The Smark Avengers - Vol 3, Ep 9: The Smark Avengers Go to Wrestlemania

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

The bell has rung, the small tights are on, and Dylan is coming off the top rope with a big elbow drop all the way from Belfast, Ireland to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! What happens when 1/3rd of the Smark Avengers travels all the way to America for the biggest professional wrestling show of the year? You get an extra long episode of the Smark Avengers as Dylan recounts what it's like to be in America, Jon talks about watching it on TV, and Corey didn't watch it at all! Can it be? Are the Smark Avengers finally going to live up to their joke name? It's a cold day in Hell indeed!

Oh my God, I'm being recorded. I don't fucking know. Anyway, hello. Hi. Welcome to our show. Yeah, we're coming off the tail end of a rant that is not going to make the recording. We're going to cut, but we're going to cut. Yeah, we'll, don't worry about it.

We didn't worry about, we didn't round about anything. No, don't worry about it. Anyway, hi. if you were to take a white a bunch of white colored laundry and throw a red sock and put it in the washing machine and it come out bright red, you got the Smart Avengers. That's awesome.

Anyway, socks in the wash. Like socks in the wash, that's what we are. That's like, oh, that sounded like very almost poetic. Poetic, yeah. What are we, but socks in the wash. Sox in the wash. Anyway, let's go ahead and apologize for maybe Dylan's mic quality.

He sounds a little fuzzy today. It's because I'm recording this in a submarine, and we aren't able to... Is it that submarine that was controlled at the PlayStation remote that imploded on itself a couple, like a year or so ago? No, because that one imploded on itself a year ago, and here I am in this one in the present day. So obviously it's a different submarine.

Dylan, if you believe in yourself hard enough, you two can implode in some. side of a submarine going too far down into the ocean. Let me just get this straight real quick. Corey, my co-host on the show, is actively wishing for me to be in a submarine that implodes on itself thousands of meters underneath the sea. I'm just saying if you believe in yourself, anything is possible. It sounds like you want me to be in that imploded submarine.

I mean, it's not like I didn't take like a massive life insurance claim out on you or anything. Well, I wouldn't know about that because I've been in the submarine for so long. See, exactly. Anyway, hi, folks. This is Smart Avengers. I'm Corey with me here, Dylan, and John. You've heard enough about Dylan and his fuzzy voices. He's been under the sea.

But, John, how's it going? Yep. I am on dry land, so everything's good with me. What's your movie count out right now? 249. Very nice. I'm going to start. That's going to be a new bit.

Well, not a bit. It's just more of like, I want to keep log of that. Because I think in the last episode, I have that in there, too. So I think you've, like, watched three or former movies since we recorded. Oh, I've watched about, I want to say, almost 10, 12. There you go. Two or three, huh? Yeah, well, I don't remember numbers that great, which is bad because I work in data and statistics.

So, speaking of data and statistics, the three of us grew up in the 1990s. for the most part. And one of the big franchises that was super, super prevalent for us were the X-Men for Marvel. We've talked about it before, our mutual love of the characters in that world that was established. I know John's watching X-Men 97. I don't know if Dylan is. I'm not, because I do not give money to Disney if I can avoid it. But, but yes, we all grew up with it. We had, you know, Jim Lee and Claremont and all of the fantastic writers and creators who worked on the X-Men and made it such a cool thing back then. So we've done a couple of episodes in volume three of our show about movies.

We did the MCU and we brought in some stuff about DC and then we did a whole episode dedicated to the Sony Spider-Man movies. So today we're going to be doing an episode based off of all of the X-Men movies. We're very excited. Yes. There are some of these movies. So I compiled, I did what I did last time. I compiled all the movies. I've got all their box office earnings.

And I also have their Rotten Tomato scores. I've got averages for the stuff and whatnot. Some of these movies I forgot existed. Like at least two of them. I went, oh shit, that was the thing. I'm interested to know which ones you forgot about now. I don't think they'll surprise you when you find out what they are, to be frank. But yeah, so we're going to go through each of the movies, talk about it, what we, you know, what our thoughts were on it and then kind of go over some things.

So these movies started in the year 2000. And if you count the upcoming Deadpool movie, which is coming out in 2024 this year, that means we are close to a quarter of a century of X-Men movies. which is fucking wild to think about because this was before this filled that gap because the X-Men movies were out before Spider-Man. Like the very first Spider-Man movie was 2002.

So before that, we had a like, I think Batman and Robin, which was out in the late 90s. Yeah. So we had Batman and Robin and that movie did not do super hot, which I found out a weird thing about recently.

I don't know if it's weird. If we ever do a Batman, like 90s Batman movie episode, I'll bring it up then. But we should. We should do an episode about that. We should. There's only four of them. It won't take nearly as long. Yeah.

But so these movies came out from like 2000 to 2024, just, you know, still coming out. I don't know what the future of that's going to look like with the mutant world now falling under Disney. We've already seen some hints. I think we talked about it in the Marvel episode we did. We talked about how Beast showed up in the post credits for the Marvels. Yes. But yeah, there are children that were born and are now approaching their mid-20s that have always had X-Men movies in their lives. And that's like wild for me because like I was a kid watching the X-Men cartoon, getting my hand, like reading whatever issues I could get my hands on of X-Men.

And like I remember being so surprised and wowed at the concept of an. X-Men movie, like a live-action movie. Yeah, I was, I had to see him. I was super hyped. So I always liked the X-Men. And then when you see that, you know, because like the 2000s were like peak like me being a fucking kid, you know, a dumb, like 2000 was when I started watching Rastain too. So like whenever, um, they would say, oh, there's an X-Men film coming out.

You're like, what the, what? Really? We gambit in it? And they're like, Mm. No. Watch it and find out. So I did watch it to find out.

And I got my answer. But, you know, it was still like super hype for like, like you said, you know, if you're a 90s kid, the two things you watch on TV

were probably the X-Man cartoon and the Spider-Man cartoon. And for X-Men the Combined in 2000, the Spider-Man to come out in 2002, like, that's hype. You know what you mean? That means when you mean?

That means when you're, kid you watch the cartoon and then when you're a little bit older you watch the film like that's that's good stuff you know yeah so um so john what was your your your history with the x-men before finding out about the x-men movie coming out uh yeah much in the same boat big fan of the cartoon uh and then obviously when the the news came out and like the trailers appeared and stuff like that. It was like, oh, holy shit, this is awesome. But then, like, you look at it and, you know, obviously it didn't sort of, like,

you see the trailer or whatever, and they're not exactly wearing the bright yellow costumes or anything. And so a bit of a different look for the X-Men, which, you know, I guess they were cowards back then. They didn't have the guts to go the full 90s neon. Well, was that, okay, Corey, you can probably help me with this, because whenever Grant Morrison took over X-Man, he made them wear, like, kind of leather jackets and stuff. Now, did he do that because the film was going to be more like that, or did he do that and then the film took inspiration from that? I don't know which one came first, but I know it was around the same time.

Yeah, Grant's reasoning was that it was more. of like trying to do something different with the X-Men. They were very like I mean that's just the Graham-Morson approach. They were handed something and they were like, well, what can I do to make this a little bit more different than what people are used to? Because that was the idea that Grant sort of saw them as

kind of like the mutant paramedics and rescue team kind of vibe. Yeah. Like they were showing up at the crises. But yeah. So, e-fit Extinction, which was the first sort of storyarchy did, that came out step uh well so july uh 2001 so oh he's after yeah after them okay well he maybe maybe the reason

that um he went with that kind of look was because it was he was trying to tie it into the the films and yeah i'm sure there's a bit of inspiration taken there yeah i would imagine they probably had a little bit of like interaction between the two of them like um so i know that happens with some video games where like this is this is you can cut this bit out if you want this is a minxat baseball but like for a game like Super Smash Bros. It comes

out every so often they always have a Pokemon character in it. A lot of the time they have a Pokemon character that's from the newest generation but a lot of that time because games take a lot of time to develop the the Pokemon that gets introduced into Super Smash Bros

is is like only shown to the game developers of Sipishmash Brothers like way ahead of time so that they can code them into the game so it's possible that like whenever they were coming up of the artwork for either the film or the comics or vice versa

they kind of showed each other their work and was like this is what we're planning maybe we can work together on this because I don't know how long it takes to make a film but I also don't know how long it takes to write and draw All right. I have grants. I have grants notes about their X-Men run.

All right. Get rid of the costumes. Let's ditch the Spanics for the New Century and get our heroes into something that wouldn't make you look like a prick if you wore it in the street. The movie had it almost right. I think we should go for hardcore bike-style exo rubber uniforms, maybe military pants and wrestling-style boots,

whatever, a uniform again. youth culture looks are going uniform anyway. It looks brutalist and military, and I think the X-Men should reflect that to stay on the cutting edge of cool. Long leather coats with the big axis on the back as our heroes get smarter, prouder, and louder. Cyclops wearing ruby quartz contacts. I'd like to see some yellow in paneling or detailing on the costumes,

if only to avoid the dull black leather look of every film superhero. But it should be pop art day glow yellow, the kind of cyclists and bikers were to be seen. Let's discuss a new look. X-Men is a soap opera about Super Bowl. people in the same way that Dallas was a soap opera about oil people. The oil only provided the window dressing and an excuse to look great. So that's Grant Morrison's notes on their manifesto on why they did what they did. So that was the notes that he gave or they gave the

either the editors or their artists. Right. So when he said the film all was got right, he knew that he'd seen that and was drawn inspiration from that. Yep. Cool. So let's let's let's get the proper framing in place. The year's 2000. It's the new millennium, the Will Lennium, if you're a fan of Will Smith. And X-Men comes out with an interesting team lineup of primarily Wolverine, Gene Grace, Storm, and Cyclops. The big casting bits were, of course, Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, which looks perfect on paper. Ian McKellen as Magneto and Hugh Jackman, who would you say that he's, you?

he was a relative unknown as Wolverine? Pretty much. Yeah. At the time. Who did he replace again? It was a Scottish actor. I've forgotten the name of David Tennant. Sean Connery. Yes, it was Sean Connery. Yeah. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine Sean Connery's Wolverine? Oh, boy. So we also have James Mars in as Cyclops. You also have Halliberry's Storm and Famke-Gensen. Is that the pronunciation as Gene Gray?

Yeah, sure. That would be me. Yeah. So, um... She did on this name, so we can say whatever we want. Yeah, we can. Uh, so that movie also featured Anna Pacquine as rogue and, uh, the premise of the movie is, of course, Magneto and, uh,

one to liberate mutants from the evil evil governments yes almost that's governments we got the weird Rebecca Remain

stamos nude mystique which will always confuse me why was she naked why wouldn't you be naked I mean I get it if you're a shapeshifter but still

she's just walking around just you know yeah if you were a big blue shapeshifter like why wouldn't you a woman's naked all the time. He's going to stop you. I mean, you know, just seems like you get cold after a while.

True. Now, mind you, when she shapeshift, it doesn't create clothing. It creates the illusion of clothing. So she's still very much exposed to the elements. So she's still cold. Yes. That's an interesting point.

But you can never tell because she doesn't have nipples. that's not focused on the nipples too much. No, no. So anyway, what I saw the, the X-Men movie in theaters. And, I don't know.

I, X-Men, the X-Men movie to me was kind of like very similar to when I saw Man of Steel, where it's, I walked away thinking I liked it. And then the more I thought about it, and the more I talked about it,

the less I liked it. Okay. That was just kind of it for me. What about you guys? I liked it. Yeah. I thought the casting was great and like the story was simple but kind of, you know, got to the heart of the conflict between Professor X and Magneto. Right. Yeah. And obviously like you had rogue as the sort of newcomer into the X-Men's world and sort of like our surrogate as well, like as the audience.

The audience avatar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that with the X-Men, you get the first view of what we can call, like, I guess, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in that the film isn't, it's its own identity. It's not a one-to-one with the comics, but still close enough where you can be like, all right, I get this. So there was a lot of push on Wolverine as the main guy, you know, Cyclops, who historically in the comics, who's always kind of, kind of a leader, really took a backseat in the films. Roke had a big part of it, you know. But like John said, I feel like it did a really good job of just kind of establishing like, you know, Xavier Good, Magneto Bad, and here are the two teams that represent those two guys.

In a similar being to the anime of the show, which is very much like Xavier Good, Magneto Bad, here are the two teams that represent those sides. I mean, it asks the hard question. like can mutants coexist in a world where humans hate them? What is it like to be? You know, you have the mutants of the various like powers that impact them positively and negatively. And I think most importantly, what happens when a to-

get striked by lightning. Well, we all know what happens. We've all seen that, right? It's such a terrible fucking line. Well, that's a, yeah, yeah. I don't, you know, we have 14 movies. movies to cover, so I don't know how much time you want to spend on various ones. I mean, this was the original.

It was the first. It was the original. It was fine. Yeah. I think it captured, it captured the Wolverine character perfectly fine. Yep. I mean, but that's the thing is you're going to see a lot of Wolverine in all 14 of these movies that we're going to be discussing for the most part. I mean, you could say, he's a very overridden character. To tie in the last episode that we did.

Yeah. There you go. Well, not the last episode. the episode that came out before the last episode. Right, before, yeah, yeah. Unless we talked about how Overrated Wolverine was in your WrestleMania conversation. Did we? I was already drunk, so maybe we did.

Uncle Dave gave him five stars. Well, he gave Wolverine seven stars because we went to Tokyo. He did. He went to Japan. Yeah, so he gave seven stars. That's an instant plus two. Yeah, the rules. We can't argue with the facts.

It's in Japan, two extra stars. All right. X-Men was considered a pretty successful movie. So much so it warranted a sequel, X2. They didn't get really creative with the title on that one. And that one came out in 2003. I'm going to have to get a reminder on what the plot was about. I just remember certain elements.

Like I remember Ice Man having a bigger role. I remember the introduction of the character Piro. I remember Wolverine gets shot in the head. And then you see the bullet get pushed out of a skull is his healing factor, you know, pops back in. Yeah. For that. You remember the key points.

I don't remember who the fucking villain is, to be frank. I like how you remembered Wolverine getting shot in the head and pyro and like, good, good, good. This is, this is all that happened. That's all that was there. I can't remember anything else. So you guys take it from there. The villain was, the villain was William Stryker, played by Brian Cox. and yeah he was like a guy from Wolverines past

I think in this was he in charge of the Weapon X program Probably I think that's yeah I think that's how they were playing it right Yeah yeah it's if it's a Wolverine center plot then you can absolutely Absolutely guarantee that weapon X All right cool I'm remembering some stuff now we had night crawler we had Lady Death Strike

and I think his big plan was to use Professor X to like use Cerebro to basically kill all mutants on Earth because his son was a mutant and he had like a rational hatred for them all or something like that. Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds correct. But spoiler alert, it didn't turn out well for him. What?

He didn't kill all the mutants. I'm afraid not. He killed some of the mutants. This, I will tell you the portrayal of Nightcrawler, really. I get so angry when it comes to certain portrayals of Nightcrawler, because I hate the fact that they were like, let's make him Catholic. And that just became his defining characteristic for a few years. And Alan Cumming was just kind of, again, this sort of, you know, a lot of Catholic guilt and faith conversations, whereas, like, I like the nightcrawler that was a swashbuckler and kind of goofy.

Well, you know what's funny, but that is, Alan Cumming could have easily done that character, too. Yes. I feel like it would have been much more natural because he's a very charismatic individual. Yep, he would have been a great, like, swashbuckling kind of like charismatic nightcrawler. That totally, like, he had a lot of, like, angst and guilt. And, like, I really think if you're doing that in the X-Men films, nightcaller might not be the character to do that with. You can have a lighthearted nightcaller

and then some really depressed, miserable other characters. You know? That works. Yep. Do you know who else was in this movie? Damn it. Death Strike. Oh, yes.

Although I could forgive you if you didn't know that because she was basically mute. Yeah, she had nothing resembling Lady Death Strike. Yeah. Nothing at all. She wasn't cybernatic, nothing. She had a fucking brutal death. though, I remember that.

Yes. Fuck, man. I have, ooh. I just remember that very vividly. She fall off the Empire State building? No, she got hit by a car.

No, she got injected, like she got stabbed with a basically a glorified turkey based or full of liquid animantium that filled her up. Oh. She got turned into a, a Boston green donut.

Tasty. So, are you guys ready to move on from X2? What did you guys think? So we all thought the first one was okay. Yeah. What do we think of the Sacklemont? Step up in quarantine.

Okay. Yeah, I'd say that they ironed out a lot of the wrinkles. That opening scene with Nightcrawler where he's like going through the White House was pretty fucking badass. like it was a good illustration of his powers another weird critique I hated how they made

his like teleportation smoke black and not pink it's like it's a weird thing to the gripe about but it's true but uh no it was a good opening scene uh but no no they ironed the wrinkles out and uh I thought it was fine I thought Magneto makes sense as a villain like almost always

but I did like having a human villain for the most part Because I feel like that's how you really hammer in the point of mutants and humans in the struggle between the two. Well, it also set up Magneto sort of working with Professor X as well, because, you know, sometimes they can put their differences aside for the betterment of mutankind. Is this the movie where, yeah, yeah, because Magneto is in like a plastic prison? And he gets out because Mystique injects a guard with, like, iron. I think that's that one, isn't it? I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Because I, like, here's the, here's a fun fact. I didn't really bother watching much of the third movie, so. Aw. If I remember that scene, then it means it was in the second one. Okay. So you missed the best part of the third film. Was there a best part in the third film?

Well, we'll get to that one. Yes, there was the best part of the third film, and I'm very happy to bring that up when we get to it. All right. So three years pass. It's year 2006. I'm officially graduated from high school. And X-Men, the last stand comes out. So this is the movie where the government has a mutant power nullifying drug that's like a cure. Okay. It just has it. Here it is. Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to, so Dylan, I will let you get to your favorite part before I like start talking about the scenes that I, no exist in this movie. Okay. I will happily tell you about this.

You say it was came on in 2006. 2006 is X-Men the last stand. Okay. This is one where Benny Jones in it. Yes, it is. Wow. This is the juggernaut.

Here's, this is the thing that I remember the most about this film. Is I went to see this film in the cinema with my brother, my sister. And there's a bit where the juggernaut is talking to

somebody I don't remember exactly who he was talking to Benny Jones of course being the juggernaut and the juggernaut says don't you know who I am I'm the juggernaut bitch and I for the first and only time in my life

stood up in the cinema and went he did it right so this is where we show our age where the juggernaut bitch is like the old school fucking memes from and I and I turned to

my brother, my sister, he did the thing from the internet. I'm like, my brother my sister, both were like, there's no way that they reference that shitty internet thing. I'm like, they did. He's the juggernaut, and he said, I'm the juggernaut bitch. That's the joke.

That's the only joke in that whole bit. He did the thing. So we had this argument in the cinema while the fucking film was going on. And that is absolutely far away. And I, you know, I will argue, try to find me

a better part of the film. The best part of that film is when he said, I'm the Jogonaut, Bage. So, there you go. All right, so the scene that you're referring to is the scene where he is chasing after Kitty Pride, who is played by Elliot Page. I followed a ShadowCad, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so it's played, Kitty Pride is played by Elliot Page, and so Kitty's running through the walls using their power to, like, you know, walk through walls and shit. and Vinnie Jones as the juggerna, is just like busting through the walls

closely behind them. So, so yes, that was, I was wondering who was going to be the first to bring up the I'm the Juggernaut bitch line. I don't think you had to wonder for that long. So the other scenes that I remember from this movie, as I,

because I'm a big fan of multiple man, multiple man's in it. He has one line, he has one scene. Yeah, not really. Yeah, it's one scene, but it's like, you know, When that's like your favorite mutant, it's like, hey, he's in it. You know, good, dude, we're going to get to that. But my favorite mutant too, so don't worry about it.

And the other scene I remember is when they, like, the news is on in the mansion. And they're talking about the X-Men here. And like, rogue seems kind of psyched about it. And then Storm shuts her down. And it's just like, listen, one of you has the power to control nature and was worshipped as a goddess in Africa. and the other literally will kill anyone they touch. Yes. I think they're allowed to have separate reactions from you.

I feel like they could have fleshed that out a bit more too. Like, you're right. Like, there's a real lack of, like, empathy there, which is a shame whenever you're talking about the X-Men who works a team and kind of understand each other. Like, they should be not, like, open to having a mutant cure, but, like, a lot of them should be open to, like, understanding the other person's point of view.

a little more excited about it. Right, exactly, because the whole point of the X-Men is they're annoyed that the human race doesn't share their point of view. So if you're angry at a mutant that doesn't share your point of view, you're the same. And I don't think that was the angle they were going for. No. So John, by all means, go ahead and jump in.

Here's the thing. When we talk about movies, I'm always going to defer to John because I know that John has seen way more movies than me, and John probably remembers the detail. is way better than I do. Yeah. So John, what do you remember of X-Men the last stand? Well, this one was originally supposed to be directed by Brian Singer, who directed the first two movies.

But he ended up dropping out. I'm not sure how far into production, but he dropped out to go and direct Superman Returns. And I believe the guy who was supposed to direct Superman Returns ended up taking over the X-Men Last And job, which was Brett Ratner, who isn't exactly a well-received director, if we're being honest. So, yeah, like, there was a lot of chaos kind of behind the scenes, which kind of transferred over into the movie itself. Like, some of the guys who worked with Brian Singer ended up going over to work on Superman

returns, which is why James Marsden isn't in this much and Cyclops basically dies after one scene and yeah you don't even get to see his death you just see his like glasses floating around so yeah this wasn't like smooth sailing in terms of movie making

and it kind of comes across in the story as well which I mean it just wasn't great to be fair compared to the first two movies it was a really disappointing take on the whole dark phoenix saga with jean gray coming back from the dead after the the second movie where she sacrificed

their life to save the others and all of a sudden she's evil but like there's no sort of rhyme or reason to it like obviously they did like a big thing where the phoenix was a cosmic force in the comics here it's just like

an alternate personality basically so yeah I don't know the whole thing felt quite lazy but I will say Kelsey Gramer was great as the beast's beast yes he was great

you know so so here's a fun thing totally fucking forgot that Phoenix or Gene Gray sacrificed yourself in X-Men 2 Yeah. Totally. Totally spaced on that.

She's the Phoenix, bitch. Gonna make our own catch raises on this show. Yeah, we're going to start. We got to get that T-shirt store started soon. We do. We have to, by now, we have to have like a hundred catch raises. What was the ones? What was the cement or?

Oh, Symm, marriage. Yeah, that's got to be a T-shirt. Yeah. I still think about that. A cement block and a wedding ring. Yeah. Just on a plain t-shirt. Yeah.

And people are like, I know what that means. If we get to the point where if somebody knows what that means, we have succeeded as a show. Yeah. So remember, if you've not been posting cement or marriage on Limp Bizkit music videos, do your fucking homework. Get it done. So anyway, X-Men, the last stand came out in 2006, but, you know, jokes on us, it was not the last stand.

Because in 2009, oh, man, Dylan, I know you'll be excited about this. X-Men Origins Wolverine comes out. What were you saying about your favorite character in the X-Men not being represented properly on the big screen? Yeah, you were a big fan of, was it, Extreme or John, was the character that fucking Will, I am played in this. Oh, what the fuck? Oh, no. What was his name?

He was like that teleporter guy. What was he? Oh, he was he in the comics, though. He was based on somebody in the comics. Because that whole angle was supposed to be based on like, as we've covered, the whole Weapon Axe angle. And there was like four or five other guys in Weapon X with Wolverine. So Will I Am is based on somebody in.

John Wraith. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so real quick, the premise behind X-Men Origins Wolverine is it's a prequel that is covering Wolverines days with Weapon X. And it's a weird movie because I remember like you see a young Cyclops in it and a young Emma Frost. And like it's so strange because like you think like, yeah, young block. Well, you know, young, the young rock was in it. I'm sure.

but no no that was the movie we had uh Deadpool in as Ryan Reynolds which on paper everybody great casting yeah and then I remember when the movie came out and spoilers started coming out and pictures on the internet started getting posted and I went what well here's the thing about that film right

hopefully you guys don't understand this the first 20 minutes of that film really good yeah Corey, have you seen that film? No. Okay. The first 20 minutes or so, really good.

Because you get them all as a team. You get to see Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool. By that point, we're all like, this is that. If you saw Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, I thought that's Wolverine. By the time the first 20 minutes of this film comes out and you see Ryan Reynolds as Dead Pearl, you're like, that's perfect casting. Those two guys are the perfect. are perfect people to play those characters. And the first 20 minutes is then, like, kind of doing like a heist or whatever, like the four of them.

Wolverine, Deadpool, Will I am. And who's the fourth guy? Sabretooth? Well, so there's more than that. There was, okay, so you had Sabretooth, Wolverine, Deadpool, Silver Fox, John Wraith, the blob. Some dude named Bradley. Agent Zero, who was Maverick. Maverick, right. That's what I was thinking of.

But if you watch the first 20 minutes of it, you're like, this is going to be a really good film. And then, I, to this day, I have no idea. I'm kind of astounded at how well they were able to unravel that. The first 20 minutes are so good. And then the. rest of the film is just not it's just not good like the end of it just sucks ass like I

to the and John you're going to agree with this Corey Hopter not seen it you're going to agree with this anybody listen to the show you're going to agree with this the idea of taking a character like Deadpool played by an actor like Ron Reynolds

and coming up with the really clever idea to sow that character's mouth shut is the stupidest thing he could ever do. Right? We're all in agreement with that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's the stupidest thing,

especially when you have 20 minutes at the beginning that shows you how good he is at that. And then they're like, no, we're going to sew his mouth shut. Fuck you. Like, that sucks. I know in story why they did it because he's really irritating. But like, have a resolution. solution to that. Have him rip the stitches out. He's deadpool. He's gonna crack wise. Like, do,

I do something with it, you know? You know what you mean? That whole film was such a disappointment. And that's what I mean. The first 20 minutes had such a promise. And the next like fucking hour and a half or whatever sucked. And it's such a she-um. So, Dylan, another thing that would probably upset you in this movie was the portrayal of Gambit. Yes. What did you feel about Gambit in this movie? Not great. Because again, he was just like a guy.

He just didn't do anything much. I didn't like the guy to play him. I didn't like the way he was portrayed. I just... In an origin, I understand why they would want to introduce a lot of characters to, like, Wolverine's origin, right? And it makes sense to have Gambit be a part of that, too.

I get that. I just didn't like, given the way they introduced a lot of those characters and then also Gambit, like you have no confidence with how they're going to play it out. I didn't think they did a very good job with it. You know?

He basically added nothing to the movie having Gambit in there. And what's funny is, like, if you look at the comics or if you look at the TV show, Gambit is a good foil to Wolverine because he is a lot more aloof than,

then Wolverine, they play off each other very well. You didn't get any of that. And you could have. So here's the fun thing. It's been widely known this movie was not great. So here's some stuff about it. Production and post-production were troubled with delays due to weather and Jackman's other commitments,

an incomplete screenplay that was still being written in Los Angeles while principal photography was being done. Conflicts between directorhood and Fox executives over the film's direction and an unfinished workprint being linked on the internet a month before its debut. The film was criticized for its story, script, visual effects, pacing, and editing, but Jackman's performance was praised. I think some of the visual effects near the end were pretty bad. Like the Deadpool stuff, like, some of that looked really bad.

Jackson later expressed his unhappiness with the final product. What did Ryan Reynolds have to say about it? He couldn't say anything. His mouth was sewn shut. That's a good joke. Put that on, put that on TikTok. So what I was going to say was like, we know how Ryan Reynolds felt about it because he made fun of it in the end credits for Deadpool 2. Yeah. So John, where are your thoughts on X-Men Origins, Wolverine?

Yeah, I'm in the exact same school of thought as Dylan. And yeah, it's, it's disappointing. in. And like you can really see the timeline really sort of falling apart or not even falling apart. Like they just don't give a fuck anymore. Yeah. There's there's no sense of continuity really. Like with some of the random characters who end up showing up in here and like contradicting where they are in like the previous movies and stuff. So you get a young you get a young Cyclops in this. And then you get a young cyclops

in what, days of future past or X-Men Apocalypse? How many fucking times are we going to see a young cyclops? We get a young Emma Frost in it as well. Well, no, no. I read that about that. Apparently,

when confronted about that if that was a young Emma Frost, the director said, oh no, it's not it's not young Emma Frost. It's another character named Emma who has have similar powers. Oh, Jesus, what? Yeah, I saw that and I went, what?

What the fuck? Yeah, no, that wasn't Wolverine. That was a character named Ricky, who happened to also have knives that come out of his hands. Yeah, no, I would agree. The X-Men timeline is so fucking backwards. Because if you were to believe this,

why the fuck didn't Cyclops in the first X-Men movie go, hey, that guy's also called Sabretooth? So fucking weird. I remember being chased by a guy named Sabretooth. Anyway, that was X-Men Origins or X-Men Origins Wolverine. Let's go even further into the past, to the swing in 60s for X-Men first class in 2011. This movie was kind of the biggest departure of the X-Men movies because there was no returning cast for once because it was set so far in the past. So instead of Patrick Stewart, you had James McEvoy as Xavier.

Instead of Ian McAllen, you had Michael Fosbender as Magneto. You get a young Jennifer Lawrence pre some of her bigger successes as Mystique. And even more fucking around with the timeline, especially when you consider Xavier's weird childhood relationship with Mystique. But anyway, yeah, I did see this one. we have another Emma Frost citing, this time played by Mad Men alum, January Jones. But our big villain is Kevin Bacon himself as Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club.

So can I tell you my biggest... I enjoyed this movie. I had some grapes. Yes. First off, though, one of the best scenes I've ever seen in a superhero movie is the beginning scene of Magneto in Argentina, with the Nazis.

That fucking scenes amazing. That is very similar to a scene out of like inglorious bastards. Yeah. It was really, really well done. Counterpoint to that. The one character who is not a white kid named Darwin, whose whole meaning of power is that he can survive anything, gets killed. Well, I'm sure we were going to get to that.

but my big bone of contention with that film was that exact point. I don't understand why they took a character called Darwin, whose entire character, his entire purpose in the comics was that he can adapt to any situation

is like the fucking guy that dies. Because I remember, again, in the cinema, watching that and going, what the fuck? Why is he the one that dies? His entire being would survive that. There's no way he wouldn't survive that. That annoyed the hell. And what sucked about that is, it was otherwise a really good film.

I really enjoyed it. I thought Kevin Macon was great. I thought the new rebutted cast were all really, really good at what they did. The one sticking point I had was that they, for no reason, pick Darwin as the guy they were going to kill off. And you like, what the fuck? You can't kill that guy. That's his whole point is you can't kill him. He will adapt a way to not die. And it's not even a subconscious, it's a subconscious thing that happens to him. He has no choice as to what happens. Right. It's like, wasn't there like a bit in the comics where like one time he fought a guy that he knew he couldn't beat so he just teleported away?

Yeah. Because he can't, he just can't die, right? So I'm like, well, why do you that? I remember there was one thing that he was fighting a mutant who like could inflict, like basically light your nerve endings on fire. And he just turned himself into like a creature that had no nerve endings. Right. And like it's just stuff he can't control. It just happens.

Right. It's just meat and power. He doesn't activate it. It happens because it's part of him. So like, why couldn't they have just done that as an angle where whatever was going to happen to him? He teleported the way to somewhere else. And they were like, we have no idea where he is. We have no idea how to get into contact with him. He's just, he has no idea where he is. Right. He's just gone. We don't know where he is. That's devastating. But no, they were like, no, he's dead. After establishing what he could do and all his powers and stuff, like, no, he's just, he's just gone. dead. Fuck him.

Like what, that, to me, that was the one low point of that film. Otherwise, I really, really enjoyed it. I actually thought that was a really good X-Men felon. No, I enjoyed it as well. That also gave us Michael Fosbender in drag in one scene, which was interesting. And we'll never forget him.

Nope. Anyway, John, what's up? Yeah. I can't disagree with anything that's been said. It was a good way to kind of do something fresh and new with the X-Men line and putting them in like the 60s era as well and having them stop a missile crisis of sorts was like a good nod to like the very first issue of X-Men where that's basically what they do they're they're like trying to stop Magneto but here

magneto kind of helps them out so uh but You know, yeah, it's, I wasn't too keen on Sebastian Shaw as the villain. Like, I don't think, nothing against Kevin Bacon, but I don't think like the, the character really resembled Sebastian Shore at all. And like, you wasn't dressed like a regency character? No, exactly. Right. Yeah, I get you.

But, yeah. I get that, but like, I feel like, you know, if we're going for like an early. Yeah, you need a disposable villain. It doesn't need to be anything special. But even if we're going for like an early Sebastian Shaw, like he could look like that and then after this excursion with the X-Men go, he gets a quarter through his head. Well, okay.

Well. That's a great scene though, too, where Fospender kills him and Xavier feels it because he takes over his mind while it happens. That's a great scene. This is a really well shot. It's a fun film. Yeah, there's a lot of really good parts in it. Yeah.

I think some of the, I think some of the student characters weren't interesting. No. Because again, again, again, again, we're fucking no timeline.

We're fucking around with the timeline where Havik, who's Cyclops' little brother is introduced, but like, we see Cyclops in X-Men origins, the Wolverine after this, because this is the 60s. We get,

we get a version of, Banshee. We get a character named Angel who's got bug wings. But that's Angel Salvatore, right? Yeah, it's not, it's not Warren Worthington. It's a different name. It's Angel from Grant Morrison's run. Yeah, yeah, the one who, which again, doesn't make any sense timeline-wise because she came after regular angel. Yeah, way after. Yeah, way after. Yeah. We get, I think the best one, we get Nicholas Holt is Beast. Nicholas Holt did a great job. Yeah. Very good job. Yeah. He's playing Lex Luthor now.

Yes. Okay. Who's the better beast? Nicholas Holt or Kelsey Grammer? I mean, Kelsey Grammar all day long. Yeah. Hello. I agree with that.

Hello. I'd agree with that. Nigel's hold was very good, though, as young beast. He was good. He was definitely good. And he played Beast with the weird feat. But do you think, are you guys picking up because Kelsey Grammer has that, like, sophistication that really suits the beast?

You know what you mean? Like, his pronunciation, his just, His way of being that suits the beast more. Yeah. Pomposity. Yeah. But what if he became evil and then screwed over all of the X-Men? And then they had to kill him and clone him and replace him.

With Nicholas Holt. Yes. There you go. We've written it. What if that happened for like six years and then ended really abruptly? Ended it in two pages. What if that happened? Just spitball and ideas, you know?

Yeah. You know, just fucking around. Calming up the stuff. But the beast, you know? But no, no, that movie really, I will say the one flaw I had with X-Men first class, aside from the student characters being really uninteresting, is it kind of like, as Jennifer Lawrence became a bigger deal in Hollywood, the mystique role kept getting bigger and bigger and more important.

And I just feel like she wasn't that great. I kind of agree. and it did seem like the Mystique character got way bigger. Yeah. But it also felt like it contradicted the original trilogy as well because there was zero connection

whatsoever in those movies between Mystique and Mystique. Yeah. I could, I could buy a Mystique and Magneto because they established that, like they built that relationship in this movie. But like we're supposed to believe

that Xavier has known Mystique since he was like five years old. And then as a, adults in the first X-Men movie. He just, you know, hey, there's my childhood friend. Let me just not sell that at all. I'm going to beat the shit out of her.

Patrick's root, angrily wheelchairs over to her. Bitch. I'm the, I'm the professor, bitch. There you go. There you go. His stepbrother. I'm the stepbrother. We got so many.

We, oh, man. Did we ever get, was there ever a scene with Xavier and Juggernaut? I just want Vinnie Jones and Patrick Stewart interacting. I don't think so. Professor X died before Jogunel kind of came into it. That's selfish bastard. Son of a bitch. How could he?

We had so much other stuff to do. You know? Oh, well. So let's take a hop from 2011. We're going to jump forward two years. It's 2013. Hugh Jackman's going to get another shot at a solo. Wolverine movie. This one just called The Wolverine. Terrible fucking title. But it's the

Wolverine. I saw this movie in theaters and I liked it because it covered one of the more interesting things about the Wolverine character, which was his time in Japan. Yep. I enjoyed the Wolverine in Japan movie. Oh yeah. I liked it. I liked it. Yeah. We got to see the bone claws. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. So, so the, I can't even remember too much of the plot. I just remember a lot of the fight sequences in Japan were fun. I remember him beating the shit out of that guy for poisoning that bear. That's the problem I have

is that I remember watching that film and I remember loving that film. I don't remember a fucking thing with that film. Is that the version, is that the version where we were talking in the last episode about you watching the marvels on the airplane? We're like, it was fine. Like, is this, this was fine? Like, it was fine.

I liked it watching it, but I don't remember anything. Well, that's the funny thing about it. I feel like having watched it, I remember feeling more enjoyment watching that than I did with the Marbles. But I can, maybe it's a recent thing because we, I have a terrible memory. And obviously the Marvels was closer to this Wolverine film that was at least, what, 15 years old now? 15.

When was it going to come like? 2013. It's been a decade. 2013. Okay. Right, well My memory's not good But

I remember I just don't remember Anything about that film And I remember liking it I remember really liking it But like I saw once And I remember

Just nothing about it Well I wrote So the villain was silver samurai That's what I remember I feel like that film Was better than the marvels I just do not remember A goddamn thing about it

I mean I'm looking at The Rotten's Meals score and I can tell you yes, it was considered better than the Marvels. Well, duh, people hated the Marble. John, do you have any thoughts on the Wolverine? Yeah, I mean, it was

sort of, there was an episode of the animated series where Wolverine goes off on his own to Japan and this kind of reminded me of that. So I liked it was very different from every

that come before it. And if you're going to focus on Wolverine, why not do something that's a bit different and... True. And because he's got all these different facets of his character as well, like, going

off to Japan or being part of, like, you know, the sort of mercenary weapon X team he was on, like, going around doing secret missions and stuff. Like, there's plenty of material you could work with there. So the fact

that they did that and tapped into that Japanese side. It was pretty cool. But yeah, again, I don't remember a whole lot about it either, to be fair. I remember the end was he was fighting the Silver Samurai, but the Silver Samurai was basically wearing sort of like Iron Man armor. Yeah, he was a big, he was a big robot armor suit thing. Yeah, which wasn't great, but. Well, he was an old man because that was like the red herring of it.

So like it you went into the whole movie thinking like the big bad was this like young rival guy that was also interested in the the female love interest. And then like the bait and switch was like, nope, it was this old man that you were introduced to that was like hospitalized. Because he wanted like Wolverine's DNA because of the healing factor. Why the fuck am I suddenly remembering parts of this movie? It's your favorite film. Apparently, Jesus Christ. Oh, boy.

All right, well, anything else about the Wolverine you guys want to talk about? I remember nothing about it, so. There was a cut scene from the mid credits where I think Wolverine gets invited onto a plane and they opens a little, like, briefcase, and it shows like the Wolverine mask and costume, which would have been an awesome tease that was never paid off. Never went anywhere. This new Deadpool movie, which is coming out this year, where we're finally going to see Hugh Jackman in sort of the classic costume.

Can I tell you that was a thing in the early, the early superhero movies where they would like, I feel like they were making fun of fans because I remember when like, Wolverine in the first X-Men movie was like wearing the leather jumpsuit thing and remarked about it. And Cyclops just very dismissively went, what do you expect? Yellow spandex? It's like, yeah, motherfucker. That's what they wear. I'm sorry, I want them to look identifiable.

Right. But also, like, don't you want them? Like, isn't that part of the Grimarsson thing where you're like, don't you want them at some point to like kind of do something? something different? Well, sure. See, that's the thing. I feel like you're fine to do something different in the comic books, where X-Men have just been going on freak, like, consistently for decades and decades

and decades. This is the first time there's been a movie, though. Like, at the end of the day- One shot to, like, establish themselves. Yeah, but at the end of the day, like, they didn't do anything radical with the Batman suit. They didn't do anything radical with the Superman suit or the Wonder Woman costume either. It's, like, identifiable.

They didn't fuck around with the sports. Spider-Man costume. But the thing about Batman, if you look at the different Batman films, the suits are different. And the same is the different suit than in the comics. They didn't just put Spider-Man in a silver body suit and go like, would you expect red and blue? Can I just say, if in the Spider-Man film, they had dressed them up as a scarred spider and said, would you expect Spadenton X? I would have fucking loved it.

You would have loved him in the hoodie and the little. ankle. Yes. Yes. I love it. The ankle pouches always confused me. What? The ankle pouches always confused me.

Dude, the scarlet spider costume was coolest shit. I like the scarlet spider costume. The most recent scarlet spider run they did with Peter David, they tried to put him in a new costume, and the fan pack lashed to it was so strong. They put them right back in the old costume. Wait, was the new scarlet spider, is that Kean? No, no.

This was after Kane. So is this back to Ben Riley? Yeah, it was there was a, say another series where Ben Riley was Scarlet Spider. But is this before Ben Riley went crazy? It was before Ben Riley went crazy. So the timeline is, so the timeline is Ben Riley's the, is the, was it the jackal? Yes.

And while he's the jackal, Kane is Scarlet Spider. Yes. I don't remember what happened to Kane, but then Ben Riley came back and was Scarlet Spider again. Ken died. Kane died. Okay. Came was sacrificed. Ben came back as

Ben came back as scarlet spider And then he was told in that story Like you have died and resurrected so many times now The next time you die You're going to lose your soul What? Yeah, yeah It was the thing.

It was like a Madam Webb thing, I'm sure. No, it was death. Death visited him and told him that Basically like because he's a clone His soul is like not legitimate Anyway We divert from X-Men long enough to talk about the greatest Spider-Man character of all time Ben Riley. Whoa, whoa, whoa, you say that.

I think you've said that in Jess. No, I like Ben Riley. I love Ben Riley. I don't like what they've done with him recently. That's another, I'm right not dying. Ben Riley, I'm right not dying. Yeah, I like Ben Riley is my favorite Spider-Man. I mean, I'm not arguing with you.

I think he's really good. Yeah, we're agreeing. We're just agreeing aggressive. and passionately. To be fair, I do agree with people very aggressively, so... Yeah. Don't worry about it. You're right, motherfucker.

Fuck, you're correct, and I agree with you. So anyway, so anyway, so he's Scarlet Spider again and then whatever, I can't remember what the lead was. Well, yeah, no. He was Scarlet Spider again, and then whatever happened, he became, like, a brand new Spider-Man

again. That was, like, Spireman working for a company. And then, like, all of his shit got wrecked and ruined and he became chasm. I mean, see, this is kind of where I fell off with Spider-Man, and I hate this. It all sounds terrible,

and I'm really annoyed about that. So, there you go. Yeah, honestly, that Peter David Scarlet Spider-Spiter ended on such a bummer because it was just like,

oh, you know, you died and you got resurrected, now you're just evil. Yeah, it sounds like a series ended. It sounds like a real, like,

not good way to resurrect that stuff, you know? Yeah. Because people love, Ben Riley, like, why would you make him a villain? Why would you turn him heel? It doesn't make any sense. Why would you turn L.A. Knight heel right now? He's hot. Don't do it.

Are they turning L.A. Night Heel? I don't know. Oh, you missed your chance. Yeah? Yeah, exactly. Whose game is it? I don't know whose game is it. Yeah, it's L.A. Nights, Gabe. Yeah.

There you go. Anyway, um, John, any more thoughts on the Wolverine? Because we spent more time talking about Scarlet Spider. And Ellie and I. I forgot even more about this movie now. Did you like it? Yeah.

Yeah, did you like it. I did. Yeah. It felt like, like I said, it was like a new take for a Wolverine movie. But yeah, completely unmemorable. John, what did you rate this on Letterbox? John, do you find your Letterbox? score on the Wolverine. John, have you got letterbox scores for all of these X-Men films, by the way?

Yeah, I should do. But yeah. Can we go through the mall? I'm going to have to do some digging to get them all out. Can we open up 17 tabs? We should have, we should have made this, we should have said right off the bad, because John's a big film guy, right? We know this from a history of the show. We, I mean, this is on us. This is me and Corey. We probably should have said beforehand, John, can you get your letter box scores up for these films that we are definitely going to talk about today in our show

about X-Men films. That was on us, right? That's our, that's our field. That was our bad. That was a big mistake in our part. I already thought about that like five minutes ago. So like, that's on us. We can talk about it at the end.

Yeah. That's a good idea. We'll, yeah, we'll talk about the box office earnings and we'll talk about the Rotten Tomatoes and we'll see how John matched up with Rotten Tomatoes. Oh, yeah. Well, yes, perfect. Rotten Tomatoes versus John. That's the show.

Rod of the Minos versus John. That's the t-shirt. Yeah, there it is. So let's jump forward one year to the year 2014 where we get, we go back to the Fosbender-McCavoy

era mutants and we go X-Men days of future past. That's a huge storyline in the comics. That's one of those definitive X-Men stories where we do get, we basically get Sentinels and we get

Bolivar Trask played by Peter Dinklage, which is interesting and it involved... I love that. I love that. Yes. But a great choice. Because I remember being... Well, here's the thing. I remember being... I'm sorry to cut you off, Corey. But I...

For the record, let me say this. I've never seen Game of Thrones. I want to put that light there right now. And I went to the cinema to see this film with a lot of people who have seen the Game of Thrones. and whenever Peter Dinklies came on screen, people who I was with started to point at the screen and say,

that's the dink. And I'm like, Do like the clown sidekick? And I'm like, I don't know what that means. But they, some of them said that's the dink. And then some of them said that's whatever his game of those name is.

What's his game of throwing his name? Tyrion. Tyrion. Tyrion. They're like, They're like, they're high-fiving. And I'm like,

I don't know what, what are he talking about? I had no idea what any of that shit mean, you know, I'm not like him throwing's guy, I don't like that kind of stuff. But they loved it. So, obviously, it was good casting if you want to get the casuals in.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, this movie involved, uh, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine getting sent back through time to the 1960s to, um, basically stop this, a dystopian future from, from happening in which he, we get our interactions with him and the

Maccavoy and Fosbender era crew. I saw this one in a theater and in 2014, so that's a decade old now and I walked away feeling kind of about the whole thing. Really? Okay. Interesting. I feel like me and John might have a very different opinion. Yeah. I loved this movie.

I thought it was a fucking hated it. Now I'm joking. No, it's like a really good mesh between like the original trilogy and what they were, you know, building with the sort of, you know, a new version of these characters. And like it was a good sort of play on the days of future past storyline as well from the comics. Obviously not like a direct adaptation again, but like we've talked about this before. another podcast where it's movie it's like cinema is a completely different medium so of course it's not

going to be exactly the same I agree I felt like this was a really good way to bridge the gap between the newer chronologically newer X-Men and in timeline wise the older X-Men because they were trying to do both you know like and I think

this is a good way to like show them both together. I thought that was a really good way. And again, you know, using Wolverine as a guy, it makes sense because Wolverine's the most popular, arguably overrated X-Man. So it really kind of made sense to see them kind of like

interact with each other. I thought this was a really good fellow. I did. I really liked it. That was a good mix of like both new and old X-Men if they're going for that angle. You know what you mean? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just didn't really make that much of an impact on me. I mean, there's certain actors that I like and I could watch pretty much in anything, which like Fossbender is one of them. But yeah, no. Is Hugh Jacklin not one of those guys? I prefer him as a song and dance man personally. No, I prefer him as evil fucking claw boy.

I am fed up of him being a song and dance man. I want to see him rip a guy's throat out and eat the heart of the man. That's what I want. There you go. Yeah. Hugh Jackman, if you're listening, that's all he wants you to do. Don't even in a film. Just do it in the street.

I'll watch that and I'll put it on YouTube. It's all you want. I assume Hugh Jackman is listening to the show. One would hope. I would hope. Any closing thoughts on days of future past? I liked it. Yeah.

I think this was the high point of the entire series for me. I will tell you, looking at the numbers that I see, you're not incorrect. Hello. So we're going to jump forward two years to 2016, where we get the movie that I feel like some people have been waiting for their entire lives. We get Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Yes. And Deadpool was great because it was an X-Men, movie that didn't that played around with the idea of it being in the same continuity and played around

with it not it had it had a comic realistic Deadpool costume the jokes were there the you know it it felt right it was the right mesh of profane and violent and silly yeah yep yep yeah I feel like if yeah if we're going to go with Deadpool as an X-man film and we're going to to go under the pretense of the films getting their characters correct it's hard to find a better film than Deadpool because

Deadpool got that character down perfectly I mean that's Deadpool that's it they did it I remember talking Ryan Reynolds as well they were like two basically the exact same people

very similar and again all of this comes back to a comic from the late 90s, early 2000s, in which Deadpool was asked what he looked like under the mask, and he said he looked like Ryan Reynolds mixed with a Sharpay. And that's what, that somebody alerted Ryan Reynolds to that back then, and he saw it and loved it,

and that became his goal ever since, was to be Deadpool. And he came close. In X-Men Origins Wolverine, he got cast as Deadpool, but, you know. He tried his best. But also, he knew that after that, he's like, we didn't do the character justice,

we can do better than that. Yep. And then they did. Like, he had a big hand in that whole film, not just making the film, but also, like, getting that film made. Yeah.

Like, he had a big, big hand in, I think it was the first scene in that film that accidentally got leaked onto the internet, wink, wink, that got people to see it and go, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, yeah. And that's how that film,

The sequences are amazing in it. They're a lot of fun. It's so much fun. But also, like, just all the way through it, it's just, it's just a fun film to watch, right? Just all the way through it, like, wall to wall, like, it's, you just have fun watch, you know. And that's all you want from a film, right? Like, really. Yeah.

You know, we can, we can, like, just, you know, we can say about a film, like, oh, I want it to be emotional. I want to do this. I want to do that. Really, you just want to have a good time watching the film. and I think we all three was going to agree Deadpool we had a great time watching that film

yeah that's the long and short of it is but a fun time watching that film that's it you know what I mean it's not the smart it's not Citizen Keen but who gives a shit

it's fun you know John what your thoughts he's going to say the same thing he's going to say it's not Citizen Keen but it's fun yeah it's not Citizen Kane

but it is fun it's Citizen Kane It's not Susan Key. Orson Wells is there. There's no rose pods. There's no... His wife is sitting really terribly and he's just clapping really intensely. Can I just say, by the way, don't make fun of Susan Keynes.

It's really, Phil. No, it's great. No one should ever be... Grateful. It's grateful. It's no deathful, though. But, yeah, like, this was the first movie in the series, I believe, which got the R-rating. So they were allowed to do it.

a lot more with it in terms of the violence and the swearing and just like cranking it up to a degree which we hadn't seen in the previous movies and which obviously sort of leaned into Ryan Reynolds's sensibilities as well and yeah like it's just a funny movie and you know what I liked about it was they knew that they couldn't use a whole lot of the X-Men license. So they got around that, but using people who weren't in the X-Men, including Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who in the comics was dead, but they thought,

well, just use this as a character, and she was so popular in the films that they brought her back as a character in the comics. Yeah, and they also, her banter with Deadpool was great. They also brought in Colossus as sort of like the angel on the shoulder kind of character.

Which, whenever you see Colossus in that film, you're like, why didn't they bring Colossus in fucking years ago? Well, he was, but like, it was such a minor role. Like, I don't even think the character spoke. Like, he was in X2, an X3, and in days of future past. But he's such a good character with Deadpool. Like, the banter between the two, like the dead pan of one of them and off the World Olympics of the other one, it's a perfect meaning. And also, like, the same with Negasonic Teenage Warhead, where they're two opposite characters. but they work perfectly with each other.

So that kind of goes back to the whole theory on foils and that like you need, like that's where you like conflict creates content. I will say that all the time. And so you have those exact opposites where you have Colossus who is a very portrayed as very sensible and responsible and good-hearted individual talking to Deadpool who is a degenerate for all intents of purposes. Yes. And then you have, you know, Negasonic Teenage Warhead who is uptight.

and angry and aggressive against a very, again, bit of a nonsensical dickhead character. So, you know, they bounced off of each other incredibly well. And you get the great joke of where they're wandering the X-Men mansion, and Deadpool just kind of breaks the fourth wall and talks about how, whoa, wow, nobody's here, huh? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

I love that. Also, the villain was kind of weak. It's white. It's green as Ajax. Yeah. I don't know, man. I think that, like, if you know, if you know Deadpool lore, like, that makes sense. No, I'm not knocking them as a villain choice, but, like, I didn't think Ed screen sort of, you know, popped on screen, really for this.

Right. It was an interesting choice for that character. Yeah. Well, again, I just, I feel that if it's going to be the first movie, you don't need a dynamic villain because you're trying to establish your main character. like that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't so i for example tim burton's batman i feel like michael keaton's batman suffers a little bit because he's against such a force of nature that is jack nicholson just going fucking all in on playing the joker yeah sometimes i feel like if you're starting a movie out you don't necessarily need you have a super dynamic villain if you're trying to establish something you know

it's going to be a series but then also like like we said earlier in the show if you think back to the original x-man the very first one. The first villain was Magneto. He was a very charismatic person. Like, you know, he was, he became a very good Magneto. Like, well, so I'm going to

already have a very, like, not bombastic, but like a very charismatic kind of character that had, he knew what he was doing. Yes. But he was, he was very reserved, though. Like, as you say, he's not bombastic. He's not eating the scenery like Jack Nicholson's

Joker would. Plus, it, the X-Men movies, for all intense purposes, despite the fact that it was a Wolverine, very much driven story, it is a team movie. And you kind of go in knowing you're going to have to juggle some characters around to begin with, whereas Deadpool is a solo movie. Okay. So would you, but would you say Ed Scream was like eating in the city more than in McAllen? No, no, that's what I'm saying.

Like, I think he was, he was a weak villain, but I don't think it hurt anything to have a weak villain. Okay. I think the whole point was like, you're going to just let Deadpool be Deadpool. and you get a, you know, this whole movie to get introduced to, yes, here's this character who gets brutally injured, but he's fine. And he breaks the fourth wall because he's kind of crazy. Right.

Like, see, for me, like, I, I didn't hate that film because I think that they did a very good job of showing the stakes. Yes. I think they did a really good job of showing why Deadpool would have an issue with that guy. Yeah. And him getting his comeuppance, I think, like, all of that worked really, like, as a. film, you know, in a film, you have an hour and a half, two hours to, like, tell a good story. I think they told that story. They were able to tell that story, plus the story of Deadpool and his girlfriend, plus the story

of Deadpool just being weird, plus the story of Deadpool interacting with the other X-Men. They told all of those parts very, very well in that time frame that they had. That's what I think. So we should probably jump ahead into another movie that came out in 20, I did not see this one. This is X-Men Apocalypse. We're again back with the Foss Bender and McAvoy X-movies. Yes.

Oscar Isaac plays Apocalypse, which is insane to think about. Yeah. Yeah. But I couldn't tell you anything about it because I didn't see it because I saw trailers for it. I went, oh, this looks very, this feels familiar to seeing the other X-Men movie trailers from back in the day. So yeah, take it from here, guys.

I really want to know what John's opinion on this is, because I have an opinion on this film, and I would like to hear what John's opinion is first. Well, I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. Apocalypse is like a great character, one of my favorite villains from the animated series. He was awesome, and Oscar Isaac is a hell of an actor as well.

Well, felt like, you know, it was a perfect fit. But yeah, the end result didn't really turn out that way. I wouldn't say it's horrendously bad. Like, a lot of people seem to have this opinion as this is like a total shitting of the bed. But honestly, it's just fine. There's nothing horrendous, but there's nothing that I'd really say is. is great about it. And yeah, I don't know.

Okay. It's a weird one. You know what? I am on pretty much the C&PH's You because I liked this film. I didn't love it. I liked it. I love Apocalypse as a villain.

I think he's great. And to be fair, I think they did a very good job of showing Apocalypse as a big deal in this film. I do think they did a very good job of establishing him as like a villain. But I do kind of agree with you in that it's, it's,

it's, it's not perfect. There's a lot of like issues with that, especially with like Magneto, right? Like, let's be honest. If you're,

if you're picking a four horsemen of the apocalypse, I don't know if you pick up Magneto, the way they did it. Well, I don't think Magneto would go with Apocalypse either. No, no, I don't think, no, exactly.

I don't think that will work. Doesn't make sense for the character. No, it doesn't. But I did like that film. And I wanted to like it more because I love Apocalypse. I think he's one of my favorite villains. But I like that film more than other people do. Because my brother saw that and he fucking hated it.

And I'm like, I don't hate it. I do not hate that film. I think it's more fun than some other X-Men films. but also it's not clearly it's at the best film you know what you mean it's it's it's good you know it's okay

to good if we're charging it that way you know but it's it's not good to grid so let's let's try to pick up the pace a little bit on these because we are we've been recording

a good bit now we got some more stuff to go including I'm really curious what John's Letterbox scores and these are going to be we're going to jump ahead one year to the year 2017 and this is a movie

that looked like it'd be really good, didn't see it. Logan. I liked it. This was the depiction of Old Man Logan essentially. I liked it for the most part. I feel like again there was some whenever you remember the problem I always have with going

into these Marvel films, I'm very familiar with the comics and then you go into them and you have to remember that the films aren't the comics, they're different. And if you remember that, then Logan's a pretty good film. They do take some twists and turns. It's a bit different, but it kind of makes sense all together. I feel like a lot of the solo Wolverine films have been really good to be totally fair.

You know, because I feel like they knew that Wolverine was their big guy. They had to do something good with them. And I feel like they did. I quite like this film. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say I'd go even further than that and say this is probably the best solo Logan movie or Wolverine movie. Yeah, like they did a good job of sort of tapping into like this older version of the character where he's outlived all of his X-Men team and now he's sort of broken down.

both physically and mentally. And then, yeah, along comes X23. And like, that's the little spark of humanity that kind of keeps him going for a bit as well. Like the only real disappointment for me was, like, you know, they hired Richard E. Grant. And what a perfect Mr. Sinister, he would have been. Like, he would have been great in that role.

And instead he's just some random scientist who, you know, has no real, like, personality or defining features or anything. Can I say that that is honestly, Richard E. Grant is one of the fucking best ever. And I feel like he gets... The best ever? Yeah, I think so. What? I feel like he gets put into the weirdest roles when he gets put into these giant, like, franchise. like his role in

the last Star Wars movie that came out felt really like it just was tacked on at the very end for the most part you know I think he was like classic Loki in the Loki show and I feel like that was probably his best portrayal that he's done in one of these like larger franchise things

that man made Hudson Hawk somewhat enjoyable Hutton Hawk you've never heard of Hudson Hawk I've heard of it you should watch it I don't think I will. I'm going to watch. It's amazingly.

You got to watch bad movies sometimes. It's always fun every now and then. You find a really good bad movie and you just get a different sense of enjoyment from it. I love bad movies, though, to be totally honest with you. It's just whenever it's like, if it's a big budget bad movie, it's nowhere near as much fun as a low budget bad movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. like there's some heart in it, you know, in a low budget bad movie.

There's some heart. Yes. I agree with that. I feel like... You get to some of these X-Men movies and you're just like, no, they just... They're just bad. They're just bad. It's just not well done because they didn't care.

Right. I get that. There's something sweet about a really bad, like, independent film because, like, they tried their best. And there's something like really endearing about that. You know what I mean? So any other remarks on Logan? I like, I remember loving it.

I remember being in the cinema, I'm thinking that's the best solo Wolverine film. And it was like a good, like, I wouldn't even say exclamation point, but like full stop on the character as well. That felt like a good sort of definitive and earned ending. Yes.

And like a good way for like, you know, Hugh Jack went to sign out as the character. Yes. I agree. If you were going to, if Hugh Jackman, was going to add because by that point you know what's he been done like 70th nine films if you want to stop in wolverin that's the best way to do it to kind of like buy wide and go all right

that's a good it's a good way to do it you know yeah it's 2018 now and Deadpool two has come out uh this is the sequel very much a sequel in that it it carried the same tone and the same sense of humor but we get the added bonus of josh brolin as cable who i enjoyed him as cable way more than I did as Thanos. I. Oh, that's divisive. It is, but I'm more of a cable person in general. You've split the room.

I'm much more of a cable person, and I never really cared for Thanos as a character. Right, but if you think about that, again, you have to split the two. You have to remember that the cinema universe is different from the comic universe. The way that he played Thanos was very good. I loved him.

cable, but the way he played him as Thanos was very, very good. Very different character. It's very, very different. Just didn't care for it. No, but no, but I feel like you're taking your own bias from not liking Thanos and hiring that

over to the cinema. Deadpool, too. We've got a plot that involves time travel and a grieving Deadpool and the juggernaut shows up for the second time in our X-Men watch. Do you know who does the voice of the juggernaut? No, who did the voice of juggernaut?

John, do you know who does the voice of the juggernaut? Was it Ryan Reynolds? It was Ryan Reynolds. No kidding. That's fun. So I liked this film. I thought that Deadpool's a better film, frankly.

Yeah, I agree. But I did enjoy this film. I thought that it was nice in cable on film. Yes. You know what I mean? I like the idea of, I like the kid. I don't remember the name of the kid. John, you can probably tell me what the name of the kid was in character and also the person.

Because he's the same kid that was in that, um, Tech O-O-80 film. Yes. He's really good. He's really good in that film. Yeah. But I don't remember his name. He was really good in the, he was really good in Deadpool, too. Yeah.

But, you know, like, I like, I like, I like, I. I like that film. I thought it was an interesting choice to make it about that. You know what you mean? I like the rest of the film. I love the idea of him like making his own squad

of people that all die. Oh, X-Force. Yeah. I like I love that shit. Like that was so much fun. Like fucking invisible guy that was Brad Pitt.

And what was the guy like Peter that was Rob DeLaney? Rob DeLiney. Yeah, Rob DeLiney. Yeah. Was it Peter? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was just a guy. Yeah, just a regular, yeah, just like I loved all of that shit. Like, that was so much fun to watch. Um, but I felt like when it came to the end of it, you're like, I don't know if this is quite the conclusion I expected. But at the same time, I did like that film. I did like it. Can I say that what I enjoyed about the ending was like all of that talk of like,

you can't go into the, into the past and change like change the future or whatever. and like, you know, like sometimes you just have to accept things and move on. And it just ends with fucking Deadpool doing that shit anyway. Yeah. We get the montage of him shooting the X-Men Wolverine, the X-Men Origins Wolverine Deadpool. And then he shoots, he shoots Ryan Reynolds as he's reading a script for Green Lantern. Yes. Yes.

It wasn't as, it wasn't as good as Deadpool one, but it was still good. I agree. One of my favorite scenes is once he gets ripped in half and he's regrowing his lower body, where he gets up pantsless with little tiny baby legs walking across the room to shake hands with cable. That's like, that's the perfect cable and Deadpool relationship right there. Yeah. Because cable is like absolute no nonsense, no sense of humor whatsoever ever.

Yep. And there's Deadpool with his little baby legs walking across the room awkwardly. Right. That's that dynamic we were talking about earlier. Like that fun kind of the wacky off the wall, Deadpool and then the serious no nonsense other side. Like you need that dynamic. Like it really works together. Also, Domino was great in it too.

I can't remember the name of the actress. Yes, Domino was great. Yeah. Great illustration of her powers, too. Yes. And that actor, the actress was really good. Yeah, she's great.

She was really, really good. Like, she nailed it, you know. So I'm going to let you guys know it, it goes downhill from here. What? Isn't this the last X-Man film? Nope.

Remember I told you there was some that I forgot existed? I thought it ended at Deadpool, too, and then we all had a great time, and we toasted the fact that the Deadpool was a great film. I went home and ate a kick. So it's the year 2019 pre-pandemic. What? What? Phoenix.

No, it wasn't this pandemic? Pre-pandemic. Okay, sorry. No, the next one's pandemic. This one is Dark Phoenix. Okay. I didn't know this was a movie that came out. I'll be honest with you.

This completely was not on my radar whatsoever. Well, there wasn't much to it. So it's not as if you missed much. Like, I'm trying to think. I'm like, I'm sure I've seen this film, but I don't remember a fucking thing about it. So they basically, they're redoing the Dark Phoenix storyline,

as you could probably guess by the name of it. But one would have a same? They, um, they sort of, kick it off with like an homage to the animated series where the X-Men go up into space and help save like a space shuttle mission and then that's where Gene gets like the Phoenix. Again, I don't think it's like a cosmic being sort of taking control of her. I think it's more of a split personality type thing. But then, yeah, the rest of the movie is them trying to stop Gene from turning to the dark side.

And I think, what's the name? Jessica Chastain shows up as, like, in the trailers, it was really kind of played up as like, oh, who's this mysterious character? Like, who is she from the comics? And it turns out, well, she's not really anyone. She's just like a random member of some alien race, which, like, is pretty obscure in terms of, like, you know, the big alien races we've got in the Marvel comics. So, yeah, I don't know. It's sort of a waste of time.

Fun fact, Chris Claremont had a cameo in this. Really? You Wolverine? No, he was a guest in the White House during a scene which Xavier accepts his award for rescuing the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Well, that's nice. Just chucked him in there. Why not? I, um, yeah.

Yep. Yep. This was a movie that came out. I'm just like scrolling through the Wikipedia page. So here's the thing. Earlier I was talking about how you were saying like, what's the difference between like Miss Marvel? and some other film.

I'm like, well, this one was more recent, so this is the best when I can remember. I don't remember a dick about this film. I honest to God,

and I know I've seen it. I have to have seen it in the cinema. I just do not remember fucking anything about this film. Well, don't worry.

Again, I'm looking at, I'm looking at some of the details. You're not the only one who didn't remember this movie. Did somebody leave a reading on the film that was like

zero out of ten? I don't remember anything about this film. We just walked out of the theater. Can't recall. They walked out? Oh, they walked out. Okay.

I looked at the first fucking five minutes or whatever. All right. Well, here's an interesting, so we're going to go up next. This is the year 2020. So here, the X-Men movies have been pretty consistent in that, like, very quick turnaround. 2000, 2003, 2006, 2006, 2009, etc., etc. So we go to the year,

2020 and this is a movie that was shelved for such a long fucking time that eventually they just had to put it out to put it out and they said fuck it's a COVID pandemic throw it out there and that is the year 2020s the new mutants which I remember being billed as kind of a horror movie kind of deal yeah and whenever I see like oh this movie's been shelled. I'm like, oh, that's probably a sign of this isn't going to be good.

You saw it. No, I did not. Oh, you didn't see it? No. Okay. Well, here's a fun fact. I also didn't see it. So, John, over to you. John, did you see it? John, do you see it? Of course I saw it, yeah. Did you like it?

I mean, I didn't hate it, but like is probably too strong a word, but Is this ridded on your ladderbox page? It is. Okay, cool. Good, good, good. Good, good. What was the best and worst part?

Well, the best part was it did have sort of a horror slant to it. So that made it feel completely different to everything else as has come before it in terms of the X-Men movies. But yeah, it was a bit. boring and like the writing isn't that good as well like it just felt like the relationships

between some of the characters weren't fully formed and yeah and then it sort of descends into the demon bear saga from the very important saga

yeah it's a really big thing for New Mutants but I'm not sure it translated well on screen to be fair. Is Karma one of the mutants? I don't think she's listed. Is she? Oh no. Sorry, no, it wasn't karma.

It's Wolfstein, Magic, Cannonball, Marraud. Danny Woodstar in Sunspot. Isn't Karma one of the... I might get that wrong? No, karma is one of the OGs, but Karma is such a forgettable character even in the comics. I don't blame

him for not including her. But is it Karma or is it Danny Moonsar that has a thing with a demon bear? That Danny Moonstar. Okay, that was my mistake then. I got the too confused. So, John, this is a horror movie. We got the demon bear. We've got our new new movie.

Joy as Ilya Rasputin. And she's great. The rest of the cast, not so much. Maisie Williams is Wolfsbane. but I think she sort of struggles a bit with the Scottish accent and it can be a bit distracting at times

and this is like I want to say like the fourth or fifth movie as well which I'm sure like teases Mr. Sinister's involvement and then never delivers on it which is just at this point it's getting really annoying. Oh my God

I just now saw something that terrifies me could they not have got some somebody from Scotland to do a Scottish Scottish Scottish? Scottish. Can I also say

Can I also say that Marilyn Manson did the voice of quote the Smiley Men? Oh. Why? Why? So this movie had some issues. They announced in 2016. They filmed it in 2017

to be put out in 2018. That got delayed due to reshoots. and they didn't release it until August of 2020, which is right in the heart of the COVID pandemic. Not even the heart, really. Like, it's still brand fucking new. Could have gone better. Yeah, John, what was a bright spot in this?

Was it just the fact that they, they treated it like more of a horror movie, and that was kind of a different tone? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the only thing that kind of stood out about it, really. like I say, Anya Taylor, Joy was great as well, and I wouldn't mind seeing her Ileana pop up in other stuff. But yeah, there's not too much to write home about. Okay. Well, so let's take a look at some of the just the numbers.

So previously when we've done these episodes, I have compiled what the average box office earnings were and the average percentage. and I told you guys yesterday when I did this, I was surprised. So to kind of give you a quick recap, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies post-in-game or pre-end game were averaging about $961 million. After in-game, $693 million.

The DC Universe movies did $772 million. The Sony Spider-Man movies did $650,000. million dollars. The X-Men movies, 188. Yeah. Earned way less than everything else. And I was so surprised by that because for the longest time, they were like the only game,

the only name in the game. Because like you said, X-Men came out in 2000. I thought they would have made way more fucking money. But no, $188 million average. Another thing, if we want to look at the Rotten Tomato score, is the average Rotten Tomato score for all these movies, pre-end game, 85% post-in-game, 72%. The DC movies were 57%.

The Sony movies were 66%. The X-Men movie average on Rotten Tomatoes 67%. So just 1% higher than the Sony Spider-Man world. So let's put out some real quick things right there, much like we didn't talk about the Disney Plus stuff or the like the Netflix shows or anything like that for Marvel.

There are some things that we did not include in this. We did not include the short-lived show The Gifted. We did not include the show Legion and we did not include the special movie they put out called Once Upon a Deadpool, which I think was like a holiday special. I have not done that. No, neither of us.

Same. Same. So would you guys like to know with the highest rated of these X-Men movies were, like Rottenam-Wise. So it's going to be Days of Future Past is the highest. Dylan, what do you think did the best? Deadpool.

You are both were incorrect. What? What? Logan did 93%. Better than Deadpool? Deadpool was in, it was 85. And X-Men Days of Future Pass was 90. Wait, what was Logan?

93. What? Whoa! Deadpool was only 85? Deadpool was only 85. Do you want any of the movies that did better than Deadpool?

Oh, oh. Yes. X-Men first class did 86? No. And they tied with X2 at 85. No. What do you think the lowest rated one was? X-Men 2.

No. No. We just said X-Men 2. X-Men 3. X-M-3. Yeah. Last stand. No.

What? Last stand at 57%. The worst received one was Dark Phoenix at 22%. Ah, geez. Yeah, it killed that franchise. Okay. All right. So if you guys want to do line for line, John versus Rotten Tomatoes, John, if you got them ready,

we'll go from chronological order. X-Men. Rotten Tomato score 82%. Mine is 3.5 stars out of 5. What's that a percentage though? God damn it. I don't know. Like 75% or something maybe. Corey, what's that percentage? So wait, wait. You said it was 3.5 out of 5?

Yeah. All right. Okay, hold on. 3.5 out of 5 would be what, 60. 70 out of 100? So 7. Yeah, it's 70%. Okay. So Rotten Tomatoes said that X-Men was a little bit better than you. Well, I don't have as much nuance as Rotten Tomatoes. Don't defend yourself.

Do defend yourself. You're the one out here written all these X-Men films. You have a right to make your own statements. No, what I'm saying is like no one's judging you, John. All right. We're not judging you, but you still have like your own opinions. you were able to say that with dignity, you know? Yes.

Yes. All right. X2, Rotten Tomatoes gave that an 85%. I gave it four stars out of five. So that's 80%. That's an 80%. X-Men, the last stand, they gave it 57%. What did you give it?

One and a half stars. Ooh. That's 30%. So they liked it a little bit more than you. X-Men. Origins Wolverine did 38%. I gave it 2.5 stars. Okay.

That's 50%. So you gave it 50. Hello. Fair. I think that's fair. X-Men Origins Wolverine? You really like that starting 20 minutes, didn't you? I think 50 minutes fine because if you think about that first 20 minutes, right? That's fine. The last 20 minutes, half an hour, shite. The middle part is okay.

first class. Rottenamados gave it 86%. I gave it four stars out of five. That's 80%. That's 80%. Yeah. The Wolverine, they gave it 71%. I gave it three and a half stars. That's 70%. Hey.

That's real close. We're getting... This is good shit. This is really good shit. X-Men, Days of Future Pass, they gave it 90%. What did you give it? I gave it. Five stars. A hundred percent. And Dylan just blew the audio.

Oh, dear. I got very excited about that. I'm sorry. Oh, boy. All right. Deadpool. Gave it 85%. That's Deadpool.

Oh, no. Where's he gone? No. I gave. I gave. Dylan, get ready. I gave this five stars.

That's the best I could do. I hope there's more five stars. I don't think there should be. That's the best you're going to get. Maybe there's another two. X-Men Apocalypse, 47%. I gave it three stars. All right, that's 60%.

Logan, 93%. Warm yourself out, Alan. It's crackling knuckles. It's really quick, quick. me me me me all right hang on let me just stay structured all right

all right I'm good I'm good I'm good I'm good do your vocal warmups come on now come on now I gave this four now oh okay well

yeah don't put as much effort into that one's only four and I five that was pretty good though yeah so pretty good Deadpool 2 84% I gave that

four stars Oh Dark Phoenix 22% I gave that probably a generous three stars out of five Oh that is really generous

And the last one New Mutants got a 36% And that I gave three stars out five as well Wow you're really nice to him Yeah three stars is probably Pretty generous, right?

So the movie that made the most money in the box office, what would you assume that would be? I would assume the movie that made the most noise in this podcast. Which was? The one I made the most noise at. What was the one of the most noise at? What was it? The face of future past, wasn't it?

Future Pass, yeah, yeah, that was a big one, right? It was the first five-star one, right? Yeah. Yes. That one. Deadpool did $363 million. Okay. The next one after that was Deadpool 2 at 324 million.

And then it's a pretty, it's a pretty steep drop by about 100 million. Wow. Because after that is X-Men, the last stand at 234, days of future passed at 233. And then Logan at 226. Wait a minute. So the one I fucking made the big deal out of. isn't in the top five?

Well, it's in the top five. It just, uh, it's just not the most earning. That's pretty low, man. I just, you know, I think what it is is a lot of people got burned by the X-Men movies previously.

Why? The first one was good. Well, yeah, I think that's the thing is I feel like there was a sliding scale and quality, though, because you went last stand to X-Men origins Wolverine. And then the Wolverine,

which a lot of people thought was kind of forgettable, obviously, plot elements of it. And then you just jump into Days of Future Past. And I feel like a lot of that hurt Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. And he was a very big part of Days of Future Past. I think maybe people just didn't trust it. I could not trust Hugh Jackman is Wolverine.

What a delightful boy. So the movie that earned the least amount, obviously is New Mutants because he didn't get a theater release because of the pandemic. But before that, it was Dark Phoenix, 65 million. yish. 65 million is pretty good though. Considering the movie considering the next movie.

65 million? If somebody came up to me and said here 65 million points for a film you made, I'm like, thank you. Yeah, but they probably spent like, I don't know, 150 million on the budget alone. So. Yeah, but how much did I make of my film? Not that much. So if you double.

So the next one after that, like the second lowest earning was the Wolverine at 132. So that's like more than double of what Dark Phoenix did. Like that's to illustrate how poor Dark Phoenix did. Right. Fair enough. Fair enough.

But you know, I wouldn't necessarily trust it because after that it's, I mean, we talked about how X-Men first class did, you know, was pretty good. And it did 146. Yeah. And then X-Men Apocalyp. And then the first X-Men did 157.

I told you, the thing that surprised me the most about these movies was like, in comparison to other superhero movies, they didn't really earn a ton of money. Right. So it's kind of surprising that Fox held on to them as long as they did before selling them over to Disney. Absolutely.

Maybe they just thought they could just, I think that's like the Sony problem too and even the DC problem of like, well, Marvel can make a bunch of money on this. Surely we can too. Yeah, I think that was part of it. They were like, well, why are these kids making money off? We can't make money off it.

Maybe the part of it is they're making good films and they're well advertised. Like maybe that's part of it too. Like I feel like that's always a big issue with people. It's like you can make the best thing in the world, but if it's not well advertised, then nobody will know about it. The reason that like a lot of people and a lot of movies get across these days is because they have that advertising behind them. Why is Taylor Swift the biggest artist in the world? Because she has advertising behind her. Not to say that she's not good.

She is good. But people equally as good as her just aren't getting as much known as her because they aren't as well advertised. It's the same of films, the same with everything. You can have the best film in the world. But if nobody watches that film, they're not going to know it's the best film in the world. Because there's not that buzz behind it. And that's just the way. I always felt out with the X-Men films.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe always had this big, huge media bars apart them. And the X-Men films didn't. And they, you know, they had some bars, but not to the extent that the Marvel films did. And I think that's part of why all that shit didn't quite get over the way it should have got over. And they're all good. They're fine. We've talked about this. They're all fine films.

There's no real shitty films. He could argue that the third film, last time was shite, whatever, but most of them are pretty good. It's just the fact that the marketing wasn't there for them. I think that's the real takeaway is that you can make the greatest film in the world. It doesn't matter if the marketing is nerd.

Like we said, what did you say was the highest rated film in these X-Men films? Logan. Logan, the first one. No, the Logan is the old man Logan one. Okay, cool. Well, okay, well, that defeats my point because I was going to say that's the best one. It is the best one.

So, fair enough. All right, well, I guess I'll just go home then. Fuck me then, right? Anyway, I still stand by the point that a lot of the media doesn't help these guys, but they don't, like, they don't prop a lot of that stuff on when they should do, you know. whatever I'm not going to I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not anything

no you're good so it's we've been recording now for a good bit we've worked our way through all of the movies that took I enjoyed this because I feel like when we were talking about the Marvel movies there wasn't as much conversation about some of the movies and I feel like we really dove into some of these but is there any closing remarks you have on the X-Movies?

Like I said, we don't really know what the future of these are going to look like aside from Deadpool and Wolverine is coming out in 2024. And a lot of people's expectations are this is the one that's going to break the wall into the MCU. Which I don't really understand how that's going to work because so much of, you know, like the X-Men is kind of mixed in. into the past, like, you know, Magneto's origins, you know, go back to World War II and stuff. I don't think we can really do that again. Well, I doubt Disney would want to...

Yeah, well, yeah. I thought Disney would really want to go into the Holocaust. But it's going to feel weird as well, introducing them and just saying all of a sudden, oh, hey, we've got mutants. Where have they come from? like, you know, like obviously Well, like, you know, Magneto's going to be an old man if he shows up and if he's an old man with like, you know, all these mutant abilities.

Like, where's he been for the last, you know, 15, 20 years that we'd be making these movies? Right. There's weird sort of like inconsistencies that they're going to need to figure out ways around, which is part of the reason why I think when it comes to secret wars and stuff, they're going to basically blow up the universe and recast everything and start all over again, which is not a bad thing. I mean, I kind of agree with that, but also I feel like the problem with the Marvel universe,

and Corey, you'll agree with this, it's the same with the DC universe, is that whenever you're making a film, you have to make one film over one guy. and so it's very hard especially for a guy like Magneto who's been a very specifically X-Man character right

like if you look at the other villains that they've shown in the Marvel universe they're very broad not to say that Magneto isn't but a lot of those guys are much broader than Magneto is Magneto is very much an X-Man character an X-Men villain

So we can understand why they haven't introduced him already because they have other villains that cross the Avengers and cross Spider-Man across a lot of those other genres, those other characters. You can see that. You can understand that. Do you know what I mean? So I understand why they haven't introduced Magneto already because it makes sense to me. You know, they have all these other guys that are bigger threats. Like, Thanos is clearly a bigger threat than Magneto. That makes sense to me.

Kying, if the stars aligned and it worked all right, would have been a bigger threat than Magneto. Like, that makes sense to me. You know what I mean? And it kind of goes to the whole, like, how long can you keep the MCU running? I mean, we talked a while ago about how it thinks to the Eternals, there's a part of a celestial just in the ocean, like, sticking up.

Like at what point can you no longer just tell like a simple superhero story because everything's become so epic? Like it wouldn't make sense why this character would be struggling against this particular thing. I guess I'm thinking of like the the Captain America Disney Plus series that they ran where it was like Falcon and Winter Soldier dealing with a gang of people who got superhero soldier serum. and like you would just know if like the Steve Rogers Captain America was there it wouldn't be a problem because like he had a fist fight with a mad

god essentially so like a bunch of people hopped up on a weaker version of what he has shouldn't be a problem like at what point is to just get too epic that you can't tell anything that's not at that same level or even higher but that's what I like about all of the

Marvel and then like if you think about Spider-Man he's much more grounded car And I haven't seen the Daredevil show, but I imagine the Daredevil's much to see him. And the characters in the Daredevil show are much more grounded than the Avengers, because the whole point of the Avengers is they're supposed to protect the Earth. And they're supposed to protect people against Isaac Thanos and Kang. That makes sense. And then if you look at Spider-Man, he's supposed to be much more grounded and fight people like Magneto and Dr.

octopus who are just happy to take over Manhattan or whatever would that make sense you know there's levels to it do you what I mean so you know like where does Magneto fit into that part of it

Magneto really only fits into A fighting the X-Men or B just one day decided he's going to take over the entire world which is quite a leap into the Avengers canon. If they do that in a film,

then they also have to establish the other shit Magneto did. And that will take up quite a part of the film to establish that Magneto is a big threat and why he's a big threat and why he's trying to do this shit. What you need to do is establish that in other films. Well, we've been recording now for a good bit,

so we should probably go ahead and sign off for now. This is our practice in... I don't know. We have a... couple more like film series things we could do i'm sure uh but that was this was kind of the last of the real big ones conquering the uh the x-men world considering they were consistently putting out movies for the last like 25 years but we're not completely down to the x-men yet because it's it's come up a couple of times and it is something we're going to do um there was a pilot in

1996 for a Generation X TV show that was about an hour and a half long. It came, it was put out on Fox and I think John and I are the only people who watched it. And Dylan gets to experience Generation X for the first time. I have not seen them. And John and I probably both watched it back in 1996. Yeah. A long, long time ago. A good bit ago, about 20 years ago, maybe 30.

But yeah, so we're going to go ahead and we're going to call this a show. It's been lovely being with you all once more. If you're watching on YouTube, check us out on Spotify. If you're listening to us on Spotify, check us on YouTube. Cross-pollinate. It's good for the environment. If you're watching us on YouTube, please leave us comments about all the stuff you heard today. Do we say anything funny in today's episode that we should make a comment on?

I mean, some intermarriage is, you know, just a tribute. We also have John versus Letterbox. So, or John versus Rotten Tomatoes. So if you should like- John versus Letter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. John versus Rotten Tomatoes is a good, yeah. If you feel like John's opinions were better than Rotten Tomatoes, please leave a comment. If we do other shows where John's opinions are versus the

like Ronald Tomatoes thing, we want to hear what do you think? what are your scores are you in line with john because if you're not in line with john you're probably wrong yeah john watch has watched 496 movies so far let's let's be honest with ourselves john is the most he is the most accurate film person i've ever met when it comes to like films if you if you go to john and go what do you think about his film he says something i would agree with that so in other words follow me on letterbox follow john on letterbox what's your letterboxing It is big John Bowsky with no H in John because that would be wrong.

There'll be wrong. There you go. Follow him on Ladabox. Corey, how do they follow people on you? Whatever you do? I don't have social media for the most part. Great. I don't remember what my thing is.

What the fuck is my thing? I have no idea. I'm on Instagram, but that's it. What the fuck? Guys, what's my Instagram thing? is the captain explodey I think so I don't know

I'm captain explode you just just go go Gapton Explority you'll probably find me Yeah you'll probably find Dylan Yeah yeah Anyway It's been lovely seeing you all once more

We'll see you again in the future Behav yourselves Bye bye Thank you Bye bye Fuck you