The Press Box - 'The Big Picture' — The Past, Present, and Future of Superhero Movies (Ep. 383)

Episode Date: November 17, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey is joined by fellow Ringer staffers and comic book enthusiasts Jason Concepcion and David Shoemaker to discuss the evolution, the current state, and the future of the movie universes of DC and Marvel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture. Very special week at The Ringer this week. It is Superhero Week. We did rank all of the superhero movies. We are writing about superheroes in sophisticated ways. We did draft all of the superheroes in order. And we're making more superhero content. Here to talk with me about the future and the past of superhero movies.

Very pleased to be joined by Ringer staff writer Jason Concepcion. Hello. And Ringer Art Director and Podcaster and Wrestling column. and Man About Town, David Shoemaker. Man About Town. Wow. Rackonteur. Man about office?

Yeah, I do the laps around the office complex with some frequency. That's true. So David and Jason, you guys are here because you, like me, are longtime comic book fans and also serious watchers and purveyors of comic book movies. Sure. And I wrote in a column early this week that Superhero movies in a lot of ways are really the only movies now. They're the only movies of serious consequence of movie studios.

Before we talk about where these movies are going, though, there's kind of a lot to understand about where they've been and how we got here. So, Jason, let's start a little bit by talking about when the superhero movie moment really first started. This is just my perspective. But I feel like the first superhero movie that really set the tone for what we consider the modern era of superhero films is Blade, 1998, starring Wesley Snipes as a daywalker, which is a vampire that can walk in the daytime. his mother was bitten by a vampire, gave birth to him. The full turning process was halted, and he now hunts vampires through the day and the night. That movie was kind of a surprise success, and just it proved something about the genre that was kind of taken for granted at the time, which is you can combine a genre film

with a superhero film and use that to elevate a character that really has no mainstream no kind of mainstream profile at all. Blade is not even a sea level character. I mean, would you say, Dave? I don't even know what a blade, what's the blade's best arc. I was trying to recreate the history. I mean, he certainly had a moment back in that, like, in the comic book shop, back in like the kind of the ghost writer heyday, which would have been just before that,

the sort of like Mark Cheshire, is Mark Tashara draw? Is that, or was that about it? He was hitting home runs. Who is the comic artist, Tashara? that was just drawing everything back then in this super muscled out, inky style. He did a lot of ghostwriter and Black Panther and I'm sure he did some blade covers.

But anyway, yeah, he had a moment when everything was dark and grim in comic books and they were kind of like reaching back into the archives to see what they had. But, I mean, that's, he's a level of genre that's always had difficulty sticking even in comic books where there's all this space for everything.

And this is 10 full years before Iron Man. A marble property comes like. And there is something kind of random, but also pressing, I think, about specifically what Jason is describing, which is, you know, this is the collision of a genre movie with a superhero movie, which is kind of where we find ourselves now. But back then, why did that movie even happen? Was it because they could get Wesley Snipes's he was still a movie star? I think it's Wesley Snipes looking for properties. I mean, looking for creating roles for himself at that point. 131.2 million on a $45 million budget in 1998.

Two years later, you get the Brian Singer-Helmed X-Men movie, the first X-Men of that trilogy in 2000. That approach is really what the standard approach for superhero films was up until that time, which was you take the most popular heroes. The X-Men certainly were the Marvel's most popular heroes going back to the mid-70s in the Chris Claremont run and introduce them all at once. Here's the Wolverine. Here's the Wolverine came to be. Here's Rogue. Here's Professor X. You have to introduce all these characters.

And somehow, hopefully in the third act of the movie, you've built up enough momentum where there's. There can be some kind of fight against a villain who you also have to introduce. Yeah, momentum and also identification. I mean, it's really difficult to introduce 12 characters in a film and have anybody care about them. But in the craziest, I mean, Andy and Chris talked about this on the watch this week, that it was so mind-blowing that that movie was made, that they actually did one for us, that that, I mean, I was super excited about this. I was just so, so into it.

But at the same time, in retrospect, when I was ranking these movies for part of the, you know, as our superhero movie ranking project, I mean, there's none of those X-Men movies hold any place in my heart. I guess you could go like first class. I had a certain style that I liked. And the more recent ones, you know, I'm interested to see them sort of playing ketchup. We'll get into that later. And that's interesting to me.

But yeah, I mean, it was dire. The casting was straight out of like Wizard magazine. Remember when Wizard used to have the casting? That was my favorite column. My favorite magazine column. They just did. Like half of the movie was that. And I remember thinking, this is an interesting point.

that you bring up because we don't talk about the casting in the same way. I remember back then as as the first X-Men of film was getting into production, there was all this like, who's going to be Wolverine? Is it being Glenn Danzig? I remember that was like one of the really crazy ones that was thrown out there. Patrick Stewart had been Professor Xavier for years. He had been, he has to be Professor Xx. Even then, I remember when they announced the movie, I felt like he had already aged out of Professor Xavier and now he's still doing the role like 45 years later. That's an interesting thing, right? Because that is sort of the first tip towards world. building and fan service, which is something that these movies started to live and die by, right? Yeah. For a long time, that was the most difficult obstacle for these movies, is that you had to be fully authentic, I mean, fully true to the source material, and yet sort of find a broader

audience. I guess the flashpoint of all this where it seemed like a bigger deal than most, or at least in the mainstream media, was Watchmen, because it was a concise, I mean, it was one graphic novel. Oh, yeah, it was, yeah. And Zach Snyder was, I mean, that's my favorite Zach Snyder superhero endeavor for sure. Low bar, but he was just like, I'm going to, I'm just going to follow that. And there was a, and, you know, he was able to, I mean, Dave Gibbons is one of the great comic book illustrators, but is a very low-key sort of British style that all the panels in the book were the same size.

It was more, you know, it was more of like a structural feat than any sort of like great artistic expression in the way that we're used to as comic book fans at least. I don't know. I really liked that movie, but it was very, very true to the source material. But he had in some ways an easier job because there was a limit to the source material. Right. That is the opposite of kind of the direction that Marvel in particular went, but even DC2. I mean, we should talk about how there are essentially three competing universes in this world, right? So we tip towards X-Men, which is the sort of Fox X-Men, Fantastic Four to some extent universe. They own a certain set of properties.

Those movies are all produced by Fox. Then there's the Marvel MCU, which launches shortly thereafter. Jason, I'll let you break that down for us. And now we're sort of moving into an extended DC universe that began with Christopher Nolan in 2005. With Batman began? Sort of. Sort of. Well, you would imagine if DC had any inkling of what Marvel was to create five years later,

that they would have jumped on this shared universe IP right away. The disadvantage that DC is in is that Batman as their emblematic character is this really kind of dower, all black and gray's very visceral street level character. And you get the feeling that they've kind of wedded themselves to a certain style with them. What I mean by that is, I mean, if you look at those X-Men movies going up to the Batman movies, there's almost a complete lack of color there. They're very abashed to be like, this is a comic book movie. Like, where are the comic book costumes? No, we can't do that. We have to do these leather costumes for the X-Men.

Batman is the same way. We have to make it look really like we have to tone down what those late 90s Batman films are and just make it a black armor suit and just make it like that. Whereas Marvel was the code part of how they crack the code was they were able to just tap into what was absolutely authentic about their characters. I've been saying for, I feel like, years now that the two most central things that Marvel, the MCU got right that no one else has got right before is one self-awareness and the inherent and the built-in sense of humor that comes with that.

And two, it seems so simple, but all of the costumes have a reason. Right. Right. They're either wearing armor or, I mean, if they're not, okay, they're either all wearing tactical outfits, which would, I mean, I know real people don't wear Hawkeyes outfit, but, you know, it's either tactical outfits or Captain America's like red, white and blue is what he wore as a, on propaganda monsters in World War II, and he puts it back on and, movie, but he's in tactical.

And then everything else is Iron Man Armor or stuff that Tony Stark makes. It's like it's so, like it seems like such a small thing, but it just helps with the suspension of disbelief so much that it's not like, why is Wolverine wearing yellow and blue? Or why is he not? Both of those questions are really like, they're really irritating. Well, certainly part of that, you have to credit to like the rise of Kevin Feige as, I guess you would say, like the creative force behind the MCU movies started as a. like an assistant producer on those X-Men films and was put in charge of these properties

and was able to mold what were essentially a list of B characters. I mean, Captain America is an important character in the Marvel universe, but outside of that was seen as kind of this hokey throwback. Sure. Tony Stark, what's his best arc? What's the best Tony Stark? Isn't it the slip into alcoholism? That would have been more than once, but yeah.

The original, the 1970s version of it. And that's like two issues, two or three. It's not even that. And, you know, obviously Black Widow and other important character who's no profile outside of the MCU. These were characters that when they were announced post-Iron Man as going to be part of this shared universe, people were like, you know, is that even going to be a thing? I mean, that was Zach Snyder when said when Watchman was coming out. Like, Captain America movie, what? Thor?

This is crazy. You know, I can't believe Iron Man made $300 million. Like, who wants this? And that was, like, not to take shots at Zach Snyder, but that was really, that was absolutely the common perception of these characters at the time, that no one would want to see these characters. I had a very similar reaction to it, too. I mean, I have no relationship to Thor whatsoever. I've never read a Thor book in my life. And I don't think I ever will.

And yet somehow, I think one of the five best Marvel movies ever now is the Thor movie that came out two weeks ago. And they had to get to two bad movies to get there. Well, that's just it. Yeah. Two different things. One, I mean, the disadvantage that DC's under is part of it is just reps. Like, if you would ask them if they could have, if they could be 15 movies deep, but no one would give, if Rotten Tomatoes had them all under 45%.

They would take that because you go see a movie. Part of it is just the, it's like with comic books, it's like, I know X-Men's going to last forever. So I can get in now and not feel like I'm going to miss out on saying, you know, I'm not going to be let down. All of these, none of these Marvel characters have great. You know, there's not, we're so spoiled by some of the good comic book writing that's been, that's happened in the past decade, you don't even realize that, like,

Brian K. Vaughn has wrote Dr. Strange's The Oath, one really good graphic novel that sort of retells the backstory and everything else. There's not a lot of good Dr. Strange unless she's really into trippy 70s stuff or whatever. Not like Superman, like Red Sun is commonly referred to as like the greatest Superman. That's like an else world story about him landing.

There's just not a lot of, outside of Batman and, you know, Wolverine, these really kind of attractive characters, there's not a lot of great stories to even talk about, especially with the stuff that Marvel was dealing with when they launched the MCU. And Thor was, you know, there was some trippy Walt Simons and stuff. And Jason Aaron has done amazing work over the past five years or whatever. Ragnarok is certainly influenced by the Jason Aaron and stuff.

Yeah, but before, but you're right. I mean, the allure of, I don't even know. I mean, I don't know what the Thor audience was. I said earlier it was the guys who owned the comic book shop, you know, and play Dungeons and Dragons. That was me, but, you know. You've hit on something that is really important, though, which is that these movies, I think, satisfy comic book fans. enough and effectively draw in everyone else.

So I'm still not totally sure how they've done that and maybe we should explore that a little bit. But it doesn't matter than most people didn't have a relationship with Thor because what they were able to make a relationship with was Chris Hemsworth and the look of that character and what that character could represent inside an Avengers movie, right? Yeah, I mean, the Hemsworth thing is really interesting because he wasn't the household name that he is now when he signed up, right? So Marvel's done a really good job of finding, at least in the first wave, of finding sort of underserved or young up and coming. actors and putting him in these roles. I mean, if someone had showed you the roster of the Avengers, you would have said, you know, Scarlett Johansson is by far

the most famous or vital person right now. Robert Downey Jr. was it sort of a, you know, that was a craft shoot when Iron Man one came out. Certainly he was really famous in his way. But yeah, I mean, it's to find those actors at that right moment,

it's the sort of deal that they make. Chris Hemsworth knows I'm going to be, you know, a household name because of this Thor role and then I can grow my career because of that and it becomes this symbiotic, no venom, pun intended relationship that kind of rising, rising ties, lifting all boats and all that stuff. I think that the really amazing thing that they were able to do coming off of Iron Man was build a brand awareness that superseded the individual movies. Like Thor was treated as a loss leader, essentially.

Yeah. This is how we're going to get to Avengers. Forget that it's bad. It's getting to Avengers and squatting on weekends. Just saying we're going to do four of these a year or three of these a year. I mean, people care almost more about the stinger scenes in Thor. How is this going to link with the rest of the MCU? How are they going to do this?

Then they really did about the movie. That was that forward momentum. And as they got deeper into their films in the second wave, that's when you really started to see the strength of this structure, which is you're freed from the tyranny of having to introduce these guys all the time. Yes. No more having to shoot Batman's parents again. No more Peter Parker bit by the spider again.

We know who these guys are. Let's move it forward towards the Avengers film. And then when the Avengers film happens, we don't need to introduce these people. It's just action all the way through. This is a big part of this conversation. Yeah. Specifically because there have now been since Blade came out,

I think four different, maybe three different, but maybe four different Batman's in our lifetime. Right. there's only been one Thor there's only been one Captain America one Iron Man all of the lynchpin characters likewise on the Fox side

there have now been three Spider-Man's there have now been two Magnitos there have now been two Professor X's there's about to be a new Logan and because of this like that the way that MCU is birthed is still in place

it's like a Faberge egg you know what I mean it's still like a precious piece and you know when we talk about the future of this stuff on the second half I think we need to get into a little bit of like what happens when that egg gets cracked because it's going to be cracked at some point.

But do you think that the success of movies like the Thor movie are simply because they've created a culture around the MCU or are they because there's something better about these movies and we're willing to acknowledge? Stepping on your toes here. There's a broader movie industry thing.

I mean, a situation where you wrote that they're the only movies that matter right now. To a certain extent, there's no, like every movie gets a two-week window of people paying attention to it. It's just like some movies seem like louder and more urgent and that's what the superhero movies are capable of doing. It's like everybody's going to go see this.

So I'm definitely going to go, you know, in my very brief opportunity to go see this movie. We talked about this a little before we started recording, but there is this sort of like high floor, right? I mean, who knows what the ceiling is for superhero movies? But there's a certain expectation of just baseline quality and enjoyment, right? Like when Guardians of the Galaxy came out, when was the last time that you would seem like just even a fulfilling space odyssey, right?

I mean, it had been so long and you knew that it was going to be at least like a B plus. And we should also acknowledge what an incredible flex that was on Marvel's part to be like, here is a superhero team that you've never heard of. You never heard of Rocket Raccoon. You don't know who this is unless you think it's a Beatles song. You've never heard of these guys. The selling point on that movie was Marvel Goes to Space. Yeah. That's it.

And that movie did $300-something million based on characters that nobody had any awareness of. Yeah, we're going to cast a wrestler. We're going to take this guy from Parks and Iraq. He's going to do sit-ups, I swear. It was a big gamble. It was the brand. And that was really the movie where I thought, oh, man, they're printing money now.

Now they're going to, that's, I mean, you do Ant-Man after that because you're just like, yeah, let's do Ant-Man. I think in some ways that is among their most beloved movies, too, which is what's really interesting. When Tycho Waititi was in here a few weeks ago to talk about Thor, I asked him, what was the scariest part about doing this, and he said they're 16 for 16. They have not failed in any of their movies. Now, we can quibble about the quality of a Thor movie or which Captain America movie is the most effective or the most like a 70s thriller. And we can talk about that too. But all of these movies have made more money than they cost.

And they're established in the canon now of this MCU. Yeah. And at some point, there's going to be one that doesn't. Sure. That's the wild card, right? I mean, we both discussed, you know, the sort of making of stars. They've made these characters. There was, you know, there's all these stories that like, you know, about how little

they paid the actors in the first, at least in phase one. Right, of course. And then, you know, Robert Downey Jr. sort of blew that up when he, when he renegue. And all of them, I'm sure, blowing it up now for every additional Avengers movie. But the expectations are higher. I mean, even if they did, if they, you know, if they did something else that's like Guardians of the Galaxy, I'm not sure that that era of Chris Pratt. is big enough to anchor that movie anymore.

And certainly for, you know, directors, they're still bringing directors along. They have Kevin Feige. They have this sort of infrastructure that's helping, you know, that makes, that gives you the confidence that they're going to be good. Also, you can have a director that has never done CGI before and just say, like, we got you. Right. Right. The infrastructure is in place.

Yeah. But yeah, it's a different world. And going forward, there's different expectations. And I think that, like I said, I mean, Robert Downey Jr. will conceivably keep coming back for $30 million for every cameo that he does. But maybe there's going to be a movie where the Robert Downey Jr., the Robert Downey Jr. budget puts the movie in the red. And then what do they do next? Let's hold that thought before we go to the future of Marvel and talk a little bit about the two other properties and what has happened for them in the last 10 years while Marvel has had this ceaseless accumulation of brand loyalty and return business.

there's the Fox X-Men films which I think qualitatively are probably up and down at best and then there's DC which was in a little bit of a stasis mode

I think through the completion of Nolan's Dark Night trilogy where they had to let that finish before they could officially go to the next stage of what they wanted to do so where are those two brands at for lack of a better word those two studio executions we're talking kind of on the eve of Justice League

so that's I mean that's where the DC is right now. I mean, there's everything except for, I mean, I guess Suicide Squad is slightly its own separate thing, but, you know,

certainly they're spinning these movies off, supposedly with Joker and Harley Quinn, everything else. But for that, but, you know, the center of the DCU is, I mean,

it's crazy to say, the center of the DC universe right now is Wonder Woman and then, and the Justice League outside of that. I mean, none of us have seen the movie yet, but you look at the trailers and the stills.

I mean, Wonder Woman is the, is the, is the center of grass. The gravity of the movie, I mean, she and Ben Affleck is Batman, but he's already talking about not being, I mean, ending his reign as Batman. So, and then, you know, Superman is, it's sort of insane the degree to which they've been leaning on him to be a tent pull, but also, like, sort of acknowledging the fact that he's not a character that anybody likes. I mean, that's the role that that he's played. I get the impression he's just not going to be in the first hour of that movie.

Right. The Superman issue in particular is interesting because I think Cavill's actually a pretty good Superman. I don't love those movies. And I think most people don't love those movies. However, Batman versus Superman, Dawn of Justice, and Man of Steel are both very successful. They made a lot of money. They're critically maligned. But they did start to do the work of begin this new era, I guess, for DC.

It shows how critic-proof these films are on a micro-sense. But in a macro sense, this tidal wave of critical lambasting certainly has taken its toll, like on the cultural relevance of the films. And it's, you know, D.C. is in this weird defensive crouch where on the one hand, they scored the first real hit of, you know, the aughts, the post-aughts with the Nolan Batman films. Excellent movie trilogy, critically lauded, great cultural, relevant film, incredible reimagining of Batman put into the modern era, but also standalone. So therefore, this kind of like outmoded thinking, they had to let run its course while Marvel was like busy building this

Cathedral to comics. And then Marvel got to set the tone that people engage with in the genre, which is this kind of jokey, self-referential, light-hearted thing. And then DC is stuck with this kind of dour grim, Batman, the gritty universe. And so when it came time to maybe switch gears, lighten the tone a little bit, now they're going to be accused of, now, okay, you're ripping off. you're ripping off Marvel now if you do that. Yeah, I think that's true.

And I think that, you know, without writing on it too much, because I, you know, enjoy comic book movies sort of full stop. But the way that they, you know, the Nolan movies were a success. I think that, in my opinion, it was a mistake to build the entire universe, you know, on the tone and production style of those movies. Yes. But there was also. But there's also.

But there's also that I remember, I feel like I remember when they announced the broader DC-C. cinematic universe, and it was Nolan and Snyder, and it felt a whole lot like these are like the two most famous movie makers that will involve themselves in our product, which is contrary to the Marvel's technique,

which DC could have stolen, which was, we're just going to make these movies and we're going to find people who will make them. And that is the lesson I think of Wonder Woman's success, which is Patty Jenkins has chosen to make that movie. She's only made one movie in the last 10 years. Now, granted, it's a very critically acclaimed film and won Charlie's Theron and Oscar.

But that choice, that choice, is the Marvel blueprint. And Zach Snyder is not. And now I think, Jason, you make a great point about tonal confusion of where DC finds itself, especially given that Justice League was finished by Joss Whedon. That's who was the writer-director of the Avengers film after Zach Snyder had a tragic incident in his family. And now Josh Whedon style, this kind of whiz-bang, TV-born, snappy dialogue is going to find

itself inserted into a grim, grunge, darkened DC universe. Grapped it onto the top somehow. The parallel, I mean, we've all talked about this before, but the parallel is Brian Michael Bindis being hired onto the DC as a writer for D.C. comics. So explain who Bendez is. Brian Michael Bindis is one of the most influential, if not the most influential comics writer over the past decade or so. Certainly, yeah.

He's just had his hand in so many arcs, so many. At Marvel, specifically. At Marvel specific. He set the tone for what Marvel is today. But he kind of made his name writing a Spider-Man series, but not the actionary, right, not amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, which took place in this parallel reality. This guy, Miles Morales was Spider-Man instead of Peter Parker. And it was this very conversational, very, the dialogue jumped off the page. And it got, there's a lot of people who I think at some point were sort of worn down by this sort of dialogue style.

In Brian Michael Bendis comics, there is a lot of dialogue. There's a lot of dialogue balloons. You'll see sometimes like 20 panels with just dialogue balloons. Right. It's not like, it's not the old, like, pop art style of, like, one dialogue balloon per face. It was, there's like 20 per face, and they're just eating each other all over the page. But it's this really smart, snappy, and very character-driven and just very sort of like upbeat, not overly political, but certainly just sort of like a modern, you know, vaguely liberal tone to everything. Gently woke. Yeah, it's a good way of putting it.

And just, like, very much set the norm for what Marvel was. in the 21st century. And, you know, there's a lot of variety to writing at Marvel Comics. But DC Comics, on the other hand, had a much narrower self-definition. Not to their detriment, they're, you know, over the past couple years, or the past year, at least, there are a lot of people that say they're doing it better than Marvel by just sticking into the basics, and the basics are, you know, by their definition. It's basically like 90s comic books.

Like, and very much in the same style of the way they're doing the movies, it's this, like, gritty is the word. It's like the moment when comic books started being described as gritty when every comic cover was like the Punisher with like 5,000 bullet casings on the front and like die cut blood. You know, like that was like that is

that's the mode of the big time DC comics and sort of the movies too. And that's why it's interesting that they would bring Bindus in. Like you, if they're going to make a big if they're going to make a big buy, it would almost, I'm trying to, I don't even know what the example would be, but it's like, you know, You know, you could imagine them finding a, you know, just novelist or a screenwriter who

just like kind of fits the mold better and spending all their money on that. Bendis is very, very not the DC model. And the fact that they're bringing him in is a really transformative, potentially transformative move for them. I want to talk more about what Bendis will mean. But first, let's get a word from our sponsor. Today's show is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What if hiring could be easier, more streamlined and less time-consuming? so even when you're busy, you can still be smart about the way you hire.

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That's right, free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. One more time to try it for free, go to ZipRecruiter.com slash 33. Back here with Jason Concepcion and David Shoemaker, we are talking about the past and the future of superhero movies. David, you were just explaining what Brian Michael Bendis is higher at D.C. is going to mean for those books. What is it going to mean for those movies? You know, it's interesting.

There's not a Kevin Feige of, at least known with that amount of power over the DC Warner Brothers thing. Jeff Johns has taken on a lot of that role since he's sort of stepped back from Justice League writing, the writing the comic book side. And I'm sure there's somebody that I'm not aware of or that I'm forgetting. I mean, it bears mentioned that Bendis was on this sort of like creative committee of comic book writers on the Marvel side. And that got blown up a year or a couple years ago, however long ago that was. Over disagreements allegedly about the kind of the wokeness of the current Marvel line. This is these are reports, but nothing confirmed.

There's a lot of rumors. And a lot of it was just that they wanted to be more involved than they were. And the whole thing had sort of run its course. So it doesn't surprise me at all that Bendis of all the, of all of the comic book writers of his level, he may have made like the least Hollywood money to this point in his career. So like certainly there's probably, he probably has his eye on some other thing, you know, on a bigger portfolio. It's interesting that that's happening at the moment that Zach Snyder's office has been moved off the Universal. I mean, move off to Warner Brothers lot that, that, you know, Wonder Woman has emerged.

I mean, the movie has emerged as sort of the template for the DC universe going forward. And you can also take it back to Suicide Squad that the movie that, you know, I mean that the trailer for Suicide Squad was more of a Marvel trailer than the movie that, the movie that they had in the can. The reshoots, the whole thing with the reshoots. Yeah, the whole thing is, it feels like the DCU is moving towards, you know, more of a place where Marvel already is. And they don't have to be, we don't have to call it derivative. If they're moving towards better movies, then that's great. I think you make a good point with Wonder Woman, because Wonder Woman is the first DCU movie that doesn't feel reactionary to something else that has happened.

Suicide Squad felt like it was very influenced by the success of Deadpool, which seemed to really shake. the entire genre, really. And Batman versus Superman is interesting because in Man of Steel, Superman has to stop like these giant robotic world killing machines. And in the process of the battle with Zod and trying to stop these machines, probably causes the deaths of several million people throughout Metropolis. And this was criticized roundly by people who love the characters. It's like, no, Superman would move the battle offshore, somebody fight over the ocean, something like that.

And then in Batman versus Superman, there is so much, there's so much detail added by, like, the newscasters. Oh, they're fighting over a totally abandoned part of the city. There's no one living there. Like, that kind of thing shows the lack of confidence that DC really has in its voice and what it is doing right now. And Wonder Woman is the first movie that they've made since the Nolan films that's like that understand. what it is and what it's doing and is not reacting to anything else that's going on. It's just really smartly constructed. I mean, you talked about, you know, the tyranny of origin stories.

I think that the, you know, before it was even a concept that you'd make enough movies to get away from those, the best superhero movies that have ever been made are the ones where the origin story is tied in directly to the arc of the movie, to the villain of the movie, that Green Goblin was there for the creation of Spider-Man. That's right. Hellboy One, you know, like it's the Nazis or whatever. When it's all tied in together, then you can actually put, you can fit it in 90 minutes, and it doesn't feel like you're just like dragging random villains in left and right.

When Joker, I mean, a little bit controversial, but if Joker is the one that killed Batman's parents, then there you go. You know, I mean, it has to all sort of tie together. And, you know, Wonder Woman did a good job of that. You leave everything together. The ones that are really successful, you know, do that really well. And I think that when you're, you know, when you just have, when you're too preoccupied with everything else with commentary on your movies,

it's a real problem. And again, I don't know the corporate structures behind these setups, but it really does feel like just a lack of, you know, I keep going back a lack of that voice at the top who's just making these level-headed decisions. Superman would not do this. It would be cool.

It would be cool to blow up New York City. Maybe just let's not do it. It's like with Suicide Squad, these are street-level crooks, right? The street-level villas is like killer crock and the boomerang or whatever. It's... This is a baseball bat. Yeah. Why are they fighting like a celestial god?

Like this exact story could have been told with like low rent terrorists or something. You know, like it could be the exact same thing and we could get the same. I mean, it would just be so much more believable. And the way that they did it, everyone over the age of five in that movie theater was like, what, this is so dumb. Like watching it just sort of guffawing at the, you know, at the climax. Maybe not five. I feel like, you know, nine.

My positive review of that movie was that 13-year-old David would have thought it was awesome. I think that there are things that that movie does well. I think that they hit on something with Margot Robbie, and there's a reason that they're making a Harley Quinn movie. There are something attitudinal that I think is effective. The storytelling is quite bad. I think the storytelling is pretty bad in most of those films. And that's something that should lead into the conversation about Justice League, because Justice League has a big task in front of it.

It has to introduce and effectively sell you on at least three more characters who are going to have their own films. Cyborg, Aquaman, and The Flash. And all of those characters, two of whom you may not really have a relationship with at all, are lynchpins now in this universe. They have to be the Thor. They have to be the Captain America. And if they don't sell, if you don't buy, I can't name the man who's playing Cyborg, which is, that's bad news. That's a bad sign. Ray Fisher.

Ray Fisher. But he is so subsumed under the weight of Affleck and Galgad and all of the other noise happening. Was that a snide comment? I think the casting of Jason MoMAO as Aquaman is trenchant, is a trenchant criticism in and of itself. Because this is the thing that Marvel does is they're like, Ant Man, dumb name. Yeah. Guess what? We're going to lay into the fact that that name is dumb.

Yes. We're going to really just double down on it, hard turn right into the ridiculous. of that name. Will the DCU swerve into the fact that Aquaman is probably best known for his relationship

with fish? No. They're going to go the opposite way. Like, let's cast the most macho guy we can. Let's play heavy metal music. We have to.

Let's make you forget, we're not going to even call him Aquaman. We'll just put that in the craze. That's DC, I mean, that's not just DC. I don't want to, but it really is like, they insist upon their origin

stories in a way. It's like, Martian Man Under's name is John Jones. Oh, but he's, and aliens, and we're going to misspell it, like, J-apostrophe O-N-N, J-A-N. It's like, no, like, just don't lean into it anymore.

Just wipe it away. You have the power to do this. You could just clean the slate, you know? I don't fully comprehend the plan for DC in general. And I think we'll learn a lot when we see the movie, but even still getting people, it's not going to be hard to get people excited about Wonder Woman, too. It's probably not even going to be difficult to get people excited about the Batman,

which is Matt Reeves, a sort of detective story about the Batman, which may or may not star Affleck. But every other movie that is a part of this world, whether it be a suicide squad spinoff or even the Flash movie, and I think Ezra Miller is pretty winning. It's kind of up in the air. They could fail.

Well, I mean, the Flash, we have a track record with the TV show, there are stories you can tell. There's an audience out there. And I think that despite me saying before that, like, you know, how spoiled we are with Good Right. There's not always good stories with all these characters. You can kind of tell case by case, like what there's, what stories we can tell based on which comics have been not just successful but interesting.

You know, Thor, they figured out a way to make that story good, make him interesting in the comic books. Wonder Woman since the new 52 has been, you know, there have been some really interesting stuff going on in that comic book. There have been some interesting Superman stories. He's difficult. Aquaman notoriously difficult, you know, unless you just really keep him underwater and tell like a, you know, just a 1950s adventure tale with him or something. It's tough. I've always said that I think the best Aquaman move would be that so it's the JLA, they're sitting in their satellite or whatever, and they're talking about what their next mission is going to be. And Aquaman is just like, looks at Bruce Wayne after this would be after the Dark Night Rises says, do you know how many fucking fish died when you exploded that nuclear weapon over the ocean?

That's great. That would be incredible, right? That's what they should do. But, you know, I think you hit on something really interesting, which is the difficulty in writing for Superman. and essentially an omniscient, omnipowerful alien who can do anything. And this is kind of like the standard critique in the Marvel versus DC debate that's gone back to the 60s, which is Marvel has these street-level relatable characters. Peter Parker is a teenager who goes to high school.

Bruce Banner is just a mild-mannered scientist who becomes the Hulk. They have real-world problems. They have to pay the rent. Peter Parker's always like, man, I don't have enough money to do stuff. And then you go to D.C. and it's like, you know, Superman is an alien. Aquaman is a god. A god. Wonder Woman's a god.

Wonder Woman is actually a god. Martian Manhunter, an alien. And how do you make that relatable in a way that's mainstream? Now, some people would say that's overblown. These characters are obviously very popular and have, like, huge cultural revelance. But, I mean, it feels like that criticism is still valid. I think it definitely is. It threatens the quality of movie because the story is more difficult to tell because it's more intergalactic or more superpowered by its very nature.

It's part of the reason why Batman, I think, has been consistently the most successful character because he is the most groundbound. I will say that if you want to spend two minutes critiquing the Batman movies in general, I think that regardless of what you think about the Nolan trilogy, I think Heath Ledger was is the main reason that we still talk about those movies at all in a positive way. Jason and I did so at length on the rewatchables. I mean, and I think that it's, I think that the thing that a lot of people miss, because Batman is a super cool character, is it like, what makes Batman interesting is the Rogue's Gallery, right? So if you, I mean, if you made me Kevin Feige, the Kevin Feigey of the Batman universe, I would say every Batman movie, I mean, we spend so much time trying to figure out who's playing Batman, and we can get him, every Batman movie is a different director and every Batman movie is a different genre dictated by the villain. It's a great point. Like Killer Croc is a horror movie. The Joker is the noir movie.

Like, everything has a completely different look, and it's about, I mean, the lights are turned down pretty low in all of them, but the villains are what matters. And Batman is, in a lot of ways, just like a real blank slate. I think it's a great point. It's something we talked about before we came on is that what would have happened if Heath Ledger lived? What could their plans have been? Because so much of the character of Batman is tied up in his relationship with the Joker.

Yeah. You know, there are two sides of the same coin, and the Joker thrills in pointing this out to Batman all the time. And that's in every video game that they appear in, every comic they appear in, and in the dark night. And then to not have that, to have that taken off the board, you know, what could have been. We're going to see more of Jared Letto's Joker in the future. It's great. We can't wait. I'm torn on Leto, by the way. I think, I mean, I think that in some ways it's the sort of like grunge, like the gritty move. It is the 90s joke. But at the same time, because he's got the tattoos.

But at the same time, it's a very, like, the level of star feels like a Marvel move also. It's an interesting move, at least. You know, it's not, they're not playing it safe. And so I think it could go, I don't love his interpretation, but I'm more, I'm interested enough to keep watching. Let's talk about the other universes now. Sure. Let's very quickly talk about sort of the X-Men universe and its relationship to the Marvel

universe, because for years these two things were sort of happening. simultaneous to one another, but not interconnected, even though X-Men and Fantastic Four and Spider-Man are all properties that should be within the Marvel world and have not been. Now, Spider-Man was with Sony and Sony and Marvel have combined to work together. There were some rumors last week that Disney explored the possibility of purchasing 21st century Fox, which would mean that the entire X-Men and Fantastic Four universe would become available to Marvel Studios, which would be a pretty cataclysmic thing. Yeah. That being said, the X-Men movies for the last few years have done an interesting job, I think, of telling classic comic book stories, but not totally satisfying with the way they told them. So Days of Future Past is the most recent story, I believe, or Apocalypse is the most recent story. And Days of Future Past before that, and even the Dark Phoenix saga before that, which were all sort of middling to dissatisfying executions of these stories, so much so that the next one that they're going to tell is going to be Dark Phoenix again.

and that's going to be with your girl, Sophie, Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones. Big fan of Sophie Turner. Where is X-Men at? Does X-Men need Marvel to make sense? I keep coming back to the casting decisions that are, I mean, at the beginning, I don't mind any of the people who got their roles, but from the very beginning, it's the sort of like, yes, it's world building, but it's also a sort of self-defeating world building when, like, in the earliest movies,

Singer movies when mutants that you clearly recognize were running across the scene in the back or would have three lines and it's like, wait, so does that actor who's clearly not, no one I'm ever going to see? Is he permanently gambit now or like whoever it is? I mean, Ryan Reynolds or whoever going to be Deadpool with no mouth? Like, it's all very strange. And I think Days of Future Pass, which I actually really love in a lot of ways. The arc or the movie?

Both. Both. But I'm talking about the movie here. to not have the confidence just to tell the the comic book version of that story and you can make changes I'm not a purist or anything but it's like we have J-law under contract so we got to figure out a way to get mystique

in a prominent role in this I mean just to not have the confidence of your storytelling of your ability to just like find and if you need J-Law on something just do another movie with her but it's like they're on this really weird like they got to cram everybody in to everything and it makes it all

I think that's the big difference compared to the mainstream Marvel Cinematic Universe is that they just have the confidence of the stories that they're telling. I think part of the problem with the X-Men universe over the past 10, 12 years, 15 years, is it's similar to the thing that bedeviled the comics, which is kind of the tyranny of Wolverine. Yeah. Which is you had to have him in there. He's the most popular character. He's the one everybody knows. Every teenage boy loves Wolverine. and it just felt like you had to have

figure out a way to get Hugh Jackman in there figure out a way to get Wolverine in there. So this year seemed to kickstart essentially the next phase of this stuff because of Logan which was... Which by the way, Logan was great, Logan was great, we can all agree. Very good movie.

But what worked about that was I'm just going to take two of the characters and surround them with good supporting actors and then just like let them have fun. We're going to just make the best movie we can with this as opposed to trying to shoehorn everybody else into these movies. Completely agree. It feels like it may be signaled. And I think that this started with Deadpool, the Ryan Reynolds,

standalone Deadpool movie, which you mentioned earlier, Jason, which just said, let's just tell the best story about this character that is true to this character. And I think Logan, which, you know, tells some of the story of the old man Logan run, felt truer to what the character should be. And obviously it was just more cinematic in a lot of ways, too. And I'm curious to see we now know that the New Mutants movie, which is coming out early next year is essentially a horror story. Very interesting trailer. A very interesting trailer.

And feels like something different. And like I said before, I think harkens back to that blade feeling where it's just a genre movie. And if X-Men movies are genre movies going forward, I would think that would be interesting. Jason, would you be into that. I would be into that. You know, the mutants were kind of my gateway drug into comics. I loved X-Men. I loved the new mutants.

Yeah, me too. The thing that's great about them in the comics format is, you know, they're in school. It's this relationship between schoolmates. It's very much a soap opera drama with some, like, action scenes grafted on top of it. There's unrequited love. There's like the spurned lover. There's two people that don't get along. There's, you know, the friendship drama.

Who's friendship drama in terms of who's in and who's out? Who's not friendly? Then there's always the mutants who just look very different. So it's, it really worked well in that school type of format, teenage storytelling. And I think they've really struggled to translate that to the screen in a way that feels timeless. Listen, in theory, X-Men and New Mutants would be a TV show. I mean, New Mutants is a TV show now.

Guisted, yeah. Is that what you're talking about? No, but no, I was talking about the movie that's, yeah, the 2018 coming up movie. But, like, the way that X-Men is set up is very much different than the Avengers, who are these solo characters that get together to defeat great evil or threats to the globe. The X-Men, they all live together in a house, essentially. Like, this is a soap opera. This should be a TV show.

So it's very interesting to see that group of characters kind of run up against not only the trends in movies, but the trends in the way a story like that would be told today. And this is, I mean, this is well-trod territory, but like, why do they all live together in this giant mansion? It's to one, because they're all social outcast. And two, to train you to use your power so you don't blow up the world. Like, this is like weird. These are like living time bombs, each one of them, you know. They all have, like, their separate issues. And so there's a lot of kind of inherent interest in the same.

story there. And so it's like, honestly, I read every X-Men comic book for, you know, growing up for a decade or more. Like, I would forget the storyline from issue to issue. Like, you know, it's a four-issue story arc. We're like out in the, you know, like in space with

with, you know, I don't even know. I mean, it'd be like we were fighting apocalypse somewhere. We're fighting Mr. Sinister, whatever. I don't, I could never remember what was going on. The brood, maybe, you know, whatever. But I did remember, like, relationships, what was happening at the school. When they're playing softball, as corny as it is, that's the most interesting stuff.

Yeah. Josswe, it's funny because Joss Whedon, for me, wrote what is, I think, the best standalone X-Men arc, his astonishing X-Men series. The first three graphic novels, which is a collection of like the first, whatever it is, 20-something issues of the astonishing X-Men series. And he's really the first guy that captured what makes Cyclops an interesting character. You know, Cyclops in the movies has been this kind of, you know, Debbie Downer, just very controlled, not a fun guy. Why is he like that?

Because every time he opens his eyes, he threatens to kill everyone that he cares about. You know, if he's not wearing his glasses, he opens his eyes, you're dead. It's a stressful job. He destroys the entire mansion. Sort of the Sean Finacy. I have a lot of empathy for Scott Summers. I got to be honest. And that is my cross the bear.

And Josh Whedon really captured that about that character in his own. astonishing X-Men arc. And then you look at the movies, X-Men Last Stand, you know, like kills Cyclops James Marsden off in the first 30 minutes in the movie off-screen. You don't even see it happen. Yeah, and before that, they just let him be a downer without any of like the explanation without any reason to get to like him or whatever. It's just, you got everybody has to have a reason to be on screen.

This is basic movie stuff, you know? It's a great position to put us in. for Marvel now. Yeah. Everyone has to have a reason to be on screen except Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans

may not have a reason to be on screen anymore because there won't be any more money for them on a contract. Or they may make a choice to do that. And Downey, as you mentioned,

probably will come for a paycheck, but maybe not. We don't know. We don't know what Mark Ruffalo's future is as the Hulk. We don't know if Black Widow

will get her own movie and if she doesn't will Scarjo be around much longer. The future of the MCU is the most interesting to me for a number of questions. One, I like those

movies the best. Two, they're the most successful. Three, they kind of dictate the future of a whole galaxy of born movie stars now. Let's talk a little bit about the movies they're going to put out next year. The most anticipated by far, maybe the most anticipated ever, I think are kind of coming in succession. One Black Panther in March, two Avengers Infinity War, the third Avengers film, I believe in May.

These two movies, there's a lot riding on both of them. One, you've got Ryan Coogler as the filmmaker, first black filmmaker to make a superhero movie in one of these worlds. All-Black cast. Another character who is canonical but not necessarily completely beloved except for in recent times

when Tana Hossi Cotes took on the character and created a whole new level of interest in him. And I wouldn't say that there's a lot riding on it per se. I certainly don't think it's going to fail. In fact, I think it's going to be hugely successful. But whether Chad Bozeman can be the Chris Evans

or what have you, I think is very relevant to this conversation. And then let's talk a little bit about Life After Infinity War. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's, you know, Hemsworth, Evans, Robert Danny Jr. is 52 years old. They've been doing this for 10 years now. Plus, the bench is thin. Black Panther certainly looks to be the best bet to carry the series into phase four, would it be? Phase four after this.

I don't know what they'll call it, but something like that. Right? I mean, Captain Marvel is set in the 90s or the 80s or the 90s? Yeah. Well, who knows? How that connects to the wider MCU is unclear. Ant Man and Wasp, are they the people that are going to carry your film franchise and film universe going forward? I would have been on it.

That's my nominee for the first time. We're like, is this going to be okay? Yeah. So Avengers of Finney War is not just like the final team-up movie of this cast. It's also the movie where you would imagine they're going to start to hand the torch off to this. other generation of superheroes that's going to come up and carry this forward. Infinity War is, I mean, has a very obvious parallel in the physical comic book world, the comic world, not the movie world.

I mean, and it's based on a giant comic book crossover, and that's what this is. And these big crossovers are both a moment of like great gratification as a big fan, but they're also almost always universally despised because it's just, it's just like, It can never live up to anyone's expectations, let alone everyone's expectations. This movie could be good and fine. I think what you're saying is right. The most interesting thing is, do we, does this A, just sort of generally set the stage for what we're moving forward to do? Or B, does it just do like a hard reset of, you know, there is a flash across the screen and Captain America is being played by a different actor when we come back.

That could happen. If he's, you know, if Thanos has the infinity gauntlet, he could change reality in a way that changes the entire. setup of the Marvel universe. Sure. Then do we go back to origin stories? Yeah. I mean, what Marvel's been doing in the, you know, I hope not.

Well, Marvel's been sort of test marketing in the comic books over the past several years, this sort of next generation of mantle holders where there's a female Thor, although Thor is still in the book. I mean, the character, Odinson, Thor, whatever, is still in the book. There's Riri Williams.

It kind of took over as Iron Man for a minute now as a different, now it's Iron Heart. Falcon took over as Captain America. Amadeus Cho took over as the Hulk. So it's sort of like this look to see what the next phase could be if we just want to keep going without any sort of retconning.

But just sort of give these famous titles, famous names to new characters. You know, it's met with mixed success. I think it's hard to, it's hard to imagine, you know, a Marvel universe without a Captain America that we know.

But in comic books, you know, you can always sort of like take your medicine and eat your vegetables, whatever the right turn of phrase is, and keep going because you know that Steve Rogers, Captain America, will be back someday. He died after Civil War, for instance. Inevitably, he'll be back. You know, so I guess it makes more sense just to recast

if you want to keep doing Captain America movies in a post-Christ Evans era. As long as you have something to hold everything together, you know, Sam Jackson will still be playing his role until he's 500 years old, I'm sure. I feel like they can make it work. But it's definitely a tricky situation. I don't think they're in dire straits. They have Tom Holland, who is the star of Spider-Man, Homecoming, who I thought was quite good, and is a very credible Spider-Man.

Chris Pratt, obviously, there will be a Guardians 3. It's strange to me to think of Star Lord as one of the primary figures in the Marvel movie universe, but that is where we are. It still feels like there's something we'll be missing if they integrate, I don't know what we would call it, like Vora, like value above Replacement Avenger, you know? I'm not sure what will happen if they essentially attempt to recast the character with different actors and with a different persona. Well, the Avengers have meant a lot of different things over the years in the comic books. They keep coming back to the sort of core five of Thor, Captain America, Iron Man Hulk.

And, well, I guess Vision and the Scarlet Witch or the two in the comic books. But, you know, it's, I don't think it's, my guess is that they're not planning like a hard pivot. and it would be crazy to do it. You know, you can change out a couple of characters and hopefully keep moving forward. I mean, what's interesting is if the Disney Fox acquisition does go through, then you might see something akin to Bendis's New Avengers run, where he took an entirely diverse cat. He put Luke Cage as basically the leader of the Avengers with Wolverine and with Spider-Woman

and with all these other characters that you would not think of being as Avengers. and really, if not the one of the flagship titles for the early aughts of Marvel Comics. Could that happen? Maybe. It's interesting to watch the movies drive creative on the comic side over the last five or six years. It is. But to go back to your question, I mean, I guess the general question that this whole conversation begs, which is, you know, what comes next? Like, what's the future of these movies?

We shouldn't, I mean, we've been talking about this for an hour, but, you know, the place. that we started is when we was blade, you know, and I think we were talking before we started recording, but it's often forgotten

how insane Iron Man seemed at the time. You talked about that too, how we could have, how on earth did that movie make all that money? I mean, to take Robert Downey Jr. at that stage of his career, you know,

a director who was experienced with Swingers and Jumanji, Favro's great, we all love him, but still, I mean, to be helming a major movie, and Iron Man of all characters, Iron Man is probably the highest cue rating for a character that nobody gave a flying F about in the entire comic book world.

It was wacky. Captain America obviously is very meaningful and is a big name character. But I think that the big thing is that we don't need to get, despite the success of all these movies, we might not need to be get that precious about do these characters keep going? Do we reboot them? Whatever. I think what Marvel's proven more, I mean, the most impressive thing is that what matters is Marvel. You know, what matters is the infrastructure. Let me just say, though, that in the history of movies, these genres, and I think specifically Marvel movies are now a genre unto themselves, are never more vulnerable than when they seem strongest.

And so if you look at the history of, say, musicals in Hollywood, in the 1940s and then the 1950s, musicals were incredibly powerful. And what happens is that they become more and more successful and more and more expensive. And then they become more and more essential to the day-to-day of the Hollywood system. And the minute you screw one up, and they did start to screw them up in the 50s, the entire genre unwinds and the key players in those worlds become less essential. The moment that Kevin Faggy missteps, there's going to be some doubt and complication in this world. If DC had been on the ball, then Marvel wouldn't have the latitude right now. The reason why we all saw Ant Man and enjoyed it is because that was the superhero movie to see that weekend, right? If there was another option, it would have been a whole different story.

And yeah, I think that going forward, like, as DC does more stuff, and it's going to be interesting to see what they do. If Marvel were really to acquire Fox, I don't know, I'm sure that they'd coexist as separate divisions, but like how many weekends does that parent company get to stake out over the course of the year? It's a great question, yeah. There is a parallel to your other realm of coverage to WWE, and the idea that somehow this product has been watered down because they stake a claim to a pay-per-view every other week. And so you're sort of like, well, what really matters here? At what point does Ant Man and the Wasp not matter as much as Infinity War? We don't have that feeling yet, and that's why Ragnarok mattering and being a hit is still mind-blowing until it doesn't work anymore. I mean, the success of the DCU films, despite the critical whipping they take, I think when that stops happening, if Justice League is a flop, a true flop, I think that'll send shockwaves through the genre.

Okay, let me wrap with this. I want to know from you guys specifically, what is the superhero story or figure that you want to see get its own line? Wow, that's really tough. For me, the real lesson has been much more into quality as I get older, just finding the right tone than anything else. I didn't have any, I mean, if you would ask me three years ago, if I wanted to see like a Daredevil miniseries, I would have said hell no.

But I just loved that. This being the big picture, we did not talk about any of the TV installations here, but there's tons of television around these characters, too. That's a whole other series of podcasts. At this point, you kind of have to wall off the TV. It'd be fun to bring in those kind of core Netflix shows of this conversation, but now with just like sheet with all the kind of network shows, it's just, there's so much stuff. And there's too much to watch. I mean, it's the same thing with the movies. We're just talking about, like, how many they could possibly be under, you know, in,

one company, but like, even big comic book fans like me are kind of like picking and choosing which weekends we're going to go see these movies and which times we're going to wait for, you know, Netflix or whatever. Which one would drag you into the movies? Full immediately. This is really hard. I don't have an answer right at the top of my head. I mean, I'm an old school X-Men guy.

I would love, you know, Logan was really fulfilling to me in a lot of ways. And I would love to see a reboot of Wolverine kind of done with a little bit more of the genre flair that comic's had. But, you know, he's sort of too big of a star, I think, for them to, too big of a character for them to take those sort of risks with. I don't know, Jason, do you have an answer or something you want to see? I have two answers. One is I'd go with maybe image and I'd say something like saga. Absolutely, man.

Which is just a swashbuckling space odyssey love story. Really one of the great love stories of the past three to four years just in terms of the way it depicts two characters. the way people fall in love and then slowly fall out of it and then feel that ache of falling out of it. It's really well done and then set in this just wild environment of an intergalactic war between a planet and its moon between a technological base race and a one race that's based primarily in magic. And then I would say like, you know, like do the X-Men right. I would reboot it. I would follow the blueprint that MCU did with the Avengers that they deployed. to create the Avengers, which is base it on the ultimate universe X-Men,

which is like the modern retelling of the X-Men universe, and just start it from scratch with the core characters, maybe as solo standalone movies building towards a team-up. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the real successful turns of spoiler alert for anyone that hasn't seen the new Tom Holland Spider-Man, but the reveal of MJ of Mary Jane at the end of the movie was really powerful because, The way that we've seen so many superhero movies in the past, that wouldn't have been feasible because she would have been cast by an actress that looked more like her and would have been shouted out from the very beginning because the fan service is more important than the storytelling.

Even if it's an Easter egg, the fan service takes precedence at the beginning. And that would be great if there were a way to do X-Men in like a slow burn where it was just a story about, it could just be a story about Wolverine or a story about Professor X. and you don't realize until the third act that this person he's been talking to the whole time is Cyclops or is whoever, you know. But I agree about saga. It should be said that they said they're never going to do a, they're never going to sell, you know, do an adaptation of it. That just means the money that the check hasn't been cut high enough. Yeah, there are no nevers in the superhero world. I'm still waiting for as a Spider-Man guy, a Sinister Six movie, which I don't think will ever happen.

This trio is not so sinister. David Jason. Thank you very much for doing this. Thanks for honest. This has been fun. Yeah.