The Watch - Apple’s Upcoming Entry Into the Streaming Wars and Reviewing ‘Captain Marvel’ | The Watch

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

On March 25, Apple will host a group of movie and TV producers and actors at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, to unveil plans for its upcoming streaming service (10:20). Plus, ‘Captain Marvel’ missed the mark in many ways—what does that mean, if anything, for the larger quilt Marvel is trying to stitch (32:45)? Further Reading: “Apple’s Big Spending Plan to Challenge Netflix Takes Shape,” John Koblin Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's on-dash-running.com slash watch. Come run with me. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Bud Light. Did you know not all alcohol products are required to list their ingredients? That was news to me. Bud Light is changing the game. They believe that we deserve to know our beer's ingredients. So they put an ingredients label right on their packaging.

Bud Light, brewed with hops, barley water, and rice. No corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors. Find out what ingredients are in your beer. Bud Light, enjoy responsibly. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I'm an editor at The Rigger.com and joining me in the studio. Now that's what I call the 90s. It's Andy Greenwald. You know, this is a big moment for us. It's nice to be back together, but what our listeners don't know is I had movie night with Bay last night. I hadn't seen you like two weeks. What's up?

Yeah. Typically, Andy planning situation where it's just like, I really want to do this, but I don't know if I can. Did you think I was going to flake? Yeah, definitely. When I went dark for 90 minutes, just like right during the crucial mission. Well, you were like, I have to put my kids down to bed, and then it was just like you had to go spulunking for like ancient minerals. And what were those caves outside of Philadelphia? Crystal Caverns?

Am I making that up? I think you're having a stroke. What was it even the thing? The caves? Bobby, you're from Philly. Bobby's from Philly too Kind of Yeah, Crystal Cave

That's the thing I fucking nailed it Get out of here man I knew I felt like a Why don't I just do this podcast solo Sometimes? Greenwald it's Monday You do

We're having this conversation now We hung out last night We did Incredible hang By the way It was a tough bedtime Thanks for asking We went and saw Captain Marvel

And we're gonna talk a little bit I know that Captain Marvel Has been well trod ground Not on your podcast network Not on this podcast Not on this pod We're going to talk a little bit about what it was like as children of the 90s to watch this 90s set film.

As old men of the late aught teens. What are we calling this? I don't know. And then we're also going to talk. I want to talk a little bit about this Apple story in the New York Times. Do you want to start? You want to start with just a little personal?

A couple other things. Oh, sure. I do, okay, you want to do personal first? I don't have anything, honestly. Really? You were in Texas? I talked about that. I went to the beach.

Congratulations. Thanks. I just think there's, We don't do this. So I'm putting this idea. Maybe our Facebook group can pick up the slack on this. But I feel like we've been talking about new trends and TV watching recently. You know, we were talking about people, I don't know.

There's a word maybe for the comfort you find in shows that already exist as opposed to the shock of the new. You know, people, a friend of ours, Sarah Lewin, who listened to the podcast, was just posting about how she had never watched the office. and then in three weeks watch 201 episodes of the office and now it says, where are all my friends? So I just feel like there are a new phenomenon

in TV watching. Sarah said that to you like a text message or something? No, on social media. She didn't even say it to me. Okay. She said it to her internet friends. Gotcha.

A new trend, but there's something else that I noticed this weekend, which is something I wanted to bring up, but also maybe is a way to cover the fact that I did not myself watch this show this weekend is catastrophe.

Oh yeah, I watched all the episodes. Up until the last one. Okay, so what I wanted to say was, I've never seen this happen before. The fourth and final season of the fantastic, what's going to say, sitcom, comedy, half hour, British American, whatever.

It's on Amazon here, Sharon Hogan, Rob Delaney. Brilliant, brilliant show. Fourth season, fourth and final season, drops. The way you do this, can I just, can I interject, when you're like, I haven't seen it, brilliant show. I know you've seen it before,

but you really are getting, like, perilously close to going Hollywood, the way you say that. Brilliant, brilliant. Wonderful two-hander. You know what, Sharon Horgat, genius, never seen any of her work. Lovely woman, never met her. From what I understand, that's just a savage intellect.

What a talent. Not sure if she can read. Never met her. Yeah. Just to say, I saw a number of people saying that they cannot bring themselves to watch it. You're looking at one of the, I couldn't watch the end. They didn't want to watch it. No, it's not that I didn't want it to be over.

It's just been like a long year. I know it's only March. And the reaction to the last one was like, I'm like swimming in my own tears. Oh my God. Yeah. Not just, I think just because the show's over,

I think I don't want to give away what happens at the end of the series. Rob Delaney's character flies up to the asteroid as it's approaching Earth. Yeah. And he says to Ben Affleck's character, you go marry, live Tyler, and he blows himself up on the asteroid. What's the name of the Scottish guy who vapes on the show? Well, his character's name's Chris, I think. Right. Chris, is he the one who does the animal crackers in this?

Yeah, he's the, uh, Chris is kind of like darkest timeline, Simon Pegg. I thought you said darkest timeline Chris Ryan. But I actually, his life seems pretty good. I just meant the phenomenon of like having the thing that you like, but then not watching it. Yeah. Which I think you could call Greenwalding. Uh, yeah. Because I'm not watching it out of like some sort of like unease with it ending.

You're not watching it because you've, uh, mismanaged your time, right? Correct. But others. But now you're making it sound like I might not watch it for the same reason that I turned to you in a dark movie theater last night and said, I won't be watching Godzilla King of Monsters. Because we said, why? We had quite a time last night. So we were at the movies last night, the lovely vista theater. Lovely. And the trailers came on. And it was like sitting next to Junior Soprano, like in the movie theater. Like late, late Soprists. Superpranist, Junior Supremon, not like when he was sharp. It was like all these trailers that I've watched multiple times in my capacity as a thinker, editor,

and public speaker on the internet. Public speaker, yes. And like the Godzilla King of Monsters ad came on, trailer came on. And he was just like, what's this? And I was like, it's Godzilla King of Monsters. I'm going to see the shit out of this. And he sits there and watches like a minute and a half of this. And he just goes, I won't be seeing this.

No, no. First I said, is that fear of fun? Farminga. What was the movie? You said? What was the movie where like Vera Farmiga recently seen in what?

I don't, I don't. The departed? Yeah, the departed. I was like, the best thing about asking Chris in a dark movie theater if it's Vera Farmiga is he doesn't know

which way the arrow is pointing. Is that a go sign? Yeah. Or is that a not? So it's like it's Vera Farmiga when Millie Bobby Brown appeared on screen. He goes, oh, that's her.

I did. Yeah. Kyle Chandler, O'Shea Jackson, Sally Hawkins, Vera Formiga. Charles Dance. Charles Dance. And he was just like, I'm not going to see this. And I just said, is that because there's too many good actors in it? That's my new barometer.

No, it was actually, I did bring this up, not as part of a long campaign of self-ownage, but because it was just the world getting destroyed. That's why you're not going to see Godzilla King of Monsters. to watch Rome. Rome. Pillar of the West. Overrun by like three-headed It just was sort of a bumper.

Did they have a shot of Rome getting hit? I guess. And DC too. DC's gone. Yeah. Yeah. The swamp. Yo, Godzilla drain the swamp. Yeah, but then he put a new swamp on top of the swamp. So it was an experience.

They needed somebody to come in and clean up that town. Finally. Are you going to make a bumper cigarette? What's up? Cockey Mitch. Are you going to make a poker sticker? Godzilla, King of All Monsters, 2020? Why not? Why not?

What do you run as an independent? How do you think Godzilla feels about the Green New Deal? Where do you think he'll caucus? Do you think he'll like caucus with the... Can you imagine, wait a second? Yeah. If Godzilla was running for president. Okay.

I'm already... And he's at a coffee shop in Iowa. He's like Godzilla walks in. He jumps up on the counter and the counter just like goes down into the center of the earth because of his density. Because he's a giant prehistoric monster? Would Godzilla get the same coverage as Beto? It's like, you know what?

He shows up everywhere. Talks to everyone. Walk in any room. The reason why... Yeah. Godzilla's kind of a cipher, though. It's just like you put what you want on him. You laugh.

Uh-huh. Chris. Uh-huh. But the reason why Godzilla is not a viable candidate for the Democrats in 2020 is he can't campaign in Iowa because he cannot traverse land without reeking an endless swath of destruction behind him. and he can't fly private.

Think of the visuals of him making an announcement in front of a cornfield that he had just let a blaze. I'm into it. Frankly, The carbon footprint. He's smaller than my footprint? I'm into it. Should we talk about this movie?

No, let's talk about Apple first, because I have a huge segue to do. Oh, okay, well, we serve as segues above all else. We want to do a little, so this is like the newsier part, and we'll talk about Captain Marvel afterwards, and that way you should listen to the whole thing because I think Andy and I have interesting takes on Captain Marvel, but I understand you may be Captain Marveled out.

Also, we should talk about the popcorn dispersal. Last night, you did not carry your share of the weight. Yesterday in the New York Times, John Coblin, excellent reporter over there, put out a story about the upcoming Apple event, which is taking place on March 25th in Cupertino, California. One week from today. I've never been there, lovely town.

And it is essentially, by all accounts, it's going to be this huge rollout for Apple's content play. Their play into scripted and non-scripted TV. And the pieces just kind of goes through what that event's going to be like this 1,000 seat theater,

Reese Witherspoon, JJ Abrams, many luminaries. All the friends of the pod. All the friends of the pod are going to be there doing Brie Larson, Jason Mamoa, Octavia Spencer. They're just going to have a bunch of stars up there, a bunch of showrunners. And they're going to announce their opening slate, presumably,

their opening slate of programming. how they're going to program, right? Because unless I'm mistaken, we still don't quite understand it. We don't know whether or not there's going to be a new product, whether it's going to, presumably it's going to exist inside of the iTunes interface,

I would assume. Right, you mean by new product, you don't mean like a new phone. You mean like a new app or a new app. Yeah, like you have to download like an Apple programming app or something. Because they've done that, they've done a smart job seating that TV app onto all of our devices. Yes. Which for those of us who use an Apple TV is quite handy.

Uh-huh. And they announced that they also are in pretty late-stage discussions with premium cable programmers like HBO and Showtime and the like to basically have their libraries

as part of their service. So that also is what Amazon Prime does. You can get HBO and stars on... But they're additional. I mean, to be clear, it's not to have their libraries be part of their service, it's to be able to bundle separately. So you wouldn't need a separate

HBO Go or now or whatever it is, you wouldn't need to have your cable, HBO with your cable company, you could theoretically cut the cord and still get HBO as part of your iTunes bill. And would you think that's going to be an additional fee on top of the baseline Apple? Well, so what I don't understand is what the baseline fee is. So for example, if you subscribe to Apple Music. It's like $8.99, I think. A month, right? Is it, is it all going to be inclusive in the same way that Amazon Prime video content is also the free shipping and the music that no one uses. Yes. They're also introducing some new newsstand stuff, right, for magazine subscriptions. My guess is it'll all somehow be the same bill, but there will be tiers of it. I would imagine,

I would imagine that it has something to do with it. It's not a particularly robust opening inning for these guys in terms of what they're going to be presenting. Like, it's not, I think that Disney Plus will probably come out of the gate with a lot more stars in their eyes in terms of having a Star Wars show and the entire Disney library that all families in America will be like, I have to sign up for this? Well, that's the thing. I mean, that's the thing that I don't quite understand

and the article didn't even do the best job explaining, I would say, not because the Times did a bad job reporting it, because I don't know if there are answers, which is, you can watch any movie ever or TV show ever on Apple now. It's just through iTunes,

and you pay for it. Yeah. And the benefit of paying extra tends to come from the libraries, which is why we're seeing these companies spend so much money to build them up. So I don't get what Apple,

I mean, will they be offering some of these shows free with your music subscription. I mean, I don't quite get it, especially because I don't know who is signing up for Apple TV specifically just because they want to see amazing stories.

Right. And to your point, Apple's play here rather than volume, although I assume at some point, maybe a year or two from now, we will look back and say, oh, there's like 40 shows on Apple. Their play here is stardom, is star power. I would argue

that they are slightly misreading the market here in terms of not only who is famous, which I mean, just to take nothing away from Reese Witherspoon, but Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anderson

with Steve Correll in a show about morning shows, which they are insisting is coming on. This article said they're almost done shooting. They're done shooting. It was,

I think, called Top of the Morning. Well, that was the book that it was based on. As of now, this show has no title. Right. And has already gone

through multiple showrunners. Two show runners. Yeah. I don't know if that's like, take my money. Unless it's, great, which I think is sort of what you're speaking to. Well, I don't even...

So, I've started thinking about this a lot, where we just kind of like blindly go into these situations. And look, it's not like the people who make our television content now are... It's not like the Southern Poverty Law Center makes television for us. You know what I mean? Like, we're all watching this corporate, you know, these are functions of huge mega corporations. But there was...

Undercurrent in this article that basically there's been a culture clash between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Oh, yeah. And that there have been these little things not only in terms of how little Apple is sort of telling the people making the shows about when their shows will be up, how they will be available, how they will be marketed, if at all. There's also been some mild interference, reported mild interference about content, both in terms of, for instance, whether or not M. Knight-Shamaun's allowed to use an image of a crucifix in his thriller show. and the use and presentation of Apple products in these shows, which is hilariously drifting towards Jack Donagie territory. Yes. And we kind of like, I think, entered into this moment being like,

wow, this brave new world, streets paved with gold, everybody can get a show. They're just going to have 800 shows on. You're never going to be bored. And not only personally, do I feel mildly bored by all this stuff, But secondarily, I do think we're getting into a really weird place where it's like, it's like we're getting towards idiocracy or something where it's like, check out my super-sized Apple television show brought to you by Reese Witherspoon and this phone.

And an Apple Newton, which I salvage from the 90s. It's kind of simple, though, to say, just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at another thing. Yes. And the hubris of giant companies often is when they mess that up. there are thousands of examples. We could talk about the Amazon Fire phone and all that as a recent example. But this culture clash between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, which I think you're right to put in the caveat that even Hollywood companies are companies and corporations.

There's no question. But there is a different culture when you have been at least allowed to believe that you were in a purely creative enterprise, you know, plus or minus whatever number of product placements per hour, whatever. It's a culture clash we've been seeing for the last five, six years.

You know, Amazon definitely had a large culture clash when they arrived, and that was clear. And it was clear from what we've heard anecdotally from people making shows for them. But even, and I think I probably said this years ago on the podcast, in my previous incarnation as a critic, when Amazon showed up, they

just fundamentally didn't understand why they had to have a press shop or how they should interact with critics. Now, I'm not going to sit here and argue the validity of whether critics should be serviced or whatever. I think they should because that was obviously what I did. And that is in the piece, yeah, because they're talking about how technology companies generally

treat their intellectual property as like a state secret. Exactly. Whereas Hollywood is much more about whining and dining and seeding the idea that you know, this movie is going to be a player in the award season. You have to watch this show. We're really excited about this show. We get emails about it. that kind of stuff. And it's a real, and it, this sounds gross, especially as someone who just talked about his dear friend Sharon Hogan this way, but it is a relationship business. Sure. Of course it is.

And, you know, it's one of the reasons this is not a state secret, but HBO and FX make really good shows. But HBO and FX also have incredibly good press shops who employ across the board generally smart and nice people who are approachable and are real with you, or honest with you, or direct with you about, and with their product and also about what they're going to offer you and what it means, and et cetera, et cetera. There's a learning curve to get there. There's also, for example, and we can use a recent example about this, Netflix, you know, the version that was sold to the public for a long time is Netflix,

you know, they keep their data opaque, which helps everyone. You know, no one falls prey to the ratings game, and creators are free to create what they want to create, and it's this, you know, utopia. The flip side of that being that there are apparently like a number of algorithms and data points that creators, can use or are asked to use to hit certain, like, the hardest algorithms.

Harder than anyone else. I mean, you know, HBO, a titan in the industry for decades, until they developed the HBO Go and now direct-to-consumer basically model, they didn't know who their subscribers were. They were making shows that they believed to be HBO shows, but they didn't know who they were making them for because they didn't have the data. Netflix always has the data all the time,

down to the second you spend watching it. So a show that we both had a lot of time for and admired a lot one day at a time that got canceled last week after three seasons of, you know, great television and also huge outpouring constantly in which, you know, the symphony to which it danced, dissent, was the love of Twitter, basically, and love from the internet. And Netflix seemed to conduct that like a symphony orchestra, basically. Especially lately, yeah. We're not sure if we're going to renew this, so you'd better show us how much you love. it. It's actually kind of sounds like a hostage situation. And then Netflix was like, hey guys, sorry we can't renew your show because no one watched it, but please know we respect your voices and you are seen. It's like, no, you don't get to do it both ways, you know? And I spoke to Mike Royce,

who's one of the co-creators of the show. He doesn't know what bar he's supposed to clear. All he's able to do is make the best show he can, which is great. But then also try to encourage busy Phillips to fly a plane over Netflix headquarters with waving a flag. saying renew one day at a time. I don't know if good art comes from those circumstances either. Is that happening? She did. I don't think Mike Roy's did it.

Can Busy Phillips fly? She didn't personally fly the plane. I think she used budget of her show. I didn't know if we were getting like another Harrison Ford golf course landing situation. Have you seen the Aviator? Have I seen flight? So take the whole thing. Busy Phillips is like, we're going to roll it.

Jesus. I'd love to see that. Yeah, let's make flight with busy Phillips. Should we reach out? She's tech avail. Apple, what's up? She is out here in these L.A. streets. If you go to Squirrel, you can pitch this to her yourself.

Anyway, all of this is to say, this is a culture clash between these two worlds, and the early days of anything are super bumpy. Now, Apple hired smart executives who were respected and liked from Sony to run their content studios. They have enough money to make mistakes for a decade, and it doesn't matter. And this opening lineup, as outlined, and I'm sorry, I digressed way away from it, on paper is super impressive. Let me tell you a little about this opening lineup really quickly.

The opening lineup should include a Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Dramedy, I'm going to assume comedy drama, also starring Steve Carell, Billy Crudup and Mark Duplas, based on Brian Stelter's top of the morning, which is a... Not Brian Brown. Inside account of what it's like on morning shows. What if the name was Brian Bryan-Bryon-Seltter? This is an interesting idea, especially because I feel like this has been in the works for quite a while. And morning shows like almost all televised, quote-unquote, new shows.

And I don't mean that in the fake news way. I just mean everything is kind of news now in the last three years. What will it take for Godzilla to get on the debate stage? Well, I don't think this is going to be exactly the news. Sorry. Is there no room for the king of monsters? on this stage? I'm sorry, I'm hearing from the PA? No, no. In fact, there's not room.

Anyway, I just find that interesting. How are you going to make a sort of shiny, happy, presumably, like, romantic comedy show about a newsroom of sorts in this day and it. It doesn't really matter. I just don't know if that would be necessarily, like, sign me up, right? I think the other thing you're talking about is what is sticky, like, what gets traction? And this is when you start thinking, like, a programmer or a tech company, but, like, how are you going to get the people not only to engage, but to stay engaged? And often, you know, and that's why Amazon pays a quarter of a billion dollars to develop a Lord of the Rings show.

And I guess that's why Apple chose to spend, I can't even imagine, the acting budget on this show. Absolutely. But we don't know, and this has been an issue with movies for decades, and now it's an issue with TV as well, do big stars attract people? They attract media attention at the beginning, but do they keep viewers there in the way that you need them to? And this is, this speaks to what Apple's doing. Of course, on the flip side, they have something like a reboot of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, which will have a different cast every week. Yes. And may be the sort of thing that appeals to you week to week without that, that heavy

celeb presence. So they're trying to have it both ways. That was, and that show is run by Everkitsis and Adam Horowitz. And they took over for Brian Fuller, whose vision of amazing stories was apparently too dark, not only for Apple, but for Steven Spielberg. Yeah. The other shows that they are supposed. supposedly going to be launching in and around whenever this thing goes live is Are You Sleeping,

which is a show starring Octavia Spencer and Lizzie Kaplan about sort of true crime obsessives and podcast, which I think that's actually a really cool idea for a show. I can't wait to see that. For All Mankind, which is a Ronald D. Moore space series. He obviously did Outlander and Battlestar Galactica famously. And rode on the Amtrak surfliner with us to Comic Con three years ago. Oh yeah, that's right. Chilling. Black jeans. Chloe Grace Moritz, him and us. Just enjoying the California coastline. You know what, Chris?

It's a relationship business. It's kind of, Brian Raldi Moore, incredible guy. Great, great guy. What a thinker. Love to sit in the quiet car with him. That is about what would happen if the space race never ended. That's cool. Otherwise, we've got a fantasy epic starring Jason Momoa,

a new Mnite Sharmelon thriller. Called crucifixes. Sorry, crucifixes. Can't get enough of them. How could they not have seen this problem coming? With Rupert Grint and Lauren Ambrose, a lot of redheads there. Shout out to them. A bunch of stuff.

Nothing that I am like, here's the thing. Somehow or some way, and maybe I'm coming from like a liberal elite media bubble. They made like this stupid brick that I'm holding in my hand. Indispensable. Yes. I don't know how they make TV indispensable. I want to be clear that Chris is holding a brick. His phone is still on the table.

I'm holding a bumper sticker that says vote Godzilla. Bing of a Monsters. Yeah, I don't know how they make content in this age of that you can find it everywhere, where people are already paying through the nose for a bunch of different stream services, and a lot of them are still paying $200 a month or $150 a month for a cable package. And then they're also going to add more stuff onto it. Aside from this fact that I don't know how many hours in the day there are. Well, and I will just bring in the other piece of it, which is, you know, this is week 10 for me.

in a writer's room. Yeah. This is hard. Like, I mean, I knew that. Yeah. And I'd been in rooms before. But it's hard. And...

Now imagine if somebody was like, can Rosario Dawson use garage band on her iPhone? Yes. I mean, I'll just say yes. I was going to ask you if Rosario Dawson is famous. I got real worried

when you started that line of questioning. She's famous. She's famous. But what I mean is, just from purely, from a creative place, like, it's incredible to be the beneficiary of these outrageous boom times. It is incredibly hard to make anything creative and all the people making the shows, even the shows that I have callously dismissed in the past as a critic, people worked hard on these things and I don't ever mean to diminish that.

But to work very hard on something, and some of these shows you're mentioning are finished shooting. Yeah. And they're in the can and then be like, well, will anyone ever see this? What, you know, if what will happen to this? Is this really just the, speaking of bricks? Is this really just the smallest brick at the bottom of the kind? content wall that they want to build. Yeah.

They will pay off in 10 years. And maybe my grandkids will like, you know, speak into their space spectacles and be like, play grandpa's show that he made. And then they find the old episodes. Oh, mighty Godzilla. Please. Please let me watch this Octavia Spencer show. President Mr. Godzilla.

Bless me with fire. King of all monsters. But what if he were, now I'm just going to put in, again, I'm sorry, I'm a call from my friend Sharon. Sharon, I got to put you on hold. What, I'm just pitching here, what if it was Godzilla president of all monsters? What if we were anti-royalists? Yeah, that's true. And he had to work within the confines. He could dissolve the monarchy with fire. First of all, that's a great start. And then what if he had to work with this bicameral system? Yeah, sure. Would that be tough? Reaching across the aisle with that big paw he has.

What I'm saying is Mothra has three heads like the three branches of the United States government. I actually, I was riffing. I don't know any of them. Bobby, look that up. Does Mothra have three heads? Bobby, what's the auto fill for does Mothra have? Mothra has one head. Wow.

Okay, well, at the end of the trailer, just looks like a butterfly. Totally. It's just snowflake. There were three-headed monster at the end of the trailer of the movie I'm not going to see. I don't think that was Mothra, yeah. Okay, so now, onto the Shazam trailer. I guess the last thing I wanted to say was just this is, I would not have guessed in 2002 or something. You know, whenever it felt like Apple was just, whenever it felt like everything Apple made felt like it became a part of your life in some way or another.

It's funny to be here in 2019. And it almost feels like they don't know what we need anymore. And they're like, do you guys need more TV? And especially do you guys need PG-rated TV? that has no crucifix. Can I say who the bad guy in this TV show is? Capitalism.

Not to get all greenie deal on you. We should go straight to our mid-roll ass. I can't wait. But here's the thing that was in this John Coblin piece, which is that Apple, comma, I'm paraphrasing, the first American corporation to have $1 trillion in market value has had flat growth.

I'm sorry, Apple King of All Monsters. You need to have a lot. $2 trillion growth? I'm just saying, it's cool that you make the phone that everyone in the world has. Now I can't stop thinking of Godzilla wearing a black turtle neck

being like, it has to say hello! Amazing. Extremely Elizabeth Theronos voice. It is a weird moment, but actually we're talking about Apple now and maybe they're going to make great TV and maybe not, but also we are in this moment,

as we keep pointing out on the podcast, that things are very much in flux. And these companies that have seemed to be able to do no wrong, or at least grow without pause, are all caught out a little bit. Yeah. And not knowing, it is a thing, not to get Warren Buffett about it, but I do think showing a lack of confidence does have an effect on, it does, I do think that trickles down. I think eventually that even does reach the consumer. And that is actually a segue I would like to make to Captain Marvel, but you said you had a segue. No, I do have, no, that's exactly the segue I was going to use.

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All right, Andy, let's talk about Captain Marvel. And I guess the segue I was going to use was last night was one of the first times, gosh, I can't even remember the last time this really happened during a Marvel movie in the theater where I was like, oh yeah, this isn't for me.

Yeah. Not even that it was not for me because it's like I don't like I love comic book movies. I mean, I think they're a blast. But I was just like, oh yeah, this whole thing isn't about making a good movie or telling a cool story,

although that's an added benefit. It's about creating this giant 360-degree money-sucking experience for everybody. And I think that I'm coming at it from this cynical perspective. I bought your ticket, buddy, but all right. Because for some, reason, which I still have not quite unpacked, and I know Fennessee's written about this, and they talked about it on the big picture, this movie is largely set in the 90s. And that's our decade.

And that is a decade that we grew up with, that had a much different kind of relationship, I think, towards popular culture. At least you and I did when we were growing up about what was ethical or authentic or what was the right way to do things. and I think that the character that Brie Larson plays in this movie who has many names

Carol. Carol. Viers is situated as kind of like this like punk rock superhero as kind of as a sort of a rebel. They would like to get there.

And it's sort of strange to see that in that context. Not to say that you know, commodify your descent is as old as descent Chris, I remember sipping a cold can of okay soda flipping through the latest issue of the baffler.

I turned down the Drag City 7 inch that was playing on my Fisher Price record player because that's all I needed to be. Put aside my cynicism about whether or not this is all just to create

like rides at some future Marvel world in Disney. I think it was also the first time where I was like whatever this is movie 22 or 23, it's like they're running, sometimes the stitches show

a little bit on these things. And that was certainly the case with Captain Marvel, which I think has... It has to be probably the least fun I've had at a Marvel movie in the theater. Because it's the first one we've seen together. That's right, because I just couldn't get over your disrespect

of Godzilla King of Monsters. Ruined it. Is this your king? That was weird when I stood up and yelled that. What minute mark was it? 15, 19, 26, when I leaned over and I said, Triple Frontier was better than this.

I like six. It was some point in the middle of Jew law and Brie Larson dueling. We can talk about this on a number of levels because this, as you alluded to, functions as very expensive cross-stitching in a much larger corporate garment. Yes. But I think first and foremost, it's worth saying this was a bad movie. This was a very, very bad movie on a number of levels. and it's fascinating to think about.

It's really interesting to wonder why and how it started to go wrong. Clearly, the hesitation that we picked up in those various ads was borne out by the final product. This is a movie that couldn't really decide which movie it wanted to be and seemed to decide rather than being a sort of plucky origin story of a human person decided to make it the sort of backwards engineered find yourself amidst your memories but also bring in the larger Cree Scroll War IP for future Avengers movies or future Captain Marvel sequels.

It tried to do all of that. And there seems to be a lot of what was now flashback footage shot. Yeah. I would imagine that there is a linear version of this movie where she's in Top Gun, California in the 90s. well I guess it would be 1989. 89 she left.

Right. So she's in the 80s. Right. And she is training to be a pilot and wants to be like a fighter pilot and gets hooked up with the Net Benning's character because I think a Net Benning presumably shot like a fair amount of footage

as the other version of herself? Yeah, the Pegasus woman. Right. And then it turns out that she gets captured. They have like the crash. She gets captured. it was Captain Marvel. It's...

But I understand why that would have been a four-hour-long movie if you also want to do so much Cree scroll space opera shit. It's weird. And here's my,

here's my macro take on this. We've been talking about Marvel movies on this podcast almost since they started. I think the first Avengers movie came out a few months after we started doing the podcast in 2012.

During that time, DC has also started and then collapsed and then started and failed and then apparently successfully relaunched. Right, right. By being like, forget the universe. And, you know, I think that the, the top line criticism that we've had about what DC got wrong and about what Marvel got right consistently was that Marvel had this unerring sense of its own characters.

They seem to deeply understand the characters. They seem to understand that the best characters they had, even the ones that prior to becoming global sensations were relatively unknown. could be reduced to a log line, you know, to a very, very simple pitch that you understand. You know, Spider-Man is a high school kid whose high school problems sometimes outweigh his problems as a radioactively powered spider guy. Yeah. That Iron Man has the metal outside, but he's vulnerable inside. Or that also that he's just, you know, he's a sexy billionaire also. I mean, there are these little details that I'm having trouble communicating it, but Kevin Feigie never did. And even as they got further down the road into Guardians of the Galaxy or Dr. Strange or even Ant Man, it seemed like he was playing with House Money because he seemed to be taking these swings.

And even when the movies weren't great, Dr. Strange, I don't think it was great. Ant Man's fine. That sort of compass as to what these characters were seemed ever true and cut through all of the other aspects of it and at least made an enjoyable theater-going experience, regardless of who you were sitting with. Yeah. This is the first time I think they got scared. This is the first time they didn't seem to know what they had or what they were doing with it. And I don't know where to put the blame.

I don't even know if blame is the word. I don't know if it falls to the many screenwriters credited or Flacken Bowden who directed it or Fygie or a corporate mandate. Or the very, very delicate act of trying to thread this needle for a character that is going to be so crucial but had yet to exist. I think that that last part is the most important and probably the biggest pressure point. Because Avengers Infinity War ends with this page going out. with this signal going out to Captain Marvel. So the worst possible thing that could have happened is happened. Who do you call this person?

That's enormous. Yep. That's an enormous amount. Like, forget, like, that's an enormous amount of responsibility. In just pure storytelling terms, the phone call you make is to this character. So now, not only do you have to make this movie, and it has to come out presumably before endgame, but the character has to be, it has to be. not only the actor has to have so much charisma

and so much magic to them that they would be the person's superhero's call in the moment of need. And you sort of have to explain their powers in such a way that you'd be like, man, they're bringing in Dennis Eckersley. They got it. They figured it out. But I left that movie however long it was

and I still don't really understand why she's basically a god and can just like fight space ships and I get it. I mean, I get like, she got hit with an energy core and she's got all this juice inside of her. That's great. But I don't even understand what she's going to do.

Like, you know, I don't understand like, oh, her whole thing is she can do this. And they need her because of this. And this speaks to, also, the thing about Marvel is the person inside the suit is always more interesting than the suit. Not this time. And not this time. And a couple things. It's an incredibly hard character to unpack. Because as a character, Carol Danvers has existed in the Marvel universe for 40 years. But I cannot imagine more complicated or fucked up history until

very, very recently. This is a character who has gone through three codenames, Ms. Marvel, binary, Captain Marvel. This is a character who spent all of the 80s as a disembodied spirit voice inside rogue from the X-Men's head. Oh, yeah. This is a character who I don't even now I understand in the comics because they restated who she is in a really cool way. And a lot of that credit goes to the writer Kelly Sue DeKonik, who had a very amusing cameo in the movie as someone who's giving her, who gives Carol's side eye in the L.A. subway. She basically distilled it to something that is said briefly,

which is this higher, faster, farther tagline that they tried to put on the movie, basically created that, reimagined this character as a young woman who was told she couldn't succeed for her whole life, keeps getting back up and found a really strong human throughline in a character that was otherwise just alien mumbo jumbo. For me, that would have been the way to tell the story in the movies. Just show a young woman through her career, through every step of the way, getting back up again. Somewhere along the line, they got scared. And I don't know.

I truly don't know, and I wouldn't presume to know, if this came from a deep desire to make her superpowered god in time for endgame. If it came from a desire to expand the space aspect of the Marvel universe. Which is where they want to take the movies anyway. For future movies. Yes. Or they got shook because this was their first character. There was lead character who was a woman.

I don't know. The DC, it has to be, I'm sorry, but for corporate reasons alone, you compare it to DC's Wonder Woman, which did a much better job. It's a much better movie, but it's also a much closer movie. but it's also a much cleaner, cleaner explanation of who this character is in this world. And this was so muddled, it was so surprising that ultimately that get-back-up thing

becomes this sort of rousing, moving... That her superpower is, in fact, being human, right? But also that whole montage of flashback stuff that only comes into play when she's struggling to defeat Annette Benning AI that's not even there while she's on the floor of an orbiting lab while everyone's just watching her. And then they play no damn.

out, it's a missed opportunity. And I think that's the bummer to me more than anything else. Yeah, I think that far be it for me to critique something as successful, even as Captain Marvel. So obviously, like, it doesn't necessarily matter. No, they got away with one because people love Avengers movies. Right. And this, this fills in the quilt. But I think that there was so many different things that they had to do. And the things that they, so they had to do all these different things that we're talking about, about connecting the two Avengers movies and about setting up maybe the next iteration of the Avengers and setting up this space,

this space battle that will presumably be very like up front for the next 10 movies or whatever. But one of the things that kind of always catches my eye and we've talked about a lot in this podcast is when they start these Marvel movies with the marketing and they start throwing out there like, this is kind of a 70s political thriller. Or this is,

I don't know. I mean, like there's tons of different examples, like Shane Black kind of making a 90s action comedy out of Iron Man 3. or saying Dr. Strange is a horror movie. Yeah, we're saying Dr. Strange is a horror movie or whatever. With this, I don't, I think that they had some signifiers they wanted to throw around. They had a soundtrack idea. They had a look they wanted to give Brie L. L.arson and some of the other characters.

They had this idea to de-age Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg. Worked better for the former than the latter. And I think that they just kind of missed the story part about it, though. They weren't like, this is why this story has to take place in the 90s. This is why she has to crash through a blockbuster video. this is why she has to wear a nine-ish-nail shirt. It doesn't actually have any meaning whatsoever. It's just signifier to signifier in the emptiest way possible.

And nothing highlights that more than multiple iterations of the joke where a bunch of characters look at error-appropriate technology and react strongly to it. Yeah. I mean... Like the CD-ROM stuff. But somehow you can still use a mob-bell payphone to call space. Yeah. So don't give me that.

Technology is magic in all these movies. It doesn't matter. There's just, and there's just also, like, really practical. Like, Andy and I were watching, and we were kind of, like, would look at each other at these different moments where, like, Jude Law kills, like, shows up, and it's, you know. The science guy? Brie Larson is actually the science guy scroll.

And you're just kind of like, why did the scene even have to happen? Why did he stay? Why is he there? He gets to know that, he gets to find out that she's aware that he was the bad guy. which feels like something you wouldn't want him to know. So why even set it up? Yeah, it's just sort of like random scenes like that or even like they commit to this idea

when she first lands on Earth that she's just like, humans, what is this place of? Blockbuster videos you speak of. And then like five minutes later, she's like, I totally got it. You know? Yeah, I'm myself again. You don't have time for all that.

And then to do it in a movie that puts so much emphasis on Star Trek next generation level prosthetics. Yeah. And gags that don't work, you know, the way they've worked in other movies. And it's strange. I mean, that opening sequence on, after they leave the Cree home world and then they go to that other planet.

Yeah, they do that mission. Yeah. It's one of the worst lit and worst shot sequences. I mean, it was just bizarre. It's just, it doesn't look good. Yeah. And, you know, these are the kind of. Nor does the, nor do the stuff that they.

They shot in LA, though. These are the kind of nits you pick when you're not on the ride. You're not going along with it. And it's a bummer. And, you know, I don't know. I think they make a lot of good product. And I mean that with affection. I think they must know on some level the ways this missed the mark.

And there's certainly going to be opportunities to correct it because it's a big hit. She's going to be in a movie next month. And they're going to make sequels. And I am here. for furious Jude Law. Well, also, I do think that in addition, you know, it took a while for them to get Thor right. You know, it took a while.

Like, some of these movies and some of these characters take a couple of runs. I mean, the Captain America that we see now is so different than the first Captain America. That's true. So there's no reason why Captain Marvel 2 can't be excellent. It's true. I think they also have to...

And also, I would say that the sort of small ambitions of Ant-Man kind of felt a little tiring in the second one. So it's like, I think that there's, there's room for the stocks to go up and down since we're talking so much about business in this pod today. You know, like, I agree.

I think they also need to consider writing the character towards the strengths of your actor because I think that Brie Larson seems, at times this movie is confused about who the character is as we are. I think the character is written as just dominant. This is all-powerful person.

And I think that she as an actor is best in smaller and human moments. Now, obviously, that's easy to say after we've enjoyed her in, you know, room and playing with fire in short-term 12 and never seen her do this. I mean, doing this is a different kind of acting.

But, like, I think her best moments were with the little girl who plays the character that's going to grow up, sorry, spoiler, to be a character named Spectrum, who, by the way, for all of the 80s and 90s, was called Captain Marvel. So what a rich history to draw from.

But, like, when she's acting with someone who she's excited to be with and it's on a human level, I love watching her on the screen. I didn't buy the other stuff, and that's a problem. But I don't think it's necessarily a problem of performance. I do think it's a problem of clarity.

And you can tell that, like, Ben Mendelsohn, whom we professionally love quite a bit. Amazing guy, too. Personally, really deep, close friends with him. Ben, should we text him? He's such a character. He's always texting emojis. took the part because he's like, I don't want to be the same villain.

Oh, I get to be something different. Okay, yeah, you get to be a character in the 80s movie Alien Nation, I guess. Very strange. Very strange. Put some respect on Gemma Chan's name. Yeah. That was a weird, just a weird character art. But most of all, what I most want, Chris, is I just want the numbers on Lee Pace's contract.

It must be outrageous. It must be one of those. like early 2000s NBA contracts where they would sign like a power forward to a nine-year deal. Do you think? But it was like really bad numbers. I want to get Lee Pace's agent on this. And I want to know if one of the deal points was the percentage of performance that will be broadcast from Jude Law's hand. He's like, Lee has one question.

Will he be corporeal in blue makeup in a hood for the majority of the film? Or will he mostly be a hologram? Or could he just record one version of it that shows up in multiple different movies? Oh, that's smart. Yeah. That's smart. Yeah. And then what was the name of the character standing just beside him, giving him side eye?

Not science guy. Not, well, he was his own science guy. Right. Yeah. We all need a science guy. It is strange. And then, but then we get another run at it. Yeah.

And it will be interesting to see. Honestly, I mean, obviously, we're all in for end game. We're very interested in what it's going to be. But how will this action figure, which is what all these characters really are, fit with the set of everyone else? How will she be used and deployed? And the fear is she will be deployed ultimately as she was deployed in this movie, which is as the god particle.

Yeah, maybe, but maybe now she's kind of a changed person now that she knows that. You know what happens if you know you can throw spaceships around? But do you think her first question is going to be like, what happened with Elastica's second album? Yeah. Which, by the way, has some bangers on it.

Elastika's second album is great. Yeah, I know. But how are we going to explain it to her? You know, like what happened with the group and how Justine's a mixed media artist now in Colorado. Like, there's a lot to catch her up on. Before her.

We got to save her some old issues of NME. You know, we could do that. We could call our good friend Justine. That's a good post-podcast career for us. I think that's good for us. We'll wrap it up there. We'll be back on Thursday. Greenwald, thanks for coming by.

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