The Big Picture - ‘WandaVision’: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next With Mallory Rubin

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

The first entrant in Disney+'s MCU expansion into TV concluded over the weekend. 'Binge Mode' cohost Mallory Rubin joins Sean to talk about the finale, the theories that never paid off, the series' highlights, and what comes next for Marvel (0:17). Then, they discuss another new Disney release, the surprisingly great 'Raya and the Last Dragon' (1:01:00). Finally, Sean is joined by 'The Mauritanian' director Kevin Macdonald to discuss his new film (1:08:13). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guests: Mallory Rubin, Kevin Macdonald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join Justin Charity and Micah Peters in Sound Only as they discuss their deepest, darkest thoughts about the millennial lifestyle, rap music, video games, anime, YouTube, social media, and their underlying themes. Check out Sound Only on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about WandaVision. Today, I'm joined by a special guest, Binge Mode co-host, Ringer editor-in-chief, and one of my closest pals, Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mal. Sean, you are my sadness and my hope.

Oh my God, this is already off the rails. After the conclusion of this past season of Binge, Mal is, of course, a master of Marvel, so we had to have her on to discuss the conclusion of the first Disney Plus Marvel series and what it means for the future of the MCU. Speaking of Disney Plus, we'll also get into Raya and the Last Dragon, the latest Disney Animation Studios film, which was released on D Plus Premiere over the weekend for a cool $29.99. And then later in the show, I'll be joined by Kevin MacDonald, the director of award-seizing contender The Mauritanian, a drama about a Guantanamo Bay detainee, which stars Golden Globe winner Jodie Foster and an incredible performance Tahar Rahim. That film is available now to watch on VOD. Hope you'll stick around for that chat.

But first, let's talk about WandaVision. Mal, we caught the finale on Friday, or frankly for you and I, late Thursday night. That's right. We're going to talk about the series in full. This, of course, was a monumental series relative to the MCU, which is why we're talking about it here on The Big Picture. But first takeaways, how did you feel after you first watched the season finale of WandaVision?

What a question. Let me say first before I answer that question, which is my favorite thing to do, just divert immediately, that it already feels like a really long time ago. I agree. Which is strange. It feels like a hundred years ago since I stayed up on Thursday night to watch the WandaVision finale. And I was curious if you felt that way as well. Maybe it's the level of discourse around it, the amount of time spent thinking about it and discussing it. I rewatched it this weekend, so that probably exacerbated the sensation that the first viewing was a long time ago. So I say that all to say,

it's hard to even totally recall how I felt when I first watched it. I think I'm going to spend a lot of this pod trying to navigate my own response and also the narrative around the show. I will say broadly that I was a big fan of this season of WandaVision. Say that right at the top. Of course, given the level of theorizing

and anticipation, the mini monoculture moment that WandaVision enjoyed, how much time we all spent talking about it together, the fact that it was a weekly release and not a binge really fueling the water cooler-like nature of the weekly conversation. All of that led to a level of buildup that I think was almost definitionally difficult for the finale to deliver on. I'm also okay with that. That is broadly my feeling on the finale.

And I found that when I returned to it, I enjoyed it a lot more on second viewing because I was not spending every minute of the episode wondering when the cameo is going to come or running through X number of loose ends questions in my head. I was just enjoying the story between the characters who I had grown quite attached to by that point. How about you? So I felt very similarly. I know a lot of our colleagues who we talked to in the immediate aftermath also felt very similarly. We really

threw ourselves into WandaVision here at The Ringer. I'm glad that we did. I think... Me too. When I first saw the first three episodes of the show and then did a podcast about it, I had a little bit of a crisis of faith with my MCU fandom, I think. I think I misunderstood the purpose of the show. And I actually wish I could go back to that moment and re-approach the show with slightly different expectations. Because I think the letdown that I had around the finale, and it wasn't a significant letdown, it was modest, but it was relative to other MCU entrants that I think were just okay or

above average, but not great, in that they kind of concluded the way that most of these stories conclude, which is with a big CGI fight and with a big tease towards whatever is coming next. Now, you know, as fans of this stuff, we understand that that is the very nature of a lot of this storytelling, you know, the serialized approach. But with this show, there was so much that was different and there was so much that was unusual and it seemed, you know, I don't think, I think the word weird was thrown around a lot. I don't think the show was weird per se, but it was experimental given the circumstances. And I probably wasn't appreciating that as much at the beginning. And then I think by the time the show got into episodes four and five and six,

you could feel the fandom vibrating at an intensity. So then the lead up. Yeah, it was great. It was very, it was extremely fun to just be getting into the show every Thursday night. So by the time we got to this conclusion, I think it was sort of well-handled, a little bit chin-scratchy,

and a little bit kind of dull CGI fight fest, which we've seen before from the MCU. So I think we should probably talk a little bit about what specifically happened. How do we recap the final episode of the show? Because so much of it was both like a physical manifestation of a fight and then also a lot of kind of philosophical and emotional untangling. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting actually to start there, I think, with the

kind of dual nature of the makeup of the show, for me at least a couple things about the CGI fight fest aspect one I don't mind that mostly I guess just because I love the MCU so much and consider it basically ingrained into the DNA

of what to expect out of one of these projects right so when Wanda and Agatha took to the sky, it's like, yeah, all right, sure. That makes sense. When Westview Vision and White Vision were battling, once White Vision was introduced into the story, there wasn't a version of the finale

where we weren't going to see them face off. So I don't really think that the finale was about the fights. I think that the fights were one of the ingredients in the... I've been watching a lot of Bake Off lately, you know, in the tray bake or layer cake or entremet or whatever that is the finale of the show and is often the concluding act of an MCU film or whatever. But I would take, let's use the visions as an example, right? I don't find myself thinking about them beaming each other across Westview or phasing in and out of each other. I find myself thinking about them beaming each other across Westview or phasing in and out of

each other. I find myself thinking about the, the Ship of Theseus conversation ultimately, because that's more interesting to me, but also because I think that one of the things that I've always loved about the MCU, and that I do think WandaVision feels emblematic of, is the ability to do all of those things at once. The ability to open up something about the way you as a viewer, a reader, a fan of these types of stories thinks about the question of identity, love, family, belonging, grief, obviously central to this show and this season of television in particular. Wanda and Agatha taking to the sky, yes, of course, some of that is about the new origin of Wanda inside of the MCU.

And obviously her original MCU origin was a huge retconning of her comics canon, right? And I spent much of the season thinking that this would be an on-ramp to the mutants which i'm sure we'll talk about later when we get to our dude ralph boner but of course that was a stage on which agatha would be able to talk about the dark hold and the chapter on the Scarlet Witch and the terror that Wanda was unleashing into the world through the acts of her magic and little things like the fact that Wanda cast the runes into the perimeter of the hex showing that she, you know, Agatha had said she has the power but absorbing the knowledge. And as we heard Wanda say to Monica, you know, she may not understand the power yet, but she's going to. And then, of course, what do we see in the second stinger? She's reading, she's studying the Darkhold, which I'm sure we'll also get to later because that is elemental setup she is, and not only assessing the next choice she had to make in terms of Vision and Billy and Tommy, and of course, the inhabitants of Westview, lest we forget, but the decisions that she had made to that point. So to me, that's the MCU brew. All of those things working together to allow you to

enjoy the spectacle, but also the substance of the character arcs and the growth. And I personally really enjoy that. It's okay if not everybody does, but for me, I do. Yeah, I thought it was largely effective, if not always exhilarating. think you know the ship of theseus conversation between the two visions i thought was quite interesting i thought some of the loved that some of the emotional dynamic between the last moments of vision before wanda closes the hex for good were i don't know about powerful but rendered well and i think that the nature of the emotional conversation between a synthezoid and a witch, I think is a difficult conversation to have with a straight face, honestly.

But at times, I think the show did a nice job of getting you emotionally involved and engaged in these two creatures of a kind and their relationship. I think that the trickiness that a lot of people had with this, and I did to some extent is when I first started watching the show, all I could think about was, is this going to move the story forward? And then when I realized at the end of the series, I realized that it was only about moving the story forward. I felt the disappointment of my own expectations. And that's something that is obviously inherent with all television. And, you know, I think a show that has been referenced a lot, there are two shows that have been referenced a lot with relation to WandaVision. One is The Leftovers, obviously, because the

notion of grief and loss was a major part of The Leftovers and is a major part of WandaVision. And the other one was Lost. And Lost is a show that I know you love, yes. And I once upon a time loved and then deeply fell out of love with as the series continued, in part because of that same pang of where is this taking us? And is it only taking us on a journey to no conclusion? And so I'm still unwrapping my feelings about the idea of being 68 years old and still waiting for the next MCU stinger. You know what I mean? Okay. I have so many thoughts on that. I really do. I do know what you mean.

Let me offer a couple counterpoints. Not necessarily in an attempt to sway you, but just for the sake of discussion. Where to even begin here? So there's an Agatha line in episode eight. This is the memory episode, right? The sequence of revisiting key moments from Wanda's life, almost like a shade of the barf tech from Tony in Civil War, of course, Quentin Beck and the connections there, right? If you could enter into this 3D rendering of your own experience and better understand your own trauma, what would it mean for your life? When they went from the Sokovia sequence through the door into Hydra, a crucial scene in terms of the role that the Mind Stone inside of Loki's scepter played

in activating Wanda's power. I think we could do an entire episode just on that and what that all means. I have a lot of thoughts on that. But Wanda didn't want to go through that door at first. And one of the things that Agatha said was, the only way forward is back. And there were a few lines in this season that felt very meta to me

and like a commentary on what the MCU is and maybe in particular what the front end of Phase 4 is. And that line felt pretty deliberate in that respect. The only way forward is back. So Wanda and Vision are existing characters in the MCU. We have history with them. And of course, there's even longer history in the comics, right? The comics readers and people who are fans of their comic, we can sometimes be a little bit at war with ourselves over what we want here. I'll only speak for myself. Of course, I want to move forward, right? Of course, I want to know what's next. And I get very swept up in the theorizing around this season, what it might mean for not only the phase four stories that we knew because Marvel had said we're going to be

directly connected to WandaVision, specifically the next Spider-Man movie and the next Doctor Strange movie, but everything else to come, specifically around the idea of, again, potentially Britain on ramp for the X-Men, mutants, broadly everything happening in Phase 4. To the point where I found myself at the tail end of Benjamin Marvel like obsessing on an episode that had ultimately nothing to do with WandaVision about the respective time frames of Spider-Man Far From Home and WandaVision because Far From Home is set eight months after Endgame and WandaVision is set three weeks after Endgame and I found myself thinking well how can the hex meaningfully change reality inside of the MCU if this other movie takes place

after it and doesn't account for that at all? And Cram was just like, Spider-Man gets the timeline wrong a lot. Just don't overthink it, basically, which I think is part of opting in to this experience and also just something I couldn't stop thinking about. I think that understanding more about a character like Wanda and her history and what the impact of something like what happened to Vision in Infinity War and what happened to Pietro in Age of Ultron and what happened with her family back in Sokovia, all of that is actually elemental to who she is as a character, as a human being, not just as a superhero and someone who is super powered. And so I like spending time reflecting on that. And that feels to me, not only like a valid use of time, actually, but an ultimately

more rewarding experience. Because if we're only moving on to the next thing ever, then it is just a plot engine. And so I personally think that the show did actually achieve both things. Now, again, I'm not saying it paid off the kind of frenzied level of theorizing, but it does set up many aspects of the next Captain Marvel movie, Secret Invasion, Doctor Strange 2, Spider-Man, all of the things, even just the stingers, the two stingers in the finale achieve that, right?

While also helping us to better understand a character who at this point we've actually spent, now not as much time as we had spent with heading into WandaVision, of course, Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, but like a good amount of time with

and better understanding the love between those characters and their investment in each other and what that means for their life is something that I enjoy. So let's talk about the journey and the fate of the characters from this series and then maybe use that as an opportunity to spin forward a little bit. We can start with Wanda because obviously Wanda is... The show is called WandaVision, but this is Wanda. The show is Wanda, ultimately. And personally thought Elizabeth Olsen was better than I ever could have expected she would be.

I think she got an opportunity to play a lot of different kinds of parts in this one part. Yeah, for sure. And that original TV conceit essentially evolved and was rolled out of the series. But in the first four to five episodes, you got to see her show a lot of different colors. I think the character itself is a real challenge because she is forced to be

the hero, a distressed person going through kind of reevaluating her own trauma. She's also incredibly powerful and depressed and confused and a little bit evil and there is you know there's this long history with the scarlet witch in the comics as you mentioned in which there are some turns in which she is quite evil in which she is the straight-up villain of of certain runs and so elizabeth Olsen has a complicated task. I thought Linda Holmes at NPR put this well in her piece, which is to say she's asked to be a sitcom wife, a sitcom mom,

a superhero, a witch, a legend, and a woman whose grief was so overwhelming that she broke the whole world. And throughout it, Olsen never wavered at the end of this, where do we find Wanda? And how'd you feel about how her story was handled?

I think that first of all, that's actually always been true when it comes to Wanda's positioning inside of the MCU age of Ultron. Now, now of course the Maximoff twins were previously introduced in the, in the civil war singer, but in terms of primary role in a film age of Ultron is the MCU introduction age of Ultron is the MCU introduction. Age of Ultron, not my favorite MCU movie, as you know.

Nor mine, perhaps my least favorite. Crucial, ultimately, in terms of the Infinity Saga plot. And certainly, I think felt increasingly crucial while watching WandaVision because of Wanda. And if you just think about that movie, we go from the twins as the enemy, right? Hydra volunteers. Tough one to come back from. Hydra volunteers. Aligned with Ultron.

Implanting visions into the Avengers' heads. I mean, if you think about even just with Wanda and Tony, the role that the vision Wanda plants into Tony's head and allows him to see, plays in the rest of the Infinity Saga, it's like astounding. I mean, that is simultaneously his North Star in ways both good and bad, right? It misleads him and leads to countless mistakes, but also is like the orienting principle I need to fend off that fate, that endgame. So I raise that just to say Wanda, since the moment we met her in the MCU, has oscillated between these poles of existence. And I think that what WandaVision did really well, Daniel Chin wrote about this for The Ringer a little while ago, it wasn't actually about, and it isn't going to be about,

I don't think, I hope not moving forward, purely one or purely the other. Because the nature of her power and the nature of how her experience impacts the decisions that she makes, there are moments when you think she is the villain and she's going to be the villain

in the next phase, like in the Doctor Strange movie in Multiverse Madness. And then there are moments where you think that can't possibly be true. And actually, what does it say if that's how we're thinking in response to somebody who has suffered through what she has suffered i liked the ways that the show steered into that head on you know a moment like when

monica pushes back through the hacks and goes to find wanda and says they're talking about hayward at that point who i don't even know i don't even know if we'll get to Hayward, which is kind of interesting, but we won't. I was not a big fan of that character. It felt like it was happening in a MCU show from 10 years ago, not the one that we're watching now. But that's another story. Yeah. But, you know, Monica said to Wanda at that point, don't let him make you the villain. And Wanda said, maybe I already am. And I think like, you know, one of the things I was looking for in a rewatch was how Wanda was positioned either by herself or other people in the show, episode to episode. episode that position her on one end of that villainy or hero spectrum or somewhere in between. Now, what is one of the key differentiators? Well, she says something like this to Agatha, where Wanda says, in essence, the difference between us is that you're doing this on purpose. Now, that's not necessarily a validation of the things

that Wanda did. And I don't think the character herself even meant it that way, but it shows a level of awareness and the ability to assess that I think is paramount. Because so much, like if you, again, if you just go through the entire MCU, really many superhero stories, fantasy stories, this is a through line. What actually distinguishes the heroes and the villains? I mean, so often the characters are fundamentally behaving in the same way, right? Thinking that they have the, I mean, I always love to think about this with Tony's character because he is irrefutably one of the faces of the Infinity Saga and one of the chief heroes of the MCU, a character who I adore,

so many of the things that he does are misguided or actively wrong. What's the difference? It's intention, right? Intentionality, and then there are a lot of key ingredients. It's not just these, but these are some of the ones I think about often. It's like, this next one

is elemental to how I think about Harryter and to how that story concluded remorse remorse you you have to be able to recognize that something you did was wrong and think about why right so when against when, again, to use another Wanda and Monica exchange, this one from the finale, Wanda says, I'm sorry for all the pain I caused. I don't understand this power, but I will. Just saying that she's sorry for all the pain she caused,

to be clear, does not, again, erase the pain that she caused. It does not sanction the decisions that she made and the things that she did to the people of Westview. But the fact that she is able to just think that way and reflect, I think is pretty crucial in terms of ultimately, hopefully, bringing her back to light.

In terms of Doctor Strange, I honestly could see it going either way. I really could. In terms of whether she's the villain or not? Yeah, because I think that if you parse everything that Agatha said about... going either way i really could in terms of whether she's the villain or not yeah because i think that if you if you parse everything that agatha said about the scarlet witch and again if you think about this is almost like a a redo of wanda's mcu origin and you know her comics origin itself has been retconned many times right but the role of the dark hold you know the book

of the damned the book of sins wanda's just crushing those pages at the end you know you know it's so beautiful you know it's so beautiful about that too that if we're getting really nerdy so of course the director of dr strange in the multiverse of madness is sam raimi who you know i'm sure you're most familiar with for his work on the Spider-Man movies. My favorite Sam Raimi movies are the Evil Dead movies, which are oriented around the Necronomicon, which is, of course, the Book of the Dead. Sam Raimi has a lot of experience with this kind of, you know, religious, you know, zombified hoodoo. And so he's well positioned, I think, to kind of like handle this effectively and perhaps not over seriously. And I think that's something that kind of has to happen. That's something that WandaVision did really well that I think the next Doctor Strange

movie also has to do really well, which is to attempt to take itself seriously without being too serious. And I'm curious to see what happens with Wanda. I don't know if they can necessarily leave Wanda in the role of is she good or is she bad in perpetuity, but for now it seems to be working well. Truthfully, what I really want is to learn that Wanda and Pietro are actually Eric Lensher's children and that they were adopted by a family in Sokovia and then that will lead to the rise of the mutants.

I'm still holding out hope for that origin because that always was my favorite origin story in in the comics and i i it feels like it still could make sense i'll be real with you man i spent the entire season waiting for magneto the entire season it would it would have been cool um it's probably was expecting far too much at this stage of the game and who met who will even play magneto we don't know we obviously had uh the the fiatro the fake pietro in the form of uh ralph boner which i thought ultimately was not a great solution to i thought it basically was um it was a trap you know like we got we got our the rug pulled out from under us some would say that that was a clever

and fairly low stakes, ultimately, bit of chicanery by Marvel. Perhaps as somebody who takes this stuff a little too seriously, I was like, you guys kind of fucked with us. This felt rude. Literally naming the guy Boner didn't help. Come on, seriously?

You know, I thought that I had mixed and confusing thoughts on that. Fox's Quicksilver in episode five feels to me like emblematic of the peak of the WandaVision experience, right? That rush in the middle of the season where the theorizing was at its peak. It was just the most fun thing to talk about week after week. And for me watching the season and Jason and I talked about this like a bit on binge mode whether or not it led to mutants someone saying the word mutant acknowledging the mutant gene anything like that actually happening within season one of WandaVision, I was hopeful and anticipating it, but I didn't necessarily rationally think it would happen that quickly. I wanted it to. To me, that whole thing on the heels of the Ralph Boner reveal, obviously that was not the payoff I wanted, but I still do think that it was kind of even wrapped inside of the rude troll job.

It's like a wink, right? It's a wink to the audience. Like we know what you want. You're waiting for the X-Men. This is coming. And again, that kind of like meta aspect of MCU viewership is to me, one of the things that is fun about it

because it is a living document. It is evolving in real time. I agree with you. Ralph Boner was tough though. That was tough. I'm okay with it. To me, it dovetailed. I wanted to ask you more broadly about the series

because we know what's happening. We know that the stinger at the end featuring Monica Rambeau is of course a lead into Captain Marvel 2 and maybe even the Secret Invasion TV series, which is exciting. The Secret Invasion run is one of my favorite comics runs of all

time. Scroll live. It should be great. Love to get Ben Mendelsohn back in my life. Do you think the character in question is Nick Fury or is it Talos? I read it as Nick Fury. And again, though, just remember, whether or not this is retconned or matters, who knows? This takes place before Far From Home. So this is not on the heels of us realizing that Fury is actually up in space and Talos is impersonating him on the ground.

Though, of course, we don't know when they swapped places. That's true. But I think if the Skrull was referring to Talos, she would have referred to Talos differently than my friend. Doesn't she say my friend? Which leads me to believe it's Nick. They're talking about the friends of Monica's mother, Maria, which could be either of them.

Because Talos and Nick Fury, all of those characters have a history together from Captain Marvel. And again, there's a lot to learn there. Because in, I believe, episode five, the moment after they're running through Monica's lab results, basically. And, uh, Jimmy mentions Carol, the captain Marvel and Monica doesn't want to talk about her,

which was really notable and interesting because of course, you know, that's like the Lieutenant trouble origin story from the captain Marvel movie and the history between those characters. It was there like a falling out. What happened there? A lot of little things that set up interesting plot lines. Another case where maybe Captain Marvel is the villain of her next film as she battles

Photon. If in fact Monica Rambeau is Photon. We'll see. Let's talk more broadly though. So the series in full, you know, I found ultimately the Fiatro bit to be kind of a low light after thinking it was like the ultimate highlight i think him showing up the end of episode was it four or five four um five so at the end of episode five obviously i was titillated like the uh you know the the quiet fanboy that i am um what about for you what your, what was your highlight from this season?

What was your favorite thing that you, that you saw on, on WandaVision? Good question. You know, I, I don't know if I have one overall highlight. I guess I have a few things in a more kind of like macro sense in terms of just the process of consuming it. I think again, that like mid-season run i just think back on very fondly despite now being in the moment where there's a lot of conversation about whether that paid off it was just really fun like you know episodes one and

two came out on the same week right so episode three week two the to me that was like the first, even with glimpses previously, like when Wanda saw the converted sword agent, the beekeeper in the prior episode, the reset, and we realized that there is some awareness, even though of course we learned over the course of the season that it takes time for her to have full consciousness over what she had done and how but the the first like oh shit moment for me was the end of the end of episode three when monica is cast out of the hex and we see what's outside of westview and from that moment on through to really honestly the end of episode eight i just thought it was like extraordinary i really did and the finale doesn't diminish how much fun that was you know episode four opening with monica's return the blip i had like chills full body chills watching that. Even though we had gotten a glimpse of that, what it looked like when characters returned in Far From Home, in what is still to this day one of my favorite MCU sequences, the absolutely iconic Betty Jason Midtown Tech school news report on the In Memoriam video for Fallen Adventures

and the footage of the people returning in the gym. So funny. But seeing Monica come back, the chaos of that hospital sequence, a moment where you really think, what was this like for people? The people who returned, the people who had survived

and spent those five years waiting and wondering, all of that. And then you bring in Wu, you bring in Darcy, you get so many little moments and payoffs, like the Wu card trick, the online close-up Magic University throwback to the Ant-Man series. One of the things I love the most about the MCU overall is these surprising character pairings. I think often of Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy in Infinity War as one of my favorite sequences in any of the films because there was just such delightful organic chemistry

between those characters. And Wu and Darcy tapped into that in a way that I really enjoyed. Then you go into episode five and Quicksilver shows up the, the whole Halloween sequence in episode six, where you're like, Oh my God, they're going to,

the kids are, they're, they're going to do Wiccan and speed. We're going to get young Avengers. Like all of that happening so quickly. The Agatha reveal in episode seven, again, emblematic comic book fans knew that was coming. Right. People who were deep into the theorizing probably almost in full predicted that or at least consider that as a possibility. And then I thought episode eight was really moving and poignant. So that whole stretch, I just loved. I will also point to the theseus exchange between the two visions in the finale as something that I just really, really enjoyed and consider a highlight.

I thought that was great. Low light for me, obviously, is Sparky's death. What the fuck was that? Why? That's highly, highly predictable from you. What about you? Well, to the point you were just making, I think Charles Holmes,

the ringer Charles Holmes, wrote about this in our exit survey on Friday and he just wrote, it's probably not great that most of WandaVision's biggest chess moves from the Agatha reveal to Monica gaining superpowers were predicted like Beth Harmon was sitting across the board.

On the other hand, the minute that we saw Katherine Han in the first episode, I was like, Oh, Agnes is Agatha, which is frankly great. Like I, I didn't really have any anxiety about that.

And then Catherine Han, who is one of my faves, you know, and that's not a really an interesting opinion, but she's phenomenal. And she was great on this show. She brought the show. I think you could make the case that this show would not quite be the,

um, the hipster phenomenon that it kind of was amongst MCU fans without someone like her, who is, you know, she is critically acclaimed and beloved in a very specific sector of the world and has never been in something at the center of something so big as WandaVision. It's been fascinating to see her profiled in the New York Times and the New Yorker over the weekend because of her role. And frankly, she was a great Agatha. I think she fit the role well. I'm glad they didn't make Agatha 150 years old.

I'm glad that they let her be whatever, a woman in her 40s. That made the show more appealing. It made the faint more effective. And I just liked every time she was on screen, I thought the Agatha reveal and the song itself was great. I think it's hilarious that this is the sort of thing that can now go to number one on iTunes. um is it a banger uh i don't know you're the music guy you tell me yeah i was once upon a time um but you know i love katherine haunt i love that character i'll

be curious to see if we ever see that character again i'll be curious to see you know quick take do you think there'll be a second season of this show at some point? I guess it depends on what at some point means. Not to pull a Feige, right? But like anything is possible inside of the MCU. But how about in the next five years? No. I would actually be surprised. Because I think that we know already what the timeline broadly of the next couple years of the MCU is going to be.

So many projects are announced and in motion, right? It's like, I want to say it's for phase four. It's like 11 movies and 14 Disney plus projects, including, you know, not just the series,

but including like, I am Groot, the Guardian special, that total doesn't even account for Deadpool 3, which Feige has said will be inside of the MCU. It doesn't count Blade, which we're waiting on more details in terms of timeframe, et cetera. Or the, what, despite the lack of X-Men details in season one of WandaVision, ultimately, what we can just say flat out is the inevitable introduction of the X-Men into the MCU now that the rights issues have evolved, right? that we know again and this isn't like set reports leaks speculation this is confirmed by marvel wanda vision was designed at least in part i mean i think it was broadly designed as a examination of of grief and the understanding of what this character had been through and what that meant and it was also designed in terms of how it fits into the MCU engine to set up the character's role in Spider-Man No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

because I think we can assume of the multiverse connections between these stories and the Scarlet Witch's role, a nexus being, let's not forget that one of the commercials in the season was a nexus commercial. Stuff like that is obviously completely intentional and deliberate. When we're hearing

the twins calling to Wanda in the second stinger in the finale, are they in a different dimension? I mean, Wanda is in the astral dimension as she's studying the Darkhold. Where are the twins calling to her from? Are they in the, to just cite one popular theory now among the fandom, the dream dimension? Is this how we get Nightmare, who was initially supposed to be, or one of the villains they were considering for the first Doctor Strange movie? Will he be in the second movie? Will we get the Chaos God? There are plenty of possibilities, none of which are relevant to the question you just asked necessarily. But I just think that there's a lot of,

there's a lot of story left to tell in other movies based on where we just ended. And I think that Wanda will continue to remain a central role in, in the MCU and phase four and beyond, but panning back in, I would, I think that doing that within the next few years

would surprise me. I don't know how that would work exactly, though maybe that's just the new science of the MCU with the way that these movies and these shows connect to each other. It can't always just be shows setting up movies, presumably.

That would end up feeling weird. So that dovetails into something I wanted to talk to you about briefly. Amanda and I talk about this all the time on this show in terms of the continued morphing of whatever the these content types are you know the movie and tv collision the way that all of this stuff kind of feels like this agglomerated thing we got i asked some listeners for some questions about this conversation and a lot of the questions were not so much about like what really happened here or what's next in the mcu they were like some listeners for some questions about this conversation. And a lot of the questions were

not so much about what really happened here or what's next in the MCU. They were like, what is this? There were a bunch of questions. Bob asked, as an entry in the now fully cross-platform serialized MCU, how do you judge the storytelling choices specifically when it comes to resolutions? Should it be judged like a season two of an ongoing sci-fi show or a six-hour mcu movie did it succeed in either context i think that it's an interesting thing to evaluate because another question that we got a lot was what did you think of kind of the weekly rollout format given that that is so different from most of the other streamers and the shows that we consume there which obviously release in the more of the excuse excuse me, binge format. So do you see this

as a standalone story that is effectively a really long movie? Do you see it as, you know, just part of this daisy chain of storytelling that the MCU has been doing? How did you evaluate it? I guess my answer is like, yes, to all of the above, right? If I could quote my dude, Tony Stark, part of the journey is the end, right? But also part of the journey is the journey. And I think that both of those things are true and both of those things will continue to be true. I personally, I know there's like a lot of concern

about saturation and how maybe more casual fans will find entry points into these stories moving forward if they're so deeply connected. I think that this is very of a piece with comic book storytelling in general, right? Where you have these arcs, you have these runs, you have these moments in time with these characters.

And maybe that's the thing that you develop a connection to and feel the most personal fondness for. But you also understand that those characters will play roles in other stories and they will relate to other character arcs. And sometimes that will change something, maybe even fundamentally, about that moment in time that you shared with them and enjoyed. But that's kind of the nature of the beast and i think let's just use house of m as a comics comp for a second because that came up so often in the theorizing around this season and i personally felt certain that that's where this was heading at one point mid-season i'd say certain i i won't do like a 15 minute comics aside here, but just broad strokes.

That's a famous, highly famous arc for many fans, a beloved arc. It is centered largely around not only Wanda and the house of Magnus, Magneto, Quicksilver, Genosha, Magneto, Quicksilver, Genosha, mutants, and how mutants and non-mutants interact in society.

The fact that Marvel has since retconned Wanda's origin, so that, spoiler here, I guess, this is more recent. I'm not super recent, but like 2010s versus prior decades. Retconned Wanda's origin so that she is no longer Magneto's kid and no longer a mutant does not make people love House of M any less. Right. Right? But you've raised something really interesting here so house of m i also was

hoping that maybe they were rowing in the direction of house of m at the beginning of the series revisited like so many other people did or or a lot of people read for the first time which is great it's a great run of comics um i think that the series did something that most of the mcu stories that are so clearly at least inspired by runs of comics do, which is they take a component part and they use that part and then they discard everything else and also kind of tantalize the viewers with the expectations of what it means for the telling of the story. You know,

the telling of the captain America story in this series of MCU is like in some respects, extremely faithful to the, or the original origins of captain like in some respects extremely faithful to the or the original origins of Captain America in other respects if you read that first issue of Captain America you see that it is quite different tonally story wise and so what the the big difference is and maybe the multiverse is what changes this significantly is there are these resets throughout the history of comics there are these retcons that you're talking about there are these new there are these new you know there's different earths that exist and so because of that you get to tell totally new stories with

what feels like these babes in the woods these characters that we actually we we feel familiar with but we don't know because they're slightly different the mcu is not doing that you know right now we're all on one arc and i it seems like we're going to change the arc it seems like it's all going to shatter when the sam raimi movie comes out and it's going to go in a lot of different directions that does seem like a lot to manage that seems like it's going to be really hard and it has been frankly it's one of the reasons why, aside from developing interest in the films of Shohei Imamura and Federico Fellini, I grew a little bit out of comics as I was like, I just don't have time to juggle all this. And I wonder if by doing this and expanding the world this big, what feels like it's going to be a very exciting experience might actually be a little bit confusing for the consumer down the road because there's so much to follow.

What do you think? I definitely think that's a risk. I mean, it's an extraordinary amount to track already when you're talking just about the first 23 movies of the first three phases of the MCU and now WandaVision, which ultimately ended up being the beginning of phase four, though it was of course not supposed to be, which is probably worth mentioning at some

point in this discussion that, you know, Black Widow, first movie, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier were supposed to be the first TV show and the pandemic-related scheduling changes ultimately. I think that the multiverse poses that risk inherently, right? In terms of how much there is to track. Also, even if you think back to so much of the discourse around Infinity War, which is just one of my all-time favorite movies, and I adore, for people who either liked it a little bit less, or, and I don't want to create straw man here, but maybe enjoyed it, but had a few asterisks associated with it,

the idea of stakes came up a lot, right? And the multiverse always introduces the question of stakes came up a lot, right? And the multiverse always introduces the question of stakes because what does it mean if your understanding of reality impacts how you think about life, death, et cetera? That was also, of course, a central part of WandaVision. I thought like a conversation between Wanda and the twins in the wake of a dear departed Sparky's death was really important where you had that moment where Wanda said out loud that she understood that death is death.

Right. Because that, again, is like a central tenet of fantasy storytelling. What do so many so many characters who lose their way, what are they not able to understand? Right. That when you're gone, you're gone. And if you think of something like, you know, just one of my all-time favorite quotes from Lord of the Rings, Gandalf in Fellowship, you know, many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life.

Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment for even the very wise cannot see all ends. I mention that quote like all the time because it feels like it's almost always relevant in one of these stories. Multiverse, chaos magic, the ability to create life, question of consciousness, what is life? What is humanity? What is a soul? All of these things will be central to the story. And yes, it will be a lot to track, but I think it's ultimately going to lead to really interesting storytelling and something that is a vast and sprawling plot engine, of course, like inherently, but also,

I think, pretty philosophically and emotionally rich and intriguing. Now, I'll also just say that I think even without the multiverse considerations, the MCU is just going to get a lot bigger, a lot more characters, right? Eternals, the Fantastic Four are coming. X-Men are coming. I mean, you think about the Fantastic Four just in the context of this show and how often Reed Richards' theories were central to what people were anticipating with Monica's engineer. Is it going to be Reed Richards? Agatha connected to the Fantastic Four in the comics, right, with Franklin.

Is that how Agatha will ultimately come back into play? Who knows? There are millions of possibilities. I think that's exciting. I think that something you hear comic book fans say a lot is basically some version of like, well, it's okay. Don't be overwhelmed. Just pick the characters you're interested in and the point you want to dive in and then dive in. It's harder to do that, ultimately, with major blockbusters and Disney Disney plus monoculture.

This is the show of the moment experiences because if the history between the characters and all of the mythology feels like a barrier to entry, then maybe people opt out. I hope that's not what happens. I hope that, that people still find ways in. And I think that one of the things that Feige and Marvel have proven most adept at is this like consistent kind of hum and harmony where it does really feel like the flow

is organic and smooth. And that may be a certain movie along the way wasn't for you, but that's, that's fine. And you're still going to be able to like hang tight and enjoy the ride. I believe that they will be able to keep doing that, but it's almost irrefutable that it becomes a lot harder. Well, you raised so many interesting ideas there. I mean, on the one hand, I've been thinking about the success of this show and we don't know because we don't have numbers, so we don't know how many people watched. Obviously, there's no box office for the first time with a true MCU project, so we can't grade it in that way. And of course, historically, the MCU has never struggled

to keep its audience interested in its story. The conclusion of phase three, I think, was also obviously a significant turning point. Everybody basically who was interested in this stuff got on board at some point

over the course of the 2008 through 2019 run. And then we had 18 full months without an MCU thing. And then we got this show. And so it felt like there was and we're in a pandemic and everybody then we got this show. And so it felt like there was an end. We're in a pandemic and everybody is desperate for a new show. So it felt like there was a fever pitch for this show.

And now, of course, in two weeks, we get less than two weeks. We get Falcon and Winter Soldier. I did say to you on Friday when we spoke, we talked about how I had a different experience with the show, which was that at the end of a Marvel movie, especially a Marvel movie that I loved, and people have heard me kind of geek out on this show about the experience and the sort of like, wow, I can't wait to go back. I can't wait to revisit. I loved that feeling I had at that climactic moment in that film. There's probably only five or six MCU movies I really felt that with, but both of the Infinity stories, I was like, this is pretty incredible that they pulled this off. I really,

I mean, you and I saw it together and we were vibrating. We loved it. Oh my God. So I think that, you know, let's just do, let's just do a speed round about a couple of final things around this

because now you're right. Speed rounds. Always my strength. Let's do it. A couple of quick fan questions. I'm like the anti-quicksilver, Sean, you know I just move in slow motion

and take a really long time continue Tortoise Queen what would your what would your superhero name be so Chris asked us on Twitter Chris and Andy spoke

on the watch pod about how the way the series was structured with Easter eggs and cliffhangers led to so many wild theories do you think that's positive discourse

do you think Marvel should change course if fans become let down by their own crazy expectations? Which of these do, I mean, how do you feel about this? I'm really curious for your opinion on this because I have total clarity here personally.

I love the theorizing. I love the Easter egg hunting. And again, I want to be clear, like no judgment if anybody else feels differently. And I know that some people were really, really genuinely let down by the finale. Just for me, I didn't feel like I had any regrets about how I spent the prior two months watching the show because that is part of what I love so much about these stories in the first place, which is sharing them with other people and finding the things about them that animate our collective excitement and curiosity. part of it. And so it would actually be, for me, a huge shame if people felt like they needed to rein in those impulses. And I think Joanna Robinson, Vanity Fair, put it interestingly

and well on Twitter in the wake of the finale. And she said, don't try to solve or beat the show. And it won't end up feeling like the show beat you. I don't take that as don't theorize though, because again, I think that that's like part of the communal experience and the joy. So I will continue to theorize. I will continue to Easter egg hunt. I will continue to freeze frame. And especially like something,

the platform like Disney plus, it really heightens the impulse to do that you know when when we saw endgame the point of contrast by the time we sat down to record we couldn't even remember i know some cap like put meal near back right and of course now when you rewatch you're like oh my god this is some of it's just it's so much to process the first time around right some of some of that is good though i think that that that is actually a challenge of tv here is that it it gives you i'll say generally speaking the theorizing i think is great um i i have no problem with it if you like comic books if you like

science fiction that's a whole part of the experience of enjoying this stuff is hoping you can figure out where things are going and having some originating information and seeing if you can cast it forward. As I said, I was not real big on having my face rubbed in it with Fiatro. I was kind of like, I get it. We're a little early into the Marvel TV experience to being trolled already. So one other thing on that front, though. Inevitably, I think this raised a lot of, not even the quality of the finale itself,

but just the conversation around theorizing paying off, cops to things like season eight of Game of Thrones, Lost, Rise of Skywalker, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a part of this that I think is inextricable from the modern day fantasy story, comic book story consumption. I don't think that, again, just for me, this is not the same as season eight of Game of Thrones. Like, season eight of Game of Thrones was the culmination of a decade of people's lives.

WandaVision is designed to be the start of something. Now, again, that also connects to the past, but I at least find it a little liberating to think about it that way. Right? It animated our curiosity, sparked a lot of theorizing.

Like, again, I couldn't even tell you how many hours I and, I mean, God, the bulk of the internet, right? Spent talking about Reed Richards. We already talked about Magneto, Mephistophisto the al pacino mephisto moment was quite a moment in time right there was so much of this i were people saying al pacino is gonna play mephisto you're prizing his role from the devil's advocate one of my favorite i'm a fan of man that's one of my favorites because of the pa the Paul Bettany interview about how they're the,

the, the cameo. And again, like some of this is what kind of context there is around an interview. Like the whole Luke Skywalker cameo origin was actually from the, the TV line framing, right? Like Elizabeth Olsen never said the words,

there will be a Luke Skywalker level caveat on this story. But the, the response to the question being posed in that way, then, you know, lighted a lot of curiosity, et cetera. And then Bettany saying that,

you know, he was extraordinarily excited to, to, couldn't believe that there was one thing that hadn't leaked yet. And like how excited he was to, to film with someone who he wanted to work with all of his life which of course himself ended up being himself with the west vision white vision sequence but people and again this is like man the internet people were going through his imdb and who had he not worked with yet and who had he mentioned in prior interviews

that he might want to work with. People are nuts, man. It was like, could this be Magneto? Could this be Mephisto? But again, just to be clear, I think that's great. I think that's really fun that people went to that level

of assessing and analyzing what this could mean. And I'd like to see that energy ported over into the next thing and the thing after that and the thing after that and the thing after that because I think that's kind of elemental to the shared experience.

I agree. Just my take, as they say. Hopefully, you and I will be able to talk again about Falcon and Winter Soldier, which I think will be a completely different kind of brew. You've always been a proud member of the Zemo hive.

I'm fond of Daniel Bruhl. I think he's a good actor. I don't of the Zemo hive. You know? I'm fond of Daniel Brühl. I think he's a good actor. I don't know about Zemo. Let's just do 10 minutes on Raya and the Last Dragon. I asked you to watch this film and it paid $29.99 for this film. And I went with very low expectations and here's why. I just

kind of felt like Disney dumped this movie. I didn't really feel like the marketing was very strong for it, at least relative to what we just had with Soul, which also went straight to Disney Plus. This film was getting the same treatment that Mulan, I believe is the last time you were on the big picture when we talked about Mulan with Jason. And they did a similar thing here. They put it on this premiere style tier of where you have to pay for it to see it. They also released the film in theaters. It did not do very well in theaters, unfortunately. So my expectations were low, but lo and behold, on a Saturday night, I thought it was great.

I don't know if you felt similarly. I loved it. I thought it was really, really good. And as these Disney action adventures go, there's not very many of them historically. There have only been a handful of movies that are attempting to tell a story like this. It comes from Don Hall, who of course was behind Big Hero 6 and Carlos Lopez Estrada, who made a very interesting movie a few years ago

called Blindspotting. Now, I would never have guessed he would have worked on a movie like this. And it starts Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina and Gemma Chan and Daniel Dae Kim and Benedict Wong, your boy, Benedict Wong, and Sandra Oh. And it's a very classic kind of Disney tale, but I thought incredibly well-made. What jumped out at you about it? I just really enjoyed it.

I found it quite moving. It'll shock you to hear. Quite inspiring. I thought it was beautiful to look at, aesthetically quite riveting. I loved, I'm always a sucker and just such an easy mark, even if it is a absolutely blatant merch play you know like the children will buy this as a toy one day very soon don't care love it and also will buy the toy very soon and there's a lot of that in this movie that i loved you know the little the tootin booms i mean sean bugs that fart in your face and then the farts become fireworks. It's great stuff. I just loved it.

It's very impressive. Everything with my guy, Tuk Tuk, I just loved him. He was elite. The beautiful bond. Is he an armadillo? Adam and I spent a while talking about what exact creature he was supposed to be. And we landed on at least some armadillo DNA. But he obviously doesn't have the face of an armadillo.

Yeah, that was confusing. Some sort of fantastical mashup, I guess, of creatures. But love that. Let us know online what Tuk Tuk is, aside from a great character. It's just a lead. You know, a lot of strong women at the heart of the story, which I enjoyed. I'm a huge, as you know, Avatar, The Last Airbender, to be clear, the animated television program. I am a huge fan of James Cameron's Avatar.

And all James Cameron films. You are a fan of the last airbender which i have never seen it's just tremendous like i could not honestly could not recommend it more fervently and cora as well and there were so many avatar and corra vibes in this movie that I personally enjoyed. Again, I think with that in general, like mileage may vary on when you feel you, the collective you, or you,

the individual, you feel a story is like too referential to other stories or, you know, feels like derivative of things that have stories or, you know, feels like derivative of things that have come before, you know, I, I again, personally just enjoy that aspect of fantasy stories in the fantasy world.

Like where can you identify the threads and connections to other characters, other worlds? So I loved the movies. I love the themes, the idea of trust and how you forge that trust, what it means and how it feels when you lose it, how can you repair that, etc. There were obviously moments in the movie where the message is, you know, quite overt, but I thought there were also some parts of it that I found, I don't know, a little like subtler and impactful ways

as Raya's journey across the land to collect the pieces and repair the... I guess we're spoiling the plot, right? Let's not spoil it too much. I don't know that a lot of people have seen it. Then I don't know how to say this next thing, but I'll try to say it broadly, and then you can decide whether it should be in the podcast.

Great. I'll just say broadly like traveling across the land and the divisions between these tribes you realize like this this fellowship is forging organically where these different factions are coming together in this little pod in this little unit and then they're they're not even until later in the film kind of consciously acknowledging that and i thought storytelling choices like that were were quite effective and i just really enjoyed it overall so i just love a dragon i just personally love a dragon good good stuff from aquafina as the dragon i mean you know you what you were just describing also could have been the lord of the rings films obviously like it there are a lot of familiar

story tropes in this movie the mythical resource that tribal warfare the divided family the lost parent what is what's a bigger trope in the disney canon than the lost parent you know on this fight for legacy and unity all of these ideas are very familiar to anyone who follows fantasy stories, who follows Disney stories. I think this was one of the first- That's why they're familiar. They work.

They work. They do work well. And if, well, they work well if done well. And I think that this movie is well-written, well-performed and is beautifully animated. And it's really hard to make action work in the animation format there are very few movies that try to do this and i was i really came away very impressed and i also came away not feeling like there was this um overweening and hyper focused girl power

style aspect of the storytelling that i think in the past maybe pixar has struggled with and the live action mulan i thought struggled with a little bit. And, you know, Disney stories are often telling this kind of a story. This one felt naturalistic. It felt unforced. It felt very pure that essentially the co-leads and also the sort of like the villain and the hero were both women and their resolution and their clarity, I thought, was just really well told. I was just impressed, and it didn't feel forced to me. So in that respect, I was like,

this is a damned successful animated film. I agree. Do you think people are going to watch it? Are people going to find it? I don't know. I mean, I certainly have not had a lot of conversations about it. Find it is the wrong word, but pay for it.

Find it in the way that it has been offered to them. Yeah, so as a final note, let's just talk about that. Because I think on the one hand, it was a very savvy move to put this movie on the service the weekend that everyone would be tuning in for WandaVision. So you know you've got a ton of engaged users on Friday firing up the WandaVision finale and then saying, oh, wow, there's a new animated movie. But then on the other hand, if they see that it's $29.99, perhaps it's great for their children at home to have a new Disney movie to watch. But that is a lot of money. It's not a lot of money in the scheme of I have five kids and I'm taking them to a movie theater, but it is for a home

rental. I don't know how we would measure this as success, but do you just, with little knowledge, do you think it worked? I have absolutely no idea. I don't either. And no shame in saying it. I think that at least currently, and we're obviously people who spend a lot of our time online, right? Maybe you are, not me. I haven't been online in years. It feels like the way that you judge absent the ability to get reliable viewership numbers from a lot of the streaming services or right now, obviously, amid the pandemic where a more traditional metric like a box office return doesn't really tell you much, You kind of gauge everything in the volume of online discourse and discussion. And it didn't feel like a ton of people were talking about

this movie over the weekend, right? Which is sort of a bummer. Now, again, maybe that's because a lot of people were talking about WandaVision and there's something else dominating the conversation. Maybe it's just because a lot of people haven't seen it yet and they will over time. I mean, you know, that's ultimately part of the appeal of the streaming services, right? Is that you have a lot of this flexibility. You know, you can watch something when you want to. You don't have to operate on somebody else's timeframe necessarily, which in general, I'm a fan of. I think even with something like WandaVision as a weekly release and not a binge,

you're then inclined to make the comp to something like Sunday night, you know, Game of Thrones, but it's still different because you could stay up Thursday night, you could watch it Friday morning, you could watch it Friday night after work, you could watch it over the weekend.

Like people have a lot of different choices. And then the same thing with, you know, the Disney Plus premiere offering. Maybe you're not sure if you want to drop 29 bucks on this movie. And then if you do see people talking about it and you're intrigued and excited, then you can come to it a little bit later on. So hopefully more people will find the movie because I thought it was really lovely. Mallory, thanks for doing this. What is potting but love persevering, right? I was going to say that to you. I guess I'll have to switch it up. Let's see. What should I say to you? Sean, thanks for having me. It's

always a delight to be here with you, truly. You know, we've said goodbye before, so it stands to reason. We'll say hello again. Thanks, Mal. Okay, let's go to my conversation with kevin mcdonald get groceries delivered across the gta from real canadian superstore with pc express shop online for super prices and super savings try it today and get up to 75 dollars in pc optimum points visit superstore. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC optimum points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Very happy to be joined by Kevin McDonald. Kevin, thanks for doing the show today. It's a real pleasure. Nice to be here.

Kevin, you have such a versatile and diverse collection of films in your filmography. I'm always so fascinated by how you make your decisions. At this stage, how do you decide, should I do a doc? Should I do a narrative feature film? How do you make that decision as you go along? Well, you know, it's not really a clean process. It's a very messy process. I just do whatever feels right at the moment. But I think often when I finish a feature film,

I'm kind of exhausted. And the process of making a feature film is so long winded and so all consuming that actually doing a documentary where you're much freer, there's less money at stake. So, you know, it's not as nerve wracking if it doesn't work. You know, I'll often do a documentary between two features um uh and and i you know i if i could if i could actually you know regulate that and be given the choice i would i would always do that but obviously it's just you know also finding stories that stimulate you and that's the thing about making any film it's such a big endeavor whether it's a documentary or a fiction film that you know it needs to be something you can obsess about and you know one two three four

years or whatever it is i mean i think it's probably three and a half years since i first started work on the mauritanian and in one way or another you know developing it and uh since i actually started in serious prep for it in september 2019 so here we are. We're talking about this in February, late February 2021. So yeah, it's a long process. What was it about The Mortadian that grabbed you? What made you decide to throw yourself into a feature film like this? You know, I seem to be attracted to kind of ambivalent ambiguous characters you know the characters who we can't say necessarily they're conventional hero or conventional villain and i kind of believe that you know renoir dictum that

everyone has their reasons and uh i think that's that's true and that's what's fascinating about people to me it's why i make documentaries and why I like interviewing people is because, you know, once you start understanding people, your simplistic prejudices break down and life becomes richer for it. So with The Mauritanian, I'd never wanted to necessarily make a film about the war on terror, but I was sent this book, which Benedict Cumberbatch had auctioned, Benedict Cumberbatch's company had auctioned. And I'd heard about it because it was quite a big deal when it came out in 2015, Guantanamo diary. It was the first and only book written inside Guantanamo smuggled out as

letters, which is part of what you see in the film, the process of how the letters came out. And it's a, it's a fascinating document it's full of eye-popping surreal moments and parts of it are beautifully written i'd say a lot some of it is is is kind of almost you know just factual kind of annotation but some of it is beautifully poetic and you can tell that the writer mohammedou is someone who has a writer's soul. And so I was intrigued when I read the book,

but I thought, I don't know how you make this into a film. And then I spoke to Mohamedou, and I spoke to Nancy Hollander, his lawyer, and I spoke to Stuart Couch, who was the prosecuting lawyer for the US government. And I thought, okay, I want to make a film about these three people, about three characters who are all caught up in this pivotal moment of history and have to face choices which are incredibly difficult. Mohamedou has to choose whether or not to cooperate,

whether or not to confess to something that he says he hasn't done, or in order to be able to get out possibly, and Stuart Couch has to decide whether or not to proceed with the prosecution when he knows it's built on very fragile ground and illegality, when the rest of the legal department around him is willing to go ahead and prosecute this guy, even though they know that

his, um, confessions came about through torture. He stands up and goes, no, I'm not doing this. He went against the tide. So he's fasting. And then lastly, Jodie Foster's character, Nancy Hollander, you know, she has been, as it says in the film, she'd been fighting the government since the Vietnam war. You know, she's been, in fact, she was here in Chicago when the, and I think wasn't quite yet a lawyer, but she was part of the whole Chicago Seven. She knows all those people, you know, all of that,

which is obviously in the news a lot recently with the great film. And she's now in her seventies and she's still, you know, representing all sorts of incredible and maybe even sometimes dangerous clients. She's still got somebody in Guantanamo she's representing. She's Chelsea Manning's attorney. Yeah, so there's just three remarkable people who all go through an incredible story.

And I thought that's how to make this film, but particularly centering it around Mohamedou's experience. I think people forget that they think that they've seen everything to do with the war on terror, but we've never seen anything from the point of view of the Muslim men who were accused of terror, often falsely, largely falsely. It's estimated that 80% of the people who were sent to Guantanamo, for instance, were there by mistake, 80%. A lot of them were just farmers who got sold by their neighbor who didn't like them because the Americans were offering 100,000 bucks for anyone they said was a member of Al-Qaeda. So that perspective has never been seen. Not only that, but actually when I think about it, I don't know of really any American mainstream movies

which have got a positive representation of a Muslim character at the heart of them. And, you know, you can probably put me wrong because you know a lot more about movies than I do probably, but I don't think that exists. So it's kind of like, wow, this whole part of this whole perspective.

The list is short. It's Malcolm X, you know, the list is short. I mean, Malcolm X, you could say, but I think that's obviously also a,

a slightly different case in point, but yeah, that's true. There aren't very many. And, um, so I felt like this is a whole perspective that we're missing. And to me, you know, I wouldn't have actually even, I wouldn't have had been brave enough to take this on unless I had Tahar Rahim, who's the actor who plays Mohamedou.

You know, he and I are old friends. We made a film together a decade ago. And as soon as I met Mohamedou, I thought, I know who's going to play you. Because they're so similar in many ways. They've both got this incredible warmth and this humor. And Tahar totally grasped this part by the balls and was like, this is an amazing role. And it's, but it's also, I feel like I've got this huge responsibility here to represent Muslims in a, in a,

in a, in a positive light and to tell this important story that hasn't been told. And, um, so he, yeah, he immersed himself in it for, for two years or something after I originally phoned,

phoned them up and said, let's do this till until we got the money and made it. Tahar is extraordinary in the movie. I do want to ask you a little bit more about him, but before, I just want to go back to something you said, which is sort of conceptualizing how Mohamedou's story could be a

movie. So when you say that, do you mean you're searching for a kind of structure, like genre elements that you can use to kind of narrativize this story what exactly is going on in that decision making well it's it's any film you know has got to be two hours or less pretty much this one's two hours and nine minutes but yeah but you know and you can't tell that much story in that time, but this story takes place over 14 years is what he's in Guantanamo. And of course you need to understand a little bit about where he came from.

So there's all of that, you know, just a long and very complex tale and there's very many different ways you could enter into it at different stages of his incarceration, different points of view, et cetera. So finding the way just to conceptually approach the storytelling, to be able to have something that works in a satisfactory way as a beginning, middle, and end is hard. But also I didn't want to make a movie that was only a movie

for those who already know about this stuff and who are likely the ones who will see it. I wanted to try and make a movie that would appeal to a mainstream audience. Now, whether I've succeeded in that, I don't know. But that was my goal because I think that there are books about Guantanamo. There are documentaries about Guantanamo. But those things are read by a few boffins, you know, they're read by a few nerds. And I wanted, this is such, to me, seems like such a major turning point in American history, world history, what we're talking about here. And it's a, fundamentally, it's a story of enormous injustice. And we all love a story of injustice. So it's how do we tell the story of injustice about somebody that you are probably, as an American or as a Brit, you're probably inclined to go to instantly think they're guilty just because of their religion and the way they look.

And that was foremost in my mind. I want to make a movie that where I can get an audience to end up falling in love with this character. And so that, that was kind of my, that was kind of my goal. How do I, how do I achieve that? What's the way in that I can find, which comes in at the right point of the narrative and, you know, gives me a structure that's going to, it's going to work. You're always going to, in a movie like this, you're going to leave out 90% of the stuff you love about Muhammadu's life.

Just inevitable. 95%, 98% you're going to leave out. There just isn't room for it. But, and I could talk about, there's all sorts of different ways you could approach the story, but I think we found the right one and you know it's a it's a movies are all about simplicity aren't they it's all about finding the simplest way through but this is not that simple a movie that was my biggest worry actually when making this movie was that it is structurally incredibly complex certainly much more complex than anything I've ever ever tried before so you've got three main characters you follow separately then you've got three different levels of time so you've got present tense flashback deep flashback and all of these pieces have got to be

you know these balls are going to be kept in the air and that's that was you know really a challenge all the way through. So simplifying, making sure the script transitions from one thing to another, from one time period to another, the choices about format, doing some of it widescreen, some of it 4x3, all of these things, a lot of those decisions were taken in order to clarify the story and clarify what is a very complex

structure. Is the process the same when taking on a feature film like this that is based on a true life story as when you're preparing for a documentary? Are you as loyal to the specifics of the truth when telling a story like this?

Or what kind of flexibility do you have to narrativize? I'm not as'm not as loyal obviously in a documentary you're you know you're beholden really unless you're brenna herzog to tell you know the truth as you see it now obviously there are many different truths but it's as you see it and you to not go against what is public record. You have a moral responsibility. With a dramatization like this, you obviously have more latitude. However, one of the big decisions I made doing this film was at the beginning of the film, I've got a caption which says, this is a true story,

which is kind of a provocative thing to put at the beginning of a dramatized film. But I thought about, you know, this is based on a true story, which is kind of a provocative thing to put at the beginning of a dramatized film. But I thought about, you know, this is based on a true story. This is inspired by all those different things that we see. But actually, what to me was important is that what happened to Mohamedou in Guantanamo in terms of the mistreatment and the kind of the sense of the atmosphere of this place, that that is accurate. And that is really kind of docudrama in the sense that all of those things that you see that are done to him, you could stand up in the court and law and say,

yeah, that did actually happen. So that I felt, okay, I want audiences to come out of this movie going, it's a true story. Those things happen, and not to doubt that those things happen. There are obviously then, and the other parts of the film, we do all the normal things that I guess people do in movies based on real stories, which is we've compressed two characters into one. We've combined two lawyers that Shailene Woodley plays, somebody who's actually a combination of two lawyers. We have shifted the time frame a little bit to make Couch, Stuart Couch, who's Benedict Cumberbatch's character, to make his journey happen absolutely simultaneously with Jodie Foster, Jodie Foster's journey, whereas in actual fact, they were sort of slipped against each other. You know, C couch was going actually quite a lot earlier than nancy uh we you know compressed

simplified dramatized all the things that you have to do if you're going to make a movie but within that you know i tried not to have anything that's factual be inaccurate. There was a lot of attention to that. And so I think that people that I know who have been to Guantanamo, who have experienced it, tell me that it gets the feel of the place right and it gets the procedures of the place right. And that's important to me.

How much time did you spend with Mohamedou before making the film? Well, we talked quite a lot on Skype. But I wasn't able to actually meet him until maybe like two or three months, three months before we made the film. And I went down to Mauritania, which is, you know, one of the least known countries in the world. You know, most people think that it's a made up place like Ruritania, where all those 1930s Jeanette MacDonald movies happened, those musicals.

You know, a fictitious state somewhere east of Luxembourg. But it actually exists. And it's, I think, the sixth biggest country in Africa, but it's only a population of 3 million or less. And until very, very recently, the majority of people there were nomadic. Still a large part of them are nomadic. They're Bedouin people. And I think up until 1962, which I think is independence there, there were no real buildings in Mauritania except for the fort and the colonial buildings from the French administration there. Everyone lived in a tent. And still the majority of people live in tents. And so it's the kind of place that most people would look at and go, oh, you know, it's the land that time forgot. You know, there's camels everywhere.

The streets are made of sand. There's beautiful painted fishing boats all around the beaches. If you're into kite surfing, it's the great undiscovered kite surfing place in the world. You've got 500 kilometers of perfect white sand and big winds. So it's an amazing spot. No alcohol. Probably better for the kite surfer. If you're a kite surfer, yeah. But I went there and I was captivated by the place because it is so unusual. It does feel like it's off the beaten track. You know, it's not a culture which people are at all familiar with.

But as I discovered it and listened to the music and met various musicians and people, I grew to really love it and to feel that it's very much its own thing. So I was determined to film there. And that was a big bit of a fight with the financiers. How do we film somewhere that nobody's made a film before um how are we going to get all the equipment there you know is it safe all of these sort of questions but actually i think it's one of the things i like

most in my movie is the feel of reality in mauritania yeah i feel like that's a common theme for some of your films is showing us what feel like what would otherwise be undiscovered lands to the broad population of people touching the void and last king of Scotland. Well, I think that's something that I've obviously got an adventurous spirit somewhere in me. And although I'm pretty soft and I like a feather bed, but I do love travel and I do love kind of discovering other places and, and, and other kinds of people and sort of the realization that wherever you go in

the world, people are the same, you know, and that, that I think is goes to the heart of pretty much everything I do is that this sort of realization that, you know, you think you're somewhere exotic,

but actually, you know, you cut them and they bleed, you know, it somewhere exotic, but actually, you know, you cut them and they bleed. You know, it's everyone. Everyone is the same. Tell me about making a film about someone in confinement. Did you go back and look at films about people in prison or was there any references that you used? I assume it's always very challenging to do a story like this.

Yeah, it is. And mostly, I mean, I did look at at various films but i don't think there was one in particular for prison that i thought was absolutely the right thing because actually guantanamo is very different and you know i was in studio in south africa and of course i went to robin island where mandela was held and i watched various the films about mandela there's been lots about mandela in prison and actually what you realize is Guantanamo was a much more dehumanizing experience and architecturally and everything else. It's, it's, you know, Roman Island feels like a holiday camp by comparison, you know?

So one of my, you know, because I come from this research based kind of documentary kind of background, I always start off with thinking, well, what was the reality? What actually is, what was his cell really like? What size was it? What was the color? You know, how did the guards dress? How did they address him?

And so a lot of it is just based on talking to him, talking to the guards, talking, you know, to get the sense of the reality of the place. And then dramatically you move away from that. But I tried in this instance, we were in Guantanamo to be absolutely accurate as I could to Muhammad's recollections and to what the guard Steve told me, because as I said, the truth of that seemed really important.

Muhammad who said to me an interesting thing, he said the American government spent tens of millions of dollars preventing people knowing what was happening in there. You still can't go in there. There still aren't official pictures or films or anything. So I want you to show what it was really like. And that was important to him, just the sort of sense of the physical space.

So I went with the production designer to Mauritania to see Mohamedou. He measured everything out for us using his body. You know, this is how long it was I could sit like this I could pray only like this and you know so that we could figure out exactly the size of everything and he even knew you know like a lot of the cells that he was in were these strange kind of one space divided by a metal screen you know with holes in it and the guards were always on one side. There would always be two guards 24 hours a day right there with him,

but just separated by this, this, this, this metal screen. And so he couldn't have a shit without being there with them. He couldn't do anything. And so he, he, he, he, I said to him, what kind of screen was it? What were the holes like? And he said, well, I can tell you exactly. There were 4,322 holes in that screen. So you need to find something that looked like this. Because nothing else to do, no stimulation.

He counted every fucking hole in it. Wow. That's unbelievable. Tell me a little bit more about your feelings about Guantanamo. Because I think it still kind of fascinates, infuriates and baffles Americans. It's still not closed. Obviously, the president just announced that he intends to close it. But it's this bizarre sort of anti-Narnia in American history.

You know, it feels like the most awful place. Yeah, that's why it's important that Biden, one of his first things that he's done, obviously he's done a lot of things in this first few weeks, but one of the first things he has done, he's recognized the importance of Guantanamo symbolically. And he's launched a review process to try and figure out how do we close this place? Because America has made it very complicated for itself to close it. There's this kind of limbo around that place because there are 40-something people there still. Half of them are prisoners.

In other words, they have been charged with something. And the other half are still, like Mohamedou, they're detainees. They've never been charged. And they've been there, some of them, for 20 years now almost. And all of the evidence against all of those people is completely sullied by the fact that it was gained through torture. So you can't try them without pretty much everything being thrown out. So even though there probably are some people who really were guilty of bad things there who should face a proper trial, there probably is evidence. But that evidence is

now completely sullied. So that you know it's almost like it's this wound that America keeps gouging out and sort of not it's not able to heal you know it's like what's the what's the what's the Greek myth about the liver being picked out every night by the giant eagle or something. What's that myth? You probably know more about this. And every, you know, you're in absolute agony all day. If you eat with your liver being pecked out and then overnight it grows back and then it happens again the next day.

That's what Guantanamo is like. I think that's in the myth of Prometheus. Is that Prometheus? You're right. See, there you go. I knew you'd know that. I like stories. Yeah. prometheus is that prometheus you're right see there you go i knew you'd know that um so so like stories yeah so um uh i think that it would be enormously symbolically important for the rest

of the world for biden to close the place because i think it sends a very simple message which is america is back we're beacon of justice again and this was a shameful episode and obviously on one level intellectually my movie is about this very simple thing about the rule of law upholding the rule of law which sounds like such a boring thing but of course you know is absolutely vital to civilization and the reason that countries as Mohamedou himself will say the reason a country like Mauritania is a mess is because they don't uphold the rule of law and there's corruption that's rampant there's there's there's they're not free and fair elections and you're scared if the police

show up at your house you're gonna you're gonna be frightened so you know that's one of the things about Mohamedou he would love to come and live in America. Even now, everything, he would love to come here because he wants to be somewhere where he can be free, where he can say what he wants. We can do what he wants,

where there's opportunities for him as a very educated, smart guy. So that's one of the things that fascinates me about him is that he's this contradiction, you know, love for a lot of things, American, and yet he's been so badly treated by America. Love for American culture that is so profound. You know,

I remember him singing the black eyed peas song the first time we were on Skype together. And then he sort of starts singing some Christian country and Western that he'd learned from a guard, you know, and he just like takes all these bits of America, but he's never been here. He's never been here, but he's, you know, but that, that image of him that you share at the end of the film is, is so remarkable, you know, of him and Bob Dylan. I mean, it's, it's just an amazing grace note on the film.

Just a couple of more questions for you, Kevin. I'm very interested. You make these great documentaries know you make uh these great documentaries and you also make these fairly serious dramatic films the likes of which are frequently less common in hollywood right now i'm wondering you know since the last king of scotland if you've noticed is it significantly more difficult to get a movie like the mauritanian made absolutely it's really hard to get i mean look The Mauritanian is about a subject which people don't think is going to be commercial um

hosannas you know that nobody's nobody thinks they're getting rich making a film about Guantanamo um so you have to be very clever

in the way that you put it together the movie was made very cheaply um and that's one of the reasons we shot it in South Africa because we could get a great deal and, you know, wonderful crews there, but it's cheaper than doing it in Europe

or doing it in America. And we needed to pack it full of a lot of stars in order to get, in order to get the finance. But, you know, one of the things I was conscious of right at the beginning was, you know, I don't want to make a movie which, which one of those movies which is filled with celebrities who seem to be doing their, you know, their social duty, I think, who are sort of, you know, doing, doing the movie because they approve of the issue. And I hope that we avoided that. I think we avoided that because I think every performer in this film is great for their role and is really effective. And yeah, without bar none,

but it's, but we needed to get an amazing cast together. And obviously Jodie in particular is still a huge name in America. And I couldn't believe it when she said, yes, you know, I sent it to her thinking almost certainly she would say no, and it would take two months to get a no from her, but she read it. She was like the title. She said, what is the Mauritanian? What is that? Where is that? Who is that?

And, and so she was intrigued enough to meet and she recognized that this was a kind of character that first of all was uh very different than anything she played before in the sense it's a real person that it's a highly political subject but also it's a version of what she has played in many different roles where she's played this character who's very prickly kind of protected armored and yet you know has got this broken interior or something and that's kind of what she does her brain and that's why i sent it to her because i thought i can this is like got jodie foster's fingerprints all over it and it was interesting working with her because right from the very beginning she was like, take out these lines, take out these lines, I don't need this

scene. Just like making everything completely like a bullet so that she's like, I'm just a lawyer in this story. They don't need to know all this about my kids, about this, about that. They don't need to know anything. I'm just a lawyer. And you get little tiny hints of the rest of her life and you have to kind of piece it together. And I thought that was, you know, it was already, the script was already sorted like that, but she made it really extremely like that. And her line to me was, people will know who I am by the second scene from just the way I do it. And she's absolutely right. I think you know who this character is and you understand her internal conflicts right from the beginning.

That's the Steve McQueen school of movie stardom. I don't need this line. And it's actually one that you don't come across that often, let me tell you. Almost every actor is the opposite. It's like, wouldn't it be great if I said such and such?

Whereas, you know, I think that i think that uh tahar he's a he's an actor who you can have such fun with just exploring and and uh improvising around a scene and that was really fun when he was doing scenes with jody as well, you know, because she's not used to necessarily working in that way, but it would bring out interesting things in her and unexpected little moments in her. But Tahar and I would spend, you know, we'd do 20 takes of something, try it a bit this way, a bit that way, and discover different truths,

different ways of playing the same thing. And I think, you know, he's a sort of joy to work with for a DP as well because he's very camera aware. He'll always find that nice bit of light without it being self-conscious, you know. So he's a great actor. And I hope that this movie will, his English is also so amazing. I hope this movie will bring him

to wider recognition within the US. Yeah, I'm rooting for him for the Academy Awards. I think that would be helpful if he's recognized. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, that would be great. I don't know what the chances are,

but it's such a weird, it's always weird, the Academy Awards, but this is a particularly weird year. Kevin, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen?

Have you seen anything good lately? I saw a Russian film and I'm going to flank on the director, but he's an amazing director. Dear Comrades.

Andrei Konchalovsky. Okay, so Konchalovsky, despite the fact that I couldn't remember his name, I was aware of him before because he was a collaborator with Tarkovsky, I think on Ivan's Childhood and one of his earlier films.

And his brother is also an amazing Russian director who did Burned by the Sun and various other films, and a 6 to 18 musical. So he also came to America in the 80s and he made the movie Runa train yes the john voight film yeah which is a great which is a great kind of it's a good hollywood movie yeah it's a it's a great totally mainstream here's a guy who's made a totally mainstream john voight american hollywood 80s movie he also made tango and cash with stallone that's right and then he then he ends up um uh going back to

europe makes recently a bunch of pretty bad movies and suddenly aged like 86 or something has made a masterpiece which i recommend everyone see dear comrades and it's stylistically so interesting it's shot in black and white, 4.3 format. It's about, you know, it's set in the Soviet Union in the 50s, about a strike at a factory. It sounds boring, but it's really, it feels real because he was obviously there. He was part of that. And yeah, he has just enough kind of Hollywood storytelling now to kind of, you know, make it accessible.

And it's a really heartening thing for any filmmaker to see that here is someone who has finally made their masterpiece at 86. So I'm taking him as my taking him as my, my, my inspiration. Because, you know, if you can finally make your masterpiece at 86, that's pretty, that's pretty inspiring, isn't it? That's saying to, that's something to,

because the thing is with all films is that they're all, you know, you finish them and they're a failure, you know, you finish them and they're never quite, but you want, but to get to 86 and finally make the one, I hope he wins the Academy award actually for best foreign,

foreign language film. That would be something. Well, I wish you a 30 more years of films as well, Kevin. Thanks for doing the show. Thank you. Nice to be on. Thank you to Kevin McDonald, Mallory Rubin, and of course Bobby Wagner, our producer. Stay tuned to

The Big Picture, because later this week, Amanda and I will dig back into the mailbag to answer all your award season questions, analyze the BAFTA and DGA nominations, and gear up for the Oscar nominations, which will be revealed exactly one week from today. We will see you then.