against The Flash, you mean. Worked against The Flash in a big way for us. But I think you were a little bit more down on Spider-Verse. Spider-Verse was really good. I really liked Spider-Verse. It was good, but it didn't work as well as the first one for me.

I agree with you. And I thought it was incredibly beautiful. And it was again, just like a, that was, it was like the inverse, a very rewarding experience to sit next to Sean, who was just like gazing up like with childlike wonder at the screen. And it was really cool. But for me, the last 15 minutes and the kind of multiversal aspect of it just kind of like got muddied a little bit. And that was the thing where I didn't know there was a part two. So it's building. And I was just

kind of like, okay, you know, like I, there is something that they have not figured out how to do here in terms of, in terms of stakes. And it just, it doesn't work. I think, and I think many, many people, many, especially many kind of common movie goers who are not coming in with a lot of predetermined knowledge feel very similarly to you. So it does feel like we're reaching not an endpoint because frankly, it seems like Marvel has a long way to go before they conclude their multiversal storytelling. But it does feel like there's a real frustration

among your casual fans who dig these movies. So I think there's a couple of things that we have to, that I should let people know. One is that the multiversal stuff that happens in comic books is oftentimes on accident. And what I mean by that

is that like, so you'll start another universe, right? Like, and that's because you want to like reboot a character or you want to create a new character. Like they did the Ultimates universe

in Marvel in the 2000s. That's because they wanted to reset and reboot their universe. Or you create a different character and you go, okay, this character has this run, but that's because this character exists in this universe.

This is an Earth-1 person. That would be for DC. And then this is a 616 character or this is a different character or um if you have a different timeline it's like okay well this is nate gray comes from a future where this happened to him or or where he's he's basically cable but it's different so a lot of those things just happen to do with guys writing stories and they go okay what happened if this happens to this character but it's not really meant to interact with our linear base universe as much as it does on screen these are a bunch of different versions of different characters that exist because some guy had a new idea somebody had a different idea and it's like well it's not in

this universe it's in a different universe right okay and so then what happens is the reason why you might feel that way about the stories being on the screen is because this is kind of the first time that they're doing it a lot of times and it's hard and in order to make it to make it work you'd have to do it the way you do it in other episodic stuff that gets multiversal stuff right. Devs is a show about a multiverse, many worlds theory, right? More using a computer program then, but still,

you have Fringe that came out where there were two different worlds. But those things are episodic so you can bake them longer. It would work if the infrastructure of the storytelling in either situation, if the multiversal sagas or the multiversal movies were the culmination of that. But just to throw somebody in the middle of a world and go, this character can die here, but then they'll be in the next movie or there's four or five different versions of them or this is the way this happens. And let me explain to you spaghetti or time venturing off or all of that stuff. The average film goer is not as chained to this lore as I am.

I will sit down and do the work to understand Jonathan Hickman, who is a genius and writes like he's writing for three people who have taken a Kip Thorne class in astrophysics. But sometimes when you sit down, even Loki and some of the explanations,

people just don't, it's not as material to the story and people just aren't, they're not fucking with it. Let me add a couple of things on top of that. I think that was very well said. The difference between something like Fringe and Devs, and your mileage may vary on how much you enjoy those shows,

is obviously they have showrunners, and they have kind of creative heads, and they are in charge of telling the story all the way through. In these movies, obviously, we know that we have many writers, many directors. We have Kevin Feige-like godhead figures figures but those people don't actually create the thing they help kind of orchestrate the thing so there's an inconsistency in the storytelling that i think holds back when you get into multiversal storytelling additionally i think we're more willing or i'm more willing

to accept and even get excited about the idea of multiversal storytelling when you're working with spider-man or when you're working with batman because we through the the entirety of our lives have seen adam west and michael keaton exactly ben affleck yeah and val kilmer and we know as fans that this framework for a character is something that can change but with the flash who in many respects is a legendary DC character, but has not been very well represented across the history of movies, this is really the first time we're getting a proper big budget Flash movie. And it's a multi-personal movie. And so we're like, so in this version of the story,

we see another Flash and that Flash is also portrayed by Ezra Miller because there's no joke to make about another person who could portray the flash. And so it does feel like, it feels unearned. It feels unrealized. It feels like we've just decided to do this because it's the only way to kind of expand the scope of the storytelling, is to make the world seem bigger than, say, the world seemed when we were making The Winter Soldier, which was like a much more grounded version of this kind of storytelling. And I just think it's a mistake. I think you can really only do this kind of a movie,

candidly, with figures that we have a much longer lineage with as viewers. So to me, using The Flash to tell a story like this just did not work, period, even though he has a power as a character that could create opportunity for multiverse they thought that by the time they got to this point that their universe would be so well established to where seeing uh different versions of these characters would like really

kick your butt and so there's something else in comics, in these movies, no, no story didn't happen. So like, no story didn't happen. And that's another interesting thing. So what I mean is like when a new Batman comes, that's just a different Batman.

It's not a new Batman. That's a Batman in another universe. Like right now there's Batman. DC's got multiple Batmans. Okay. But so can I, can I ask you something about that no no no i like i get it and i it's on the one hand you know there are like five jokers

right now you know and i know that people were like upset about that but as sean as you pointed out there have been many batmans and i like many of them michael keaton george clooney christian bale ben affleck and robertinson. All great by me. Congratulations. Val Kilmer. Oh, and Val Kilmer, of course. How could I forget him? You shitting on Adam West? I didn't really do a lot of Adam West time.

I'm sorry if that's heretical, but I am who I am. What about the late, great Kevin Conroy, who just passed, who is the voice of the animated Batman? He is one of them. Is that... No, that's Adam West. That's Adam West. Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman. He's one of the... He's Batty animated Batman. He is. Is that? No, that's Adam West. That's Adam West. Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman.

He's one of the, he's batty Batman. Okay, I have probably interacted with it and that's great with me. What about Will Arnett as Lego Batman? No, I'm not doing that. But do you know that? I love that movie.

Do you know that Will Arnett as Lego Batman has a major cameo in Prince Harry's autobiography and he moves to Los Angeles and the person he is most excited to hang out with and possibly do illicit drugs with not sure is he implies it but whatever uh is Lego Batman he doesn't ever use Will Arnett's name he just says Lego Batman like 50 times that is the that is people less it's the dumbest book I've ever read in my entire life. Anyway, what I wanted to ask you, Van, and you, Sean, so when they recast Batman, you know, and I'm just like, okay, they're starting again and they're doing Batman and here's a new guy playing Batman. I sort of think of it like, you know, it's like if you go see like a revival of a play or like you go, you know, it's like,

oh, someone is like playing Macbeth. Like, great. It's one of the great roles that we're taking on. But I'm not sitting there being like, I wonder what universe this Macbeth is in and like what's different about it. And the story of Macbeth doesn't change, but the story of Batman does. Sure. But so are you literally like, and this is a a genuine I'm not sassing you question I'm like trying to understand how your brains work like when you watch the Batman starring Robert Pattinson are you like I wonder what universe this is in I like do you have consciousness of all the other Batmans and where they are and what's going on? Great question. I didn't used to. Okay. But I do now.

Because, so at first, it's just movie stuff, right? A guy wants to take a different turn on Batman, he gets his different thing. But then you start to realize that, okay, well, in this Batman universe, there are no other superheroes. You know? Right. this batman universe there are no other superheroes you know right because if in dark knight rises if superman's around uh you get him over here real quick he'll help you figure out some of this stuff you know you start to realize and then on the back end after it you start it's just like in the comics all of these are different iterations that exist nothing doesn't exist so everything does right and if it can't all exist

together then it has to exist in separate timelines in separate places but now though because of that they tell you straight up this batman isn't connected to this universe so when they were doing the robert pattinson batman that was supposed to be the ben affleck batman that ben didn't want to do, right? When they're doing the Robert Pattinson Batman, they're telling you that to manage your expectations so that you don't think that Jason Momoa is going to come into one of these scenes or you don't think all of a sudden

you're going to see these people together. This guy is younger. It's a different universe. So don't expect continuity with the other universe. And they're doing that to make sure that fans know what to expect so now it's done purposely and on the back end you like sony didn't cast andrew garfield and then go one day we're gonna have a movie with all three of our spider

man in it that's not what they did i found that very moving it was great right but what they said was when he saved yeah is she married gwen or mary jane which one is she it's mary jane's okay oh no no no it's gwen it's gwen stacy no he caught her it was mary jane mary yeah he caught mary jane but it was a reference because he couldn't say yeah i got it so beautiful and the irony of not being able to save the woman who was his ex-girlfriend who is now married and happy right i'm Stone, who portrayed the character in the film. Listen, I love the internal logic. So did I. I appreciated everything that they were bringing to it.

So on the end of that, they go, hey, we have this thing. We have these properties. We have these characters. These movies stopped and started for various business reasons and story reasons not because we wanted to establish new universes because we fucked up spider-man 3 and then we wanted some new guys and then the amazing spider-man 2 wasn't any good and we signed a deal with marvel not because they wanted to establish new universes but they still got them so the question is what do you do with them once you have them?

As you get everybody together. In this movie, once again, it doesn't have any of that because the DCEU was so hit or miss. It seems like what they were trying to do is what every DCEU movie was trying to do,

which was take characters that we know and love and reinvent the wheel for film-going audiences. And you have to be careful with that. Now, I think there are two scenes in this movie that if they would have worked, you guys might feel differently. Tell me. One scene

is a pivotal scene in this movie that has to work, that doesn't quite work, is when Barry is getting at barry and telling him he doesn't care about anything that is supposed to like really be a gut-wrenching emotional scene again this is an ezra miller problem ezra can't do it yes i'm just being for real i'm not trying to be a jerk because of anything that happened with them away from the thing

Ezra can't do it and it works well enough to be passable to like be passable but you're not emotionally invested I wasn't emotionally invested I just wasn't into it

right and another scene is when they're all sitting around and they're doing the, it's him and all of his roommates and stuff. That scene is supposed to be really funny. Yeah. And it's just mildly amusing. That's the tone that they were going for. If those two scenes work, to me, it says that the movie is clicking on all cylinders and you're buying into your lead's ability. And it kind of just didn't.

So other than that, it just ended up being a cool, multiversal superhero movie where I got to see Michael Keaton again, where I got to see Supergirl and some really cool stuff. I dug it. I didn't hate it. I liked it. That's where I'm at on it can I can I share an observation that I have shared with you in the past about why I've liked some of these movies but about how I think actually my opinion has become even stronger because of what has happened since the whole endgame thing the whole thing to me which I've talked about many times I've written

about it but the splash page moment in endgame where all the characters are on screen and they're all having a big battle 10 years of movies leading up to this moment the reason that that works and the reason that almost all of these movies don't really work for me anymore with some exceptions is that all of that was built brick by brick organically in the same universe and so we had if not a relationship to at least an emotional awareness of what was motivating every character in that splash page with the exception of some henchmen that we don't care about they closed the loop on a story that they spent a long time building up and this was really the only reality that we were focused on obviously it was really fun i thought it was really well rendered it was like just the excitement of seeing that movie at the time did a lot of the work

for you. But when you look back on it, even more so, I think about how they paid off so much of what I was invested in because it felt like it was being controlled by one hand. I don't mean a person. I mean, there was an intentionality at the beginning. And even if things evolved over time, we couldn't really see the seams or you had to look much closer to see the seams. When you watch a movie like The Flash, it's all seams. It's all stitching back together pieces of stories that we've been had thrown at us over the last 10 years with different actors and different ideas and different studio

regimes and different producers coming into projects. This is Andy Muschietti's first DC movie, and he's responsible now for stitching together 30 plus years of DC movies. It just doesn't, it's just not coherent to me. I mean, that makes sense to me. And also echo something that Van said, which is that most multiverses are an accident at first, and it's someone wants to do something else. And if it's an accident that's great perhaps creatively for that individual endeavor but in terms of you know me i like a

plan i like everybody to know you know where they're headed before it's and also by the way i think most successful movies and tv shows um which are more episodic and like possibly lend themselves better to this type of storytelling are like if they they need to know where they're going and to be able to build that intricate puzzle that you that you're referencing i still thought the actual visuals of the splash page were quite ugly but you know what can you do so it's time for me to be annoyingly positive because yeah i go to a superhero movie for three reasons some of them hit you deeper but there are three things you have to laugh you have to be wild and you have to feel like there

was a reason you were in a movie theater okay other movies like i can watch other films you know and just sit there i'm like what am i looking at and really get deep deep deep into the craziness of some director or writer's mind right you can't go in and sit down and watch schenectady thinking that the movie is going to do anything but drag you through an emotional landmine like it's just like you don't want to make sense of it you want to thank you for citing charlie kaufman here on this podcast my dad picked that as a christmas movie year. He has a real... For you guys to watch as a family? We went to the theater, man.

Oh my God. No, he hadn't seen it. No, no, no. He didn't know, but he had a real streak of... There was also The Savages the next year was another Philip Seymour Hoffman movie that was a Christmas. Some of these might be Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yeah.

Real hot streak for my father. I've never felt more human and more of an accident than watching Schenectady. For a moment, I had to snap myself out of it because the movie almost sent me down

into a real spiral of just existential dread. But whatever. I think that's a particularly resonant film for podcasters for whom all of life is a performance right it's it's just you know i've i've never gone back to it sometimes it's a brilliant movie it's very emotionally just disruptive yeah um but so with this movie i had laughs there were scenes that i thought were really funny just not give me two so the scene where the scene where uh barry um still thinks that he has his flash powers and he ends up that was funny that was and he ends up just running around.

And he can't. That's a great kind of gag on that. You didn't think that was funny, Amanda? Yeah, that was charming. I was more excited. Sean went to the bathroom during the speed force. And they said speed force twice. And I was just really excited for Sean to get back from the bathroom

so I could be like he was in the speed force! And then Sean was just like I hate you. And I thought the scene with Newberry getting his powers and wreaking havoc in the city

and eating and being That was the speed was that not the speed force? That was the speed force. Did I miss that sequence? Yeah, you missed it. That was really funny as well.

Do you think if I saw it, I would have a different opinion of the film? And it was to Supergrass, right? Like the, all right, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, wow. It seemed like a quality moment in the film. I thought Batman was great.

I thought Carozarell was great. I thought all of that stuff really worked. And I'll just be honest about something. You guys, it's almost hard to discuss it now. I'm being serious. I grew up my entire young life watching this one brilliant, amazing actor portray the most amazing superhero in the world.

And he was fantastic. He was like a, I don't know, like a ghost in my room or something. Like Christopher Reeve's Superman was more than just- I thought you were talking about Lou Ferrigno's Hulk. Get the hell out of here. Or Lou Ferrigno's Hercules. Like Christopher Reeve's Superman was like a specter.

He was like, it was just, you saw his face and it was just time to have fun. Perfect casting, perfect performance. Perfect casting, perfect performing. And then like one day i get to be like in my teen years and the thing that let me know look i came from a place where all kind of realities are shoved in your face and then like superman got hurt and it was like i wanted to like lose it it was fucking hard bro i remember that day as well it was extremely emotional i remember it was hard man it was really hard like and and he with such grace and such dignity and the way that he conducted the rest of his life and what he was

and who he was um it really mattered a lot right he ended up becoming almost more super and in this movie he flew again and i'm sorry it shouldn't work and it's emotionally manipulative i thought it was cheap and it it is it is it is it's the same way in gardens of the galaxy 3 when they when they put the little animals and the otter clamp hands leah and you know that like i love animals so it's like whatever but it got me dog like i was like i i knew it was coming and it is stupid and it is but i'm like okay i never thought i would see the guy fly again like that on the big screen like i it got me bro we're we're fully spoiling the film now for anybody who's gotten this far but um can i be honest that i honestly i think they kind of ruined

it by just putting helen slater as supergirl next to him too where i was like why was that like a representation choice that was insane like if you want to give christopher reeve who was a terrific actor and clearly a very noble person. Is this so you could use AI to make a Helen Slater superhero movie? It was the level of AI where it looks like my mom did it on her iPhone. Look,

you guys, for the people that are watching this, if you guys think that I'm being super mushy and sloshy, just can't wait. Wait till they get on the Midnight Boys. I'm going to be annoyingly, like disturbingly positive about the movie. Are we in spoiler territory? And is the complaint bureau open for business?

Because I have one. I've been complaining for 40 minutes. Well, I have a specific one I'd like to file. I would like to talk about the opening set piece uh and specifically babies all of the babies floating around from the nursery ward in peril uh and that being like just an extended tongue and cheek joke that they then bring back they put the babies back in peril in the netherworld towards the end of the film just babies floating around like they're about to die i not for me okay so let me tell you something

so i in immediately knew what that scene was about they've done this before so that scene is an upping of the ante they started off with with Quicksilver. Look at what I have open. What? This is exactly what I was going to say. Oh, yeah. We have seen the good version of this sequence in other movies. They did it, right? They've done this before.

They started off with Quicksilver in Days of Future Past showing what he could do, right? I told you this. Evan Peters in the X-Men film, they do two versions actually in Apocalypse as well. They bring it back, yeah. It's a Quicksilver sequence where time slows down to an infinitesimal rate. And so we can see the fast character moving very quickly through this slow reality.

And there's an opportunity for jokes. There's an opportunity for heroism. And in Days of Future Past specifically, I was like, wow, they nailed Quicksilver. They actually obviated needing a Flash movie because of this two-minute sequence in this movie. I agree. So here's the deal.

When I saw that, I'm looking, I'm thinking, the only way they could justify doing that is to put babies in it. It's because the only way that the only way that i'm serious the only way the only way that it could get more desperate because if you're gonna do that again you gotta up the ante i'm literally sitting here i'm watching that you gotta up the ante you're like all the babies are gonna to go flying out of there. Right. So when you're looking at that, what Evan Peters is doing is he's saving the life of Xavier and Magneto, and he's rendering all of their opposition useless, right?

Which is cool. It's more cool, but it's kind of low stakes. He comes back and does it in Apocalypse. It's a little bit higher stakes because he's got to save everybody before the X-Mansion explodes, I think it was. Yeah, I think so and then but here if you're gonna do that again and you're gonna show that flash is a better ass than quicksilver because he is faster than quicksilver right if you're gonna he's a more powerful character if you're gonna show he's the best how could you do

it what could you put at stake eight babies and a dog eight babies and a service dog is the only way that you can do it because the scene was like, he put a baby in a microwave, bro. I know, and he took a very long time to open the door

of the microwave again so that baby could breathe and I was really specifically stressed out about that. I don't, but... I'm not saying it was as cool.

I'm saying that the reason why they chose babies... Well, I... I mean, they lost me. I was like, i'm out you know and i'm sorry i i do not like being my baby my baby but in that case i was like fuck this the least interesting form of criticism is i'm a parent that's not yeah meaningful really at all creatively right but i am a parent and i was like what the fuck is this like what what people who have children who worked on the production of this film were like, this is a bang up idea.

We should definitely open our movie with this set piece. He saved the babies, though. The babies. What if he would have lost one baby? You know, I would have been. What if he goes seven for eight right there? Is he still here? What if one baby bites the bullet there?

It's like in a right sort of and this is again like the tonal problem of the movie we're sure he saves all the babies but he's like this is really annoying and they don't call me to do the important stuff and also i need to like have you know my calorie intake and i was like okay are we supposed to like barry allen and then they bring it back so this is once again kind of the thing here yeah you're supposed to like barry allen and then they bring it back so this is once again kind of the thing here yeah you're supposed to like him but he's supposed to be played like evan peters is quick silver is any speedster is going to be quirky because they can do whatever they want and they move around through time and you know they're moving so fast and as part of society i have

another note on that but so but evan peters for some reason he's cool to me barry allen has always been there are some moments where you know the juxtaposition between him and superman's powers where there's been some moments but it's never quite worked they don't know quite what they're doing with them. In this movie, you're supposed to like him. And you're supposed to like his variant probably a little less. But even the variant is supposed to have some youthful exuberance that you can excuse.

But it's hard to excuse it because it's very annoying. I mean, the Tom Hanks comp is a good one that you made because it's sort of big energy. That's what you need. That's incredibly hard to do. I don't think anyone else could have done big besides Tom Hanks. But I do not think that Ezra Miller brings it.

I think it's not a one-to-one, but the Marvel character that I think is an easy comparison is Spider-Man. Because there is a kind of teenage into adulthood transitional aspect to the character and maturation and falling in love and being the junior partner to the senior Captain America or Iron Man. And powers by accident and lost parents. Powers by accident, yes, lost parents.

Like those comparisons are inevitable by the way i find him annoying too and everybody and everybody man i love spider-man yeah you find spider-man annoying i find tom holland spider-man annoying and everybody who listens to the midnight boys knows this already i find it annoying spider-man my spider-man my spider-man is uh my spider-man first of all is not like that's a disney xd spider-man to me it's like a mr stark mr stark spider boy situation i was never that in on it look we've had this conversation me and mallory and and charles had a midnight court where it was tom holland against toby maguire it's the only reason why it's not more annoying is because they actually

give him less to do like literally in three movies all he does is complain literally all he does is complain and but they give him less to do because they have tony stark doing some of the heavy lifting because they have uh even um uh jake gyllenhaal come in or whatever. I didn't like that one. In the last movie, they give... A lot of drones. Okay. There were a lot of drones. In the last movie, they give Tobey Maguire

and Andrew Garfield some work to do. They put a little bit less on the character. That's the strange thing about that universe of stories is Tobey Maguire is probably the most successful spider-man in terms of the storytelling tom holland is sort of like the i think the realization of what a lot of people thought spider-man would be and i have said that before yeah but andrew garfield is probably the best cast person he's the best he's the best guy to play the part and he never got the movie he never got the script

I mean he sort of gets it in in No Way Home but sort of doesn't he's wonderful he's great huge fan but that's what you're looking for if you had an Andrew Garfield

type performance that's what I was going to say for Flash you want an Andrew Garfield you want somebody who is who is a little nervy who can be a little annoying a little needy

that is an aspect of the character but who has a an a raw empathy or when you look at him you are rooting for him that is you need that to be the case but a young hero who's unpolished like that is the thing that's that's essential to most of the spider-man stories too you know figuring it out yeah you guys love this movie wait no i have i'll never watch i. I have one more. I have one more note. And this is perhaps an Amanda's Science Corner moment. That's a hit. Bobby hit the theme song. Yeah, Bobby.

I have a theme song. Welcome to Amanda Dobbins' Science Corner. Okay. So, the flash moves very quickly. But in the films, it's all in slow-mo. And I understand that that's how time works, but it's not an honest representation of what we're seeing. What we're seeing on the screen is not a good representation of the experience and the powers of the flash.

So then what you want, because the Flash is moving at the speed of light. Well... Did you know that Amanda Science Corner often resembles Tucker Carlson asking the real questions? Why is that? Who decides that? The Flash is actually moving in slow motion.

I want him moving faster rather than slower. How about that? So if he moves at the speed of light, he essentially would have done the entire mission and you would not have been able to perceive it. That's true. I do understand that part of- Boom, asked and answered.

I said, what about faster rather than slower? So think about it. The first mission he does and the time that it takes that guy to make a sandwich. Right. It's not a lot of time. Well, they also do portray it like that guy spends 45 minutes making

a sandwich that's a fair point you know but i'm just saying it's a very specific sandwich order he's talking about his like you know friends or his like sister's problems or something i'm not really sure that person is supposed to be fun it's another supposed to be funny kind of annoying um but the well that's true but then the flash has all of this time and it just everything it takes forever he's supposed to be really fast right that's all i'm saying so i what i will say is you know you do maybe you do want a couple of scenes in there where is this zip zip that's there we go zippy you know what I mean? But you want to be able to see the kind of stuff that's happening. I do, as the proprietor of Science Corner,

understand that were he to move at the speed of light, that would... Well, that would provide some problems in terms of us being able to see it. But you also, like, how does his body hold up? Like, how does, like does the matter of his body? Speed force. So what really happens is that Flash goes into a different dimension called the speed force.

Okay. The speed force. He's running, but the speed force is actually this thing that helps him run. So his body is maintained intact and stuff like that. Okay, got it. But he still can feel pain. Remember like when he, when he,

Physical pain, you mean. Right, when he's running. But also emotional pain. Well, it's a lot of emotional pain, right? When he's running and you see the clothes burning off of his body. Right.

That's because the clothes aren't of the material. Well, but also because they, so the clothes aren't protected by the speed force, but his body is. He is protected by the Speed Force, but his body is. He is protected by the Speed Force. The Speed Force is what gives him his powers.

So really, he's kind of in another dimension when he's running. But the clothes aren't taken to the dimension. The clothes are subject to the physics of the world. Okay. And the world that he's in. Which multi-world, though? Scientist Van is my favorite van. You're being so serious. Because you know why, though? Scientist van is my favorite van. You're being so serious.

Because, you know why, though? Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why, though. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. This is the last thing I'll say. Because this is a central part of nerdism.

It's like, somebody will be like, you know, why does, like, Cyclops have his powers? Somebody that he can shoot kinetic energy blasts. I'm like,

actually, what's happening is like there's a connection to a different dimension and his eyes are portals to that dimension. And when he opens his eyes, it comes out because these guys are

redefining these powers. And look, they help you get smarter as you're a kid. I didn't know what the word telepathy meant. Telekinesis was a big one for me. Telekinesis was a big one for me. Like, what does it mean to be telekinetic?

There's truth to this. Psionic? I didn't know what any of these words meant. Like, a Psylocke has a Psyblade. Like, what is a psionic blade? I don't know that it makes much sense to have a psychic blade. But I looked all of this stuff up, and it helped like my mind come come i completely agree with this and when people say that stuff like this rots your brain i completely disagree you do have to come to it with an understanding

that the science has been bent around the story yes it is not an actual rendition of say amanda's version of science which is bound by by the FDA and all legal protections. I've been meaning to ask you this. Since you developed and executed on Science Corner, did you receive a carve-out from Daniel X so that you can promote and build a brand beyond the big picture? Is this something you'll be expanding into? Is there merch? My outside work application is pending. Okay, I see. I think I'm the one who has to approve that. Science Corner would be fun, though.

Because you could have Neil deGrasse Tyson on there, whose job it is to destroy the science of every... Would that be fun? Well, it would be fun for some. Because I remember watching Interstellar. And when I got to the moment that I understood, I did not understand it the first time. Sure.

I'm sure you guys did. I did not understand Interstellar. I did not understand it the first time. Sure. I'm sure you guys did. I did not understand. I did because it's textbook science, you know? I did not because it is Poppycock, the whole movie. Okay.

So when you saw the magic library, you were like, of course, I understand the science there. I understood nothing. They were like, you know, we go there,

we got five hours. It's going to be 21 days. I'm looking at Kalika. I'm like, what? And she's like, it's whatever. They say this relatively. I was was like you don't know what they're talking about i thought you know what they're talking about i actually went home and started reading like stuff that

kip thorne wrote so that i could understand interstellar i didn't but my point is it still doesn't make scientific sense in a lot of ways is that okay or is it just comic book movies that have to be scientifically like i just want him to go faster that's his power be fast i think i think that the question of is does it make sense in the world as a film is a fair one to ask does it make sense in terms of practical reality of course not it's a movie called the flash about a person who runs really fast faster than we can even imagine so no it doesn't have to be logical but it has to be scientific yeah okay michael keaton was great wonderful he he was good jesus wow well i the thing is is that it felt like he was perhaps not used to the, you know what it is?

I just wanted to be with Michael Keaton, you know, and we're just constantly cutting back to Barry Allen. And I don't give a fuck about this. Like show me what 70 year old Bruce Wayne is doing. I would be interested in that story. Seems like he's not doing upkeep on Wayne Manor. No,

no. And collecting. Yeah. Well, and. The late, greatael michael goff yeah he's well he didn't develop his his own skills in the homemaking arena but he seemed to be cooking yeah oh yeah he knew how to make spaghetti spaghetti for one yeah spaghetti for one and he gave it away cooking up for alice right there that's what it's like where i'm just like get that prego right on top drop that on there. He came in and he

knew how to fight. I love old Batman because he can still throw down. You know what I mean? He can still get busy. We've seen old Batman in many different iterations.

Kingdom Come is an interesting one. That's a great old Batman. Yo dog, you read Kingdom Come? Yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. I've always wanted them

to do that. Kingdom Come is far into the future and all the superheroes are old. So there's the old generation of wonder woman superman the flash batman batman has been paralyzed and he is more is he like the governor of a state or he's like he's in a leadership capacity well well and kingdom come like i don't think he's the governor of a state if i remember he is well towards the end he's just governor of a state, if I remember. He is, well, towards the end. Maybe he's just retired.

Yeah, because Superman comes back and Superman kind of saves the day. But remember, the government is involved and all of that stuff. The superhero kids. Yeah, the young superhero. The young generation is more violent, more aggressive.

And the older generation needs to be called in. It's actually not unlike what's happened with Biden and Trump. We just needed to get some old guys. You know what? Can I be real? You would like, you would like Kingdom Come

and you would like it if they did it because that's a... I think that sounds interesting to me. That's a very relatable story. It's beautifully drawn too. It's basically, it's painted.

I mean, it's a different style than what your expectations of comic books would be. There's an underlying love situation between Superman and Wonder Woman. Diana, yeah.

Sick. Yeah. Okay. It's really good i just remember that i also tried to start applause when wonder woman showed up for two seconds no one cared yeah no one no one two movies in a row and then and then wonder woman into for no reason did his mumbling about uh you know they had that little in joke about like well you know it's this is about childhood trauma and all this but i thought that was was funny. I like it. Whatever they do.

Yeah. Lasso of truth humor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. That does work. Um, the one,

did you see Shazam fury of the gods? Was that the second one? Yes. I watched part of it. And then I was like, I, I, I can't do this even for employment.

Wonder woman showed up at the end of that film too. And, uh, it didn't, I was just like, why do it with Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot you know

as like middle aged you want Sliver but for Batman and Wonder Woman see that's what I would be making that's what I'm saying

if I was if I had the keys they should give me the keys to WB for five years that was gonna be my my honest prompt for you though like to end this conversation was what like what what are they what should they do because i think that people are running out of

patience with a lot of this stuff and the the box office has been not as disastrous as some would have you believe myself included these movies still make a lot of money they're still at the forefront of of a big tent movie making but the worm has turned to your point you know we're at the we're at a we're at a breaking point selection point yeah so here's the thing number one the first thing we should do is discard the idea that anything lasts forever at one point stallone and schwarzenegger had a bunch of different movies where they could take a guy a grown human man and throw him 30 feet. And we had no problem with it. It was just, you know, we went to see those movies, right?

We went to see movies, Stallone just punched somebody, hole in their chest, he's got blood. He's like, oh my God, he's that strong. Then- Remember when he bench pressed Leon into a stalactite? Right. That was wild. Then Die Hard comes out, and the next 10 or 15 years the action stars

look a little different they're regular guys who are in different situations they're highly they have they're highly expert dudes and we get to the i guess the crescendo of that with the born identity and a guy who looks like he could also Matt Damon kicking people's asses, right? It changed. It's two things. Number one, it might just be a slowdown in these films because of, not that there are not being great stories out there, some of these stories might not translate to film that well.

All right. In lieu of that, I still believe this, that the stories of these superheroes and what they do are some of the only stories that we tell over and over again in mythology and folklore. That's like we tell these stories over and over again, no matter who it is. When I say stuff like that on the pod, Amanda's like, you're a fucking loser clown. And when Van says it, she's like, no, I don't. Because you never say it like that. You're just like, my comic book experiences were very important.

Also... That's not true. You know, it's... Dishonest. They are sort of myths. Just like, you know, Greek myths or Shakespeare or something. They are stories that, at this point, we are fairly used to, like, having a new interpretation of. Having them always be in the culture in some respect.

I completely accept that i think where i get really frustrated is when you add in all the to my mind like pretty cynical and corporate well corporately motivated everything has to connect and you know multiverse like and this can be the only the only thing rather, you know, an aspect of the way that we understand ourselves in the world, which they are. They totally are. So to your point, these stories get told over and over again, but they still get told one story at a time. Still one story at a time.

One story at a time. Like Batman 89 is a retelling of Batman, of a live-action Batman we'd already seen, right? But it's one story at a time, right? If you make three great movies, you happen to have made three great movies and you're building on

the one story that you told. What I think that James Gunn is going to get back to, particularly in DC, is understanding that you really don't have to reinvent the wheel to affect people. You just have to give them something that they can connect to. I connected to movies like Prey. I've seen the Predator.

I've seen the Predator everywhere. I've seen the Predator on the Predator's planet. I've seen the Predator fight Danny Glover. I've seen the Predator everywhere. I've seen the Predator on the Predator's planet. I've seen the Predator fight Danny Glover. I've seen the Predator in the jungle. I've seen the Predator with Sonat Lathan. I've seen the Predator everywhere, right? What matters is that seeing the- You made it sound like the Predator and Sonat Lathan were like having brunch there, by the way.

Right, you know what I'm saying? I've seen the Predator with Sonat Lathan, hanging out. I've seen the Predators in our lathe thing hanging out I've seen the Predator everywhere but I when I saw the Predator the same entity right there in that particular situation it was more about the characters than it was about the big huge alien

just get back to that it's fine if he does Superman Legacy and his take on Superman is a Superman that we can really get behind and a guy who is really struggling cool I've bought so much of this stuff they don't have to sell me anything else they just have to make me feel something and that's what we're getting away from like we're getting away cap

goes Avengers assemble I'm like do you know what it took to get all of them back together it's not because they were able to put all of the people on there at the same time. It's because they went through some shit to all be back together. They had to move heavens and earth to all get back together. And they still got to do it one more time. And so I think that it can be done, but they're going to have to slow down. That's why I think all of these Marvel slowdowns, it's actually a good thing. I'm going to be 47 by the time. We did that math earlier this week. It was tough. I would be 47 by the time Secret Wars comes

out and God, I hope I have something else to care about. I think we all agree about that. Honestly, so you are now one of many people I've talked to who are in their late 30s or early 40s who spends a lot of time covering this space. I think we dreamt of this being the opportunity for us when we were kids. Maybe you did not, Amanda, but you've been able to realize certain dreams as well. Sure. And we're getting to the age now where it's a little silly. A little silly to still be as in on this stuff. And I don't, I get it, but it's, it's, it's.

There's nothing wrong with loving it. That's not what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Okay. The extent to which we surround ourselves with it because of how big it has gotten globally. There is something a little imbalanced. Right. I think for a time, I literally, i really did spike the football i was like you

guys call me a nerd for all of this time and now you do what i like okay you know what i mean i really i used to be at my old place of employment be like they would say nerd this nerd that i'd be like i don't know what y'all talking about we. We made $2 billion. And I've never, like, you know, I don't, never worked with Disney, nothing. I'll be like, we made $2 billion. Now I'm getting to the point to where I was like, I really need things that I watch to be meaningful and constructed well.

And that's what I'm hoping that they do. It's great advice. We didn't talk about the one confusing thing really ultimately, which is Nicolas Cage as Superman in this film. And Amanda didn't know I think quite understandably that once upon a time

Nicolas Cage was going to star as Superman in a Tim Burton adaptation of a story written by Kevin Smith produced by John Peters and Peter Gruber.

John Peters who of course always wanted a giant spider in all of the big action franchises that he was making. And of course, a big spider was meant to be the big bad of the Superman film starring Nicolas Cage. Never happened. He got his spider, though. But he got his spider. He got his spider in Wild Wild West.

That's right. And that didn't work. No. True. There have been other big spiders in other feature films, right? Yeah, there have been huge spiders. Spiders, spiders. What's the spider

in the Denis Villeneuve movie? Enemy? I don't believe John Peters produced that. Okay. Although I love the idea I just thought we were talking about spiders.

There is a giant spider. But what I'll say with this is I never thought that I was going to get to see Nicolas Cage as Superman. Yeah. I mean, by the way. You still haven't.

Well, because it was AI or whatever. This wasn't like they were talking about it. There's a great doc on it. It was done. The movie wasn't done. He was fitted for the costume.

He was fitted for the costume. The whole thing. They were doing it. And then they didn't do it. They then they just canceled it. Yeah. They were on the one yard line of going forward with the production and then they canceled it. And I didn't think I would ever see a Superman with long hair. I saw it and I thought it was cool.

I don't care what none of y'all say. I thought it was cool. It all worked for me. That whole last part worked. All right. I loved it. I really liked the movie. I thought it was cool. it all worked for me that whole last part worked alright I loved it I really liked the movie I thought it was cool

it's easy it's easy I wish that I had like a video recording of the two of you sitting across the table for me being like he was fitted for the suit

he was fitted for the suit you know it's just good podcasting I don't know what you're talking about. It was really beautiful. Well, this has been a passionate episode,

as usual. Thanks for being here, Van. Amanda, what are we doing next week? Asteroid City? Asteroid City. It's time. Are you going to see it again?

I'm going to. I think I'm going to see it a second time. I quite liked it. I loved it. There's a lot to unpack. It's very dense. Very dense.

That's great. Okay. You're pro-Wes Anderson. All the way. Through the roof. I was incredibly moved by this. Have you seen it? Oh, it's a good movie? I loved great. Okay. You're pro Wes Anderson. All the way. Through the roof. I was incredibly moved by this. Have you seen it? Oh, it's a good movie?

I loved it. I didn't see it, no. We'll get to it next week. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Listen to The Midnight Boys. Listen to Higher Learning. Listen to The Ringer Podcast Network

wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next week. Thank you.