The Big Picture - ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ and Top 5 Comic Book Movie Sequels

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote pal are back in 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage,' a sequel to the surprise mega-hit from 2018. To break down the new 'Venom' movie and our favorite comic book movie sequels, Sean is joined by Van Lathan and Charles Holmes, aka The Midnight Boys (0:30). Then, Sean talks to 'Let There Be Carnage' director Andy Serkis, the acclaimed performance capture artist behind Gollum in the 'Lord of the Rings' films and a filmmaker in his own right (1:14:05). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Van Lathan, Charles Holmes, and Andy Serkis Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's me, Sean Fantasy, host of The Big Picture. If you're a fan of this show, there's a new Spotify feature that lets you automatically follow the show. Tap the bell on the show page to get notified as soon as new episodes are released. By turning on new episode notifications, you'll also automatically start following the show. All the latest episodes from shows you follow can be easily accessed in the What's New feed on home. Now let's get into the show.

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Venom. That's right. Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote, Hal, are back in a sequel to the surprise mega hit from 2018 in Venom, Let There Be Carnage. Later in the show, I have a conversation with the Let There Be Carnage director, Andy Serkis, who you may know as the acclaimed performance capture artist behind Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, Caesar in the most recent Planet of the Apes films.

He's also a director. We discussed his career and this new movie. But first, man, we got to talk about Venom 2. And we're doing it with Van Lathan and Charles Holmes, who are collectively known on the Ringerverse as, of course, the Midnight Boys. Sorry, we had to bring that energy to the big picture, Sean. Wait, Sean, I have to ask you really, really quick

before we get into Venom. How does it feel for being one of the people responsible for unleashing the Midnight Boys on the unsuspecting public? I take no credit whatsoever. I'm very proud of the Ringerverse and all the work that you guys have done, but you've done it all on your own. And I'm delighted that you're here because frankly,

there's nobody that I like hearing talk about not quality comic book entertainment, but ridiculous comic book entertainment than the Midnight Boys. So this is perfect. I hadn't even seen this film before. I thought, yo, I really want to have Van and Charles on to talk about this movie. And it lived up to my expectations, which were different than my expectations for a lot of movies like this. Charles, I'll start with you.

Did you enjoy Venom? Let there be carnage. And if so, why? And if not, why not? Sean, I love this movie. I sat down in the theater and I let this movie wash over me like a symbiote. It got into my pores. I didn't stop laughing for 90 minutes.

It was like watching the Mona Lisa being painted in front of me. I cannot speak highly enough. This is not ironic. This is not ironic. You have to understand, I came home after it and my girlfriend is usually the first line of me. I cannot speak highly enough. This is not ironic. This is not ironic. You have to understand, I came home after it, and my girlfriend is usually the first line of defense. She's like, did you like the movie? And I'm always like, yeah, it was not great. And she saw the grin. She's like, you liked it? But I saw what you thought of the first one. I'm like, no, no,

you don't understand. They did something amazing. So what did it do that is amazing? I think the best way I can describe it is it's as if Tom Hardy saw a marriage story and was essentially like, what if we replace all of the characters in this with shaken up bottles of Mountain Dew? The movie from the beginning is just like, is just a rom-com. It is a story about Venom,

the symbiote, and Eddie being like an old married couple who can't stand each other. And that sounds like I'm joking, but no, that is like the heart of this film. And I think that's the part of the film that works amazingly. Yes.

Does the CGI look bad in a lot of this? Yes. Did Woody Harrelson basically sign on to this so he could buy another beach house? Absolutely. But at the core of this, you have Ed Hardy, who from the first movie said,

like, Ed Hardy was just like, you have to think about it. Ed Hardy. Tom. Tom. Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy. Oh, we got to get that right.

The midnight writers are going to kill me. Tom Hardy. Thinking of the hats. Yeah. Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy in the second movie got to get that right. The midnight writers are going to kill me. Tom Hardy. The hats. Yeah. Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy in the second movie, I thought he was going to be like, you know what? The first one, a little bit manic. I was sweating too much.

Going to tighten it up. No. He's like, give me more sweat. Give me more manic energy. We're going. I can't say how amazing this movie is. Van is going to kill me because he did not feel the same. Charles, I'm so glad you said all

of that because it sets the table for a really good conversation about what is good art and what is not good art and how we measure it van what did you think of venom let there be carnage um so here's the thing well here's van winding up for us well no no no no no no not winding up the thing is how do you judge art? And that's the... We actually had this conversation when we were leaving. Me, Mallory, all the rest of the Midnight Boys, Jomie, everyone was there.

So we had this conversation. So the reality is that, is it a terrible movie? Yes. Okay? Like, is it a terrible movie? Yeah. In terms of any metric that you would use to the metric that we're used to the metric that we're used to using to judge movies yes but

the fact of the matter is there was not one second where i wasn't entertained that's what i'm talking about and so that was the movie in fantastical out of here? It just seemed like they just went, okay, let's throw it on the screen and go. Yeah, but it wasn't boring. It wasn't like I was there. There was a moment in this film early on, spoiler alert.

I know we didn't do the spoiler alert. We have to do a huge long spoiler alert on Ringiverse so we can stop people from spoiling shit that we're actually talking about reacting to it's fantastic um but at the beginning of the movie they have two characters there are younger versions of uh cletus cassidy and shriek and when clvis cassidy's character speaks they're dubbing his voice with woody harrelson which there is no reason to do except to fuck with the audience when i tell you there's no reason to do that i've never seen the movie do that before like there's no sean i'm sure you haven't i've never seen it before that you know the character is probably 15 years old in the scene

that you're describing woody harrelson is currently a 60 year old man and certainly no 60 year old man has the voice of a 15 year old so it is a weird choice there's just no reason to do it and then after that that was kind of your initiation yeah because then after that you're just like all right like buckle up we're going into the realm of the ridiculous and when i tell you no movie in recent memory has thrust you into the realm of the ridiculous like this film it did a fantastic job of taking you to a world that's just you're just like jesus christ people are crazy so i agree with both of you i think that there's just, you're just like, Jesus Christ, people are crazy. So I agree with both of you. I think that there's no way that this can be a terrible film

because of exactly what you said, man, because I was entertained the entire time. I think it's also much more self-knowing and self-aware about what it's trying to accomplish than a lot of historically bad comic book and comic book sequel movies. A lot of these movies go in with a kind of like sincerity about their themes

and a lot of like an over-earnestness around what they're trying to do. Venom Let There Be Carnage by its very nature is like this is absurd comic ridiculousness. The fact that it is that rom-com that Charles is saying, the fact that it is basically The Bride of Frankenstein, the fact that it is that rom-com that charles is saying the fact that it is basically the bride of frankenstein the fact that it is basically a story about tom hardy coming to grips with the demons that live inside of him is hilarious to me and i certainly we can quibble about the way that the

film looks at times and some of the cgi but they made a couple of really smart decisions one i counted this up there are uh actors with a total of nine Academy Award nominations in this cast. This is one of the most decorated casts in comic book movie history and they're in Venom,

Let There Be Carnage. Two, this movie is 90 minutes long and that is brilliant. Why are there not more comic book films that are 90 minutes long? I ask you this because one of the very great things

about reading comic books and you guys have done it and I have done it for years in my life, is how quickly you can make your way through an issue of a comic book. More comic book movies should be standalone adventures. They should be, this thing happened, there's a bad guy, we need to vanquish the bad guy and go on to the next chapter of this story. Too often, because of what has happened with the MCU, which for the most part I have loved, I know you has happened with the MCU, which, you know, for the most part, I have loved. I know you guys have loved as well. There's this sense that there is something vitally important happening in every single installment of that story. Sometimes,

you know, you got to fight the weird serial killer symbiote alien that bit your finger while on death row, and you got to figure out how to defeat him and go on to the next battle i loved that the movie wanted to be um it felt more close to a comic book than many comic book movies i have seen recently and i'm trying to figure out why that is i don't know if either of you guys sense that or disagree with that and if so i'm kind of curious why i think well one reason is because they lowered the stakes so one thing that happens with comic book movies is the stakes just keep getting raised and raised and raised and raised and almost in every comic book movie they saved the world and every single one they saved the world like uh and a lot of times it's because the movies

have become such spectacle to where they're not actually issues of specific comics that they're covering. They're covering entire comic book arcs. That's right. Right. They're covering whole epics and whole 10, 15 issues and condensing them into it. You know, this one is not. This is actually just, hey, because Carnage has his whole series, right? He has the ultimate Carnage series in the comic books.

Maximum Carnage, yeah. Excuse me. Maximum Carnage. My fault. Yeah, he has a whole Maximum Carnage run. And to do that, you'd have to have a couple, three movies. At the end of this film, I'm like, yo, they killed Carnage. So, I mean, we're not going to ever get Maximum Carnage.

We're not going to get the whole thing. But they said, no, this is one time. Carnage meets Venom. They fight. Somebody dies. And I don't think actually the studios feel like they have the latitude to make these types of movies. They feel like they have to go bigger. The stakes have to be higher

these people are so powered you can't give them something trivial to fight about and venom was like nah he got out of jail everything is pretty right look why did he do all of this because he's in love easy work easy work like what does he want he wants to get his girl back what do they want they just want to get married you know what i mean they want to bring all of these people and they didn't they want revenge then after that they win it's over but i thought 90 minutes was perfect for this because if had this movie been 10 minutes longer it would have been atrocious it would have been like 10 minutes longer it doesn't work for what it did wait can I ask you guys both of this? Because you are both children of the 90s and a bunch of these comics. I had to go back and read.

But. Sorry. He does it every single time. It wasn't a diss. Children of the 90s. Go ahead and ask the question. I think Venom Let There Be Carnage also works because it is a movie that like distills what like 90s, late 80s 90s comic books were the extreme era where like cable has a bunch of pouches and like everybody has like big drooling teeth and like

they kill off batman the spoiler alert and they like replace them with like gene paul valley and what i think this movie does that's so important is that Venom and Carnage are like characters that embody the 90s. They don't make sense. They're just there to be cool and to battle each other. When Carnage, at one point in this movie,

slips his finger into a computer and essentially knows all of the information. I was just like, wait, what? And then I was just like, no, this is exactly what a comic book movie should be. This movie would be terrible

if they tried to explain Carnage's powers. Carnage is the son of Venom and he hates him and he wants to kill him. And I think that's what I loved about the movie so much is like, this is the equivalent of reading a 90s Spider-Man comic. It does not make sense. It's supposed to look cool.

I want to see like Todd McFarlane drawing the shit out of Venom drooling and everything and Carnage going back and forth. And it gave me that. What more can I complain? If it was in Feige's hands, I don't think he would have given us this silly of a movie. I mean, preach.

Like that's exactly how I feel. Like I grew up reading Todd McFarlane, Spider-Man comics. Todd McFarlane is behind Venom, the creation of Venom. So the idea that the film would try to live up to the ridiculousness of that period of time in comic books is great. That doesn't mean it's the only kind of comic books that are good. Of course, there's a broad range, but it was nice to see something that felt reflective of my memories of the medium really and it's it's a

little bit it's a it's frankly a little bit even more ridiculous than some of the comic books it it is lacking i think some of the gravitas that you would get in later versions of those stories but it's just a it's just a fun movie it's a fun movie that like knows that it's putting michelle williams in a position to be talking to venom you know like and and frankly to become venom that is one of the weirdest things that has ever happened in michelle williams having to hit on venom i was just like i hope that she got the check i hope no it's not but the thing is like that's that's part of it though the part of the the allure of the movie is i'm watching the movie and I'm like, yo, that's Michelle Williams, man. That's Tom Hardy.

Like, you had to get these guys. They had to go along with the joke. Sometimes you watch something and you get, we all know this as movie people, you get shepherded into something, right? You might have not watched it, but hey, Ridley Scott said

that he's going to be a part of it, so I'm in. You know, and this one, I'm watching the movie and the whole time I'm thinking, you know, there's more to it. Because, look, that's Blue Valentine. Like, that's like, I mean, that's Michelle Williams right there. And so and by the way, she made it work. She's good. She was great. She was amazing.

Your man from your man from Veep who's playing dan again that's confusing yeah reed scott is his name reed scott so anyway look when i say the movie is terrible i mean by the metric that i have you i have to stay true to who i am by the metric that i use to judge movies but like was this movie fun when we left we all looked around like we have fun so we win so one of the reasons why i know that everything that is on the screen is intentional but like, was this movie fun? When we left, we all looked around like we have fun. So we win. So one of the reasons why I know that everything that is on the screen is intentional and that this is not some so bad, it's good experience that we're having is that Tom Hardy conceived of the story is one of the producers of the movie and hired one of his closest friends in the world, Kelly Marcel, to write the screenplay. This is a passion project for tom hardy he loves venom he loves what

venom can do for him as a performer this is not a joke on the other hand i think when we talk about like michelle williams and blue valentine that's a very serious story about heartbreak and loss and the dissolution of the american family right and so that feels like an important film. But talk to an actor. You know what actors like to do? They like to play pretend. They like to dress up in costumes and wear makeup and go to another world.

You know who else likes to do that? People who like comic books. It's the same fucking principle, which is why more comic book movies should have this kind of pursuit. So, you know, honestly, I'm very into the Venom project, the Venom mission. So, you know, I'm honestly, I'm very into, I'm very into the Venom project, the Venom mission. Let me just say though, you know,

Van, I think you totally nailed it when you said that these films kind of lower the stakes, which is not to say that there's not big action or this kind of this huge threat throughout the story, but it has nothing to do with whatever Thanos was after. You know, it has nothing to do with whatever was going on in the Snyder Cut. This is not intergalactic warfare that will change generations forever. It's a smaller story, a lower scaled story. Most comic book sequels

are not like that. Most comic book sequels are actually the opposite of that, which is it's about ratcheting the tension, ratcheting the stakes, you know, raising the expectations of the audience

to get them excited to go see the movie. Do you think that this works on the terms of the audience to get them excited to go see the movie. Do you think that this works on the terms of the comic book movie sequel? Yeah, I think it worked, but I also think that because of the post-credits scene, you can look at this movie as almost an interlude. That's why it didn't have to be long.

It didn't have to be particularly penetrating. It didn't have to be particularly penetrating. It didn't have to forge new fucking territory in terms of, you know, conceptually or anything like that. It didn't have to introduce you to anything new except for a new character. Just get on to where you're probably going to throw this same guy into things that are a lot bigger. So this one didn't have to be that. I can't think of another movie, comic book sequel and charles helped me out with this that dialed it back and so it's just one off the top okay give it to me i would argue logan logan's not saving the world in that last movie it is very contained it is not like it is very

much like him trying to transport and save this child. It's just him and Xavier. He, I don't even remember how long is it before he like pops his claws in them. He pops his claws in the, in almost the very first scene. He does.

Remember that he kills the guys by the limo by the car. Yeah. Yeah. But, but what I would say about that and we're notorious for rabbit holes and we're not going to do this right here, Sean, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, for rabbit holes and we're not going to do this right here, Sean. But the only thing that I'd say about that is the future of mutant kind was at stake.

It was. So that's what I would say. The future of mutant kind was at stake. Here, I mean, this is just about father-son love, marriage. This is basically only San Francisco's problem. You know what I mean? Yes. And so I enjoyed it.

I don't know how feasible it is to see more of this in comic book movies, though. Just because people go at this point. Sometimes these movies don't even have plots sean like we go for the spectacle and you can't wish more movies were like this i wish more comic book movies like had the here's the thing this whole movie only works because i want to watch tom hardy and venom the dissolution of their like marriage and them coming back together everything else like yeah carnage is like whatever but the whole every single time I was laughing like the moment where I will never see this in a comic book movie again where basically Eddie Brock realizes that he's

lost the love of his life he tries to commit suicide Venom saves him and then it's like i'm gonna patch up buddy don't worry and then he makes breakfast for him the next day i it's just even me describing that it's just it's the wildest thing ever and i'm just like oh i wish more comic book movies slowed down to be like no the thing you actually care about is the relationships in these movies even if it is between like a sweaty tom hardy and like a Venom. Like why can't more movies? I think Shang-Chi honestly would have been more successful if it just was a martial arts movie where they didn't have to show you this like CGI land with dragons. I tend to agree. Now, I think that there's a bigger question about whether or not comic book movies

would continue to be the center of popular culture if more comic book movies were like that. Obviously, the ingenious, continuous nature of the MCU films created this expectation. You guys have talked about this a number of times on the show, and I've talked about it with Mal and a few other people,

but I think the big, messy, world-threatening CGI conclusion to everything from the Avengers films to WandaVision makes it it makes it both predictable but also global stakes at every turn and that keeps people on the edge of their seat and looking forward to the story I I would like to have a few more of these it would be nice to have a few more of these but van i think your point is right too which is that the stinger in this film and maybe let's just talk about it very briefly before we start getting into more about sequels um this is a big spoiler warning if you have not seen this film and you do not want to hear about such a gigantic spoiler warning so just fucking cut the shit off right now if you don't want to hear

because it's big it's really i want to be responsible for your shit yes thank you for your rudeness van it's it's it's worthwhile in this case um so basically when the film ends we find eddie and venom together again and they've gone on vacation they've they've left

san francisco they're in a tropical locale of some kind and eddie is in his room and he's watching TV. And then his room transforms somehow into some sort of multiversal moment. You missed something. What did I miss?

Because Eddie's talking to Venom. Venom tells Eddie that he knew how everything was going to go because of all the things that his people have seen. His race of people. Yes, they're basically the symbiotes, and this is comic book accurate, they have a hive mind. So every single

symbiote thinks together and he was basically like to Eddie, like, you can't handle this. A human can't even handle like one-eighth of everything a symbiote knows. And then, Sean, you know. And then we see this room transformation. He's in the same room,

but what looks like at a different time of day, and it's more cleaned up, and the television is on, and on the television, we see J. Jonah Jameson's report that we saw at the end of the previous Spider-Man film revealing the true nature of Peter Parker, which sets in motion, I think,

what many people are expecting to be, this big collision of the multiverse and all of the Spider-Men and ultimately introducing Venom, Tom Hardy's Venom, into that world, which, now that I say it out loud, one, I sound like just a complete clown. Like, I can't believe this is my life. But two, I love this stuff.

And people in the theater when this happened were, as they often do, just screaming at the top of their lungs, losing their minds. The yelps of, oh shit. This has happened in, what, nine, 10, 11 Marvel films in the last 10 years.

Did you guys like this reveal? What do you think it means? Did it actually improve or worsen your feelings about the movie itself? Charles, why don't you start? I think in the moment, I was like, yes, this is what I want. A good Spider-Man versus Venom. I was there. I was with everybody. The more I thought about it, I was like, man, Venom was this corner of superhero movies that was untouched by the MCU. And here's the thing

about the MCU. I love them here's the thing about the MCU. I love them. When we're going to talk about sequels, the bulk of them are from the MCU. But I do think that like the competency of the MCU sometimes can be overbearing because it's almost like we know what the film's going to look like. We know it's going to have some level of quality. It might not be transcendent, but it'll be fine to go.

Venom, the last two films, I'm like, I don't know what I'm getting. This is one of those movies where I'm like, this can be the worst piece of shit I've ever seen, or I'm like, man, I don't want that. I know it's going to be successful. I know I'm going to cheer. It's going to be cool. But I almost wish that I had this pocket universe that I could just keep and could be dumb and could be frivolous. And it wasn't universe ending stakes. So I'm a little bit on the fence about it.

Am I being a hater? Am I being a hater, guys? No, you're not. This is what I would say. Obviously, I was very excited for the moment. I think that, to Sean's point, you would think that Marvel had run out of tricks in their bag. You'd think that it was impossible

after seeing Cap summon Mjolnir, after, on your left, after On Your Left, after all it is for Marvel to do it again, but they keep doing it. They keep doing it. They keep doing it, and they did it again. I think it depends on this in terms of the future of that entire thing

and how I feel about it. I'm not sure how Venom works in Spider-Man's world. I am sure though, how Spider-Man works in Venom's world. Now there are hazy details out there as to whether this means that Venom will show up in Spider-Man no way home, which if he is in Spider-Man no way home means every single comic book character that's ever been created is in Spider-Man No Way Home.

The movie is going to be six and a half hours long, 15 different lights. So Spider-Man No Way Home is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Or I am particularly curious for a Venom movie set in a new universe that involves Spider-Man. And those two things are very different to me. They're not exactly the same. Also, I'll give you something else. If you watch the Mobius trailer, you see in the Mobius trailer, Michael Keaton's character as Vulture. Well, you'd assume that that takes place in the same universe, not necessarily

as Venom, but in the same universe where Peter Parker is because that's the one in which Vulture is incarcerated. So Sony actually has an opportunity to make a universe that is not in the MCU, but more directly adjacent to it. And I'd like to see how those tones kind of match up. Because to make Venom, to keep Venom around, they were going to have to find a way to bring Spider-Man into his orbit. He's too connected to Spider-Man. Spider-Man is too big a deal for him. So they were going to try to do that. So I'm, once again, Marvel has me curious about not the story itself,

but the execution, which is something I think that they do very well. Yeah. You raise some interesting points there because, you know, historically in the Spider-Man story, Eddie Brock is not a San Francisco resident. As I recall,

he's a, he's in New York, just like Peter. Yeah. And his origin story is not a San Francisco resident as I recall. He's in New York just like Peter. His origin story is him being a journalist who was disgraced and that's why he hates Spider-Man. Exactly.

He has done work for the Daily Bugle and has been discarded and he has resentment towards Peter Parker and thus they have this kind of feud. So they have to kind of,

they have to, I don't know about retcon, but they have to rearrange some things to get him out of San Francisco and get him into Peter's orbit somehow. So it won't be the true Spider-Man Venom story the way that we know it from the comics, but it'll be something like that. I look forward to it. I think it's fun. It's starting to feel like, well, let me say this first. One, we're recording this on a Friday, so we don't know what the box office receipts are

going to be on Venom, Let There Be Carnage. But on Thursday night, the movie made $11 million. That's more movie than Shang-Chi made. That means this movie is going to be a hit. So Venom Let There Be Carnage, which has moved its release date around quite a bit, it's a complicated time for theatrical-only releases. It's probably going to make a lot of money, which means one, there's probably going to be another Venom movie, and two, Venom is now going to be very important to the MCU. That's fascinating. Venom has a tone that is unlike any other MCU movie or any other Spider-Man movie.

Secondarily, starting to feel like the Spider-Man movie could be, if not the biggest comic book movie of all time, certainly up there. I don't know. Has there been even close to this much anticipation for one of these films since Endgame? It doesn't feel. Has there been even close to this much anticipation for one of these films since Endgame? It doesn't feel like it. Not even that.

I wouldn't be surprised if it gets right up to Endgame numbers wise because the trailer already broke the record. Actually, this is a movie question I have for you, Sean. Do you think when it comes to Venom being a part of the MCU you do you think that's more

on Kevin Feige and co wanting that or that's more of Sony being like hey look we're loaning you Spidey it behooves you guys to keep us happy like I don't know if it was like it's obviously mutually beneficial but I could see Feige just as easily being like, I don't know if I want to deal with like Mobius and all of the stuff that you guys are doing. I think we're purely speculating here, but I would say one Feige's masterstroke was brokering that deal with Sony. That's that was ultimately,

that was the clincher for the project that they were doing. Two, if it were Morbius becoming a part of the Spider-Man story and then the MCU, I'd be like, this feels like Sony is trying to get involved. Venom actually, considering where the MCU is going to have to go in the future, which is to say integrating Deadpool,

figuring out a way to get the X-Men story, which is a little bit more sophisticated by the standards of these comic book stories, into that world. They know that they have to go into R-rated territory. They have to go into a more violent territory. Venom Let There Be Carnage is extremely violent. I can't believe, I actually, when I was interviewing when i was interviewing circus i said man how did you get

an r-rated movie made and he's like this movie's not r it's pg-13 i was like what how is this movie pg-13 anyhow um i think feige knows that there has to be a kind of evolution and that venom in the new phase not even phase four but phase five is going to make a lot more sense being a part of that world so So I wouldn't be shocked if it was mutually beneficial between them. You know, if we want to get into like Silver Sable and Kraven the Hunter

and all the other characters that are going to have to come in, that feels like Sony's going to want to make those characters successful and standing alongside. That's my thing. I could see Feige being like, yeah, I want Venom. That makes sense. When we get a Kraven movie, I could see him be like like, yeah, I want Venom. That makes sense. When we get a Craven movie, I could see him be like, hey,

y'all again a little bit too. No, Craven's coming. Craven's coming. Yeah, that movie. No, I know Craven's coming.

I think, yeah, Feige might be like, y'all getting a little too comfortable. Keep Craven over there. Like, don't mess with them. We shall see.

I mean, once again, I think Aaron Taylor Johnson is playing Craven. It's like a legitimate awards nominated actor is playing this character. So everything is up for grabs. We'll see. I still, once again, I think Aaron Taylor Johnson is playing Kraven. It's like a legitimate awards-nominated actor is playing this character. So everything is up for grabs. We'll see.

I still, I have not heard any word of Namor. Who owns the rights to Namor? Oh, no. Namor is in Black Panther 2. Is that a fact? Mm-hmm. Who's playing Namor? Who's playing Namor?

The guy, beautiful guy. Who's playing Namor? Namor is in- Tanook Huerta. sorry if i got that if i put you yeah name or is it black panther too i had no idea but here's the thing about that though technically technically uh in the past you couldn't have done that because name was a mutant first mutant yeah so you in the in the past uh you could argue that apocalypse was the first mutant but like whatever uh but but in the past you couldn't have done that because he was a mutant and if you were going to call him a mutant that would have been technically fox's playground but now is not an issue so name more name more is coming name name more was gonna work perfectly in the mcu though i agree he can canonically kind of pre-2000 he was one of the few characters who would basically you know worked alongside the avengers fantastic four and the x-men very few characters could say

that they had done all three of those things so he's important a very one of the very few characters that was allies of all three of those groups and at times at cross purposes or enemies with all those groups especially with black panther the sworn enemy of wakanda so i think that's going to be pretty interesting too sean i didn't know sean sean's getting in his comic book i didn't i didn't realize that look man i i didn't realize that sean you were like that we had this many separate things now when i watch a movie because of sean i watch all the making of shit i mean all the backs i watch everything now because i'm like i'm not gonna get on another one of these fucking pods and have sean go well i talked to the second assistant

and you'd have to understand what they think about the movie. God damn it. I got shunned again. We have the midnight boys here and I'm more of like a 6 p.m. boy. You know what I mean? I'm trying to get into the underbelly of the movie telling. Okay. So let's talk

about some sequels. Comic book movie sequels. I think if we had tried to do an episode like this 10 years ago, it would have been the dumbest episode of all time because we would have been talking about the second Ghost Rider movie and wasting our breath.

But now, given everything that's happened, you know, Charles, you pointed it out with the MCU. A lot of these movies will talk about our MCU, but not all of them.

We have this plethora. It's a new subgenre of movie, the comic book movie sequel. So I want to hear, I want to hear your lists. I'm going to, I'm going to let you start, Charles. What's your, what's your number five favorite comic book movie sequel. So I want to hear your lists. I'm going to let you start, Charles. What's your number five favorite comic book movie sequel? My number five is going to get at me,

but it has to be Avengers Infinity War. I think this movie, I think it's better than Endgame. I think this was the movie where, for a while, I could argue that the Avengers movies were cool, but they hadn't gotten to that level where I'm like, oh, this is the entire Marvel universe. This feels like what it feels like to read an Avengers comic book or an event comic book where everybody shows up in it. And when I was in the theater, this movie made me cry. I was going, oh shit. I was screaming.

I was just like, what is happening? And it's just, it's a perfect, perfect comic book movie. And I think the fact that they pulled it off, none of the CGI looked too janky. All the characters look real. The characters standing next together, Black Panther, Captain America, Winter Soldier, everyone, no one looked out of place. Everybody looked like this was one connected universe. I can't speak highly enough of this movie. It was amazing. This is my number three. Van, you're hating on Infinity War?

Not at all. Not at all. So this is my thing about Infinity War. I am a greatness is measured in moments guy. Right? So I believe that greatness, a lot of people think about greatness is about consistency wrong none of y'all talk about fucking fred mcgriff so get out of here uh like everybody like everybody says greatness is measured now greatness is about moments moments

you can have great moments if you string enough together you're great infinity war is great it's amazing overall it's probably better but the moments in endgame all the moments in game are in the last half hour i don't give a god damn all right it don't even matter last half hour and the first like two hours i can argue don't really I was crying get out of here Van I cried in the film so I'd say I put Endgame

before that but I digress I'll get to my number five yeah wait wait wait really quick before Van gets to

his number five Sean did you realize that Van thinks that Endgame is a better movie than The Matrix that's not what I said what

you did say that don't lie that's not what I said don't lie don't lie that's not what I said. What? You did say that. Don't lie. That's not what I said. Don't lie. Don't lie. That's not what I said. You're backtracking because we're on the movie park. No, I didn't.

That's not what I said. You said that. I never said that. You said if one had to go, it would be The Matrix. It would not be Endgame. No, no, no, no, no. I said, no. I said if one had to go, it would be The Dark Knight.

Oh, that's even worse. What? Yeah. So, wait, wait, wait. So, I did a one had to.. So I did a one gotta go. You saw it. I saw it. Okay.

And so in that one gotta go is the Dark Knight. So for the listeners, what were the four options you provided? This was the four options in my one gotta go. All right. It was, and it's an impossible one. It's the Matrix, Endgame, the Dark Knight, and the Empire empire strikes back what what is this like you were just trying to break up you were literally trying to destroy the one gotta go premise by doing that because anybody who likes any of those movies likes all of those movies they are

a like-minded set of movies now i i don, I honestly don't think you could have said any of them. Gotta go. And I would have felt good about it. But the one that probably ultimately has to go is Endgame. I'm sorry to say. There's three of the greatest movies of all time. And then there's Endgame. Endgame can't go.

But you can't go if you love the MCU. Because Infinity War is right there. Van Dear number five. We're digressing on... My number five is a complete choice from the heart. Okay. And it's only because I don't want Tim Burton's Batman run to be left out. My number five is Batman Returns. That's my number two, Van.

Oh, is that true? Yes. I love this movie. My number five is Batman Returns. Listen, I know you guys looking back on it you can't really like you don't want to it's hard to put yourself back in the frame of it so fucking huge i personally think and we're going to actually do a run of these movies later on i personally think a movie that has been underrated and i think is really really well done

expands on gotham city expands on the character of bruce wayne gives us a great villain to me two great villains max shrek as played by christopher walken um and uh the penguin introduces cat woman uh played by michelle pfeiffer who has the perfect back and forth and the penguin introduces Catwoman, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who has the perfect back and forth relationship, amazing onscreen chemistry with Michael Keaton. I have that at number five. I also think that in many ways, kind of the blueprint

to the modern superhero sequel in that it introduced multiple villains and multiple things for Batman to be concentrating on. It wasn't just kind of one thing. So I have Batman Returns at number five. I love that movie too. It's a great pick. I think you're absolutely right that it

sets up sort of the template for how these movies go. And I think that that template actually got kind of exploited and ruined. You know, by the time we get to Spider-Man 3 and the raimi series it's too many villains too many problems but i think this is also a movie where a filmmaker got to do his version of a comic book movie without this overweening concern from the owners of the intellectual property like this is tim burton's batman now taika waititi Waititi has his vision of Thor and he's been able to execute on it. James Gunn has his vision of Guardians of the Galaxy, but it is still very

much operating in Kevin Feige's world. When Burton was making these movies, Burton was making these movies. And the only sad part about it is we don't actually get to see what the third one looks like because he moves on, they move on, Joel Schumacher comes in, Batman Forever Happens, and it feels like we're living in a totally different Batman world. So it's a great pick. It's a great movie, especially for the production design and the performances. There are very few comic book movies that look that good

and that have that impressive a kind of transformation from almost every single actor taking on one of those big parts. I dig that one. My number five is Logan. We talked about it already. Logan is on a pure filmmaking basis

one of the very best made comic book movies. That's because it's made by James Mangold, who of course had made previous Wolverine movies that frankly I did not think were very good. But... Oh, you didn't like the Wolverine? I want to see the version that is not screwed up by the studio. That's my take on, that's my take on,

on that movie. Um, I just think, um, similar to Venom, let there be carnage where it's like, we're just going for ourselves here. We're not really ultimately worried too much about anything that happens until we get to that,

that stinger moment. Um, they got to make the movie that they wanted to make and you can tell, and you can tell because it was kind of a closing act. This is the only one of these movies on my list that is a closing act. And ending stories is really hard. You know, Marvel is not going to end very many stories because we're still talking

about is Steve Rogers ever going to come back? Is this person ever going to come back? Cause we can't let go that movie. Like it let go. It let go of Hugh Jackman is that character let go of that moment in storytelling. So I'm a huge fan of Logan. It's amazing. It's a, it, it,man as that character, let go of that moment in storytelling. So I'm a huge fan of Logan. It's amazing.

It's a, it, it, boy, does that movie drag you across the emotional coals though? That's one where you're like you, it, it takes all the horrors and all the, how can I put it?

Every single thing that could happen with those characters that could go wrong, it puts you in a world where it did. Like where Professor X has lost his control, worst case scenario. Where Wolverine's adamantium is poisoning him, worst case scenario. It's just everything.

Wolverine actually having to connect with somebody and his last saving him looking inside of himself, everything that these characters dread, it throws it right at you and lets you have it all at the same time. And man, did it do a good job of, of setting that world up?

No, I love the movie. I love when you realize that they wrote comic books in this universe about the X-Men and how sad it is that they're gone, that it's just like Wolverine, Professor X left. I was like, damn, he did it. What a great pick, Sean. Can I go to my number four? Please do. I'm cheating. I'm cheating. I would say the thing about my number four is that what makes a great comic book sequel is I think that especially early before we get to the later stages of the MCU,

comic book sequels were a lot of times better than the original because the first has to get all the goofiness out. It has to introduce viewers to a world that you can believe in. And even the actors sometimes, you can tell they're trying on the suit, whether it's like Christian Bale in Batman Begins.

He's not really Batman yet. And the audience is like do i buy this do i buy this world do i buy these characters and like even in the original x-men it's a little goofy the suits are a little bit goofy it's a bad movie it's not a bad movie let's not do that this is the big picture we're not gonna have our arguments our big picture i'm sorry x-men is a great movie so i'm doing two picks tied spider-man 2 and x2 because they are of a they're like to me they're like a great double feature because both of those movies honestly perfected the superhero movie for me as a child and it like showed how all of these actors after the original movies really really like watch their performances are like all right you know what we're like watch their performances are like all right

you know what we're gonna do the directors are like all right i get it the audience we're in these worlds already we're gonna take them on a journey we're going to go back to the comic books we're gonna make thematically rich movies and i think spider-man 2 and x2 as a double feature so spider-man 2 was probably my hardest cut i love spider-man 2 um i think spider-man 2 is obviously at the top of mind right now for a lot of fans because of uh recently seeing alfred molina in the trailer for the new spider-man movie x2 at the time of release i thought to myself wow we it it happened for us we the comic book fans got the kinds of movies that they want to get. And then I revisited it recently

and I thought it was pretty bad. Really? Yeah. And maybe that's just a function of it being 20 years later and maybe the film doesn't look as good as I want it to. Maybe it wasn't as sophisticated about the outcast point of view

that I thought Bryan Singer had at the time. Maybe it was just my Bryan Singer lens knowing more about who he is and what's been what's been written and said about him in that time that could be a factor too i take all of it under consideration but i think we've just evolved a little bit as viewers of these movies and whereas batman returns does not feel like it has aged to me it feels like a singular work of creativity next to i don't know do i have my teenager lenses on? Is it because I saw the movie as a teen? No, I have a number 4 too.

Do you? So make your case. No, I have a number 4 too. So make your case for it. The first case is we waited with bated breath for the movie because we knew that the first one was bad. But listen,

X2 still remains as a, was a maybe one of the most important comic book sequels ever um because and i don't have superman 2 in here and i'll explain why i don't even though superman 2 is a great fucking movie all right recipes richard donna just for the record it's my number four so i'll have a chance to talk about it shortly okay superman 2 is i don't have superman 2 in here but um but i think the reason why i have an end is because it's a movie that expands to charles's point on the promise of the first film and in many ways how the first x-men was unsatisfying to some people. X2 actually was very satisfying because it expanded on what Wolverine was, who Wolverine was, and what Wolverine could do. It grounded the X-Men in a world more... The great X-Men stories, as much as he's a fantastic villain, are not the

X-Men versus Magneto. They're not. The great X-Men are not the X-Men versus Magneto. They're not. The great X-Men stories are the X-Men versus humanity. And while you got some of that in the first one, I thought that Stryker served, at least in the X-Men film runs, as a much better antagonist

than either Magneto or whomever else. Apocalypse was just terrible as an on-screen villain for the x-men just like awful ridiculously bad uh even though he's one of their best comic villains i personally thought there was a more human movie the movie had more feel to it the stakes seemed bigger in the movie um and the desperation of the mutants to live their life i thought it actually hit on those things and whereas the first movie's action i thought was really lacking x2 had fantastic action the assault on the uh on the x mansion you know the the ending set piece all of these things

i thought opening with nightcrawler when i was the opening with Nightcrawler the opening with Nightcrawler the opening with Nightcrawler that's the assassination on the president in the White House when they send Nightcrawler he's being controlled by Mastermind and they send him at the but anyway so I thought that

all of that stuff really really worked so I still have it in that as one of the few times that a sequel was better than its predecessor uh but my number one is another one of those situations where a sequel was better than its predecessor um it's it's interesting maybe i'll watch it a third time in in three years but i feel like one of the weird things about the x-men films you know many of which were very successful is the films were better when they were not

interpreting the greatest storylines in the runs history absolutely like Days of Future Past is okay you know X-Men Age of Apocalypse is bad the Dark Phoenix Saga interpretation is bad I mean there's two they screwed it up

both of them are not good and Dark Phoenix because interpretation is bad. I mean, there's two. They screwed it up twice. Both of them are not good. And Dark Phoenix... Well, you need, because you need four movies to do it. Like, you can't do it like they're trying to do it. And I love you, Simon. Like, you, they can't do it like they tried to do it. Yeah, I mean, it's a testament to the challenge of telling some of the X-Men stories

that, the stories that we love, all the Chris Claremont stuff, like, all that stuff that had been, that took a year to tell, you couldn't do in these contained segments. I wonder if they'll change that now that they're going to be part of the X-Men. Sean, really quick, do you think Feige,

Van and Sean, do you think there's any way Feige tries to do Dark Phoenix Saga or he's like never again? He eventually will have to. I mean, 10 years from now, maybe? Yeah, maybe 10 years from now, yeah. He'll eventually have to.

He'll eventually have to. He'll eventually have to. I don't think they touch it. I don't think they touch it. I mean, I think we're all kind of fascinated how they position those characters and what they end up doing with those characters. But we'll see. It might make sense 10 years from now

to not be movie characters, to be TV characters, to make the Sopranos for comic books with the X-Men. That might be really the way to tell that story. I love that side. Oh, yeah, I love that. I'll talk quickly about Superman 2. I think Superman 2, for me, is probably like your X2, Charles.

I was just really young when I saw it, and it just made a huge impression on me. It's actually very similar to the Let There Be Carnage thing, where there's a lot of extremely gifted and celebrated actors in this very silly Superman movie. Terrence Stamp out here crushing Azad.

He's amazing in this movie. Still has the best movie that any villain has ever said to anybody else. Why do you talk to me like this when you know I will kill you for it? Like Lex Luthor is popping his shit at Azad and Azad just can't understand. Like who are you talking to?

Like why do you talk to me like this when you know I'll kill, like, who are you talking to? Like, why do you talk to me like this? You know I'll kill you. Like, who are you? It's just, it's great. And it's just one ingredient in this amazing stew of acting. And at the time, I think, you know, impressive special effects. You know, really great movie storytelling. You know, the story behind Superman 2 is just as interesting as the movie itself.

You know, the fact that the original film was green interesting as the movie itself. You know, the fact that the original film was greenlit as was the second film. The first film was being made. It was a bit of a complicated production. The studio began to distrust the late, great Richard Donner

who just passed this year. And they took the second film after he completed the first film away from him and gave it to Richard Lester, also an incredibly gifted filmmaker in his own right, but probably not the right person

to be making a Superman movie. His version of the movie is good. The Donner version would have been even better. There's since been a recut and resurfaced Donner cut of the movie that you can watch. Doesn't have all of the effects kind of finished, but you can still see what his vision was. So it's this interesting Hollywood history curio. But Reeve as Superman, one of the all-time great casting choices ever. Hackman as Luther is perfect. And Margot Kidder is one of the great Lois Lane. So just pure ingredients, and then you

sprinkle on Terrence Stamp, like you said. All these great little supporting figures, Susanna York, E.G. Marshall, Valerie Perrine, really great and gifted Hollywood actors that shows you that it didn't take the MCU to get people like this interested in comic book movies. It was happening in the early 80s. So Superman 2 is a super fun one. I'd argue that all of those characters, all of those actors ruined those characters. Because nobody could ever play them again.

I think so. Like Hackman, Hackman is too perfect. Superman busts into his subterranean lair and he says hey just to let you know

my lawyer will be in contact about the damage to the door most powerful man in the universe is standing in front of him most powerful man in the universe standing in front of him

just booked Lex is not scared at all I'm gonna sue you because you broke down the door to my subterranean subway lair he's just like even

Ned Beatty. You know what I mean? Like, all of that stuff. Just amazing. Anyway. It's a great film. Okay, number three. My number three, Thor Ragnarok.

And it's just because I think it's the comic book movie that's gotten closest to, like, one of my favorite comic book artists of all time is Jack Kirby. And they've never, like, he is just as instrumental to comic books as Stan Lee. But visually, it's always been very, very hard

for them, like, look at Zack Snyder's movies, to get his characters right. And shout out to Taika Waititi. He takes all of that Jack Kirby energy and makes one of the best, poppiest comic book movies ever. And I can't speak enough about

just like visually watching that movie for the first time. Being like, this is the Thor movie I want. This is the New Gods movie I want. Give me more of this. I love Thor. Where are you guys at on Love and Thunder? Are you excited? Over the moon.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. It's very sad for me that I couldn't have Ragnarok in my top five. Why could you have Ragnarok in my top five. Why could you have Ragnarok in your top five? Because three other movies

just are more important than Ragnarok to me. Are you going to have a wild choice? We're going to be like, what are you doing? This is not better than Ragnarok. Are you sure?

I mean, you guys might think that this choice right now isn't better than Ragnarok, but I have to put it here. What's the choice? At number three for me is Avengers Endgame. It's a great film.

I'm a fan. Number three for me is Avengersgers endgame it's a great it's a great film i i'm a number number three for me is avengers endgame better movie better movie than thor ragnarok it's not but we're talking about better sequel stop so it's like so understand that when i say sequel we're talking about the culmination of a decade plus of hopes dreams and fantasies right we're talking about like moments that are so absolutely epic that you had man look the arc light was rocking we weren't at a film man we. We were at a fucking concert. It seemed like the arc was a black theater. We do this with every movie in a black theater. We go to a black theater.

You could put on... I went to see House Party 2, and every fucking frame in House Party 2 was like Thor had grabbed the hammer. We just going crazy. Music, cute, domino. Get those slams. That was House Party 3. We going nuts.

You know what I mean? But Thor Ride the Rock, we. Domino. Get those slams. That was House Party 3. We going nuts. You know what I mean? But Thor Ride the Rock, we're in there. I'm looking at Kalika. She's crying. Thor grabs her. No fucking way. Ah! You can't recreate it.

Everybody's going nuts. It's amazing. I don't know if Marvel can do that again. I don't know if anybody can. Who knows? We'll see. But so for that type of spectacle, like for those characters

jumping out of the screen and into your soul, for you to care that much, once in a lifetime film experience. And so it has to go to number three. Now my top two are just straight up bar none better movies. So I have to have them there. But in game

for the experience, man, come on. That might have been the number one movie experience of my entire life. So I got to have them there but in game for the experience man come on that might have been the number one movie experience of my entire life so i gotta have it in my top five so i think that's actually true for a great many people it's obviously the most successful film by box office receipts in the history of all movies i i i just put infinity war for basically the same reason that charles did which it felt like, one, you can't have Endgame without Infinity War. Two, Infinity War

essentially changed the trajectory of the MCU. I think that not only did they put all of those characters on screen, but they maximized the universe. The things that they teased at in the Captain America films where you were like,

oh, wow, this is a big fight between a bunch of heroes. They on screen together it made it an even more significantly global event for lack of a better word interstellar event for lack of a better word and it does have a infinity war has a lot of moments i mean oh yeah the first the ebony moth showdown at the beginning of the movie you know thor forging the hammer and then returning to wakanda the big kill moment with thanos and then the snap like the pulling the stone out of vision's head yeah come on i was trying i will say in uh spider-man no way home i guarantee you they're probably gonna do toby mcguire like they did tom holland and we're gonna be balling they kill my man toby in that movie i'm going to freak out um like i don't know

i don't know what to expect with if there's any life or death stakes with any of those multiversal characters i'm not banking on it but there's one scene that i would there's one scene that i would love that they would include include with toby mcguire in the movie if they have all the spider-man sitting around playing a high stakes poker game you know i mean we we know we're getting the meme you know we know we're getting three spider-men pointing at each other so it wouldn't be shocking if we saw that do you know what do you know what uh only thing i don't like there's only one argument you made there sean and i don't like when you said you can't have in like in game without infinity war of course you can't you can't have any of these movies without Birth of a Nation.

So, like, it's like, so what is it? If Edison doesn't invent, like, you know what I mean? You can't have any of these films without Gone with the Wind. I think if we pursue that logic, we would probably end up with an episode of Higher Learning

and not an episode of Big Picture, so I'm not sure that I'm ready to do that. Sean never invited the in the midnight boys griffith park is named after him don't get at me griffith park is named after him that's all i'm saying it's a beautiful park better than central park if you're trying to lure me into some sort of a defense of dw griffith you will not get it here okay what do we say about number two what's number two i've already given my number two is batman returns charles what's your number two my number two is captain america the winter soldier interesting i just i love that movie i think it is one of the rare mcu movies that like actually just like works as a just a standalone movie even though it's a sequel

i've sat with people and be like you need need to watch Captain America, The Winter Soldier. And they're like, do I need to watch any of the other ones? I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, just watch this one. And they fall in love with it. I think that movie is just, it did something to me in the theater. And that was the moment with the MCU where I was just like, oh, like,

they have another gear that they can reach. I think the best MCU movies a lot of times, if these are superhero movies, they're the only movies we're going to get. I think the best MCU movies a lot of times if these are superhero movies are the only movies we're going to get. I love when they do a genre. I love when they do like a spy thriller. I like that Venom Let There Be Carnage is a rom-com. This is all we're going to get from now on. I would love if

more superhero movies were just genre movies. It's just it tickles at me. I love Captain America the latest movie. I like it too. I think maybe I am still bucking against the presentation of this movie as a 70s paranoia spy thriller, which is some of the all-time

movie bullshit we've ever heard. Really? Wow. This is why you don't come on the big picture and play ready to get slapped by Sean out of nowhere. I can pull Three Days of the Condor off my shelf here. You know what I mean?

It's not Three Days of the Condor. It's a cool movie. Of course it's not Three Days of the Condor. They can't make a Three Days of the Condor. Come on. You know what they mean when they say that, Sean. They mean it's a decaffeinated version of Three Days of the Condor. You can't make Three Days of the Condor

in the MCU. Why not, though? The thing you can't make three days of the Condor in the MCU. Like, then nobody's going to think. Why not, though? That's the thing you can't answer for me and the thing that no one will answer. And maybe we'll see with the Eternals because I feel like the Eternals is going to try to do some stuff

that we've never seen before in these movies. And if they don't, if Chloe Zhao can't get something crazy off the ground with that film, then it will never happen. There will never be a time because she's got more capital right now than anybody

that's come into a film like that. But, you can't tell me that they can't make a smaller contained sophisticated drama in these films. They can do it if they wanted to. They can do whatever they want. They have a blank check. You're not allowing them, Sean. Come on. It's not...

It is that, and then it's also... So, when you're... When the characters have so much on their backs and there's so many expectations, I think the best thing about movies like that is they thrust you into a world and they set these rules up all in the first act, and then you just go by those rules. Well, the problem with a lot of comic book movies

is that we've been taught the rules since we were five years old. And what we're actually, as comic book fans, we're not waiting to fall into a plot and get lost in this taught spy thriller. We're waiting for you to break the rules. We're waiting to go, hey, fucking Falcon would never do that. You know what I mean? And so sometimes it actually hampers what people are allowed to do think about this think about the last jedi man like they try to do it in the last jedi made a completely like a good movie and the fucking fans said no and then disney just went

with disney punted like fucking thomas morstead did like disney just went like disney went we are fucking out y'all do whatever the fuck y'all want to do i think they had david spade come in to direct that last movie like they weren't even fucking trying like i mean no no i love jj but you watch the last movie it's like okay whatever you guys want you know what who bring palpatine back you hate him so i i think sometimes the whole thing it it's like they're a victim of the success and the mythology of their characters now i do agree that they could do it but i think they could do it with smaller characters that the audiences aren't as familiar with like they can do whatever they want with

moon knight yeah whatever they want with moon knight they could do whatever they want with Moon Knight. Yeah. Like, whatever they want with Moon Knight, they could do whatever they want with Moon Knight, right? They can. I hope you're right, and I have all the faith in the world in Ethan Hawke to challenge the conventions of some of the ridiculous storytelling that could happen in a show like that. But I don't think that they will. We've seen...

Why was there a CGI fight at the end of WandaVision, yo? Like, why did that happen? Nope, but don't get me started. You were going to get in trouble, because I said Hey, this is whack. You're going to get the midnight writers on your back, Sean. You're going to get me in trouble. I said, I said, hey, they shouldn't have done that. They were inventive from day one, doing all kinds

of crazy shit. They had it, and they lost it. It was no fucking reason for them to do it like they did it they fucked it up in the end but they but they they kind of they got to give us milk and cookies bro scared money don't make none that's what i say look at that vibe um number two man what's your number two man uh my number two is the dark knight so what is your number one there's a better so for full disclosure charles and i both chose

the dark knight as number one not only one of the greatest comic book movie sequels of all time not only one of the greatest comic book movies of all time but arguably one of the greatest movies of all time and there is a movie in front of the dark knight on your list and i know van is about to be on his bullshit and i'm about to i'm about to get really mad no No, my number two is The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight is still one of my all-time favorite movies. It's epic. It's dark. It's brooding. It's psychological.

It's not really a superhero movie is my knock against The Dark Knight. My knock against The Dark Knight is it's not really a superhero movie. The Dark Knight is a psychological thriller with superheroes in it. We just talked about this. We just talked about the Winter Soldier movie bullshit with the directors being like, it's actually one of these. No, it's not.

No, that's what they said, but that's what it's not. Okay. Then there's a man running around in a bat costume throughout the scene. Like, can you please land this plane for me? I'm landing the plane right now. What I'm telling you is that

The Dark Knight, first of all, is much more about, it's about things and themes that superhero movies don't traditionally touch on, which made it, was what made it so great as a mainstream non-superhero movie.

But in terms of a superhero movie itself, I think all three of those films are outliers to the genre. I really believe this strongly, especially when you come back. Batman Begins, a little bit more paint by numbers. But when you come to Dark Knight Rises, now we're squarely in the world of almost cataclysmsmic post-apocalyptic human resistance feel. Like think about it.

Bane takes over the whole city and puts the cops like the movie's got a completely different feel. So The Dark Knight

is by far the best movie featuring superheroes that's ever been made. But as a superhero movie I put it second to one movie that I think is a better superhero movie

can you please tell us what the number one movie is Winter Soldier come on come on what Winter Soldier is the greatest superhero sequel ever made I

admire your commitment to the bit what there admire your commitment to the bit. What? There's no commitment to the bit. Winter Soldier is the greatest superhero sequel ever made. Wait, answer me this question, Dan. Is there one actor who is better in Winter Soldier than Heath Ledger

is in The Dark Knight? No. Is the story in The Winter Soldier better is the story in the winter soldier better than the story in the dark night can i make my case is the direction better badgering me johnny cochran like can you can i make my case before you start badgering me jesus christ you're embarrassing the midnight boys I'm not embarrassing anything. Can I make my case? Make your case. This is my case. All right.

So, obviously, rest in peace, Heath did his thing to the nth degree. I remember when I was out here in L.A. And I was like, man, I hope Heath Ledger can bring us a Joker. And one of my friends who had seen the screener went, no. Heath Ledger is the Joker. I was like, he's better than Jack? He was like, bruh, Jack is Jack, and Jack is amazing, but this is different.

Like, you're not going to believe this. And he was right. This is why I say Winter Soldier is a better superhero movie. The Dark Knight is really not about Batman, right? It's about the world that Batman is thrust into and the things that Batman has to come to terms with dealing with all of these different deals. And that's fine. When you do Batman, the movie and you take Batman and all the mythos around Batman, we're not in a bat cave. We're not in Wayne Manor. He's lost so area, and there's one guy trying to stop all of it.

That's fine. That works. To me, Winter Soldier is an expansion of the character of Captain America. It's an expansion and a changing point uh to the mcu it is the introduction of the russo brothers into the mcu an introduction that ended up being incredibly instrumental in the future of the mcu it was sort of it was the death of shield in a superhero movie when we're talking about the stakes of not just the characters in it, it made Captain America a bigger character. It sharpened the focus of Captain America.

It really, in many ways, it became the origin story of Captain America. In a lot of ways, the Dark Knight is the death of Batman and Winter Soldier is the birth of Captain America. Like, even the Batman that we saw in Dark Knight Rises, like, that guy really was still trying to find himself after retiring after the Dark Knight.

So the movies themselves, there's no absolute, there's no doubt that the Dark Knight is better than Captain America Winter Soldier. But the thing here is, what's a better superhero sequel? And when I say superhero sequel, I think that Winter Soldier establishes more. It goes further with Steve's character, and it ushers in more things. It's a more important superhero sequel than The Dark Knight is. That's my take on it that is an elegant thoughtful eloquent deeply considered passionate plea with a wrong take

i'm i'm happy to say get him get him uh i i i like the way that you're you're envisioning it which is that what does this do for the, what does this do in relation to the previous film? And then what does this do for the future of the films? I think that there's, that makes a lot of sense to me. I just, I watched the Winter Soldier and I know it's beloved among MCU diehards.

And I know it's widely considered one of the best movies in the series, but I just don't think it really holds up as well. When you look back at what they've been able to do with the Infinity War and Endgame thing, I think it actually feels a little bit slight to me personally and i i guess that's becoming an increasingly blasphemous take but it's just not a movie that works for me as much um nevertheless it's number two for you charles it's number one for you are you sure you don't want to like last minute you have a chance to change you could change go back

to the dark knight number we could all agree on the dark knight number one no no here's the thing i will say this i was i was a winter soldier and i was fucking when i left the movie i was fucking blown away sean can i ask you this i have a i have a dark knight question do you think that the dark knight ended up doing more damage to just superhero movies and what i mean by that is like, I feel like that is the movie that it was just like, oh, it's capital I important. Like Heath Ledger is doing this thing. Superhero movies are here to stay.

And now we are kind of like in this mode where like every superhero movie has to be important. It didn't, no, I think it's the opposite. I don't think it did anything bad for superhero movies. I think it only contributed positivity to superhero movies.

What it did bad to was Hollywood. Yes, that's a better... And the Academy. That is the movie that broke Hollywood because the dip in ratings the year that the film was not nominated

for an Academy Award led to a series of changes that have been ongoing over the course of the past 13 years. Those changes reveal an insecurity at the highest levels

of Hollywood that if they are not speaking to the fan, the fan, frankly, that Van was talking about when he was talking about The Last Jedi and the way that kind of Hollywood has to cower to those fans now. And I'm one of those fans. So it's, you know, I know from which I speak. The fact that there is a fear and an insecurity that is motivated by that basically changed the landscape of filmmaking, not just what kind of movies were being made, but what kind of movies were considered important. And it created a line of demarcation.

There was this expectation that by expanding the Academy pool to 10 films, that we would get more comic book movies and kind of mainstream adventure and sci-fi entertainments in that mix. The opposite has happened. Now the Academy has retreated to recognizing largely smaller films,

which has meant frankly more kinds of people can be celebrated for their work but it is shrinking down the importance of those movies

and making it a zero-sum game with the comic book world. It's been very bad for Hollywood. Doesn't matter though. The Dark Knight is a good movie. I love The Dark Knight.

It's unimpeachable. That movie is like Sean said one of the best movies just of all time. We're not talking about superhero movies. And for Van to get on this podcast with that bullshit,

we might have to have a midnight court. Because I'm appalled. I'm going to lose if we go to midnight court. It's something I like. Look, by the way, Sean, you know, a lot of the things that you're saying are correct. I'm in no place right now to criticize said groups in Hollywood. I think that I brought up maybe have six more months and then i can maybe agree with

some of your takes you're in the pocket of big academy man i don't know if i can do that coming from inside the house and van standing with his author right now being like, y'all ain't going to talk bad about the Academy now. But what I will say is I do... That year was the Dark Knight and Iron Man. If I am... That's right.

If I believe. Oh, wait. It's the Dark Knight and Iron Man. And really, nothing has been the same ever since. It's like everything has changed. It broke our brains a little. And I'll be honest with you. I miss the old days a little bit.

I wish we could have both. I wish we could have both. But also, I sit down and I watch a movie. I always bring this up. Once a month, I watch, Charles, I don't know if you've ever seen this movie Tango and Cash you ever seen that? No you never saw Tango and Cash? see okay and so Tango and Cash

Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell rogue cops doing their thing they just don't make Tango and Cash no more they don't say hey here's a dope ass script we're gonna get two stars, make a movie, their charisma's gonna carry us hey, here's a dope-ass script. We're going to get two stars, make a movie.

Their charisma is going to carry us through. It's going to be ridiculous. It's going to be cool. It's going to be funny. It's going to be sexy. It's going to be slight. They just don't make those movies anymore. This is the old people's rush hour.

I got you. I got you. Rush hour is not as good as Tango and Cash. I'm going to watch Tango and Cash tonight, and we will have this argument. This is a whole other podcast that I would love to do with you guys. But I will say that a movie like Tango and Cash tonight and we will have this argument. That's the, this is a whole other podcast that I would love to do with you guys. But I will say that a movie like Tango and Cash,

like if you've never seen it, Charles, and if you watch it now, it will be like watching a completely different form of entertainment because the pacing of a movie like that, which at the time was a fast-paced, fun action comedy with a Harold Faltenmeier score,

now is going to feel like watching the Russian adaptation of War and Peace. Like it's not, things have totally shifted. But your bigger point, man, I'm with you 100%. I'd just like to have both. I'd like to have a world

where I can nerd out about Endgame and I can also get Basic Instinct. And I don't know why we can't have both in this culture. Okay, Sean. Okay. We got Sean in his bag in this episode. I really like this energy from Sean.

Listen, listen. I went to Tango and Cash and Sean went to basic. Okay, Sean. Yeah. Like a little Janine Triplehorn. Yeah. Much like you are demurring about the Academy, I will demur on Jane Triple Horn.

Big fan of her work. She's a quality actress. She is. The Midnight Boys, you guys really showed up for this one. This was a very special performance. If you guys are not listening to the Ringerverse, I hope you will tune in after hearing this. If you're not listening to Higher Learning or the Ringer Music Show, which is co-hosted

by Van and the Ringer Music Show is co-hosted by Charles, please check those out. Now let's go to my conversation with Andy Serkis. What an honor to be joined by Andy Serkis. Andy, thank you for being on the show today. Thank you. Great to see you. Andy, on the one hand, when I saw that you were attached to direct this film, I was not surprised at all, given the character work you've done and some of the films you've directed already.

On the other hand, Venom is an odd property with an unusual tone. Tell me how you became involved in the movie. Well, it all starts and ends with Tom Hardy, really. Tom and I have known each other on and off for years and years, circled around each other, wanted to work with each other. And about, well, a few years ago, he contacted me out of the blue and just said, Andy, I'm probably going to be doing this character in a Marvel movie and might be using performance capture. Can I come down to your facility and can I just experiment with some avatars? And I said, yeah, absolutely.

Come on. Didn't hear any more from him and just assumed that it wasn't happening or has been postponed as often happens with movies. Venom came out. I saw it. I thought, wow, what a great performance. That must have been what he was talking about. And then, you know, a year and a half, two years later on, I get another call out of the blue saying, Andy,

we're talking about who we'd like to direct for the next movie and we'd like to chuck your hat in the ring. How do you feel about that? And so I was like, yeah, I mean, this is a great opportunity and something that we'd been talking about for such a long time. And I think that the fact of the matter is, you know, Tom and I share a lot of kind of, our sensibilities are very similar in terms of character choices

and we're out there, physical, vocal characters, marginalized outsider, you know, we'd swim in the darker end of the swimming pool you know as it were so so so so it just seemed to be perfect that this would be the the film that we'd come together on you have a little bit of marvel experience did you have any relationship to this character did you know about the this world that you were going into well only that i'd seen the movie and i knew i, I was a big Spider-Man comic fan when I was a kid.

And, you know, so I knew, I knew of Venom. I didn't know too much about him. So, yeah, it was just an enormous pleasure to be able to join the story, like after the setup had been done, you know, like the origin story, I thought worked really great. But now I was getting to inherit

the work that I was having to do was the enjoyable part, which is to see this relationship and evolve that relationship and the fun and the dysfunctionality of that relationship, plus introducing one of the great, you know, Marvel Universe, cinematic comic book super villains in Carnage.

And work again with Woody Harrelson, who's a very good friend of mine from having worked with him on the Apes movie. So having him as Cletus Kasady, it's such an embarrassment of riches to start playing with, really. So you mentioned that Tom came to you to talk about potentially developing some work around motion capture and the avatars. You know, it seems like there's an elevated version of his performance in this movie, the relationship with the symbiote. It's sort of like almost Buster Keaton-esque kind of performance he has to give in this movie. Super physical, super responsive to an inanimate object or something that is not there. Obviously, you are world-renowned for your ability to do this. Did you do anything new or different from what Tom had done in the first film to kind of prepare for this or to kind of modernize how you might do that kind of performance?

Well, with Tom's, it's interesting because in the first movie, when you think about it, Venom is actually not present on screen very much. It's because you get his body is invaded by the parasite, as he describes it, you know, and a lot of it's internalized. And so Tom's process of creating Venom in the first movie was recording his lines because for him it was all about the radio play of it or you know sort of recording his lines and then being able to improvise freely over or not improvise but kind of banter with the venom character in his head so it's all about venom being in his head and and as i say in the first movie you only saw really the wraith character appear a couple of times most of the time it was it was it was eddie brock on screen but in this movie he's having to manifest completely,

you know, in a much more significant way. And he's in the movie a lot. And Venom really has to act in this, as does Carnage. These two symbiotes really have to act. So in terms of the process, it was still driven by the audio, the, the, the, the radio play for Tom, but, but what we would do was we, we had someone on set B then and sort of for the scenes when it was when, you know, a big guy with a kind of to give him the right height and so on and so forth

and to get the kind of physicality of this lumbering great big creature in a small apartment, for instance. And then with Venom, we worked in this sort of development phase for Carnage, rather, to create an entirely different physicality. So we worked with dancers and parkour artists so that we could really examine the difference of these two forces of energy, Venom being a kind of very grounded Neanderthal, almost kind of very heavyweight wrestler slash American football player, a kind of gorilla crossed with a killer whale sort of energy. And then, you know, Carnage is more sort of slippery and kind of floating,

and he can change his molecular structure and has lots of tendrils and is much more sort of sea creature-like or octopus-like or squid-like in terms of the way he uses his tendrils. We didn't want him to just be bipedal. So all of these things, I suppose, were things that I started to investigate and draw from the comics as well. We had lots of panels, but we were constantly bringing up panels from the comic to use as reference.

And then the brilliant visual effects supervisor, Sheena Dougal, and working alongside our cinematographer, Bob Richardson, who's amazing and, of course, a genius. That combination of the three of us sort of working towards making these quite unforgiving symbiote characters come to life in a sort of photographing them in a sort of way that made them feel more real, I guess. That was the ambition, to make them feel, you know,

to light them in such a way that they felt that they were really real. Short focus so that the fall-off would be, they really blended into the environment more, things like that. So that all of that were the considerations that we were having when we were trying to bring them to life. So you mentioned Bob Richardson. I know you worked with him on Breathe, but tell me a little bit more about, because this is not a classical Bob Richardson film. This is somebody who shot Tarantino, Scorsese, Oliver Stone films over the years. He's obviously also world-renowned for his work, but a film with this much digital imagery, this much motion capture, this kind of style of movie, this kind of style of storytelling is different for him.

What was it like to collaborate with him on this? What kind of learning curve is there for a film with this much digital photography? Well, he was keen to expand his palette, but also I was keen for it to have a kind of classic kind of 80s, 90s feel as well. And, you know, and particularly the choice of colour and the saturation and the frame. You know, we changed the aspect ratio from the first movie so that it was a more, much more full frame

to allow the symbiotes to exist. But also, you know, the story just lent itself, for me, it just felt like it lent itself to that more, you know, that fuller frame, for sure. So those are the things that we talked about. But there are so many throwbacks to those kind of 80s thriller,

sort of the Cape Fears and the Natural Born Killers, which of course reunited Woody and Bob. There are those sort of elements. And then there's the sort of Beverly Hills Cop kind of, you know, the comedy, all of that stuff was sloshing around in terms of how we wanted to shoot it. And we referenced those and riffed off those kinds of movies. So Bob was perfect for that, you know. I felt a little bit of gothic romance and a little bit of Bride of Frankenstein in there, too.

Was that something, were you looking at things like that to kind of prepare for this? Yeah, absolutely. about this movie for me was was to have a really grounded psychologically real underpinned characters who are dysfunctional and have had you know a lot of it's about family and and the dysfunctionally the dysfunctionality of growing up in a in tough upbringings you know where where where parents are brutal and you know that a lot of the characters share that streak you know cletus and and um eddie so so to have that kind of underpinning then then to grow into a sort of operatic as you say sort of you know the melodic kind of quite melodramatic and and then the humor the sort of the slapstick humor having having the ability to to like a big pair of

bellows kind of go in and out from from reality to you know seeing cletus about to be executed on the by death by lethal injection then going into this this frankensteinian kind of moment of of carnage appearing it's it you're right you know it it it needed to it wanted to go that way. And also, the speed and the pace of the movie. This is a very fast-paced movie and a thrill ride. And you want to leave the audience a bit breathless, catching up with the speed of how things happen and how events overtake themselves. Yeah, I really... I mean, one, I loved that it was 90 minutes.

I feel like more films like this, especially sequels to these films where you don't have to lay all of this track. They, you know, if you were trying to make a thrill ride, it was really effective. It's also an R rated movie, which the first film was not. And you know, it's, it's, it's violent and intense. Well, it's, it's not an R rated movie. I i mean it's a pg-13 oh it is it felt but i'm glad you said that it felt like an art of me right we pushed we tried to push it as far as we

could but would stay within the you know within the the rules the in the mpaa rules of making it interesting what was it well so well tell me about that what was that like did you have to was there a lot of push pull then on what could make it across the line? Yeah, I mean, there were moments where we did go over, you know, over, and then we definitely got notes back saying, no, no, no, that's, you know, and that was a lot to do with Cletus and his kind of his aggression and some of the fights, some of the stuff, you know, the fighting and where it's human fighting, but also some of the stuff, obviously, with the symbiotes and what you can see and what you can't see and obviously blood and all of those issues but what we tried to do was you know leave the audience imagining what would often we'd cut away from something but the audience would think they'd seen it so that's that's that was the challenge

to to to make it feel for the fans who are true venom and Carnage fans so that we weren't shortchanging them. We wanted to push it as far as we possibly could. So I'm glad you felt that. You fooled me. Tell me a little bit about taking on a project with this level of IP management. It feels like it's complicated to take a little bit of ownership of a world like this and a character like this

that people have a huge relationship to. Plus, you're following up a successful film. How much of it is about serving like this and a character like this that people have a huge relationship to, plus you're following up a successful film, you know, how much of it is about serving the story and the character, but also the long-term potential and the kind of teasing that is required in a movie like this? You know, what was that experience like for you? Well, you know, I was, you know, I was slotting into a potential, you know, to a franchise that was going to have some sort of arc. So when Kelly and Tom had been talking about the story for this, they were obviously having other things in mind. You know, Kelly Marcel wrote the actual screenplay,

but she and Tom talked a lot about, well, they devised the story together. But obviously, you know, with another one in mind, should we be so lucky to do that or they should be so happy to do that so i mean the the you know you're you're aware that you're the custodians for this particular part of the journey and that and that you need to tee up things for for it to continue should it need to or want to or the appetite is there um and that's that's part of the job so you you accept that i mean and you, they're not simply standalone movies that are, you know, the director's expression of, you know,

the lifelong thing that he or she is the story that they're made. You know, you buy into that. Of course you have to. It's part of the nature of it. But it's such an incredible canvas to play with and to sort of, as I say, there's such an embarrassment of riches of things to enjoy about seeding and dropping Easter eggs in and teasing things and teeing things up for later on. It becomes part of the storytelling process. Tell me about how your work as an actor at this stage is informing your work as a director.

And what is your ultimate relationship to those two roles long-term for you? What I love about... When I've worked with actor-directors in the past, what's been great is that you immediately have a shorthand with your fellow fellow actors you know and and with the director because they understand that actually all the best thing you can do for actors is provide an atmosphere to do their best work and to feel free to create and

make mistakes and try to go down avenues and it's all in pursuit of you know a scene and and you know just trying things out or some people don't some people have a fixed idea and so it's all in pursuit of you know a scene and and you know just trying things out or some people don't some people have a fixed idea and so it's gauging what different actors requirements are and how they you know how they will bring their character to bear in a successful successful way and allowing you know different processes not to to harm or hinder each other but to work together so it's a complex kind of thing but i think you understand that inherently as an actor because you've done that a million times yourself so that's that's one thing um i mean i i've my career as an actor has sort of evolved you know hugely since working with

pete jackson basically and going back to that experience and what that opened up in terms of the whole world of visual effects and performance capture and, you know, and telling stories in that bigger landscape and, you know, working on big franchise movie. So, and which, which leaves me at the moment kind of wanting to do both.

I love acting and I want to continue acting. I like separating it from directing. I like, you know, rather than, I'm not, I don't see myself as one of those, those directors,

certainly not on the scale of these sorts of movies where I feel the necessity to be part of them. I like being, I like, I like whenever I like to play a character, I like to go deep into it and just bury myself in that. And then if I'm directing, I like the experience of working with an amazing team of artists,

musicians, you know, composers, production designers, visual effects artists, et cetera, et cetera. experience of working with an amazing team of artists musicians you know composers production designers visual effects artists etc etc you know and i like i like i love that that side of bringing a vision together using the best skills that everybody has so so that's sort of a rather long-winded answer to your question i guess it's a very good answer. What kind of other films do you want to make? You've made three, I think, fairly distinct and quite different movies from each other.

So how do you go about figuring out what you want to do? And do you have a checklist of any kind? I do, I do. I have, look, the next three movies, if I could, which I can't tell you about, but the next three movies that I want to make are all incredibly different. They're all.

And I think that's the thing, you know, for me as a director, I never kind of went into directing just to do, you know, I'm not, I'm not as a, as a,

you know, sometimes as an actor in early in your career, of course you have to take roles, you're a hired gun and you accept that. But I don't really don't feel that about directing i will only direct something that that i truly from from now on kind of want to do and and and you know there's a you reach a certain point in your life where there are certain there's a limited amount of movies that you can make because they take so long to make and so yeah i think but i definitely know

that this it's it's all about the stories for me now and and they are very very different movies and it's it's you know i don't want to be known for making a particular kind of thing uh but so it's it is about they are they are very different movies that i've made and i like that one thing i've always wanted to ask you ever since i first became aware of your work, was what your feelings are about, you know, specifically your role in some of the signature things

that you've done in your career in kind of demystifying an era of filmmaking and kind of in showing people how it's done and how on the one hand, there's an incredible amount of kind of technical and artistic skill that goes into the work that you do. But on the other hand, you run the risk of taking some of the magic away from people, I think, potentially.

You know, how specifically do you feel about that at this stage of your career, having done this kind of work for a long time now? That's a really good question. And I mean, the whole demystification and sharing of, look, we're living in a world, aren't we? I mean, the internet is all about sharing and we're maybe we, I think we probably do overshare to a huge degree, but there, there is, you know, for the,

for the film fans who really do want to know about the process of filmmaking. I think there's, there's something very valuable in that. And, and they, and I think Peter Jackson was, was, was kind of totally instrumental in in that in that sense of giving the story sharing the experience making making the audience feel part of the filmmaking experience as it's going

along so blogging and you know sharing you know week to week like when we were making like lord of the rings and you know just leaking out information so that, so that they're not information, but just like making them part of the family, I suppose. I think there's some value. I really do think there's value in that. Rather than,

you know, sort of keeping, keeping it all under wraps. But I do equally feel that, that, you know, you watch, you watch movies from years ago and you think how did buster keaton

how did he make the the general how did they get the train to go off the track how did they tie that to a real train go off but you know and you kind of marvel at that stuff and and you we did you know we didn't know that the rumors were in Ben-Hur that people actually got killed making that movie. There is something about it. I think there is some value to not oversharing, whether it's possible or not. It's very refreshing, isn't it, to go into a movie not knowing anything about it. There is. I haven't felt that way in a long time, honestly, given what I'm'm doing but it's an interesting thing i mean somewhat related to that yeah you're

releasing this movie into a complicated atmosphere right now for movies on the one hand this is a really anticipated movie to a successful you know launch of a new franchise on the other hand obviously we've been through something very unusual in the world for the last 19 months very very scary. How are you feeling about the kind of balance between how people are seeing the movie, the proposition of the theater experience right now? Hopefully with this movie, I think it's, I think it's, and I'm not just saying this, I think it's a perfect end of pandemic movie to go and see because it's short. You don't have to sit in the cinema for too long um it's it's it is entertainment and it's entertainment which has some you know it has some gravitas to it but on the whole it's it's you know it is this ride and and i think you know just being at some of these

fan screenings and just seeing the enjoyment uh and and people literally just you can sense this great relief at being shared, you know, sharing something together and eating popcorn and kind of, you know,

in between putting their masks up. But I do think, I do think it's, you know, there's a hell of a lot of great movies just about to come out now, as we all know.

There's a slew of great films. It's a great month. Yeah. You know, so I do think hopefully it'll it'll there'll be more relaxation and i don't think it'll be too long before you know hopefully but things will start to have some sort of it'll never be how life was before because we've learned so much and life doesn't really go backwards it can't you know you we've all been through something extraordinary in this this last year and a half um doing this even talking to you now

you know we'd be sitting in the same room talking to each other of course so so it's i i do i do i think this is a this you know we were supposed to release this movie a year ago but actually i think we benefited from from you know we were supposed to release this movie a year ago but actually i think we benefited from from you know a silver lining for this particular movie was that we had more time to work on the visual effects so you you have to you know the it's the art of being for filmmakers the art of pivoting throughout this whole experience has been something that everyone's had to do working with covid protocols and you know films being shut down you know but then then then then it becoming you know actually working very well and setting up protocols that

were very effective um huge learning curve for everyone but i do i do think we are it feels to me anyway maybe it's just because i'm hoping that people will go to cinema and see this and we are doing it exclusively in cinemas which is a big risk um but i do think it's i think it's just because I'm hoping that people will go to cinema and see this. And we are doing it exclusively in cinemas, which is a big risk. But I do think it's a film that's worth taking the punt to go out and see. And hopefully, the enjoyment will bring back that sense of what it is to share again. Out of curiosity, how, what was it like working on say the visual effects for the film during COVID? I imagine it was significantly different than the way you would have done it before that. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, everything, you know, I mean, we finished shooting Venom three weeks before everything went into lockdown. So I just started editing. My editor had to fly back to the States and I was doing it from home in my basement and we couldn't go into work. So I was, editing my editor had to fly back to the states and i was doing it from home in my basement we

couldn't go into work so i was so that we i was set up with a screen in my house and and everything was remote you know so editorial meetings i was working on la house london um we you know visual effects meetings where you'd normally be sitting in a room or seeing what the animators are doing going around and you know had to be done remotely i don't know i mean china doogle and barry hemsley who are the visual effects supervisor and visual effects producer managing all of these people working across the planet to bring these visual effects shots together is a remarkable achievement i didn't meet marco beltrami our composer once at all until the final mix where I got to go over and we sat together. And I was like, thank you so much.

You've done such an incredible job. We just talked a few times. And, you know, so you find your way around it and it is possible. But there's nothing like being in a room with other people that, you know, that level of kind of ideas and creativity that, that, that, that it just, you know,

we, where it's not as formal as being, seeing people in little boxes, you know, where you feel a little bit on show all the time. So you're eager to get, eager to get back to a slightly more traditional. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Andy, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you seen anything great lately? No, yeah, yeah, definitely. Andy, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen?

Have you seen anything great lately? You know what? I've seen a film recently that really blew my mind. And it's not a new film, but it was, I think it's two years old. It was a film by Ali Abassi and it was called Border. Did you ever see that film? Is it Swedish? Yeah.

Yes, I have seen it. Yes. It was the most... Talk about films not knowing what... I had no idea what this film was about, and I went in to see it, and it completely blew my mind. It was so unpredictable, so shocking,

beautiful and terrifying. I would highly recommend it to anyone if they haven't seen it. It's quite shocking. And I'm not going to say anything about it. It was only a small film. And it was written by, I believe it was the person who wrote Let Me In,

or Let the Right One In, rather, the story of that. And so, yeah, yeah. That film really sort of, yeah, did it for me. That's a great one. Andy,

I've been in my, in my reviews for a long time. So thanks for doing the show today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. Thank you so much to Andy Serkis. Thank you to Van Lathan and Charles Holmes, the Midnight Boys.

Thank you, of course, to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this epic episode. Speaking of epic, I hope you will tune in later this week on The Big Picture because a long-awaited movie is coming out. That movie, of course, is No Time to Die, and a long-awaited podcast discussion of our top five favorite James Bond films and what we think of No Time to Die is coming with Amanda Dobbins and Chris Ryan. We will see you then.