The Big Picture - ‘The Marvels’ Is Here. Is It Too Late for the MCU?

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Sean and Amanda are joined by The Ringer’s Joanna Robinson to discuss the successes and failures of ‘The Marvels’ and what it portends for Marvel’s hopes to pull out of their relative recent tailspin (1:00). Then, Sean talks with ‘Dream Scenario’ writer and director Kristoffer Borgli about how he get his career kick-started, making films in the United States vs. Europe, and working with Nic Cage (1:15:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Joanna Robinson and Kristoffer Borgli Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, I'm Mallory Rubin and I am thrilled to tell you that House of R has a new podcast feed. Joanna Robinson and I will now be with you twice a week with more of the deep dives you've come to know and love on the Ringiverse. In addition to exploring all of your favorite nerd culture new releases, we'll have nostalgic revisitations, hype meters, Hall of Fame inductions, tropes courses, drafts, and more. All bad babies are welcome as we dive into Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and beyond. Follow the new House of R feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

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Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Marvel and the Marvels. Later in this show, I'll be joined by the writer-director Christopher Borgli, whose new film, Dream Scenario, stars Nicolas Cage as a mild-mannered professor who suddenly begins appearing, get this Amanda, in the dreams of his students

and eventually thousands of people across the country. It is one of the cleverest, most entertaining movies of the year and one of Cage's best performances in years. He actually said this is one of five screenplays that he knew as soon as he finished reading it that he had to do the movie. I hope you'll stick around for my conversation with Christopher. Very interesting guy.

Very thoughtful conversation about late capitalism in the movies. Speaking of late capitalism in the movies, Joanna Robinson, of course, is here to discuss the marvels and marvel with us. Joe, you're the author of a New York Times bestselling book called MCU. That was not the case last time you were on this show. You were the author of the book, but it wasn't a bestseller. Wait, the author with Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards, aka Dash's dad. Hello, Dash.

If you're listening, your dad is a new york times best-selling author you already knew that cool dash yeah amazing uh uh thank you amanda thank you sean thanks for having me yeah i mean and thanks consistently to this podcast for all the support you've given the book even uh and amanda even read it which is just astonishing. Listen, I like to know things and I like to support my friends. So here I am. Joanna, your book arrived at a, frankly, a hilarious time for the MCU. Genuinely. And we're going to talk, I think, a bit in depth about how we felt about the Marvels

and then ultimately what has happened to the Marvels or what is happening to the Marvels, which is an interesting story. But I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about the idea of the unhappy accident. Because I feel like for the first 10 to 12 years, the story of the MCU looks like this beautifully designed strategy. And in fact, it's just a series of happy accidents

that are then like leveraged in smart ways. And what's been happening in the last three years feels like almost the inversion of that it feels like a lot of planning that has kind of gone haywire is that an accurate reading based on kind of what you have surmised after years of writing and reporting about marvel i absolutely think that's the case i think um you know to your point happy accident plus a massive amount of brainpower and talent to make that happy accident look so intentional. When we started the book in 2019, they've put out Endgame, they're top of the world. So we definitely thought we were writing a very different book than we wound up writing at the end of the day. Because when you get to that last sixth of the book, let's say, dealing with what I like to call the wobble.

By the way, I like to call it the wobble, which is what Marvel is currently experiencing. Brooke Barnes called it that in the New York Times this week. So I'm going to call that my first pop culture influencer moment for real. Somehow I doubt that's your first. I don't think it's your first. But it feels so New York Times-y. You feel like this was the first time you got plagiarized by the New York Times

is what you're saying? No, I was just like delighted. Anyway, when we were trying to gather together, okay, what happened? How did we get here? Because we felt it was very important that the book answer that, not just what happened to build Marvel up to its, you know, victorious climax with Endgame,

but then what happened after that things that the wheels started to come off a bit. And once we started to amass the various factors, be it COVID, be it the, you know, tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman, be it this, that, or the other thing, it really did feel like the cards started to become stacked against Marvel in a certain way, whereas everything kind of wound up in their favor leading up to it. And so I think that the biggest factor of all of that, COVID, et cetera, is the quantity factor or scalability, if you prefer. Whereas I think you can convince all of us that the various threads you're weaving together

into this tapestry of story are intentional if you only have to weave together five to 10 threads at a time. But when the Disney Plus era starts, when Iger on his way out the door has this mandate of flood the gates with content, with all these Disney Plus shows, with more movies, more shows, et cetera, then your tapestry becomes a tangled mess. How could it not? And so I think they could have handled a lot of these things that they were dealt in the last few years

if they only had to smooth over a few movies at a time. But that has not been the case. And so then we start to see all those knots and tangles, and they are currently grappling with just an unbelievably bad news cycle for them. And that is not the environment we thought our book would be coming out in. But I am glad that we took the time to try to report out the how did we get here question, because then I think people want the answer to that. And hopefully that means they'll want to read the book that we wrote. What struck you reading it, especially since this is a world that you have spent a lot of time talking about and engaging with but frequently not liking and also not really holding on to in my brain which um so i have seen all the movies i think give or take dr strange uh and it's fine it's not bad i just you know it just never happened for me i would i would love a dr strange nowadays i'm being, but that's a whole other conversation. But what happens,

the memories of them sort of, you know, filter from my brain pretty quickly. Did this jog your memory, MCU? Yeah, it did. And it was fun. You know, I told Joanna, I read as much as I could. And so I did go through the book and kind of look for, I guess I actually didn't look for the movies I remembered much as, as much as like the main points. So I, you know, read the Iron Man chapter, which was, or the Iron Man chapters, which were pretty fascinating in terms of them just spending five hours in a trailer every morning, just writing what they felt like. And, you know, and it just is very funny. That's another example of something that we read as intention and the start of this grand vision to reinvent superhero movies and cinema and Hollywood was pretty much like a bunch of guys with vibes trying to figure out what works best for Robert Downey Jr. And Jeff Bridges like prefers a script. And he was like,

he's like, there's a great line. They had an outline, which was very funny. And then the image of John Favreau listening to what Gwyneth Paltrow said, just like how she talked, not, while not filming and then writing dialogue based on that,

because she didn't like improv-ing as much as Robert Downey Jr. does. So, you know, all of that stuff is fantastic, but speaks to this thing that the book really highlights, which is just maybe, like, I guess happy accident, you know, but also just that creativity is not always spreadsheet oriented, you know, and that a lot of what we see now is this like corporate behemoth was like a bunch of people in rooms like trying stuff and spitballing and then piecing it together afterwards. And that the plan was found after the fact. And that basically anytime we're talking into a microphone about stuff and Monday morning quarterbacking we're just like projecting we don't really know like what we're talking about no I don't think that's totally true and

there's like a large part of your book that is about you know tribunals and and and people and and toys and and people trying to make sense and scale this. But I was really caught by all of the, you know, all of the like funny creative moments. And also thank you so much for letting me know what they ordered at dinner in Rome after the, what was that? The fried squash blossoms. Yeah, thank you.

I noticed no pasta, which makes sense. The Avengers aren't really going to eat carbs. But like that is the level of detail that I'm looking for from a book. Thank you. I noticed no pasta, which makes sense. The Avengers aren't really going to eat carbs. Um, but like that, that is the level of detail that I'm looking for, uh, from a book. So, so that,

that's, that's what stayed with me. One thing that strikes me, Joanna, as we talk about the Marvels is, you know, this is a movie that I'll be candid. I thought it was extremely flawed.

Um, and at times enervating for me, um, because of the way that I like to enjoy movies. And it feels like what happened to this movie is very similar

to what happened to many other extremely successful Marvel movies, which is that there was a kind of ex post facto hackathon

to resolve issue and that that has worked for a very long time. And we have seen, you know, this also was happening in some kind of phase one phase two phase three movies where you'd watch a phase two movie and you'd be like that didn't seem like what they wanted to do but you'd be willing to write it off because you had a great sequence or you felt like it pushed the story forward in an exciting way or it just showed you a character on the big screen that a Marvel fan had never seen before. And now, you know, Marvel's,

which is co-written and directed by Nia DaCosta, it is the ostensible sequel to Captain Marvel, which is a huge film that made over a billion dollars back in 2019. This feels like a movie that is almost suffering for the sins of the past. Like that thinking that you could continue on this game of fixing it in post, for lack of a better word, has fully caught up to them.

The last few films have struggled with this to some extent or another. I thought Guardians 3 less so. I thought Multiverse of Men is a little less so. But almost all the other films we've seen since Shang-Chi feel like movies that have been significantly rejiggered in post.

And so when I'm watching the movie, knowing that I think that that's true is making it worse watching the movie. But even while I'm watching, I'm like, there sure is a lot of ADR in this movie. You know, there sure are a lot of holds on the faces of actors

when we're not seeing them speak so that we can get a storyline across. So, are things like significantly worse in the production of these films

or is it just that maybe the, whereas it was the right people in the example that Amanda was citing and Jon Favreau and Downey Jr. and these people who are good on their feet

and know how to improvise on a day-to-day basis. Is it now a lot of people who don't know how to do that? Is it it there are too many dominoes stacked up and this tumbling of the dominoes has caught up to them what do you what do you make of it yeah i mean there's so many i could speak to this for many hours and i probably will to mallory over on a different podcast so i'll try to keep it snappy for you and say like the a there was so much more there's so much more on their shoulders that they're trying to carry now versus Iron Man.

Iron Man was so free from continuity, burdens of expectation. They were coming in as underdogs. Nobody cared about Iron Man the character. They refer to this as their independent movie that they made, just sort of mavericking around on a dusty set, et cetera. So it's just a completely different scene, but I think the hackathon that you reference, um, is evident in this movie more than any other Marvel movie. I, I, I liked this movie overall, but by like, I mean, highest it gets is B plus mostly a B oftentimes a C plus like that's, that's where I am with this movie. So, um, but, but I don't

think it's bad and i definitely don't think it's deserves some of the like dumping on its getting um and i don't think it deserves to be this black mark forever i think there are worse marvel movies is the point um but the hackathon aspect the timeline of is is is thus quantumania comes out in fe is, you know, lambasted by critics and fans alike. Lambasted might be too strong, but does not go over well. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Does not go over well.

The news that they're going to push the Marvels from its summer release date down here into November comes in end of March, early April. So it's reactive to the reaction to quantum mania. So like, while they already, they were going to always like monkey around with Nia DaCosta's, uh, you know, a film, um, the extremity to which they did it is because I think I have heard, and I think that they were like, okay, better to hack this down to a plot that moves so fast and hone in so much on what works, AKA a Mondolani as Kamala Khan, that we get people walking and going, oh, that was okay. That was fine. I had a fun time, which I think is the majority of, you know, Rotten Tomatoes always a flawed metric. But when you compare the critical reaction when critics are trying, rightly so,

I think always to hold Marvel's feet to the fire of like, be the best you can be to the fandom reaction, which is hovering around like an 86%, which is that was fine. I had a fine time at the movies. I feel like that's the mostly the fandom response. And so that's what they were. I had a fine time at the movies. I feel like that's the mostly the fandom response. And so that's what they were. I had someone I know who's in the industry circling around Marvel texting me like, have you seen the Marvels yet? And I was like, oh no, I'm seeing it tonight. He's like, give me your review right when you come out. And I gave it to him and I gave him the like, it's a B, it's fun, it's zippy, it's fine. Amandolani's a star. And he said, oh, then they did it.

They did what they were trying to do, which is just sort of like carve away anything that could bog it down. Keep it as lightweight as possible because they're battling this narrative of Marvel requires too much homework, is too heavy, is too burdensome, all this sort of stuff like that. And so I just think that that is they achieve what they were trying to do, even though we as people who are studying film so closely can see the hacks left and right in the screenplay. You've raised your hand, Amanda. I'd like to talk about the homework. Well, I heard

homework, and I raised my hand. And also Marvel requires too much homework. You know, what I thought about this movie doesn't matter. It does to me. It truly does it. But whether it's like good or bad, I genuinely feel like unable to qualify that at this point.

I don't think it's well done. And what you guys responded to as sort of like, you know, a very in the know, this has been hacked. And I just responded to as like, I literally, like, I still don't know what is happening because there is still a lot of homework that you have to do. You have to, I guess, have seen a bunch of shows that I have not seen in full. You have to remember what happened in Captain Marvel, which I didn't really, besides Annette Bening, getting a paycheck, which I'm happy for. Jude Law was in it as well.

I do remember that, and he was evil, I think. Yeah. Nailed it. Spoiler alert for the film Captain Marvel. Correct. In general, when people of that level of fame wind up in these movies and they're not a superhero, they're evil. But that's okay. That's true.

And then there was something about the Krees and the Skrulls. I don't know. You know, like I genuinely, I don't know. And that was one where it was like that. They were actually, it was clear that was going to be part of the movie and they tried to scale it back

just want to point out Kree is like moose the plural of Kree is Kree thank you so much for that but scrolls

are with scrolls are yeah the traditional plural okay thank you this is the best I can do on a pod about the Marvels yeah no no no it's fine

i don't know you know and and then there are whole characters and and planets and plot lines there where i was like i don't really know what's happening oh god so yeah when it starts and they sit down for their like yeah pre-scroll peace talks and i I was like, no, this can't be the movie. And I think some of that is like me being either, you know, a dummy or disrespectful to the Marvel canon or whatever. And part of that is that I do not think that the basic storytelling in this movie, because it is so hacked up, as you guys said, effectively communicates what I needed to know to follow a lot of it. And to Joanna's other point, it's like, in their defense, they are now carrying 14 TV shows.

I don't know how many TV shows and however many movies and all of this lore. They have a lot more to communicate, but they did not communicate it clearly to me. I think you're both right, which is that this is a movie, I think, ultimately, and maybe it's just in the editing, but if we had gone back to the original version of the script, it probably was even more so this. It's a movie that is both for the faithful and in some ways not at all for the casual. And that's pretty new, I would say, for a Marvel film. There are movies that have come before this that would be challenging to understand if you hadn't been keeping up,

but the number of things that it would be helpful to have kept up with is at a higher rate in this film, despite the fact that I think what Joanna said is right, which is that this movie is an hour and 40 minutes. It flies by. It's got two or three really fun performances that just kind of carry the movie on its shoulders. Can we just say the name

of Mon Villani again? Because I was like, who is this? All of that was totally delightful. I sat next to Sean during the screening. He guffawed at all the family scenes. Well, I liked that show a lot too, and I think she's great. I didn't watch the show, but I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, you know, the movie lights

up whenever that family is on the screen. It's really funny. It is also as a casual. And Sean, you wrote this in the outline, but I had the same thought. It's just like, it's another Spider-Man story. You know, it's like a teen who wants to be a super. And like, that works. You know, that works.

That is how you bring in, like, it is relatable. It's how you bring in casuals. There's charisma. That part was so great that it stood in stark relief to pretty much everything. I thought so too. Yeah. And I think,

well, I think to address your homework question, it's, it's so good for me to talk to you, Amanda, always about anything, but like, but,

but I always do like relish your perspective on this because it is important for me so far inside the machine to like understand how this plays to people inside the machine i'm like they did so much work to try to invite you in they added previously on segments for every single character yeah right kamala gets an animated one carol has a dream and then they do like a vision quest to get monica's like the story of her mom dying like all of that is if you didn't watch wandavision if you didn't watch the marvels you can't remember what happened in 2019 who can right and you can't and you didn't re-watch captain marvel this this is your recap does her mom captain marvel in wandavision yeah oh is that one of the grief things all i remember

about wandavision is that it was very powerful about grief, right? Yes. Yes, it is. That's what the movie is. It is one of the many grief things. It's a really powerful television show about grief. Yeah, exactly. Sean is looking at me like I'm making, I don't know. I watched the first couple episodes. I was like, this seems cool. You're like, I don't understand. And then I quit. This is the same conversation. I mean, this is not a podcast about Star Wars or Ahsoka. But this is the same conversation we were having about Ahsoka, the TV show, which so many people complained, felt like you had to do so much homework for. And at the same time, I saw Lucasfilm genuinely trying to welcome people in. But, I mean, the answer, certainly in in your case, Amanda is it's not enough.

And maybe even if they do all that work, you still have this sense that you're missing something because you didn't, you haven't seen all the things that the other people have seen leaning up to it. And so, um, you know, maybe they're on the back foot no matter what, but I do think, I think I, I am pretty sure that there is another version of this movie where the Khan family, which, again, we all agree is the standout highlight of the movie, is a much lower percentage of the runtime. And so the fact that they're like, let's just bump up the fam, bump up the fam and make this essentially a Miss Marvel movie, which it really is. And that's the best I think they could do with the raw material, which is not a knock, by the way, on Nia DaCosta, who is so talented. But I think at the end of the day, and this is me pandering to the big pic crowd, but I think it's true. I think at the end of the day, you don't want Nia DaCosta to make a Marvel movie.

I completely agree. This is not her meter at all. You can tell. You know? And you just don't. And you don't want some of the, like, you know, I don't think you want Ryan and Anna to make a Captain Marvel movie. I completely agree. Two bizarre castings for filmmakers.

I know. It's just so weird. I think that there's just like a number of directors. I don't think you want Daniel Destin Cretton working for Marvel. I think there's just like a number of these great directors that we love the movies that we make that they're not well suited for the marvel machine versus the russos who are perfect for working for marvel um joss whedon uh you know in his day also like these are people who came from television who are who are used to working in a larger narrative i think they work well for for um the marvels and i think um the oh wow uh, it's Benson and Moorhead, right, who just did Loki, who are like potentially, you know, who are working their way into the Russo's position going forward.

I think that they are well suited for the Marvel method. And it's not to say they're untalented. They're just talented in a different way. want these great artistic visionary creatives working for Marvel because they will be as Nia DaCosta you know as it was reported in Variety pushed out of the edit at the end of the day and then you're sort of like well what's the point of hiring Nia DaCosta in the first place I want to use the happen I don't know if you're familiar with Benson and Moorhead they've made a series of independent science fiction movies over the last 10 years that are very creative thoughtful Chris and I are huge fans of theirs they made the leap to marvel with moon knight

and then they have been directed a few episodes of loki and we're sort of loki directorial moon night was the ethan hawk correct oscar isaac yes they're they're incredibly talented guys they're more in the mold of scott derrickson who made doctor strange where they come from kind of hard genre and this is important to a point i want to make about this movie for me because I felt it resonating hard I obviously love science fiction there are different strands and different styles of science fiction the movies that Marvel is attempting to make and the last this is true of essentially the last three Guardians and Quantumania this film, is that they're basically Star Trek movies. They're movies that are about warring races.

They're movies with moral quagmires. They're movies with a kind of like gloppy, almost like interesting attempt to build physical worlds that we've never seen before. There was a bit of this in Love and Thunder too. They're moving more and more interplanetary, interstellar, which is purposeful, right? Because Secret Wars is coming and that's where the avengers story is going so they're leaning into an era of marvel that is all about this kind of storytelling and that more that marvel was very

influenced by star wars and star trek and that those things were all kind of in conversation with each other but they're not good at making these movies making a star trek movie is really hard star trek is is day class a in our culture right now. I know there are a couple of very beloved Star Trek series on TV right now on Paramount+. Strangest New World is. I also just want to say

there's an amazing aside in your book, Joanna, about someone, I can't remember who claims that Star Trek 5 is better than, I don't know, something. And then you guys just do a parenthetical

that's like two minutes of hot takes about here's like the actual truth about Star Trek and the correct ranking and I just like hats off to you guys. I didn't understand what it meant but I respect the blogging. Wait can you do your top three Star Trek films right now Jo? Um yeah. Yes I can. First of all and you

did not even set me up for this. That was all Gavin. Okay. Well Gavin shout out. Amazing stuff. Josh's dad once again coming through. But I You did not even set me up for this. That was all Gavin. Okay. Well, Gavin, shut up. Amazing stuff. Dash's dad once again coming through. But First Contact is my favorite Star Trek movie. This is so geriatric millennial. You went First Contact. This is wild.

I know. And then Wrath of Khan, which is like everyone's favorite. Wrath of Khan. I mean, come on. That's obviously number one, Joanna. But like, why would you hit me with geriatric Millennial? Why wouldn't you say like- Because I am one too. Why would you say Cusper or like Baby Gen X? I would prefer over Geriatric Millennial.

We're all in this boat together, okay? This is a generation of podcasters. I love you both so much. I'm not in that boat. I don't know what you're talking about. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. I saw the JJ Abrams Star Trek with Chris Pine and Dr. Keto. Star Trek was Pharrell's record label circa 2001. You know. And then I saw most of the sequel to that. You've never seen an original Star Trek film? I don't think so.

When would I have seen it? A couple of them are quite good. I'm not even saying like that. Compared to the blockbuster bullshit we watch these days. Listen, I'm not even

being like, oh, I just don't know what you're talking about but that's okay. I only bring it up. Well, what's your third? I wanted three. First Contact,

Con. Undiscovered Country. Oh, good pick. Yeah, that's the Christopher Plummer one. Yeah, I love Christopher Plummer. He quotes Shakespeare

frequently in the film. I bring it up because science fiction is very hard to do. And mashing together films that are about magic and MacGuffins and superpowers and all the things that Marvel has to do in addition to these space journeys is tricky. And casting filmmakers like Boden and Fleck or Nia DaCosta that have basically no experience whatsoever trying to tell a story like this, have never done an epic story of any kind, have never done a science fiction story, have never really just have no experience whatsoever. So Marvel is increasingly relying on the machine that they've built, the kind of production machine to execute on those stories. We know we've talked ad nauseum about the crunch on the VFX teams on these films, on the complicated way that

the films have to be recut to allow for storytelling, lack of storytelling confusion. You know, I couldn't finish Secret Invasion. I thought it was like a real abomination. It's terrible. Terrible. How is that related to Secret Wars? And why are they secret? Not really.

It's kind of meant to be a sort of a precursor. No one even wants to engage with me? How are they secret? Not really. It's kind of meant to be a sort of a precursor. No one even wants to engage with me. How are they secret? They're both about the Kree and the Skrulls in some ways. But who's keeping them a secret? I'll tell you this. Secret Invasion is about a bunch of Skrulls or shapeshifters and about a bunch of shapeshifting aliens who come to Earth

and pretend to be humans and in the comics they pretend to be like well-known superheroes that you know are secretly Skrulls. Oh. But that's not

the Mishigas that they made of the TV show. Okay. Which was just a miss from start to finish and a waste of Olivia Colman and Kingsley Ben-Adir

and all this great talent and what is wild about the Marvels, because Samuel L. Jackson is the star of Secret Invasion, the TV show, the Marvels pretend Secret Invasion didn't happen at all. Yes. At all. And that is to your point earlier, Sean, about like, this feels new.

That feels new. And it has to do, I think, with shuffled release date order honestly and so it's just sort of like you know the the cracking weight of trying to carry tv continuity into their cinematic universe as release days keep putting getting pushed back and back and back and back like it's just you know it's an impossible scenario. So I think, you know, they recently announced with the Echo binge drop that they're doing at the start of next year, this concept of Marvel Spotlight. This idea that, like, we're breaking this out of larger continuity or we're breaking this out of the feeling that you have to do homework. A hilarious name to give a show that stars Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin and is a spinoff of a hot, like they couldn't have picked

a more entangled project than Echo, but you know. It is not a standalone. It is essential in many ways to understand what happened in previous series and films to know what's going on. And going forward.

Yeah, exactly. But maybe in future, they will pick a more appropriate project to slap that label on, you know? Well, Spotlight in general is a good idea for a Marvel concept. You looked me like i'm gonna just fire up all the spotlights i'm not no i'm not encouraging you to i'm just trying to point out that yeah yeah comic books are standalone in many ways not every comic book is like speaks to the other comic book

this is the whole point this is what i thought i think one of their most successful things post endgame was werewolf by night yeah a project that I think even Amanda Dobbins would like right it's the Christmas special right it was but it's really more of a horror it was like a Halloween oh that's right and then what was the show that was like a Christmas movie but a TV show that wasn't that good that was Hawkeye or there was a Guardians Christmas special and Hawkeye was also sort of a Christmas show Hawkekeye is what I think I was. Okay. Was Jeremy Renner in that? He was. Yes. Okay.

But then also wasn't... Haley Steinfeld? Yeah. Yes, she was, which she makes a very brief mention at the end of this film as well, which we'll discuss. Haley Steinfeld's big in our house, but for different reasons. Kate Bishop. Yeah.

Okay. I'm trying to think of a couple more things that really just did not work for this movie. Why don't we talk... I have some Marvel-specific questions and comments yeah to share so and this goes to the larger part about what did they skip and try to like condense in this movie versus like what did they just not effectively communicate why do captain marvel and monica rambeau like why have they not spoken in 15 years? Like, why is that the way that it went down?

There's an attempt to answer this question in the film. In the script, yeah. Where Carol says, basically, she was so ashamed of what she did to the Kree planet and her, like, nickname of Annihilator that she felt like she had to fix that before she could go home. But so, did we, in a previous something, follow Monica Rambeau losing her mother and feeling abandoned by Captain Marvel? In WandaVision. In WandaVision, yeah. Okay, that was the grief thing.

Yeah. Yes. That wasn't actually what the grief was about. That was about Wanda and Vision. But they're all related. They're thematically related. A larger grief tent. Sure. Okay.

So everyone's, if you will, that we're operating under. Yes. The thing that gives her powers in some ways is correlated to this. Okay. She was just a regular, was she an FBI agent? She was just sort of some governmental agent. Saber. Saber.

Saber. Okay. And also Monica Rambeau was blipped. She was.er. Okay. And also, Monica Rambeau was blipped. She was. Yes. Okay. And does that somehow explain the disparity in scripted age difference and real life casting? No, because Captain Marvel takes place in the 90s.

Captain Marvel doesn't. Brie doesn't age. Her character doesn't age. She doesn't age. Oh. doesn't age. She doesn't age. Oh. I see. Which I agree is something that, like, I thought about this while I was watching the movie. I understood why because she is a super-powered being.

But I was like, so she's just looked exactly the same for 35 years. Right. Since No Doubt was crushing on the charts. Yeah. Just Carol Danvers has looked exactly like Brie Larson this whole time. She's less buff. She's more like yoga fit than she was like weightlifting fit in the 90s. Listen, and all of the like Aloe Vera, like unsponsored, sponsored crop top tank tops.

I clocked them. Listen, I would accept any free gifts that wanted to come my way. Is that a look that you guys think Brie Larson, the actor, insisted upon for Carol Danvers while she was on the spaceship? Yes. Million percent. 1,000. I couldn't clock the sneakers that she was wearing because they obscure brands. I think they were Vahab, but obviously you're not allowed to wear anything that is, like, recognizable.

But everything in that jump roping, like, training sequence, which was, like, cute, whatever, you know. Yeah. No, she worked with the stylist. That was all, like, very… It felt that way. Yeah. I feel like, so in the first movie, much was made of her, like, you know, basically, basically like hauling Jeeps up hills and all of her like training like literally there's there's an Instagram video of her hauling a Jeep. She got so buff for the first movie.

Right. And like she's like for all that work. I just had to deal with incels online. So I'm pretty I mean, again, I'm pretty sure Brie Larson hasn't told me this specifically. I'm pretty sure she's like this time I'm not doing that again I will show up she looks fantastic I mean

she's very purposeful like I'm hot and it's important that you recognize that I'm hot which is fine that was fine by me

100% I do think that hold on one more thing yeah go ahead relating to Brie Larson's physical appearance

and she's very beautiful this movie probably for logistical reasons, you know, features a lot of close-ups of her face holding for a long time. And just like the eyebrow grooming is still not matching. And I had like enough time to just notice this also was in Fast X, and I like don't know what's going on. And there are some like eyebrow continuity issues that you start to notice, but they just

don't match. And I just don't know what's going on. And I just, I think the left doesn't match the right. Yeah. And it doesn't. And it's like, and it's really when you have as much fixed close up as Brie Larson has in these two movies to distract from the green screen. And I was like, is this a thing? Like I went home and Googled like mismatch eyebrow TikTok, you know, like maybe I'm like lost in it. I don't really know. But yeah, that's, I would love to understand.

I think we have found the straw that will break Kevin Feige's back. I think he should be fired today because of the eyebrow maintenance problem in The Marvelous. What do you think? Also apparently a blight of the eyebrow maintenance problem in the marvels what do you think i also apparently a blight of the fast franchise um i will have to i'm gonna go see the marvels again on wednesday i will look very closely at the eyebrows and i'll get back to you on that here's what's crazy about this movie you pointed out the jump rope training sequence sure there's also the kind of the one of the engines of the story is this idea that there's kind of power switching where the three main characters all share light based powers.

And so when they use these light based powers, there's correlated to this band that the Ms. Marvel character has that they switch positions wherever they are in the universe at that time. I thought this was pretty fucking cool. And I loved it. The way they choreographed it was really good. There's a fight sequence, particularly in the home of Ms. Marvel,

that is really, really well done. There are a couple of solid fight sequences in the movie. Those are actually things that I have complained about in previous MCU, like the last three or four MCU movies, where I'm like, the fight staging in Eternals is so poor. The blocking is so bad in a lot of those sequences

that it really pulls you out of the movie. This is a movie where when plot is being explained or characters are having to interact in serious ways, I was like, this is an absolute nightmare. This is like a negative five on the zero to 10 scale for me. But there were parts of the filmmaking, like the comic book movie filmmaking that I thought were very effective. And so like, I definitely don't hate this movie. there are actually things about it that you can really recommend but in a way that makes it even worse that like they fixed a problem that i thought had been an ongoing issue recently and then failed to improve on a couple of things that have been they've been struggling with in the first place well it's funny they

reverted back to um an old school marvel villain it feels like you It feels like this is not a very good Marvel villain, though as you note in the notes, Kira Shawn, it's a good performance of a bad character. But having a bad or weak villain, which everyone is listing as one of the many flaws in this movie, and I agree, didn't stop many Marvel movies before from, you know, the first Guardians of the Galaxy had, I would argue a worse Kree villain played by the great Lee Pace. Like at least this actress was not hindered by a cowl that didn't allow her to move her face. You know,

like that, like the, the Marvel villain problem, like outside of Loki in the first couple of phases, this idea of like the Marvel villain problem that was then solved by the likes of Killmonger and Thanos and all these other like villains with a point of view

and all sorts of like, and she is a villain with a point of view, right? She has a point. She's trying to save her dying planet, but that is attached to that whole part of the movie

that A, was hacked to bits and B, we don't really want to spend time in anyway because it went, and whenever the movie slows down, it is just, it's not great at all you can feel her darben zowie ashton character yeah you can feel the parts of her movie that were cut out of the movie because you can see that they tried to confirm like to confer some i don't know about some meaning it's very similar

to the christian bale character in thor love Thunder, where it's sort of like, I understand at the root of this why this is a good character, and you've got a good actor in this part, but I needed to spend a lot more time with this character. And it's ironic because there are all of these characters in this movie that we've seen before, and we're like, oh yeah, where are they from? Or what did they do? Or what homework did I have to do? And the most important thing that they had to do in this film, aside from just make that stuff legible, was introduce the stakes of the villain. And they just, the movie just does not succeed at it. You know, you just don't ever, there's this critical showdown near the end of the film between Darbin and the three Marvels.

And it's supposed to be this mega dramatic moment. And it just thuds. I don't remember it. It just thuds. Yeah. Like profoundly. I literally don't remember what happens I also I always

I always feel for the hench the henches in those in those hacked out moments Daniel Ings is the actor who plays

love him I was so excited I knew you're a lovesick fan right yeah of course and he was obviously seasons one and two of The Crown

yeah as soon as he showed up I was like honestly I was like Amanda is gonna be happy that he's here but he's barely there because I think you did try to point

him out to me yeah a star turn on the gold recently oh yeah I mean he's the best but but has like five lines and is barely there because

I think his plot cut cut away also someone pointed this out to me I actually literally didn't notice this the only white man in this movie I didn't notice it

honestly but oh wow never never occurred to me yeah and doesn't really matter you know that's that's cool that works on the one hand it doesn't it doesn't on the one hand it doesn't really matter but on the other hand it kind of does matter because like like the marvels should not get brownie points on representation alone but representation does matter and it does matter at the end of the day that this is a movie led by three women and that doesn't that doesn't inoculate it from criticism but like what what bums me out in a in a in a meta way or whatever about this is if you read if you read the book mcu the reign of marvel studios um there's this fight

this long fight and ike promutter at the head of marvel is like movies starring women aren't gonna work and so if this is a if if all they don't sell to work. And so if this is, if all these- Because they don't sell toys, right? Yeah. And so if all these like stories that like the Marvels, no like box office tanking, all this sort of stuff like that, like Ike Perlmutter is having a good day today. And that's a bad day for me.

And that makes me sad that he is, I don't think he's right, but this is some evidence that he gets to point to and that is disappointing. Well, it feels like a culmination of a series of poor choices. And so you've got this dual thing. You've got a movie that I think is just not a good movie. It's just not really well made and or there were decisions made that cut its legs out from under it. It's arriving at a time.

And, you know, I am a participant participant in this i've spent the last three years being like they are losing me in real time i was born to participate in this culture and they are losing me and i didn't quite get quantum mania as the culmination of it i watched quantum mania and i was like among the 12 comic book movies I saw this year, this is like the fourth worst, not the worst. And now what has happened with this movie is that it failed at the box office. It quote unquote failed because the primary purpose of making these movies is to make money. That is the primary purpose of these movies. They are produced by the biggest global intellectual property factory in the world. And it's part of a daisy chain of potential success. And it earned $45.3 million in America over the weekend,

by far the lowest for an MCU movie. And so now... It's like Killers of the Flower Moon money, man. It's not great. Well, I do wonder if it will be able to surpass Killers of the Flower Moon at the Internet external box office, honestly. It's an open question.

Like, what happens to the Marvels in week two? I watch with some fascination because we've seen huge drop-offs in movies of late, too, that have core fan bases. Like, the Five Nights at Freddy's thing was interesting. It did so well in that opening weekend, almost twice as well as the Marvels. But then it had this precipitous drop in week two. If the Marvels has a precipitous drop in week two, it will be like an extraordinary outlier in the history of these movies.

I'm not concerned trolling it. It's just like it partially explains why there's a pile on happening now. Oh, I mean, I don't blame that pile on or the headline writers or whatever. I mean, and there is also is also again it is just human nature it's the same way that like people relish the failure of the end of Game of Thrones to a certain degree or uh the perceived failure of the end of Lost or whatever it's like when a thing is the biggest thing in the world and then you start to see it not be that there is just there is something about that that is irresistible and I really understand it but like i think it's there's

possibility for the marvels because again anecdotally when i'm hearing from fans is they're saying like it's pretty cute i actually think the real life for the marvels will be on disney plus it's gonna land on disney plus and a lot of people are gonna go like okay might as well watch it now that i could watch it in my home. And they're going to be like, wait, why was everyone saying this is the worst thing they had ever seen when it's actually, in many parts,

even Amanda admitted, quite fun. I thought the cats were pretty funny. Yeah. And when they start, you know, not to spoil it, but when they start playing memories. Andrew Lloyd Webber. That was funny.

That was funny. I would just say it was like a memories like that was funny sequence that was funny I would just say it was like a good joke that was abused that was hat on a hatted at length in the final act

of the movie but it's a good joke I think you're right but I feel like Joanna what you're describing is like it kind of separating the wheat from the chaff

right now we're at a phase where casuals are kind of like I don't really need to go out of my way to go see this stuff. 100%. And the faithful is,

had such low expectations because of the way that the narrative had been drawn over these last couple of years, then most people are coming out of this movie saying, you know, it had a lot of flaws, and I'm happy to talk about those flaws, but I had a fun time. I listened to The Midnight Boys,

wonderful episode of The Midnight Boys about this movie. Those guys basically didn't like the movie movie and they like a lot of movies. And, you know, Charles, obviously a legendary hater, but they were still like, even though this wasn't very good, I like it. And that is something that I think, quote unquote, fanboys are accused of, but this is the first time that it's actually sort of happening in a self-aware way i've never quite seen this before where there's an acknowledgement of of creative failure i mean i also just think a film can be a b you know like it can be a b and that's okay like uh on an a to me it can be like a C minus and still be beloved.

That's kind of where I'm at. Well, I don't think this film is going to be beloved. I don't think this is like going to be a cherished Marvel entry. But like, and like genuinely, I'm sure plenty of people

will disagree with me. I don't think this is worse than Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is also, I think, an aggressively fine movie. You know, like I don't, I don't think this is worse than The Eternals, which I think is an objectively, I think is a bad movie, you know? And so, yeah, I mean, the Midnight Boys episode was really interesting to me and I still need

to like think about the spectrum of making peace with, is this what Marvel is now? But I think what a lot of us are feeling is the relief, not just that like, oh, this wasn't an abject failure, so we're grading it on a curve. It's more like there is a version of this movie that is about like parasocial relationships between fangirls and their like heroes or- Good idea for a movie or really unwise israeli palestinian conflict metaphor or whatever you know you want to do with the scrolls which i do not advise anyone do like all this sort of stuff there's you can't make it up though that the unfortunate obvious parallels in the history of marvel and that

story that they tell yes they told arriving at the time. I mean, it's like the happy accident moving into a place where if you were using any kind of critical thinking while watching the movie, it is so cursed that in this tragic time that the world is going through right now for this storyline to be

front-loaded at what is theoretically the biggest movie of the fall. Like, that is really bad luck um there's not anything that you can do about it and it's obviously a movie that has no nuance about that conflict either right but like maybe maybe you could make like you know if someone else made it i don't know anyway you're right i'm doing too many what if some too many like uh caveats but i think that that's not even marvel's fault though like i that that is literally just bad luck I think I think

there is like I there are things that they have done that have been such disasters and I'm like I hope you pretend this never happened I hope you pretend Secret Invasion never happened

I hope we never hear about Emilia Clarke's character again that's nothing to do with Emilia Clarke it has to do with a terrible mistake they made in overpowering another character Gaia in their universe

she's now the most powerful character Gaia is that her name? Gaia Gaia Gaia is the most powerful character. Gaia? Is that her name? Gaia. Gaia. Gaia is the most powerful character in the Marvel universe now. And in our world.

But let's just pretend, like, genuinely, let's pretend it never happened. Gaia's mother Earth. Come on. Yeah. Show some respect, asshole. I think that's the point.

Yeah. Genuinely, genuinely, let's pretend it never happened. But with the Marvels, I mean, if we never saw Carol Danvers again, which won't be the case because she's moved to marvels i mean if we never saw carol danvers again which won't be the case because she's moved to louisiana now but if we never saw carol danvers again it

would be okay if we never saw monica rabot again i mean that's not going to be the case but like i would i would be upset but but a mondolani as like should rightly so be and and seemingly so with the young avengers tease at the end of this movie should be something they latch on to to go forward and so there are things worth saving out of this movie and that is maybe the faintest praise you've ever heard me give a marvel anything but here we are uh i have a question for you is there any part of you that wants to watch a miss marvel now that you've seen iman velani as miss marvel in the marvel no but i do hope that she is in more movies and more movies are built around her i do think that she will be a significant participant

in whatever young avengers thing happens so they're just doing like muppet babies but avengers yeah pretty much yeah okay i love muppet babies there is a stinger spoiler alert for anybody who doesn't want this Okay. I love Muppet Babies. There is a stinger, spoiler alert for anybody who doesn't want this spoiled at the end of the film. But does that count as a stinger if it's attached to the film? Sort of a pre-stinger? Yeah.

There is a stinger that I need to discuss with you guys right now. Yeah. That is very important. And if you have not seen the Marvels and you're this far along.

And then also, so in Avengers Babies, that's what I'm calling it. Young Avengers. No, I'm calling it Avengers Babies. You have to sing the theme song to the show though.

Well, I was. Can you sing Avengers Babies? Yeah. Yeah, you're all over it. So no, I can't sing it because. More geriatric millennial content here guys.

Come on. Oh yeah, Muppet Babies, we make your dreams come true. Yeah. So you are dreams come true. Yeah. So you are one of us. Yeah. No, I know.

I totally am. Gen Z cringing right now. Haley Steinfeld shows up. She does. Who is she? Kate Bishop. Right. She's sort of the Hawkeye.

She's an archer. But she's not officially Hawkeye yet. She doesn't have another name? She is also Hawkeye. Oh. I think they come to that at the end of the show. Okay. She has more or less taken Renner's mantle. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So they're going to team up. Yeah. There are other

potential participants. Does she sing as Hawkeye? Uh, no. Not yet. No. But, you know, America Chavez who we saw in Doctor Strange the Multiverse maybe she's a part of this. There's someone else that we've introduced to. Who am I forgetting Joanna? Cassie Lang. Right. Cassie Lang from Quantumania.

Played by Catherine Newton. And they've cast you know they've cast teen versions of Wanda's kids. Wanda's sons. So. Wanda has sons? Who are they? Really you want to go into i don't know i just wanda's sons right now

i i think i think you would enjoy wandavision and you watched i liked the first couple episodes and then sean kind of had to break down about it and i was like okay well if i don't have to watch this for work it's not an accurate description of what happened um so there is a stinger at the end of this movie. Uh-huh. And. And I understood it because a man who was sitting behind us just talked very loud. He did.

But he explicated it to whoever's sitting next to him so loudly. So in real time, I understood. I knew it was an X-Men thing anyway. You didn't really bring a spoiler. Well, can Amanda tell us what happened? Sure, what happened? Listen. Describe what you saw happen.

Listen. Why are you getting mad? Because you were like, you didn't put any spoiler on it. We are, let me look at this. Yeah, I need you to decompress. 51 minutes into a podcast. People need to take some personal responsibility for spoilers. Okay?

Okay. All right. I knew that it was an X-Men thing. So what happened? Monica Rambeau wakes up in the alternate reality because, like, somehow she gets stuck on the other side of the, like, the space warp or whatever. And... So far, so good.

Yeah. And she wakes up and she's in a different reality and she sees her mom, Lashana Lynch. The great Lashana Lynch. The great Lashana Lynch who was just like killed off unceremoniously and like off screen. They didn't even like... Well, as Joanna pointed out to me,

she was killed in WandaVision, but we don't really... Well, that was stupid. It was not great for the Marvel. So, and you know, the wonderful thing about the multiverse is that nothing is ever permanent. So, Lashana Lynch is still alive in this reality, except she doesn't recognize Monica Rambeau.

So in this reality, she's not her mom. We don't know. But yeah. And then someone else comes in and is like, how is the patient doing or whatever? And... Who is that someone else? It's a guy in a lot of makeup and prosthetics. I think it's CGI, but okay.

CGI, yeah. Oh, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Do you know who the guy is? Yeah, because the person behind us loudly yelled, that's Kelsey Grammer. And he played the Beast in the original movies.

So it seems like they're using the original actors. And I was like, oh, okay. So that's Kelsey Grammer as the Beast from the original X-Men. Which is not a character I remember from the original X-Men. Yeah. Beast is Hank McCoy. He's a genius who's been transformed into a beast. Okay.

Nicholas Holt played him in the Yeah, thank you. I remember that character. Yeah. So, on the one hand, there's been incredible

anticipation and speculation about X-Men becoming a part of the MCU. Yeah. Geriatric millennial myself, X-Men, just insanely important. This is just, I've been waiting a long, long time for someone who's good to myself, X-Men, just insanely important. This is just,

I've been waiting a long, long time for someone who's good to make an X-Men movie. There have been a couple of good X-Men movies. Not very many. First Class is really good.

Hey, Sean, what are your top three X-Men movies? Logan, X2, First Class, probably. I saw Logan.

I've seen Logan and First Class. And the nice thing about First Class is it's just hot X I've seen Logan and First Class. And the nice thing about First Class is it's just hot X-Men. Which is, you know,

I accept that. I love First Class. It's very good. I like it a lot too. I really, I just wanted the X-Men to be in the MCU because I liked the MCU

a lot for about five years there. And so, it's exciting that they're starting to do this in Multiverse of Madness. We saw that Charles Xavier existed in an alternate reality

as well as played by Patrick Stewart. And now in this film we're seeing Beast as voiced by Kelsey Grammer. And we know in Deadpool 3 we're going to see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

And so what this did for me aside from just like doing what every Marvel stinger does which is like forget about the bad movie you just watched think about the good movie you could be watching in two years that's like that's their move and that move frankly works on me it I watched it happen in real time it was just like someone did one of the like men in black things in front of your face and you're

just like so that means yeah I mean I'm an idiot I don't know something and they're you're like they're real characters what disappointing movie that I just watched yeah no i mean i it is it's genius it is one of the genius strokes of modern filmmaking that they came upon this thing it's still working on me because it's got me thinking and talking to you both you do both brilliant women who spend time with me talking about movies and i'm like guys fucking beast was in this movie how cool is that the thing that's really weird though is that are they really just gonna use the actors from the brian singer x-men films like is that actually what they're gonna show or they're gonna show us that that's the other reality that those are other realities and then they're gonna launch new

actors yeah yeah i think uh so i don't know uh obviously they're being very secretive but there have been just a gajillion rumors swirling around Deadpool 3, which is the only Marvel movie coming out next year. Yes. And the, like, we know for a fact Hugh Jackman's playing Wolverine. We know Jennifer Garner is playing Elektra. Like, Jennifer Garner is coming to play Elektra. So there is an idea that the entire Deadpool three,

the most sort of winky camera meta, you know, property that they have going for them is going to be some sort of tour or celebration of the Fox properties. Right. So that we're just going to see similar to multiverse of madness, like cameo Fantasia. And, and so that that might be what we get in Deadpool three. So like Hank McCoy, Charles Xavier, Wolverine, all these Fox.

And so using that spider went Spider-Man, no way home, nostalgia play of like, you remember Toby, you remember Andrew, here we go. Play the, you know, they play the little bit of the theme song we should we should remind people not that you care necessarily big pick listeners but kamala khan is a is a mutant they played her the little x-men

theme uh you know and on her show so she is a mutant as well but i don't i don't think that just because we're using patter seward kelseymer, Hugh Jackman, etc. going forward that that is going to be who the mutants are when Marvel engages with the X-Men seriously because we're in the multiverse. It's a very interesting game that they're playing though because they're obviously using those older

characters to get you excited about the idea of them joining the universe but then they're going to have to restart then with new actors playing what I would presume would be younger versions of those characters because the x-men is all about a school it's all about kids at a school who are learning how to be mutants with this i think professor i think select well i think there's going to be some manner of bleed through um because that's why monica rambeau is there exactly monica rambeau is playing binary who is the a different version of Captain Marvel.

And so, like, she could, sorry, Maria Rambeau. Maria Rambeau is playing, is Binary in that universe. And so she could carry over into. And I think, not to, like, lose Amanda entirely, but I think Secret Wars as a potential storyline going forward, Amanda, is this kind of event where they could, because it's battle, a multiversal battle thing, they could just get rid of all the characters who aren't working. Whoever comes to mind to you who is not working in the MCU could go away. They could bring back old actors who have, you know, like people are like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, are they going to come back? You know, it's going to take a lot of money, but, and, or it may never happen, but who knows? Um, that could happen in a multiversal war, uh, and you could bring in new, you know

what I mean? So like in terms of their options of streamlining things going forward, in terms of their options of figuring out how to launch a new class of X-Men in a way that feels both connected to that nostalgia play, but something new that they could spin forward. Secret Wars is their opportunity. It's similar to the way that they introduce Mr. Fantastic in Multiverse of Madness, but that's not going to be their Mr. Fantastic going forward. That was Krasinski.

Oh, right. Okay, I was about to ask, are the Fantastic Four in The Secret Wars? In theory, yes. And they will be introduced in a standalone movie before that. But the thing is that these two Secret Wars movies are coming out in 2026 and 2027. And in fact... I won't be alive then. Well, that's...

I mean, that is kind of how I feel. I definitely cannot confirm... Some of us will be. I'm going to look back when this podcast dies in 18 months and I'm like why did I do multiple episodes

about MCU movies you don't need to bring the bill energy into this just like randomly throwing threats in the 60 you know

how about this when the planet dies in 18 months I'm gonna look back on this hello Bob should I know something is there something

that I've been an email that I've been left off of yeah like the locusts are coming so you know put some screens on your doors that's what I'm saying dog Hello, Bob. Should I know something? Is there something that I've been... An email that I've been left off of? Yeah. Should I be looking elsewhere? The locusts are coming. So, you know, put some screens on your doors. That's what I'm saying, dog.

While I'm here, actually, I had a question for you. When you say Kree and Skrulls, do you mean Kree plural or singular? I mean the one Kree versus all the Skrulls. Jim Kree. Good job. Yeah. Steve Kree versus the entire nation of Skrulls. It's really interesting that there's only one Marvel movie next year.

And there's only five comic book movies on the schedule for next year. Three of which are going to be made by Sony and then the weird Spider-Man universe that they have going. So one, hey, you did it. You did it, Amanda. Amanda. You're free. Amanda.

You outlasted them. Summer of Amanda 2024. You outlasted them. Going to the beach. Can you name the five films that will be coming out next year? You've just been given one of them. I thought you said there was only one movie. There's one MCU movie.

There's five comic book movies. So the Venom, what Venom are we on? Venom 3. Absolutely. Fucking A. Yes, Venom. Let's go. Okay.

Deadpool 3. Joanna gave me that one. Deadpool 3. Yeah. Very good. Hold on. Who are some other superheroes as you can see I'm not I'm not googling there's one you will definitely not get

listen you don't I surprise you that's the magic of this podcast okay so who are some superheroes all right um not MCU superheroes is there okay is there a Batmanman sort of okay um there's a batman related figure okay and it's probably gonna be a musical oh oh oh joker too sure yeah dance uh what is it yeah of course um easily one of my most anticipated movies of the year even if it's an absolute car crash i can't wait i'm obsessed with the idea that like there's only five superhero movies next year it still feels maybe like too many to amanda but like and that one of them their subtitle is folly idea yeah we did we didn't mention the musical planet in the marvels and they're like song and dance whatever which like didn't work but on one hand like i like that they tried on the other hand like me wanting the golden age of Hollywood

musicals to come back and then having to come back through superhero movies is like a muggy I like that really be careful what you wish for situation yeah um okay so I have two left uh one got bumped

if this helps I don't know October of 23. October of this year. In fact, I think I had been planning to invite Joanna on the show for this movie, which is actually funny and rich, but I think I might have just spent time. So if it's not Marvel, is it DCU or is it Sony? There are no more DCU movies. There are two Sony movies left.

Last two are Sony movies. Okay. But Venom is Sony also, but we already did. No. No, Venom's not Sony? Yes. All right. But two are Sony movies. Okay. But Venom is Sony also, but we already did. No. No, Venom's not Sony? Yes, yes, yes. All right, but we already did that. Okay. Who does Sony have?

I... I don't think you don't know these people. I don't know these people. I don't know. This was fun. This is Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Raven the Hunter. Oh, I have heard of that.

Yeah. There have been trailers for that film because it was supposed to come out in early October. It is directed by J.C. Shandor. Oh, right, of course. Yeah. There have been trailers for that film because it was supposed to come out in early October. It is directed by J.C. Shandor. Oh, right. Director of Margin Call

and A Most Violent Year, which should be fascinating. And... Oh, our beloved Netflix... Triple Frontier. Yeah, Triple Frontier. Yeah. J.C. Shandor, a director who I love.

And I saw the Kraven trailer and honestly, it looks absolutely dreadful. But nevertheless, maybe it'll be fun. The last film is fascinating it's called Madam Web oh I've heard of this

and it's Dakota Johnson Dakota Johnson and Sidney Sweeney oh that's right and Dakota Johnson I guess Sidney Sweeney will be playing Spider Girl

okay is Madam Web a villain kind of an anti-hero right Jo okay and Sidney Sweeney is technically Spider-Woman. Spider-Woman, sorry.

Apologies. Jesus Christ. On the Marvel's pod. I'm just regressing. I just said feminism back 30 years. My apologies to Spider-Woman. That movie is just a fascinating project that exists. What is Spider-Woman's relationship to Spider-Man?

It depends when you're reading a Spider-Comic. It's kind of a Joe Biden, Kamala Harris situation. Great. Great. This is a better answer. Anyway, yeah. I mean, here's the future that I want. Marvel movies that are, or superhero movies that are fewer,

because I just think that it will be better if we have fewer things that we're trying to do all at once. Two a year, right? Two a year. We can do this. Two year max, right? Better, fewer, don't tie up directors who should be doing other things.

Yeah. You know? Well, I feel like there's just this whole generation of creative genre directors who are not making Marvel movies. And they're continuing to pluck independent filmmakers out of Sundance who've made like serious dramas.

Yeah. And they're trying to get them to make genre movies. And I do not understand it. Like that's, it's a skill, it's a tonal skill set to be able to know how to do sci-fi or action or the rollicking comedy fight scenes like that. To your point Joanna that was the genius of the Russos.

Like they figured out how to do that style. I think possibly I actually don't have any direct. Well, I kind of do on the Ryan and Anna front. I believe that Brie has been partially responsible for looping Nia DaCosta in and looping in Ryan and Anna in a way that like, these are filmmakers I want to work with. And with Ryan and Anna, my understanding is that they were like, they were told to nail the emotional moments. I mean, similar to stories we've heard from other people who did or did not direct Marvel movies movies that they were told to focus on the human

interactions or the dramatic moments and don't worry about the action, et cetera, et cetera. And with Captain Marvel, a film that I also think is fine, the movie that made over a billion dollars at a time when like Marvel's fine was making a billion dollars. There is a kitchen table scene between Brie Larson and Lashana Lynch that I would hold up against like any other thing that Ryan and Anna has done. Like it's just phenomenal, but like it's just isolated inside of this larger thing that doesn't seem to fit them at all. So, you know, it's just like that. I think that's the idea is like get those directors to nail those kitchen table moments because as we outlined in the book, like going back to Star Trek, Kevin Feige has said that like the scene in a Star Trek film where the characters are sitting around eating beans around a campfire is one of the most important scenes in all of Star Trek.

That you need to nail those moments in order to make us care about the moments where they're all punching each other and so the a big failure of the marvels the movie we're talking about today uh is like the moment when they get off on this planet that is just like all wheat and they have this like emotional conversation it's like one of the worst parts oh my god but like but like the little family interactions with the con family that do work that gives us our heart that's our that's the closest thing we have to heart in this movie is like the family every time they are tearfully excited that kamala has survived the latest like thing that she has had to do um or you know or her mom just like telling her brother to get a house and raise a family you know just like these little personal touches do work and that you know so i think that's why they want these directors.

But I just don't think the machine just sort of chews them up and spits them out. And it's just not, it's not what I want. So it's not that I don't want, I want Marvel to stop making movies. Because when they're good, I really like them. It's just I want them to stop tying up these filmmakers from doing other things that are better suited to their talents. I want to raise like a potential test for Marvel. I want the person who's directing the movie to have been waiting their entire life to direct a movie like this.

Because when you think about their most successful movies, when you think about The Avengers, when you think about Black Panther, when you think about the Guardians of the Galaxy series, those movies are made by people who are dying to tell these stories, who are dying to create these worlds and build these characters. You can tell, you can feel it when you're watching the movies. I know you're not a Guardians fan, but like, goddamn, he makes that world sing. And people buy it. That's the only movie in the last

five years that everybody's like, well, that was good. I just want you guys to know that I know that James Gunn's Superman is not coming out until 2025 which is why i didn't list it but he is keeping everyone regularly updated that it's still on track so thanks so much james gunn for just always letting me know exactly where your cool uh superman project i'll tell you what though like what they are doing whether it works or not is to be determined but taking an entire year off from releasing a movie is a very good idea. That is something that the DC

desperately needs to do and that Marvel never did. Marvel did. There was a year without Marvel. It just happened to be because of COVID. But there was a post-Endgame year without Marvel.

No. There was a whole year without any Marvel. So 2020, there was no Marvel? It was... Yeah. 2020, no Marvel. But there was a Spider-Man movie.

Am I crazy? No. Far was uh came out after endgame but i stand corrected i stand corrected but that was but that was an accident it was right because of covid really you know so like yeah no dc next year you feel good about that there's a there's a there's a chapter in our book called a year without marvel um sean did you read my book? No, I'm just kidding. I did. I did, yes. But I was just so stuck on my point. Really good display throughout all the chapter titles,

you know, the subheads or the epigraphs. Good stuff. You know who came up with all the quotes at the beginning of the chapters? Who? Gavin Evers, my co-author.

Dash, your dad is killing it. Any closing thoughts? How are you feeling about the MCU and comic book movies? I feel the same. I feel a little bit freer. I do think, you know, and I've witnessed all the hand-wringing, and I will just say from far away, or as far away as I can be while co-hosting this podcast with you,

it does seem like there's a tinge of sexism into literally everything that is being covered here. You know, it's just, everyone seems to be very happy to pile on. But I do also kind of just think it seems like what Joanna has been saying and what her book points out is like that we've just reached the point with this movie where the way they were doing things isn't working. And, you know, it doing things isn't working. And it just isn't working. And I think even the feedback that you got, Joanna, of like, oh, they were trying to salvage the Marvels in a certain way. Because they knew they had some things. And it's just like things are broken and maybe they'll figure it out.

And I hope they figure it out in a way that's nice for you guys. You know? I like it when you're happy. Thank you, Amanda. Yeah. I really, I feel your support. Thanks. It feels genuine.

Joanna, Amanda is full of shit. So whatever she just said is not real. Jo, any closing thoughts? You're going to talk about this movie. She wants it to be okay for us, right? I want it to be okay for you. Yeah. I think just like the horse is out of the barn on this one

for me a little bit you know where it's like I probably I can never get back to 2018-19 can I say something no and they will never get back I will let me be very clear I do think there is a future rebound for Marvel it will never be what it was in 2018-2019 and that feels nice the fact that we are recording this on the Monday afterwards and it wasn't like the Thursday 8 p.m. episode. I gotta be honest, that's nice. That's just, I think that's just

a proportionate response to movies and life. So I'm okay with that as the reset going forward. Okay. Joanna, you will talk about the film at length on House of R. True.

With Lana Rubin. How many times will you podcast about the Marvels at length on House of R. True. With Mel and Ruben. How many times will you podcast about the Marvels, do you think? This is it. It's just this and then over on the old House of R feed. And then the rewatchable is eight years from now. Yeah. And what else? Oh, well, yeah.

When Bill is like, please, you know what I need to talk about? The movie that I care about the most. The Marvels. Bill wakes up one day and is like, suddenly I love multiverses. The Marvels. Bill wakes up one day and it's like, suddenly I love multiverses. You never know. Yeah. You never know.

It's great. He's running out of movies. Joe, any closing thoughts? Always a delight to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Amanda, for trying to watch this movie. And for... I watched all of it, you know?

And for explaining the introduction of Beast to the listeners, that's maybe my favorite thing that's ever happened. Thank you to that really loud guy behind us. So you guys are podcasting together about the show The Crown on the Prestige TV podcast. You're absolutely right, we are. Are you doing something else together or no? That's it right now. Okay. For now, yeah. Joanna and I are podcasting about the curse on the Prestige TV podcast. Joanna is one of the hosts of Trial by Content, one of the hosts of House of R, one of the hosts of what else are you hosting these days? That is it. Just that. And a New York Times bestselling author along with Dash's dad. And Dave Gonzalez. Yeah. And Dave Gonzalez. I know I Gonzalez. And shout out to Dave Gonzalez. I know, I do feel like he,

you know, my emphasis has kind of unintentionally left him out in the cold. Joanna, thank you so much for sharing your insight and for being a voice of kindness

in what would have otherwise been a very toxic space, I think, about this film. I mean, it doesn't deserve to, you know, skate on anything. Like, you know, skate on anything. Like, you know, we should hold our IP and our genre stuff, like, to a higher standard.

We definitely should. That's why I, sorry, really quick story. In the larger Ringiverse family, I was at a book signing in Texas this weekend. And someone came up to me and they were like, can you ask Charles to stop being a hater? And I said, no, absolutely not. I love that about Charles. I love that Charles is just constantly trying to hold things to the highest standard possible. And so does the big pick. And I love that about you guys as well. So thanks for having me. We love you, Joe. Thank you. Let's go now to my conversation with Christopher Borgli is here.

Exciting new movie, Dream Scenario. Chris, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. So tell me about growing up in Norway and loving movies. Is it easy to love movies? Is there a burgeoning film industry? What is it like as a young person? Because I don't know.

Yeah, I started working at a video store when I was a teenager because my older brother worked there. And I got really obsessive about watching films because I got them for free because I worked there. It ruined my high school years. I had to quit certain classes that were too early in the morning because I was staying up till like 4 or 5 a.m. And all the movies

that I was watching were very exciting. They looked very different from the little town in Norway that I was from. And it didn't seem like anything around me could be fodder for a movie. And I got frustrated with how am I going to make a movie that feels as exciting as the things that I'm watching. Was it primarily Hollywood stuff or international films?

What were you interested in? I think for the most part, probably American movies in the beginning. But also Lars von Trier was very big for me. Very influential. Even before I considered being a filmmaker, like his movie, The Idiots, was so influential that I started like spazzing with my friends. We started like adopting that sort of

philosophy and then yeah that grew into more you know Godard and the French New Wave and just digging deeper and deeper and also I remember thinking that when I saw movies that were related to dreams, like David Lynch, I thought, aha, there's a way to get into an exciting location no matter where you live in the world. It's like, just make sure that the movie makes it possible to go into someone's head. And that's actually been on my mind ever since. And now, finally, I'm making that movie. How long has that movie then? When did that move? I don't want to jump too far ahead in your life, but when did dream scenario arrive in your consciousness? Well, that was 2019. But the idea of I want to make a movie that makes it possible to go

into people's dreams and take a camera into people's dreams that's been there since i was 18 interesting so is there film school in in norway how did you did you end up studying film i did this like one year startup film school that was a complete scam, a cash grab. And I quit before even the year was over and decided I'll just call myself a director. It's not a protected title. I don't need like certificate. And then started making music videos and some shorts and then got into advertising for a little bit, which has sort of haunted me ever since. It showed up in my work a lot, this sort of culture in marketing and advertising.

It is skewered magnificently in Dream Scenario. Yeah. Really some of the best stuff in the movie. Yeah, yeah. So it made it easier to write those things. Uh, cause I've sort of been inside of the sausage factory. And so did you, were you pursuing those gigs to obviously to make money and to build a career, but were you, was that a way to kind of train yourself to figure out what you could do to push the boundaries? Like what, how are you

getting those kinds of opportunities at that stage of your career? Well, I made this short film called Whateverist in 2012 that became a little bit of like an internet hit. And because of that, there was suddenly advertising opportunities. Was that done like in a targeted way? Were you like, if I make a cool short, then I'm still getting film class? No, not at all. Like that short film is about a failed musician who is rationalizing his life of having left the idea of being someone who makes cool things. And it's just like an enjoyer of music and drugs. Was this an autobiographical piece?

Yeah, it was like the denial. I was imagining because I wasn't really doing anything. I wasn't getting work. And I started fearing this idea that if I'm not actually working, if I'm not directing anything, I'm not getting anything off of the ground, can I call myself a director, which felt existential to me? And how am I going to survive if I suddenly have to start working at a coffee shop

or something like that? And to me, that became a part of an identity crisis. And I made Whateverist as a sort of coping mechanism of making some comedy about like the imagined me rationalizing not being a director anymore and enjoying

it like living a lie basically and that made it possible for me to suddenly make money as a director and to call myself a director. And the sort of advertising opportunities came from it. I was always a little bit reluctant. I didn't ever get into filmmaking to do ads.

But it was a way to sustain myself. I was like living on the edge of not being able to afford rent. So it was just a necessary evil. And I could see how easy it would be to just keep surfing that wave because it's very comfortable and they make it really comfortable to you.

And the language and culture inside of it is a lot of like self-gratification everyone is like uh praising you as a genius for doing these really just banal ads and they have all of these festivals to congratulate themselves and they win awards. And it really does start feeling like, wow, I'm a successful filmmaker. Um, but, but, you know, I, I, I saw through it and, and thought, let me just quit. Now I have a little bit of money and let's start writing. And that's, uh, by the end of my twenties, I started taking, um, screenwriting more seriously. And it's been sort of a long journey since then to get these projects off of the ground. I did a very obscure little project called Dribb, which was actually about advertising.

It was a reenactment of an advertising campaign gone wrong about a Norwegian man getting entangled in the promotion of this energy drink where they were going to use real violence to sell the product, and it all failed. I went hunting for this movie last night, and I couldn't find it. Right, yeah. I mean, maybe I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with it being off the radar completely. It was, I felt after completing that, I was confused when making it because it was like a hybrid reenactment, documentary, mockumentary. It was like, I didn't

even understand what I was doing. Were you still living in Norway when you made this or had you moved? I was living in Norway but the idea was that this advertising campaign happened in LA. So we were to go to LA to shoot this reenactment

of the real story that took place in LA. And there's a clause in the Norwegian Film Institute to ensure that the films that are subsidized has enough of sort of a link to Norwegian culture. And it has to be in Norwegian language and you have to shoot it in Norway, all these things.

And I insisted, well, the real story happened in LA. We have to go there to shoot it. And they okayed it. But in reality, there was no real story. I just made the whole thing up. Did anyone at the Norwegian Film Commission learn that eventually? I stuck to the lie for so long. And there was like headlines in the Norwegian press about us like breaking the NDA and making this a story and getting threatened by some big energy drink

company, which was all just lies. And maybe I'm just finally revealing this now. I'm honored. This is a news break. Yeah. Either way, it felt like a failure to me because it didn't look or feel anything like what I had in mind. And then I moved to LA because shooting the film in LA made me realize I can be happy during the winters. So I decided, let me try living there. Maybe that will just cure my seasonal depression. And it sort of did. And I stayed living in LA and then I wrote

more scripts. I wrote a Norwegian movie called Sick of Myself and I wrote Dream Scenario. And they were both finalized in like 2019 and financed during the very early days of the pandemic. And then there was just like an uncertainty of when we could actually shoot these movies. And then 2021, I shoot Sick of Myself and 2022, Dream Scenario. And they were made back to back. I want to ask you about that

because you're having an amazing year and it seems like it took a long road to get to that year but to want to be a feature filmmaker for a long period of time and then to have a movie play Cannes last year and then for them both to open in the six month, seven month span is pretty remarkable. Were both of the movies

conceived, were they conceived as they are? Like was Sick of Myself conceived as a Norwegian movie? Was Dream Scenario conceived as an American production? And if so, why did you delineate those two things? Yeah. Sick of Myself, I started writing in the early days of living in LA. And maybe a little bit of the reason is because of the Norwegian Film Institute.

And you can apply for grants for writing. So it was just practically a way to support myself. But as I was writing it, it became very clear that this is a movie that has to take place in the welfare system where you can check yourself into a hospital without cost. That's a huge component of that movie. It's funny that you say that, though, because the structure of the movie requires that, but the character and the ideas of the movie are also very American,

like almost chillingly American. Yeah, her sort of personality disorders, if we can sort of diagnose her, are very American, yeah. There's this idea in the U.S. where you raise a child and you tell that child that you can become president if you really set your mind to it. In Norway, it's the opposite. It's telling your child,

don't think you're better than anyone else. So it's just like culturally a huge difference. In Norway, it's like you're not allowed to be famous. It's illegal. I'd like to explore that. how was the movie received in norway sick of myself um it was received uh really well it did uh um well and like the theatrical run was really good and and people responded to it really well. The sort of opportunistic narcissism at play was a little bit more novel in Norway.

And I think people saw the character as almost like an adjective, like a Karen, you know? Signa was like, oh, you're being very Signa now. Oh, wow. That is an honor to be identified, to have a character become personified in a way. That's amazing. Yeah, it's just like a shorthand

of sort of labeling a very specific type of behavior. Second Myself is really terrific, but I was kind of, I remain fascinated by the idea of making a movie about the American character in another country, in another language too. There's something interesting. Dream Scenario is also, at least in my experience, a very American story about our obsession with self and our obsession with our own ideas and why they matter

to us and the collective unconscious that I think you've really wrapped your arms around in the movie that being said can i tell you what about my dream last night is the most annoying question like in the world yeah anytime someone says that to you it's like even my wife whom i love dearly i'm like i don't i don't really want to know what you dreamt about last night yeah is it hard to get people to accept this pitch or this concept for this movie? Well, I thought about that. I think the reason why retelling a dream to someone else is very uninteresting

is because it's very hard to translate with words the experience of that dream. Words just fail us. And I think putting a camera in there and actually taking the audience into the dream, words just fail us. And I think putting a camera in there and actually taking the audience into the dream, then it becomes possible to take interest in the sort of fantastical and strangeness of the dream.

You fully get to experience it. Do you dream very vividly? I know you have nothing to compare it to, but can you really recall clearly imagery from your dreams? Yes. And a lot of the dreams in the film are just stolen from my own dreams. I'm sure people have told you this,

and now I'm doing the thing I promised I wouldn't do, but I really don't remember my dreams. Right. Very rarely can I recall a night where I had a clear dream. And I don't know what that is. I assume that's maybe more common than I realized, but I don't know anybody else for whom that's true. Yeah, I'm realizing things about dreams

as I'm traveling with the movie and I'm doing Q&As. And I actually ask the audience questions about certain dreams. So in the film, there's a specific dream where I depict something I thought everyone experienced, which is you are trying to fight someone off. You're in a desperate situation, but your punches are really slow and weak and you can't move. It feels like you're underwater. And I asked the audience how many has that dream. And about like 25% raised their hands. I thought it would be way more than that.

But it's strange that so specifically, like punching slowly, feeling underwater, that that is an almost universal thing that we experience. And it does say something about the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious, maybe, even though I'm not a Jungian or believer in mysticism in any way. It is interesting for cinema. It does seem like you researched it at least a lot to better understand it. Yeah, no, it's very interesting for a film. It's a great, like mystery is just so good for cinema. And I don't want to even, I don't think the movies that deal with sort of metaphysical,

mysterious things should even explain them. I think it does just tickle something in the brain that we want to experience, that we want to be puzzled. You've made this choice, and maybe for most audience members, this actually is natural, but because I don't have this strong catalog of dream memory in my life, most of the dreams, even if the events inside of them are fantastical, the world is often very grounded and realistic that they're operating in. Now, was that like a creative decision or like, is that because maybe you don't have a big enough budget to create a world that seems more dream like or you know what I'm saying? No, it was a very conscious decision.

Because when you dream, you shut off your skepticism. And living inside of a dream feels very serious. You take whatever is thrown at you very seriously, even if it's completely ridiculous. When you wake up and you think about it, it suddenly is just banal and dumb. And I wanted the experience of these dreams when we take the audience in there. I wanted the audience to experience what the dreamer when they dream experience. So there was sort of a limit of how ridiculous or unnatural they could be before we, the audience, start just feeling that they're silly. So I was toying with those limits

and trying to stay within that box of limitations to ensure that we're seeing a dream and experiencing what the dreamer experiences. The movie stars Nicolas Cage. I'm sure you're getting a lot of questions about Nicolas Cage, but I'm going to ask you

some questions about him. I saw you guys together actually at the Arrow Theater a few weeks ago for the screening of the film, which was just a really fun night. Yeah.

He feels perfect for this movie. I'm wondering, could you tell me how he got involved? What was your first conversation with him like? He has an unusual aura even for a movie star. this movie I'm wondering could you tell me like how he got involved what was your first conversation with him like like you know he has an unusual aura even for a movie star what what was your experience with him like uh it was it was great he is definitely a unique unique person um he said

to me when we first met he had read the, he really felt that he related to its themes. And he had seen my short films and he felt that there was something different about the way that I directed that he was interested in. And he said, here's the remote control. You decide how I act. You try to get something new out of me, which I think is like more generous or an exaggeration almost of how much control I had. He definitely had authorship with this character.

I think it was a collaboration, but he was very interested in following me into a new area and finding something that he hadn't done before. What was it like for you as someone who'd made a lot of short films, ads, music videos, and had made Sick of Myself? It's a little different to be kind of enthralled to a big star, especially a star as well known as Cage. And he obviously, like you said, he brings a lot of creativity to his parts. I heard you guys talking on stage about, you know, you had an idea for this

part of the character. He wanted to wear this or the hair was going to look like this. Was it difficult for you to kind of give up some ownership of things like that as you were making a big Hollywood movie like this? I guess it could be with maybe a different person. He was very open and down to collaborate. And in that sense, I didn't feel that he... We were trying to make the same movie, basically. And I think if you work with someone who has a different idea of what movie you're making, I think that becomes really hard.

So far in my career, I haven't had that experience yet. I've been very lucky to work with people who understand and agree with where we're going. Very few movies right now, I wonder if you agree with this, it feels like are unwilling or unable to try to capture a human character in the present times, for lack of a better word. This movie is almost alarmingly about what people feel,

what people who live online feel, what people who are having complicated interpersonal relationships in the 2020s feel. Yeah. I think that there are a lot of ideas, and some of them are exaggerated because they're funny or because you want them to be terrifying. But your movie feels very, very contemporary.

Do you find that that comes naturally to you to kind of capture what would be, quote-unquote, the conversation? Is it something you kind of work towards effectively for the film? Yeah, I think for this one, I would almost credit Our Current Times as a co-writer of the movie. It's the idea at core core this sort of dream phenomenon you could sort of place it in any time and the story would be very different uh it's almost like a horror film idea and i wanted to rip it out of its genre and just place it in our culture almost as a social anthropological experience or experiment uh and and just follow

what i thought would be the natural story to unfold from first just the initial the character how does he experience and respond to it and navigate it. And then the friend group and then his students and then growing into a cultural thing. And it just felt like the culture itself was telling me where this was going to go. It was, of course, going to be a hot topic. There was going to be advertising opportunities. It was going to suddenly become a culture war issue. It was going to be commodified and turned into a product. Our times, our culture are sort of, we haven't found a good way to talk about very strange or complicated things. And we sort of almost treat everything with the same style of conversation. And that I thought was comedic to take a very like metaphysical, mystical, very much like cinematic idea and let it just live in our banal times.

Yeah, I thought that was incredibly effective. It's hard to do that with a sense of humor. That's the other thing I think I really respond to the movie because satire is like a kind of a lost art in American movies. It's not really a category or a genre that you hear much about these days. And this is not entirely a satire, but at times it very clearly is. And I'm wondering if you feel that people will relate to that or understand it because you have this tricky balance you have to make for any satirist where you're making something that is effectively art but also a product,

but you're also kind of lampooning the idea of trying to make money on something creative in this film you know the idea of like your own consciousness and everyone's collective consciousness is being satirized yeah i wonder how much you've thought about the balance between those two ideas well yeah i have thought about it a lot. So Sick of that a park in a city is. A park, a public park is not supposed to make money back. It's a public good. It's a service to the people to

you know, to let their spirits breathe. And the same could be said about making a movie outside of capitalism in this this like uh um european funding structure and then of course making a movie in the u.s you don't have that system so there is uh suddenly you're dealing with the idea that your movie, while my intentions is always to stick to it being an art piece, like staying

true to my vision and my voice and never optimizing it for a market. I think because I was lucky enough to team up with A24, those pressures never arrived. there was nobody pushing it to be different than just optimized for the artistic vision uh so to me it doesn't feel like it's been commodified or turned into a product but but it's yeah, it's still like a difficult thing to, I guess, satirize marketing structures and capitalism. And then get on a podcast and market your movie. Well, what we're doing here is we're talking about the arts. We're not selling anything. Okay. Of course not. Of course not. You may not be, but I have to sell things, unfortunately. I'm always interested in that collision, though,

because maybe it speaks a little bit to the intersection of your ambition, like in terms of what you want to do next, too. Do you want to make a movie with a bigger budget? Do you want to make a movie with more famous people? And if you want to do some of those things, and I'm sure you don't think in that binary way, but if you do want to do those things, then a movie has to make more money. And I'm sure you don't think in that binary way, but if you do want to do those things, then a movie has to make more money.

And, you know, I'm curious kind of where you want your career to go from a movie like this. Yeah. Well, I think that just to make it clear that I don't think that

an exchange of goods for money is necessarily evil. But I think the... Thank God for that. Yeah. But I think like the Thank God for that. Yeah. But I think like the race to the bottom mentality is, of course, very unhealthy.

So in certain ways, just making something, a good product, lip balm. You know, like certain things are just a product that you would pay for and you get exactly what you asked for.

But you make subjective art. I mean, it has to be subjective. It has to, like, I'm what they would call pretentiously an auteur, you know. I'm trying to solidify something that's abstract in my head uh and and give it to other people experience it and um um what were we talking about i'm i'm i'm actually fascinated by this conversation because like both of your movies in some ways are about like the obsession with self right and the obsession with like um yeah amplifying and then monetizing your own yeah yeah identity well yeah okay so

here's what i was like i'm completely fine engaging with the public consciousness or mass culture as long as it's through the art that i put in there and And that it's not, we're not talking about me personally. We're talking about the arts and me coming on here. If we were just talking about my personal issues or what I personally kind of believe and outside of this movie, that would be different.

So I'm happy to come and talk about my movies. I'm not castigating you for that. I promise you, that i promise you i'm delighted you're here i think i think it is really interesting though because of what seems to what i perceive as interesting you as a creative person yeah and and it is it is um a complicated issue um and i'm still grappling with it. I don't have like a... Outside of... Well, now we're talking politics suddenly. But, you know, like the Norwegian welfare system seems to work pretty good.

And I think that the protection of things that should be a public good, like a library, maybe should apply to movies as well. And I think that there should be X amount of movies that is okay not making its money back because it's trying to do something. It's not... So this is the thing, like, inside of big capitalism, like, the bigger you go, the more fair-based decisions will be made everything is

about um not trying to rock the boat or or doing something that's too different you kind of have to follow a formula and their safety and making art that's uh um where you're staying true to your integrity is love-based decisions. And that's what I'm trying to do. And if it's possible inside of capitalism, then that's great. There's some companies that seem to be interested in not only the bottom line, but to catapult filmmakers and supporting their visions. And then there's other studios or ideas around movies that is purely product, IP, remakes. You know, like the IP now,

you used to have true crime. Now it's just a true story. This actually happened, so therefore, it's a good IP. You can't just make anything up anymore. Nobody will believe that it's worth

making because it hasn't been tested in reality yet. I mean, I'm happy to hear you say that. I really love the movie. Someone like you who has made a movie like this is often located by the studios because you've done a lot kind of creatively. You've built a world on a relatively small budget. And so the instinct of the executive is like, that's a guy who I got to get for my superhero movie or whatever, you know, whatever is in vogue at the time. And so hopefully next time when you come in,

you're not pitching your superhero movie. Right. I mean, yeah, an interesting question would be how much money would it take for me to say yes to like a Marvel movie? Well, you've already faced this question, right? And I have the answer, by the way. Would you like to share it? $40 billion.

Okay. Well, I'll check in with Marvel and see if they're interested in that deal. But you have faced that already with the advertising and the decision that you made where you were doing that and then you said, I don't want to do this as much anymore. Hey, I was a hungry child. I needed food to survive, okay? We all do things when we're desperate. Do you think of each film as having like a core idea that you want to explore?

Or is it more about character or like what is the thing that leads you on the journey to the next movie that is something that i've been trying to figure out the the kind of solidifying a template for how to come up with an idea or a story um and it feels new every time it it can come at the, you can bang your head against the wall for months and then suddenly you're at the gym and it strikes you. So there's, again, going back to Carl Jung, he said, people don't have ideas. Ideas have people. They sort of come to, they come knocking on your head and wants to be let out or something like that. And I think that's been the feeling that I have

is that the ideas just suddenly come a knocking. I look forward to the next idea. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Are you still a cinephile?

Do you still watch a lot? I still watch a lot, yes. The last thing that I saw and had an amazing experience doing was re-watching Happiness at the New Beverly on like a 35mm print. Very rare screening of that movie. And I saw that movie when I worked at the video store and it's the reason for like me being obsessed

with Dylan Baker who is in Dream Scenario. And I hadn't seen the movie in probably 20 years and it was better than I remembered and it was such an amazing experience. Just like the energy in the room. Like people were just cracking up and just having so much fun. It was a great experience. I really love what I feel like.

I don't know if this is, I haven't looked at numbers or anything. I feel like movies are back. Theaters are back. I've been talking about this. I think in particular, well, one thing I just want to note that you cited Bontreer, Lynch, and Todd Solans here, which is a great trinity for your movie in some ways.

I can feel their influence in your stuff for sure. But we've been talking about the repertory thing, which is the new Bev and the Arrow, where I saw your movie and the Los Filos 3 and the Vista is reopening and Vidiot's and all of the sudden there's this insanely vibrant culture in LA of people showing up to see a movie that came out 27 years ago. Yeah. And they're sold out. Was Happiness sold out? I assume it was.

It was, yeah. I mean, I don't, you've been living here. Like what is that? What is happening? I don't know. It's I think maybe pandemic showed us what we missed and how special it was.

Lots of young people though. Yeah. Lots of people like in their early 20s showing up for some of these movies which I've been so excited about. Yeah. There is something like the letterboxed culture.

Yeah. I don't know exactly how to pinpoint it, but to me it feels like cinema is back and I feel really excited about being a part of it. I went to Beyond Fest and saw Anatomy of a Fall, which even that movie being sort of like a slow burn French movie had such a vibrant reception in the theater. And then I knew sitting there in a week, I will show Dream Scenario to the same audience. And it was just like so exciting.

Were you happy with how it played? It was beyond beyond beyond anything the the the crowd went uh wild yeah it feels like something participatory is happening yeah people seem more engaged than

they did five or six years ago for some reason yeah yeah it's exciting congratulations on dream scenario I really thought it was terrific so thanks for doing the show thank

you so much thanks for having me. Thanks to Joanna Robinson. Thanks to Christopher Borgli. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Later this week, in anticipation of his forthcoming historical epic Napoleon, we will be building the Ridley Scott Hall of Fame. We'll see you then.