The Ringer-Verse - 'Masters of the Universe’ Reactions | Midnight Boys

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

The Boys are back, and this time they’re giving their reactions to the newest movie iteration of Van’s most beloved IP: ‘Masters of the Universe.' Then, they jump into the latest nerd news, breaking down Tom Holland’s recent comments about making 'Spider-Man' after working with Christopher Nolan. (00:00) Intro (10:03) Spoilers ahead (11:30) ‘Masters of the Universe’ reactions (1:12:32) Nerd News (1:20:19) Outro Hosts: Van Lathan, Rob Mahoney, Steve Ahlman, and Charles HolmesProducers: Jamie Yukich and Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome into the Ring ofverse. This is, of course, the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. We are Steve, the architect, almond, the builder, a tinker of things. Rabble-Rowsing Rob Mahoney. That's his Midnight Boys name. Rabell Ronda Rousy.

Rousing Rob Mahoney. Jomey is in Sweden. Yes, he is. Jomey is in Sweden. Sweden is the land of milk. So Jomey's in heaven. Jomey's in heaven right now. I thought it was the land of like herring.

I know, but it's a lot of white people out there. Sure. And so then like, oh, herring and milk. That's disgusting. So Jomi's there right now. We can only hope that Jomey comes back to us without adding to our biracial scourge that's been taking over television.

Can we, it's not a skirm. Oh man, man. He of the receiving resurgent hair line, coat baby chuck, the 24-carat closer. Together we are known as the Midnight Boys. All right, we'll be right back after this. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg,

a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim. to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg.

Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans. and they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans.

They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group, they're fans. Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Follows on social. So Jomi's gone. At the Midnight Boys' Pod on Insta and TikTok.

At Ringervverse on Insta, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. I've been monitoring the socials. And I have to say. they're going well. You think so? I think Jomi's got a, I think Jomi's got something going. Why don't you ever tell him this to his face?

I do. I don't feel like you don't. We've been having problems with Jomey. He's been feeling himself a little bit. Okay. He got the new apartment, you know. He got milk in and out. See, it's tough, Rob,

because like, what you want to do is you want to make sure that you continuously pour into Jomey. While also pushing him down. No, by also pulling him. him back. You want to pour into him, but you want to pull it back.

Jomi got on here one day, and Jomi went, yo, man, he had the glasses on the whole night. He was like, we're going to cover Invincible if we get to 15K on the Instagram. And we never talked about that. I was like, yeah, yeah, cool. And then I was like, wait a minute, man.

When did that get brought up? You know what I mean? So you have to make sure. He's a young whippersnapper. Do you have whippersnapper? He is not a young whippersnapper. Jomey's like 30. He's an adult man. You'd be treating the black Tom Holland. Tom Holland's 29. And by the way, his entire fucking career is Whippersnapper. He's played whippersnapper and everything. And he's actually playing whippersnapper and Odyssey. And we have to see how his whippersnapper and kind of works in that movie. A lot of people work. I did hear Jomey say

if he's still doing the Midnight Boys at 37. He's going to have to reconsider his whole life, a la Tom Holland. So take that for what it's worth. I'll tell you what, though. He got lucky for him if we would still be doing the Midnight Boys. That's a lot. That's the wrong thing to fucking say. I'm telling you all. Anyway, we're on YouTube, like, comment, subscribe, share. You can watch every midnight boy

and house of our episode on YouTube. com backslash at Ringgivers and also on Spotify. Would you say that you're more, Rob? More a midnight boy or a house of our? Clearly a midnight boy. I mean, I'm asking though, because you also do the prestige podcast

with Joe, which makes you sort of a house of our cousin. But I feel like when I have been on House of R, but I'm a guest there. I'm an interloper. Here I'm in one of the four seats. You're one of the six, man. I am Swedish Jomi today. You are Swedish Jomi Rami.

Jomi Spins through some changes all right now. I think we should do a Midnight Boy 6-Man because it used to be. Used to be Kerm, man. All right, Kerm didn't die. Don't point to him. It's not like there's a black movie where he just died. He's alive and well. I just responded to Kerm's birthday text yesterday.

Hell yeah. Yeah, my birthday was April. Okay. Yeah. On Friday, the House of Arr gives you their fictional, musical, and Lestat primer. Yes. So the vampire list that's coming out. You guys excited?

No. I honestly, genuinely didn't know it was coming out this year. I forgot about that. So this is an interesting thing. I'm keeping up with it because I love interview with the vampire. Right. But I don't know if they really took advantage of some of the momentum that the show was having in terms of they dropped the vampire stat.

because now I feel like people might be like not. I feel like they've dropped a new season like every year. But last year, I think, I don't know if they came in 26, pause. I don't know if they, oh, this 26. I don't know if they were there in 25. It might be late 24, maybe early 20. I certainly don't think that the irons have cooled

on the interview with the vampire IP. Obviously, the stat's the rock star of that show. I think if you're hot for vampires, you're always hot. Yeah, vampires. Good point. I don't know. I don't know if that's true.

Let me tell you why. I think, I think it's true. But I think we've been, hotter. Do you remember the mid 2000s vampire renaissance? I mean, of course. It was the twilight. Because let me say, I'll say something about this. We'll talk about this later. Horror is

a better horse. Horror is in a better place. Let's clarify. Horror movies are in a better place right now because ghosts and vampires and zombies aren't taking a much space. I think so. Wow.

So in the mid-2000s, right? The mid-2000s, tens, whatever. Horror was back, but it was like, we were in the zombie realm, we were in the remaking of old prestige horror realm. Would Twilight count? Twilight would kind of count, but then you had all of this, you had this, the horror genre, the vampire, vampires were everywhere, zombies were everywhere, right? I feel like that was crowding out a lot of the new ideas, and a lot of the old IP was still

everywhere, which was crowding out of a lot of the new ideas. That stuff, it's not, obviously not gone, right? Like Halloween, just dropped it in a light Or they've been a couple of years ago, whatever. It's obviously not gone, but it's less prominent than it was before, which is making a lot of people take a chance on horror movies that, like obsession, like backrooms, like stuff like that. If those are traditional horrors.

Zombies and vampires, that's like Spider-Man and Wolverine. And right now we're in the MCU, like, backrooms is fucking Iron Man. I would argue, though, that it's like we had Jordan Peel, right? and he comes out and everybody's like, oh, get out. We're going to start making movies about race and gender or whatever. And now Hollywood is like, hey, yo, young white men, why don't you make your own get out? Just make a scary office building and it'll be fine. We got a time of conversation about Charles.

I don't know what's going on with Charles. But it doesn't matter what gets said at this point. I could be like, hey, man, I went to Disneyland. Charles would be like, how many black people did you say this? They let niggas in there now? I'm like, Chuck is, Chuck is, this is militant. What radicalized you? Have you all been outside?

Now you just made it right. Now he's right. But that's a point though. Now what you're saying is true. Because I do think that those movies becoming, those psychological thriller-type horror joints becoming such a big deal, then kind of changed what people were doing. Blubhouse has always been on this.

But I mean, if you look at what these movies are doing now, it's like phenomenal. We'll get into a little bit more. we're talking about legitimate get-out-type blockbuster type of shit that's going on. So I just think the fact that we're a little bit off the zombies, a little bit off the vampires, maybe opens things up a little bit. And we don't need another remake of fucking Freddie Krueber. On Monday, ButtMash delivers their Summer Game Fest roundup.

Steve, yeah. Yeah, Summer Games Fest is happening in L.A. I'm getting sent over there for like two days. And we're going to be checking out new games that are coming out this summer in the next year or so. And we're going to come back with the great news that is happening there. What are you excited to see? I'm excited to see the new Onimusha. I'm excited to see the new Wolverine game.

September's going to be absolutely insane because everybody's scared of GTA 6 and nobody's releasing another game in October because that's just going to cannibalize the entire market. You know what? We have butt match for this, but why do I feel like we need a Steve game corner

just for this. It's probably going to get mad. Wait, I feel like we should have we should have our own Wolverine Wolverine game. Absolutely. Why would you know? Wait, wait, wait, maybe we, hey, get the switch. Yeah. I mean, get the

the Twitch going. Yeah. I'm, I show Kalika like some some some gameplay from the Wolverine game. It's pretty nuts. She was fucking like disgusting. Wolverine's

eviscerating people in this. I show her the game. She's like, what is this? How is Kalika disgusted her? One of her favorite TV shows is Daredevil. I know, but for some reason she real, she iffy with the violence. She could watch John Wick kill 150 people in one scene.

That's a lot of violence. But then if you put on the soprano, she's like, oh my God, it's so violent. Take this off the screen. It's weird. Huh. It's weird. But the Wolverine game was too much for it. Wolverine was running around in this game. Blood all over him. His suit dripping in blood guys. They said they did, I did read that they

they're going to have a whole version of the game where less blood, less score. Yeah, you can turn all that off for other people, but like, I'm certainly going to be playing it with it. Let's turn it up. I want people speak. It's a lot. You need to see this, Rob.

He's got claws on his hands. We're going to talk about this later with white folks. I'm getting more into horror. White people love the blood in a way where I'm a little bit like, you weren't concerned about us before? You know why they love the blood. All right. All you got to read is like, you know,

Chris Columbus come over there, they sharpen in their sores and come people's arms off. They're fucking savages. What are you talking about? Okay. But on today's show, the Midnight Boys, react to a movie with swords and no blood. Masters of the universe.

There will be spoilers. You guys, I will probably spoil a lot of your time in these people's times with the way I'm fucking over the moon about the movie. But we have to do a spoiler warning. That's Steve's department. We're getting ready to talk about Master of the Universe.

You're listening to a reaction podcast. The spoiler. Lazzar coming. All right. To begin our reactions, we once again bring you the Midnight Manifest, putting you in the know about Masters of the Universe. The only person that can do that, Chuck Wagon, take it away. All right, this is your Midnight Manifest for Masters of the Universe, directed by Travis Knight, screenplay by Christopher Butler, Aaron and Adam Ney, and David Calham,

starring Nicholas, how do you say this is the name? Galatine. Galatine. This is why we have you, Rob. Idriselva, Camilla Mendez, Kristen Wigg, and Jared Leto. Skeletor Attax Attorney, Helbin, on getting the sword of power, a weapon that can turn its wielder into a god. The sorcerer sends young prince Adam Glenn to earth with the sword to keep it out of Skeletor's hands, but the boy

loses the sword and is stranded. Fifteen years later, Adam works in HR but dreams of returning to Eternia. When he finally finds the sword of power in a comic book shop, the race to obtain the weapon intensifies. Adam's childhood friend, Tila finds him and takes the inexperienced prince back to the destroyed Eternia. While running away from Skeletor and his goons, Adam finally activates the sword, transforming into He-Man and possessing the power to take on his mortal foe. He Man, Master at Arms, Keel and Robato go on a quest to save Aternia from Skeletor's tyranny

and surprise they are successful with the power of friendship and believing in yourself. That has been your midnight manifest for Master of the Universe. Then I feel like all of us today should just do a clear out. How did you enjoy this movie?

So like, it's like 1985. Is that scene? Yeah. You know? And you're getting off the bus and you're like running home. You're running home because there was one

fucking soap opera that came on late it was called Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara will come on after He-Man

and every now and again you would miss He-Man and you would get there just as Santa Barbara was coming on now you're a kid and you can tell time you know that you've already

missed He-Man but the reality is that you still see the credits of Santa Barbara role right see the opening credits of it. and you realize that that's the end of fun,

that the adults have taken things over again. It's their time. Why it's coming on after He-Man? I'm not sure. It should be coming on before. I'm not sure. But why it came on after in Ban Rouge, I'm not sure about it.

But when I got home and I would get there and I would sit down and I would watch He-Man, He-Man wasn't just like an afternoon cartoon for me, right? It was something other than the Batman, Superman, type of stuff that I was getting in the comic book shops and stuff like that. This was different. You go buy toys. The toys were active.

You didn't just watch He-Man. You played He-Man. You'd set battles up. You would go get Ram Man. You would go get these people. You'd get Castle Grace Gold. You'd get Snake Mountain. In order to get into the entire thing, you had to live it.

You have to be a part of it. Because there wasn't much story. Okay? There wasn't much story. It's the inverse of Star Wars where Star Wars comes out and then the toys explode. E-Man, they made the toy. and the TV show is Ducelved.

So what I'm saying is, as much as I have, I'm saying this inartfully, as much as I have watched He-Man, I've also been He-Man, and that's different. I've been He-Man. I've played my own adventures. I've staged sieges on Grey's Skull. We've lost some, right? But then we've also sneak-attacked Snake Mountain,

and we've won some. We've taken evil in hostage. We, that's not, we shouldn't have done that, okay? We shouldn't. It was the 80s. Skeletor has had to come get it back. We've done surprises. I've done so much, but I never really got a chance to be in the world besides the

Dolph Lundra masterpiece in a way that I felt like saw me and rewarded me for all the time. This was duke and fiction. This was my fan fiction. This was somebody actually taking all of the battles that. I have played and making them come to life on the screen. It was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It was actually maybe in some places incredibly messy, but I had a fucking shit ton of fun in Masters of the Universe, man.

And it wasn't lame. My biggest fear for the movie is that the movie would be fucking lame. Y'all don't know what it's like. I'm sure you guys do, because you guys, the anime shit and all that shit, to wait 30 fucking years for something to be presented to you and not to have it be bad. Bad is acceptable

but to have it be lame is just a kick in your nuts and I didn't feel like the movie was lame at all. I had a lot of fun I liked it. Robert? This movie's good. Like I'm honestly shocked. I thought the trailer,

like we need to talk about the marketing for this movie because it's, I think in the running for one of the worst trailers of any big budget movie in the last couple years, I had a blast. Like, I thought this movie is really fun. I was expecting to hate it.

I was expecting it to be horrible. I was expecting it to be lame. And it's not perfect, but, like, I found myself consistently coming back all throughout the movie to Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves. And I would say the original Thor. There's some Ragnarok stuff in the sauce too, but like, to me, the original Thor in terms of the balance

that it's trying to reach for. And I think it, like, mostly gets there in a way that given the source material is shockingly impressive. Yeah. I remember throwing down a gauntlet earlier when we talked about Mortal Kombat too, about hoping that this would have more fun with itself. And I was absolutely right in knowing that when you're not afraid of the source material, when you don't want to shy away from the things that are inherently silly about this property

and actually lean in and have the most possible fun with it, that's exactly where the magic sauce is. It's going to be losing some people because, again, this skipped my generation. I don't have that connection to He-Man at all like you do, but when I hear you loving it and when I see, we were at a screening where a lot of people were in the bag for He-Man. I think it was half a fan screening. Yeah. It was kind of electric for some people that I was like, oh, wow, like,

people are really loving this. And I can't argue with the fact that it's never going to not have fun with itself. It's never going to take itself too seriously. And there are some moments that are kind of genuinely, visually impressive. I thought some of the fight scenes were incredibly looking. I'm going to have to come here with my tail tuck between my legs and say that Jared Leto might have actually been great in this. And I was wildly impressed.

We're going to have to have a long conversation about the Jared Lettel thing. You know, it's an uncomfortable conversation, but it is what it is. Chuck? I think this is the most perfect that you can make a he-man movie. Like if I was a-what-the-fair just happened? If I was a fan of-hit. If you were a fan. I grew up on one of the remakes.

And then I watched one of the, like, the TV shows and then went back and watched some of the original. And I think that he meant is a very difficult property to transport to live action because it is so based around toys at a very 80s aesthetic. So I was sitting next to a guy who I guess I'd listen to the show. And he's like, yo, are you excited? And he was probably like in his 40s and 50s. I'm like, oh, yeah, I get. I'm such a loser, dog Like, just, man,

shout out to who over that man is. No, no, no, no. You just, I know, but you're just describing that. That's exactly how I felt like, I was levitating. I just, but now, I just judged him. And now, so I'm listening to how, this must have, no, he was, like, vibrating the whole time. He must have brought.

He's like, his partner, wife, somebody else. And she was like, is this the one where he is, like, I have the power? He's like, yes. And I was just like, so I was very excited for him. So I think this is the perfect, this is a perfect he-man movie and I have to be honest.

I had an existential crisis after I watched it because I loathed it. I was just like, this movie's not for me. I got two hours asleep because I literally, it was like the homeland or me on him in the screening. He's like,

I hated every single part of it while also being able to take myself out of it. It'd be like, if you are a fan of he-man, this is everything you could ever want. So I appreciate that. Let me say something. By the way,

and this is, this has to be said, So, you know, after Michael, like, came and went from my movie watching experience, the one thing I will say, for as many criticisms of Michael movies I had, it did make me do something, which was go home and, like, watch a shit ton of Michael Jackson shit, which I did. I watched a shit ton of Michael Jackson shit, right? And I'm watching it all, and I'm reliving all that. And this movie made me do the same thing.

So I go home and I'll watch the He Man cartoons now. Okay, so the cartoons are bad. Yeah, right. Okay, so, and I hadn't gone. back to them a lot, they're back. So then I start watching some Sheriff Brave Star and some Thundercats.

And so it's not the fucking animation has grown. The storytelling and animation has evolved. Yes. To really being, maybe this starts, I don't know, around the Lion King era where you give like really deep characters and you're playing on

huge themes. Well, they can actually emote at that point too. Right. And there's always been a difference between what you got on the screen and what you can get in the Saturday morning or afternoon cartoon, whatever. So these cartoons don't give you a shit ton to like work with in terms of the He-Man lore. It's not like there's this

deep, overarching, thematic journey that you get in He-Man. He-Man has like fucking synchre identity. It's like this is like legitimately what kind of like of the times. Having said that, I think that one thing that this movie does do well, I really actually appreciate your announcement. of it, knowing that it kind of wasn't for you, but it was kind of the best version of itself that could be. What the movie does do, though, is it makes a real attempt. It makes

a real attempt to modernize the story, to deepen the story, to give some thematic weight to a story that maybe didn't have a ton of it other than cooperate, make friends, and fight against bad people. And it tries to even scale towards by far the most compelling character in the entire movie. Jared Leto and I hate to, you know, agree with Steve. He's the best part I'm so mad. The movie doesn't really work unless Skeletor works and Skeletor was the best part. He's on fire in this movie. I think it helps that we don't have to see him.

Yes, that did help. I was just like, okay, because I was like, ooh, y'all got Jared Letto. And then I was like, damn, every single time Skeletor is on screen, I started enjoying the movie. And the minute he disappears, I'm like, man, bring that Skeletor. Yeah. And once again, he committed to it, though. Yeah. Like, Skeletor is an awesome character, right?

He's an awesome guy. He's evil, but he's funny. all of those 80s villains kind of were like that. Like the DeSepticons, a lot of points were like the best part of the Transformers and stuff. But he commits to it. He puts a performance that I think is one of the better performances of his career. I agree. So I think even if you look at like the story buying the screenplay credits and how much they spent on this movie, I think it was like $200 million.

I do think Amazon and all of the creators were like, yo, we need to make this work. and I think the things about the movie that are successful hold it back, which is like they have writers from the MCU in different corners. Like if you look at the credits, you're like, oh, these are people who know how to make IP storytelling. And you can see how much the movie is like, okay, we need to start with just describing what this world is. Because if we do not describe it, it will make no sense. And then we're like, oh, we're going to do the Thor thing where he goes to, Earth. So then we can kind of like

have the audience settle into some type of reality. And it's like they wear their inspirations on their sleeve where there's Thor, there's Guardians of the Galaxy, there's Barbie, there's Dungeons and Dragons and Dragons. And I think that's maybe where the movie lost me a little bit, where I was

like, you guys made the best version of something that is so indebted to things I like more. Yeah. So it's the thing that works about the movie, but I don't know if it ever like pull vaults over the It doesn't have any cohesive idea that brings all of that stuff together. And like, tonally the whiplash of we're just doing like slapstick comedy, we're doing

meme bits, we're doing like all of these outrageous things. And then we're going to have like hyper sentimental father-daughter conversations or whatever. It's like it's a little intense in terms of the way it throws your alcoholic. He's a legitimate struggling alcoholic. I'm not going to lie, that part did work for me. I became a drunk so my daughter wouldn't see me as a failure. I'm like, holy shit, Idris Elba. You're like, wow.

You're like, wow. I'm seeing Idris as man of, seeing Idris as man of arms, man at arms, at first I was like, that doesn't work. He made it work. Yeah. He made it work. You guys are right about the tone of the movie, though. I'm not even going to lie.

It actually made me appreciate some of the early Marvel stuff a little bit more. We talked a little bit about this after we left the film. But if you watch Guardians of the Galaxy, or if you watch some of these other films, they are completely committing to the tone to the vessel that they are inside of.

They're dialed in. They dialed in. The jokes work. They stay there throughout the whole movie. They weave the narrative around the movie and then they give you resolution in the end. And I think we kind of took for granted how hard that is to do

because this movie attempts to do it, but it can't do it. This movie wants to be the first Thor and it also wants to be Thor Ragnarok. Right. And I'm just getting outpotted today like crazy. And I think that was where I was like because I liked the Ragnar

rock parts of the movie. And I also like the Thor Ant Man parts of the movie, but sometimes I was like oh, the whiplash of going from it. But then it would be like, Skeletor would walk in and one of the funniest parts of the movie is like, it starts getting like trippy and meta and Skeletor

is like in the office. That I just, that's legitimately, we've talked about that. That's a legitimately brilliant scene. It is. It really is because you can see that it's like when, again, in Thor Ragnarok, when Loki was messing with, oh, somebody else's mind and he was going through, oh, Valky. He was fucking with Valkyrie's mind and he was like sending her back to those flashbacks

of wartime and all this stuff and like he's inside of that vision. And Skeletor is just like working out in the gym with like his sweats and muscle shirt on and then he's held in the coffee with like a bow tie on in the office. I'm like, this is brilliant, but also a pretty good way of like having the villain set up these stakes for a hero that has kind of just been sidelined a little bit. You struck me about the tone that we had, like, it's bookended by, like, different types of Thor movies. In the middle, it tries to be Barbie.

Yes. With that amount of sentiment. And, like, it's, we have Ken, clearly with He-Man, who Adam himself is, like, kind of being played as this kind of, like, it's supposed to be, like, a bit of a dullard character, but also, like, he's very socially repressed and doesn't really know how to operate in the world because he only has matured nothing past 10 years old. And it made me a little sad, but also there's this way of, like, combating toxic masculinity and like identifying what like strength can look like in many different ways.

And as muddied as it can be, getting to the end of all of that, I kind of wish that it did a little bit more to land those sentimental parts. But again, it still came across the finish line. It is kind of trading one for the other. And I think Charles, you're absolutely right. Like, it is what holds the movie back and also the reason it works. It's like in those moments, when it is swinging for sentiment, I think it's pretty sentimental. And when it's swinging for comedy, it is a volume game. but like it can be pretty funny.

And when you step back after all of it, it's like, okay, I don't know how I feel about the whole item of this of what this movie is presenting. But in the moment, I just had a great time. Right. Every time it feels like it's getting a little bit too much into itself to where it's going to lose you, something genuinely funny happens or something genuinely cool happens.

Like when Battlecat comes at the end of the movie, I was just like, oh, wait, where was Battlecat? And then I was like, oh shit, he's back with the homies. It's genuinely cool. And then they called them a fucking pussy. Yeah. Rough. The movie did do that a couple of times where it's like, you feel like the movie commits

to early on. That's where you could tell there was a rewriting there. Yeah. The movie early on is like, this is a kid. This movie's going to be a movie that like is for more for kids or whatever like that. It's going to be a softer touch. And then they put some jokes in there. You're like, oh shit.

Yeah. Like there's a joke about fisting. Yeah. Give him head. It was funny. The first times. Jokes, they're trying to like, the guys who fucking watch this, They're almost fucking 50 years old.

Like, Van, like, we got to give them something that they can laugh at. There was an interesting scene that I wanted to bring up to you guys. Where I feel like this is pretty indicative of what the movie was trying to do. So, Adam is on a date. So, spoiler alert, all of the backstory we get about Eternia, we actually get it from the fact that Adam is on a date with a girl, and he's very earnestly telling this girl that his entire life history, and it's true, but it's very fantastical.

It's actually a good way to get us from where we have to start with Eternia to where we have to get with Adam's character. Give us all that backstory. He's telling a date this. It's actually brilliant writing to set him up. That girl is beautiful. And the fact that she is so beautiful is to me a very direct filmmaking choice. Adam, you cannot look at Adam as Adam and not see that he's gorgeous. Yeah.

Well, this is the bit in the car. cartoon too. Like Adam is fucking jacked just like him and they couldn't like animate this thing. Like this movie also pretend that he isn't jacked until he gets the power of baseball. It makes him more jack. But they can't pretend like this guy is going to be somebody that's that people are not going to swipe right on. That joke in the comic book store when he's trying to get the sword and it ends on the punchline. I guess your number.

I was like, that's a good joke. That's a good joke. Like are you like are you single? Because they can't pretend like he doesn't look like that. So what they actually do is through characterization, try to make him infantile and lame and hung up on this past that nobody believes but is actually true. Because he's actually chasing a destiny. That's for real. Only problem is that he doesn't really know how to access it and he's the only one that believes in it.

Which makes him an outcast no matter where he goes. He's an outcast on Earth and he's an outcast on Eternia. that's the part of the movie that, like, carries the character through the end of it. That's the part of it that works the best. Like, to me, just him as a nerd, as a laper, as one of us that believes he can do all of this stuff, doesn't know how to do it. That's the part of the movie that kind of carries itself. I promise I'm not going to, like, try to poke holes in this movie, but that only, the more I think about it,

that was the only thing that really bumped on me. I'm like, who raised him from 10 years old? I think he was wondering what I'm like, he was in the system. There's some holes. You think that there was a version of the movie where we got that? I think there probably was. There's probably a version where we're like three hours on earth. You know, it's like...

Well, guess what? Guess what? His actual mom is barely in this movie anyway. And when his own father dies and he's just reunited with his mother, it's kind of nothing. The parent's stuff doesn't work at all. Okay, it kind of works with the dad. The dad dying scene, and let's be real. Adam straight up kills his dad on accident.

He does. He fucking killed his own dad. He doesn't care. No one. The guy was a fucking dickhead. He was. It's like, to me, the reason why that stuff didn't work for me, obviously, you know, Van's always going to get, like,

Missy Eye when the father dies on the screen. But, like, when the reason why that stuff worked, because we didn't spend enough time with his father. Right. Actually giving a shit about Adam, his dad, it just wasn't enough there. Well, the reason it doesn't work is the same reason Skeletor does, which is Adam gets to a attorney, and he's like,

oh my God, what happened to this place? How could Skeletor do this? And he was like, he's fucking evil. He got a skull for a face. Like, we don't need to. pretend this is anything other than it is and we can just move on and I feel like the parents that maybe they dwell a little bit too much

especially with the dad. I also have to say shout out to the filmmakers where even if I did not like the movie there were so many parts where I could just admire the craft where I was like oh the fight scenes in this are very well shot

and very well considered and I'm like I'll be honest some of the fight scenes in this have been better than a lot of the shit we've been getting from Marvel. You can tell. that they were very locked in on like, how do we make these fights believable? How do we make him make him look cool? And I was like, oh shit, this is pretty good.

And how do we make them unique to the people who are participating in that's like, okay, we got this guy, it's covered in spikes? What do we do? What if another bad guy gets stabbed onto his back and we can just do like a physical comedy fit with a spike? Or punch him into a ceiling and get him stuck there. Or a trapjaw who's just like,

I mean, honestly, one of the lamest character designs in the history of animation, like looks like they got extra parts at the factoring. like, okay, let's just put this guy together. But he has this arm that can transform. It's like, what if you could literally get the physical upper hand by like re-mechanizing your body to get leverage? It's like, okay, this is actually kind of cool what they're doing here.

The trap jaw man in arms fight that comes very early in the movie is actually a very meaningful and awesome fight. It's an awesome fight just from the choreography. I was blown away by how good the fights were. Yeah. Every single battle scene is phenomenal. Well, we should say hand to hand. I think every time they get in a spaceship,

Not great. Absolutely nonsense. I will say the CGI when it would get to, like they were basically flying the ships that they do in Wakanda. I was like, all right, we getting a little. And that's if my biggest note was I don't know if they leaned heavily enough into the more like grounded Lord of the Rain. Because when they're just like walking around and fighting each other,

those were the moments I love. And I think because the TV show and the toys were trying to sell you, barbarians, they're kind of aliens, but there's also orcs and there's also spaceships. They're trying to honor all of that. And the more sci-fi stuff was, I was like, it doesn't work as much. That's because that shit doesn't make any sense for real. Okay? Like, when I go, but it doesn't make any sense.

Like, the Thundercats are both on a completely different planet, and they got all kinds of stuff, but, you know, they're also, it's also a world in the past. where you know what I mean? It's like if they were laser guns in in fucking the Game of Thrones you'd be like yo man, fucking chill. Like you know what I'm saying? Like is that but these shows were all kind of like that.

So there is this sci-fi element to he man where it's on another planet. This planet has like different ships and all kinds of different kinds of technologies and stuff like that. And that to you guys's point is when the movie kind of feels a little weird. If it would have been a little bit more sword and sandal

maybe it would have actually been a little bit less quirky as well. Yeah, but I think you need some of the quirk and some of the self-send up. In particular, I think it does a really good job of engaging with the toy, like, action figure element you brought up, Charles. Which is like, this is based on a bunch of toys. The names are ridiculous. Like, the names of these characters are preposterous. And this is a problem for all IP when you have to start saying these things out loud. To me, like, the dumbest scene in any modern superhero movie is an X-Men first class, a movie I like.

A movie where all the X-Men are, like, sitting in a room, getting to know each other, showing off their power. And one of them is like, let's give ourselves code names. I'm Banshee. I'm mystique. What the fuck are you talking about? This isn't how human beings behave. No one would do this. All right, but the pushback, if I got power, if we all got powers,

we would be like, hey, yo, what are our code in you? Would we? Yes! You never had superpowers. The only reason why I don't agree with you, first of all, that's hysterical. But the only reason why I don't agree with you is because they do. with you is because they do do that. In Top Gun, he's like, I'm Maverick.

But they have literal code names. They're in the military. That is the same shit. You don't think that you are. Hey, you love the NBA. You don't think NBA players are just like, damn. I really want. I'm the shaker. Somebody told me that on the Delta Force thing, it says, and you know, who knows?

Because the Delta Force is supposed to be some like super secret thing. Shout out to all the operators out there. I still watching out on YouTube and whatnot. I'm not trying to get in your shit. But it says, come in here, like Brave Jedi or something. To me, these type of people that's doing this type of shit, they always do that type of shit. They always come through. Like, they give these fucking harbingers of death, like, cool-sounding names, like the Reaper, or they name the fucking helicopter that's supposed to go out and kill a whole bunch of people, like the Apache.

Yeah, but you know what they don't name is Jubilee. I know, but I'm just talking about taste. Yes, right? Fair, fair. No, but I'm saying to your point, though, what the grander point that I feel like you are making is that they give you a creative and intellectual out for how stupid these names are. By making them a child came up with it. A kid's drawings and his names, no one has to say this stuff with a straight face.

Right. We can just get through it. We can call him Fisto. We can call him Mechanek. And let's just all move on together. Right. And it also kind of does something else. which is the movie makes,

because what I was talking about earlier, all of the things that I had to create as a kid because you're playing with toys, like Adam had to do that. He wasn't in Eternia when all of these things were happening, so he in his head kind of builds the lore of Eternia and then realizes that lore at the end of the movie, which is kind of the same thing

that a lot of the older He-Man fans were doing when they were there. Like the way you get with Adam at the end of the film where he's looking around it, all of these people and you're real, you're real, you're real, and then they do the laugh. It's kind of the way we felt because now our childhood is being relived on the screen. But does it work where it was like, I think that worked where I was getting a little frustrated is that everybody started having the humor and I was just like, wait, no, no, no, you guys live on attorney.

Why are you pointing to? Yeah, and that's Mossman. And I was just like, no, no, no, you guys live here. You should know who that creature is. Like, this is real name. That's George. Yeah. Take this dead serious.

Like in Star Wars, they're never like when the great thing we see like a new hope is I'm like, everybody is walking around because they're just like, no, this is our society. Of course I know who these aliens are. Everybody on a turn who's like, who the fuck is this pig man? Yeah. Now, you guys, we've done it. We've talked a lot about the movie. What we like what we don't like? Now we have to clear out and we have to talk about Skeletor.

Now, why are we talking about this? You know, Jared Leto doesn't have like the highest, favorability rating, you know? No. And there are all kinds of things about Jared Leto that have been like alleged, talked about doubled down on and it's been for a while now. Now, I will say

that unlike some of his contemporaries of the last 15 years, he has largely been able to avoid any responsibility whatsoever. Yeah, and any direct tainting. Like you think of

Franco, you have an automatic response. You think of like Lewis C.K. You have an automatic response. You think of some of these other. With Jared Leto, he's still been able to do like Morbius and like have fun with the Morbius stuff. He's still been able to do the Trom movie and kind of be around.

It hasn't. He was in the Blade Runner. 249. Yeah. Also, to be fair, I think a lot of these movies that he chose were in gestation for a lot. long time. Right.

And we are kind of getting like. At least his vehicles. Like 2049 would have happened with him without. We signed Jared Leto back before all the really uphorrent shit or around. And now we're like, because Masters of the Universe, they've been trying to make this movie. Oh, yeah. For a while. Same thing with the, the Tron sequel.

I do think, though, that if this movie had come out or was scheduled for release some years earlier that they moved away from him. Right. Or recast him. Or recast him. Or like, I mean, he wasn't heavily involved in the promotion of it still, not from what I saw. But I do feel like if this movie were dropping in, I don't know, 22 or 23, when we're a little bit closer to people still acting like they had a moral center that maybe they move away from him or they recast it. But, I mean, he was heavily in the promo for, for Tron, a Disney movie that was putting him front and center of everything in that.

And even with his extracurriculars aside, he was kind of labeled box. off as poison by most of the things that he was in for many of these years. Those movies just weren't working. Yeah. Because they weren't good. Yeah, there's this larger conversation about predatory behavior and all that. And then there's just like, in most things he's bad. Yeah. He is...

Gerrida was not good. Disractingly, annoyingly bad in the vast majority of his work. He has some high points of his career. And this is one of them, I think. In terms of the actual performance, it is quite good. Yeah, because we do not have to see him. And I don't even think he was... I might be wrong. I don't think that was... he was physically the character.

I do think a lot of this is not just Jared Leto's voice acting. Whoever was on screen moving as Skeletor did a fucking phenomenal job. They did a great job. Right. So the challenge with the character of Skeletor is, like we said before, Skeletor is both the comic relief of this, but also the sinister center evil of the entire story. That is very hard to do.

It's very hard to do to make a compelling, comedic character, but is also just the worst motherfucker in the whole fucking. universe. Is he that bad? In actuality? Yeah. In actuality he is... All he kind of wants to do is like sit on a throne and fuck he man. Like, you're talking about in the actual movie? Yeah.

He does assault a couple of women. I was just like, oh, I'm like, I don't know if any of the writers are just like, you know what? Not only we're cast Jared Lito. We're going to have assaulting these fictional women. I was like, that's also, that kind of also leads into the toxic masculinity aspect of this that actually could have left a little bit more. Like, this left a little bit more on the table in talking about that than I actually thought it was possible.

Because every single time that I see this kind of, like, narrative conceit of characters in this movie keep telling Adam what a man does. Yeah. Or, like, what it means to be a man in certain aspects. And there's a great amount of sentiment when it comes to mastered arms to kind of, like, giving up drinking and being a bit more emotional and, like, letting out his feelings, even in ways that are like less than productive. And to see Skeletor,

assault, what was her name again? Evil, Lynn. Evil in. Like several times and kind of combat Adam's idea of what makes strength and what makes these types of things, putting that front and center in the messaging of this movie

could have been a little dangerous, especially if you didn't message that properly. And I think in the end it was okay but I think hammering that home could have been a bit more meaningful. I think the message is still like Adam wins because of his empathy, really? Because of who he's a kind person

is the reason he's worthy. And Duncan even has the speech to his daughter of like, you're a better man than I am basically. Like it's a gender neutral man situation. Right, yes. But also, Skeletor is also so dastardly. Yeah. He's so silly.

Adam goes, why don't you face me? And Skeletor goes, because I don't want to. Yeah. Like, he goes, Skeletor is a character even in the cartoon that is so honest

about his cowardice. He is a chicken hawk, right? So he is going to send waves of armies at you. And then when you go, hey, Skeletor, give me my straight-up fate. He's going to be like, nah, I'm not into that. And then as soon as you corner him,

he's going to be like, oh, hey, I love you, blah, blah, blah. And so I think Adam having to be a genuine man, which we have are societally trying to reorient as being a great part of a community. You don't always have to be a leader of a community or a dominator of a community,

making people feel safe, respected, and loved. That's a part of masculinity. Adam is that. Skeletor is so not that. He is like the opposite of that. That's kind of the thing that the movie's pulling on. And that's why you have to have a compelling Skeletor. Really by like the third scene of him at Skeletor, I'm like, yo man, what the fuck is happening?

Like, they got that part of the movie super fucking right. And how do we talk about this next week? I have to bring up something important. And I hope that you can pull up your biracial list. Because I have a question. Okay. When I was sitting down to watch this movie, Tila, I was just like, well, Tila is man at, is man at arm's daughter. And that's obviously a biracial little girl.

And I'm like, okay, Tila's half, black, half white. And then we get to Camilla Mendez. And I went through Wikipedia and I was like, okay, does she got a black mom or dad? I'm like, oh, she's Brazilian. That don't mean anything. We got Black Brothers and Sisters in Brazil too. Shout out to them. Just typed it in Google, Camilla Mendez's parents.

These do not look like black people. So I was wondering halfway through the movie, I'm like, how does race work on attorney? It's tough. I mean, for me, personally, these are the types of situations that I'm always talking. talking about. Really? But I thought that maybe she was adopted. I think canonically, sometimes she is.

I think she, yeah, she's adopted. Wait, wait, but was I wrong? Was that little girl? Well, the younger girl definitely didn't look like she had nothing to do with him. I think he put he, I think he, I think this is probably like a fucking whole, uh, a net star situation. Right. A lot of child soldiers being made in attorney.

Wow. Yeah, like a whole net star situation because it really don't, it doesn't make any sense. But she's a great actress though. No, she did great. She was one of the best parts of the movie. I was just wondering, I was just like, damn. So now I have to ask you, Van, do you think that we should give our biracial queens some like? Oh, this is right here.

Tila is the capital of the rural guard and men in arms adopted daughter. Okay. Yeah, he's adopted. Okay. Yeah. So the original microcomics depicted Tila as a warrior god is rescued by Skeletor by human. Okay. I was confused the entire movie.

Right, right. I was like she's a Brazilian woman. No, she's adopted. She's adopted. Right. is adopted. Do you really have a list of biracial people on there? Oh, it's extensive.

Wow. Yeah, a list of biracial. Because did you, have you seen on screen when you're watching? This is, because we usually only have one white man. Yeah. Have you noticed the prevalence of only biracial women on our, on our movies and TV? This is the thing that we need to be, we need to be keeping track of Rob. But can I tell you something, though?

Here's the problem with asking Rob. Yeah. Is that there are certain. Would you recognize them if you saw them? Would I recognize a biracial person? Yeah. I might not assume, you know? But I'm asking, so, like, there are people, like, you watch industry?

Yeah. Like, you see Mahala? Yeah. Would you look at her and be like, there's a biracial lady? I would look at her and be like, could be, not my business. Okay, there you go. Not your business. That's true.

That's what I appreciate. Hey, no. It's a great answer. It's actually not your fucking business, you know? Very much not. But at the same time, I can kind of tell. So for me, I might see people in different spots. Like in this situation right here, you know what you could have done?

Tila could have been black. And if Tila was straight up black, the people would have lost their fucking minds on the internet. If they had come through, I would have loved that Coco Jones as Tila. Right. Why do you cast Coco Jones as? every single. Because she needs to be in more stuff. Okay.

That's what I believe. Wait, can you pull up your list really, really quick for Rob? Just to let him know, because he's on prestige TV, you should start looking out for it and bringing it up on your platform. You know, it's a great point. So I'll say this. You want Rob to bring up the fucking list? I think I want all of my allies to advocate for dark skin black women to be cast in more movies.

I'll say this. There have been some people around the town who have, reached out about the list because there was a situation. We're at a place where someone didn't believe that the actual list was real. You mentioned it constantly. But they don't think that the list actually

exists. Oh, the NOAAP isn't. I thought it was just a bit. No, it's in there. And I keep updating the list. I had to update the list after those people. Remember the list of actresses that came out that was going to be maybe in Superman Manor Tomorrow? Remember that? Aware. Because it was

Adrian Arjuna. And then it was Chase Infinity and then somebody else. It was a couple of that I didn't know. So I had to update the list. Right. Put them on the list. Okay.

So every time you see an actress's name, you Google, get the profile, make an assumption, maybe put them on the list. Nope, this is what, I'm glad you asked. I'm curious of your process.

I don't ask about the process. And so I see someone. What is the vetting process? I see someone and I go, huh, never saw her before. Where did she come from? Then I go,

oh, okay, she's in that thing. Look her up, go to Early Life on the Wikipedia. Early Life. And it tells you whether or not. But is this something that like only, like, it's a very black thing where I, not only can I usually tell who's biracial, I can tell if your dad was white or your mom was white. I agree. Nine times that it's right.

Wait a minute. By the way, by the way, just to let you know, people think that this is a cynical thing. No. This is not. I just was noticing with all the black actresses I know in town. I was just noticing after a while, yo, man, there's something going on. Now, guess what?

Even outside of me, people are starting to talk about it. People are starting to discuss this. Now, I will say this. I don't want to hyperfixate on this. And so I'm going to let it go for a little while because there was, I did have a really good conversation with an actress that was just talking to me

about the fact that maybe keeping a list of biracial people on a no-tap on your phone is not the best, most healthy thing to do. We're having a very fun conversation, but the conversation didn't come down like, are you crazy? And I was like, no, the list, and this last thing I'll say about it,

the list was me actually proving to myself that I'm not crazy. Well, I will double down. I will double down on this because on the big pick, don't they do, I think they do like the 30 best actors under 30 or whatever. 35 under 35.

I think we should do the 35 by race. Rachel's under 35. I'm fucking with it. You know what I'm saying? I'm being serious. Because people are looking at me and they're going, hey, man, you're crazy. I'm like, no, I was making sure I wasn't crazy because I was seeing shit over and over and over and over again. And I was just wondering, can a dark-skinned sister get cast in this movie or this show?

Or are you saying? I'm watching Black Mirror. I'm watching all this. I'm watching all this. And if you want to go deeper, can a dark-skinned it black American actress? And now we're really in the dirt. Now we're really in the dirt You know, so I look at shows like forever

And I'm like, oh, Brock, I kill and all of these people, man Shout out to you, thanks to you guys. Keep our young sisters working because we need them. We are six months from you like living in a shed Newspapers over the windows Like scrawling the number 23 on the walls Like I'm worried I told you guys I was right.

Okay, so you know what? I'll tell you something, you truly are a midnight boy. Thank you. You completely participated in a tangent that doesn't have any much to do with this movie. I try. And you did your thing. All right. Now, when you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get.

Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. We've talked about it. We've gotten into the film. we've discussed it.

I loved the movie. Last thing I say about the film. Number one, there are things, I have to tell you things that I think they could have done better. Number one, they could have committed to a better tone. They could have actually committed to the story of Adam, which they kind of do, but they do in this film,

like the hijinks sometimes overrun the movie and not actually serve the movie. Hyjinks in the movie are supposed to serve the movie. There are also a couple of, I think action set pieces in this that are supposed to be important that are just completely flat. One of them,

I think Beast Man attacking them in New York or in Oklahoma City. That was nothing. That's terrible. That part almost actually lost me. In that part, there's actually an Amazon commercial in the middle of it.

Amazon, do yourself a favor. We know that you're producing movies. Do not fucking do that again. An Amazon truck saves Adam. Amazon truck saves Adam. truck saves Adam. I'm telling you guys, just listen to me. I'm not trying to be holier than now with the whole thing. Don't fucking do that again. Don't fucking remind us in the fuck. If you're going to do product placement, product placement's been around for a long time.

It's not going anywhere. Be more subtle than that. No one wants to sit in a movie where they're transported to another world and then be reminded of big tech workplace conditions all of that stuff. Nobody wants to be reminded of all of that shit while they're sitting in the movie. Don't do that again. That was too cynical

and fucked up for even me. That guy really didn't want to miss his delivery time. He did not. I get it. I understand it and I'm not trying to paint Amazon as the great evil

of the entire world or any of that stuff. I'm not enough of a hypocrite to do that. But I'm saying that's a mistake. Like, do not fucking do that. I'm glad you brought

the physical grounding of the movie though. This is a movie partially set in Oklahoma City. I could have done 15 minutes at the HR office, like, talking about the shay flopping discourse. Talking about shit, disappearing in game seven. Like, what does Adam think about it?

It said we were taking jabs at woke culture a little bit. Adam is even a fan of OKC or is he too, is he too, like, in his own head about attorney? I think he's a casual. He doesn't know Nicolatopich like that. No. They get to the semis and then they're like, oh, wow. Oh, the team's doing really well. He's got a rally towel in his window and he thinks that's good enough and it's not.

Right. Yeah, plus, you know, he's probably like in and out. on the whole fucking thing. He's like caught up in this. We don't get enough of that to your point. We don't get enough of Adam in the workplace and all that. Some of that stuff was funny. But like the Beast Man rescue scene and all that.

That scene, the chase, the fucking chasing the forest, none of that stuff really worked for me. I also don't know why, like, why is Tila there? Is she following Beast Man blindly around the

source in signal? But that was also funny. Oh, when he activates the sword, right? It brings everybody. Why is she the only, who gets this. Like, she comes back

and everybody's like, who the fuck is this man? What? He has a sword? And I'm like, you guys, you don't remember him was the sword. Wasn't it a plan?

The rebels don't know about the fucking power sword. By the way, if the sword is still in Oklahoma City, it's also not going to take you 15 years to find that bitch. Yeah. If the bitch is still in Oklahoma City,

it'd be one thing if he had to travel to like fucking New York or Zimbabwe or wherever the fuck to get the motherfucking sword. But if the sword is still in Oklahoma City, you're going to find a fucking sword in 15 years.

Also, he didn't think. It didn't, Bricktown. I don't know what to tell you. How many comic stores are in an OKC? Probably like, what? Like five? Not that meant. That'd be the first thing. I'm like, hey, yo, let me take a day. Just like, popping a while. Find a fucking sword.

All right, midnight meter time? Midnight meter time. Before midnight meter. Two minutes. At the end of the film, a couple of things happened. Number one, orco comes out. I almost cried. I'm sorry, guys.

I love Orko. Like, oh, like, I love Orko. It's tough sell to put Orco in the whole movie, I would imagine. Why isn't he in it, though? It would have been one thing too much after. It might have been a bridge too far. If there is a sequel, which we're not sure that they will be. Not committed to show up.

Like, if we're not sure that there will be, maybe you see more orco. Maybe you see more orco. But when he came out at the end, I was like, this movie, I was ready to come here and say, Masters of the Universe is pussy. For an awkwarding orco in this. Yep. Because I look at Orko. I look at Orco.

Characters like Orko about, that's what. Are you committing? Yeah. Are you committing to the thing? You're asking me to go to Eternia, but you're telling me that it's too fun. The first master of the universe movie I loved, but they were like, hey, we can do no orco.

We'll do Gwildar. We'll put Gwildar in it. He'll kind of be our orco. They couldn't do Orco. They didn't even try it. They're not going for it. This movie went, you know what? Fuck it.

Orco, bitch. Blue Wizard, no fucking face. Waring the whole thing. Gave it to us. The movie committed to it. And then they tried to give us a Shira situation. Right. So they want a whole universe.

Guys. Asking for a lot. Concentrate on the now. Right. Because I don't know if we're getting to Shira based upon some of the numbers that we're saying, but concentrate on the now. But I did appreciate them, like, putting Orko in the movie. I appreciated them even talking about Shira. I appreciated the fact that they're like, there's a whole lore here.

Better a little orco than none. But like, I think you're right. He's like the rocket of this movie. Where it's like if you're going to ask us to buy it, you have to show us the commensurate level of buy-in. And I did think they kind of skimped on that. So before we get to the Midnight Meter, then, this movie is tracking right now for $25 to $30 million,

opening weekend. Budget was around $200 million. That would make it fourth. After the backroom's obsession and scary movie, we don't know how that's going to shake out. With the rest of the summer and the fall, we got Supergirl, Spider-Man 4, Clayface. The town is telling them,

themselves the story now is like, hey, yo, it's hard. It is getting these young zoomers off YouTube. Basically, you got to bring your own audience. The kids love it. If you're James Gunn, Kevin Feigey, Dave Filoni, are you looking at this being like, I'm worried. Well, no. I mean, what I would say is, number one, you should be encouraged by the fact that you can't

get people to go to the movies. Because you, like a year ago or a year and a half ago, that was a really, that's a clear question about whether or not they would just go, period. The answer is yes. Are they going for the stuff that you might be peddling right now? No. But having more people going to the movies is a good thing.

Getting them in the habit of it. What you need to do is do two things. Number one, you need to harvest those filmmakers because those filmmakers have a point of view in a filmmaking style that clearly cuts. through to an audience. The question would be if Masters of the Universe 2, this is going to sound so crazy. If Masters of the Universe 2

was directed by the director of backrooms or written by the screenwriter of that, can you take those people that are going to want money, they're going to want homes too, that have sensibilities that are more audience developed, and sensibilities there are more audience focused to this different audience and have them mailed. That was the project of the MCU.

The project of the MCU was to take people who had unique PLV, kind of cram them into a machine and ripped them like their soul. That's true. Or fire them. Or fire them. That was the project of the MCU.

And the project for those guys who have these legacy characters will always be how to make those characters relevant to current and contemporary movie going to audiences. But I think actually, when I think about this,

like if you think about Kane Parsons with the backrooms, to me the backrooms is IP. You know, it's a kid taking lore about liminal spaces, something that was on Reddit, where it's like a lot of, I think,

zoomers right now are either lacking for IP or it is not He-Man. He-Man was created in the 80s. A kid right now growing up is going to be more interested in the Zelda movie or something like,

where I'm just like, you, I think what Amazon is realizing because I'm like, there is a shelf life for something like a He-Man. The only thing that you cannot litigate before you have the movie out

is cultural expiration. You just don't know it until the thing expires right in front of you. You just don't know. You don't know when people have had enough of Superman,

when people have had enough of Batman. It's never going to culturally expire with you because you own the property. You have the property because you have the property you think it's viable. You never know when Bond

is going to cultural expire or even if Bond is going to cultural expire. The movie has to flop. The audience has to tell you that. And that is the chance that you take whenever you make one of these films that's based on something like this, is that you came a little bit too late. Maybe this is a movie for 2015. Maybe this is a movie for 2005.

You don't know until you make it. If this came out at the peak of the MCU, I don't know if it would have been ultra successful. But I don't think we would be so not burnt out. But I do think that it's like there's a reason something like sinners works. Because it's just like, oh, this is fresh, this is new. And when I was sitting in the movie theater, I did have this feeling of I'm like, damn, this is a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds laughing at their childhood. And I am someone who I'm like, I am old enough to know all these characters, to have watchedy man,

and to feel nothing, not because it was the filmmaker's fault, but just because I'm just like, I, as a 20 year old, I would have no connection to anything happening on the screen. Right. Because I don't, it's, it's happening. Look, and I know Steve went to getting, I want to make sure. No, you're good. But what I was, is that's a thing. We, to be honest with you,

Superman and Batman, all those people, those are generational characters. Spider-Man. Those are generations. We might have had our time. We talked about earlier the remaking of, like, Freddie Kruger and all of that stuff like that. Like, Scream is something that is existed across the timeline

to where every single generation can say, scream is mine. He man is not. He man did not come across with, they kept making it, but it was at its zenith in the 80s. It's not teenage ninja turtles where. I would argue even with the turtles, though, even with the turtles, the turtles keep testing it out,

and you have to ask yourself whether or not the return, the juice is worth to squeeze all the time. The turtles are something that might have a cultural expiration date. I'm not sure if they do. The question always is going to be, can you freshen this up? Can you make it new? Or it is truly the last thing I'll say.

Is the property itself so amazing that all you have to do is dust it off and then you can recreate 1985. Barbie, where I think Barbee example where it's like a Barbie movie feels dumb until Greta Gerwig does it. That's the fucking thing though.

But Barbie never left and he man did. That's true. But that's the thing we don't know. you talked about sinners would sinners have been would He-Man have been different if Kugel would have directed if Michael B. Jordan was he-man, that would be fucking crazy.

You know what I'm saying? Michael, wait, wait, wait, no. Michael B. Jordan as he-man would have been nuts. Would be hysterical. Yeah, that would be nuts. I think it actually would have worked. Yeah, like nigger man, I'm just joking.

Steve, go ahead. No, no, it wrote a Steve. It was slightly to your point a little bit ago, but like, to the point of the machine, because that's the MCU and I, to this, to Amazon's point, throwing it a bunch of money to get little returns back. And then the machine of the IP of, say, the backrooms and then now obsession,

dominating the box office, all of these buys are much more smaller, much higher rewards. The idea of like taking these people that are going into smaller movies, making these IPs smaller can now seemingly only exist if an Amazon, if a Marvel, if anybody like that takes it. To make a smaller bet on a He-Man movie doesn't make sense anymore. now, but it might be what it has to do in order for IP to ride itself out of a post-MCU heyday.

The only problem is that with backrooms and obsession, nobody cares if they fail, except for the filmmakers. So, like, it's, you're talking about draft picks here, right? With the put it in the basketball terms, if you draft somebody at 25 and they go on to make an all-NBA team,

you look like a fucking genius. If you draft somebody at three and they don't make an all-NBA team, you look like a moron. So the stakes from the beginning are different. Like backrooms, backrooms and obsession becomes stories because they are successful.

If the movie makes $7 million and it's a good movie, that's a win. Well, this is why horror's been the most bankable bet in that specific way for basically as long as modern cinema's been around. But I'm also very cynical about just what's happening now where I'm just like, I listen to all the movies. What is that been?

I was like, it was just like, last year where people were like, the state of horror, because we had a couple of flops. Like, what's happening with the industry? The whole horror is going to live on forever. That obsession shit was crazy.

No, no, no. That shit was, that was a fuck. That movie is a motherfucker. No, no, no. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is horror was dead last year

because a couple things flopped and now because the industry is very good at myth-making. It is like, all you need is two things to work at the same time for a trend to happen. That's two dots.

That's a line. But my fear, because I watch as a music journalist, I watch it happen with music, where I'm like, it's starting to feel a little, little, little, naz-exish. Where it is like, why are you got to? No, but what I'm saying is now the, the, it's prime month. No, the lesson that the, the lesson that the movie industry is going to take isn't, hey, we should invest in a bunch of young creators. Exactly.

you are connecting with, like, young people that look like them to tell interesting original stories at a, like, at a budget that works, it is going to be, let's throw a bunch of money at influencers. And I'm like, any single time you do that in any industry, you wake up in three, four years. And that's more so my point is, like, don't keep spending more just to get more, maybe spend a little bit less because you're not risk, you're not betting the whole town on Marvel. It's also Amazon, though. Right.

So if Amazon has decided. if Amazon has decided that they are going forth with whatever Masters of the Universe Universe they want to have, then they could do it. There's really no skin off their neck. 200 of them losing. Yeah, like $250, 300 million.

It's a rounding error. But it also, the bet worked with Project Howmary. Yes. IP, where they were just like, so it's like for Amazon, I'm just like, hey, mess with the universe flop, but they did prove this year. It's just like, I think that they're going to look at

all these numbers and kind of be like, all right, what is actually the smart? art IP bet. Is it something like He-Man or is it like, do people actually want us to have a project Hail Mary, a book that's beloved? It feels like the Martian, same fucking writer. I think that's the reason for optimism. It's like the lesson of all this stuff to me isn't even something that's Marvel-specific or superhero specific so much as like it's not the only game in town anymore. You can make a horror movie that becomes a sensation. You could turn a beloved novel into a blockbuster movie and that can work. He-Man is like, Master's

the Universe is not going to make a ton of money. This is not going to be a sensation of a movie. But even then, I will take a hundred of these over like the Ghostbusters movie that takes itself too seriously about like an ice demon. Like, yeah. Give me this any day of the week. I found this refreshing, at least in contrast

to some of that other slop we've been fed. Yeah, you know, that kind of stuff to me never really went away. Like the whole time, they were making Dan Brown's movies into that, like that stuff was always there. But they kind of stopped. I feel like they did stop with the literary adaptation that they're doing now with what was the

Simi-Sweeney movie that did fucking bump. The housemate. That stuff did go away for a couple of years. Give me a plain read turned into a movie. Like that's what I want. To me, if you guys really investigate it, it never really stopped. Like, you adapt books into movies. Sure, yeah.

But it's not at the forefront of pop culture. Right. A lot of times, that's also because those books have to, those books have to be, those books, books were as much a part of monoculture as anything else was. For sure. Like, nigger write Jurassic Park. The fucking book was everywhere.

Books are a part of the monoculture. And now a lot of the books, particularly the fiction and stuff that people are reading, it's not the same way that it used to be. Like now a lot of that stuff is like fucking self-help books and stuff. Also, I'll say this about that. The adaption of the self-help book into, or like the non-fiction book into the movie, those did not go as crazy as people thought that they would. and that kind of fucked shit up a little bit too.

There were a couple of them there's not. No, I get what you're saying. The servant Bill and hell on how to lose a guy in 10 days. Some of these books tried to take nonfiction books, books that weren't story related and adapting to the movies.

Yeah, and they didn't and they didn't really go anywhere. Fucking, what's the name's book? He's the vice president. What's the nigga's name? Fucked up face. Oh, what's? Jaydivance.

Oh, Hillbilly Ellogy. Oh, my God. Oh, that. Yeah. Like some of those, they've been making those. Have you seen that movie? I have. I read the book. I'm not even bullshed you. The whole movie is like J.D. Vance sitting in the kitchen being like, Mom, I'm trying to do my math homework and be a good student. And like literally everyone is crashing out around him at all times. Jaydy Vance is the greatest person alive. I hate to ask, I hate to tell you guys something. That book. That book. Oh, no.

Oh, me. Okay, I'm going to give you Dundra Crawler. Before we meet her, can I be Adam H.R. professional for one moment about the state of the movie industry. Because you opened with this about just like, what it means to bring people to the cinema for different reasons. And I think, like, the more that it's asking a lot of an industry to have that open-minded and that global look at this, but, like, the idea that there was only one way to make money, that there was only one thing being heavily invested in, if there's any reason to chase a backroom, I think that's a good thing. If there's any reason to chase an idea that, like, we are doing this for the sake of getting people in the habit of making this a part of their lives again, versus sitting at home and watching Stranger Things

Season 8, I think that's a net positive for all of us. I think at the end of the year, the story will actually be, it's like you got a back room and you got an obsession, then a couple months later, you got an Odyssey, you have Spider-Man, and then award season, it's like, I actually think that that is to your point, Hollywood needs parity.

You know what I'm saying? That's all we need. The balance is returning. And we will go to midnight minute after this, we promise, we're friends that like talking to each other. the thing that people don't understand is it always starts that way. That's the way that it starts. The way that it starts is someone has an idea of a story that they want to make.

Now, sometimes that story is broader and it's four quadrant. You know, sometimes that story is, hey, let's take a character like Iron Man and give Iron Man his own movie because we want to build out this universe. That's always the way it starts. The question is not how it starts. The question is, once it gets going, how, like, actual, ingenuity is injected into it and how that stays at the top of the conversation. Because it's not that going out and trying to get the next backrooms or obsession is a bad thing.

The question is the bad thing about it is when you go out and try to get the next one for the sake of it being the next one. Yeah. When it's not about the story or the vision of the director or actually what's happened, when you're trying to like... They're chasing the tail of another thing. I think the same thing and to bring it back because, you know, I could be once again cynical is like, I made the joke about Get Out. But I'm like, Jordan Peel's Get Out is a perfect example where it's like that is a movie that changed so much, that revived so much in horror.

And then you had a bunch of people trying to either remake Get Out or people drawing money at like this. And I'm just like, no, Get Out works because to your point, one person, not one person, but Jordan Peel had a great idea and a visionary idea. You need to pay, you need to find people who have their own visionary ideas and not just like, all right, midnight feeder, y'all know what it is. one to 12 11, 11, 12 reserve for game changers. We're going to start with Rob.

I'm going to go 6 out of 10. Okay, good. Solid down the middle. Really enjoyed my time with it. If you think about anything too hard, it will fall apart. But don't think about it too hard. There you go. It's a fucking 9.

All right. Wow, okay. And it could have easily been a 10. He man, back in this motherfucker. He, man, bitch. Masters of the University of Attorney. Snake Mountain fucking skin. The only thing that they didn't do in this movie was have him take the

fucking sword and pointed at Cringer and turn Cringer into Battlecat. They had a little Battlecat actually. They had a little battle cat. They put the armor on them. I'm fucking with it. I loved it. That was the biggest roar in the theater. I would say. When these sickos saw Cringer in the armor, it was like, oh, this is it. It's fucking Battlecat, man. Let's go. All right, Steve.

I would also say a six. Like, it does fall apart if I think about it more often. But the way in which it really pulls itself together for a lot of humor, a lot of sentiment, and certainly a good time, I would give it with the utmost respect to Six. Be nice.

Yeah, this is a two. Okay. Two. Come on, man. The 90s is over. Chuck, take it away. Let's get to nerd news. All right, so Tom Holland is running around the town like Pock.

He is. What? Just pop-ha-p-p-pout. Is he not? This thing is dropping his nuts all over Sony. Oh, my God. GQ had a cover story about the Odyssey. They interviewed Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland.

And Tom Holland said this, quote, The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man because he wouldn't have had Destin. He wouldn't have been ready to make the movie when we were ready to go. We wouldn't have had the six-month period to develop the script. With Destin to get it to a place where it is now, he went on to say after that, I was really able to lay down the law and say, we are not going to come to set and figure it out. We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it's Spider-Man 4.

And Destin was super instrumental than that. But it was just really great to constantly be calling up the studio, and Amy and Rachel, who I love, and be like, well, Chris is doing it this way. This is how I think we should be doing it. All right. Man, I'm going to give you the floor because... That's funny.

This she is hilarious. Tom Hollis' run around. It's like, fuck. Yo, I think this is... I think this is marketing for the movie. I think this is one of the smartest things I've ever seen Tom Holland do. It is very savvy. Yeah.

Because there even is one part in the... Shoutout, Zach Barron. Where he basically asked him about a quote that he had said that you brought up earlier where he's like, if I'm playing Spider-Man by 30, like basically I failed or whatever. And Spider-Tom Holland at one point goes, yeah, that also might have been me, you know,

trying to get Sony scared a little bit because my deal was on the table. And I'm like, is Tom Holland actually a killer? Is this, is he Robert Downey Jr., Jr.? Is he learning from Ironland? He might be. He might be. I mean, to me, when I saw this, I went,

okay, he's in this movie that is so highly anticipated. He's in two highly anticipated movies. Yep. Number one, how can you tie those audiences together? And number two, how can you do a little bit of your thing in both movies? How can you make the Spider-Man experience a little Odyssey? How can you make the Odyssey experience a little Spider-Man? By actually saying that, just straight up going, hey, by the way, when we were on this movie, being on a real movie, made me see how these other films should actually be made.

And he's not wrong. No. He's not, like, he's not wrong. He's like, let's just not make Spider-Man, for it. Let's, like, do something with the character. And it's also probably all, like, true that he saw on this film an actual PLV. And this is where this is. If there's one guy to learn that from, it's Nolan, right?

Right, of course. Oh, we have storyboards? We have storyboards. We're doing all of this stuff. I think it was a very smart move by him. I mean, I also, it says where Tom Holland is at in his career. I think when these movies are at their best is the original Deadpool, when it is an actor being like, I am this character now.

I take it so seriously. It is Hugh Jackman, really taking the reins back and being like, no, no, no, I'm the star. I believe in this. Let's make a good movie. And, hey, if Marvel gets away from the fucking committee by committee filmmaking, I think that's good. I think it is good to have actors be like, no, I want to trust the director. I want to have a good script. I want to get to set and know what the fuck we are doing.

For the high-minded conversation we just had about the state of the industry, A lot of it is just that, like, can you show up and have an idea of what you are shooting and when and how this story ties together and not have to make it all in reshoots every time? Doesn't that feel like a weird back to basics of like, shouldn't they have, could it have not been this hard all along? Are we making it too hard for us? No, I think that's a great observation. But for the MCU to work the way it did before, it had to have been that way. Yeah. But to note Iron Man would not have worked unless it was Robb Down Jr. and Favro in the trailer being like, this scene isn't working.

we are going to basically add lib and get this. Yeah. The question is why they didn't switch up faster? There's two reasons. Number one, Tom Holland couldn't even do that. Sure. Like until I don't think that Tom Holland could have done what he's saying that he did legitimately until after the third Spider-Man.

Yeah, for sure. Because the MCU has a way of, that might not be like this anymore because they might realize that their movie stars have a little bit more power and persuasion than they think that they did. But they treat those people like sort of stars on the assembly line. Like you're not Chris Evans, you're Captain America. Yeah. And we can make another Captain America.

Maybe they learned, they can't. And so now you have to kind of listen a little bit more to the man inside of the suit, and he's learning different things. So all of these things show both Tom Holland's career influx, Marvel influx, and now where that goes from here, Well, the question is not capable playing him at 30, he clearly will be, but will he be playing at 35? What would it take

to make him continue playing Peter Parker? Like, would he have to play a high-minded version of Peter Parker that could be really taken seriously by everyone? Would his career have to go in a different way for him to still play? Like, how can you still challenge actors to play in these roles?

Let's be honest, people are wondering, like, where this stuff can all go. Yeah, I mean, I would just say the irony of this is that, like, it follows the arc of Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. Because I think it was on Civil War where Robert Downey Jr. gets to have a little bit more power.

And he gets to be like, well, if you guys not only want me in this Captain America movie, but beyond, you're going to have to, he's the guy who's like, I have power in this. And I think Tom Holland and the people around him are like,

oh, none of those MCU movies really worked. You're the man now. You can advocate for more money, for more power. You can tell them how you want. this to go. Rob, what do you think? I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to, like, who has the voice of these characters?

And this is where that power comes from, right? Like, the machinery has failed Marvel. It is, they have tried to go to the same process and just are running on fumes at this point. Tom Holland has a unique take on Spider-Man that clearly works. Sometimes it requires Toby to be in the movie or Andrew Garfield to be in the movie or, like, let's bring in the specter of Tony Stark, if not actual Tony Stark. Like, I think he deserves this within this role, maybe more than any, like, I believe

Tom Holland as Spider-Man. I don't know if I believe him as Telemachus. I don't know if I believe him as like literally anything else. That's why I want it. He does this well. They're about to get your ass. Are they? No, they're not. Who? The Cherry fanatics? Like, come on. Oh, damn. God damn, Rob.

Damn, Rob. No, the Russo, right on white violence. So it, like, for him, for a lot of these people, like, we'll see how this works once again, the Spider-Man like, shit is off the chain right now, like everyone's talking about how good the movie is.

A lot of people talking about the ending. Maybe they didn't like the ending as much, but the movie is testing like fucking gangbusters right now. We'll just kind of see how far that goes. But never forget, all of these people are in these movies. I know for us, it seems like playing Spider-Man for like 30 years and then making like $300 million is awesome. These people are actors.

Yeah. And they want to fucking act. They grew up taking on a. a bunch of different characters. They're put, they're all into different characters. They want to act. So to ask somebody

to play the same character for a long-ass time, you have to give them something to do. They don't like that. They make fun of that. They look at each other differently. They want to show their range and their importance

and their artistry. So I think it's a high time that Marvel kind of consider that. Plus, if Tom On's in his 30s, like Spider-Man's newest power just got unlocked, it's lower back pain. That dude can't be flipping around.

That happened to Toby McGuette. Yeah. So the niggas started getting injured. Tobin McGuire, poker playing ass. All right. Let's get out of it. That's a wrap. On Friday, the House of Arr gives you their fictional musical and list that primer.

Fictional musicals. So like, what's a fictional movie? Musical is fictional. Most of them. Yeah. So they're, what's like, give me an example of. High school musical is a fictional musical? They're all, I mean, yeah.

The music man. Are there non-fictional musicals? Some's asked a question. The real life musical. Are they talking about like, fictional musical. Like characters making up fake songs in a, like a fake rock band

in, like, almost famous. It's like, not a musical, but it's a fake rock band. Whereas that is not a real, I don't think I understand fictional musical. I'm not going to lie. Jersey Boys work a fictional. Well, most of them, like Greece is a fictional musical, right? Like the sound of me.

Yeah. There you go. Real as anything. Which member would you be? Which member would I be? Stocker Channing? Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Why not? That's very interesting. All right. On Monday, button mash delivers,

I'm Canicky. On Monday, of course you are. Butmash delivers their Summer Game Fest Roundup. Our producers today are Jamie Yukitch, Devin Boraldi, join me a dinner on on socials.

Hashtag Jomi Neckman. Oh. We didn't change it. I did change it. Jomi Neckman. Oh, Jomi Neckman. I thought it was going to be Rob. Because Rob is...

Well, he's not on socials, though. The hashtag has to go to the social person. We got to honor Jomi, too. He's still here with us. He's still here with us. what he's in over there in Sweden. An additional production from Arjuna Ramgapal. Chuck, take us out.

Jumie is in the land of milk. He Man wasn't bad. Don't listen to Van. The Midnight Boys love you. Whether you have a white mom or black dad. Woo!