The Ringer-Verse - 'Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness' Instant Reactions | The Midnight Boys

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

The Midnight Boys finally step into the multiverse and dive into all of their reactions to "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (03:59). They discuss the crazy turns and scenes that director Sam Raimi takes us on (42:56), all the wild cameos (53:30), and even the major controversy surrounding one key character (78:16). Hosts: Van Lathan and Charles Holmes Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, The Great Bill Hater. We'll talk about the show's wild twists and turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, Every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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for all things fandom. We are Steve, Alman George, and Cuddlin and Lumberman Bear. We are. Oman Van. He of the non-existent hairline. We are

Coke Baby Chuck, 24-carat closer. And we are Jomey, the explainer, a dinner on. You've got questions. He's got. answers. Together, we're known as other midnight boys.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Monday, the House of Ar returns to give their deep dive on Dr. Strange in the multiverse of madness. They're going to dive deep. You got Mel, you got Joe, you got House of Art, you got Ruben, you got Robinson. What else can you ask for? Mrs. Robinson's neighborhood.

Mr. Ruben's Thursday House of Midnight where we answer all of your burning questions on Dr. Strange. That's House of Midnight. Of course that means that the Midnight Boys

will be together with our counterparts over on the House of Our Our squatter Causing all the ruckus, you know? Causing ruckus, God damn it. What are the bad boys of nerd podcasting? You know what I'm saying?

We see everything. Yeah, we see it. yeah, we're the, we're the, those guys, those guys again. You know what I mean? Those guys. We're like four rocket raccoons that have joined together. Oh, that sounds terrible. Oh, no.

Geez. Well, Steve could be Groot. Steve is definitely Groot. Steve is definitely. He's lovable. I'm not annoying-ass Chris Pratt. I'm not that. Oh, you're not Chris Pratt.

Well, well, not I think about it. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. I didn't even think about that. But now, I think about it, you are kind of like Chris Bratt. Steve is Chris Pratt. Who did you vote for in the last election? All right.

What were you January 6th? Steve was the insurrection. This guy in the chair. No, Steve, I know Steve was the guy to do with the Punisher insignia. He's just like, nobody will catch me. Right. Now, on today's show, besides torturing Steve, we'll be giving you all our instant thoughts on the biggest.

event of the Marvel year. Until the next one. Until the next one. Until the next one. Until this Marvel comes out. And the multiverse of madness. Now, we're going to talk about this movie.

We understand that this is a Friday. And being it this is a Friday, it means some of you guys have not gotten a chance to get off your asses and go see the movie yet. We're going to give you the spoiler warning, but I'm going to extend this spoiler warning. This spoiler warning.

warning doesn't just exist on this podcast. This is a spoiler warning on socials. This is a spoiler warning on Facebook. This is a spoiler warning on Reddit. Here at the Midnight Boys, we cannot control the discussions that the community has. But here, right now, Steve, give it to me. We're getting ready to talk about. You're listening to a reaction podcast.

The spoilers are coming. All right, of course, we get our reactions. As always, Charles will give you the Midnight Manifest into Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, giving you all the need to know about this particular Marvel film. Charles, taking away. Guys, this is the Midnight Manifest for the Multiverse of Madness, directed by the legend himself, Sam Ramey, written by Michael Waldron. Currently, at a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes as it's May 5th, all right?

So, the plot of this movie was going to get wonky. An alternate universe strange, I'm going to call Defender Strange, and America Chavez are being chased by a monster in the gap junction, which is a space between universes. Strange and America are in search of the book of Bichanti, which will grant you anything you need for any type of problem. But the monster mortally wound Strange and tries to steal America's multidimensional powers. Strange tries to double cross America and also steal our powers, but is unsubstable. then America, who can't control her powers, opens a portal to the 616 universe,

which the duo escapes to. Our Dr. Strange Awakes from this nightmare and attends the wedding of Christine. Strange and Christine have a back and forth where Christine admits that, like, hey, it's not going to work out because you always want the night. Which is a metaphor. Shumagorath then attacks America Chavez and, by extension, the city, and Wong and Strange saver. America gives Strange and Wong to download on the multiverse and why she's being chased.

Strange goes to Wanda for help, but realize. I was just like, damn, bitch, you use in the Darkhold, which is an ancient book of witchcraft to find the multiverse, where she can be with her sons, Billy and Tommy, who she created with magic and all this shit happened in Wanda Vision. I'm not going to go over it. Wanda issues an ultimatum to Strange, that she must give up America so that she can kill her and take her power

or else she will take everyone out. Wanda attacks Carmitage, where Strange and Wong are hiding America. But America and Strange escape to Earth 838 to escape Wanda, While Strange and America are in Earth 838, a disciple of Wong destroys the darkhold, but then through a series of events, Wong has to tell Wanda that the real spells are on, Dun, Dun, Dun, not Wondagore. Strange in America try to find the Strange of this universe, but instead find Mordo. Mordo is the biggest hater of all time.

He laces their tea, and they wake up imprisoned at the Baxter building, where this universe is Christine gives them the lowdown. Stephen is then put on trial in front of the Illamnadi, which is a secret organization that this Earth Strange put together, The group consists of Professor X, Captain Carter, Blackbolt, Captain Marvel, and your boy, John Krasinski, as Mr. Fantastic. The group reveals that they're strange, tried to use the dark hole to defeat Thanos, but strange succumbed to its power. So they had to kill their strange and now believe that all strangers pose an existential crisis to the multiverse via incursions. We are going to explain what incursions are later.

Wanda Dream walks into this dimension. She marks all the Illamani. After a brief fight with Mordo and some words of encouragement from Brum, Professor X. Our Strange escapes. Then Strange America, uh, Strange America and Christine run from Wanda are in search of the book of Vashanti. They find the doorway to the book, but Wanda destroys it before they can use it. Wanda sends Strange and Christine to another universe and then kidnaps America. Stephen has to fight an evil version of himself in the dark universe that was destroyed by an incursion. This dark Stephen has used the dark hold, and you can definitely tell.

Steve to dark Stephen fight over the dark hold and our Stephen wins. Then our Stephen, with the help with Christine, use the Dark Hold to inhabit the defender, Stevens' corpse, and save America. Yes, I know there's a lot of Stevens running around. Stephen eventually gets over himself and tells America that she needs to believe in her power. America teleports Wanda to a universe where she has kids, and Billy and Tommy are terrified of this version of Wanda. This universe is Wanda tells our Scarlet Witch, it'll be okay. And then Scarlet Witch kills herself in every version of the Dark Cold in every universe.

So these shenanigans can never happen again. Strange Wong and America are all one big. happy family. And surprise, we're going to talk about this later. Slingering is harder to use them. People would have thought, so Ned shouldn't have been able to use it that easily. And surprise, Stephen has a third eye from fucking around with the dark old.

And then Clayah appears, which is strange most popular love interest in the comics. And she's like, dude, fuck it with the multiverse and we need to fix it. Guys, that is a very long and very confusing Midnight Manifest. We'll talk about later on whether or not Clay is an upgrade. Yeah. Oh my God.

I mean, look, well, it's a discussion that has to be had. Come on. God damn it, Joni. Does it, to? Jomey,

what the hell? I see little discussion, but okay. All right, immediately reactions. Oh, there's a meta part of this that definitely

warmed my heart. I think Sam Ramey has even talked about it. You know, this guy's a legend. He's definitely one of the four founders of just building superhero cinema.

Van and I talked about that on the rewatchables when we rewatched Spider-Man. And I think this was kind of a coming home moment after the critical kind of evisceration of Spider-Man 3. So it was kind of cool seeing that the 62-year-old legendary director is like, yo, kids, I still got this shit.

I still got the bag. I still got the magic. So there was so much joy seeing that. Like, I was just like, damn, Ramie, you doing it again. He's like Jay-Z because he's also 62. Anyway, I was like, what? Black don't crack, man. That's an incredible fact.

I mean, Jay-Z is actually not 62. He might as well be. Anyway, so happy for Sam Ramey. I think he did a lot of interesting things visually. I think as a comic book fan, I saw this twice. The first time I left the movie theater, I was like, I don't know what to think about this. I had to text some friends, text the group chat.

I'm like, I don't know what to think. And I think there is a tad bit of, I thought that this movie was going to be bigger than it was. I thought that this movie was going to kind of it was never going to be like Infinity War Endgame, but I thought it would be like maybe 75% of that in terms of like, oh shit, this is the big thing that's happening.

This is going to tell us everything. We've been waiting for the multiverse. And yeah, it's just a smaller film. It's about Dr. Strange. So I think we're going to talk about that later. Van, what were your immediate thoughts on this movie? So the movie was a fun time in the movies, for sure. There's definitely a fun time in the movies.

I think the question about my thoughts about the movie have to do with the next question. Okay. I enjoyed the Sam Ramey of this. I didn't think that we were going to get a zombie strange, even though I saw him in the trailer. That was a little trick. Strange came out as a zombie. He was actually good, strange, dreamwalking.

I didn't think we were going to get a zombie strange. I didn't think that we were going to get as many horror elements as we got. Remember, there was some talk. that Scott Derrickson left the movie because he didn't get a chance to make it a full-fledged horror movie. I still feel like there was some really cool horror elements in this movie, but Wanda is

chasing America, Christine, it's strange. Wanda's all-consuming sort of need to fulfill her purpose in this movie became scary at some point. I guess it became something, she became something of a horror movie villain.

And a lot of the other quirks of Sam Ramey in the movie kept me in it the whole way and I enjoyed it. I think the question of, do you feel like our expectations were set too high for this movie is the central question to your enjoyment of multiverse of madness? So, I had a conversation

with Joanna about this and the conversation was multiverse of madness and a lot of our minds was going to be a watershed moment in the MCU.

It was going to completely reset the universe. It's going to fold anything, everything in on itself. We're going to leave the movie with the X-Men in play, with the Fantastic Four in play. And they were going to do it in this big, gigantic way. Well, none of that really happened. You could argue that the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are in play because we got John Krasinski as Rhee Richards. We got Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier.

But in the way that we thought that that was going to happen, for the movie, I asked Steve and this other person, I asked them if how many X-Men did they think we were getting this movie? Because we were doing this little pre-movie game. And I was like, you think we'll get more than one. And everybody was like, oh, yeah, of course we'll get more than one.

We just thought that it was a sure thing that we were going to get all these mus and all these things were going to happen. The question is, why did we think that? You know? Like, the question is, why did we, why do we think that? And I thought it for so long that I don't know where I got the idea from.

Well, can I be honest, though, with you? What? So I do agree with you that expectations were high. This was actually what I'd been waiting for. I don't think there's been a Marvel movie since Infinity War Endgame that I've been waiting for this long. I honestly think my hype for this was bigger than Spider-Man No Way Home because I was like, it's going to be cool to see the three Peters, but like, we're getting fantastic for X-Men. And I think the title first, multiverse of madness, promises you a certain level of like,

oh, there is going to be multiversal shenanigans. We're going to see shit that we've never seen before. I think the fact that originally this movie was supposed to come before Spider-Man No Way Home and then it had to be re-jiggered. I was like, of course, now that it's coming after, they're going to give us even more. They have to, they have to up the stakes. We just saw the two Peters from the previous films. Like, and then when Professor X comes out in that trailer on Super Bowl Sunday, we're all like, damn, if they drop in Professor X in the trailer, they got to have something in the chamber.

You know what I'm saying? Like, that's just normal. Right, right. Because I go back and you ask the question, if your expectations were too high. If, and this is the way, this is my immediate reaction to the movie. if your expectations were high, the movie is disappointing. If your expectations were high in the way

that this movie was going to be some gigantic, huge, Marvel crossover, ridiculous event, then your expect, then you're, then you're, then you were disappointed, right?

If we didn't have those expectations of the film, and we just viewed it as the sequel to Dr. Strange, then the movie is good to find with some major problems that I have, that like in terms of what they did story-wise, right? I had a fun time watching the movie. The movie is not whack at all. Guys, I know that there's somebody listening to my voice right now that's so mad that I'm not overflowing with praise and glee

for a movie that I absolutely, with every scintilla in my body, wanted to enjoy as much as anything, please grow to fuck up. I'm just being for real. Jesus Christ. I, as much as you have loved and devoted brain cells and inordinate amounts of time

to loving this stuff, I want to love everything. I'm just saying, based upon my expectations, not the movie itself, but based upon, based upon, on my expectations, I was disappointed in multiverse of madness. And I'm sorry about it. So before we get into the plot, one more thing. I was thinking about

this because I read a quote from Kevin Feige, which was essentially, he was real. He was like, yo, I wish they wouldn't have shown so much in the trailers. And I was thinking, would our enjoyment of the movie been a little bit higher if we knew nothing about

the Illam Nadi, if we knew nothing if we had it for Patrick Stewart's voice, if we weren't, it's like, there's a bunch of shit that's, I'm just like, oh, they showed kind of not the entire movie, but big portions of the movie in the trial. I'm like, damn, like, if, if I was so, like, if they, if Dan went to Earth 838 and Professor X had like, like, popped out, I'd be like, God damn it. But I'm like, oh, no, y'all, y'all blew your water early, you know?

So this is what I'm saying. This, if we do a calico review of this, this was her whole problem. There was her whole problem as told to Jami and Steve that night was there was nothing that was cool in the movie that they didn't show in the trailer. But I'll tell you something else. I'm going to do a clear, I'm going to ask for a clear out a little later. I'm going to talk to the fans. Because part of this is the fans' fault.

Okay? Part of it is, I'm going to talk to the fans. Fan to fan. Van to fan. Oh. Van to fan? New segment ideas. Van to fan.

Part of it is Van Van to fan. All right. All right. So we're going to also do our midnight media ranking, of course, of this movie later on the show. as well as our rankings of all the films of Phase 4, of all of everything in Phase 4. Okay, so Strange, where we find it. Strange's arc and story.

What Strange's art and story served in this movie, I am going to start with a dinner on this. Because Jomey, what's going on, pal? The reason why I'm starting with you on this is because I have to ask you a question. What's going on? We have to relitigate something, Jome. We've now seen the multiverse of Madd's. Yeah, we did.

Are you still standing by your assertion that Wanda Vision, first of all, tell people what your assertion is before I say it for you and say it. Perfect. Thank you. My assertion is that the TV shows, they are important to the M-Cube, not as like plot drivers. Like, we're not going to get anything like crazy. Like we talk about like the X-Men fitness for it.

Like none of that stuff is going to show up. But they serve an important job of letting us get to know characters more. And they spend more time with characters that we wouldn't ordinarily spend time with in the movies, in the proper movie canon of the MCU. You don't think that Wanda Vision was a plot driver to Multiverse of Madness? I think her character, right, like how she was feeling was important. You got to listen, Charles. I see people can see, we're just on video.

People can see your face. People can see your face now. I think ultimately because in the first, the first conversation he has was strange, right? It's a lot of, oh, man, those kids you had that don't exist, that you were, like, she has a dream, and she wakes up and she's really sad.

And if you're any person who's read any book or watch any movie, like, oh, those kids aren't real. She doesn't have those kids. Oh, that's sad. And then they spend that whole conversation Talking about how her kids aren't real And they'll spend the whole conversation is one line It's one line, too

But that's what I'm saying But that's one line, whole conversation, whatever But that's, that was my point That they'll They'll mention it a little bit And then keep it pushing, right? I do think that us as fans Because remember, we're not casuals,

we're deep in this stuff, right? We, watching WandaVision, helps us contextualize this thing perfectly. Like, oh, yeah, we go from beat to beat to beat to beat, right? But the MCU, honestly, as a whole, but even in this movie, excels because even if this is your first film,

you don't feel, like, completely out of pocket by jumping in at any point. That's not the point, though. So I'm going to say one thing, and I'm going to actually turn this over to Steve before I get to Charles, because I know what Charles thinks. Oh, no, I'm going in. I like, I need to mind.

I need some time. So what Charles thinks? Okay. I'm still right. So if it's your first movie, of course, right? If it's your first movie. But let's say it's your second movie. Let's say you saw endgame.

You saw end game and then you never saw Wanda Vision. How do you explain, like first of all, her even being the Scarlet Witch, which is a major plot thing that happened in Wanda Vision, right? She's now, so when they say Scarlet Witch and they talk about the fact that she became the Scarlet Witch, all of that stuff was realized in Wanda Vision, how do you explain in the movie her going from someone fighting along the side of doctors of uh of uh of of the Avengers yeah right

to her coming through the whole situation killing children and trying to kill Dr. Strange like if you don't have Wanda Vision I'm asking sincerely Jumby how does that make sense so Wong they explain Bruins and then Wong when she's not to attack Karmataj is like, this is a being of just chaos, right?

Not magic, witchcraft, straight chaos, right? It's the same speech that Agatha gave us at the end of Wanda Vision. After. It's not, though, because it is, but it was episodes of exposition that led into it.

This is such a weird thing, bro. It's like, it's, you can't admit that you're wrong. You just can't make me mad. It's not. It's just making me mad. Because it's, let me ask you. Hold on. Independent room.

Steve, is Jomi wrong? I believe that he's wrong. Yes. Boom. We're moving on. No, no, no. Really quick,

because I've been waiting. I don't know because Jome's been talking to shit for a while. I'll let you get us off. I'll let you get your take off, Charles. But my, my entire point, if I was, it's,

this is why the MCU's been so successful. This is why we have all this stuff. Because, no, it's just, it's just true. Yo, Jomey, you can't.

Here's the thing. Jomi. Jomi. I'm not. Jomey. It's a business decision. You were talking big-haired shit. You were like, all right, Disney Plus shows don't mean shit.

You don't got to watch them to watch the movies. That's not what I said, though. That's the problem. Look at everybody. That's not what I said. You said. That's not what I said. Agreed with Jomey.

If you never watched one or anything, you wouldn't know what the fuck is going on in this movie. Yes, you would. What? Jummy. I'm not saying you can't follow it. Jomi. I'm not saying you can't follow it.

I'm saying that they make it, they give you enough that you're like, okay, I understand. Exactly. And then you, it's like a comic, it's literally like a comic book. They have the addendum.

Go back and if you're like, oh, so that, okay, so she had kids. Oh, you go water vision, you get it. Oh,

this is perfect. Look at the context. Right. So, but, but, but do you understand, but do you understand that what you're saying, like what you're saying basically works and almost anything?

like so you can so you're saying it works perfect no what I'm saying is you're you're adjusting an argument and you're looking at something. I'm not adjusting argument my argument was so broad it was like you don't if you don't watch the shows you will be fine you like that was my argument like here's the thing now you're also saying the argument is look if you don't watch the shows you'll be fine the argument started from whether or not these shows will ever be as vital right whether or not they'll ever be as vital and you said this was what this happened you said they

weren't meant to be as vital i have a hard time believing that wandavision wasn't meant to be vital when multiverse of madness is a sequel to wandavision multiverse of madness said and in that and and multiverse i'm talking i'm taking too much oxygen up because steve hasn't spoken yet so my bad yeah yeah yeah no it's i i think it's fine i think that the biggest trick that won that uh the mc u has played on us, like, pretty much since it began, is that it makes you think that you need to see everything, which is why we have seen everything. It's why a lot of people that aren't us that don't do this for a living have seen everything because they think they're going to miss something. And I think the only time that it actually has been true is in multiverse of madness.

Because... Damn, Steve. Damn, Steve! Tell me, is your mouth open? Yeah. In your mouth. What's up? Like, in your mouth. In your mouth. Even regardless of your mouth. He's proven me right. Well, no, I think that if you have not seen Wanda Vision, which I don't know anybody who hasn't at this point that would ever care to see this movie. But I think to the person that hasn't seen Wanda Vision and has now seen this, they really don't know quite understanding why Wanda's acting the way that she is. And to be frank, I think we all have seen Wanda Vision and we're still not 100% sure why she has done what she does.

does. So does it end up mattering? We'll see. I don't even need an ISO to dismantle Jomey. My man, Steve did it himself. You were, like, I think we're like just on like a different level. Jomey. Oh, here's the last thing I'll say about you. Here's the last thing I'll say about it. You're wrong. I love you so much. I love you, Jomey, but you are. I appreciate you. I appreciate you.

Here's the last thing I'll say about it. I'll put you on my shoulders, bro. You can't do that. I'm way too big for that. At a concert. It's not going to happen because that's how much I love you. I'll fall. I'll break your back. I'll break your back. I'll take you a lollapalooza and I'll put you on my shoulders and how much I love you, but you're wrong. God, no. Here's the last thing I'll say about it.

It's just a fundamental difference in how I think. We think, like, I'm thinking about it, like, as if I was a business person, right? And I know that, like, we do have a big fan base, but there's a lot of casuals who watch this stuff. Like, we're not thinking about those people who are, like, will just watch drop in every so often. You have to make movies for them, too.

You can't assume they've seen everything. So when they make the stuff, they have that in mind. You always have to keep that in mind. You guys don't think that matters. And that's cool. That's what I think we're never going to agree because it's a fundamental difference of opinion. Because I'm thinking, like,

how many people was just going to be their first, like first, second, third, Marvel thing that probably haven't seen. This movie probably releasing countries that haven't, don't have Disney Plus, right? How are you going to wager that? They're going to sneak in some stuff. They're going to the movies to see whatever.

comes out. Right? I'm gonna keep it real because you gotta keep it moving. It's a fundamental difference in the opinion. The minute you said, we just have fundamental differences you lost. Because anytime somebody said, we just have fundamental differences, they just lost a debate. I think I'm right. We got to, you know, we just agree to disagree.

Agree to agree to disagree. And far be it for me to ever think about movies as a business, it's not like I own a production company. Hey! This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it, with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce

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and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. enjoy the fresh flavors of spring, save at Whole Foods Market. Benedict Cumberbatch, as Dr. Stephen Strange in this movie, Charles, did you feel like he brought it as Stephen Strange, or are you getting any Bender, Ben, Benedict Cumberbatch fatigue at this point as Dr. Strange? I don't think I'm getting any fatigue. I think the funny thing about this movie is that it's not really a showcase for him. It's almost like what you've been saying about, um,

about Black Panther. Sometimes you have a movie where there's so many moving parts around him where like Benedict Cumberbatch is trying to like make sure America Chavez gets points, make sure Wong gets points, make sure Scarlet Witch has it. He's kind of the fulcrum which everything spins.

And I do think that the emotional throughline, the emotional story of this, it's kind of very interesting because Christine basically throws it back in his face with that first line of like, hey, you always need to have the knife. And we realize something about strange is that like he sees the world in black and white when he's in infinity where he only

sees one way to win and so much of this movie is about is that like why why are we letting this one man control so much of the universe does he have too much power and i do think that like benedict cumberpatch in the small amount of time where he gets to like iso does play off that very very well save you look like you you're jumping out of your no i i i agree that's that's very true from charles but it's the fact that that question was sparked from a dude at a wedding being like, was that the only way that you could have won end game?

And I was like, okay, regular human man, you try to figure that out. No, but here's the thing, Christine, Christine kind of like, she's not talking about end game, but she's kind of talking about how he acts as a person

and how that affects how he acts as a superhero. And throughout the movie, we realized like, yo, the reason why, Stephen fucks up in so many universes is is because he doesn't see gray. When he thinks that there's only one way to do it, he does it. Right. So here's the thing. By the way, Steve, just so you check your

privilege at the door, the guy that said that to him, all right, had lost his brother. So the real question that he's asking was there any other way to do this without me having to like never see my brother again? and if the answer, anybody would ask that question, right? Like if you're in a situation to where it's like, hey, this is how this had to go, and you sacrifice that much, anybody's going to be like, well, did it have to go that way? Let's say something else about Strange. It's actually good writing in that same regard is that he has to be that way.

He's a surgeon. So a surgeon has to look at different entry points to whatever organ or whatever situation he's trying to solve and go, this is the way. We could go around here, we could go around there, we could go through there, we could go through there, but the way to do it is one way, this is the way, and they have to be resolute and sure of themselves when they do this. So it makes sense for Stephen Strange's character that he would be like that. Another thing is, the fact that he is now in a movie where things are swirling around him tells you how Marvel views Dr. Strange. Only a handful of of characters get that

get to be secondary in their own movie in Marvel and when you are when you are that lets you know that you've reached the next level when not everything in an Antman movie

everything has to be about Antman right? Because Ant Man is not big enough deal to go away from his movie and they keep the drama of his situation pushing forward. The only guy that's about him every single time is Iron Man

that's just because that's in Tony's nature right? Tony steals everything he's ever in anytime he's ever in that scene. But so I looked at this and the fact that they introduced, America Chavez, the fact that they introduced the whole Illuminati and all of that stuff in this movie

tells you how important Stephen Strange is about to be in the Marvel universe because they're about to be films, not about what he's doing, but about what's happening to him. And those are two different types of movies. Somebody say something that's a problem. I think you're right about that.

I think Dr. Strange has entered an upper echelon of characters. into being like the future of the MCU. Like one of the, like it was Tony, Steve, and Thor, you know, the first three phases. And I think the first pillar of, you know, phase four on the MCU is Dr. Strange. Oh, he's number one overall? I think so.

Yeah. Oh, I definitely agree. When I was watching this, I'm like, oh, this movie is trying to convince us that Dr. Strange is now the guy. There was Tony and now it's strange. And he's going to be the. guy where like everybody spins around him throughout these movies. I wouldn't even be surprised if he's the pillar of the Avengers at a certain.

You don't think, you don't seem convinced that that can happen now. I think that this movie wants us to believe that that will happen. I think that because we didn't get as much character development as we needed from Strange, like, I don't know how he would lead the Avengers. I don't know if he's the guy who's going to like be able to get them together because he's still at the end of this movie very much like, all right, cool. It was a cool America, chilling with you. During Spider-Man, he's like, all right, Peter, I'll see you later.

And he just goes off on his own. You know what I mean? Let's talk about America real quick. Not our country, which has seen better weeks. Yeah, but America Chavez. America Chavez comes into the movie, precocious young kid, star portals. We know the powers. Let's talk about the person.

Was she a good addition to this film for Strange to bounce off of? Did she play the Tony Stark, Peter Parker role to a team? So here's the thing that I think is funny about this movie, and it's like because we know too much about the Marvel Universe, is that we know that the release of this got messed up, that the multiverse of madness was supposed to come first. And I feel like a lot of what they're doing with America is exactly what they did with Dr. Strange and Peter

in terms of like this kind of like father figure role and Dr. Strange knowing too much and being so smart and mature and have to deal with this precocious person. So I think I liked America Chavez. Her powers looked cool. I'd like the addition of her in this. I did kind of feel like I'm like, yeah, this probably was supposed to be the first one out of the gate in terms of like multiverse 101. Because I kept being like, oh, these are kind of the same beats that Dr. Strange is having with Peter in terms of like have to deal with this like teenager that he did. doesn't know what to do with. Jum?

I think that Sosigames, the person who played America Chavez, was great. I thought she acted against Benedict Cumberbatch really well. And I liked their energy. To Charles's point, like, yeah, it's definitely like, we've seen this dynamic before.

Like, we literally just saw it. But it was still refreshing, interesting, especially how that scene where he's watching her family get her two moms get whisked away. And he's got to be like, like, hey, it's not, you know, that's not all you. You know, they're not dead.

He was like, you shot, it was being comforting in a way. Like, he, he wasn't for Spider-Man until the very end. He said, fuck Spider-Man. Yeah, really. He was being, like, you know, it was, it was interesting. It's almost like, you can thread a through line to him being like, you know, well, I guess he won't remember the Spider-Man incident, but, you know. Wait, do we don't think Dr. Strange remembers?

Well, remember, he called him a Spider-Man. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was like, you know. And so we, like, he doesn't remember, but we know, like, yeah, he was kind of a, he was kind of a Dictor Spider-Man for a little bit there when he found out, like, he messed up the spell and whatever. But with, with America Chavez, he was, like, pretty cool and pretty grounded, like, you know, almost like even subconsciously, like, he had learned, you know, to be, to be a little bit better about things. And so that was, like, a pretty nice moment of growth for Dr. Strange, my thoughts. So, Christine is in this movie a lot more than she's been in the prior films, Rachel McAdams. There's a lot more to do.

We get a variant, Christine, that works for the Illuminati. She ends up going on an adventure with Dr. Strange, okay? They're around the town. And actually, it shows you that Dr. Strange is in love with the soul of Christine because he loves Christine, whatever universe they're in. And they couldn't make it work in that universe either. And just when you think they might have a chance to make it work in this universe, she lets them know that there's no time that's ever the right time for them.

universe, it's ever the right universe for them. They just star-crossed lovers. I mean, also, if they, like, have sex too rough, like, they're going at it too rough, it might cause an incursion. Like, so, you got to chuck it up. Just, it's a completely disgusting thing to see. What? I do that's the reality.

I need to, I don't know. I don't know that that was ever said. I really need to, I really need to have a sound effect that means, like, full stop. Yeah. I'm confused. What? That was never said. On the podcast on Wednesday

I was talking about Ventress and Obiwani I was like Ah John I go on Come on now What are you talking about You just talked about two people Fucking the multiverse apart She said something to that effect

In the movie When did she say that At the end When they're in the evil Dr. Strangess She's just like Yo it would have She said something to the effect It would have been wild

Like damn What would happen to our universe Is it going to hold on So you mean to tell me That two people Having sex in the multiverse could destroy the multiverse, right? I mean, two people punching each other in their face.

Two people from different universes, if he's staying and they're having like a nice weekend, other people in their faces and stuff, how come that's not met? You know, we're digressing again. It's what people are like, those wacky midnight boys. All right, Steve, were you happy to see Christine come back

and be in such a large portion of them? Yes, I think she was criminally underused in the first Doctor Strange, and I think to use this as a sort of, of like gut check for Stephen to like even the character of Stephen himself because like he kind of looks at her a little objectively

in when he's like caught in prison and being like look listen get us out of here you clearly know me it's all of this stuff and she's like ah shut up a little bit because you kind of fuck this up in your time and your universe and I'm just trying to do my job here and if you if you're anything like Stephen I knew you would have fucked this up with any of us

as well so like I I really, I really like that. And she gets to kill a fucking demon at the end of it. She does. She does. Morto's back, Charles. Not the mortal that we know. You got dreads.

And it has nothing to do with the mortal Dr. Strange one. No clue. Hey, crime. I hate crime. That hair line? Shit, man. Come on. You couldn't get my man a nice friend.

Is that racism in the MCU? world. Like, it was like, when I first saw it, like, I had seen it in the trailer, but seeing it on a big screen twice, you know, in a week, I'm like, man, they hate black people. They don't want to see us prosper. Yeah, see, my thing with that is that, you know,

I just don't know, that's how you know that, like, it's not black people on the set. Because I don't care who I was, bro. I could be like a PA, not even a key PA, just a PA, and I'm going to look at you will tell, I'm going to be like, hey, no

it was looking real grim I literally would have walked on and I would be like yo I got a girl in Harlem who could like do you up like it'll take three hours don't like charges to the game like we can't have you looking like this like all right and my thing is like why didn't he not say anything like he saw himself in the mirror

like he'd be like guys time out we can't do this it's true now let me ask you guys a question the Mordo makes me bring this back Mordos character in this movie doesn't have anything to do with the desires or the wants or the needs of the mordo that we got from uh dr strange one that guy is out to stop sorcerers from sorcering and stop magic users from magic and we never picked back up on his story at least we

haven't yet due to that and other things that have happened that happened in this movie would you guys say that this movie is actually a sequel to Dr. Strange? No. Spiritually, I think it is. I think spiritually it is a sequel in the loosest terms. And like, Christina's here, the broken watch, the, just kind of like they're trying their best to do it. But if I'm being real now, because like it's just you wouldn't have even had to watch

Dr. Strange one if we're being honest. You could have skipped it and been fine. with this movie. You could have skipped out the strings. That's interesting. That's crazy. Sage you mentioned that. But continue, Van, you had something to say.

That wasn't your point. No, it wasn't, bro. We don't have time to re-litigate it. We don't have time to re-litigate it. Jomey, you can't admit when you're wrong. And that's what makes me sad. And that's how I know you're the youngest on this podcast. We got on this podcast.

We got to get off of it. We got to this podcast at the end of No Way Home. Remember when I was wrong about the sling ring? I got on this podcast. You argued down. We had to prove it. When you prove me wrong, did I not? And we proved it, they proved it again in this movie.

And how stupid that shit was. It's also, like, two different things. We'll talk about that later. Whatever. I don't talk about that no more. No, we're talking about it later. No, but to Charles's point, I think it is a sequel. They bring the watch back.

Christine is back. And I just think, like, it's how the MCU works. They're always trying different things. Always trying to like reinvent like characters, you know, from phase to phase. And so while there's not a ton of through lines from the first movie to this movie, I think the themes of strange like learning not to like, A, not to be like a dick and B, just trying to be like a better superhero. I think that runs through these two movies as things. So yeah, I think it works as a sequel.

Strong point there, Jones. All right, Sam Ramey. Sam Ramey is in on this movie. He comes in, takes over for Scott Derrickson. And I love Sam Ramey. You know, me and Charles said on the rewatchables that Sam Ramey jumped into action with Spider-Man. And I'll know why Army of Darkness, one of my favorite movies, slit my mind. Sam Ramey is a great director of all different genres.

I love him. Danny Elfman does the score of this movie. I hope all the fans of the rewatchables are listening to all the things that I'm noting about this film so that you know that we missed nothing. Okay. Could you guys feel the Sam Ramey in this? Chuck Wagon, could you feel Sam? I mean, definitely. I think what was very, very cool about this movie is I think sometimes a big gripe about

the MCU is that you can't really feel the director's hand on it that much. I could feel Sam Ramey. Some of the kookiness, like, Dr. Strange could have been a CGI zombie at the end. Like, that could have all been CGI. And I know Sam Ramey's like, nah, man, we're, doing this practical. It might look a little bit goofy and tactile, but that's what we want. Some of the cuts that he was

doing were like super classic Sam Ramey and some of the shit was jarring. I was like, directors aren't using like cuts like this anymore or like transitions like this anymore. It's cool. And even like there's two points. Christine and Scarlet Witch both get that

classic like Sam Ramey. I'm going to shove the camera in your face and shake it and there's like the actors have to like freak out. It's just there's a campiness to it and there's a kookiness to it that I loved. And yeah, I don't think it works all the time. Sometimes I would have cut that.

But I just love that he took those arrests. I was in love with a lot of the choices. What about you? Yeah, look, I love Sam Ramey as a director. I thought that he brought sort of freshness to it. He said that it wasn't so much a Sam Ramey movie as it was a movie that he was producing in a Marvel. I didn't feel that way at all.

I could definitely feel him in there. I could feel some of the crazy shit that he does in the movie. I could also feel some of the little moments. There's a moment where Wanda's walking through the home that she's dreamwalked into. When she walks into, she's walking in the picture. The Wanda in the picture turns and looks at her. Yeah.

It's a classic off-putting horror-type moment. It reminds me of one of the most terrifying scenes in the history of film to me. It's in the movie It, when the kid is in the library and he's reading through the book. and behind him Pennywise is the librarian and he's looking at the kid

he's looking at the kid from off screen making a scary face I was terrified How old are you? Like 35? 36 This was a year and a half ago. Maybe 37?

Guys, I don't know. You guys know this about me. I didn't know what it you were talking about. I don't watch the year. scary movies. Oh, yeah, no. The other the it, the second it, Chapter 2 was kind of like whatever. The first it was great.

Fucking amazing. So good. And terrifying. I was in there watching it like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm the hidden colleague, I'm like, look, look at the background. She's like what? I'm like, look at the background. He's staring at the kid. But I like little movies like that little, little weird shit and horror movies in the same movie. I'm just a master of that.

All right. So, this movie went kind of heavy on the horror slash violence aspects of it? All right, anybody can answer? How do we feel about that from our Marvel Fair? Are we into having a little bit more direct genre influence? We've seen some genre in Marvel, of course,

but it hasn't been as heavy as movies like Logan, where they go straight genre. This movie didn't do that, but it got closer than other films have, in my opinion. Winter Soldier being the biggest genre film to me that Marvel's ever made. unless you're talking about comedies and then you got throw a Ragnar too, so whatever. But do you guys feel like this particular genre, horror slash violence,

is a good place for Marvel to go? I couldn't be happier. I was genuine, like, I will talk about it more later, but like the genuine murder of the Illuminati at the hands of Wanda, I think was like incredible and genuinely like surprising that it got past Disney

with what we saw. Oh, there are, There are multiple points in this movie where it's just like when Black Bull, when Wanda like- That was a lot. That was insane. And he does his voice and his like head pops in this disgusting way. There was people in my theater who were just like, ooh.

Because you're not used to seeing that. And that's something that I actually think the MCU needs to dig into where I'm just like, yo, there's little moments like that if you're doing a genre film that you can do that to make me like, oh, God, that is fucking disgusting. They are really stretching that PG-13. with that scene because that was like that was incredibly violent.

Yeah, evil Dr. Strange gets thrown out and gets like impaled by the fence. I was like, God, that was the one for me. That was why.

I don't know you could do that. Like, I'm gonna be honest with you. That was a, that was the one for me. We've seen knives and people getting cut. And,

you know, Thanos got his head cut off and all of that stuff. But that one was different. That one was on some fucking Bram Stoker's Dracula type shit. That was, that one was,

that was the one I was like, God damn, I can't believe they went there. Jones, horror movies. Your thoughts? I thought it was great. I thought, like you said, seeing new things, seeing Marvel try new things was awesome. And just to see my man Reed go out like that,

turning to noodles, bro. Turn reading into a noodle. All right, we're going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. You know who really got at the worst, though? Who really got at the worst was Captain Carter. In half. They killed my baby mama.

Got punished. And by the way, she didn't even hit a flip. she was barely doing nothing. I'm not, I'm going to be honest with y'all. Captain Carter sucked, man. I'm going to be real. Like, like, I'm going to get my agenda off, man. Deep, deep, I don't know if you want this, bro.

I don't know if you want to smoke, bro. We can't do this. Not my wife. You can't do my wife like that. I don't think of this, bro. Look, look, I'm going to be real with you. I'm going to be real with you. I'm going to say what you want, bro.

Because this is my, this is my problem. And this is my issue. Sometimes I feel like, They don't know how to handle these characters in a way that honors them, right? She's out, you, Steve Rogers is the least powerful character in Marvel, but they always find a way. I know she had to lose the fight, but they always find a way to make him look like a boss. Got him catching Thanos's hand, right? Got him coming in against proximity to midnight and the rest of them and beating them in a fight with fucking Falcon on his team.

He also runs a route on Black Panther. You know what I'm saying? Fucking walk Black Panther down. Check out Twitter. And I felt like this was a chance for them to give Captain Carter super awesome stuff to do. And they gave her a tiny jet pat. I'm so mad. And I really didn't.

I wanted so much more. I fuck with Captain Carter. And Captain Carter just kind of got played a little bit. Here's. Yeah. Anyway, here's my thing. When Blackbolt and Mr. Fantastic, some of the most powerful, smartest characters in Marvel comics.

go out like that and you got to spend all that energy going against Captain Carter. I don't really... All right. If we're going to do the Eliminati talk, I'm just going to get this off really quick before we go into like everything. We have to go into Illuminati later. I do want to say one thing before we get to Illuminati.

We're going to go into it right now because I want to say one thing about Ramey and then Charles, you got to clear out of the Illuminati. Is that cool? Absolutely. So the music note fight we have to talk about. Holy shit. The best part of this movie.

I say that the music no fight is a top 10 MCU scene ever. Top 10? Hard agree. Guys, it's cool. Top 10? I think the music no fight

is a top 10 MCU scene. All right. We can one over. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, I'm gonna call bullshit

because it's a good scene. It's a really good scene. But top 10 is a little much. I'm with Charles. Top 10 is a little much. I would say top 10 fight scene. I don't, whoa. I would say top 10 fight scene.

I don't, like it's a great. Hold on. Hold on. I will say I will, I'm when I say scene, I mean action sequence. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's more fair. I'm not just saying scene ever.

Because then you got it, because I got scenes in there that nobody talks about. Nobody ever talks about Tony talking with Howard Stark. I don't ever talks about that. I fucking lose it. I throw my fucking popcorn at the screen crying in front of the whole theater. Nobody ever talks about that. Talk about stuff like that. Steve and,

and, uh, and, and, uh, and, and, dancing cheat to cheat, one tear rolls down. Oh my God. I'm like, what the fuck, Steve? Do your thing, baby. But the music no fight was fucking fantastic.

Yeah. Who agrees? Yes. It was great. I'm with you. For a second, I didn't realize what was happening until like, I was like, he's pulling notes off of the thing. And then when he's just like throwing him like ninja stars and it's like notes from a piano

and like it's a play, it's playing a fucking classical music piece. it's incredible. No, but then when he sees the harp and sends the little note, the last... Did you realize, though, that the soundtrack and the score of the movie had, that that's what they were playing?

Yes. Yeah. So good. That is nuts, bro. That's crazy. Like, the score of the movie is what they were playing, because as soon as that fights over,

the score goes back to normal. It is insanely inventive, and it makes you wonder what kind of movie that you might get if they let Sam Ramey just cook and go quirky wild. Because it makes me think sometimes that maybe he had 10 or 15 quirky ideas that they were like that's too quirky. But no, the musical fight we like.

I mean, I'm going to be honest. This ain't shots at like whatever. But like if we wanted a Moonnight movie, I'm like, what type of like horror like Moon Night movie would you get if Sam Ramee just, you let him just do this thing? Oh, man. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, Sam Ramey. That would be nuts.

also you could do like moon night Blumhouse too seven million dollars you know what I mean just Annabelle just moon night Blumhouse seven million dollars just seven million bucks

Moon night in a suit how about how are we going to get the talking hippo man you can't do that you can't do none of that it's got it in a hippo costume

like that'll be you can't do none of that you got seven million everybody works for scale moon nights in New York just fucking people up that's how I know Van is on his producer's shit.

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Colehauser Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, Annette Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. The Illuminati, we got to talk about them. We delved into that a little bit

to the Illuminati. Charles, you said you had a take to get off when we were getting into the Illuminati situation. What you got from your brother? All right.

So, guys, like, when the Illumini came on screen, I was a fan. I was a fan boy. I was screaming. When John Krasinski came out,

like, guys, I know all the cool people on Twitter, like fuck this fancasting fuck this shit fuck John Krasinski, whatever like I'm a human I was just like this is dope as hell like the lizard part of my

consensus is going to be fuck John Krasinski No I think there's like cool people who are like John Krasinski what Yeah but I'm like no guys guys it's John Krasis like Chris Kizzi has like Reed Richards I was like this is dope as hell like what like what is going on

my mind was exploding but here's the knit I have to pick are a collection of some of the smartest beings on this earth and on any earth. Reed Richards especially. You know, in the comic books, Reed has a whole entire like, Reed Richards like Counsel of Rick's type shit. Okay?

He knows how to do this. We get introduced to Reed Richards, the smartest man on earth, and he's going to walk in front of Wanda and be like, Wanda, stop. You can't do this. Read, really? That was your one plan. Like, that's your number one plan. You with stretching abilities are going to take everybody, be like, all right, we just got to talk her down.

Like, you don't have contingencies in the backs are building. Like, y'all have, you're locked up Dr. Strange. Y'all can't do, like, what are we doing here? So this is the thing about Reed Richards. And it was great to see a new live Ashton Reed Richards. First of all, Krasinski's slightly playing him wrong, but there's only like three scenes. So who knows he, but he's playing them wrong. Oh, all right.

Before we go back to your other point, why do you think he's playing him wrong? He's not playing him right. He thinks he needs to be more arrogant. He needs to be a little bit more. He needs to be a little bit more. Yeah, especially the read as he's being played now. He was like, this was like Christian camp counselor,

Reed Richards. You know what I'm saying? I mean, Johnny, Johnny Kay will give you that. He can give you. I know, but he, but not know, you know, but Reed Richards, Richards, a guy who's trying to solve the problem of everything, a guy who makes multiple super difficult decisions. at the expense of the greater good,

he's not playing anymore. I'm not saying I don't like John Krasinski is Reed Richards. What I'm saying is he's got stretch his legs a little bit. I will say John Krasinski needs, like Reed Richards is kind of like the future of the Marvel universe in terms of like, he's constantly sonning Sue.

Like Sue, I got to save the world. Can you please not right now? Like, come on. Like he needs a little bit more. He's playing him wrong. And secondly, do Illuminati with some

bitches If we If we keep it If we keep it against us So who we had we had Captain Marvel We had Blackbolt We had Xavier

We had Mordo He should be fucking thrilled That he got that invite More like Big up Strange was like Like literally like Dog I know why you wanted

To get me out of this universe So you could get my spot Like you wanted to, you wanted to, you was riding the bench. You wanted to go to the Rockefeller brunch. And Captain Carter. They get dispatched pretty easy. And I guess that's supposed to be a measure of how powerful Wanda is. But it also read to me as sort of a measure of like how they,

it seems like there's a disconnect between the careers of this film and what the Illuminati have been in the comic books. Like, they haven't even been some. something, to be honest with you, that they've been, they're much more in the shadows, much more behind the scenes than to bring someone in front of them, admonish them, and then be in a situation where they could be killed. Not that the Illuminati haven't been directly involved in shit, but that it seemed more like fodder to just murk them than anything else.

Steve, you got something? Yeah, I think, and it rubs up to my, like, what will be my biggest, like, problem with the movie. that it's very clear that for the sake of the story, the Illuminati exists to give the exposition to Stephen about what has happened

to this previous Stephen Strange and why the book of Bichanti is closed off to him, basically. If it's purely exposition and to get murdered by Wanda, that's the only purpose that they serve for the case of this story. It's cool to see everybody.

It's awesome that we get all of these characters screen time. But I think that when we start to talk about what problems we might have with Wanda, I think that a scene and storytelling tools like that can be used a lot better to a better purpose for what this story wants to do. That's my biggest problem. Not only do I agree, but I think for like the fans or like Elam Nadie, like if we go out a little bit more, Illamnati is introduced by this writer Brian

Michael Bendis. And in the comic books, it's supposed to be this collection of the world's smartest most influential people. Professor X, Black Bull, Black Panther, all of these type of people. Namor, Captain America have been. Yeah. And then

there is this creator Jonathan Hickman in his New Avengers run basically introduces that the Illamnati have to stop the incursions. Incursions in the comic books are basically what they are in the MCU is that it's two universes colliding and they're going to destroy each other.

and the Illamnadi is kind of these people in the shadows being like, yo, we have to kill these universes before they kill us. And that's kind of what the reason that they're trying to dispatch of all the Stevens, because if Stephen keeps hopping multiverse from multiverse using a darkhold, he is going to invite an incursion, that's actually what happens with the evil Stephen. So I was just like, I liked the Illamnaudi scene for what it was, but I was like, if this is supposed to be a collection of the most powerful people

and the smartest people on this world, why are you fighting Wanda head on? This makes absolutely no sense. Also, what we know of like Captain Marvel, I'm like, Captain Marvel's stronger than this. Like, why is Captain Marvel getting like throwing around like this? Like, same thing with BlackBolt. If I'm Reed Richards, I'm like, yo, BlackBolt,

don't say shit. Just run out there and scream. I don't want, like, don't pause. Like, just scream. Just kill her. Like, we can deal with it later. Don't catch her monologuing. None of this.

Like, why are you waiting? Like, just scream, Blackbolt. Kill her. Less so with that, but I think it's just more of like, it was clear as day what like the narrative purpose of all of this was for. And I was like, this could have been different. This could have been better. I won't rewrite the whole movie in like this one discussion.

But like I think, I think that that was misused, I'll say. Right. My two takes. Oh, go ahead. My two takes are that it was great to see the Fantastic Four or Mr. Fantastic on screen again. Fantastic four is like my intro to superhero movies. I have a soft spot for the for the first film

So it was great to see a new mr. Fantastic Hopefully the Fantastic Four in the MC going forward And my second point is This is a really tough beat for me but uh Saying Black Bolt on screen Before seeing Any Anches of Shield People on screen again like an emcee film

That hurt right That was hurt and hurtful They brought my man back from the show that they had to cancel They brought up And same out Joe, I'm going to tell you right now, stay hurt about agents of shield because that shit is never coming back.

Why are you so mean about that, Steve? Why are they so mean about it? They're the one doing it. That shit was whack, bro. And I'm going to be honest. And I'm going to hurt your feelings one more time, Jomey. It's wild. It's wild that the MCU with all the money they have

have not upgraded the stretching CGI. Because like, I love John Krasinski. But when he stretched, I'm like, guys, come on. Like, come on. They string cheeseed them. Like, what are we doing? That was cool. I will say that I wasn't expecting

than to die, so seeing them die was kind of cool, but the Luminati is pretty much almost like a mascot for I think some of the problems that people might have with the movie in terms of its of its bigness. The moment was supposed to feel bigger.

You expect it more. We get a cameo by Cleo, Clea, shall I say, in the cutscene, played by Charlize Theron one of the worst cut scenes in the history of the MCU No we're not going to do that No we're not going to do that

We're not going to do that Right up there With the musical version Of I can do this all day No that song was great That song was good No Charlie Staron looked like Sindell from Mortal Kombat

Like that was a tough costume It was so funny Like I was waiting And part of me was like, oh, that's clear. Then the other part of me was just like, A, why does she look like that? B, like she just walked off the street. Like, it's just like they filmed this on a blue screen. Like on their off day, what is happening?

So let me go back to before we move on, before we move to Wanda, which is going to be contentious. Yeah. Honestly, if you guys, if we might need to shadow protocol this. That whole conversation, I don't know. Which is going to be a doozy. I want to say something about the Illuminati slash Cameo Corner part of this. So this is, this goes back to what I was talking about earlier. The cameos that we got in this movie were the Illuminati and then Clea in the cutscene, right?

Yeah. We also got Bruce Campbell, but we knew Bruce Campbell was going to be in the movie. It's kind of like a gag. It's good. Good to see Bruce Campbell. I think there's a double-ed sword here in that if this movie, would have had 150 cameos, there would have been people saying that these movies aren't about making good movies anymore and just about throwing us a million cameos.

At the same time, we went to a film and didn't get any cameos, and it felt like we didn't get what we thought we wanted. All right. So which side of Cameo Gate are you guys on? So this is a roundabout way of saying it. and I'm going to be honest, but I saw everything, everywhere all at once before this.

A couple weeks ago, life-changing experience in terms of just like, this is why I go to the movies. It is a wonderful movie. Go support it. Go support your local cinemas. But that did something so crazy with the multiverse where every universe

they went to, you're like, oh, this is like a silly universe. And by the end of the movie, you realize how emotionally resonant it is for the characters. like you start feeling emotions for characters that have hot dogs for fingers. And you start kind of like, oh my gosh, like what are they doing for this? And I think the weird thing about multiverse and madness following this is that like there's not

much madness and there's not much multiversal stuff in this. The universes themselves are not built up. They aren't things where I'm just like, I want to live in this universe. So I'd say all that to say with the cameos, I think there was a way in this movement. where it doesn't feel like cameo gate just to get the fanboys excited. Every single cameo says something about the characters and the emotions and you're building these universes where you want to live in them. And I don't know about you guys, but none of these cameos made me be like, I want to see more

of this, Mr. Fantastic. I'm like, oh, no, I'll just wait for the movie. I don't want to see any more of this universe. Our universe is cooler. And that, I think, is actually the real sin of this movie. is like if you're going to call it multiverse of madness, I want to see a lot of universes, and I want them all to connect back to the story

and make this event. It's really telling that, like, of all of the possibilities that we could have seen and been put on screen, it's just New York City with a bunch of plants and people are wearing hats. That's what I'm talking about. They're all wearing black and white for some reason.

And that's it. And, like, not so much that I didn't get enough of a color palette for whatever, like, the next multi- Super's movie could have been, but it's the fact that, like, for all of the things that this movie could have done, I think of the things that it should have done

were very, very few. Like, Professor X came back. Patrick Stewart reprised his role to be Charles Xavier again, and we're not that over the moon about it. And that's probably a problem because you didn't tell a good enough story. Well, I mean, I think we knew Patrick's true

was going to be in there, so even if that's the thing, we were excited at the trailer when we, like, we freaked out when we saw the Super Bowl trailer. We just heard his voice and we're like, oh shit, it's over. We got X-Men. We got all these things. We got all these expectations. And then expectations, I think, and this is something that we've talked about on and off.

Like, I feel like ever since we started doing this podcast, it's like, what do you expect going into the theater? When you, like, have your popcorn, you have your snacks and you sit down. Like, your expectations will determine, like, how you felt about the film after you've seen it. Right? If you went in thinking, like, it was saying, we had. the conversation at the end of Wanda Vision, right, where we were talking about during the thing, like, oh, X-Men, oh, the actual physicist, Mr. Fantastic, Mephisto, right? And then to see none of that come to fruition, we're like, oh, man, they didn't give us anything that we wanted, but were they

trying to do that in the first place, or was that us, was that the fan, was that, like, us trying to figure things out, reaching conclusions that the show was never going to reach, right? And so with these movies, there's such conversations, such a little, this could happen, that could happen, da, da, da, da, da. And then when some of it happens or none of it happens, we're left the theater going, I expected so much more, even though the movie, the movie's trying to do a job to sell you, come watch it, everything's crazy. But in reality, we have to like, you know, that's not for everybody, but, you know, you have to look back and be like, maybe did we expect too much from this? film, you know? I'm not. Well, that's the question. Jummy is asking us

a question. Yeah, it's a bigger thing. It's more than this movie. I'm not saying that this movie, like, you know, we should you know, that we were like, oh man, the movie promised da-da-da-da-da-da. For this specific movie, I think, it gave us great stuff, you know, I think like, for me, at least personally, the

Mr. Vintech's stuff, that's good enough for me. Like, I did not see that coming at all. That was way out of left- Sure. I think the fulfillment of our expectations doesn't need to make a film worse, though, because when our expectations aren't met, then we have to make the sum total of the parts that we, what we do have. And what we do have when we're left with the end of this movie,

are we happy with? I think ultimately, I think my entire point is, like, when we think about these events, we think about these things, we have to talk about it for what it is and not what we wanted it to be. It's impossible. And that's, I mean, I go into it.

I'm just, I operate on a different, clearly on a different level. Well, the only reason why I'm saying is because, number one, it's impossible for us to do that because we, first of all, we know these characters too well, right? So it's like the story arcs and the characters and stuff, we've been reading these characters since we were kids. So it's possible not to have any expectations.

The question is, how do you, how do you, and I don't know if that's even what you were saying, to be fair to you, but I think the question is, what are realistic expectations? Because if you sit down in a movie, you obviously are expecting to have fun. If you'd have gone to the movie and Stephen didn't do one spell the whole time,

you're going to be like, you can't come back and say, well, you shouldn't have expected to him to do a spell. Well, yes, I can. He's fucking Dr. Strange. Right. So he's going to do some spells. Yeah.

The question is, should you expect him to do a spell that brings Hugh Jackman into the movie as Wolverine? That's the question. Steve? And that's, and then we're in a wild, unprecedented time of insane expectations because there hasn't been like a pop culture experiment like the MCU to do this. Like, there hasn't been 10 plus years of movies that iterate upon characters over and over again to make us even think that this is possible.

So when we go all off on these crazy tangents about what we think a movie could be and then it's just left with something a little wanting, like is the, you know, is the question up on us to. to know that we need to keep ourselves in check? Or has this just been a wild ride that we're just kind of starting to feel a little bumpside? But can I be real? And this might be too much into the business of the shit. Like, if we're going to keep it 100%, Marvel knows what they're doing.

Like, this is like sometimes at a certain point where it's like they were game changers in making us sit in a theater and watch all of the credits. And then, boom, something happens. And we sit and we're just like, oh, they're teasing Thanos at the end of Avengers? okay, you got me for the next five, six years of my life.

Yes, this is what Marvel, like there are entire industries, our podcast, YouTube videos on Easter eggs, things that they're teasing, things that might happen. Like, so much of our enjoyment of the MCU, like even directors, even directors themselves, Sam Ramey's be like, yo, I had to go back and shoot some stuff that they wanted me to put in the film. Just so they, like, the comic book stuff that will keep all of us. coming back. So I do get the argument being like, yo, are we kind of the assholes for having these massive expectations? But I'm like, yo, the person who's making the meal has made their entire business on making us think this way. And other movies are now doing this. That I'm just like,

yo, that's the double-edged sword. That's the nature of the business. You made us think that this is what we need to have fun at these movies. So like, yeah, there is a little bit of like, yo, if your own directors are saying, like, I had to go back and, like, shoehorn in some stuff so that, like, I could keep this fan base, this core fan base happy. Like, yeah, that, that's the nature of the game. So, and I'll say something to that. There's something else that happens here that people don't understand as well or that I don't think we get is that, you know, it used to be, it was this show that came on E. It was called Coming Attractions. It was about trailers.

Yes. It was called. It was called Coming to Traces. Don't do that. It had that ready. It was called Coming to Traces. This was about trailers, right? And because there wasn't like the internet,

and at the time of my life, I wasn't going to the movies to see every single movie to see every single trailer. The first trailer I remember actually being up on was I went to see Wing Commander just because it had the I went to see Weing Commander just because it had the Phantom Minish trailer on it. You know what I mean? So I remember those were the first thing, but you had to, you know, by that time it was the internet,

you could see the trailer, whatever. But Marvel and Disney, they have these big, great, huge events. Well, they tell you the next six movies that are coming out. That didn't used to be like that. You know? They tell you the next six movies

that are coming out. to tell you all the movies in the phase, whatever they're going to do. They say Blade, and we go, okay, when are we going to see Blade? They go, mutants, okay, we go, when are we going to see Mutants? They go, Fantastic Four, we go, when are we going to see the Fantastic Four? And there has to, you have to split the baby here in some kind of way in us looking forward and us staying focused on what's in front of the screen.

Like, there has to be something. Like between us looking forward, and us staying, like, there are people that were saying Gorda God Butcher was coming in Moon Night. I'm like, yo, stop fucking talking to me, man. Like, I don't, like, I don't want to hear that Gorda God butcher, because I'm going to start thinking

that Gorda God Butcher's going to come kill all the gods. And then if Gorda God Butcher doesn't come, I'm going to be like, where's my Gorgon God Butch? But then again, like, we get, like, oh, man, Reed Richards is coming in, WandaVision, Mephisto. And we're like, oh, we're the assholes. We get a couple. And then Kang shows up.

in Loki and we're like, it's like, it hits the streets again. We're fiends and like, all right, in the next one. Like, you can't have it both ways. And I do think that like, the thing that I'm kind of like, I don't want to be, like, I'm going to be real about this. We've talked about this, Jomi.

We've had arguments about this at a certain point. We've been trained that whatever Marvel is going to give us next is going to be just as exciting as going to be better. And I think we're getting to the point. that we have like five, six Disney Plus shows and all of these movies where we're just like, yo, like, the thing that you're giving me now isn't exciting me anymore. So how can I be excited for the next thing if like the thing like Winter Soldier did not need to connect to Infinity War for me to be like, all right, this was one of the greatest

times in the theater? I think, and this is, again, this is something we've talked about is because at least at the End of Avengers, we get the Thanos, right? Yeah. And so we know all roads lead to Thanos. And so all our expectations about... Ultron 2. Ultron 2, right?

All the... Our expectations for the next films are like, all right, how does this connect to that Ultron? How does this connect to Thanos? Right? Da-da-da-da-da. We don't have that for this new phase of Marvel. We don't have, like, a point to direct our attention to our theories to.

So they're everywhere at this point. We're like, we know Fantastic Force coming, no mutants are coming, right? But we don't know when and we don't know how. So it's just a lot of we're reaching, we're grabbing, this, that, blah, blah, ooh, that might be da-da. And because we don't have a place, we don't have like a future to look at, like, okay, here's like the, here's the event that we're leading to. We're just, we're spread, I think we're spread too thin,

especially with all the films and all the TV shows. There's a lot going on. a lot coming quickly with no clear like, all right, this is the event we're headed to. So we're just like all over the place in terms of our expectations. Do you know what's crazy? Is Jomi, you're right emotionally?

You are? But I think factually, and this is the most interesting thing about Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange was the movie that told us where we're going. These incursions are obviously taking us towards Secret Wars, right? Yeah. And so, and so, but we,

haven't talked at all about that because it wasn't done right. We know that. We need the nerds that read these books and all these things. Yeah, so like, with the incursions, and maybe that's just for us. Maybe the casual fan doesn't even talk about that. But we know now,

this is the first movie that told us where we're going. We're like the first movie that told us where we're going, that means at some point, in my mind, the Beyonders. God King Doom. Like, oh, I like, But Van, but

Van, let me push back. Yes, this film did that with the incursions and everything. But it's not that visceral feeling at the Avengers where you see Thales. If you saw Dr. Doom, we'd all be like, all right, we're getting God Doom. Like, come, like, you know what I'm saying?

Like, and that it's unfair that as fans were like, that's what you need. But I'm just like, yo, Secret Wars is just this ethereal thing in the, it's just a title. It's just incursions is just a, thing they said. It's not a like, we see Thanos with the, with the glove being like, all right, shit,

we know it. Emotionally, I'm invested. I want to, and then when you see him in Guardians of the Galaxy, you're like, come on. Like you get, yeah, come on. All right, one at a time. Okay. Now I'm going to go real quick. This is an ISO play. I need you. Come on, man. Come on.

Clear right. Clear. The floor is yours, man. Okay. So there's a name for something or somebody that is in a place with another entity and only reacts to what that entity does and the way that that entity wants them to. So if I'm in this room right now and there's somebody else in this room, and whatever they do, I'm cool with it.

Whatever they say, I go along with it. Whatever they want me to do, I do it. and I can't leave them because I'm too attached to them or they have me attached. That's called a hostage. It's weird that you say that while Kalika is in the room, but yes. Yeah, I was about to be like Kalika is in the room.

She left. She left. She's exactly where she wants to be, baby. I take a bow out. All right. Sex and man. We have to make sure that we're fans and not hostages. Okay.

We have to make sure that we're, because part of this is that, like even the John Krasinski thing like we spoke that into existence we made that happen really right which is cool but at the same time what you really want

is as you want these filmmakers to be able to go into these movies and be inspired in a real way to make the art that they think tells the story of these characters that we love so much you guys kick Ryan Johnson's ass

after he made the last Jedi and it ended up being one of the better movies that we've ever seen in the history of Star Wars, but the fans couldn't help it because the fans can help it. Look, I don't want to see Luke Skywalker turn it to an asshole either, but at some point, we have to make sure that we're not hostages

to nostalgia or to our childhood. This leads into what I'm about to say about Wanda. It's okay for me right now to say that what happened to Wanda Maximoff in this movie is a fucking disgrace. Speak on it. Speak on it. Like, that what happened to her in this movie is

disgrace for many reasons. Number one, in all of these movies that we talk about, we see dads in the movie, I shut her to think, and I'm sure the midnight mob and writers out there would be able to think of one, where fatherhood is used as a way to make some dude become like the worst version of himself. Like he loves his, fatherhood makes guys superheroes, fucking taken, commando, John Q, like, John Q, whatever it is. fatherhood makes guys go to the best. Wanda's essential issue

is that she's a mom who loves her kids too much and the love that she has for her children, she's also lost a shit ton. Joe made a great point in the group chat that Wanda also created a whole fake town because she had gone through so much loss and maybe there's something inside of her that's making this. But to me, that's overshadowed by the fact

that an Avenger is killing people left and right killing people in Carmatage trying to kill a child chasing her through different universes trying to kill her because of her own children.

I think that's gross. I think it's gross that they took Wanda Maximoff and made her into this. I think it's a weird choice. I think almost if the movie wasn't going to be Wanda Maximoff is a singular

character in Marvel in that because of storylines like the House of Him storyline, she can be someone that because she's a nexus being can reset everything and start a new universe. She has done that in the comic books before. It made sense with Wanda Maximoff

as the villain in this story if that is what was going to happen. If this cameo-laden, super multiverse, huge reality-shifting event was going to happen in this comic book, in this movie, it made sense to have her as a villain.

If not, it doesn't. It makes no sense to have her make that turn if that's not what was going to happen. And leaving that, when that was the deal, I was kind of pissed off. I was like, well, what the fuck? Why would you do her that way? Like, it just seems like for everything that she's lost,

a brother, two only half real sons, her whole country, like her parents, vision, for everything that she's lost, then to turn around and make her the shithead, I was kind of, I felt away. I'm not going to... I think that the movie in the beginning

does something that I do think is smart. And if they went down this line, I thought, this is a better movie, where Wanda says effectively to like Strange, like, yo, what makes you a hero and me a villain when we do the same exact thing?

And throughout this whole movie, we're supposed to think of Stephen Strange as this heroic figure. Even when Stephen, uses the dark hold, which everybody is demonizing, Wanda for using. He's the hero at the end of this. And Wanda is in this trope of a woman who cannot control her emotions,

who loves too much. If she can just, Wanda, everybody's like, Wanda, could you calm down? Could you just, it's this very disgusting trope. And I think that when I was watching the movie, I'm like, there's a version of this where Wanda is like, I don't know, any movie, finding Nemo, where she is on a mission to find her kids. Like, that is fine. I think that that is well and fine.

And maybe she gets, it gets a little out of hand. But to say the Wanda that we know from Wanda Vision, who has gone through all of this, in the span of a couple months, is going to be a kid killer. To have happiness is like, I don't know. It's kind of like a character. Still kids, still kids from some other mother.

That's what I'm saying. Like what, like, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what's, what? And, what, we're, not only how much she loves her kids, but how protective she is. So for us to look at Wanda and be like, yeah, she's going to hurt another woman, even if it's herself. And she's going to make these kids go through this traumatic event. I'm like, guys, like, this is not the same character. This is just not the same character we were introduced to. You feel cheated.

And I know I'm going to let Steve go because Steve had like Steve was the person kind of like, was just like dog. Like y'all know this is fucked up. And I'm like, yeah, it's fucked up. And then Steve went in. I was like, oh shit. So Steve, ISO, go. I found this to be not even so much like a disservice or disgrace like Van said,

but an active regression from what we saw in Wanda Vision. It is not congruous to what we had just seen in Wadivision for anybody who has seen like the acceptance of loss that she had to go through at the end of that. And then while still, you know, taking the dark hold and learning, you know, these new powers as the Scarlet Witch, to simply become something that is completely antithetical to who she was in the prior TV show. and then try to convince us that she is then fine with, you know, killing kids, taking all of these means to basically destroy lives for her own ill-gotten gains. The idea that that is our Wanda makes zero sense. The fact that it could be a Wanda possible. But like the fact that this is us, absolutely insane.

And the like danger of this and like it's the only word that I could think of to use is danger of this is when, we came out of this movie. I was, like, I had overheard, like, a group of guys and then one girl talking about this. She was upset about how this happened to Wanda, and the guys were all like, well, she had the dark hole. It's all, like, you can't wave it about. Don't worry about it. And this is where I'm like, I don't need, like, I don't expect MCU movies to have, like,

the most, like, on the nose, gender politics or poignant things to say with gender and everything. But when you have someone who's a mother become incredibly powerful and that being their ultimate weakness throughout the entire film, you better know what you're saying after. Or her only want. The only want that Wanda, like, she's not a nuanced character. The only thing that we know about her is she only cares about motherhood and her kid. I'm just like moms and women in general, like, are more nuanced than that. Why does Dr. Strange get to have this whole interior your life, but the only thing we learn about Wanda in this movie is that she will kill people

and children for her own children. And also, I'm going to be honest, then I know she's probably not dead, but I was a little kind of like, really the light, like what we're learning at the end of this is that she has to sacrifice herself. She has to kill herself for the universe and that's the big play.

I was just like, no, why are we doing this? That don't help the people in Carmatage. No. No. That don't help them people in Carmar Todd. She killed the people. She was killing people. And to think that, like, again, I'm sure that this is probably not the last that we see of this Wanda Maximov. I certainly hope not.

But it isn't, but it isn't until it is. And if this really is the last we ever see with her, this is a fucking travesty of what they've done to Wanda. No, Steve, you took the words right out of my mouth. Like, the movie just goes, oh, she's been with the dark cold. The dark world is corrupted. But the optics are not good regardless, man. It just looks like she's a crazy mother. trying to find her kids and just doing whatever it takes.

Being like somebody who at the end of the last time we saw her was an Avenger, was a hero. And now she's a serial murderer. That's just not, that's not, that's not it. Like that's just, it's just not it. The more and more I sat with it, like, and I don't want to rewrite the entire movie, but it got me more mad that we had like a whole 20 minutes with the Illuminati and not even something to give us. If you want to take Wanda down this path

as terrible and dark as it is, reinforce it with some narrative structure that actually lets her bulldoze through everything that she used to be. Like, the fact that we didn't see any version of vision in this movie to try to like talk her out of this

or talk her down or try to save her for many of this to truly get us to understand how bad the dark hole is or how she's fighting herself, that's terrible. You could have easily taken out like six cameos and 20 minutes and given us that and I would have actually liked that.

Do you know, do you know why? Vision doesn't care anymore? Because he's white now. Charles, you know that was coming. Vision is white now. Vishon is dead. And Vision is white now. Right.

That's true. So the reality is vision don't care about like people that are dealing with motherhood and child care issues. That's not his thing. Right, right, right. He doesn't give a fuck. He'll actually duck the child support.

Yeah, Vision doesn't care about anything like that. Vision is white now. And because he's now white, he's somewhere on a boat, hanging out. You know what? I would be surprised the vision was Elon Musk. Damn. I mean, his body is worth enough. You're going to get us kicked off Twitter.

Like, cool. Get us kicked. I wouldn't be surprised if you're on. And while we're on this corner, I just will say, I need the MCU to very, very quickly tell me what the rules of the multiverse were because I did kind of a chuckle when they're just like, people's dreams are visions into the multiverse

and I was just like, that was hokey. That was, that was hokey. It's all comic books. It's all silliness. It's all magic. You could sell us on that. You could sell you on it. You could. We saw a zombie doctor strange. I was like, ooh. Zombie Doctor Strange was cool. Zombie Dr. Strange was cool. And

people kept saying that this was going to be the introduction into Marvel zombies. Something else, the fans we got to do, Just know that leak culture, leak culture is also influencing these things. I think that they put the Illuminati, the cat came out of the bag with that and Xavier and all of that stuff because the leaks had already let you know that that was going to happen. So because the leaks were already out and I don't think they thought they had a super duper

strong movie, then essentially at the end of it, they were money grabbing. They were like, Xavier's in the movie, come see it. You don't know what else can happen. Nothing else happens, but Xavier's in the movie, come see it. So at the end, they're like, we just need a big opening weekend. So we got to let people know that the shit that they're talking about as far as the Illuminati or whatever, it's in the movie. Don't speculate.

It's here. Go see it. Because you want to see that sea. I know for a fact that if Mephisto ever shows up in any MCU movie, it will be the people at the ringer that made it happen because we will never shut up about it. I would prefer that we did actually. All right. All right, midnight meeting rankings.

Clockwise. I don't know what clockwise means. Yeah, we all have different Zoom things. Oh, do we all do? Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't know that. I thought that my Zoom thing was the same as y'all.

Steve is in the top left, right, for everybody. Steve is in the top left for me. Jomey, where are you? Oh, Steve's the second. I'm right. So mine is Steve Van, Jomey, Charles. else. This is why we're not House of R. This is the exact conversation

that makes this shit we get hung up on. It's like, oh, soon could go clockwashed? Okay. I just sound like that. I really didn't know that shit. I'm not, I don't care what y'all say. All right, let's go. Jomi, Steve, me, Van, midnight

your rankings. Midnight of the Rankers. John, you go. Gotta give it an eight. I thought it was an enjoyable movie. but just a lot of stuff that really didn't that really didn't work

but still like Elizabeth Olson I know we talked about it earlier she's fantastic you know she's so good and even the stuff that doesn't work you're like

she works the stuff that does the stuff that does work is enjoyable Sosci Gomez Bender Cumberbatch are solid I give it an 8 on the midnight meter we talked a little bit off air with Jomey and he mentioned this movie not exactly being some of its parts and I consider it to

be just parts and with that I want to give it a six. It is very fun. It can be very fun at times. But I found myself getting very upset the more and more I sat with it. Coke baby Steve, you taking the crown for me this episode. God damn. Yeah. It was tough because I honestly, because it gave us some of the most fun moments I've had in the MCU. I still will say that that music fight is one of the most incredible things the MCO's ever given us.

I like there are other things I like Wanda snatching people up through the water. Crazy cool. Oh, when she comes through the mirror and she's like the contortions of her body, that shit was scary sound. Yeah, it's good. It's scary, yeah.

When the chase scene in the Illuminati. Yeah, the movie is not whack. So I think I'm going to split the difference between Jomi and Steve, when I came out of this movie, at first I was like eight, definitely an eight. I saw it a second time, and I have to give it a seven.

Like once I was like concentrating on it, like, and saw it all again, I was like, this is a seven. Like a good movie. Like you're saying, then, not whack. Like, this is, like, I had a fun time in the theater,

but like the flaws make it a seven. It's a seven. And I think seven is good. I think I I think these are good scores I'm surprised at Steve six but Steve really made his case

in this podcast to his issues with this movie I would say seven I would say seven really six point five but we don't do point fives right

we don't no we're not but um you're rounding up I wish I really wish that I could look past it I really wish I could because there are there really are fun things to this

but like I just I can't I can't I would say seven look and in the grand scheme of things seven is that bad. But the fact that we all thought this movie was going to be in 11 or 12. Oh, I thought that this was going to be like

top tier Marvel reinvigorated. Okay, you're going to take me through the next five years. But we have one more thing before we go. We got to rank our phase four movies of the MCU. Rank them all. Okay, so in phase four, there's Black Widow, Shanks, She, Eternals, Spider-Man, No Way, Home, and Dr. Strange

Multiverse of Madness. I will go first since I went last time. The best movie of this phase is Spider-Man No Way Home. The second best movie is Shang-she. The third best movie is Eternals. The fourth best movie is Black Widow. And I fucked this up.

I was going to say, I was like, wow. I was like, hey, yo. I'll do it again. I'll do it again. What? Number one is Spider-Man No Way Home. Number two is Dr. Strange Multiversal Madness. Number three is Shang-Chi. Number four is Eternals. Number five.

You know what? Number three is Eternals. Number four. This graphic's going to be really fun. No, number five is Black Widow. Number three is Eterns. Number four is Sean. Ah, man.

So my brother and Christ, are you sure? Are you sure? You got a lot of dollars on the line here. Number one, Spider-Man went nowhere home. Number two, Dr. Strange multiverse of madness. Number three is eternal. I'm sorry. Number four is Shang-she.

Number five is Black Widow. Okay. Oof. Wow. Emotional roller coaster. All right. I'll go next. Number one, easily, by a mile.

Spider-Man, No Way Home. Number two, Dr. Strange, multiverse of madness. Number three, Shang-Chi, number four, Eternals, and number five, Black Widow. I will go Spider-Man,

No-Way Home. For number one, I will go Shang-Chi, number two. I will go... It turned. Dr. Strange. No.

No. Stick to your good. Stick to your good. Don't back up that shit. I put it back in. I put it back in. I put it back in my mouth.

I put it back in my mouth. It came up a little bit. I put it back out. Dr. Strange, multiverse of madness. Eternal's then Black Widow. All right. So I'm going to.

Yeah. First is Spider-Man. I went home. second is Dr. Strange, multivorcial madness. Third is Sean Chi. Fourth is Eternal. And last,

but in certainly least, Black Widow. Damn. I just watch it. It's not that bad, man. Black Widow? Yeah, it's cool, bro. It's cool.

It's just not it. It's just not it. All right. Guys, we did it. Woo! Multiverse of Madness pod in the books. Are you guys excited?

They're going to have a field day with our asses. I have one last question to ask all of the Midnight Boys. Yes. These movies are Black Widow Shankshi, Eternal's Spider-Man No Way Home, and Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness. Look at these films for Phase 4. Do you think that Marvel isn't a slump? All right.

So I'm not going to put, like, I'm going to do this because I've been waiting so long. Because I am Coke Baby Chuck. I know my role on this podcast. Like, I know my role. Okay. I'm the hater. People call me the hater. People like, fuck him.

get him off. Like, I get it. There was a moment where our man Jomey, the most positive man I know behind Logan Murdoch at the ringer, was like, bro, what's going on? Like, he had a real crisis of what is going on in the Marvel universe.

Do you want to claim this, Jomey? I was going to say it. I was going to get on my soapbox and be like, listen, most MCU phases go, like at least the first two were six films. And now we're five films in with Thor 11 Thunder coming out in July. And we have barely of an inkling of what the MCU holds for us at this point.

At the end of Avengers, we got the Thanos tease. And at the end of Avengers, age of Ultron, we got Thanos picking up the gauntlet and saying, fine, I'll do it myself. Right. We had a through line to where we're going. It's just vibes here at the MCU right now, right? Which would be, which is cool, right? Except for the fact that the movies have been mad to,

okay, this is cool, but what is it enough to do with anything? You call this a Bryson-Tiller album. God damn, Jeremy. It's just the truth, right? Just vibes and nothing else? There's no Winter Soldier. There's no Guardians of the Galaxy. There's no Thor Ragnarok.

There's no Black Panther, at least so far in these five films, right? And so since Endgame, which was 2019, we haven't seen like the MCU greatness like year after year that we're supposed to now there was a pandemic in 2020 like you know we understand gotta give a little grace for that answer this is the MCU on PacWatch

no I want to say Pac Watch it's not Pac Watch but you got it's like it's no no no no we're speaking it's kind of like we're looking at James Harder now we're like hey man you're looking a little you don't look the same my guy I can't do the MCU as James Hardin bro

You got to, let's be honest. Let's be honest. Jomi, we're being too harsh. Let's be honest. We're looking at them differently, though. You're trying to say the MCU can't carry a team in the playoffs. I didn't say all that.

I'm saying we're looking at them a little different now. Like, hey, man. Only shooting 33% from the three. Are you saying that the MCU needs to get out of the strip club and back on the court? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying that maybe you got to get out the strip club, right? And start focusing on like, hey, man, what, you know, what was you doing back then? Maybe the, maybe the MCU does.

doesn't have the same burst they used to. Maybe that's what it is. That's a conversation that we should keep them in the background of minds. I still think, like James Hardin, there's another level that you can reach. Maybe you're not old. Maybe you just phoned it in right now.

But you have to, we can't sit here on our laurels and think MCU's great. It's always been great. It's always been great. It's always been great. We got to look at these things critically. I can't believe me and Chuck are on the same thing.

But it's really like, you're like, this is like my fucking birthday. Like, y'all call me a hater. And I was like, yo. Co baby Jomi. We got a look at it and be like, hopefully. Come on.

We should get more. Steve, what's you got? I don't know if I want to go as far as to say a slump because I think what it really lacks is kind of a North Star. I think it needs an actual thing to point itself at. And that what I think is missing. I think that these movies could be obviously better. But I think in a vacuum, all of them are good, defined. But I think it's like if this pattern keeps up, I'm willing.

to go with you on this because I think we need some goalpost to point to. We thought it was Kang. We thought it was the multiverse. We thought it was something. It hasn't been said. Like, we haven't been reinforced with where we're all going to as a collective group. But instead, it's just vibes, which I think I'm okay with for now, but, you know, shortly. Then, before I go, I've been waiting for you to give me this explanation. You got to tell the people, you know, you had to take that Michael Jordan was bad for the NBA. You didn't give us our take. End game might have been bad for the ICU. So, yeah, yeah.

So here's the thing. So I wrote this piece one time, and it was called Five Reasons Why Michael Joy was bad for the NBA. It was a long time ago, so I only remember a couple of them. Well, one of them was that he moved the game out of the perimeter. It was the death of the big man was one of them. That has kind of changed now. Another one was that he left the Hall of Fame graveyard where all of these grades didn't

get any rings because Jordan was sucking up all the ring. And he made the league even more into a star-driven league, which changed all of these things I looked into a reason why one guy that is that big and that is that dominant is bad for a league. It's great for a league. And overall, of course, Michael Jordan was fantastic for the NBA, fantastic for basketball. But there are downsides to having one guy be that singularly dominant over your league.

There's always going to be a negative. In-game, to me, reminds me of that. Because what In-game really served to do, more than any other movie, was to shift our expectations of Marvel. Everything that we're talking about is coming post-N-game, right? Everything after In-game, right? In-game was much theorized over. In-game was much Ballyhooed.

In-game was, we thought about it incessantly. And it went beyond, at least in that final, hour or whatever, what we could have ever imagined we would feel in the movie theater. Since then, okay, since then, there's been a spot in our fan DNA. What we are looking for the same feeling that we got, when Kat picked up, me and there, when they yelled Avengers Asimble, we are looking for that. We are craving that. We are looking so deeply into it, even if we're not doing it like consciously,

subconsciously that movie was so big we're expecting to be able to have those moments again and we might never so it's not that in-game was went out it set out to change our expectation matrix for the entire MCU it's just that it did it actually did do that

it actually was so big that now we're like okay when are we going to get to the next moment where we're all yelling in the theater and the reality is Shangxi wasn't going to be that the Eternals weren't going to be that. Spider-Man No Way Home, we actually conned ourselves into believing that that was that when it really wasn't.

And then multiverse of madness, we kept waiting for this feeling of Jesus Christ, fucking Gene Gray's going to pop out, Deadpool's going to pop out, fucking... Tom Cruise is Iron Man. Tom Cruise is Iron Man. Oh man, we all believe that for a second.

Yeah. We're going to get, we all made out, we made them out because we're, we're chasing a high now. And in-game took 10 years to get to. And we didn't really feel that way

so much before the movie. And we kind of haven't felt that way since and it'll be a long time. But I'm telling you, somewhere in our fan DNA, just on accident, that movie might have set an unlivable standard for Marvel. Even though Infinity War is probably

the better overall movie, the moments in endgame might have fucked us a little bit. Well, and I'll say in closing, I think the thing that like I get it, like, you know, I am a hater. I wear that badge proudly. But I think after watching multiverse of madness, I think sometimes the reason I want more from the TV shows, I want more from the movies, is because as fans, if we let certain things slide, as dumb as quarter flipping seams, as dumb is like, why is Ned able to use

the slingering so easily, as dumb as that seems in the moment and we laugh and we have fun. I'm just like, yo, that does become a trend. If we let certain things slide, then we get to a moment like Scarlet Witch in this movie where we're like, this character does not line up with what I know. I feel betrayed because this doesn't feel like what I've invested time in with this character. And I think Multiverse and Madness, entertain movie. I had so much fun. But I think as fans, we have to demand like, yo, we want more.

It's sometimes like the reason the MCU got here is because they didn't slip up that much is because they stuck the landing. And that's kind of what I want. Again, I just. Yeah. You guys, that's a wrap. It's a monster pod, guys. Monday, the House of Ar is going to come back. And if we went 140.

Shit, three hours. Like, we want to make bets? We want to make bets. How long we think? I think they're going to go. I think they're going to go too. Two and a half, easy. Easy.

I think 245, if I'm being done. Two 45. Monday, the House of R returns a deep dive into Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness. Thursday next week, we're going to have a strange mega mailback. It's going to be interesting. Not only would the mailbag be strange,

but it'll be about the movie. Smart. Got him. Producer credits. Our producer is Steve Almenjoyed, the cuddly lover bear. Jomi The Explaner at Diner on on Socials. On Social Media.

And additional production by our very loved and esteemed colleague, Arjuna Ram Gapal, who we love, love, love, love, love. You guys, we appreciate and love Arjuna. Charles, please take us out. The multiverse of madness is over and we cannot wait for what is next. And I'm sad to say that if Dr. Strange or Christine bump it, they're going to have some encouraging sense.

Steve, did you think that Jay-Z was 62 years old? The moment that he said at it, the moment that I'm watching you, Steve. I'm watching you, Steve. I keep waiting, I keep waiting for it. Just little things like that. Doesn't know how old Jay-Z is. I'm watching you, Steve. I'm watching you.

He's late 40s. Whoa. All right, let's not just see this like this. Everybody throw out how old they think Jay-Z is real quick before we get back to it. He did. He turned 50 like a couple years ago. Jay Z was born December 4th, 1969.

All right, he's 52. All right, fine. Late 40s. December 4th, that's 52. That's 52. I know. Jay Z.

I know. So I know, not only do I know how old he is. I was born on the day Fred Hampton died. Okay. All right. December 4th, 169 is Jay Z's birthday.

Jesus Christ. Steve, I got to be honest with you, Steve. Watching you. that's crazy. I know Steve is cracking. He's staying up all night waiting for that Jack Harlow tape yesterday. He's like Jack Harlow drops.

That's what he's thinking. He's thinking, fuck Jay-Z. How old is Jack Harlow, nigga? That's what he's thinking. Okay. Anyway. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy? It's the real California farm families behind it.

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