The Big Picture - The Snyder Cut Commentary: A ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Watch-along

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

This is a very, very special episode of 'The Big Picture': our first watch-along commentary track. For 'Zack Snyder’s Justice League.' Except we’ve never seen it before. So when we press play on the Snyder Cut for the first time, we want you to do so as well and to watch with us on HBO Max. We will be together for all four hours and two minutes of this film’s run time discussing Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Steppenwolf, Darkseid, and especially Ben Affleck’s hair. For four hours. Let’s go.  Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome into the Ringerverse. From the Ringer, my name is Mallory Rubin. And I'm Van Latham. Mal, before we get started, does anyone want to know what the Ringerverse is? The Ringerverse is one podcast feed with multiple shows on all things superheroes, nerd culture, and fandom entertainment. Instant reactions to new releases,

theory breakdowns, fun takes on the latest news, and more. Whether you're a casual fan or an obsessive like us, our shows are worthy of all your fandom needs. So head to the Ringiverse and follow the show now on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Snyder Cut. That's right, it's finally here. Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max this week for all of its anticipating and adoring fans. Joining us today is the Barry Allen

to our Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince. It's Chris Ryan. C, are you ready for this, man? Let's get released! This film is finally being released and this is a very, very special episode of The Big Picture. Here's what we're going to do here. It's a watch-along commentary track.

So, if you are a true cinephile, like the three of us, you have watched classic films with the commentary audio track on. I'm talking about Martin Scorsese on Raging Bull. I'm talking about Paul Thomas Anderson on Boogie Nights. David Fincher on Gone Girl. This is our version of exactly that, but for Zack Snyder's Justice League, except we've never seen this movie before. We've never seen this cut. This is our first time watching it. So when we press play on the Snyder cut for

the first time, we want you to do so as well and to watch with us. We will be together for all four hours and two minutes of this film's runtime. Is everyone ready? Get your HBO Max fired up because we are doing this. Sync up your headphones. Take a deep breath. Go to the bathroom. Let's go.

Three, two, one. Press play. Here we are. And there is a note about this film's presentation in 4-3 format, which is a fascinating place to start. That is, of course, the historical academy ratio. And I'm hoping we don't get ratioed here when we post this podcast. How do you guys feel about this film being presented in a square format on our televisions? It rules. It's just like the first great decision of this four-hour film. And if this is just like what we have in store for us, I can't imagine there being any issues.

As Zack Snyder mentioned in the New York Times, it's the same ratio as First Cow. And I just hope more people watch First Cow. So that's great. Here we are. Two great films. I believe he pitched it as a double feature. And that's what I'll be doing right after this. It's just jumping right into First Cow. Right into the Kelly Reichardt Hall of Fame. You guys know this is a DC property? Not sure if you had heard that. DC films. Chris, would you say you're a fan of the DC films? Yeah. Well, I'm coming to this ready to have my mind changed. I think that I've been a little bit dismissive of them over the years, mostly just because they seem so stop-start with

their plan. And you know I love a plan. And I never really got the picture that whether or not they had a roadmap for success here at DC. And you read all the press surrounding this movie and what Zack Snyder's been saying in interviews, and it sounds like this was supposed to be the launchpad for three, two other Justice League movies and a cyborg movie and all these other spinoffs. So it'll be really interesting to see whether this retroactively does launch a DC cinematic universe in a significant way. We've had a bunch of movies, but they haven't been entirely coherent the way that Marvel movies have been. Amanda, you, of course, are a massive fan of the DC films. We've been talking about them on this show for many years.

You love them, so you must be excited here. I mean, I know the names. You know, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Heavy Hitters, right? Those are the big brand names. Now, I don't really know that they've done that much with that brand awareness, but I'm just happy to know what's going on. I'm looking at Wonder Woman right now. Love her.

That's exciting. Yeah, I think what we're seeing here at the opening stages of this movie is something very different from how the previous Justice League iteration launched. This is basically a continuation slash revisit of the end of Batman versus Superman in which Doomsday arrives.

He was created by Lex Luthor to kill Superman. He does, in fact, kill Superman. And then Batman figures out how to kill Doomsday. Am I getting this right? Does this all sound reasonable? Yeah, there's some Krypton-laced stuff going on, right? Like there's like a spear with kryptonite on it. Am I right?

Yeah, I think that's correct. I'm so glad I revisited all these Zack Snyder films before sitting down here. Doesn't the original cut of this movie open with some kids who are starting a podcast and want to interview Superman? Yeah. Fun fact, I was actually the kid playing the podcaster in the first. That's how long ago this film was shot.

Is it you and Rogan? So now here we're seeing Cyborg. I definitely don't recall Cyborg cropping up in the first minute of the movie. And this is a pretty important. Oh, there's a mother box. Is that a mother box? That is a mother box. Oh, is that a mother box? That is a mother box. We're going to be talking a lot about the mother boxes here.

So Cyborg is important because he's played by Ray Fisher, who was meant to be a huge part of the Justice League film. And of course, has spoken out about his experience with Joss Whedon. And we'll get into that a little bit later in this conversation. But notable that they would show Cy little bit later in this conversation, but, notable that they would show cyborg so early in this movie, because I think he is arguably the, the linchpin characters, the way that it's been described to me.

Okay. So let's recap. Okay. Superman dead, dead. Okay. There's anything else I need to know. Well, there's a sense that the pain is not over here.

Okay. There's clearly some other powerful force after Doomsday has been destroyed. Lex Luthor is getting a look at this visualization of the mother boxes. And even though Batman and Wonder Woman and Aquaman are still out in the world there's pain coming and this is just very stormy Zack Snyder business here

so we're getting a good look at Aquaman this is already so much more surreal than the original version it is doing the Zack Snyder thing. Very painterly, very renaissance painting version of superheroism which is to say these dark and tragic tones

lots of blues and reds and this foreboding doom. That's like, that's the Zack Snyder ethos. And the original Justice League movie obviously is significantly different. Okay, so the second mother box is Under the Sea. Yeah, then I think the third box is I know where we are, it's in Miscarriage.

Yeah, that's right. Right. Now, the first time around, I don't know necessarily, we're probably going to wind up talking about mother boxes in relationship to Infinity Stones a lot, just because these are the sort of the central MacGuffins. I do feel like the mythology or the explanation around these devices was really kind of like rushed through in the original cut. Oh, yeah. around these devices was really kind of like rushed through in the original cut oh yeah so the mother boxes are a part of dc lore i mean this is not new stuff and a lot of this stuff

comes from jack kirby creations from the 1970s kirby was a very famous that i feel like i'm speaking directly to amanda with this information was a very famous illustrator and creative force at Marvel for many years and is responsible for co-creating some of the most famous characters of all time. The characters that frankly dominate our culture right now. And then he jumped to DC in the late 60s. And when he did, he created this kind of intergalactic world. And a lot of that intergalactic stuff has been adopted by Zack Snyder to tell this story of the Justice League. And Chris is right.

Like the first time around in the Whedon version, there was not this heavy pomp and circumstance exploring these three square boxes. Can I ask you guys a question? Go for it. How many names have you seen in the credits so far

where you were like I did not know this person was in this movie did David Thouless is in this I read a Wikipedia page before we started that was my extent of my prep for this podcast but I did see him on a Wikipedia page but well he was the villain in Wonder Woman. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, he's Ares, God of War, and something else. Yeah. Okay, but can I follow up on the Jack Kirby additions and kind of like the intergalactic alien? Because that's a major tension here, right? Between sort of the mythological, Greek mythological origins and then like a bunch of aliens. And so that's what happens

when Jack Kirby comes to DC? Yeah, I mean, he's very well known for integrating science fiction and Greek mythology and biblical stories into the works of comic books. Obviously, Jesus here is about to be resurrected. Sure. Very much, very much so.

And he created something called the New Gods, which was basically an intergalactic version of Greek mythology. And some of the figures we'll see in here are representative of the New Gods. If you watch the first version of this movie, Steppenwolf is talking about the New Gods and the Old Gods and how some of the heroes in the DC universe are like old gods. Superman is an old god. The villains here are new gods, technically.

And it's funny because this is not so significantly different from a lot of the Marvel stuff that we've seen. It's just these movies and most of these stories are just not funny at all. And they're not trying to be funny. They do not have a sense of humor about themselves. And so invariably, it asks you to take it very seriously. And then once you start doing that, I feel like it kind of starts to feel a little bit silly. Where are we right now? This is presumably Bruce Wayne riding a horse across a mountain range.

Okay. How did you know that? Well, he has a kind of like, I just lost $500 at blackjack vibe to his walk. Okay. And also I seem to remember him taking the hood off it being him. Okay. Do you think after Chris Terrio won the Academy Award for best screenplay at the Oscars for Argo,

he thought what I'm going to do now is write three to five DC movies? Do you think that any of these, any of the plots of, of, of this film would have made good, good wired articles? So a lot of what we're seeing here actually wasn't the first,

the first justice league is basically Affleck showing up to I forget what country they're in right now. Okay part one part one don't count on it Batman. Yes. Okay we're getting dialogue and so this is where this podcast is going to get very confusing because we're going to attempt to pay attention to this film and understand it while also talking to you about it

so bruce wayne has showed up looking for aquaman there he is momoa and for folks who remember and this is the sort of the big litmus test that i'm i'm kind of um gonna look at the two two versions through this is one of the first scenes where you're like, the banter is really turned up. Like in the original version, there's a lot of jokes about where Arthur Curry is and whether or not, like why Bruce Wayne is here. I feel like this is where you start to see

the Whedon touches in the first version. So it'll be interesting to see whether, how much Snyder just sort of eradicates that. Maybe we should just use this as a moment, since this is a very familiar sequence, to just talk about the origins of this movie and why it's here and why this is an event and just get some of that stuff out of the way, because it's obviously really complicated. I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast you probably know some of it but there are a few things that I think are worth underlining before we repel into the rabbit hole that is the Zack Snyder Justice League so you know in May of 2017 Snyder stepped away from the late stages of

production and post-production after his 20 year old daughter Autumn took her own life and he told the Hollywood Reporter at the time in my mind I thought it was a cathartic thing to go back to work to just bury myself and see if that was the way through it. But then he said, the demands of this job are pretty intense. It is all consuming. And in the last two months, I've come to the realization, I've decided to take a step back from the movie to be with my family, be with my kids who really need me. They are all having a hard time. I'm having a hard time. And so the version of this film that we're watching right now, this four-hour film is dedicated to Autumn. And the proceeds from this film are going to suicide prevention,

which is, of course, a very important cause. And there's no reason to make light of any of that stuff. I think it's actually kind of amazing and kind of beautiful that Zack Snyder got a chance to make the movie that he really wanted to make, despite enduring this horrifically tragic period in his life and for his family. So in that respect, this is kind of miraculous that it happened. How we got here is extremely complex and messy. And after Snyder stepped back in 17, Joss Whedon, who had already been hired to be a writer, as Chris indicated, as somebody who came in to basically punch up the script while Snyder was still shooting the film, essentially took over post-production duties on the movie and then was asked to reshoot some sequences. And so, I mean, we can already tell we're 11 minutes into this movie and it is significantly more grave, direct and serious andpless, as opposed to the way that Whedon would do it. Whedon obviously punched it up a lot and added a lot of jokes to his version of

this Justice League script, and in reshooting it, effectively remade the movie. And so Snyder never watched Whedon's version of the movie. He never even felt like he was a part of making this film after he stepped away. And so now we're getting something totally different. I mean, Whedon did a lot of things. He wrote 80 new pages of the script. He only used 10% of the footage that Snyder shot. He brought in a completely new composer.

He replaced Junkie XL with Danny Elfman. So we just seen this scene where Batman and Aquaman are walking along this sort of rocky shore and Aquaman's about to jump into the water. And there's this line about a strong man is strongest alone, whatever. In the Whedon version of that, Affleck then delivers some quip like that's not the saying at all. And that was like, it's a total Whedon move to kind of like have this kind of meta reference to the kinds of the sort of grandiose ways superheroes tend to talk anyway and have a kind of almost fourth wall breaking moment between characters. But in that film, it actually kind of breaks the moment. Bruce Wayne is sad. Bruce Wayne saw

Superman die. He should be melancholy. He should be this guy that we're seeing on our screen. We shouldn't see him also busting balls and making jokes about Aquaman getting a saying wrong. So I don't know. I think that that Snyder's vision for this material is clearly probably more appropriate because you can't just graft on a sense of humor onto something, right? Yeah. I mean, without question, like if you, as I have in the last three days, I've watched all of the DC movies over a period of time and all the Zack Snyder DC movies have a very specific tone and you can take issue with the tone.

And I think we probably will take issue with the tone and the way that the stories are told at times, but it is downright jarring and confusing to see the Whedon version of Justice League because it has nothing to do really tonally with the rest of these other movies. And it felt like audiences recognized that the movie was not successful, only made $230 million at the box office in the US relative to the other movies that had come before it. It was kind of a failure. Amanda, when you first saw it, what did you think of Justice League? Justice League? I never saw Justice League. This is literally I'm learning what Justice League is, right? Because it was so immediately dismissed and it's you know that kind of movie where I go see them because people say that I need to see them and I need to know what's going on um and but the fact of the matter was is that no one really cared about Justice League and

people um didn't think it was worthwhile and also I have a sense of what's going to happen in this movie I won't spoil it for everybody else. I have not seen the center cut. But, you know, generally speaking, we know what's going to happen. So I'm learning everything for the first time. This is my first time seeing Ben Affleck and his Canada Goose outerwear. And I'm enjoying that. It's nice to see one of the Marthas back.

I do remember that from Batman vs Superman that their that their moms are both Martha so that's nice and I'm just you know the team's gonna get together

and we're gonna find some other boxes and I'm excited for that and ringer podcast icon Diane Lane is in the building it's true do you guys think

that Bruce Wayne like all of us kind of backslid into wearing sweatpants during the pandemic? God, he looks so good. He looks phenomenal. The theme of this whole thing is going to be redemption.

It's going to be redemption for Snyder's vision of this thing. And fucking Affleck. Look at this bucket hat. Look at Jeremy Irons' bucket hat. Affleck's just going to stack W's in this. I'm calling it now. I completely agree. agree honestly he's he's terrific in batman versus superman 2 he's a good batman i don't i it's not it's not complicated

i don't really love these movies but he was absolutely the right choice there's a lot of outerwear going on right now it's really it's good it's on trend everybody has their little specific look um what do you think jeremy irons did with his paycheck from his work in justice league do you know jeremy irons is in svu what like jeremy irons is like plays a recurring character that shows up for a couple of seasons in svu watching a lot of svu you know lois lane loves to get her latte in the morning this is one of her favorite activities she goes out she gets a, and then she breaks news at the Daily Planet. She is a newsbreaker.

Do you think Haberman was inspired by Lois Lane? Oh, my God. What do you guys think? Are we 20 minutes in? Good job, guys. It's not even. It's not even. Bobby is cringing.

Okay. Cringe and sigh from our producer security bank I feel like I'm learning a lot already watching this movie this is way more coherent

I was relating to Haberman with that latte I got one going just like that she got it for a police officer what in the world wow

copaganda here in the Justice League who does that one of the things I really want to talk to you guys a lot about is the in the world? Wow. Copaganda here in the Justice League. Who doesn't? One of the things I really want to talk to you guys a lot about is the, you know, where we could kind of

see ourselves in this DC universe not only as heroes, but just as residents we're going to get introduced to a couple of different cities. Gotham, Metropolis, and Central City.

And I think they all have, you know, their pros and cons like any place. I feel like Metropolis is kind of like Austin now where it was like it was cool for a while and then tech money invaded especially with luther you know um luther's behind a lot of spacks right now i heard he's gonna try and buy the timberwolves but so that means uh i guess i'm a gotham guy then if you're a metropolis guy yeah and you're kind of like the legs mcneil of this podcast you're just down and out in the lower east side yeah

gotham gotham is like avenue d in 1979 you know just living on the skids just trying to get 10 bucks together to buy some heroin and trying to kill Batman. Okay. So apparently we're in London right now. Does London... Is there another name for London in the DC universe or can it just be London? I think Metropolis. I think they're one and the same. Oh, really? Oh, I thought Metropolis...

No, they're not. They're not. Oh, I thought Metropolis was New York. I thought they were all New York and then all the other cities exist. How many times can I trick you into something like that during Like a thousand times. My heart's open. I'm learning about the Justice League and outerwear all at the same time. I would vote to live in London out of everything you just named. Bruce Bolton, first Game of Thrones cameo here, entering the building. Oh no. Okay. This is all from the original film as well. We're in London. There's

some sort of raid about to take place from some SWAT type figures. And the actor who played Roos is there. What's that guy's name, Chris? I can't remember, honestly. He's never going to top Roos. Chris, you hosted a live post Game of Thrones show on Twitter for years. And I invested myself so deeply in that world that I can't see these people as performers. They are the characters that they are. So this is Bruce Bolton. The only person who really dapped up out of there is

Richard Madden because he was in Bodyguard and so now I associate him with Vicky. There we go. Vicky! And Charles Dance. That's one. Michael McElhatton? Michael McElhatton. Michael McElhatton. McElhatton? I don't know.

McElhatton is a tremendous name. Thanks, Bobby. So this is going to be an introduction to Amanda's favorite character. A proper introduction. Oh, is Diana, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, showing up? Diana is just around the corner. Okay. I would assume unless they've completely

replaced her with another figure. Maybe Martian Manhunter will pop up here. Are we getting a Martian Manhunter setting? He's a Martian. Who is? Martian Manhunter. Oh, but not Bruce. Bruce isn't a Martian though. No, no, no. I was referring to another

Justice League character. He's a bad guy. Wow. He's in the sights of a SWAT agent now. Some tense stuff. Again, this is very different and expanded from the last version of the film. I'm not going to keep doing that.

Of course, kids, there's always a school trip to the museum when there's a hostage situation like this. So we're getting a good look at... Oh, there she is. There's my girl. Standing astride a statue on top of a building. Yeah. As one does.

Just totally practical armor and active wear that she's got going on here. Just for all occasions. Do you think if you were a super heroine amanda you would have your legs exposed while fighting bad guys yes of course she would it is true that i don't really like pants like in that sense i really i just want to be free right now i'm wearing jean shorts because it's gonna be a long road and i just

need to let them let them breathe. So I support her in that. I don't know about the whole sexual breastplate situation that she has going. That's more my vibe. You love a bustier, Chris. FYI, we just heard an F-bomb here, which I do not recall from the original version. That's one of four, right? Kind of ramping up the language. I read a blog post that there are four F-words

in the Snyder Cut, so you can count them. If you could have any superhero utter the F-word, which one would it be? I know exactly who I want it to be. I know exactly who I want it to be. What would that even mean? It would mean I want to see the video of Bradley Cooper

performing as Rocket Raccoon dropping an F-bomb. Okay. That's what I want to see. If in the Russo cut of Endgame, I think Captain Marvel flies through Thanos' ship

and is just like, I fucked up your spaceship, Thanos. What if Captain Marvel called Thanos a fuckboy? Would that be good? He's kind of a fuckboy, right? You know, he thinks he has all the answers, seems like a decent guy.

Lo and behold, he wants to eliminate half of the universe's population. So Diana, she's doing some stuff. See, this is, they make it seem like she has the powers of the Flash. She's just moving awfully fast here. Does she not have the powers of the Flash? Can she not move quickly?

She can move quickly, but not this quickly. Okay. I mean, why you got to put limits on the one woman superhero? Just let her move fast. Come on, man. She's half goddess.

She might be the most powerful person in this whole film, but she just doesn't have the Flash's powers. I think also in between Dawn of Justice and this, Diana Prince did a lot of work with Alex Guerrero, just working on quick twitch speed work. WW12.

Yeah. Yeah. So she threw the bomb into... Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Can Diana fly? What just happened? How did she fly?

I think she could jump really she learns to fly from Steve in Wonder Woman 1984 but this like Pearl Jam learning this okay so is this after it because that happened in 1984 and this even though this movie came out before in the time continuum yes this I'm glad you asked. Okay, great. There we go. It does. I've thought of this quite a few times in terms of some of the conversations

that we may or may not see between Wonder Woman and Batman soon in this movie because in the Whedon version, Batman is kind of a dick to Diana

when they're talking about whether or not they should try to resurrect Superman. Okay. And it kind of doesn't make sense based on what we've now seen in Wonder Woman 1984. And I wonder if they've retrofitted that in any way. Is this movie just four hours because half of it happens in slow-mo?

It's a very good question. Bob, this is a great question. I was wondering, look, two extra hours is a significant add-on. I'd say nothing of the four-hour runtime. Just the fact that they have this much footage, and clearly so much of it is going to be dedicated to action set pieces. Yeah, that's actually good news for us

because that's just something to talk through. There's just not much to contextualize about Diana slowly moving through... What is this? A museum? A school? Where are we? Chris, does this remind you of the Franklin Institute at all?

More like the Please Touch Museum. This is how we used to get it in. That was a weird name for a museum. Shout out to Philadelphia. There was a museum there for kids called the Please Touch Museum. Chris! The implication being that the Philadelphia Art Museum and other museums like it

were don't touch, you know, but as a youngster, I like to think that every museum was a Please Touch Museum. So I was up there on some Cy Twombly's

just pawing at him. Interesting turn of events as you're now known at the ringer as Uncle Bad Touch. Oh my God. That's funny. Things evolve. Chris, you walked right into that one so i'm all for it okay

um i also want to just chat really briefly about when you have a roving band of marauders such as these guys in the uh in the museum and they define themselves as reactionary terrorists it's a lot of self-awareness um to ask of a group of people like i don't necessarily think that you would be like i i am reactionary it's a great point thanks i think diana did great amanda you like to do that though when you enter a room it is i Amanda, features editor and podcaster. That's true. Please bow before me and my AK-47.

It's good to have clarity, you know, and to introduce yourself, especially for the people like me who, you know, have never watched this before and really need something to hold on to. Okay, we're back on Themyscira, my favorite place. So we're back on the mascara my favorite place so we're back to mother boxes so chris you've spent the last decade or so studying mother boxes so this is really a chance for you to speak eloquently about what they mean to you work i'm sort of the zaynep too fecky of mother boxes you know and i'm out here doing threads um and for a long time operating in total obscurity. But now that this particular academic pursuit has come through, I find that there's a lot of misconceptions

about mother boxes. Like what? Well, so they're not actually mothers. You know what I mean? Like they don't, there's no, the only thing they're giving birth to is sort of elemental powers. Earlier today on The Watch,

Andy and I were talking about whether or not Steven Soderbergh's Let Them All Talk happened within the DC cinematic universe and whether we should call each mother box Candice Bergen, Diane Wiest, and Meryl Streep just as like a kind of nickname or as a reference point. Okay. And where'd you land?

Jury's still out. Jury's still out. Interesting. Which one would this, which one would the Themyscira box be? This feels like Bergen. Yeah, I agree with you. It's the right energy. Okay, but so Chris, I don't want to step on our segment here, but

as a mother box expert, like what's in the box. So this was at various points. I think Zack Snyder is very handily divided this film up into parts. So we'll be able to do this throughout the podcast, but I do want to ask sort of pop quiz questions from time to time. I think that much like the infinity stones, but grief,

it's holder like control over, you know, the soul, the mind, whatever. I think the mother boxes have an element of this. These are just directly tied to the big homie Steppenwolf. Who's making his first real appearance in this film.

So Amanda, this is Steppenwolf. Yeah. You guys have been sending me a lot of screenshots of him over the last few days. And Chris sent me a plot summary of this film so i'm familiar with him but where did he come from uh he he works uh with the new gods um he has a boss we're probably going to meet his boss a little bit later on in this film i know who that is

because you guys also make fun of me by saying his name a lot. I would say that I think of Steppenwolf as bum-ass Thanos. You know, just like the real off-brand, like 99-cent store Thanos. And it's kind of amazing that Thanos didn't really materially

appear for more than a minute in any of those Marvel movies until 2018-19. And so this all came before that. All this mediocre stuff. But the framework of the characters is just so similar. Like I was saying, a lot of it is born of this Jack Kirby stuff. And so the idea of a being from another dimension that wants all consuming power and will kill superheroes to acquire it. These are the same stories being told over and over again.

It's just Steppenwolf, frankly, just doesn't look or sound as cool as Thanos. And it's played by Siren Hines. Yeah, that's right. The great Irish actor. Siren Hines was one of the first performers in Justice League to come forth and support the Snyder Cut. I did not know that. Yeah.

When it was revealed that there was, in fact, a Snyder Cut, that there was an extant version of this movie that had unfinished effects that ran at length and that Zack Snyder wanted to be released. And obviously, it was a long road to there. Maybe we'll talk about it a little bit in the campaign and HBO Max and how all this came to be. But yeah, the voice of Steppenwolf is in part responsible for what we're seeing here today.

All right. So let me ask some more timeline questions. If this happens after 1984, then obviously this also happens after the original wonder woman. Correct. Correct. Correct. And the mascara was fine at the end of the

original Wonder Woman but did they didn't mention the mother box in Wonder Woman right they did not know okay why I don't know right how long did it take the Infinity Stones to start popping up in Marvel movies like an Ultron is it Ultron or is it I guess it there is a stone in the first Avengers right yes I believe so right I believe it was very

early on in the first scene right the look like well Loki I want to say it was the first Thor film that's right it was a big part it was a big part of the early conception of this those that series of films this is a brutal ass kicking the amazon so i have some questions about this sequence that we're seeing here um i re-watched the you know the original version of this movie and i saw the sequence um in which connie nielsen is sliding underneath a falling wall that her fellow amazonians have been holding up and so once the wall falls and those amazonians get stuck inside of this giant edifice like is the expectation there that they've just sacrificed themselves that they're just dead yeah they're just locked in there yeah that's kind of a shitty

job i wouldn't want to be one of those amazonians well this is this is the 300 ethic he's bringing to this it's also why they try to keep men off the island sean for so long it was pretty tough because men are cowards oh no also just because look i mean the whole thing falls apart literally into the ground once the the men show up as we learned a dome falls off your cliff yes so this is completely different this is in fact steppenwolf just bursts through that edifice in the other film and then starts chasing down Amazons. Now, he may still chase down an Amazon here, but as far as I can remember, there was no

dome falling off a cliff in the first version. Okay. Guys, this is a lot better. Definitely a lot better. This scene is played like it's in Indiana. It's in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And the first one where it's like, she's riding the horse, she's going to get away.

You know, like it's not, it's not this tragedy. I will say though, just the way that the mascara looks in this film, as opposed to the way that it looks in both Wonder Woman films. I mean, the light and is incredibly different.

Like it is, this, this is a, and it makes sense. it's of a piece with snyder's um aesthetic and color palette but i don't know the other place looked like more fun you know it's funny that you say that though i mean that underlines like the central tension of the last few years with this whole endeavor right because it's clear that the warner brothers brass was not happy with the way that these Zack

Snyder movies were going. And so they wanted a change. They wanted a pop sensation. And that's part of why Suicide Squad got recut to be jokier. It's part of the reason why Wonder Woman was a little bit shinier, a little bit sunnier, Patty Jenkins's version. It's true, Chris and amanda like this is definitely played more as a tragedy but still like steppenwolf is kind of like running around and swinging an axe and killing people like it's still it still is a weird violent superhero movie um but it's just the snyder version of these stories feels like a distant memory um so it's interesting to see it completely recast.

The thing you hear Snyder talk about the most in these interviews, aside from obviously the prolonged production and post-production process and the experience of coming back to the movie, is his sort of affinity for the mythology of these characters. And for a long time, I think that I was pretty out on these films because I didn't, well, first of all, I didn't find them particularly entertaining or engaging, but it took me a while to kind of understand what they were going for. And now you can make the argument like that shouldn't matter in your enjoyment of a film. You should be able to go in

and just sort of, this film should speak to you without like a version of Cliff Notes sitting next to you. So you can be like, oh, this is the intention. But to hear him talk about this being his Lord of the Rings and to hear him talk about this being his take on Greek mythology and to have all of these characters are representative of some sort of larger-than-life

iconic character for him is a lot. It changes the way you look at this significantly it makes sense it was never gonna it was never gonna work that way you know i don't think um for starters the lord of the rings movies are pretty funny um and so like that doesn't just because something is fantasy doesn't mean it necessarily has to be that you know shouldering this heavy burden of storytelling that that that assumes um it's kind of amazing that we've come all the way back around again because like as

we've already noted this already seems just a lot better than the first version of the movie that we saw and the reviews of this movie have been pretty good and there's definitely some grading on a curve going on here there's definitely a little bit of, well, the last one was a complete piece of garbage. So there was only nowhere, anywhere to go but up. But I think five or eight years ago, the critical consensus was that the Zack Snyder approach to filmmaking, overly serious, incredibly violent on a massively grand scale, bending towards kind of faux poetry, obsessed with the idea of masculinity. The shot is straight out

of Lord of the Rings. Wow. Have you done a shot-by-shot breakdown of Lord of the Rings in the past, Chris? I have, yeah. It's not really for public consumption, though.

I see. Will that be in the Mother Box presentation as well? It's in that deck. um it's not really for public consumption though i see will that be in the mother box presentation as well it's in that deck as an appendix is it painful to watch the amazonians get their asses kicked amanda amazon no i mean it happens in the other it happens in wonder woman in um the original the patty jenkins you, there's that, I think very exciting on horseback scene on, on the beach. Um, that is, and they don't win that as I recall.

I mean, I think, I guess they get Steve and then they repel the rest of the people off the beach. So I guess they do win, but it's, they lose some people in the process. So, you know, this is obviously longer and grimmer and they're not winning. And you don't really have the sense of this is a cool island where like women kick ass. It's more like we're all being suppressed by this weird alien being, which, you know, your mileage may vary on that. It's interesting so far. This has just been wonder woman fighting pretty much and then the amazon's fighting so i i like that um but but you're right that's 25 minutes pretty much fight fighting yeah like we had one scene between curry and wayne and one scene between wayne and um what's his butler's name alfred and alfred you gotta be impressed that i got that name's klaus von bulow

and then jeremy irons all right all right so we're coming into part two part two already so what are you about 40 minutes into the film right now 37 minutes so originally it was suggested that this would be a four part kind of mini series and that was something that Snyder was touting when he finally got the chance to go out and make this

and then he walked that back and said in fact no it's a four hour film but it does have chapters so in retrospect we'll probably not be able to answer this question until we get to the end of the film That in fact, no, it's a four-hour film, but it does have chapters. So in retrospect, we'll probably not be able to answer this question until we get to the end of the film. It would have been fascinating if HBO Max was putting out

the Snyder Cut miniseries against Falcon and Winter Soldier for the next month. One week at a time. Yeah, they opted not to do that they've unlocked the whole thing here i wanted to ask you guys about this so this is like there's some sort of obelisk here that steppenwolf puts the mother boxes into to acquire power but it seems to be taking place inside of a chernobyl reactor um yeah where where are we this is his world right

is it yeah i think that see because in the original film this is in in, right? Is it? Yeah. I think that, see, because in the original film, this is on Earth. Oh, that's right. Isn't this the nuclear power plant? Yeah. Oh, hey. Looking great, though I was really enjoying the beard

and I'm a little sad to see it go. You know, I want to talk about Ben Affleck's hair. It's wonderful. So, you know, I'm going'm going gray right we're all going gray so to speak but excuse me it's like just i'm here i'm watching this movie for four hours with you i'm learning about the justice league and about steppenwolf but i'm not gonna be given gray hair prematurely okay that's Amanda, you will have a majestic mane until the day that you expire.

I assure you. And frankly, it doesn't matter what color it is, but we are all going gray. At the end of this movie, Amanda's going to look like Emmylou Harris. So, you know, Bruce Wayne in this movie has the graying temples, heavy graying temples.

Yeah. And is that Affleck's real hair color or has this been colored to represent a slightly aged Wayne? Sean, this is colored. They weren't like, oh, good, Ben Affleck, you have slight gray temples. Let's just go with that. Come on, Chris, just roll with me here. Should I? This might be a wig, honestly.

Whoa. What? I need better light so I can see it, damn it. It's a very dark film. It's a very dark film. All I'm saying is, you know, as I go gray. Yeah. And my hair turns into this weird kind of amber, blonde, white, gray mishmash, which is just frankly hideous.

I aspire to that that athlect coloring he probably has had some treatments at some point i'm with chris so you know just people different hair colors gray differently so are you guys saying ben got plugs yes i also say this i've often thought about like if i can just get some more money i don't know how much more money what that i would just i would just be like like fuck it and get get uh plugs or get you know like a hair transplant but if i did initially i was kind of like i would want to look like an italian soccer manager and just have like kind of like this amazing feathered do but why not just go full-on and just like basically make

myself look like bonnie reed you know what i mean like just like a full long red mane and then like a white shock of hair what was the longest your hair ever was chris it was pretty long in the early 2000s okay i grew it out a little bit give me that like chin shoulder uh like down to like the i mean you can't the listeners can't see it but the nape of your neck yeah nape okay and it. Yeah, nape. Okay. And it was mostly in the back. Okay. So there's pictures of me and our buddy, John Caramonica. I was just actually looking at them because Andy sent them to me

and we're at an MOP concert and I'm wearing a Detroit Tigers hat and I have like pretty long hair in the back. So Chris, my solemn oath to you is- Fucking abandoned me. I will pay for your plugs if if you record a 10 part vodcast series for spotify um called plugged my journey and it's a story about how you you're reconnecting with hair yeah will you do it i i just think it's like we we frown upon it in this

country whereas in germany and italy as soon as soccer managers get enough money they're like i'm getting plugs you guys are fucking crazy if you think i'm gonna walk around bald on the sideline i mean it worked for wayne rooney he looks fantastic yeah right obviously worked for tom brady we know he's bald he's who was the winged person that we just saw so those were parademons that's a parademon oh great i love the authority with which both of you are just willing to say that's a parademon continue parademons um there is an explanation of parademons in the first film i don't know if there's going to be in this film but they are um essentially there was a battle many many many

many years ago amongst all of the various communities that we've seen thus far the atlanteans the amazons um the humans and this the sort of realm of the new gods and the the characters a lot of people in that battle were converted to parademons they're kind of like the orcs of this world you know the orcs that were created in the Lord of the Rings movies. Does that ring a bell? Vaguely. Okay. So parademons, earthly beings or aliens?

So I think that they are converted earthly beings. At least that's the way it was explained in the previous movie. We may get an explanation here since we still have about three hours and 20 minutes to go. Sure. But they're like, they're the foot soldiers. They are like powerful foot soldiers in Steppenwolf's army. Okay. And they are in search of the mother boxes,

which is why they just showed up at Joe Morton's lab. Joe Morton, who apparently is just reprising his role from Terminator 2. Yeah. It's very weird that he is playing a high level scientist again. Maybe it's an homage or maybe it's just typecasting. What do you think, Chris? I think it's probably a little bit of both.

It's like a shorthand or it's like, I need a scientist. Let's get Joe Morton. We need like a smart-seeming, authoritative man. All right. So we just have some mom guilt happening here. She's making Diana come back and fight her battles. I don't know.

This is a fucking Olympic level archery right here. Wow. Putting Robin of Loxley to shame. You call that some serious long toss in the baseball world. That's right. That's how Jake DeGrom gets loose every day. Okay, so is that... So is this... Did she just shoot this arrow into Greece?

Yeah, I was going to say, is that the Parthenon? Because I think UNESCO might have some thoughts on how landmarks are being treated. Okay, now we're in Paris. Oh, she sent it to the wrong place. Diana, just straight curating if you had the powers of an amazon princess um would you work in a museum restoring great works that's not how i would spend my time well so she's like the closest to greek mythology right like she's she's basically athena which is why it's funny that her mom just sent the the flaming thing to the parthenon because that's a temple basically athena which is why it's funny that her mom just sent the the flaming

thing to the parthenon because that's a temple to athena and i'm assuming i mean i don't know what statute this is but i'm guessing that's athena so she's just like taking care of all the odes to herself you just your college education just you just paid for it just worth it just paid off i mean it's like like that's nothing that you can't get in delaires but sure thank you yeah i did graduate from college also just my professor would want me to point out that diana is actually the roman name for artemis who is another greek goddess who's not athena so there's a little bit going on here you know there's we're combining some tropes but yeah art amanda also a warrior right amanda you dropped this queen you're just just dry you got so much deep classical knowledge

don't you remember that book did you guys have delirious the greek book of book of myths oh you didn't oh it was awesome it was a kid's book and it taught you about how they were born and then their dad like ate all of them and then threw them up you don't remember this i was too busy i was i was a glove man up the middle at that time missed out just sucking up grounders here's the thing i don't understand why you don't love these movies amanda you have like a deep understanding of what they're all what they're ripping off but then they just have to bring in dumb aliens. Like if it were just, like that's why I like Wonder Woman and Themyscira

and everything until Ares becomes like a superhuman alien. Like I don't want Steppenwolf. I don't want you guys to have to teach me what parademons and orcs are. Like there's plenty of complexity here on this earth. And you know, with the gods that relate to to this earth i don't need the sci-fi stuff amanda's looking for the adult version of percy jackson and the olympians also you know i just a little sunshine that's just all i want in life is just like let's just have some saturated

colors in here but whatever i understand that that's not zack s style. This is Superman's ship, right? This is a Kryptonian ship, yes. And that is one of the drawings from Silence of the Lambs? No? That's the Batman. So, you know, in general, I know that you don't like the intergalactic portions

of this stuff, Amanda, but, you know, it just feels like an evolution to me a little bit. It's like it's another iteration of the imagination of what's beyond our grasp um and it's also like the part the difference here is that these stories need villains they don't just need monsters they need villains right so a lot of greek and roman mythology there's a lot of battles cyclops syl and charybdis, etc. These movies need an oversimplified

iteration of why someone is the enemy. That's kind of what holds some of these movies back, to be honest. Now we're back with Cyborg. Getting our first real Cyborg moment. You think he's wearing John Elliot there? What do you think he was wearing?

No? Is that like a streetwear brand? Man who makes sweatshirts, sweatpants. I do like her monochromatic looks. I make sweatshirts now. At least she's matching the scenery. This is a very passive aggressive way to get

in touch with your daughter. Not even passive aggressive, but like within the scale of their relationship, it's just like I sent a burning torch to the temple in your honor. Are those words written on there? Yeah. What do you think that says on there? Call your mother I got logged out of Netflix can you help forgot password yeah what's my get my letter yeah

okay so this is definitely all new I don't remember she like in a crypt below the parthenon what's the uh what's the the cave fire myth who's that guy like plato yes oh plato no well prometheus got fire but plato had a cave right And then he goes outside the cave. So you just mixed up your caves. In a way, she's going to do that. So that's what I was setting up. Good save, Chris. This is giving me National Treasure vibes here.

Yeah, we're in some sort of archaeological circumstance. And I don't know what she's going to find here. It's just great filmmaking, you know? She's probably going to find some steppenwolf intel i would imagine right i don't know i just can't believe how serious this film is so this is a let's talk about seriousness okay as diana is reading some some hieroglyphics and stuff has marvel made us like almost cynical where we expect too much like banter and and one-liners and like everybody's always kind of like pretty much a good person except for thanos

and you know like the this idea that these like are very like relatable people that you would see at your office except they happen to be captain america or do you guys do you guys think that this is actually like a very valid way of depicting superheroes in these larger-than-life terms? Well, what do you think, Amanda? I mean, I have a more personal relationship to a lot of these stories. I mean, this is an oversimplification

based on the fact that I don't really pay that much attention to these things, but like the Marvel superheroes are supposed to be like, they're just like us, except also, you know, they have a superpower and whether it's like you got injected by whatever Captain America radioactive. Well,

what did happen to Captain America? They did science tests on him. He had the, he got the shot. Right. Yeah. I mean, I certainly remember the after shot to Captain America? They did science tests on him. He had the, he got the shot. Right. Yeah. I mean, I certainly remember the after shot from Captain America,

but you know, they're like people in normal circumstances who become superheroes, superheroes and are like grappling with that. And it's supposed to be more relatable. And then these are like, for the most part, gods or like half human people. And so they're trying to figure out how to be,

I guess, how to relate to humans and how to be accepted and how to like what power and what being great is. And, you know, that not to be like, I was a classics major again, but that in a lot of ways is like Greek mythology stuff. And that is those questions of ways is like Greek mythology stuff and that is those questions of of power and theology or whatever they can be really interesting I think that it's harder to make jokes about it and it's harder to have that accessibility that I think

makes people want to spend so much time in the MCU right because at the end of the day people just like like being with those characters and I don't know do you like being with like a really depressed Ben Affleck who like you know it's really sad that his parents died and just has to growl all the time I mean I do personally but um like that's the sexiest thing in the world to you right yes but it's but it's not like the I'm just gonna turn it on and hang with my friends thing. So I'll be curious to see how they handle the Flash, because I think the Flash is probably the character who's most similar to a lot of the MCU characters. And we only saw Joss Whedon's version of the Flash. And that quippiness. Green Lantern is like this, too.

And Green Lantern is not a part of these stories. The characters that Zack Snyder chose to use in this story, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg. What is this music drop? Are we just doing a music video? There's some great bitware. Zack Snyder, first of all, just as an aside, just make your fucking disaster at sea movie, man. Nobody's stopping you. You're free of this DC stuff. Just go out and make a sinking of the Lusitania

or whatever you got to do. You belong on the waves, my brother. Second of all, this is just a great example of Zach's aesthetic where it just feels like a very, for better or for worse, an extended trailer. All of these shots feel like shots

that you would find in the trailer for this movie, but they're just like, what if we just made that the movie? So furthermore, this song that we're hearing right now is by an artist that Chris and I love, Nick Cave. This is a Nick Cave and the Bad Seed song. It's called There is a Kingdom. More explicitly, this is from the album

called The Boatman's Call. Wow. And this is a scene featuring Aquaman. So Captain Obvious here has once again shown his powers. There is a Kingdom Great song though.

And now Aquaman is swimming to Atlantis. So he decided he needed to go back home but first he had to do like a music video. Yeah, he needed to crush a home, but first he had to do like a music video. Yeah. He needed to crush a bottle of rum and then get underwater.

So we're in Atlantis. And James Wan's version of Atlantis is pretty technicolor, if I remember correctly, right? It's pretty just like vibrant. And this is, we're still going gray, blue here.

You know, did you, you guys saw Aquaman? Man, did you see it? Sean? No, you didn't. I love you, but no, I did you see it sean no you didn't i love you but no i did not see aquaman i watched some trailers uh and but i do remember the colors from the trailers you know we recorded a fun pod with david shoemaker when that movie came out it's probably because i was like amanda's not gonna go see this it was over christmas there was a lot

going on and it was just not on the priority list you abdicated your duties as uh the mirror to my aquaman um and uh you know that's a fun movie i like that movie i like james wan's movies in general but um this is not this does not look like that as chris pointed out oh fuck yeah willem dafoe is here hell yeah this is absolutely what you want is Willem Defoe. He was not in the last version of this film. He plays a character named Volko.

Okay. Why is he speaking so disrespectfully to Aquaman if Aquaman is the king of the sea? I think he's trying to shame him.

Yeah, he's trying to shame Aquaman into becoming the king. Alcoholic dirtbag, yeah. Okay. This is also, interestingly, the same script

from a sequence from The Lighthouse, one of my favorite movies. Okay. Remember when, for like three months, people tried to make make the lighthouse's dialogue happen as like a as like a meme yes sean did remember when when they tried or when they

succeeded that's a blip on the continuum of culture ultimately right like you you're you you drop that you don't still make lighthouse jokes do you um they're not jokes they they live inside me their memories um they're you know they're access points to my imagination take up your mother's trident i hope to one day be able to say that to someone okay my dad used to say that all the time to me see this is something this movie needs is more ridiculous dialogue. Dafoe is so committed. You absolutely love to see it. So this is just like reverse Little Mermaid here? He just wants to be a part of their world?

They want him to be a part of their world. Right, but he wants to be a part of their other worlds. What's their other world? You know, the world. The surface. The normal world. The Earth world. But isn't that the normal world, the earth world. But isn't that what Ariel wanted?

Yeah. Yeah. So he's like Ariel. Right. Yes. I said reverse. I meant gender reversal. Not like him wanting to be part of the sea.

Who plays? Does Aquaman's dad show up in Aquaman? I can't remember. He does. Yeah. Is it played by Robbie Coltrane? Who's it played by? No,

I don't recall the actor's name. Um, I believe he's of Samoan descent. Um, and you know, who plays Aquaman's mother, right? No,

I forget. Uh, Academy award winning actress, Nicole Kidman. Oh my God. Are you serious? Nicole Kidman plays a mer woman. I didn't see that movie.

Wait. So is this the, is this a, what's his name? This is Steppenwolf. Right. But he's talking to his boss. Let's see.

This is, this is not dark side. I don't believe. No. Let me see okay i'm just gonna say a lot of people who i'm supposed to understand are really powerful are just letting anyone mouth off to them and we should probably break down steppenwolf's ideology as compared to thanos right because thanos' whole thing was there's too much suffering, but if you get rid of half of the people, ultimately there will be less suffering, right? That's right.

What's Steppenwolf's vibe here? Thanos was a conservationist. Steppenwolf is a power-hungry tyrant. Okay. He is addicted to the all- all consuming power of the mother boxes while also serving in this kind of John, the apostle role to dark side. Well,

he's talking here like he's a fallen angel. Steppenwolf's like, I've, I was, I want to come home. So, want to come home so i think that this is more of a herald here this character that is talking yes decide who decide is you may recall from the marvel movies there is a character who talks a lot on behalf of thanos his name is ebony maw Bobby Wagner, our producer, knows I love Ebony Maw. He's one of my faves.

This guy, DeSade, who is in fact named after the Marquis de Sade, he loves to inflict pain and torture. He is kind of the mouthpiece for Darkseid. He's melting. I think this was just like a vision of him. He's no Ebony Maw. He's no Ebony Maw.

Absolutely not. No, Ebony Maw rules. So am I meant to take away from that that there's some tension between steppenwolf and dark side perhaps their visions aren't aligned well i think also the steppenwolf royally fucked up satan style at one point it was kicked kicked out of the house i think that this whole steppenwolf mission is to try to get back in the good graces of that's correct it's that's correct. It's a little bit of like a Billy Martin George Steinbrenner

situation though you know where like they both seem to think that they know who's right. Steppenwolf gets fired in reality. You guys are talking over Ben Affleck

and Gal Gadot talking to each other so just absolutely stop doing that. I just These two just need to have sex on stage. I literally was about to say

I know that they don't this is just an absolute missed opportunity. You asked me when I would like superheroes to use the f-word it's when these two are fucking each other like can why isn't this happening yeah

they just there's a lot of heat going in both directions you think Ben and Gal get along sure wow are they in the same I mean they are in the same room okay yeah this scene this scene's in the first one it wasn't this conversation happening outdoors last time

it was they were walking along some sort of river they were a prom yeah they were they were and they were having a very similar kind of expo conversation guys I met some of those guys. I didn't like them. Okay. Yeah. A natural cut to some weird people. So this is what I was describing. This will be an explanation, I believe,

of the origin of the parademons. What you're about to see here. Okay. Darks. Oh, so here now we're getting dark side too. That dude is on

a lot of HGH right there. Foe Hercules? Yeah. This is the most expensive World of Warcraft ad ever. Some of this movie looks good and better than the original. Some of it still looks like

CGI bullshit. It's very hard to watch movies this way. This is the first time we've watched a movie together in more than a year. That's very true. Oh,

that's touching. Is this the one you were hoping it would be? I was hoping it would be triple frontier too. Three more frontiers. Three hours left. Chris, who's to say? Shouldn't try the last two hours.

You just put triple frontier on. You would be my homie for life. I'll do that. I'm not committed to this, to finishing this. I just can't. I'm not committed to this, to finishing this. I just can't believe that I'm watching this CGI bullshit

instead of Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot together. Like, they're in a room narrating this. Just cut back. Sean, who plays Darkseid? Is that Daniel Day-Lewis? They actually managed

to capture the voice work of Laurence Olivier Olivier and they captured individual words that he uttered through the years and on film and they piece that together to get Darkseid that's not true as Darkseid goes he looks like Darkseid that's what Darkseid looks like in the comics you're just always making the women do all the exposition all the heavy lifting why can't ben affleck say some of this i mean i'm glad that his agent put it in his contract that he wouldn't have to say this nonsense but like come on i'm surprised you didn't wear one of those dark side chin straps to this recording amanda i feel like you gotta strap. Protect your neck.

Some shades of Macbeth here. I guess so. Three mothers, three old hags. Here to explain the all-consuming power and the doom that awaits our leads. There's Lear. We're getting all kinds of shades of Shakespeare.

Right? Come on. Speak to it. Yes. Sure, Sean. That all kinds of shades of Shakespeare. Right? Come on, speak to it. Yes. Sure, Sean. That's exactly what I thought of. The Scottish play. Yeah, like, Shakespeare's probably rolling in his grave, like, just being like, I'm such a chump. Because he's not as good as Zack Snyder?

Yeah. Ontario. So, I mean, here we're seeing a massive battle sequence. Zeus growling! Where was Zeus? Yeah. There's Green Lantern. One of the Green Lanterns.

There are many. That's what a Green Lantern looks like? It can look like any species. It's about wearing a ring. If you have a ring, you can become a lantern. Okay.

Honestly, Green Lantern, a great character that Brian Reynolds royally fucked up in that terrible Green Lantern movie. I hope they make a cool Green Lantern movie. I would love Reynolds royally fucked up in that terrible Green Lantern movie I hope they make a cool Green Lantern movie I would love to see one did you see that he did like Spawn Con for a gin brand where he rewatched Green

Lantern for the first time and was just like look at this dog shit it's a real shame also one of the funniest performances in any movie in the 21st century is Peter Sarsgaard as the villain in Green Lantern okay I'm just can is there like... Do we have a segment or is there a thing I can

hit where you guys can just explain what the hell's happening? It's like everyone's fighting and like Zeus is here and Darkseid... Like what's happening? This is an origin story. This is where Darkseid's mission, his goal, this is how the three mother boxes came to

be separated. And basically Atlantis and Themyscira and Earth were meant to be the individual resting places for all three of them to eliminate the opportunity to have all that power. Very similar to the stones from the Marvel movies. And then visually, it's basically a combination of 300 meets the opening of fellowship of the ring where we get to see like soran for the first that in the second one where you get to see soran fighting

for the first time get his finger cut off yeah i don't i so who made them other boxes um i think steve jobs great good joke why is zeus here I think Steve Jobs. Great joke. Why is Zeus here? You keep saying that like this is absolutely Zeus. I genuinely don't know. It said Zeus in the captioning. It did say Zeus. And his son Ares.

Yeah, that's how it works. I think Darkseid's getting laid out. Gal Gadot is describing a coalition of all of the mythical, powerful figures coming together to stop Darkseid in ancient history. Okay. That's what she read when she broke into the National Treasure Tomb, I believe. The story. Okay.

Oh, okay. That's helpful. Now, is that guy a Spartan? No, I think that's Zeus. That's Zeus. And he was using the lightning, which is one of Zeus' things. That's just swole Zeus?

Yeah. So Zeus is a character in the DC Comics universe. It's an interpretation of the Zeus from Greek mythology. Oh, good. I'm so glad. Yeah.

We needed their spin on it. A lot of changes were made there that just kept the same name and the same powers. So, unfortunately, he was not played in this film by Gerard Butler, who I feel like would have

just been fabulous in that role. Where is Butler these days if you if you had to fight dark side uh-huh what do you think that um paulo schreiber and gerard butler from dead of thieves would do a good job like repelling him you need o'shea jackson i think to make it happen and 50 cent yeah man these are dead of thieves jokes i'm really just reading the closed captioning trying to understand what's happening i wasn't listening to you i just am following the closed captioning being like can i try to understand this mythology because i it's not like this screen is telling me what's going on i feel like zeus was shorter in the last scene did they make him taller here i was about to comment on how I was excited

that they made him kind of short. That's funny you should say that, Bob. I thought Steppenwolf looked a little shorter in the first fight with the Amazonians. This is just one of those Tom Cruise situations, you know, listed at 5'11", but clocking in at 5'6". Yeah, like PJ Tucker, you know?

That's right. But, you know, Scrappy on the boards really can box out. Zeus is really, his footwork is tremendous. Low center of gravity on that guy. That's right. According to the rites and rituals of their culture,

it's important. So this sequence in which they explain the origin of the mother boxes and the pact amongst the various civilizations here lasts, I don't know,

90 seconds. Oh, wow. In the original film and this film there's some sort of uh speaking of cilin charybdis some sort of a sea monster clutching the the mother box in atlantis okay so you see they've all been separated because they're too powerful right someone has all three of them together sure i gotta say we're talking way more about plot than i expected well i have to say that the way that this story is being told reminds me way more of a comic book than a movie there's been like seven total minutes of dialogue between two or more characters and in those scenes those scenes have been cut down quite a bit this is way more like panel to panel to panel, page flipping through exposition, these sort of rich visual panoramas.

It's a fascinating kind of hybrid of that style with movies. So are these the humans right here? They didn't do a very good job hiding it. That's like three feet deep. You can tell it's a human because that guy looks just like Sean Bean. humans right here they didn't do a very good job hiding it that's like three feet deep everybody else put it deep in a temple just like Sean Bean so in the previous version of the film they I think Diana

explicitly says that a very select group of humans were had this information so that no one else could know but I agree that it does not seem to be as effectively safeguarded as say having an octopus protect it a giant squid yeah

so here's where incredible Batman and Wonder Woman kiss yeah this is gonna be great kiss kiss imagine if they just if they just launched into a 30 minute sex scene just that wouldn't that be amazing that would be the peak of this podcast

do you guys lose my mind you guys seen Watchmen the Zack Snyder movie yeah not the TV series no but I've seen the scene in question you know what I'm gonna say

they have sex in the little ship yeah Patrick Wilson and Malin Ackerman have sex set to the strains of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

oh my god I think we're gonna get some serious Diane Lane now oh wow Bobby no we're going to get some serious Diane Lane now. Oh wow. Bobby! No, we're going to Central City. This is where The Flash lives, right? Yeah, no, it's a different one. Yeah, but the mother-son title, you gotta figure Martha's here.

So here's Barry Allen, aka The Flash, played by Ezra Miller. The Flash movie, perhaps the only film with a more prolonged and sort of stop-start production than Justice League. So here's Kirstie Clemons,

which is important because she was completely cut out of the film in the Joss Whedon version, and apparently her story has been restored here. Amanda, do you respond to Ezra Miller?

I don't know. I'm learning in real time seems like we're doing some comedy here right now this is what I was gonna say he's the spider-man to the DC universe not always not not in every iteration but clearly in this version of

the story he's the youngest member of the crew and he's fast talking and neurotic and relatable. Okay. And there's a guy driving a truck eating a burger. That's always going to turn out well. I'm sure not having both hands on the wheel won't be a problem. Chekhov's burger right there.

Oh, no. Uh-oh. He's got his burger. Don't look down. No. No. No. No.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Not this person. I don't know her name, but I'm concerned about her. This is some. Burger propaganda. Barry's going to see what's going down here. He's going to zoom in. Right.

He's literally going to flash in. Can you imagine if he didn't? You know, she just annih annihilated and then the movie ended hmm so oh no go get her what in the world

oh no that's a hot dog vendor you know this is manual breaks here he goes What in the world? Oh no, that's a hot dog vendor. You know this is manual breaks. Here he goes. We see the lightning bolts, the slow motion dog roar. A sesame seed.

That's so beautiful. Wow. Zack Snyder is such an artist. Okay. Oh wow. The flash is flashing. He is transforming truly.

This also this is does not happen in the previous version of the film. Making this is like slow and balletic and

solemn as possible. I get it, but so what song do we think this is it's song to the siren is this this isn't also Jeff Buckley is it no I don't think it's Jeff Buckley

it's Tim Buckley isn't this his father Tim yeah I gotta say I was unimpressed with the flashes strides there you gotta retrain that one like Steph Curry. Chris, are you more of a Flash guy or a Quicksilver guy? Definitely Flash.

I'm not immune to Ezra Miller's charms here in terms of his banter and stuff. There's a hot dog floating in the air. What's happening? That's a hot dog, right? I think this is meant to be funny. Is it? Yeah, see, he's pocketing the dog,

which, like, really? You would pocket a raw dog? I was never really clear on it, because, like, I always just thought the Flash was, like, crazy fast, but it's obviously, like, he can just, like, basic, you know... He has power.

Move within the margins of time, right? Yes. That's great. Are they gonna to kiss? That would be inappropriate. Amanda, would you like the idea of having a romantic partner who has this ability?

No. To see you? I mean, he's being so slow. I'm extremely, I understand that he stopped time, but I would be like, speed it up, my guy. Let's go.

Do you think that this movie's four hours because there are several scenes like that yes I have to watch the Sesame Seed every single time

oh there he goes so Barry Allen saves the day but he then for some reason has abandoned this girl that he's connected to because he's nervous oh now he's trying to buy puppies he doesn't want to be caught right right so he's just like i'm back here i'm playing with dogs i was made for this work and he brought a hot dog right what a what an amazing wow that worked out beautifully would you guys be ashamed of your superpowers it depends on what

they are you know well chris you you have the ultimate superpower you are the most uh sociable likable person um to men at least um that anyone knows do you guys really think that um i don't appeal to women i i'm on record as being a CR head, except I don't, you know, interact with other CR heads. And I don't endorse any of their activities. But, you know, in spirit, right there with you. Steppenwolf has got a very strange loincloth here. I just want to say that he is are you you are you trying to get into the the physiognomy of

steppenwolf you're curious about his junk curious why he even needs armor he seems sort of is it armor is that of his like it looks like chain person it's a great question when we see the steppenwolf sex scene, we'll know. Oh my God. No, but I want to know what does Steppenwolf You're going to have a four hour movie.

You're going to have 25 minute fight scenes. You're not going to show Steppenwolf get dressed in the morning? Seriously. Does Steppenwolf, has he moved into green tea?

Is he still a coffee guy? Like what does he need to gather? What do you think, Chris? Probably like a boxer brief guy. Steppenwolf. Yeah. He wants, he wants the kind of like the flexibility of athletic wear, but he also, you know, he

has to go to work every day. He doesn't want punching. Yeah. Okay. So this guy just said earlier that this person who's dying had the scent of the mother box on him. Yes. What is the mother box smell like?

Do they have different smells according to their, you know, contents? the mother box on him. Yes. What does the mother box smell like? Oh, God. It's just incredible. Do they have different smells according to their, you know, contents? Yeah, I hope it's like some of those really cool fancy candles that have been so popular

during quarantine. Let's just candle podcast. Go right now, Chris. I've been really getting into Big Sur after the rain. Okay. That's been a big one around the cr household red cedar is also a like an incense stick that i've been burning do you use the

phrase the cr household to your wife's face that's how my mail is addressed no i think you know the the mother box in atlantis is is a seafoam candle right okay and uh does seafoam have a smell what are some like mediterranean smells that you could get olive you know olive rosemary yeah and so what's the last one the one for the guys the men had yeah that's like jasmine leather okay i think it's more like it's like pumpkin pie okay can i ask you guys a question about calming candles do you think that's snake oil no i think it's more like, it's like pumpkin pie. Okay. Can I ask you guys a question about calming candles? Do you think that's snake oil? No, I think it works. Like a eucalyptus candle, you like that, you feel better?

Is that all pseudoscience? No, I mean, like everything is pseudoscience, but yeah, like there are supposed to be essential oils that if you, you know, believe in such things that hit certain sensors in your brain. Every night I light one, my wife lights one of these red cedar sticks. We turn on this plastic pink Christmas tree that we have that illuminates our room in a low pink light. And then we watch a French crime show. And it's the happiest I've been in a year.

It's so like the senses are all perfect there. Wait, you're saying this is what you do in the CR house? Yeah. If that's what they want to do with Ben Affleck and Gaga right now, I would be really happy.

Okay? Like let's wave a cedar stick, put whatever crime show onto this, and then just let me watch for 30 minutes. Let's see how it develops.

The Bureau. That's what I'll be watching. Oh yeah, my dad really liked that that was really validating for me thank you i believe in the eucalyptus candle above all else so thanks yeah you got everybody needs some help bob so i don't know a lot about the cyborg is that what he is so everything we're seeing right now was not in the movie what we are about to get is cyborg's origin story. Oh, okay.

And so this is all going to be new to all of us. And so we just saw Cyborg looking longingly out the window wearing a hoodie as a cyborg at a bunch of boys throwing a football

in the street, you know, like you do. Chris, you grew up on the mean streets of a city where you threw the football around all the time, the pigskin. And then Cyborg

flashed on a memory, clearly, of his days as a young athlete when he was not paid playing in the NCAA. Well, I was just going to ask, do you think that the football sequence of this movie exists in the same cinematic universe as the football sequence in Dark Knight Rises? Is this the college football version of those guys then

eventually becoming Heinz Ward and playing in that stadium. I do think that. I also think Bane was an elite Sam linebacker. Okay. So I guess we're seeing Cyborg's mother

who was also previously not featured in the film and she's talking to someone at Gotham University which is an elite program. They only take on five star this is college football i mean it's a university right i don't know i don't know anything cyborgs running running the run pass option they should have made blue chips too about gotham university i feel like that would have been a good film dude you you say that. I'm sure HBO Max is open to

pitches about a last chance you for Gotham City. Let's do it, Chris. Let's write it. Is this our resignation? Who plays QB? The Joker? Oh my god. It's pretty good. Alright, the Riddler. He's kind of

like a streaking wide receiver. The Riddler could be the offensive coordinator. That's good. Pure chaos. I just want to say that I understand that that's a touchdown under the letter of the law, but when they just really hit the... What are the... The pylon? That's correct. No other part of their body is in the end zone. It's not satisfying for me. I think that everyone, the NFL and the Gotham City League here should reconsider the

rules. You just knowing the word pylon is wonderful. It just means that our friendship is all worth it. The hell on earth that is your Sundays. This is a 15-yard penalty. Wondering whether or not Miles Sanders crosses the plane of the time. Three guys in hats watching a four-hour alien movie. And then on Sunday, I learned about pylons. And they're absolutely ridiculous. Is it a catch rules in the NFL? And I just, I think we can do better. And this is going to be, I assume, the accident that creates Cyborg where he loses his mother, but his father comes.

Oh, no. That's happening? Yes, that's about to happen. That's awful. it's only alluded to in the original film yeah that there was an accident of some kind that we didn't see and you know obviously probably a good time to just talk about rey fisher and um the way that uh he spoke out against whedon and and whedon's behavior on set during the reshoots of this film and he obviously took issue with the way that he

treated people um and felt that there was an abusive aura on the set and spoke out against it recently and then other people have since come out and spoken out against joss whedon and you know it's complicated because it seems clear that cyborg was just significantly carved out of zach snyder's vision for the film when whedon took over. And, you know, in addition to that, it sounds like Fisher had an absolutely terrible experience doing these reshoots with Whedon. So, you know, there's some justice, not to put too fine a point on that pun, to him getting his chance to be a part of this story. Because Ray Fisher is not Ben Affleck and he's not Gal Gadot and he's not as famous as some of these other people. Yeah, this is his entire career here.

Yes. and he's not as famous as some of these other people so this is his entire career here yes yeah and is this meant or kind of in the beginning of justin justice league is this meant to introduce him for future spinoff movies or that was according to a deadline interview that snyder did he kind of suggested that they they were under the assumption that cyborg would go on to have his own movies and would be a central figure in these films. It's funny too, because even in watching the Whedon version, I thought Fisher was pretty good. I mean, he has to be in a room with Ezra Miller, who's been acting since he was 11 years old, Ben Affleck,

Gal Gadot, and Henry Cavill, and he can hold his own. He's charismatic. I mean, he's obviously opposite Joe Morton. You know what I was just thinking about? Henry Cavill, not in this movie yet. It's been a long time. Yeah.

An hour, an hour and a half. Have we hit an hour and a half yet? Do you want to hold your Cavill thoughts? I have a lot of Cavill thoughts. Yeah.

I'm not trying to introduce them ahead of time, but I just like for an hour and a half for Superman to not be in the movie. That's a long time. That's as long as most movies.

That's the length that most movies should be. We're literally at the one third mark of this film right now. How do you guys feel about that? Well, I can't say that it doesn't feel as long as I thought it would. I think that the fact that most of it is action is a little bit unexpected. I get the impression from Amanda's shrinking sort of demeanor that maybe it's feeling a little longer to her. Amanda has been sliding down in her chair slowly. I'm just trying to get comfortable. Can we talk a little? You want to talk about the setups?

Because we're all watching this in our office because of how we're recording things. Oh, like what our vibes are right now? No. I just wanted to explain that part of the reason you're seeing me sink down in the Zoom screen is just because I'm trying to get comfortable at my desk for hour two, three, and four. You're doing okay. You look fine. The whole thing with Cyborg, right, is that he is not comfortable, obviously,

with becoming this half-man, half-machine thing, but he's still trying to figure out his own powers, so to speak, right? Yeah, and I believe some of his powers and his cybernetic body have been forged from that alien Kryptonian ship slash mother box material. Is that Zod's ship? Whose ship is that that Joe Morton works on?

I think that was the ship that sully landed successfully kept captain sullenberger oh man um and yeah so he doesn't you're right he doesn't have total control of his over his powers he's still figuring out how to and you know the the big the kind of ethical quandary the the dilemma of cyborg is man or machine, right? That's really what he's battling. Am I more man? Am I able to retain my humanity? Or am I this killing machine? And that becomes a significant part even in this story of him figuring out how to engage with these other super human figures. This is way different, everything that we're seeing here. I mean, this is... They're explaining his powers.

Yeah. But who is explaining it? That's his father. It's Joe Morton. Because Joe Morton basically, his mom dies. Joe Morton's told that Victor's going to die. And he goes rogue

and does some... So he's a scientist of some sort. Not quite ethical medical stuff on his son. So you got a little Frankenstein action going here. Okay. So there's some dad issues as well involved in all of this. Yes.

For sure. Okay. When aren't there, I guess. Yeah. This is actually something my dad wanted to do to me. He was thinking maybe let's get some cybernetic technology affixed to my throwing arm so that I could be a more effective pitcher

and what do you think the pop time on cr would have been if he had this whole procedure done to him you know he would have made it as a catcher yeah well like imagine turning to chris your footwork i would have been like an honorary melina brother if i had had this no one's dealing second on cyborg seriously if you were cy, why wouldn't you just play running back? Why did he abandon the game for crime fighting? What a waste. Get that guaranteed annual

average salary up to $18 million in the NFL. This is all new to me, man. Is he in a control room of some sort? I think this is what he can see inside of his face. He's in the control room of his own? I think this is what he can see inside of his face plate. He's in the control room of his own operating system? Yes, his mind's eye.

Wow. Seeing the world. This seems like a real curse. This is a good Google Glass commercial. Yeah, Shades of Minority Report as well. Minority Report, one of the most influential movies of the last 25 years. We don't talk about it enough

so how old is cyborg is that his that's his probably early 20s 21 22 young to shoulder the burden of you know the whole world all the time of course yeah i mean i don't think we have like bruce wayne's what like 50 45 in this movie wow that, that's rude. 45, okay, and looking strong. How old's Affleck? 48, I want to say. I don't think we've hit 50 yet because, you know, we'll be- We would hear about it.

Right. We would celebrate it on this podcast. Yeah, Cyborg is, in my memory, not an A-list character. Oh, you see what he's doing here? He's got he's being tempted by his power so it's

like you could do work for good but you could also just steal this guap. I didn't know the GameStop short factored into this film so prominently.

And now he just he just put a bunch of money in her account so. Have you guys ever had more money show up in your atm no this is a trick question what now just ask us if we've ever laundered money on spot no but i i just feel like this woman probably go up into city bank and just be like there's there's an issue. So when you pick up $20 that you find in the street, do you scream out, I found 20!

Whose 20 is this? I do. You do that. Why are you enunciating like that? Yeah, what makes you think I talk like that? I found a $20 bill! Well, Chris, he's got his hair plugs. He's wearing a top hat.

So I'm a monopoly man that's right holy shit the sequence is long there's a parademon in someone's home here in cyborg's home so cyborg's holding the mother box yeah and the parademon smells the box imagine if you were just out one night going to the atm and then a fucking parademon flew over your head i guess i have you guys i haven't been to the atm in a minute i've had to make some deposits but it was outside so it was okay yeah deposits what have you been doing you've been moving weight I don't really need to share that with you guys, but. You get a lot of drachmas that you got to change over?

I don't know. Sometimes you just have to go to the stupid bank. Actually, you know what it was? Crudup. No one cares about this. No, Crudup. I want to come back to you.

Oh, oh, oh, okay. So, Billy Crudup's in this movie. Incredible run for Billy Crudup right now is just doing amazing things on The Morning Show. An amazing podcast guest. I don't know if everybody's got to hear him on Marin, but just like an absolutely electrifying use of your 90 minutes. And I remember this from

the previous version of this film. Barry is majoring in criminal justice at like a JUCO or something in an effort to get his dad out of jail. I don't know what his crime was that he committed, but they're convinced that it is, uh, that he was wrongly, wrongly imprisoned. So we've got a little,

you know, innocence project going here. Um, I don't know how they got crud up in here. You know, it's just, uh, that guy's just down to play,

you know, you know, we know how. Crudup portrayed Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen movie which is his relationship with Zack. I forgot about Zack.

And frankly he's terrific as Dr. Manhattan. I love Dr. Manhattan and I love that's the only thing in Watchmen that I really like is the way that they portrayed that character.

All these superheroes dad issues. No. What? The exception of Wonder Woman. What do you why do you think that is? She has mom issues no the exception of wonder woman what do you why do you think that is because her mom won't just she's got mom issues yeah yeah she's like you gotta read you read my text on my arrow right and then go save my world because i couldn't do it diana's just out here trying to you know absolutely fucking dunked on by steppenwolf

that's why i brought this up earlier guys like guys. That's my origin story is my dad wanted me to have cybernetic abilities so that I could perform on the baseball field. I said, no, dad, I want to be a podcaster. And here we are. I rejected him and now I'm podcasting about the daddy issues of all superheroes. I'd like to go to jail one day

just to see how many people do the hand on the window thing. Chris. Amanda, would you touch that glass in a prison if it was me if i was in oh my god for uh insider trading of bitcoin and they put me in jail would you and i was like amanda is my first and only phone call as a classics major and and the daughter of a lawyer. Right, that's great. I can both be entertained by mythology and get some legal advice. Yeah, sure.

You come see me. I would bring you the Dallaire's Book of Myths and then hold my hand up and read it to you with one hand. That would kind of be tricky because you gotta turn the pages and I want you to be able to see the illustrations, but we'd figure it out just for you, Chris. I have such a deep sense of needing to belong that I worry about myself in prison.

I feel like I would just get like, I would just be like, who needs a new recruit? You know what I mean? So like one mistake that we made was not like making our own, you know, Snyder cut for our podcast bingo of like Chris starts talking about being in prison. You know, like Chris starts talking about hair plugs. This is a fun scene. Actually,

Chris, I got to say, I also worry about you in prison. I don't, I don't think you'd do well. I know. I do. You don't,

you really don't know. You would not do well, Chris. No, I think I would be like, um, I would be like George Clooney and out of sight. Incredibly handsome?

Yeah, just also like a friend to all. And then you'd make it out and fall in love with J-Lo? Okay. The opening scenes of that movie, Don Cheadle, aka Snoopy, wants to stab George Clooney to death. But he doesn't. Chris, you don't look as good as George Clooney, I'm sorry to say. He doesn't have the hair plugs yet the Barry Bruce vibes were always good to me

so is this in the original this banter this seems like some bants this reminds me of Affleck's work in the skew universe you know the Kevin Smith series of films this is really the same energy shannon from mall rats oh oh yeah oh dear love to see a bat dart what are those things called batarangs no they're like a ninja star

so here we're seeing more slow motion barry action. Watch this shit. He's like, damn, you're Batman. I'm Batman. How long do you think Ben had to stand there looking like that? This scene took 312 days to shoot. But it turned out great. So that's why they're stretching it out in slow-mo. Honestly, Affleck just looks unbelievable. He is incredibly handsome. I don't know how I feel about his slow-mo wind machine face. It's not like my favorite of his faces. I think he seems a little aware of the slow-mo

and the wind machine. He's trying to work the angles. Well, you don't sign on to a Zack Snyder film without knowing that there's going to be a lot of slow-mo and a lot of wind machines, right? Yeah, that's true. That's kind of endemic to the experience. So the entire sort of thrust of the original theatrical version of this movie is Affleck trying to build up this team and making these pitches to people who,

with the exception of Barry Allen, for the most part, are just like, nah, pass. Let me see if they have the I'm rich line in here. This fucking car is nuts. Suicide doors on this. So we're waiting on... So is this a Mercedes Batmobile?

Yes. Am I saying that right? Great. Good job, Ben Affleck. I would ride in it. Just a Mercedes. Yeah, there you go. I would write in it. Mercedes. Oh, you got it. I'm rich. There's been a couple strong brand placements so far. Mercedes. There was an Under Armour. This is a sicker car than anything

that is in any Marvel movie. I'll say that straight up. That is really true. I'm a fan of some, you know, like friends of mine have Audis. There's no disrespect. Wow. Chris bends the knee to Audi. Friends of mine have Audis. There's no disrespect. Wow. Chris bends the knee to Audi. Friends of mine have Audis. Some of my best friends have Audis.

Some of my best friends have Audis. What do you want from me? That's great, Chris. This is dynamite stuff irons and cadeau well the two greatest actors of their generations right here so here's my thing is here's what i'm learning if the first justice league was just like a getting the gang together movie with ben affleck looking really hot and all these characters talking to each other. Why didn't I see that movie? I genuinely don't know. And there was less

fighting and more banter? Correct. Am I the only person who would have liked the original Justice League? I think you straight up would just be like, what the fuck is happening? Because that's what even very well-versed people were like. It just feels like a movie in which large parts of it, obviously,

are just cut out. Yeah. That came up very frequently in the reviews, the sense that it was clearly Frankenstein together. Now, all of these movies in a way are Frankenstein together, and they shoot a lot of stuff and they cut it out. We've talked about the Star Wars movies, Amanda, too, where sometimes it just seems like they've lopped off entire plots.

Yeah. But this one, so much more so. You know, it was only two hours as well which is you know that seems like a long movie but relatives of these other films in these series you know i just watched the batman versus superman ultimate cut doj the dawn of justice dawn of justice and that was three hours and five minutes so these are long movies so a two-hour movie is just it was honestly just confusing right amanda what's it called when you lift the kettle high up

to like, is that aerating the tea? Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's, you aerate the wine when you do that. You're blooming. Yeah. Have you opened a bottle of wine yet, Amanda? No, it's,

I'm working. I'm concentrating. I didn't know if I can do, if I can get a gin sponsorship like Ryan Reynolds did to rewatch Greenland and maybe I screwed up right we should have got what are we what were we doing we could have gotten

all kinds of liquor brands could have gotten here like therapy candles that's right we could have gotten not Audi brought to you by Kia you fucking sick if Batman had a Kia. It's just like, who cares? Is this the same car or a different car?

No, it's a different car. What is going on? Another sleek, silver Mercedes? Oh, it's Diana. She's got a wife too. She's also in the Mercedes-Benz family?

That seems highly unlikely. Yeah, maybe they're sponsoring Justice League, literally. And also, you know, the movie itself. She's a, you know, she works at a very prestigious museum, Sean.

She has the money for it. What do you think a restoration expert at a museum in Washington, D.C. earns annually? Anywhere from 20 bucks an hour to $400,000 a year. I literally don't know. I think she's on the upper end of that. Maybe.

Based on the fact that she was standing on a ladder, the only person working on this sculpture. She has a different kind of wealth. She has the lasso of truth. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We just heard Cyborg say, fuck the world. Whoa.

Hey now, I tell you what, I relate to Cyborg. Cyborg coming up on Rogan next week. Seriously. Is he? Dark energy. No. Oh, I thought Ray Fisher was going on Rogan. Chris.

Chris was like, Ray Fisher got the invite before me? What the hell? Chris, you've been maintaining the Joe Rogan experience wikia for a number of years. Oh my God. If Ray Fisher showed up, would you race to your desk to update that? I only listen to sections of Joe Rogan when he has a guest on that I am already interested in. Okay.

Interested doing a lot of work there, Chris, but we're just going to keep going for you. Oh, okay. Diana's trying to relate. Share her experience. I don't know why the superheroes also

need to be emotionally available. Love it. They just need to do their job. Great point. But she's trying to recruit him to the team. No, I know. He's very young and a lot happened to him very to the team. No, I know. You know, he's very young and a lot happened to him very quickly. Show some empathy, Chris.

Chris, I find that so surprising. You're so available. I don't think it should be a necessary benchmark to be a superhero is to also be emotionally available. Maybe if I have my superhero character would be very closed off and I would just be like this non-negotiable because you are so available and that is

your superpower are you threatened by available superheroes that's right okay it's interesting just also I wouldn't say that everyone in this movie is available Henry Cavill aka Superman just still not here

literally not available. Ben Affleck just works gadgets so far in this movie. A lot of the emotional stuff is tied up in this cyborg character. I just thought I would ask you guys, in the last 20 years or so, whenever the Bryan Singer or Superman came out,

it does feel like Superman is probably the most bungled character in this sort of franchise superhero era. Their inability to get multiple films up off the ground. They made Henry Cavill into a supporting character

throughout these films, essentially. He's never really got a run. You'd want to see Superman 2 from Cavill. You want to see superman too from from cavill you want to see him not having to do the origin story again i agree but i don't want to see zach snyder's version of it i mean that's really the thing who would you want to see whose version would you want to see ridley scott okay okay i think i want somebody who can do the majesty part that snyder was able to do but with

a little bit more style and a little bit of a sense of humor not a lot of sense of humor we've already seen that right the richard donner superman movies are almost like rom-coms in a way you know they're almost they're slapsticky at times he's kind of bungling reeve was so great at that cavill i think he's like a prototype superman i was re-watching man of steel with my wife uh earlier this week and she was like he's great like he's like a prototype Superman. I was rewatching Man of Steel with my wife earlier this week, and she was like, he's great. Like, he's obviously incredibly handsome. He's kind of the, he looks perfect for the part.

But I found so much of what Snyder did with the character in that first movie, like, honestly repulsive. I hated the way that they positioned that whole story and the incredible violence in that story. I just really did not like what they did. You were bad out of shape that he killed Zod? No, I don't,

it's not about these, like this, like morality of Superman necessarily. It was more just like what we were forced to watch through the final 40, 40 minutes of that movie, which is just like a two gods punching each other in the air. And I don't want to watch a movie like that. I want something that has that level of grandeur. And we know that like Scott can do something like that,

but you're right, Chris. I mean, on the one hand, he never really got a fair shake. Um, that character has it. Yeah.

Character. Isn't that the most, he's perfect, right? Like that's, he's the, he's the straight superhero that everybody else is like responding to. It's kind of,

I mean, he's the Jesus figure. It's hard to get right. Yes. The Uber mensch. So Gotham PD. Here he is. J.K. Simmons, one of the few people who show up in both the DC and the MCU, right?

Oh, yeah. One of my favorite moments of 2019 was the stinger at the end of Spider-Man Far From Home when J.K. Simmons showed up as J. Jonah Jameson. You guys remember that? I don't. Reprising his role from the previous Spider-Man Far From Home when J.K. Simmons showed up as J. Jonah Jameson. You guys remember that? I don't. Reprising his role from the previous Spider-Man films, which then indicated there was, in fact, perhaps a multiverse. Amanda, get ready

for all this. MCU movies are coming back, man. There's a lot to catch up on. Okay, so the multiverse... Go on. Keep going. Just tell me what it indicated. It's possible. it didn't necessarily indicate it it just it showed like a sense of humor about the way that they were going to approach these movies and now

we know in the future Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies there are like multiple iterations like Tobey Maguire is rumored to be coming back for a future Spider-Man movie and this is why everybody got so excited during WandaVision was that they thought when Evan Peters showed up as Quicksilver and if you were an hour two plus of this podcast and didn't know that i apologize

but when evan peters shows up in wandavision as quicksilver everybody was like holy shit they're gonna bring in the x-men this is like the multiverse is here and that that will come i mean the doctor strange movie is called that um it's called Holy Shit, the Multiverse is here. Okay. When that didn't actually turn out to be true in WandaVision, people, and when I say people, I mean like, I guess me, were like a little like, what a red herring. That was disappointing. You took to the...

What a measured response, Chris. Yeah, you took to the Rogan Wikia and you updated the page. So we're seeing now Barry Allen, Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince, all together they've just gotten off a jet and they're in search of presumably Arthur Curry, Aquaman.

And I'm just going to say it's the same case for the first movie. I don't know when they shot what here i this is looking a little bit post morongo casino for for affleck yes that bags under the eyes are more pronounced chris also he's got a great sense of humor of him about himself so i don't feel bad saying like she's just like it looks like he may have placed some hands the night before i just also please remember his body mass around this time was just a purposefully I think

because he really bulked up for Batman but substantially different than you know all of the Dunkin Donuts photos of 2020. This is Amber Heard right? This is Amber Heard. She plays Mira. She is the love interest

slash extremely powerful denizen of Atlantis who works with Aquaman. Hey, Sean. Yes, Chris. Do they have many DC movies announced coming soon aside from The Suicide Squad?

They do. I'm glad you asked. There is a Shazam 2 in the works. Have you guys seen shazam that's also a very nice movie i missed shazam i did as well but i remember that you liked it and i was happy for you i think you would like it amanda it's like a teen comedy um it's pretty fun it's good i'm a grown-up now i would just still i'm more interested in the comedy where ben affleck and gal gadot have a romantic interlude. But continue. Au contraire. You are not an adult now because you are watching Zack Snyder's Justice League with me and Chris

while recording a podcast. So Shazam 2 is planned, as is Aquaman 2, which is also going to be directed by James Wan. And then the other film is Black Adam, who is a character who will be portrayed by The Rock. So here's what we have on the table then. We don't know what's up with Wonder Woman 3. Patty Jenkins was like, I'm not going to do it. Then she was like, I got to finish the story. Cyborg, obviously, incredibly complex question.

Aquaman 2, we're getting the Batman with Robert Pattinson, the Matt Reeves version, which it sounds like will be completely separate from this not a part of this this whole thing um okay so I think well in the flash of course we're getting a flash movie the flash movie is

right um yes after the suicide squad this summer which is when this quartet will be reconvening for another live rewatch of James Gunn's The Suicide Squad. Get ready Amanda. Is Ben Affleck in that? Let's just say yes. Okay.

Yeah. And so the Flash then comes in November of 2022 which is a long ways off directed by Andy Muschietti who directed the It movies. Then Aquaman 2. Then Shazam Fury of the Gods.

Then Black Adam. And then I think the rumor is that Green Lantern Core will be the It movies. Then Aquaman 2, then Shazam Fury of the Gods, then Black Adam, and then I think the rumor is that Green Lantern Core will be the next movie. Green Lantern what? Green Lantern Core, which is about a team of Green Lanterns. Okay. But I gotta say, I'm not really looking forward to most of those movies

because I don't really care that much about this world. So the reason why I was asking was, you know, obviously this film has gotten, relative to other DC movies, pretty good critical reviews. Yep. It seems like it is certainly going to capture the zeitgeist for a little while. At least the weekend.

I wonder whether or not this prompts DC to be like, let's get back into the Steppenwolf business. I mean, Zack Snyder has denied that that will be the case. He obviously has another movie coming later this year. Actually, very soon, in two months,

he has a zombie movie called Army of the Dead coming to Netflix. And he says he's out of the DC business. I mean, one of the things that has happened

over the course of the last couple of years is that a lot of the leadership that was responsible for putting all these movies together and we're watching a sequence in which Aquaman and Steppenwolf are fighting underwater that is somewhat incoherent. I have some questions about what sounds are being made underwater.

It's a good call. But a lot of that leadership is gone. So a lot of the people who are responsible for kind of green lighting the well, we should say Christopher Nolan is responsible for basically handpicking Zack Snyder to be the shepherd of the DC stories once he departed after his work on the Batman movies. And then there were a handful of executives who had been there for many years and they are, of course, gone. And in the interim, the HBO Max moment happened, which Amanda and I covered on this show ad nauseum and how significant that was. And I think if there was no HBO Max, there would be no Zack Snyder's justice league. Amanda, do you want to do a quick interlude of it's a cell phone company?

That was so beautiful. Chris, you've got it. I want you to stream. There you go. You mentioned Christopher Nolan. And right now, Aquaman and Mira are dealing with mother box issues underwater

where Steppenwolf seems to have yoinked it which is a bad Is there like a mother box like hotline in case you're having issues

with your mother box? Can I just say I know Ben Affleck has been busy at the screens and gathering people but like they're not on it

they're not responding to the Steppenwolf issue thus far. No. There's a lot of reluctance thus far. No, no, no. There's a lot of reluctance. Right. You know, Sean, how did you feel about the images we've seen over the last couple of days of Christopher Nolan hanging out at the AMC Burbank?

Thank you for asking me that. I don't want to cast aspersions on specific Cineplex corporations, but I think it's kind of sad that Christopher Nolan is trying to tell people that he actually does that. He actually goes to the AMC in Burbank and is like, what I do is I sit here amongst the people in my three-piece suit and I watch Trolls World Tour. We don't believe you, dog.

You don't do that. That isn't real. You are Chris Nolan. You have a fucking screening room in your house. Follow up. tour we don't believe you dog like you did you don't do that that isn't real you are chris nolan you have a fucking screening room in your house follow up so the amc in burbank is are we talking about the one like across from the ikea i mean i believe so which is one of those incredibly complicated where you park and then you are fat you find yourself on the other side of a complex that you have to like then walk around a buffalo wild wings and figure out where you are like and perhaps christopher nolan feels comfortable in that sort of maze-like existence but i just have

to say it is not even the nicest amc within a five mile drive from where i understand christopher nolan lives so i i don't i don't really get it that's all so Victor's coming back to the scene of the crime he sees that his dad's glasses are broken which is not a good sign anybody who wears glasses could tell you Chris did you ever have that happen to you do you ever have a parademon show up at your place and snatch you up and leave your glasses behind so the bat signal we're seeing the bat signal which is great news okay so steppenwolf has the second of the three mother boxes and he's putting it in the obelisk from 2001 i really have not been paying attention i did not know that he already captured he got the one from the amazonians and

he got the one from joe morgan right i guess i did see both of those scenes when he put it like that yeah you guys think he's going to get the third? Probably not. What do you think? The third? The movie might end two hours prematurely. And now there's like a totem up there. He's ahead of pace here.

He's got two out of three and he's not even halfway through. You make a good point. So does that mean it's just an hour and a half of slow motion flash scenes? Like what's coming here I think there's just literally going to be an hour of them fighting go once he has all three like a full hour yeah

like whatever that Game of Thrones episode was but Steppenwolf's trying to negotiate a car lease here he's like I got the two boxes okay I'm going to put those down that should adjust

my monthly payments so this is DeSade again has appeared as a fiery I'm going to put those down. That should adjust my monthly payments. So this is, Dasad again has appeared as a fiery image. And he is kind of negging Steppenwolf. He's like, you're not shit to me until you get the third. This is what Chris was like in bars in the 2000s.

Like Dasad or Steppenwolf? Dasad. You were just negging. You were reading the game. Part 4. So I think we should take, you know, as part 4 gets started and we're seeing Jim Gordon We're in Gotham. Shooting that bat signal

up into the air. Let's just do a quick power ranking. Who's winning the movie here? I think collectively I'll go as far as to say that clubhouse leader is Affleck, right? But this's winning the movie here i think collectively i'll go as far as say that clubhouse leader is affleck right but this is this this version of the movie is treating affleck quite well oh there he is finally he looks good and him coming in he looks like it's stapling on funny funny jokes and this is this is a like a oh this is an exciting moment. The gang is all together. How many of you are there?

I do believe that this scene was in the previous version of the film. I think Cyborg is winning so far. This is way, way more Cyborg than we got in the last movie. We understand his motivations. We understand the challenge of that character. And he's going to turn out to be a crux point I think in the way that the story unfolds I don't want to be too literal but Steppenwolf has two of the three mother boxes and has definitely been on this film on screen more than any other superhero that's that's the thing to me is like I you know I'm here for the very famous people so really cyborg Batman Steppenwolf yeah what a role

reversal for Amanda to be arguing for Steppenwolf after Sean has made a career out of supporting Thanos in his various endeavors. I think four is... Show the famous people more. Is Volko, is that Willem Dafoe? Yeah, Volko from The Lighthouse is probably in third.

And then DeSade is fourth. DeSade seems to be a power broker. DeSade is, yeah. He's like the Michael Clayton of this whole thing. I agree. and then Desaad seems to be a power broker Desaad is yeah he's like the Michael Clayton of this whole thing I agree dead last is Bruce Bolton okay so still some jokes here

I seem to recall this being the last time we see Jim Gordon in the Justice League movie in the first version the original version of this film I could be wrong. But I don't remember seeing him again. So we'll see if he... Just mark this and see if he comes back. Yeah, Bobby, mark it. Let's definitely like...

Please mark it, Bobby. I've been keeping advanced stats this whole time just so you guys know. Who's winning out of the three of us, Bobby? I can't answer that question. Not this early on in the four hours. Good point.

It's like declaring being the winner after five solid innings. Barely even a quality start. So what is their mission right now aside from protecting the third mother box, right? Yeah. The scent of the enemy. Oh, wow. Oh.

Wow, smells are just so huge in this movie. I think their mission is to get the other two back as well. You don't want to be playing defense for the rest of eternity. No, I know. That's like you can't play. On one box, like you're beat at that point. Oh, I guess, are they trying to find, are they where Steppenwolf is assembling the mother boxes?

I can't believe I just said that sentence. I have to quit my life now. I'm so proud of you, Amanda. Amanda, I'm touched. This is like, I feel like I'm present for, you know, my son's first goal in a soccer game. I feel like the warmth, the pride inside me is so powerful. This looks like where Han Solo died in the Star Wars movie. Yeah, that's actually where this was filmed.

Okay. Same bridge. Okay. It's a famous bridge. Brooklyn Bridge. You remember? Yeah. He's such a show-off, disbarreling guy.

So is this a training sequence? We can't even have a training sequence be fun? I don't actually know what's going on. I'm genuinely a little bit confused. I guess they're just showing off there yeah they're just showing yeah I too can can jump yeah and cyborg can fly so now they're confronting

Steppenwolf oh yeah I remember okay so where they keep the things so Steppenwolf has captured Joe Morton among others I think people who have worked in the lab and is questioning all of them now

to get information about where Earth's mother box is little do they know Cyborg earlier in the film buried that box I believe it is

mother's grave site which is frankly really weird and Freudian just really quick this is actually how you're supposed to do these action movies where there is one character who is comic relief and is doing the like so i guess that's the bad guy line not all four people at once doing that

particularly it works in the avengers fine because they're they're the avengers they're those stars they're those particular actors but it's much better to have it just be like it's ezra miller's job to talk shit and everybody else here needs to like glower and be super heroic is that true yeah that's what i'm telling you is it working for you though ryan's rule number one okay only one jokester all right that's just trying to make way for you to get to tell all the jokes while the rest of us have to figure out who steppenwolf is. It's a good point. It's a very good point. That's a life of being told you're the funniest guy in the room talking

to Chris. So I just like, it doesn't seem like anyone else in the movie thinks that he's funny. No, that's true. Right. So not even like a slightly bemused older brother way. I think also I should have been making notes but we are watching this with closed captioning and so the the best um description award at the end would be really a useful one meaning what there's at one

point i saw like growls yeah at one point i saw soft indie rock music plays. Yeah, there's been a lot of that. Solemn choir music. Yeah, all of the music descriptions. I think soft indie rock was when Aquaman went into the bar and took the alcohol. They are accurate and useful. They're doing their jobs, but there's definitely a type of music

that is played in this film. I also belong to no one. Unfortunately, you belong to the DC Extended Universe. The big picture Extended Universe. I must say, Steppenwolf seems like a really bad hang. He doesn't really seem to have a lot of interest outside

of the mother boxes. He's kind of rude to the parademons. I'm sure he smells. You think he smells of jasmine? Where are you guys on Affleck's Batman voice? You can rank them against the other Batman voices or you can just speak from the heart about this one. Once again, I'm glad you asked, Amanda.

Chris and I recently appeared on an episode of the Rewatchables about neighbors. My favorite part of neighbors is when Seth Rogen and Zac Efron are very drunk together. And Seth Rogen is identifying the generation gap between the two of them. And Seth Rogen says, who's Batman to you? And Zac Efron says, Christian Bale. And Seth says, Michael Keaton is Batman to me. And then they start doing their Batman impressions.

Right. Seth Batman impression is, I'm Batman. Very soft, whispery. And then Zac Efron in the greatest moment in his career does an impression of Christian Bale's Batman. And how does that sound, Chris? I'm the Batman. Where is she?

Where is she? And so I think what Affleck was trying to do was split the difference I think he was trying to meet us in the middle between he pretended like Clooney and Kilmer never lived and trying to split the difference between Keaton and Bale and

wait a second did Alfred make a gauntlet yes apparently and it worked what do Alfred make a gauntlet? Yes, apparently. And it worked. What do you mean a gauntlet? He just said my gauntlet worked. He was like, my gauntlet worked. Because the energy is dissipating. I don't know about that.

This is a nightcrawler. That's what it said. Do you think that this nightcrawler was also made by Audi? Yeah, probably. It's an A4. Yeah, it's a converted A4 into a giant mecha spider. I don't really understand the utility of this crawling tank that Batman is in.

I don't know. So Diana and Steppenwolf have just been going toe to toe yeah it's kind of a kind of a love affair thing right

it's a little bit like the energy between Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts and I Love Trouble just kiss already god what are you guys waiting for yeah

are you shipping Steppenwolf and Wonder Woman I think so I think so and I think so. And definitely the Flash and Cyborg too. They should also kiss. Okay, so they won? They saved those guys.

They haven't won. So we're in the middle of one of these big fight sequences. And there's not really a lot to describe here except that parademons are flying left and right. So should we play another game sure yeah what do you want to play chris what can you shock amanda with why don't we play roger deakins was a visual consultant on Rango Award for great cinematography. Amanda, what has been your favorite sequence in terms of shots so far this film? Why do I have to go first? I honestly can't.

Because I can't remember a single thing I've seen. Like, I just, it's a lot of people with wings fighting each other. I guess it's the sequence when Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot are like both in the same shot, which is like 30 seconds. It has a kind of Ingmar Bergman quality. Yeah, it does. I think that my favorite sequence so far has been the fall of the Amazons to Steppenwolf and that whole fight and the women trying to keep the door open. I would say I was super into that sesame seed. I feel like that was a big moment for us.

Yeah. Slow-mo sesame seed followed by Ezra Miller plucking a uncooked hot dog out of the air. Right. That's cinema to me. One thing that's happened over the last 10 years or so is there's this emergence of this idea of director bullshit where a director of one of these movies will reference like Ernst Lubitsch or Josef von Sternberg in like what they were trying to like communicate.

And I just think that Zack Snyder seems completely free of that stuff. Like he is almost sui generis. Like I don't even know, what are his cinematic references? Caravaggio? Yeah, I was going to say, isn't he? Rodin?

Yeah. Dungeons and Dragons boxes? No, I mean, I think he really thinks of himself as a painter I don't think he thinks of himself as a as a traditional film artist and honestly some of his movies when they're working in that mode are good I think

that the ideas and the weird ethnocentrism borderline racism of 300 is bad but 300 when it's when it's kicking as an action I think that the ideas and the weird ethnocentrism, borderline racism of 300 is bad. But 300, when it's kicking as an action movie, it's beautiful. It's amazing. There are very few action movies that have been made that look like that, that can even come close to looking like that. So he's really, really skilled. He just does not seem to have much, like John Frankenheimer, not John frank john john um mctiernan for example

chris we love john mctiernan movies yep john mctiernan might be one hard might be one of the absolute best at human behavior in action sequences and vice versa letting those like creating a relationship between those two things i feel like zach snyder doesn't even have like the intellectual ability to imagine that he's only comfortable in like superhero like over overly musculatured godlike formats he doesn't he doesn't human behavior is not doesn't really play into it when it comes to his films I don't feel like he has a sense of dynamics it's like nirvana it's like quiet loud quiet loud and in die hard and predator in those movies it's like the action sequences build like There's four or five of them in a movie,

and they slowly get more and more significant. The end of Predator is then this almost primal fight between this alien and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is just like every scene is 25 minutes. Every fight is taking place in six different settings. It's unclear as to why each member of the Justice League is fighting Steppenwolf or a Parademon at any given point. Batman's got an invention

for everything. And we know Steppenwolf isn't going to get killed here, so it's just kind of like, this is a very long way of kicking the can down the road. I think ultimately, so Steppenwolf just caught a missile in the air and is going to

throw it back i guess um he actually just threw it into the tunnel which is going to release a lot of water and now he has just teleported out of there um but yeah i mean amanda you you in the past have asked about what makes action good or how what is like the skill and with a movie like this i always find it so hard to answer that because it's all, this is all CGI. I mean, there's like nothing here that was practically shot. They're not on a set.

They're on a green screen for the most part. Um, and so even just like the visual coherence, it's just drawn, you know, it's not, it's hardly full of people. Yeah. I, it's not particularly legible in terms of action and understanding the consequence of this person kicked this thing over here. And then that's why this other person is catching it. But like, I think some of that's aesthetic, right? That it's just he's like, it's so literally dark and there are just so many explosions.

And he's just going for that. Like more and there are just so many explosions and he's just going for that. Like more is more super loud thing that Chris was saying. And then some of it is, I think just like the, the technical logic isn't completely there or it isn't for me. But again, I'm not a person who is able to follow actions here at sequences unless

they're pretty obvious. So maybe I'm not the best person to, to comment on it. Though I am here watching minute 4,700 of this action sequence. But like, okay, so obviously there was this really passionate movement, the hashtag release the Snyder Cut movement

that ultimately did result in this film getting released. Now there are obviously some sort of corporate reasons for that decision. And Zack Snyder obviously was able to compel them to give him more money to make this film. But what is it that you think people respond to in Zack Snyder's movies? Why is he popular? Why does he have something beyond a cult following? Well, I think that we've talked about this the last 10 years on the sites that we've worked for and the mainstreaming of nerd culture. That people will get into this kind of stuff at a younger age and maybe there are ways in which they're responding to it that it's like a fantasy escapist kind of thing. That's what this is. This is very fantastical.

This is very escapist this is like when i watch something like the expanse i find it difficult to really identify with because i feel like it's hard sci-fi it's about what it's about it's not about like oh it's a metaphor for the other worlds or anything like that it's not it's not a metaphor for our reality it's more of like a sort of hard genre exercise so i guess my point is that snyder almost feels like kind of a throwback to before this stuff was cool you know it's like it's like back to when um this was like really dedicated to the internal mythology of the comic books and like the Jack Kirby stuff and it's not about making it relatable or decipherable to a mass audience and I think that that's why that very vocal base of his fandom so

they were so psyched about this possibly happening and basically willed it into existence okay everybody we need to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors so please pause your movie and once we've just wrapped this breakup you can press play again

hello pause your movie and once we've just wrapped this breakup you can press play again hello and welcome into the ringerverse from the ringer my name is mallory rubin and i'm van latham now before we get started does anybody want to know what the ringerverse really is i'm so glad you asked the ringeringer versus a podcast feed with infinite possibilities on all things superheroes, nerd culture, and fandom. A variety of shows have instant reactions to new releases, theory breakdowns, audience mailback questions, and fun takes on the latest trailers and more. In a single week, I will lead one show, Van will lead another. We'll introduce new shows and characters in the future. Maybe even plan a team up or some crossovers i love a good crossover anything is possible in the ringer verse but one thing is for

certain we are suiting up for a premiere on march 19th with full coverage of the falcon and the winter soldier and zach snyder's justice we'll have at least two episodes a week and you can follow the show now on spot Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby. I'm cutting in real quick to help you get situated after that quick ad break. If you want to stay perfectly synced up with Sean, Chris, and Amanda, you're going to start with a shot of Steppenwolf's hand hitting the dirt at 2 hours, 7 minutes, and 20 seconds. And then you're going to go ahead and press play in 3, 2,

1 That was a very long way of saying that I just think that this movie is a throwback to the time before nerd culture became mainstream culture and they had to like kind of water nerd culture down a little bit. This is some shit that like a guy playing Dungeons

and Dragons in 86 would be like this rules, you know, whereas like I think now we expect our superheroes to go to Sparrow or something like that. Now, while I did that whole monologue, Sean's contact fell out. My contact lens literally fell out of my head while Chris was talking. My fucking truth bombs just blew Sean's mind so hard his contacts fell out.

So that resulted in the first real stoppage of this recording. And what did you guys do in the interim when we stopped down? Did you get some sustenance? Yeah, I had some chocolate. I had some coffee cake. 200 push-ups. I don't understand you guys were more than happy to talk about audi and all the brands that you support but then the idea of food comes up and you want to know what i have is like my kind of this is what i have on deck i've got an

iced tea in the fridge i've got an oat milk latte i've got nicorette lozenges i've got bottled water of my brand of choice, which we all know I'm very specific about what kind of water I like to drink. The only water that hydrates you. Are you getting tired of me? No, I'll never. I think about you being like, I don't have a water bottle because the only water that hydrates me is Aquafina. Like I think about it once a week. As I look for one of my water bottles, I'm just like, I wonder whether Chris has gotten a water bottle yet. I wonder how we can find water

that properly hydrates Chris. Chris came into the pod office saying that he thinks that they put salt in most other waters to dehydrate. And you know what? He got that from my husband and we really regret sharing that with him because not only did he then refuse

to drink most water that is an aquafina, but he's become really obsessed with sodium content and then he's passed that on to me. And then sometimes I'm just like really stressed in the middle of the night. Like, oh no, I had too much sodium. Was there salt in my water? I can't sleep.

So I'm not tired of you, Chris. You're're in my brain i think about it all the time guys while you were talking about your experiences we've got another um meeting of steppenwolf and desad and and frankly their their showdowns are starting to resemble the obama springsteen pod there seems to be kind of like desad steppenwolf i think is a good spotify exclusive i don't know why you're just Obama-Springsteen pod. There seems to be... Dessant Steppenwolf, I think, is a good Spotify exclusive. I don't know why you're just giving that away. That's a good point. We've got to get more users on platform with this pod between these two ancient demons.

I do think we are leaving a lot of listeners on the barrel without appealing more to parademons with our podcast. Yeah, it's a whole demo that the ringers never spoken to more to parademons with our podcast yeah it's a whole demo though even the ringers never spoken to before parademons we didn't really get the origin of the parademon like i was suggesting to amanda they're zombies they're the guys that they conquer did they actually show that in this version too i'm not sure but that's they did in the last one

that was whedon's explanation what's the transformation process there oh is this dark side that's definitely that's dark side yeah but this dark side? That's that's dark side. Yeah, but he's only in this like that's dark side. Yes. And this thing I'm looking at right now, but it's only like a demonic

visualization. He's like made of this isn't the real dark side. Oh, this is like the projection of the emperor type of thing. Yeah, exactly. It's time.

I'm just like how anti-life is here. The other guy. This is Krush, right? Anti-life. Isn't Put this guy next to the other guy. This is Krush, right? Anti-life? Isn't that a big deal? Yes. So this is a lot of mythology.

And this is a lot of Steppenwolf not wearing his armor. We got Steppenwolf in the nude. How are you guys feeling? Not who I wanted in the nude in this film, once again. Wanted in the nude power rankings is also something we should do at the end of every episode of the big picture of all the stars of this JK Simmons, just full birthday suit. So, all right.

So what's this guy's damage? Like he just wants to take over the earth through the mother boxes. I think the mother boxes are going to unleash this force called the anti-life which is a huge deal for dc like lore and it's like i think we can get into what it what it means for superman and what zack snyder had sort of envisioned for future movies and it's essentially like putting on the infinity gauntlet you get ultimate power and dark side is like a long time ago i tried to you know i i got kind of busted out of my rightful possession of these mother boxes and when i get them nobody can stop me i'm just zion williamson going left

more specifically the anti-life equation is a formula for total control over the minds of sentient beings that's what dark side wants okay wants. Okay, what's he going to do with it? Probably start a podcast. He's going to say, move to Austin, baby. Get crypto. Yeah, Darkseid is one of the Is he the most famous Jack Kirby creation of the

DC era? I feel like he is. He has become basically the signature villain of the Justice League in the last era? I feel like he is. He has become basically the signature villain of the Justice League in the last 40 to 50 years in the comics. He's a well-known figure. When Zack Snyder announced that his original vision was to have Darkseid in these movies, among DC fans, that was a very big deal.

Okay. Can we talk about Affleck's best? Certainly. I'm wondering about the decision process that led to him wearing like two pieces of a three-piece suit you know do you think it was because he had a big morning at dnd and so he was trying to hide the pouch like i wear a vest and i want to hide the pouch when do you wear a vest whenever wear a vest i've never seen you in a vest i would say uh five to six times a week.

I sport a vest. Fantasy, you remember when there was like, you used to be like, what we need to start doing at the ringer is wearing suits to work every day? Yeah. Yeah, I've been saying that at every job since 2009 and literally only Danny Chow

has ever teamed up with me on that one. Do you want, when we come back off court, what the fuck is happening? Are we in... What? Cyborg is in Nazi what the fuck is happening are we in what cyborg is in nazi germany what is happening this is that's where one of the mother boxes came from i mean i don't know now we're talking about is there another mother box this guy worked at star labs and sky that this is the history of where the the mother box how it came

to be in cyborg's dad's possession i wanted to learn this we have to talk this is a podcast you can't just watch this riveting film i know but then listen i'm here i'm trying we're two hours in it's cocktail hour i just like i'm still here and i'm not being the worst version of myself and i'm trying to learn about all of this stuff and understand. And you guys, I ask you what's a mother box. And you're just like a lot of jokes about I don't know what. This speaks to the larger issue here, which is that there is not a good explanation for what the mother boxes are that you could just explain in layman's terms. Okay.

Anyone tried replacing the mother box with an NFT? It's the same concept. These are ones of a kind. Yeah, this is interesting. It could only be like 30 minutes. I mean, on the one hand, Amanda, like I think I could keep reading off of DC wikis and giving you clarification.

Yeah, but I don't want you to do that. I just want you to tell me like a human. Well, I'm not i'm a cyborg so it's not easy for me okay but i think that it's complicated because the movie takes this stuff so seriously and that's part of you know i've said a few times now but that's part of the marvel thing is sure chris it's better for like the consistency of a film when all nine characters are not cracking wise at the same time on the other hand it makes a grown man like me a little bit more comfortable in the space and frankly I always felt like

Star Wars was like this too I never thought Star Wars took itself too seriously it makes a grown man like me more comfortable in this space yeah you know the space where um where me and Mara go swimming under the water i don't know i don't i don't really know what the other box is terrio sauce this is pasta a la terrio and they're just there's a lot of particles particles of house

become particles of smoke is that what that said anybody with a match can turn a house to smoke we're wow this is this is tough it's just you have six movie stars around a table or five how many how many justice leaguers are we at this point one two we're five cyborg flash wonder woman aquaman and and this is all you give them that's that's a waste to me guys still no Superman where Clark oh right on cue there he is

there he is Amanda if you were a superhero you would do a cape no I don't think so I'd trip on it you know me

I'm not really totally sure on my feet I don't need extra material getting in the way if sean and i come back wearing suits after the pandemic you gotta come back wearing a cape more of like an anna wintour cape though you know i did you know as a young child i did have like a like a half cape i can't remember as a child yeah i don't know i it was like red wool i maybe As a child? Yeah, I don't know. It was like red wool. Maybe I just like read Heidi.

I don't know. Little Red Riding Hood. Yeah, but I don't really think I was. I think I was like really into. The thing about Heidi was that they just made this snack that she ate of like cheese and bread. Sounds so good. Like wouldn't you like some cheese and bread right now?

You're so weird. I just got really into that and got a cape, but it was short, so I couldn't trip on it. When you were growing up, did you guys like point at your screen and say, I want that about things like capes? Like Chris, is that familiar to you? No, I wasn't super into superhero stuff

when I was growing up. I liked Transformers and stuff. And then I think I had more... I wanted to be in the Growing Pains house or the Silver Spoons house. That was more of my family. I wanted to be in the Family Ties family. Meaning you wanted

to have a suburban lifestyle? No. I just think that I didn't spend a lot of time reading comics when I was really young, so I wasn't fantasizing about a world in which I was a superhero. I was more like, what if I was Justin Bateman's brother? I guess, what if I was Jason Bateman, which I still sort of fantasize about. It's amazing.

We are really who we've always been. There's nothing changes. Me, I was more of a He-Man guy as a kid. Enjoyed He-Man. Enjoyed GI Joe. You have some Skeletor vibes now. Thank you. Yes,

I do because I am evil and have an oddly shaped body. We're talking about the man behind the symbol here. Diane Lane, just fucking serving out Oscar winning justice right now. How dare you say more than a sentence about diane lane without doing the voice i mean like they really like i mean like she could have just done the boston accent she could have just been like everywhere i go i see s's my son clack i came all this way because i wanted to see you, Bobby.

So at this table in the dark here, Chris, we've got between these two gals, seven Oscar nominations between them. Fucking astonishing performers. Sitting in the dark in a Zack Snyder movie talking about Superman. How many days do you think they spent on set total between the two of them?

This is it. Well, that scene earlier was 312 days. This scene, I think, was 615 days, if I read that correctly, in the Vanity Fair piece about the Snyder Cut. But just this scene. Right. That's why Diane Lane is aged.

Yeah. There's so much talk about Fincher and Fincher's shooting schedule, but we never talk about Diane Lane's insistence on spending several years on on short scenes and films that she barely appears in uh I mean I really want to talk to you about Amy Adams Chris and I were talking about Amy Adams a little bit earlier this week just about normal guy stuff like on a podcast or just in life we're just texting each other no just texting

you want to like walk us through that how did amy adams come up uh chris was like i'm so horny for amy adams and i was like dude let's talk about her work as an actress what are you talking about it was weird but i so i pivoted the conversation pretty quickly blue even light blue i just yeah okay it wasn't me it was chris um so in 2013 amy adams takes on the role of lois lane in man of steel okay uh i don't know who this is chris is this some sort of some sort of oh this is the uh the general from from uh i believe he was originally appears in man of steel um and make some of the decisions with uh with superman so speaking of man of steel

amy adams appears as lois lane in that movie and then this is the run that she goes on these are the films she appears in you ready for this yeah american hustle complex movie she's very good at it though she is very good at it batman versus superman dawn of justice also a complex movie she's very good at it though she is very good at it batman versus superman dawn of justice also a complex movie arrival one of your favorite movies of the 2010s both of me and amanda put our movie of the decade yeah nocturnal animals fucking sicko movie right that movie crazy i saw that movie by myself at the arc light i don't know why no one would go with me but that was an experience. She follows that up with Justice League,

which we're talking about right now. Yeah. Shortly after that, she stars in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects. Quite complicated. Then appears as Lynn Chaney in Vice. Right. Her next film is her role as Bev in Hillbilly Elegy.

Yes. Cut to today. Yes, I know. What's going on? Is Amy Adams okay? And what does she have coming out next, Sean? The woman in the window. Yeah. Do you know when I hear you run that resume,

Amy Adams is the queen of no plays off. Absolutely. She's just like, no matter what she's doing, she's doing it to the max. She's Teron Matthew. She's the honey badger of movies. She's relentless. These people have just

been sitting in that cave. Oh, wow. Part five. All the king's horses love it. Bob, what's the time check? Let's just I just want to get a sense of where we're at. Buck 40 left.

Buck 40. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Zoom super. So they're digging up. Wow. They just literally jumped straight to dig him up?

We were going for the box, right? They're going for the mother box. I mean, I understand that Superman is going to come back to life. Like, I get it, you know. But they jumped straight to just digging him up. There was a lot of preamble and then not a lot of plan development, I would say. If I died prematurely, would you guys treat me the way they're treating Superman here? Like you debate whether or not you should resurrect me

with an ancient demon technology? I would have you cremated immediately. And then I would go to a server farm and spread your ashes so that you could always be part of content do i have power of attorney for you yeah okay this is me granting it officially this is it that. That's binding. You know that, right? This is a memorial record. No, you don't have power of attorney

over me, Chris. You have control of my everlasting soul. This is just more scenes in the graveyard than I expected in the film Justice League. This is the second scene

in a graveyard. Cyborg loves to live in a graveyard. I mean, Superman is dead. I think you should have expected at least one. Is this what they did? Did they dig him out in the last one, Chris? I don't remember that.

I honestly don't recall that. I can't remember. I thought he was resurrected out of like a pool of some sort. Yeah, I think they just show his corpse in that pool. Again, Jeremy Irons just was putting in work on this film. This is like the 14th scene with Jeremy Irons. I know.

It's kind of amazing. And then he went on to make the Watchmen series. Is Jeremy Irons secretly a big DC guy? Jeremy Irons is on a little bit of a heater late in his career. Margin Call. Alfred. Watchmen. jerry maron's on a little bit of a heater and late in his career margin call yeah alfred watchman this is what else teaching bruce wayne about drilling he was great in that what was the

the extremely weird jennifer lawrence spy movie another movie i had to see by myself yeah why did you have to see that by yourself i don't know you guys just will never go see movies with me like i i just always think suddenly like a friday afternoon and i'm like all right the only thing i want to do is go to the movies what are you talking about right but you like to go sit by yourself and go to four in a row and not speak to anyone and that's fine well i gotta stay away from chris at an amy adams movie you know he gets really excited that's really inappropriate. What? You just said you got excited. What else has Jeremy Irons been up to?

He's been in some kind of mediocre movies the last 10 years. Assassin's Creed. He's really in a paycheck mode. But he's also very- But he's doing good paycheck work. Yeah. I mean, he is the only person in this movie that can sell the mother boxes

and the energy and the whatever. I can, he is the only person in this movie that can sell the mother boxes and the energy and the whatever. I can't even tell you the lingo and make it sound not completely ridiculous. Definitely. That's one of his that's his superpower. Right. Apparently, he was in two episodes of Law and Order Special Victims Unit. That is just

crazy to me. You were inspired to watch Special Victims Unit because of this podcast. Is that right, Chris? That's right. Alex Ross Perry's love of Special Victims Unit inspired me. Amanda, do you spend any time in the Special Victims Unit Extended Universe? The Law & Order Extended Universe. Sorry, excuse me.

We watched Law & Order as a child. Law & Order is one of the things that I was allowed to watch way too young because my parents watched it. And I was an only child. And at some point, I think they were just like, I'm done parenting. Like, I'm not going to kick you out of the room.

You know? They're like, we bought you all these capes. Will you just shut up and watch Law & Order? Oh, man. Check out the peg arms on this coat from Diana. Oh, wait. I missed it. Show it again.

Damn. Batman on his perch. Yeah. He loves a perch. Seems very unsafe. So they are stealing Superman's corpse. I genuinely don't know what's going on. They're going into some sort of facility in gotham

why would superman's corpse be in gotham no they got superman's corpse already they're bringing it in here i missed it sort of reverse yes they put it in the back of the truck and then there was an aggressive zoom in i have to be honest 45 minutes for every single fight and then like Superman rising from the earth and I just missed it? I don't know. Yeah, they're kind of like, this is like a breaking into the prison sequence here.

Okay. It's a cyborg is dialing into the... Yeah, Wesley Rau. The mainframe here. It's nice. I like a little heist, you know? Or a heist vibe anyway. You know Amanda, we did an inside man

rewatchables last week and there was a inside man it's a great film there's there was a digression um about the best heist movies of all time and chris and bill's forthcoming streaming service heists um and we we neglected to mention the ocean's 11 movies i got some feedback on that a lot of people were calling me out for that it's like that was like just off the cuff you know i mean sometimes on the rewatchables things happen and it's not like you plan for it i feel like bill doesn't love those movies i think that's true so i don't know what's going on there yeah i don't either i've never really you know been in a situation where i could confront him about it that's like a real like when bill gets into like it's like ethan hawke's character from Reality Bites Grover

from Kicking and Screaming a little bit and then the Ocean's Guys it's like a real you think you're better than me kind of thing literally like my icons when I was 17 and I've been working with Bill for almost a decade so a microbe of alien origin is what's being discussed

here by Joe Morton we just had it swept ryan this movie is i would say not less confusing there's certainly more of it and and admittedly we're not paying very close attention as i look at the adams's filmography i mean i think like i have a general top-line sense of what's going on. This is the, there's some sort of theft and or resurrection of Superman in the works.

Do you think they're going to steal something or are they going to put, like, clear the room and get him in and then use the technology to resuscitate him? It's like a reverse heist. The latter. Yeah. Do you guys get the sense that this is constructed

differently than a two to two and a half hour film like does it feel different to you do you feel like there's not like act breaks in the way

that we're used to I was kind of fascinated going into this like how much is this going to feel different as a watching experience obviously I don't usually talk through a four hour film

unless it's unless it's made by Kieslowski then you talk through all of those movies when you watch them right i do you and your wife on the couch in the house of cr um i i you know snyder has given a lot of interviews in the last few weeks he's been on the press tour and he talked about how almost all of his movies have these extremely long cuts that he knows are never going to be available for public consumption. It sounds like he more or less goes to battle with studios every time he makes a movie.

And he wants them to be longer. They want them to be shorter. And so he has. And you can see a lot of his films now have these expanded cuts. I've been rewatching all of them this week. I watched the three and a half hour Watchmen cut this week. That's long. That's a lot of Watchmen.

What's your favorite Zack Snyder movie? Definitely the first Dawn of the week. That's long. That's a lot of Watchmen. What's your favorite Zack Snyder movie? Definitely the first Dawn of the Dead, his first film. There's a case to be made that the quality of his films is literally in descending order, reverse chronology.

Like he's getting worse, so to speak. I don't necessarily totally subscribe to that because I kind of liked the Batman versus Superman version that I saw this week. I thought it was not bad.

But previous to that, it goes Dawn of the Dead. Amanda, have you seen that one? You don't like horror movies. 300, did you see that? Yeah, I've seen parts of 300 at least. Yeah, Chris, I know you loved that Dawn of the Dead remake. Yeah, and then like at 300, you see that every Lakers game.

This is Sparta speech yeah and then after that is is Watchmen right after that it is and then Legends of the Guardian or Legend of the Guardians the Owls of Gahool which was of course my favorite film of 2010

animated film about owls right it is an animated film about owls but also is totally a Zack Snyder movie and then after that I believe is man of steel no excuse me sucker punch which is a movie that i despise that is extremely stupid um and then man of steel and then batman versus superman and now justice league so he's on a roll i feel like the hipster pick is donna the dead the film nerd pick is bat vs. Superman, Dawn of Justice. It emerged as that this week. As everyone...

Yeah, everyone rewatched. When you get on Letterboxd, where I reign, not where CR's people reigns, there's a lot of like, oh, Batman vs. Superman, not bad. That dialogue's going around. I feel like the normie person's answer is still 300, right?

Yeah, exactly. Definitely. Exactly. So there are many phases. Oh, they're playing, the Superman music's playing. This is actually pretty sick music. I usually have this playing in AirPods

when I go to the Batacage. Can you sing it for us since I can't hear it? Yeah. This is amazing. Bobby, tell us what time it is in this movie. since I can't hear it. Yeah. Dun dun. Dun dun. This is amazing. What, Bobby, tell us what time it is

in this movie. And he's about to show up. We got an hour 30 left. Two and a half hours. That is incredible. Two hours 32 minutes in. She's still just looking at pictures of Cavill.

So one thing I wanted to mention before we get truly into the Cavill moment is you guys may recall, at least Amanda, you may have read this. You know, they had to reshoot with Cavill. Oh my God.

Oh no, look. Whoa. Why is that called force majeure? The pregnancy test was called force majeure. What the fuck? Holy moly. Okay, well, congratulations to them. You guys heard about what Zack Snyder's plans were for-

Looks like Chris isn't the only person who's horny for Amy Adams. Am I right? No. Zack Snyder's plans for Superman and Lois Lane's child. You guys know what the deal is there, right? No. That was going to be the next Batman.

What? Superman and Lois Lane were supposed to have a child. Oh. Kevin Costner. He's really good in Man of Steel. I thought he said also that he wanted to do like he wanted to have Batman be in love with Lois Lane.

And then there was he had to learn that it, you know, reviving Superman was more important than his love of Amy Adams. Once again,

everyone loves Amy Adams. It sounds like DC just outright rejected that pitch. I'm glad. I think too far field. Yeah. Seemed to be too far afield. Yeah. Who's this guy?

In a suit. That must be Clark. In a suit? Just hanging out? I guess so. That's weird that he was buried in a suit. I guess he was buried as a man. Yeah, right.

He died as a man. Yeah, as Clark. But anyway, I was just going to say before Henry Cavill makes his triumphant return here to this movie that when they did those reshoots with Whedon again with the two coffees let's go is she going out

to a police officer relatable a little late for coffee who's she bringing maybe she's bringing it for Clark maybe she had a premonition anyhow

Cavill when they did the reshoots had a mustache because he was making Mission Impossible 6 I do remember this and they had to digitally remove that mustache and so when you watch the reshoots, had a mustache because he was making Mission Impossible 6. I do remember this. And they had to digitally remove that mustache. And so when you watch the original Whedon version of this movie, it's weird as hell because there's like wavy lines of digital animation on Cavill's face the whole time.

And it's very noticeable. So is he going to have a mustache in this? No, because this is going to be original footage. Right now, Flash is talking about the outer reaches of his power, where when he approaches the speed of light, crazy stuff happens. And from my understanding, which is admittedly not expert, this specific ability is very key

to the multiverse in DC, and Flash being able to go back in time and change things, stuff like that. Is there any bells for you guys? Yeah, that sounds right. Isn't that flashpoint? Yes.

Again, I'm not a DC expert, right? Chris, do you identify, you were introduced as the flash. Do you relate to him? Do you feel like that's a good comp for you?

I'd love to be bad, but i guess okay i do feel like it's about time that we assigned different members of this podcast to different members of this team that they've assembled well we kind of did that already i'm obviously taking diana prince i'm kind of like steppenwolf i'm always looking for approval you know i feel like i feel like like I'm making up for lost time. I'm just sad because I made Bobby do this and that's torture. So she's moving on, but she's not moving on.

Amanda's like cyborg. She's fully realizing all of her powers and potential throughout this film, throughout this process. Or she's like Aquaman because she loves swimming. I really do love swimming. I love the ocean.

Thank you, Chris. process or she's like Aquaman because she loves swimming I really do love swimming I love the ocean thank you Chris I'm pretty lukewarm on Aquaman so far he hasn't done much he was in a really cool music video like three days ago when this movie started remember that so Cyborg and Flash seem to be like calling the shots here and Aquaman and

everybody else is kind of an ageist film in that sense. It's for sure. Yeah, this is this is for the zoomers. All right. Got a box. Oh, no. I why did that happen? Oh, no. Some sort of explosion. Is that planet back to life? Dramatic

request for music playing. Oh, no. So that's Darkseid and I's Darkseid. And I believe Darkseid's home planet is known as Apocalypse, spelled A-K-O-L-O-L-I-P-S, like lips. Mm-hmm. So this is a vision that they're having. Okay.

I was very nervous. Wonder Woman being burned alive or burned. On a funeral pyre. Yeah. Oh, dear. Her mom's got to watch. This is my face watching the Eagles end of season. I don't understand how all these guys, Darkseid and Steppenwolf,

are all so good underwater. Is that something you're born with if you're a new god? I guess so. I i mean you know the gods though the old gods are kind of territorial right you had the sky one and the earth one and the sea one and the underworld one it's true oh he's back this is dark side i think tempting cl tempting Clark Superman with the anti-life, right? In a possible alternative reality. So it was the temptation of Christ. He's got Batman's fucking head. So that was something that Cyborg was able to see in a vision.

And now the mother box is being dropped into the water where Clark's corpse resides. And the flash is going to flash his way into this space and set off some sort of electrical field. And I guess that's like when you run, Chris, have you ever seen me run? When was the last time you ran?

When was the last time you guys ran? I run like irregularly in quarantine. I run between 30 and 40 miles every morning. Okay. Sean, you should get into tough mudding. I've replaced endurance sports with podcasting, as you can tell from this episode. Is there a version of this movie where we are enraptured

and barely able to do the podcast because we're so just blown away by what we're seeing is that not this if this movie like we're gonna get there it's gonna be like four hours and change if this movie was just three and a half hours and he shaved off like two or two to four minutes off of each of the action sequences no no you don. You don't think it would matter? No. No. And I'm not saying that this is bad. I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's just like there's a reason that movies are not four hours.

There's a reason. Yeah. This isn't how these things should be delivered. We're not going to get deeply in touch with that reason in the last hour, I think. And some films can be incredibly long and powerful and reveal themselves over time, but almost never stories like this. It's also like this might be a more aesthetically cohesive Snyder experience, but I don't know.

That works for some people and for others. It's like, what am I watching? You know, it's funny because a lot of this work too was done during a pandemic so i wonder like would this movie have been any different if a lot of the work was done you know for example one i think one of the more interesting aspects of this is they did do reshoots with ezra miller for this for one scene in particular but he was deep into production on um the third beast movie and the jk rowling Rowling series. So he was directed by Snyder via Zoom.

They couldn't be together. He was on another... They literally shot another sequel. There's Superman's back. Superman's back. This is extremely biblical. This is classic human being shit. Instinct is to be defensive like this

instead of just allowing Krypton into your heart. So where did that... why is that box there? It came flying out of the underground or this military base and landed on a cop car. And now Superman is just like, so he's back where he was a diesel shirtless zombie. Yeah. Okay. Why not? I guess. I don't know why I'm complaining. It gets better. I don't know why I'm complaining. It gets better.

I don't know about the fit on those pants. Okay. Can't say I love that. Looks like he's getting ready to go to the dojo. And what is that inscription? If you see, I don't know. He looks more normal than I remember it like

by the end I felt like they were all so steroided up I mean like not literally but Henry Cavill just like in my mind

all of the people in the DC universe are just like super bulked out of control his lats are shizzled right here yeah he's shizzled I don. Yeah, he's shizzled. I don't think that those are real neck muscles.

He's Henry Cavill. None of these people are... Every single person that you've seen on screen has taken HGH in their workout regimen. This is being recorded, Bobby. So they've resurrected this guy, but I don't necessarily think he's psyched to be here. No, he's unhappy.

This is very similar to the way that this was portrayed in the previous version. Okay, so. X-ray vision, something you want? No. No? No. No. Chris? Not for me. Seems a little daunting.

I mean, this guy's yoked. Yeah. So. So where's Batman in this switch? I believe he's there. And the problem is that Cyborg can't control himself. He's seeing a threat, so he's already turning. Oh, I see. Exactly.

No, Batman's not there. Batman is not there. I guess they're saving him as the closer. Well, there's a concern that there's a perception that Batman is responsible for Superman's death. And so he might be, he might provoke a negative reaction and then Cyborg shot a missile at him anyway, so it doesn't matter. So these expert communicators are going to just talk him into the idea. Oh dear.

So Superman is now sending laser beams from his eyes at Cyborg. And there's a showdown here amongst the Justice League. This is a little bit like when we get to the end of a movie draft, you know, and I pick up a giant statue head and I throw it at you guys. I feel like Aquaman and Superman is a dumb fight. I don't really understand how he has these powers out of the water. That's not my understanding of, I have no understanding of Aquaman except for what's in the name, but you see my point.

You make a great point. This is the lasso of truth. Yeah. Right? What would you ask Superman if you had the lasso of truth wrapped around him? Are you on HGH? Should I buy the dip? I don't need to ask that.

Why would I ask that? Okay, well, what would you ask him? Quarantine could last another 40 years and I could not look like that. Cavill is really elite. Big fan is. Got those low-rise pants too. You like that, right, CR?

When you're strutting around the house of CR, you got the pants kind of below the navel. This is my usual look in the house. Pants with no shirt. It's like very... But like Tuxedo pants, right? Yeah. That was a good closed caption right there, Amanda,

for tracking. Slowed electrical warbling. Yeah. So now Flash can see that Superman is in his time. So he's nervous about that. See, that's the thing with Superman is he has everyone's powers. I feel like Henry Cavill looks much younger here than I remember him looking. I guess maybe the mustache in Mission Impossible ages him can we just give a shout out

to Cavill in Mission Impossible when he loads up his arms like machine guns that's the best thing I've ever seen that bathroom fight is epic it really is so yeah are they just destroying the Vietnam War

memorial what's going on here I think it's the Superman memorial. Right. For all the people who died when Superman and Zod fought? I think so, yes. Yeah. I think that's what it is. So here's the thing.

Now Batman's shooting at him or the cops are shooting at him? No, the army. The army's shooting at him. The army knows better. We went through this in Man of Steel. You can't defeat Superman this way. What are you shooting bullets at Superman for? He's fucking Superman. This is really

the problem, I think, with some of these movies too is we know that Superman eventually will become good again. So this just feels like a lot of wasted effort. But isn't that the gambit? That's like the possibility is that Snyder might change the rules on us. He had Superman kill Zod. Anything's possible in these movies.

Yeah, I guess. Zod is still Zod, though. He deserves to die. Superman's back to save the day, even though he has no powers and is just wearing a metal suit. Would you go toe-to-toe with Superman if you had no powers, Chris?

Yeah, definitely. I think I would just reason with him, you know? You'd be like, do you want to be the third chair on the watch? Replace Andy for all I care. What kind of TV do you think Superman's into? Oh, HGTV all the way. No, I think he likes like like jenny and georgia that's why it's number one yeah he watches it a million on a million screens at once

i don't know he might be a hannity guy what where is batman fascism he's coming okay he's just waiting at the end of the infinity pool about something okay damn wonder woman a lot of confidence this is tough this is shades of Frederick Weiss and Vince Carter coming here oh no oh dear she just headbutted him wow that's assault

Superman is very strong, everybody. Not to be messed with. Chris, remember when we did that superhero draft like a million years ago? Who did I draft first? And everybody was like, you idiot.

I think you drafted Superman first and everyone was like, you are the dumbest person alive. Yeah. They were like, obviously you should take Thanos or something. I didn't say that.

I would never say that to you. That was when I realized I may have lost a couple miles per hour off my fastball. I went into that with a ton of confidence. I was like, I feel like I know a lot about superheroes and we did it

and I was just like immediately being screamed at by Mallory. Well, we were all being yelled at by Mallory. Like, Mallory's over-'s over preparation and your unorthodox strategies were like two different aspects of that but I was just remarking like I thought Superman was a good pick yeah I thought Superman was like Ken Griffey Jr. I didn't know

that there was any debate one thing is notable is that I think there's a couple of instances both in this film and in Batman versus Superman Superman where Lois, late arriving, stops Superman from carving dudes up. Right? This isn't the whole thing in Batman vs. Superman where it's like, why do you know that name? Like the Martha stuff.

And then Lois shows up. Well, that's one of the most confusing parts of Batman vs. Superman is like, why is Lois even near that area where they're fighting? She's a reporter, man. Yeah. It's true.

She knows where the story is. It's a true story. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you. She's like. Is she going to tell him that she's pregnant right now?

Also, how long has, how much time has passed since he died? That's a good question. That's a great question. I still think she would be first trimester. Okay.

Chris, you're exactly right. But I just love that you brought the terminology. Dr. Ryan returns. Well, Chris has been talking about Amy's physiognomy quite a bit. Oh, my God. Sean, Jesus Christ. It just keeps getting teed up. You know, it's like we're at Topgolf,

and Chris has put the driver in my hand. Okay. Okay, so what did we see he took Lois they bounced a bunch of dudes are just laid out right Barry Allen's like what the hell man Superman also has my powers and Arthur Curry's

aka Aquaman's powers this is not a good idea okay so the team needs some work oh Steppenwolf's here god damn it I was like, this is not a good idea. Okay. So the team needs some work. Oh, Steppenwolf's here. God damn it. Convenient timing.

Immediately after Superman departs. Should we start betting on like how long these fights are going to be time-wise? I mean, there's got to be one last fight that's longer than the last. Have we crossed the three-hour mark yet? Where are we at time-wise? I said that when we enter, no, we're close, 2.49. When we get to hour three, I crack a beer.

That was my rule. Oh, really? We can do that? I guess it is almost six o'clock. Did you guys not listen to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show this week? They literally played a drinking game on that show.

I mean, we're again. It was responsibly played, I would say. Again, despite the circumstances of this podcast we are adults yeah of course so I don't think that

drinking is going to hinder our ability to understand this love the regular fantasy football show by the way listen to that show if you're not checking it out

I've had six shots of espresso during the course of these two hours and 48 minutes you're the opposite you should start drinking too it'll be like a speedball

yeah Chris how are your hydration levels? How's the water working out for you? It's good. I got to get another one. I have like all this iced tea here, but I don't know if I want extra caffeine because I got to do two pods tomorrow.

Oh dear. What do you got on deck, Chris? I'm doing the answer tomorrow on the Atlanta Hawks. Oh, America's team. And then I am doing the rewatchables with you. Oh, cool.

You want to tease what we're doing? Yeah. Are we allowed to say what the rewatchables is you oh cool you want to tease what we're doing yeah are we allowed to say what the rewatchables is next time I think so it's insidious yeah okay

not on the Amanda watch list but Inside Man was yeah Inside Man was good give me the mother box so Steppenwolf is here and he's going to have

a showdown with Cyborg Cyborg needs to protect his father oh no is like uh oh this is exactly what happens in T2 Steppenwolf is here and he's going to have a showdown with Cyborg. Cyborg needs to protect his father. Oh no. He's like, uh oh. This is exactly what happens in T2. Joe Morton's like, I gotta go out. Is this an homage?

What's going on? This is exactly what he does in T2. This is a straight up homage. Where he destroys, is he just trying to destroy the mother box? Or what is he doing? I think he's unlocking it. And he's just killed himself, which is terrible. Sacrificed himself.

I don't understand. So Steppenwolf's breaking into this lab. It looks like the mother box survived. So this is this is really not what you want if you're trying to protect the mother boxes letting this guy actually get it. I have no idea what Joe Morton just thinks he did. Something good going to happen here. So it begins the end.

So he literally just got it like what literally what did Joe Morton just do? I think he was trying to, like, dematerialize it, you know? No, he's not okay. He just saw his dad get just fucking evaporated, man. This is not good. This is really not good for the Justice League, guys.

I would have loved to have been in the room, and they were like, let's leave that line in where he says, you okay, man? You know, we didn't we didn't wrote that one but uh we're gonna leave it in you good bro yeah we've been fighting an ancient god from a foreign land

for hours the second half of this movie is really lacking Ben Affleck yeah it's true he was a strong presence in the first half yeah and he has been absent also Henry Cavill showed up for about seven Yeah, it's true. He was a strong presence in the first half. Yeah, and he has been absent.

Also, Henry Cavill showed up for about seven minutes and then got sent away again. Well, we're going to get some him. I mean, I understand. Oh, here we go. Finally. Does does that hold the same appeal when he's in the cape and cowl, Amanda? No, no no not really but you know I liked the slightly unshaven outerwear you know Bruce Wayne on his days off look that would be number one for me then Bruce Wayne as Bruce Wayne number two and then in the suit that's the power rankings of Bruce Wayne appearances and then Cape and Callous fourth,

Dead Last. Yeah. That's too bad. What do you think Cyborg- Joe Morton was doing a little rope-a-dope. He wasn't trying to destroy the box, he was trying to superheat it. I don't understand.

Yes! Thermal imaging system! So it's a GPS system? This seems like a lot of gobbledygook. This is some real exposition situation. Big info dump here. Let's go find the son of a bitch. I gotta say Cyborg.

Also working a little blue. Fuck the world. Let's go find that son of a bitch. I got to say Cyborg. Also working a little blue. Fuck the world. Let's go find that son of a bitch. I think this is our final part. Part six. Something. Oh, good.

That's what we needed. No, this is now we're going to get some real domestic bliss. Yeah. Clark and Lois, Wheatfields, maybe get a little Diane Lane going. Yep. Threesome. Oh, my God. Some uh some tough scenes here about uh the housing crisis too you think that's what this is about they just said they have a sign it's a foreclosure sign on clark

kent's farm yeah well before the housing crisis there was no foreclosure so it starts with fanny and freddie okay so let's go. God. Yeah, this is a sequel to the big short. Little known fact. Reprising his role as Superman, Henry Cavill. This is definitely

like some feel to New Jersey. It does not look like Iowa at all. Amanda, you've been to Kansas? It's not Iowa, it's Kansas, bro.

Chill out. I don't think I've ever been to Kansas. I've been to Kansas City, but it's not in Kansas. It's in Missouri, So that's tricky. What were you doing in Kansas City? I went to a wedding there. Nice. And Chris, you'll really appreciate this. We found the Houston's in Kansas City and had a lovely lunch there. And then I watched the film, The Young Victoria with my friends and then went to the wedding. This was our first, like our first friend from college who

got married. So it was like that 23, 24 age range, you know, when you don't know how you're supposed to behave at weddings. We had a nice time. Thank you to the people of Kansas City. Yeah. It was also like 100 degrees. It was very hot. And we just, we didn't act like full adults.

We hit the dance floor hard. We're seeing a scene here, by the way, where Lois is explaining mortgage payments to Clark. Because it turns out when you abandon your mom, We're seeing a scene here, by the way, where Lois is explaining mortgage payments to Clark. Turns out, when you abandon your mom, sometimes the bills don't get paid. I feel like Clark is such... Chris, I think that's your shirt.

You have that shirt, don't you? Sure I do. Oh, that flannel? Yeah. I just feel like Clark went through the same kind of tribal rites that we all go through where we,

you know, we only think about ourselves after we graduate college and we move away and we just think about our careers in journalism, you know, like the four of us, we leave our hometown and, uh, and then we leave our parents to,

you know, good luck to you guys. Thanks for everything. I got money to make deuces. Okay. You know, good luck to you guys. Thanks for everything. I got money to make deuces. I got to go work at the Daily Planet now. Okay. This is exactly what I was picturing when I was picturing my career in journalism

when I left. Oh, yeah. You did it. You made it, Bob. You made it, man. Yeah. Let me just say that Affleck as Batman with the, I guess guess what are we calling

the face like this look this is great mask off mask off of course mask off mask off Affleck as Batman is out there in the power rankings he looks good in a cape just stand alone black cape like that with no mask

looks sharp look at this fit. Jeremy Irons is doing some special stuff. That's actually from the CR collection. I love it. You know that quilted vest?

Do you have a quilted vest, Sarah? I have a quilted You have a Patagonia. Yeah. Yeah, it's a three-quarter like button-up instead of zip-up. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Somewhere between kind of like a mountain man look and also like a Bobby Axelrod thing right sure yeah yeah happiest I ever saw Chris at the office

was the first time it rained in 2019 and he got to wear all of his Patagonia I know he's a simple man you know he likes outerwear

I think I'm keeping Patagonia afloat right now you've got those socks I'm keeping them liquid yeah are you wearing a Patagonia shirt

right now? Yeah. Oh my God. You are pure spawn on this pod. It's unbelievable. Do you hope that they are listening? That they're on hour three of the Justice League pod? But the thing is, is that if anybody gets to the part

where I'm like, outie, outie, outie Patagonia, and they're just like working in the marketing department, they're like, this guy has it all figured out, and they want to come through and bless the kid with that stuff. Yeah. That's great. That's natural. So you're saying you're for sale?

What are you talking about? I'm just saying like, maybe somebody hears me saying these things have meant a lot to me or to my friends who drive Audis. Yeah. And they want to hook me up. These guys have spent too much time in hours three and four planning stuff.

That's a good point. That's a good point. You know, we didn't really do very much planning on this pod. Can you guys tell? Do you think the listeners out there are thinking these guys really, they prepped heavy for this? We did a lot of Mother Box stuff. We did some classics. We talked a little bit about Jack Kirby.

I mean, we kind of like burned off all the research on Takeoff. And now re-entry is going to be rocky. You know what I mean? We're going to go around the dark side of the moon. We'll have a little bit of communications blackout. And then we're going to see if the panels hold, like Apollo 13, or if we just burn up. Chris, I was about to say,

I'm just loving the Apollo 13 from you. Bobby is like Ed Harris. He's trying to guide us back home. So who's who in this equation? Who are the astronauts? Who's who, Chris? I'm Paxton. Obvious. Okay. I'm probably Kevin Bacon.

That makes me Tom Hanks. Jim Lovell. What are your intentions, gentlemen? This just turned into Field of Dreams? No, Apollo 13. Well, this is just all like when when the Nolan Snyder Superman shit dropped, everybody was like, whoa.

This is going to be punching me in the feelings box. Let me just say, if Lois Lane is in fact pregnant, I think that she has at this point withheld that information from superman for too long especially given what we know about the threats to earth i just think you need to share so you know one of the age-old questions on seinfeld was whether or not superman and Lois can really make it happen, you know, because Superman's got superpowers, so to speak.

Are they swimming in the same way? Yeah. Exactly. This is a big issue in Twilight as well. That's right. That's right. It's slightly different. So true. No, do you guys actually want to know? Because- They were fine during the coupling, but then it was like the birth they were really worried about. Right. It wasn't a science issue. It wasn it was like the birth they were really worried about. Right.

It wasn't a science issue. It wasn't about whether the swimmers were the same and whether the science could happen, but it was about kind of like the control and strength, which I guess is maybe also a Superman issue. What was their baby's name? Esme? Yeah.

Good job. Renesme. You forgot the Ren. Renesme was the name of Edward and Bella's child? It was literally an amalgam of the mother's names. The grandmother's names. Renée and Esme.

That's nice, I guess. I'm glad that all of this work that I've put into my life has made me the Twilight expert of a four hour long podcast about Justice League. We will never be doing a watch along to the Twilight films

because they are hot trash. The first one's good. Yeah. Yes, Chris. There we go. So that's a minus me effort for you guys. Did she just tell him and I wasn't paying attention? Or are they just like, you know? I think he proposed.

I think she just said, I'm horny. But she was already wearing a ring. You're just disrespecting Amy Adams. It's just so weird that she's in these movies that is a good trick and now Diane Lane's here now

yeah Ma Kent Ma Kent hath returned oh but she's pissed because she's like you can't abandon everybody even though in

in I think in Justice in Batman vs Superman wasn't she like you don't owe these people anything she's not pissed misreading it Diane Lane's just such

a great actress so Ma Kent and Clark and Lois have been reunited and they're having this extended convo in a cornfield

right which is the height of fake Malick snide Darian nonsense and meanwhile dark side is like get me these boxes i'm going to destroy everything it's true like what is what is going on here who cares about this he's really gotten over his john snow survivors remorse oh here we

go okay they wanted me back for a reason oh i need to find out why okay if you're martha kid at this point aren't you kind of like this is part of the bargain with having a god for a son is that there's going to be some demands on his time right because she seems like a little frustrated by this yeah it's a challenge i was going to make a joke about christianity but i couldn't really land it. Anyway, yeah, probably Chris. Victor's just doing DMT in this lab. Crazy visions. So we're back in the lab. We're back in the lab with Flash, Aquaman,

and Cyborg. The three, the lesser three, the lesser known three, I should say of the Justice League heroes. Does Aquaman often just wander around in non-aquatic environments? Well, he was born on Earth. Okay.

And lived on Earth for many years before learning that he was an Aquaman. Oh, okay. At least according to the mythology in the most recent DC film. Okay. So he's comfortable. I think he's most comfortable in a bar.

I like the idea that they all just like sit around in their suits as lounge wear, you know? Yeah, just like me. I guess that desk chair that Affleck is rocking, you think that'd be better for my lower back? It looks pretty sturdy. I think he's got more funds than you do. You know, that might have been custom. Yeah. Wirecutter doesn't recommend that one for people on a budget this conversation I think also

that they're having about Lois Lane is the key in Batman's premonition I think is something is a note just because I think this is also like plays into like the whole multiverse thing how so what do you mean by? I think they're trying to avoid this darkest timeline, right? Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

This is good or bad? Giant ship of some kind. I think this is good because it's triumphant. Whose ship? Is this the Kryptonian ship? They were talking about how they had to get a ship working.

Boy. Okay. This movie really misses michael shannon do you like his his zod i gotta be honest i don't think it was what i wanted it wasn't i was i was happy for michael shannon but i don't think that it was that great and uh i appreciated how his level of commitment yeah but always the case with shannon i think it could have there there was like a more fun version of that so because i don't value my own time i spent a lot of time watching the bonus materials on some of the zach snyder dc movies dvds and uh i watched a featurette on the making of of Steel, and there was a solid four to seven minutes of just Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe talking about how much respect they had for each other and what great work they do together,

which was pretty great. He has all the Pokemons. Chris, are there any Pokemon names that you'd like to share with us? Do you know any? I don't know any other than Pikachu. Okay. Bobby knows them all.

Yeah. It's just not true. I don't know that many at all. If you guys knew how many Pokemon there are and how many people of my generation could just name off top, you'd think that I was an amateur. I do believe you've caught them all. Is that right, Bob?

Why is Darkseid not already there, guys? I don't know. We have to prepare for his arrival like they've been waiting for this moment for centuries I don't know and now he like has to get on in traffic or what a lot of like Steve Bannon Donald Trump stuff going on with with Steppenwolf and Darkseid what's really going on here when we like do you think so do you think Steppenwolf is kind of banning to dark sides Trump? I think so yeah. Yeah.

And they're both pure evil. But one is ostensibly more powerful. What's that? That was Talisker. Oh okay. Of course of course Alfred drinks Talisker.

A man of wealth and taste. Love Talisker. See that if the good people at Talisker are listening right now please please holler

do you think anyone we love will listen to this by the way can i just say this is the second time today you've said like the people that you love like you were like i told the people I love that I was doing this. So if you didn't know Chris was doing this, I guess now you know some hard truths. I just made a realization that in the progress bar at the bottom, there seemed to be some diamonds marking the different points. And there are two more parts. So this is, yeah, the different parts.

And there are two more. So we theorized that number six was the last part. And it seems that there is a seven and an eight upcoming. I'm grabbing a water. I'll be right back. Oh, yeah. Can we take a break? Why don't, well, I would have waited to just get to the end of this part.

But Chris has walked away. So let's just let him walk away. Amanda, how are you? You doing well? You and I can connect as we often do on this pod. Sure. Yeah, I'm doing great. I've had to adjust my

like ergonomic situation a couple times in the last few hours how's the old back holding up um it's okay i i elevated my computer screen which you know they say that you're supposed to do and i don't do that on a day-to-day basis but for this after hour one i did borrow some technology from my husband and the experts are right It's really helping with the neck. Wonderful for you. And someday you will have posture like Henry Cavill. He is an upright man walking through this hall. That's true.

What is this? I guess it's just an oversized button down. Is he got bootcut pants? I have a lot of questions. I think that's from the Travolta collection. Okay. He's in the hall of dads right now. He's from the Travolta collection. Okay. He's here in the, he's in the hall of dads right now.

He's here in Costner and Crow. Just be like, you got to hook these humans up. Could you imagine if you were raised by Costner and Crow? That would be too much. That's just, that's so much masculine dignity. I can't even deal.

Superman, obviously taking stock you know it took some personal time after being resurrected which is totally I think part of his benefits package is the savior of the

world but it's time to get back to work man I think the Justice League has good bennies what do you think I mean I think that you get has good bennies. What do you think? I mean, I think that you get like early access

to a lot of cool shit on the Batman front. You know, like all those new Audis. All that R&D. But also like Superman's got to think about parental leave now.

You know, I think there's like how does that look? He doesn't know yet. This is really unremarked upon that the we got to talk more about the pregnancy test being called

force majeure pregnancy test. It's absolutely the most offensive thing I've seen in a movie. I don't think that's the right energy to be bringing into the pregnancy test. And I've seen all of the movies this year, including this one. So I thought it looks like we crossed this seventh chapter diamond, Bobby. But have we not? Is it about to end here? I mean, this seems like a climactic moment.

It does. Look at Jesus Christ flying before the sun. Upbeat music playing is the description. Here comes Diana. Oh, the team is back. Okay. So is it just going to be like five people versus Darkseid's entire army?

Or are they going to get some other homies to help? So that's a good question. You know, here's what we have not seen yet, guys. We have not seen Jared Let we have not seen jared leto as the joker who is the joker we have not seen joe manginello who is deathstroke we did see lex luther very briefly at the beginning of this film and the kind of prologue but i don't know if he's going to be making another appearance as bald Luther. Who else? Isn't there somebody else making a special guest appearance that I'm

bringing Holly hunters, late Senator back. This is a day for truth. Chris, you know, this is usually the domain of, um, of the rewatchables,

but I was hoping we could hear a little Al Pacino as Steppenwolf. Yeah. Next time he comes on screen, I'll do it. Great. Anything for you. The dark side, a little dome here,

reminiscent of Westview for Wanda vision. That's a good point. You think, um, you think they cribbed from the Snynyder cut mcu yeah do you think jack jack shaffer and matt jackman were just like man got my hands on this bootleg copy of the snyder cut gonna steal this dome this hex yeah they probably just jacked it wholesale that's that's how hollywood works right a copy of a copy of a copy of a Xerox of a copy.

Unless you're Zack Snyder, and then you are in the forge of the wonders of storytelling. Oh, so Darkseid is in the dome. Yeah, I think Steppenwolf definitely is. I don't know where Darkseid's at. But the little GPS tracker is in the dome. My assumption is that

Darkseid will not be completely defeated at the end of this film oh i would i would guess the dark side they'll be they'll tip towards the future even if there is no future film he's too powerful stepping wolf whatever he's he's b team okay so i guess the parademons are now attempting to attack the justice league even though we know full well that the parademons stand no chance against any members of the justice league and we've probably got a good 30 plus minutes of fighting in front of us so where do we go from here what do we what do we even say to each other

how do we explore each other's souls more deeply on this podcast? I do find that as this movie has progressed, that I find I'm finding the action sequences to be less and less decipherable. And I do wonder whether or not that indicates maybe when Snyder left the original project, like, you know,

or what state certain sets of footage are in, because now we are just like in a full on Gothic, you know, blacklight painting. Whereas before, like they're fighting with the Amazonians or some of the Gotham stuff. It felt a little bit more lively. Some contrast.

It was at least some like vaguely recognizable settings and there were landmarks and things that you could hold on to so again there's a lot of parademons in this movie much like the ultron robots you know just like throwing guys at you. And if you're, let's say you're a digital animator working in the field of movies, right? It's a pretty lucrative line of work. It's creative. And you get the call, you're in the middle of the pandemic. And Zack Snyder is like, guess what, guys? We're putting the band back together.

We need more parademons. What we need is more visual effects. Are you like, hell yeah. My pandemic is saved because I've got work. I can make money. What were you hoping to be working on? Well, I don't know. I was really hoping Malik would call me and have me

illustrate an Austrian village. What's the alternative to parademons? Your snob just jumps out completely, Chris. It's so rare but then it's just like being nasty i'm just saying like i don't know what wasn't this wouldn't this be the best call of your life if you were an animator i i genuinely don't know i don't know any digital animators working in the field of superhero films i think they were probably glad to get work especially during a pandemic i'm sure

that was a very scary time i doubt that this is like the opportunity for the most creative expression that they're ever offered i assume they're just kind of you know making one parademon look like the next according to the specifics of whatever um dc snyder cut bible they were given whatever DC Snyder Cut Bible they were given. Right. So, I don't know. Amanda, do you think the Parademons have BDE?

No, I don't. They don't. I really don't. Do you think Steppenwolf or Darkseid do? No, I don't. I feel like... No, no.

I agree. Neither of them do. Yeah. I mean, that's a major problem here is that you don't care about any of the villains at all. Yeah. Like you'll probably try to make some Steppenwolf jokes on future podcasts just to annoy me, but it doesn't even really have the staying power of the Thanos joke. I gotta be honest with you. You have my pledge that I will never make a Steppenwolf joke after this. Okay. All right. I meant, I meant Sean. You're respectful. Sean's not. I'm not respectful. That's true. But I have no relationship to Steppenwolf joke after this. All right. I meant Sean. You're respectful.

Sean's not. I'm not respectful. That's true. But I have no relationship to Steppenwolf. I think Thanos was an authentically interesting and funny villain. I think he's funny to talk about. But also, I think that those movies, you know, for as ridiculous as they are, do a pretty good job of kind of animating what's motivating him

in a way that a movie like this just can't. It's just way more about all these flying creatures attacking superheroes. Let me ask you guys a question. Do you find this fun? What we're watching? No, no, there's no sense of physics to it.

No, it's loud, which is fine, but it's just like cacophonous. Yeah. And there's no stakes to it. I just don't understand like what, like,

so can he fly? Can he jump just really far? He can just fight in midair. He's Aquaman. Like, what are we doing? But are there people who find this fun? Evidently. Yeah.

And I don't, I don't. But do you think that's how they're relating to it? Like, this is like really fun. And I had a fun time at the movies because it seems like there's a, there is a lot going on here. And I think that Zack Snyder has a very specific vision, but fun does not seem to be a part of it.

I'm trying to put myself in the mind space of like a 15 year old boy. I think that there's a real endorphin hit, like a triumphalist kind of, we beat the bad guys, very simple, direct mainline hit of excitement that comes for certain people from and and honestly like some people just love these characters there are some people who are just like my whole life is superman batman and wonder woman like that's my favorite thing in

the whole world and if it is to see them winning in a big battle like this in a movie is a dream come true and this seems to be like a kind of a dirty dozen-esque action sequence where like everybody else is running interference for batman to be able to get inside of something of this building yeah i think adrenaline is a good explanation of the appeal of this and like i don't personally feel it but i can understand how people who are interested in this would. Yeah. I think the sentimentality is what does not work for me. Like the MCU sentimentality does work for me,

but the, the, the, the sense of duty and honor that is laced throughout these movies. And this concept of like sacrifice is a huge, huge, huge theme in the snyder movies the idea of giving yourself over um singularly for the cause and there's a lot of

great critical writing about his work there's an amazing piece on the ringer that adam naman wrote this week about all of his films and the themes of his films and so i think some of that stuff also really resonates with people you know the idea of rising films. And so I think some of that stuff also really resonates with people. You know, the idea of rising to the call and this emotional relationship when a band of unlikely people come together to fight a stronger force. That's what 300 is. You know, it's, you know,

the story of the 300 warriors who overwhelmed the Persian empire. And I think people like that stuff. I don't really get it. To me, it has never resonated. So, I mean, one thing that we haven't seen in a very long time in this movie is a normal person.

Like, there's a little bit of secret identity stuff at the beginning of this movie, but that's actually like a much bigger factor. But we're seeing the Talisker right now, Chris. Oh, wait. Shout out to Talisker. That was obviously an homage to the famed Jurassic Park

sequence in which the water tremors while the T-Rex shows up and now Superman just showed up and that was the tremor. The T-Rex of this movie has officially arrived. Is this Black Suit Superman? Yeah. Can you imagine telling Superman you're like too late

you might as well go back to kansas chris did you read any of the death of superman run of comics when you were a kid i didn't so that was a that was a huge huge event in the world of comic books i want to say it was i remember the early 90s cover yeah yeah there's a famous does this ring a bell at all amanda it was like a big it was like on the Today Show. It was a really big story when they killed Superman in the comic books.

No, it does not ring a bell from the Today Show. But I did read about it on a Wikipedia page. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah. I think some of this story

is culled from that too. The idea of his death and his resurrection and the complications of his death and his resurrection and the complications of his resurrection. I was working at a comic book store around that time. Were you really?

Oh, wow. Yeah. Did you enjoy that experience? Well, it was unlike, it was not really a comic book store. It was more of a comic book outlet. It was one of the first online comic book retailers

that my cousin actually started in the 90s um and so i was in a warehouse with 10 other guys and it's just full of comic books but we had no customers all the customers were online very weird that's cool though so now there's just a big fight sequence so So everybody's just going to get to face off one by one. And then Steppenwolf. Yeah. Superman is going to come in and save the day. I think this is like the third time we've seen something like this.

Right. Yeah. This is like they've had several fights at Steppenwolf. I don't know. I don't really get it. This is definitely more coherent. But the idea that this is like significantly better. You're fading on it.

Yeah. Cause it's like, I mean, Chris, you know, we talked about the, the man of steel screening we went to and how by the end of it, we were just like,

come on, man, this is just so terrible. And there's so much fighting and there's no resonance of any of the ideas. And that man versus Superman is very similar. And this is very similar. It's like the same structure every single time with none of the charm.

So there's also just no character development. And I mean, yes, I'm very interested in the actors playing a lot of these roles. But like, you don't see these people doing anything other than looking at a weird techno screen to make a plan and or fight with each other and so i guess the stakes are obvious and that you want them to win and the other people to lose but after fight after fight on hour four i don't know yeah there's also just a lack of um like i don't really feel like that their superpowers are particularly significant in a character way. They're not like,

oh, only Wonder Moon can do this and we need her to fill this role or only Cyborg could do this. I only think of that because they just made a reference to football for Victor and Barry and I was like, oh yeah, I forgot. Victor played football.

That usually is written into the characters in some way that there's some memory that they have or some use. I think you guys will watch this movie again right after we finish no I'm not returning to it I promised myself I would never revisit the Zack Snyder DC movies and here I go

this is my fourth one in five days could you have watched this without watching all of them like could you have gone in cold like Manda and I had? I mean, I watched Batman versus Superman, but could you have done this without the usual Sean prep? I think it would have been difficult to drive certain parts of this conversation. Not that any of those parts of the conversation

were interesting or entertaining at all. But I think just for the sake of filling airtime through four hours, it would have been difficult to even understand prep work. Thank you guys. Um, but I don't think that I think that the, the, the relative lack of understanding we're having in a beat to beat basis of

with the movie would have been even worse if it wasn't, had I not revisited any of this stuff. Yeah. I expected there to be a little bit more, um, dynamism to the movie where there would have been

more parts for us to like kind of dialogue-centric character forward parts that we would have been able to kind of latch on to and be like, oh, that was fun.

I like that moment with Victor and Barry and it's instead, it's so, it's just really task-oriented it feels like. Yeah. Uh-oh.

So now. There's Superman. Hey. Not impressed. It's cheeky. Is Superman usually cheeky? This is cool. Frozen breath.

Just like this. You know what? Superman's a good character. Love the black suit. Black suit looks great. Tower. So. love the black suit black suit looks great tower so again like part of what makes Superman so good

is what makes him so bad he's just way stronger and better than everybody and so we've been waiting the whole movie for him to show up he shows up can't touch him can can't hurt him, especially if you don't have kryptonite. So now after,

I guess, fearing Steppenwolf for three and a half hours, he's just going to get his clock cleaned by black suit Superman. Yeah. But you also like kind of, I don't know if you guys noticed, but this is what this movie was kind of missing. True.

It's like some majesty, some, some drama. This guy arrived, you know? I mean, everyone's inspired, you know? It's like when Chris shows up on the big picture. Yeah. It's like, you're here, buddy.

Our spirits have been lifted. We're excited. I just remembered that the Joker still hasn't showed up. Yeah. Well, how much time do we have left? Are you guys like fucking with me or is the Joker really in this movie? No, he's in it. do we have left? Are you guys like fucking with me or is the Joker really in this movie?

No, he's in it. He's in it. Are you serious? Yeah. That got spoiled by YouTube for me when I was going to watch a cooking video and they were like

the ending explained and Jared Leto's face was there. No, it's Joaquin. It's Joaquin Phoenix. Amanda is excited about that. I do like Joaquin but that's

isn't that a different multiverse or whatever? It is. Okay. It is. I wish Jack Nicholson would show up as the Joker at the end of this. That would really make me happy. That would be the best cameo of all. Who's the best person that could show up in this movie?

Any living human. You were just like, oh my gosh, there's Kathy Griffin. She's here. Definitely Obama. Obama. living human you were just like oh my gosh there's kathy griffin she's here definitely obama obama definitely if they just cut and obama was like after the events in gotham and metropolis and and central city i'm starting a podcast for springsteen of where we are as a nation and a world. That's pretty good. Oh, yeah.

Weren't we supposed to power rank the cities? We didn't get to spend that much time in them. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't really feel like I have a feel for Central City, and that was kind of my first foray into that part of the world. I'm going Kansas cornfield one. Okay. Okay. Central City two. I'm going Kansas cornfield one okay okay

um central city two what happened to Kirstie Clemons is she out of this she's only in one scene she's in the flash she's only in one scene

yeah yeah but she's safe so it's okay oh here's dark side guys it's all happening dark side hath arrived and these are

his his attended new gods. Was that Brienne of Tarth to his right? It looks like her. Could be. Do you think we should rename the big picture new gods? That would be good. Yeah.

All right. This is the moment I think it's all going to go wrong. Here comes Batman to defeat Darkseid despite not having any superpowers. Why do you hate Batman so much? What's up with that? I don't hate Batman.

But you just keep being really negative. You know? No, here's the thing. I'm really looking forward to the Matt Reeves Batman movie. Batman is a detective. he's not a superhero i don't like him in intergalactic wars with gods that's just it doesn't that doesn't really make like resonate for me with the character okay you know what i mean but but for you it's the batman that's the problem and not the

wars with intergalactic gods well it's kind of six and one half dozen of the other when it comes to this movie I love Affleck I think right Barry's breaking one of his own rules guys which is what I don't think he likes to go beyond the speed of light and he's also got a little bit of a flesh wound on his side

oh god a lot of dad action are we gonna see credit is there a credit flashback oh yeah we can hear credit what do you think uh the flash is 40 times how would he do at the combine oh my god he would smash it he would be good what about his um his three cone drill i don't know if he changes directions very well amanda have you watched the NFL Combine? I have not. That's too bad.

Darkseid has arrived, but Flash is trying to... Run back time? I don't know what Flash is doing. Yeah, it looks like it. Flash is flashing. He's trying to run back time. He's trying to move faster than the speed of light and, I believe, turn back time.

But I think he's worried that he might turn himself into jelly by doing that. Yeah, because his side is all fucked up. Can I ask a basic question? Sure. Where are we in space and time right now? I think we're in like

Romania. Okay. What? Isn't that where Darkseid's spot is though? Like, do we establish that that's where he's Yeah, that's where

his pied-a-terre is. Okay. All right. Man, Flash is just getting tons of looks in this movie. He's getting busy right now. He's doing the major Flash thing. And within the context of this universe that they're in right now,

how much time do you think has elapsed in this fight? Not that we've been watching, but how long have they and their universe been fighting? That's a great question. And it speaks to some of the issues with this movie and that I have no idea how much time has elapsed. Okay. I don't even know in this world, like, have they been fighting for four days or 12 minutes? Right.

I mean, also, I think what we're watching right now, the flash is this is supposed to be happening in an instant, except now it's taking like five minutes. Right. So did Superman get evaporated here? this is supposed to be happening in an instant except now it's taking like five minutes. Right? So did Superman get evaporated here? I think everybody got evaporated. Oh. Is he putting them back together? Yes.

Cool. Didn't know he could do that. I'm not really entirely sure how he's doing it. I want you guys to know that this is a movie about superheroes, so I don't think logic is really something we need to worry about too much. Okay. Every time I say that to you on a podcast, you lecture me for

30 minutes about... What a huge look for Under Armour sponsoring Gotham City. I did not see that earlier. Under Armour, is it Gotham University or... Yeah yeah Gotham City University GCU wow I'd like to drop in bags to get them to GCU

you know so Under Armour big winner of this pod Mercedes big winner Patagonia big winner who else Chris oh Aquafina right that's your brand major yeah Brady's, big winner. Patagonia, big winner. Who else, Chris? Oh, Aquafina, right?

That's your brand? This is major, yeah. Therapy Candles, big winner. I think those are just like normal candles. I think Jeremy Irons, big winner. Yeah, Talisker. I mean, Ray Fisher, obviously huge winner. Who knew Ray Fisher was literally the crux of this film?

No wonder he was so pissed off. Seriously. This is quite a psychological journey for this cyborg character. Again, shades of the three hags. The witches. You've read one play. That's it. You're just out here.

Reads a play once. Yeah. I've read every mammoth play and one Shakespeare. Have you read all Shakespeare? You did it all? I've read probably like two thirds of The Bard. That's pretty good. What's the soft spot?

The history? He broke off Steppenwolf's horn. Never read Twelfth Night. Wow. Yeah. I've read that. Okay. Never read Coriolanus.

Okay. And then he gets stabbed by a trident. Okay. So that's it? Is Steppenwolf cooked? On the edge of the trident? Oh, yes. Pacino time, Chris.

Pacino time. He hasn't said anything. So now Wonder Woman is going to slash Steppenwolf's head off. That's cool. Looks like he's been decapitated. I don't think he's going to be saying anything. And he's now being sent without a head through a portal. All right.

And who caught his dark side stepping on his skull? It's quite an abrupt exit interview. I do love that everybody like put Steppenwolf and step or whatever his name is into a switch. Just like got their own turn at him. That's right. That's right. Hell in the cell. He was own turn at him. That's right. That's right. Hell in the Cell. He was just going after him.

So Darkseid is not going after them. Well, because this is the thing. So I think that this movie was supposed to be like Age of Ultron ending where now Darkseid is like, the next two movies I'm going to be invading. So Dasaad is like, damn, I've'm going to be invading. So Dasad is like damn I've been bad mouthing Steppenwolf.

He was like my pod partner just died. It's like me and Steppenwolf were podding for weeks. We thought we were going to be an always on show. Turns out it was a limited series. I know. So. Who is doing Dark sides voice isn't that something you're supposed to know

come on come me some slack here I've been doing this for a long time the self appointed roles you're the person who's supposed to have the IMDB open you can help if you're crying out loud well Peter Guinness is doing de sod the english actor siren hines of course as we mentioned was steppenwolf where's dark side he's in his realm and he's ray porter he's playing oh ray porter's got quite a

haircut damn shout out to this guy okay so now we've got batman hanging on by a thread here quite literally having soups i just got really hungry i think i'm gonna crack a beer what do you think do you have is it reachable from your desk i can just put my mic down for a second amanda you got a vamp what is it you want to talk about can you vamp for a couple minutes well i was actually sure by myself you're gonna leave yeah or i'm just gonna grab a beer i can't wait to find out what you were talking about when i take my headphones off you know the shakespeare conversation got cut a little short because i was going to tell you about a book i read recently that i really enjoyed it was recommended to me by juliet's mom it's called

hamnet it's written by maggie o'arrell. And it is about, I mean, it's historical fiction, but it's really about Shakespeare had three children, including a son whose name was Hamnet, which apparently in ye olde English was interchangeable with Hamlet. And the son died at a young age. And then four years later, he writes Hamlet. And so it uses that very small amount of biographical information to write a very moving novel that I recommend to everyone. I'm back.

You're talking about Steppenwolf? What have you been talking about? Are you doing book recommendations? Yes, I had to vamp. So I was just talking about a book I liked. That was your opportunity to be like, now that these chodes are out of here, let me really tell

you what i think of the snyder cut i feel like everyone knows exactly what i think of the snyder cut and i tell you something really excited yeah you've been a trooper today thank you very thank you i appreciate that i can't believe it's still going this movie's not over we're in the epilogue 28 minutes left epilogue finally a father left. Epilogue. Finally, a father twice over. Okay, there's going to be a baby. Cyborg back in his jumpsuit. He's rebuilding

something here. Cyborg is too powerful. Oh, wow. Oh, and it's going to be his dad being like, yo. I can't believe you guys went to get drinks and I didn't. Go bet on the Chiefs. I wonder if my husband's here. I'm going to text my husband and see if he'll bring me a drink. I'm surprised you didn't have that going before we started recording.

He went to the driving range. He went to the driving range. For four hours? He went to the driving range. He went to the DMV. He's going to come back looking like Henry Cav you know just a hyper swole from all those swings sean i was at the dmv the other day in glendale and there was this dude behind me where he was like 60 and he was wearing a blink 182 t-shirt and he was telling everybody about how

was it tom delong no but like this is this dude with like kind of a mullet telling everybody about how his car, he'd finally got his car out of the shop, but now he was going to sell it. And I was like, this guy is pod gold. We got to get this guy

his own, maybe like what Nathan and Nora do in Taylor Swift. It's just this dude on every Blink-182 song. Well, that's a great story Chris appreciate that so we're getting basically

codas for every character now so now you got Aquaman Sam Rockwell here at this truck that's not Sam Rockwell

that's not like him what if it was Sam Rockwell and he just started dancing and Zach isn't home this is really disappointing wow looks like you're gonna have to you know what zach's doing he's seen the snyder cut at amc burbank with christopher nolan two of them are fucking crying into each other's cravats

what's the implication with aquaman's latent alcoholism is he okay he's always drinking straight from the bottle it is kind of strange that this is like this is previous this takes place on the timeline before aquaman correct correct no i don't think so after i don't think i mean that's confusing i i i think you know what i't know. Not even the 85th most confusing thing in this movie. I think Aquaman was fall of 2018, right? Is that when it was released? That sounds right. December 2018?

Yeah. And so technically this movie was released a whole year before that. Suicide Squad comes in between DOJ and this. But Aquaman takes place after this. I just, I, what is going on here with everyone's clothes? I like what Wonder Woman,

I like the belts. Gal Gadot looks good. Yeah. I think Affleck has too many layers. Oh, crud up back. Did he, is he getting dad out of prison?

Yeah. This is not in the last film is it Chris not to my not to my memory return to pops crud up is so so overqualified and he was just like here's the thing I'm guilty crud up should be in a Tom Stoppard

play right now why is he in this movie so weird because he does this movie and now he can afford to do like five tom stoppard plays that was another playwright reference man i've read a lot of plays amanda how dare you who are some of your favorite playwrights i do know you love the theater and you like it when movies are just like a filmed play which drives me absolutely bananas but who are some of my favorite playwrights yeah yeah in the arc of time yes my favorite live performance i've ever seen is top dog underdog with cheetle and most def wow or maybe no it was jeffrey wright and most definitely i saw it um and my second favorite is true west with uh philip seymour hoffman John C. Reilly. Sam Shepard. Those are my two favorites.

And Chris and I both love Sam Shepard plays. Yeah. Who doesn't? You know, I got a few. I got a couple of collections of Sam Shepard plays right here. So Victor Stone died.

Oh no, sorry. Cyborg's still here. Yeah, Cyborg's alive. We're just hearing his dad's sort of memorial tape amanda who are your favorite playwrights jim gordon commissioner jim gordon he's one of them here on the screen who else um a big sapard fan which is not unique like everybody else but i had i took like a play class in high school,

I think. And they had us read the real thing. And that was like a very, um, formative experience. Also, they had us read Heidi Chronicles when he was, we're seeing that was very formative.

Yeah. Um, I'm trying to think of what I have actually like great plays that I've seen. I didn't go as much as I should have in New York, although it is was like prohibitively expensive. I mean, you know, Pinter.

I like Pinter. I like Edward Albee. Um, Patty Chayefsky's early plays. Love those. Sure. I used to read those for fun. Like a weirdo.

I remember I was on the subway once reading a Chayefsky collection and, uh, a similar old man to the Blink-182 guy I think that Chris was talking about sat down next to me and started talking to me about Chayefsky. I thought I was going to be murdered on the train. Did you think it was Patty Chayefsky? I mean, I knew that it wasn't, but he had his essence. He was mad-eyed. So Barry Allen, did he free pop or no? No, he's just saying he got a job at a crime lab.

So I think it's like life is turning around for me. Wow, look at this. Oh, wow. Trench coat from Superman. Okay, so now we're back in a prison. We're about to be up in Arkham right now. Okay. So the Joker is about to show up.

Yep. Here So the Joker is about to show up. Yep. Here comes the Joker. That's actually kind of annoying that this leaked. That they put it in the trailer and everything. This would have been fun if they hadn't done that. Oh, this is Luther. Oh. This is good.

So this was the thing in watching Batman versus Superman that I loved is I thought Eisenberg was fantastic as Lex Luthor. I think, was it Adam who was like, Jesse Eisenberg is the only person who knows what kind of movie he's in? Yes. And he's just like really hamming it up? Yes. But he's wonderful and he

plays him, and I give credit to Snyder too because like his conception of Luthor as like this like mad boy tech genius brat as opposed to that like lush gene hackman asshole you know donald trump-esque figure that he was in the past this version of him i really really liked um and i made the movie that much better although is this this doesn't look like eisenberg is it no that's not eisenberg because he got out man he escaped bro

so where's not Eisenberg because he got out man he escaped bro so where's Eisenberg at Amanda would you say you like Eisenberg or are you just in his Zuckerberg where do you stand on

him he does make me a little uncomfortable the other time not like he plays awkward characters and he has a presence that is meant to make you feel uncomfortable.

But I definitely do feel it sometimes. Yeah. Do you know that if he shot this in addition to, he must have, right? This must have been new stuff. Yeah. This Arkham stuff. So now we're on a boat. This boat looks suspiciously like the boat we saw Deathstroke getting onto at the end of one of these movies.

What movie was that? Suicide Squad, right? Was it Suicide Squad? At the end of Suicide Squad? This is Deathstroke. This is Deathstroke here, arriving at the ship. The Deathstroke movie, too, would have been cool. I feel like Joe Manganiello did not have the career he was supposed to.

He's married to Sofia Vergara. I mean, his life sounds sick. Yeah. And he obviously had a very... Oh, there's Deathstroke. Is this Lake Como? What's going on? This is a cool character.

Oh, there it is. And Lex. Okay. See, this is kind of the movie I wanted. Yeah, dude. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Yeah. This is... yeah agree okay yeah this is

this is way less intergalactic and way more like on the streets of Gotham this is what we want crime movie right yeah

that's what I want wow look at Manganiello with the white hair wow he looks good so hmm this is a weird oh my mind's weird one second this is a weird tease chris to give us like a tease for a movie that like literally can never happen right unless it is actually like we're

just trying to like bait you into saying we need more snyder dc movies which like do you think that will be an outcome of this i mean you mentioned that. Do you think that that's where we'll go? So here are the things that he's currently working on. He did Army of the Dead. It sounds like he loved doing that with Netflix and he's making a German language prequel or sequel to Army of the Dead for Netflix. At least he says he is.

He's also doing Army of the Dead animated stuff. Then he's making something called The Horse Latitudes, which I think is a smaller scale drama. Yeah. And he is just like straight up like, I'm good. They don't have to use this as canon. I got to put this movie out.

He's obviously at the center of the filmmaking universe for at least a weekend. And you watch the scene. This scene is just setting up future movies. So I don't think that we're going to be, I don't think this is the last we're seeing of Jackson. I remember making these kinds of movies. The Horse Latitudes was written by Tom Stoppard right as I recall

yeah demons there are more parademons parademons back this I think this is dark sides hut is this apocalypse the planet apocalypse it looks like a city of some kind

boy this is a long film guys it really is I mean this is a long It looks like a city of some kind. Boy, this is a long film, guys. It really is. I mean, this is a long epilogue. Oh, what is Batman doing? Where is he? What the fuck? Batman is holding a machine gun.

He's in a post-apocalyptic environment surrounded by unarmored parademons. There's a giant spaceship lurking over the cityscape. Do you guys like when I narrate the film? I actually was not looking at this particular moment. I was googling something. This is the best part of the movie. So I did appreciate it. Sean, thank you.

You're welcome. What is going on here? This is the movie version of Justice League? Is that what's happening here? Because these are not the actors. What? No. What is going on here? This is an alternative reality.

An alternative reality? This is very confusing. I've changed my mind on Affleck's voice. I don't think it's good as Batman. I think it's silly. I prefer him in Bruce Wayne mode. So we don't think he'll be in any more movies? I mean, Batman movies?

Affleck? I don't think so. He just did two? What I mean, Batman movies? I don't think so. He just did two? What a waste. I gotta get out of this, man. If the Batman wasn't happening, he was planning to direct himself in one of the Batman movies. Is this Lois Lane?

No, here's Joker. So he's in a SWAT vest. This is just going to be dead air on the podcast we're watching Leto because Leto is this powerful he's got us enraptured are you feeling better

about Leto now that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar of course so much easier to celebrate his complete ridiculousness I completely agree I can't believe Batman

just stays getting triggered by this guy who Batman just stays getting triggered by this guy. Who does? Batman keeps getting triggered by the Joker. My favorite Batman and Joker scene ever is the interrogation in The Dark Knight. It's like, kill you. You complete me. Batman and Joker I think that this is

obviously taking place in some sort of alternate reality that got opened up when the flash Dewey did right that seems reasonable

everyone seems to be talking in a voice that is not quite their own which creates the sense of unreality that we're watching huh where are like where which creates the sense of unreality that we're watching huh where are like where they're in

like a destroyed outer ring of the city is that what you're suggesting whoa I missed the other two fucks if they said them or else the blog post that I read was wrong well we saw we saw fuck the world and what else oh you're right you created by letting her die who did he let die

wonder woman lois i don't know i'm very confused guys so they're gonna end this movie on a cliffhanger with an alternate reality and then he's never gonna make another movie again which is just like I don't know by the clock we at least have another 20 minutes right no the credits are gonna be long

oh okay alright so it's almost over there was a lot of post production on this film there was 11 minutes of credits on Batman vs Superman okay Leto is like There was a lot of post-production on this film. There was 11 minutes of credits on Batman versus Superman. Okay. Leto is like basically shot entirely out of focus. I don't, you have to wonder whether or not he shot, I think,

didn't he say some story about him shooting Leto like in his backyard or something? Yeah, I think that's right. And this is, must be mostly CGI surrounding him. Gotta say, I just love the Joker. I'm not afraid to say it.

That's the one part of the DC universe I get, that chaotic energy. Okay. Thanks for sharing with us. Not Joaquin Joker. I thought that movie was more interesting than it was given credit for, but I don't love it.

He's talking about Harley Quinn. Is he? Yeah. I thought he said lois we haven't even addressed there's another one oh i will fucking kill you from batman wow i just can't believe i gave four hours of my life to this and I got like maybe 10 minutes of maskless Affleck. I just... He looked good though. I mean, he looked great. I think that he's... Let's start wrapping up where we say like, who came out better through this?

Who's risen in our estimation? Not that Affleck could have possibly... Number one, Patagonia. Yeah. Number two? Number two, Leto. Number one, Patagonia. Yeah. Number two? Number two, Leto. You're friends with Addie's. Leto.

Yeah. Number three, Amy Adams. Yep. Amy Adams' filmography and Chris's relationship to it. Number four, Bobby Wagner. Yeah. Who, he and Amanda have done well actually you guys have all nobody's turned any lights on straight up crazy

out here it's real dark well I forgot and it's like the lamps are on the other side of the table and it's a whole thing so I literally don't know what we're watching why are Deathstroke and Batman together who is Deathstroke I mean I know which character he is I know that's him he's a vigilante character in the Batman together. Who is Deathstroke? I mean, I know which character he is. I know that's him.

He's a vigilante character in the DC series. Who isn't a vigilante? That's right. This pot is either now called going forward new gods or vigilantes. The new gods are really lame.

I don't know. Darkseid, I think, is kind of crushing it. Oh, Superman back. So is this going to be it's evil Superman who's been given the afterlife

isn't the that those two actors are not Ezra Miller and Ray Fisher that's not Ray is that Ray Fisher that's Ray Fisher is it am I losing my mind is that Ezra Miller Bobby can you check me on this I've had half of a PBR I I can't be that drunk. I think they're meant to look slightly different in a CGIed-over way. There's a world in which that is not Affleck. Is this going to be

not Cavill? Yeah, he's Cavill. This is his dream. There we go. This is his dream. There you go. Thank God we got one last shot of this.

What do you want from me you did it Amanda you won this is recent because this is the way he looked in his interview with Fincher it is

he looks so good in that man okay so we're doing like a pajamas like a Terry pajama set here this is really where

I want to live in this house yeah with the floor toto-ceiling windows, wood paneling everywhere. Oh, I don't know. This is exactly Sean's spot. It really is Sean's spot.

It doesn't matter if it's Omababi because no one's allowed. No one can visit. This is going to be Martian Manhunter. Wow, this is definitely 2020. This is fucking Martian Manhunter, guys. Yeah. So this is one of the other

key members of the Justice League who is not featured in these films. Martian Manhunter? Yes. You're not familiar with this guy? Does he just do what the name, like what says on the package? Not exactly. Look at this man. Look at that. That perfect light? That magic hour i'm trying to tell you about one of the great characters in the dc universe i have listened

for four hours to you tell me about these people and i think i have been generous and open-hearted and i have learned some things and now look at the light on this gentleman that's what I'm doing. And it's not real light. Okay. You know what? So, geez, when did Martian, Martian Manor's been around for a while. He's been around

since the 50s. His name is John Johns. Here's how you spell his first name. J apostrophe O-N-N. Come on, guys. Try harder. J apostrophe O-N-Z-Z.

John Johns. O for two on those two-N-Z-Z. John Johns. 0 for 2 on those two names. Martian Manhunter and John Johns. They love alliteration. Wonder Woman. This is a DC thing. The Martian Manhunter. There he is.

So I think that the general from the Man of Steel movies who we saw earlier whose face was contorted is the Martian Manhunter. Which I didn't realize when we were first watching it. Now when you're Bruce Wayne and you face was contorted is the Martian Manhunter which I didn't realize when we were first watching it. Now when you're Bruce Wayne and you just have an interaction with the Martian Manhunter what's your

first move when you get back into your glass box? Probably fire a Pornhub. We can't take you anywhere. We're an hour before. It's all good. I was gonna say bowl of cereal and now it's just like

it's over. No? He just cracks it? So this is like his country home outside of Gotham? That's beautiful. I think we're free. Is the film over?

There's dedication. Autumn, Zack Snyder's daughter. Is there going to be a post-credit sequence? Yes. I think we owe it to ourselves to fast forward to see that. I read a blog headline about it. Okay. So for those of you who are listening at home, still listening at home, one, wow, you are truly special and committed listeners of this podcast.

Two, Bobby is about to fast forward us through to the final stages of this movie so we can talk about an end credit sequence if it's there. Let's see. Bobby is fasting forward. It does not seem like there is anything. And if there's nothing, we get to go out on a Pornhub joke. It's so dark in a minute.

Hallelujah is playing. There's a cover of hallelujah now playing they always dap up quebec shout out to quebec and new zealand

new zealand government screen production grant yeah oh yeah well they've had covid under control there makes sense jacinda

she just smashed that who's just gonna let it rock from here guys yeah there's like 40 seconds left. I don't think we're going to get anything else. I think we may be done here. Am I crazy? Was there a Vox.com article about why you should stick around for the post-credit sequence?

No, I swear I read a Vulture thing about what that stinger means. But maybe I was wrong. Hold on. We're seeing a globe of stinger. I didn't actually read it. Is this going gonna be a logo or a meaningful moment isn't this like

Atlas Shrugged what's going on here that is yeah that is Atlas Alice Entertainment okay and we're seeing

some chyrons to say goodbye this film is over the stone quarry guys is this how we're gonna end it this is the Warner Brothers

production are you guys okay how we're gonna end it this is the warner brothers production are you guys okay how are you that's it and now i'm just like what did i read hold on i'm googling did you read about martian manhunter would you what would you give this as stars out of five two i would say two is it better than the joss whedon version version without question the joss whedon version doesn't make sense isn't as funny as it thinks it is and kind of looks like shit you know the the the special effects especially in the final sequence of that film are not good it feels rushed this is obviously much closer in spirit to the zach snyder aesthetic as amanda put it earlier and he has a vision it's not really a vision that i necessarily love but he

he executed his vision i did find it kind of confusing if i'm being totally honest as a movie going experience man how many stars i have have a couple of pages of notes. I'm just going to go through here. It's going to be probably about 40 minutes, but Amanda, Sean can leave, but you have to stay. Okay.

Um, I'm really glad we did this because I think that we were also sort of documenting what it feels like to actually have to like endure this as like a single product, which was really my attraction to this idea in the first place of like what's it like to watch a four-hour action movie like this this was not once upon a time in america this was not you know i don't know heaven's gate or something like that this had a lot of action sequences i think i if i had watched it on my own i would have gotten up a lot i probably would have fast

forwarded a fair amount through some of these action sequences. So interesting experiment, but I'm not something I'll revisit. I guess it's better than the Whedon version, but it's not so appreciably better than I'm like, now there's a brave new world of DC movies to spring from this. Although clearly Warner brothers is counting on that. Amanda,

where are you at? I'm going to power rank the hours for you you ready yeah number one hour one number two hour two number three hour three hour four hour four i'll be honest i this was a cute thing to do with my friends and you are actually still my friends at the end of this i think probably so that is an achievement in and of itself i don don't remember what happened in this movie. Like, I don't really think that I personally, like, took away any, like, more specific elements of plot or character or even really action than I had when I started. I think I got the Zack Snyder vibe and, and the aesthetic. And I do think that he, um,

he has a vision and he likes to make films a certain way. And I think that they're the people who respond to that adrenaline. I'm happy for them that they have this in the world. I, I don't know that I'll ever, I guess we will talk about this again as a movie. Do you guys think you'll talk about this on Monday? So fun facts,

if you're still listening, Chuck Klosterman is joining us on this podcast for the first time ever to share a theory that he has about movies that I'm looking forward to. Have you heard the theory yet? I have, but only in the raw. I haven't heard the refined version

of the theory. In addition to that, we're going to be talking about Adam Curtis and his works. And so you can imagine the one, two punch of Adam Curtis and the Snyder cut. They're frankly correlated in a lot of ways. Um, so I do want to actually see if Chuck has seen this and if he has any

opinions about it, because he's the exact kind of person. He has the exact kind of brain that I kind of want to know how he feels about something like this, not about whether or not Steppenwolf was a good villain or not, but more like this experience of the Snyder Cut. What it means for our culture that this movie got willed into existence. But Bobby, I know you were kind of dreading this, even if it was somewhat performatively dreading. Were you?

No, it was performatively. I got to get those Twitter replies in. How do you feel? I'd like to power rank the three different times that my watch gave me a get up and move around notice during the course of this recording Yeah No, it was complete just a mishmash of

unintelligible CGI for most of it None of it building or particularly compelling but I'm glad that we did this. We went into it with the best of intentions. I think you could hear, you could hear us being like really open to this movie in the beginning.

And then I think much like many of the parademons, we just got beaten down. Yeah, I agree with that. I think at hour two, I was like, this is actually pretty good. They've done some streamlining of the storyline,

feeling good about it. And it did wither away nevertheless thank you guys for doing this it was thanks for having me i don't i would you say it was fun did you have fun i i definitely enjoyed myself at points obviously i would have i traded a fucking my child unborn child for a three-hour movie honestly oh you? One hour would have improved it. Did Superman ever find out that he's a dad? The force majeure was never revealed. That's a great point. Yeah.

They, they left loose ends in a four hour film. I'm going to, I'm going to dig in some to some loose ends and some Easter eggs, Amanda, and I'll hit you with them this weekend. Thanks so much. Great. I'm going to dig into a fresh Caesar salad because I'm really fucking hungry. You're such a maniac. That's your reward? Yeah. Is a Caesar salad because i'm really fucking hungry um you're such a maniac that's your reward is your salad yeah chris what are you having for dinner i have uh

enchiladas that i'm gonna reheat wow yeah okay uh bob what about you chick-fil-a baby wow that actually is a reward okay let's go out on a brand yes in spawn we trust here in the justice league of podcasters guys thank you so much thanks to everyone who's still listening it's not a person chris stop trying to get a free car just take it to your own pod i will also take a free car just if gerald is listening unbelievable effort to steal the shine on this pod to get a free car okay thank you guys and please tune in next week to the big picture when it will not be four hours long i promise