The Watch - 'Avengers: Infinity War’ Mega-pod and Why You Should Watch ‘Killing Eve’ (Ep. 253)

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald review this weekend’s massive blockbuster, ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ and discuss its plot, emotional stakes, and impressive accomplishment (2:00). Later, they discuss one of their favorite shows on television right now, ‘Killing Eve’ (51:00). *This episode contains spoilers For more on Avengers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Wyatt Cinnack's Problem Areas. Join Wyatt Cineck as he wades through America's most complex and confusing issues to look for some answers, whether they're helpful or not in HBO's news series, Wyatt Cinex Problem Areas. Apartments don't allow pets. Sublet it to your dogs. Now you don't have pets. You have tenants. Always running late.

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If you haven't heard Wolverine the Long Night, Marvel's first scripted podcast, you're missing out. The first seven episodes are really amazing. And if you start now, you'll end up binge listening to the whole thing just in time for the finale. If you like the first season of True Degiate, Detective. It's a lot like that. The show follows two special agents investigating a string of murders deep in Alaska. At first, they suspect Logan, a stranger with claws, aka Wolverine, aka the best X-Man. But between a night worshiping cult and a shady police force, things get a

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For today's episode of the watch, I hope you're ready to strap on your gauntlets because we're doing a megapod on Infinity War. Andy and I talked about that from most of the podcast. You can read tons of great stuff about the Infinity War movie on Theringer.com,

which is my favorite website. We have an exit survey, which a bunch of the staff participated in, Sean Fennessey wrote a fantastic piece last week about death and stakes in the MCU. So I highly recommend those things. We have all sorts of great coverage on The Ringer right now. I loved Allison's piece about Howard's End. Victor and Jordan Kahn have fantastic features today.

I also wanted to say a special shout out to Ben Lindberg's essay on God of War, which I thought was remarkable. So we have tons of great stuff to read. We also have great stuff to listen to. NBA playoffs are in full flight, so you should check out the Ringer NBA show. you should also check out a plucky little podcast from a great chef I've heard about named Dave Chang. The Dave Chang Show is on the Ringer podcast network, and you can check out that episode. You talked about the opening of what might be the best restaurant in Los Angeles, Major Domo.

I love that place. I love this podcast. You should really check it out the Dave Chang Show on the Ringer podcast network without further ado. Let's get into the watch. I ain't 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 editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. If I was going for a soulstone, he's who I'd throw off a cliff. It's Andy Greenwald! We've known each other for 22 years. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. That makes it sound like I have mixed emotions about you. Like that... It means...

I don't. You got 100% approval rating for me. It means... No, that means that you truly care for me and that I would be the last... thing you'd step on in your stairway to unimaginable power. That would be the last skull you crush. That's right.

I want to be that guy. Andy, it's Monday. We're going to be talking, obviously, about Avengers Infinity War for the majority of this podcast. We're going in. We're also going to touch a little bit on killing Eve and maybe some other stuff at the end. Thursday. When are we doing the Hot 20 on the White House Correspondents dinner? Oh, WHCD?

Yeah. You didn't listen to my WHCD pod? Did you do one already? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Because I have so much faux outrage about everything. Not much housekeeping this week. Just Thursday, I think we'll probably have a ringer recommend show because Andy's out.

We'll also have my interview with Ice Age, the band from Denmark that rules. And they have a new record coming out called Beyondless this week. We have a little of that interview this week. One other house cleaning, I think we only unofficially said it, but the next entry in the book club. Yes. Patrick Hoffman's. Every Man a Menace. Yeah.

A personal favorite. Yeah. A new classic of the genre. We're very excited to talk about this. So get reading now. We'll probably cover it in about a month. Yeah. And we hope to have Patrick on when we do that book.

So let's talk about Infinity War. Yeah, we're going to spoil it. Yeah. Okay? Yeah, yeah. $600 million worth of tickets were sold worldwide. So you were one of them. You probably saw it.

Yeah. And if not, just follow this one away. There was a Thomas's English Muffins read at the end of it. So you can just skip to. that. They still got our back though, right? Oh, for sure. Yes. For sure, for sure. Because you need to carve up before a three-hour movie. Yeah. Now, how do you want to do this? Do you want to say up top, like, here's my synopsis of my feelings, or do you want to just go with what we liked it when we have some notes? What is a podcast, if not a synopsis of my feelings?

I just want to say that, you know, we have a great group percolating on Facebook, watch listeners, watch fans, just muffheads, the muffsters. Yeah. And I did. I did. I do. I I did notice it popped across my feed that there were some people out there clucking this weekend, just anticipating my hatred of this film. Well, you don't do yourself any favors. You can be a little bit of a Debbie Downer when it comes to some of this stuff. Wow, I thought you were going to wait until you had five Infinity Stones to throw me off a cliff. Wow. It took like six minutes of the podcast.

Guys, I kind of loved it. Yeah. I loved it. Look, um, the thing that, the thing that I, there are many things that we're going to communicate about this movie. We're going to talk about highs and lows and in between and why we liked it and the ways that we liked it

that were, some notes we might have. Sure. And also the ways that I think that we liked it creatively and also the ways that it was just a complete Marvel, pun intended of structure and how they pulled this off. Yeah. Truly astounding. And I would say that even if I didn't like the movie, frankly. But look, I was a comic book kid.

I loved comic books. Reading comic books, particularly Marvel comic books, as a kid from like ages, age 10 to 17 or 18, shaped how I think about storytelling and what excites me about storytelling, the possibilities of it. And probably more than any other comic book movie, this captured a large portion of it,

in terms of its spectacle, in terms of its ambition, in terms of its overlap. And also, yes, I'm going to say this, in terms of its stakes. Now, we can get into this from a whole different bunch of on-ramp. But I did immediately want to begin by targeting the criticism of this movie that I've seen out there that I think is more or less invalid.

The idea that this movie has no stakes because the large number of deaths that occur at the end of it are, of course, going to be wiped away in large part in the untitled Avengers sequel coming next summer, the one they filmed in tandem with this movie. Guys, this is a children's movie, okay? I understand that because we all see this and the cultural, industrial, complex demands that we podcasts about it and write 100,000 headlines and do everything that we do in culture now and cover it and take it seriously. This is a movie for younger people. It's cool that we like it. I liked it. But this is a movie for younger people. And one of the things that was most indelible about reading comic books as a younger person was skating up to the edge of heavy thoughts like death, peering over the edge, and then being able to know that you're going to be

safely pulled back. Probably the most influential comic book I ever read as a kid. I'm going to say this and I can't even believe I'm saying these words out loud. Are you ready for this? Sure. West Coast Avengers annual two. Okay. I had to Google it. It wasn't that much in the hard drive. This was an issue where the West Coast Avengers, which was a thing, like Hawkeye and Tiger, who was a tiger. Yeah, I remember her. They live in L.A. Anyway, it's a good choice. The weather's good. Great food in Korea Town. They were transported to the realm of death, who is a character in the Marvel Universe. And by the way, is Thanos' girlfriend in the comics.

Probably a good editorial decision not to include that. They really ups his, like, sort of midlife crisis that he's having. He seems a lot more like, exactly. I mean, everyone who buys a sports car or a motorcycle. Thanos or the girlfriend is like, what'd you do today? Well, you know, I kind of just put one group of people on this side and then another group of people on that side. I thought you were making the case that everyone who buys like a motorcycle after 50 is basically in love with death. Right.

But anyway, in this issue, the West Coast Avengers have to fight one-on-one, the East Coast Avengers, and one dies. And this is their way to, like, rescue each other from death. And you read this. And it's incredible, because this is, of course, what you want to see. This is what we do when we play the action figures against each other. Did they call them the East Coast Avengers or is it more like American League National League kind of thing? It's like OG Avengers. Okay.

And then at the end of it, it's all wiped away in everybody's friends. but this thing happened and we saw how it would play out. And that level of excitement and engagement with emotional stakes matters. And I think it's instructive. And I think that it's important to look at this movie for yourself and you can have your own issues with it as an adult human. Hopefully most of the people listening to this are adult humans. But also look at our friend Sean Fennessee's Twitter feed where he screenshoted his 14-year-old sister's reaction to him. And younger people who have never seen a movie like this or engage with storytelling like this,

where people could die. And what that means in their process, it's a baby step towards larger art and storytelling, I think. And I appreciated that aspect of it and that it stayed true to it. Yeah, I think that you hit on something in your opening statement that is very important. And probably the thing that made this film feel just a little bit special was the relationship it has not just to the comic book characters, but to comic book storytelling. and to the idea of a crossover event. So it's been a long time since I found myself thumbing through the stacks at a comic book store.

But one of my favorite things was always these collections that would bring together multiple titles under one story umbrella. And I thought that they did something kind of ingenious in this movie, which is that it is essentially, especially the first two acts, a collection of 25-minute movies. Yes. It's just, and then they, I was worried that what was going to happen was that we were going to be constantly ripped away from scenes just as something was getting interesting. Just as anybody started to get a little bit of chemistry, just as a plot or some kind of vibe started going, you'd get yanked back down to Wakanda. You'd get yanked back to New York.

You'd get yanked into space and that you wouldn't feel ever in the moment. It's really hard to do that in these movies. And I think that the first two Avengers movies really suffered because of it. Totally right. Too much cross-cutting, too much racing around the world. And this is something that's been plaguing not just Marvel movies, but even Star Wars movies. I like Rogue One a lot, but there's a lot of like planet hopping in Rogue One. There's a lot of like, we got to go over this planet and rescue this guy now.

This had a really ingenious way of saying, we're going to start with a 25-minute Thor movie. Yep. And then we're going to have a 25-minute New York movie. And then we're going to have a 25-minute. And you were like, wow, I feel incredibly aware of what everyone is doing. how everybody is doing, how they feel about each other, what's happened since the last time most of these people were together,

and you immediately just have this vibe. And then crucially, crucially, the vibe is fucking awesome. It's a good hang. It's way more what Weeden, I think, we expected than the first two movies. It's way more, we're chopping it up. Yeah, there's a lot of exposition,

but there's a lot of jokes. There's a lot of meta-commentary about Chris Wars and like how Thor is like way better looking than than Quill and people's like you know everybody's used to their best potential selves like Drax is there to be funny not to be like my wife you know like that sounds like Borat that's like Angry Borat played at the wrong speed so I just thought they did a great job of understanding the best use of each character and seeing the larger playing field which is often something that's played Marvel because if you you know it's been around for 10 years now but i would say only within the last 10 movies do they actually know where they're going maybe they don't need to do

captain yet they don't need to do steve rogers in this movie because that's the next movie and they didn't waste a lot of our time with what's black widow and steve been up to because we have all these cool new toys to play with and it actually wound up doing the thing that i was always suspicious that they were going to be able to do which is essentially turn the battleship around and make it the Chadwick Bozeman Chris Hemsworth show and the Guardians of Galaxy show. And for that, I have, they have my, I mean, like, I enjoy myself throughout the movie. I don't like these movies fight scenes. They can be tedious.

That's like, we can talk about, like, our notes that we have for things. But, like, why don't we talk a little bit more about what we liked about it? I want to respond to the point you made, which I think is really good. I think a large number of the Blockbuster movies of today, including the Star Wars movies, are still working off the same dusty script. They are trying to make Star Wars and or Empire Strikes Back for a New Jersey. generation. And they are chasing the ideal of those movies with today's toys and today's attention span and today's corporate and audience expectations. What this movie did brilliantly,

and I think you articulated equally brilliantly, is base the storytelling off of episodic storytelling, which you could say is television. And there was elements of television here because when Chris Evans shows up, I had that involuntary warmth and fondness that you feel for characters. You've just spent time with. Yeah. I don't spend time thinking about what Steve Rogers is up to while he's on the lamb. I had forgotten he was on the lamb. But when he shows up and they have that moment and the Allen Silvestri score kicks in,

I have it involuntarily and they understood that. Yeah. But so you could look at TV or what you could do is go all the way back to comic books. And I think you said this exactly right. The best crossover events, whether it's like fall of the mutants or Atlantis attacks or more recently Jonathan Hickman's outrageous long run in the Avengers. that basically ended with secret wars and ending the Marvel universe. Did you see the Hickman tweet from this weekend?

I did. That was unbelievable. John that Hickman is an incredible writer. He writes probably my favorite running comic book right now, East of West. You thumb through that stack. He said that he was on like his favorite football message board and there was like Avengers theories flying around and he jumped in there and someone was like, you don't know what you're talking about.

That's comic book fandom. But all of those storylines that we're talking about, they all are made up of individual issues that tell a specific story or mission, A to B, and then all of those things. And foreground or background different characters, yeah. And then ultimately they all end up in the same place or adding to the same story. Okay, so going into the things that we particularly liked and that I was particularly impressed with, I was surprised how much this was a Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy movie, how much your knowledge or understanding of this movie depended on seeing the last Thor movie,

which you know I loved, but also felt kind of like an outlier. but also the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. I did not realize the debt of gratitude that Marvel and Kevin Feigy owe to James Gunn for expanding the emotional palette, the creative palette, just the comedy and the heart. It wasn't until I saw how they were folded into this,

like egg whites into a batter. Yeah. To literally, to do the same thing as egg whites, to lighten and lift, how important Guardians of the Galaxy were, and what a remarkable job he had done creating strongly grounded, identifiable, emotional beats and backstories for these characters. They carried this movie in a way that I was surprised with, and in fact, they made the earthbound

characters feel a little bit leaden and uninteresting in comparison. There's very interesting decisions made on who they grouped together. I really actually also enjoyed Dr. Strange, Tony Stark, and Peter Parker together. I thought that those three actors had a fucking blast with each other. pretty obviously, like, oh, we're using fake names, like, we're using fake names. Like, that's, so I'm Spider-Man. I thought that they probably had the most inane,

like, why did you do that moments? You know, like, that group of people of the, like, wait, we need to put Thanos asleep and try to get his glove off rather than someone just, like, basically blow this guy's head up or whatever you have to do. But I thought that the groupings of people together, the ability to see, like, you know what, Cumberbatch, Downey,

and Holland would be really good just doing stuff in a room together. And Hemsworth, Pratt, Saldana, and fake Bradley Cooper would be really good bouncing off. But your point about the debt they owe James Gunn, it's kind of what I was talking about with the battleship.

It's like, this is actually now their franchise. It's their universe. It's not actually Captain America and Iron Man. And I actually think that they kind of wrapped all that up with Civil War in some ways. They will, the next Avengers movie will probably be more of a Civil War sequel

where they kind of wrap up all of their divides. They not only survived, they're unlikely to move on past that movie. That seems pretty clear. Exactly. I mean, there is like, we can get into theories about what's happening next. I do want to talk a little bit about,

some of the people that we thought, particularly, like, acquitted themselves well. I retroactively now, and this is kind of the nice thing about these movies, is that, like, I had to open up the plot for, Infinity War right now because like I can't quite remember what order these things happened in. So these movies do not necessarily like stay with you like the master.

I'm just saying straight out. They don't linger in font. Right. But I will say that I have now retroactively just like forgotten the stuff I didn't like about Ragner Rock. You know? And so that was more of like an experiential like that movie was 45 minutes too long and stop telling me it's as funny as the last detail.

You know, like it's it was like I actually short. But it felt long to be. The entire extra Kate Blanchett fight at the end is like, come on. Just get off the planet. Okay. So I retroactively enjoy that. And I have to say now, after seeing Ragger Rock and this, can you think of a better two-movie superhero run than what Hemsworth has had right now?

No. And Hemsworth, once they let him be funny and stop dying his eyebrows, he is the biggest star. I think of a badass in this movie. I was like pretty into it. Yeah. I was probably, damn, dog, you got that Groot Hammer?

I mean, this is pretty cool. The thing about this that the movie's understood and that this movie really captured is that one of the things that people who love comic books love about comic books is how operatically ridiculous they can be. Yeah. People who love comic books love them because of the extremity of all emotion, you know? And when I say that,

it's not the ridiculousness of like boom-pow on the old Batman series. It's the fact that he, that Thor held open the aperture of a four- so that a dying star could ignite and create a new hammer that was sealed together by the cut off arm of a brady teenage tree alien. Yeah. Yeah. What other storyline is going to give you that, you know?

And so he and the Guardians and the larger universe story freed from the bounds of Earth expectation or grounded storytelling or whatever. Or frankly, like as one of the card-carrying founding members of the Robert Downey Jr. fan club, freed a little bit of, like, him chewing scenery. It felt terrific. And I think Hemsworth is truly a movie star in a wonderful way. I think that I know we're doing the celebrating things, but I think the movie did show the wear and tear on the OG characters.

And Downey's thing birthed this universe. Shout out to his sharper image jumper. But he was just fully just wearing ath leisure. Like we always gave him credits. It's fucking amazing. Because that's the same thing with like, I think it was Spider-Man. I can't remember for Spider-Man or Civil War where I'm like, is he in this movie? I mean, is he just on green screen?

The genius of all of it was that they created a character for him where he could just show up to Burbank. They could put the fake helmet suit and flash the lights on him and he could be done an entire movie in an afternoon. In this movie, he is wearing Reebok aathleture in space. He shows up to an intergalactic battle dressed the same way Greg Dooley dressed for our podcast interview. It's incredible. But I'm ready for that for that page to be turned. Two years ago, we were not saying that. Two years ago, three years ago, we were saying they've got a problem.

We did say that. This guy is clearly the absolute engine that whatever intellect this thing has is coming from him. He's always been openly kind of playfully hostile towards the idea of there being a script for these movies. And I think honestly, like you can, when that first scene in Infinity War happens and he's talking with Pepper and you're just like, Okay, so like, are you just going to have, like, it's just going to be Downey rolling into each scene, just like dunking on people? And then it's like, no, we have to basically, like, you have to play your part just like everybody else does. But let's also talk about the fact that Don Cheadle and not only are some of these actors aging out of, and Ruffalo aging out of probably being plausible superheroes in a way, even though they wear fancy suits. there, in terms of character work,

like Rody and War Machine and all of that character basically is there to be Tony's friend. And ditto Sam Wilson and Falcon, despite Anthony Mackey, always having charisma that lights up the screen, the character, there's only real estate in these movies for him to be Steve's friend.

Yeah. And when you look at the more recent movies and the work they've done to the supporting characters, now doing so with the knowledge that they're going to have to continue the universe, if you compare those characters to Mbaku or Shuri or Rocket or, or Gomorrah or Nebula or any one of the tertiary characters in the Guardians universe,

yes, let's go with them. They are fundamentally more interesting at this point because they did the homework earlier. Yeah. I would be curious to see what a Black Widow looks like now after they've learned all these lessons from all the space dancing they've been doing for a while. Exactly. What is the grounded story in this universe now? Because, and this always happens with Avengers in the comic books too,

at a certain point when you are fighting intergalactic celestial threats, what can a super spy with handguns do? Yeah. Now, it would be a huge sign of success for Marvel if they can continue to do the high and the low, and I think the first test for that is going to be Ant Man and the Wasp, which is the next Marvel movie to come out

and is decidedly not a part of this world. So do you think, I want to get to, let's table the Ant Man on the Wasp for when we talk about theories. Let's talk a little bit about the Rousseau's, just really briefly. And Marcus and McPhile. We've got to talk about these four dudes. The Rousseau's and Marcus and McPhileys.

So Marcus and McPhilei wrote, I believe, did they write Winter Soldier Civil War and these two films, I believe? And Thor Dark World. They did. Yeah. I think that was their first job. And then the Rousseau's have done.

They did, they've all worked together from that point on. They did both Captain America's. Winter Soldier Civil War. And these two Avengers movies. And these two Avengers movies. This is not an easy job. Oh my God. No, it's impossible.

And I went back and this is not dunk on Joss Whedon Day, but I just went back because I was curious. The thing, what are the things have jumped out at this movie. It's dunk on Joss Whedon year. One of the things that jumped out about this movie to me immediately was the first, was the New York attack and basically the second, the second set of scenes where Tony Stark's talking to Stephen Strange and Peter Parker

shows up eventually and banners there. Yeah, and banners there. And so I went back and watched the New York attack from the first Avengers movie. And it is so fucking corny to watch them be like, you guys can't see me, but I'm like pretending to run like... The cameras are on. They can't have been. But I'm just like, I've got them.

Come here! You know, like, it's like really, really, really comic-y. This was, this also goes back to like this, that weird, like, flat color palette that Marvel was shooting with it. It felt like, are you guys using the Golden Girls cameras to shoot this? I saw a still from Avengers.

Yeah. And remembering how they dressed Captain America in the movie, which was a little more accurate to the way the comic book character has usually been portrayed. But I saw that still, and I did a double-take. It was like seeing a still from the trash. He looks like Father John Misty now, yeah.

But this still looked like an image from the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie that Marvel disappeared in the 80s. It looked completely separate from what it's become. And that was six years ago. Yeah. And now this is coming from somebody who would love for us all to just take a time out with like cities being like, is this a terrorist attack? No, it's aliens. Like that whole like a bit is not my favorite. but the way that they shot that

where it's like inside the sanctum, they're talking, Stark hears something, and that they do stuff like, oh, there's noises outside. And then you can see through the pain glass windows people running across. And then they keep on Tony and Tony walks out

and Tony's there. And that one shot of the car crash that hits Tony, almost hits Tony, hits the light post and he's like, you guys get these people. And he keeps moving and keeps moving and it stays on him

and you don't get to see around the corner until the very last second. That's Jaws shit. That's how Steven Spielberg makes things. That's where you develop tension to make people invest in the moment. And it's not something that was present in the first two Avengers movies.

They didn't have that swagger. It didn't have that sense of cinematic devices that were using to show you what this feels like and to elicit a certain emotional response from the audience. So I thought they did. excellent job with what must have been impossible material to handle. I agree. And again, it's been praised before, but their ability to balance action and comedy is pretty unparalleled.

I am not a fan of superpowered people punching each other for a long time. But I thought visually the fight scenes, and there were many, were a million percent more coherent than in most Marvel movies. And many of them had very emotional decisions within them, which is what I respected about them. I thought visually they were stupid, but when the Peter Quill finds out Gomorra's been killed moment, while they're all trying to yank that glove off

and they're like, we're right at, we almost got him here, don't do anything stupid and he does something stupid to make up for the fact that he didn't do the thing that he was supposed to do before. And exactly what he said he was going to protect her from happened. And then the other one where basically Tachala lets in

the space dogs, whatever those guys are. And he's just like, we have to like make this sack because otherwise they're going to go all the way around. I thought that they did a really good job of putting emotional stakes within these fight scenes. Did you have any other people you wanted to shout out as winners? I just want to say for people who want to know more clearly what we're talking about, about the coherence of fight scenes, the one that sticks out to me is in Ultron when there's

Tony in the Hulk buster suit versus the Hulk, which is a scene that the people who do the toy department insist being in, you know, that needs to be in the movie because you need the new toys and he always want to see who's stronger. And they literally ruin like $27 trillion of the... No idea what was happening, and I couldn't care less. And there wasn't a moment like this in the movie. I think that at the risk of sounding like of over-praising these four people, they've never, this hasn't been done before.

Now, we're not saying that these guys are Kubrick. We're not saying they write dialogue like Tony Gilroy or whatever. But what they did in terms of corraling IP and expectations and making, hammering it into something coherent and making the best out of some tough situations, Some of the more incredible bits of writing acrobatics in this movie were when they had to create emotional stakes and then pay them off five minutes later. We know that Gomorra is Thanos's daughter

because she said so in two movies. What does that mean? Yeah. They had to establish that in flashback and then pay it off 10 minutes later, five minutes later in the movie. That's not elegant, but that's making do. And more than anything else, that is the next level cinematic ability of this century.

Okay. You know, we're not saying this is the 70s again. Yeah. No, no. This is remarkable for the moment. There's no reason why this thing, there has always been this trash heap at the top. Like, the idea that the superheroes have ruined what would have been summer movie fair and that, like, if not for superheroes, we would get jaws every summer is not true. Yeah.

You know, I mean, like, and I think that they have done a really good job of, in the last 18 months, especially with Spider-Man Thor, Thore, Black Panthers. in this movie, making these movies feel more contemporary, more urgent, more connected to what, like, how people talk and how people think. And I think that that can only be valuable. I think we have a couple more things we want to say about this. So I want to take a break to hear from our sponsors. And then we'll come back. We're going to talk a little bit about Thanos. MVP's, LVPs. MVP's, LVPs. And we're going to talk a little bit about some things we might have some notes on. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Thomas's English Muffins looking for a breakfast that's worth skipping the snooze button for Thomas's is the only breakfast brand that delivers

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and she wanted me to let you guys know that I thought nooks and crannies were like a divet, like one was the hole and one was the stalactite kind of thing. thing, you know? Oh, like a convex, concave situation. It turns out nooks and crannies are both the same thing. They're both like the little pegs. Well, they're not the same thing, Chris. Well, they're not the same thing, but they are both the holes, right? Divots. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't want to, I think I'm downplaying this. What I'm telling you is that I'm Team 10. I'm Team Thomas's English muffins. They've taken over my personal life now. And you can lightly toast each

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You know, is that weird? I'm crang gang. Wow. Is this going to tear us apart after all? Thomas's Knicks and Crannies English muffins, they are truly like no other. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by the Black Tux. Wedding season is upon us. I don't know why I said that.

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That's the Blacktucks.com slash watch. for $20 off your first purchase, the Black Tucks, Premium Rental suits and Tuxedos, delivered. We're back, Andy. Yep. Let's, before we get to awards, if you want to do MVP, LVP,

I want to talk a little bit about Brolin. Is it Brolin? Is it Brolin? Is it Brolin? My guy did a pretty good job. Yeah. The fact that it's basically like Barney with a friggin, like, medieval times glove. Like, that's, he did it, he did some good stuff in there.

I was shocked how much of him was there. Yeah. Like, I was, I thought, like, oh, Thanos is going to be kind of like, he shows up and he's like floating on a moon and he's like, I'm going to kill everybody. And then they're like, no. He's, like, in a lot of scenes. A lot, and a lot of the work of the movie is giving him emotional weight.

Yeah. Giving him a reasoning for what he's doing. And coming the closest, I think, any of these movies have come to solving Marvel's villain problem. He was not only much more powerful than everyone else. There were stakes to him. I know whether you bought them or not, depends on whether you were willing to buy the screenwriting acrobatics required to give him those things. Well, it requires, what did you think about the actual, like, Thanos's gambit? That the universe cannot sustain the amount of life that is occupying it.

I want to wipe out half the plate. There are moments in watching this movie where my brain switches over and I begin to praise it from a problem-solving perspective as opposed to a storytelling perspective. In the comic books, Thanos is a power-mad demigod who's in love with death, a physical embodiment of death,

and wants to win her heart by killing as many people as possible. Sure. So that's the text. This version of it, yeah. Yeah, that seems like the least, bad solution to all of it because it gave him a sense there was a sense of sacrifice and there was a

sense of nobility that he believed in nobility to his purpose whether we bought it or not so i i was again i was impressed by it whether i bought it i don't know um and and one of the movies small one of the movies failings which we may get to is the true potential of this glove and these stones is not something you can really do in a mainstream movie you can only do like in a jim starlin comic book in the 70s when everyone involved, including like the janitor, has ingested a gallon's worth of acid. Because we only see one moment of it, where he has a gem called the reality gem, and he makes Drax fall into cubes, and he makes Mantis into a slinky.

Right. He could just do that. The David Lynch version of this would have been like 80 minutes of that. He can do that all the time. And luckily, the movie moves so quickly that you don't pause and think he could do anything. Like, why is he even punching people? Right. So, again, given the limits of what they were working with, I was fine with it.

MVP of the movie. Zoe Seldanya. I was shocked by this. I mean, she's always been a good performer and a good actor and game for being painted and doing all sorts of CGI stuff. But the movie simply does not work without her performance. And Brolin responding to it. Because again, like I said, a second ago,

we didn't know anything about that relationship. We didn't care. We know she wants to kill him. But the movie took the time to say, well, what does that mean that a daughter wants to kill her father? But more importantly, Zoe Saldanya took the time to really, really invest in that and show us. And I was really, I was impressed by it. And I think the movie doesn't work without that performance.

I'm going to go with Hemsworth for all the reasons that I said before. I actually thought that this was really interesting that, like, he became more impressive as a physical force as they've stripped away him being a god. Like, now I'm like, damn, like, when he shows up in Wakanda, you're like, it's a rap for you. That was the first time in like 15 years where I think I've had a visceral reaction the way that I think people are supposed. The way basically everyone who lives on Twitter and talks about mainstream movies, they seem to be like this every day. Yeah. I had that moment. It worked for me.

So we can do this as least valuable player, but I am more going to say least valuable part. Okay. Yeah, I think we're going to agree. So I'm going to go with your boy. Yeah. Vision. Oh, I'm with you. and his relish with the Scarlet Witch.

That was a tough one. Strolling through. Is that Edinburgh that they run? Because they were to take the train to Glasgow, right? Yeah. Let's get this on the record here. This guy was a glorified, souped up fucking Alexa two movies ago. And now we're supposed to be like, oh, what a touching love story.

Maybe we shouldn't sacrifice half the universe so that these two crazy kids can catch a train to Glasgow and look at Abby. Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's like, Siri, stroke my hair and tell me I'm pretty. Like, come on. Couldn't they just decapitate this guy? Get rid of that stone, save the universe, and then be like, hey, Tony Stark, here's an action item, like rebuild this dude. How about this?

In his spare time. No, in his spare time, spare time, Tony Stark can build a spider suit with eight retractable arms that can allow a boy to survive in space. I think he could construct a new boyfriend for young Sikovia over here. I don't think it's that far out. outside the realm of possibility. Anything is literally possible. We see this in this movie.

And these kids are just like, no, no, we really, really wanted to go antiquing in Glasgow. This is magic. These two don't work. And I think they knew that. And I also think they felt the need to service the attention paid to them in previous movies. And to pay off the fact that some segment of fanboys is like, no, the robot and the witch got married. None of that ever really made sense. If you want to read a good vision story, read the newly collected thing, the story that Tom King wrote.

It's one of the best comics Marvel is published in 20 years. That kind of gets into what that character could or should be. This didn't work at all, and the attempts to make it emotional did not work. Does the Infinity Stone in the Tom King comic? Does that also magically grow back Paul Bettney's hair? Well, I mean, look, the MVP is Paul Bettney's wardrobe guy on the press tour. Because my man seems to think the best look for Jimmy Kimmel is to be like, no, no, you know the whole island that Dr. Moreau had?

That's me. that's my look like fresh off the runways that doesn't work and I don't think anyone cares and my free time I enjoy collecting linen outfits and doing genetic experiments

I wouldn't believe it you know what that guy definitely has done before taking a push pin and just push it into a butterfly like that's something he's done probably while it was alive I respect Elizabeth Olson's look

when she's about to turn dust you know and she's just like I kind of welcome this and I think that's a moment when the character get me to wind river too That's when the character and actor definitely dovetailed. Yeah, that just, it just didn't work.

One thing that also didn't fully work to me, and I think that you may disagree on this, is I think, and I feel like this is a low-key comment that no one's going to support, I don't think Dr. Strange is working, guys. I actually do disagree with you. I thought he was pretty charming. And I actually, I mean, we're talking about retroactive opinions. Like, in retrospect, Dr. Strange is a pretty, yes. Like, what?

Were you going to say good or bad movie? Bad. Oh. I mean, it's got Pangborn. Yes. In which case, so it's already a top five. It's a classic film for its pickup basketball scenes. And it has some like interesting efforts where they're like, oh, you're trying to make a psychedelic

Marvel movie. Like, I get it. But it may be in retrospect is not a good movie. Yes. And now I'm like, but I actually was just like, I thought Cumberbatch was used just enough. Cumberbatch is doing his best and having a good time. and the goatee off between him and Downey was paid dividends. Yes.

But I just think this is an example of they wanted the character. And it wasn't the right time for this movie to happen in a way. What I mean is what's cool about Dr. Strange as a character in the comics and in his role in these giant crossovers is he knows fucking everything. And his approach into it is always super weird and oblique. And they did pay service to that with his running the options, running all the different simulations of what would happen. happened.

But in the narrative of the character and in the movies, he's the new guy. Yeah. And as new as Spider-Man, basically. And so that didn't work for me. But the other thing was, the movies, I think, succeed because Kevin Feigey and his people made a smart choice not to tip too far into weird. They have a pretty firm handle on what's possible and what's not. And as we said, the level of surreality is mantis is a slinky for a minute.

You know, they don't go past that, really. And the end result of that strategy. is that Dr. Strange's abilities seem to be making cool hand gestures and causing force fields and teleporting people. And I'm like, well, okay. He doesn't seem as interesting to me because of that. So I was disappointed in that.

Yeah. Do you have any notes on anything else before we get to like what's, what's this mean for the future? I think this is Bradley Cooper's best work since Burt. You know. I think that he was tremendous. That was a tort of force.

It really was. I would like to have an inside-the-actor's studio. with Rocket sitting there, with Bradley voicing it and people asking him questions. Like, it was fantastic. It made me more interested in a Star is Born just because of his performance. That guy learned to fucking sing for this movie. Are you kidding me? Well, he knows how to make a raccoon interesting.

I mean, he could probably. I'm all in on Coops, man. Cooper could rebuild the vision now. They got to make silver linings too after the Super Bowl now. Listen, that's a whole other podcast. All those secondary guardians characters, Dave Bautista, terrific, thrilled every time he talked, really funny, really strong. Shout out to Marcus and McFeeley for finding a emotional throughline for CGI.

Hugo Weaving? Teenage. No, that wasn't Hugo Weaving? Wait, let me take this point again. Finding a throughline for CGI teenage Groot, making him be a disaffected teenager and then sacrificing part of himself to join in on the story. I mean, what are we even talking about? and how much time did they spend thinking about how to make that work?

Red Skull cameo, not Hugo Weaving. I bet not because that dude was like, if I ever have to do another one of these movies, it will be too soon. And I didn't know if they were just like, I've always been waiting. Whenever these guys are like, I fucking signed a nine movie contract guys.

Like Sebastian Stan is on a nine movie contract. Sebastian Stan during this press store looked like a hostage. I mean, like I would not be surprised to those eyes. Because he's waiting for the call, man. he's Lamar Jackson at the end of the first round being like, yeah, you got it, your cap. Yeah, but what happens? What happens if they don't, though? That's what I'm saying.

What happens if they're like, you know what? Josh Rosen's going to be cap. Yeah, you know what? We feel like we got a lot of group to look at. Or like, you know, we promise Anthony Mackey a shot. Like, that's all in play too. Yeah. And he's like, I could show up with one arm and weird hair for the next 12 years and be like,

it's been a long winter, winter soldier. Let's talk about that I mean that Bucky, it doesn't work, right? Like he made sense in the first Captain America movie he made sense a little bit as the villain in Winter Soldier since then, unless you subscribe, and I'm starting to

to the fan theory that Steve and Bucky are meant for each other and are deeply romantically in love, which tracks in these movies? And by the way, please go for that. Save it for the Howard's End pod. The character doesn't make sense until Bradley Cooper as a talking raccoon is like,

I'm coming for your arm. All of a sudden, I like the guy again. Like, you need that little extra seasoning on these characters. Otherwise, they're just not interesting on their own. So I want to talk about what this means going forward. We're talking about the end of the movie and what's... Yeah, so the end of the movie, then everybody's compared it to the leftovers. I found the Lindelof impact on this movie to be quite significant,

both in terms of like possible time-shifting alternate realities and also the very leftovers end. I would also say that the thing that fascinates me, and we have an exit survey on the site that I wrote a little bit about this. And I've read on Reddit a little bit about this, about how right around the time of the Fox merger, is that like a done? Are they still working that out? All I know is that I have no financial insight.

The Fox Disney merger. But creatively, the people who I've spoken to who work at some of these places are acting like this is happening. Okay. So that's important to note because this is not my like original observation, but it's widely understood

that since that sort of became in play, the amount of hand-tipping that Marvel has done about eight years from now, seven years from now, has dipped down a lot. From where at Comic-Con in 2015, they were talking already about Infinity War, you know, or whatever. Now, you have this whole other IP possibly being merged with the MCU.

And by IP, in this case, you're talking about the Fantastic Four universe and the X-Men universe. Because some people think, okay, so once, presumably Thanos will be. be felled in the next movie. What's next? Is that Galacticus? Galactus.

Galactus, sorry. My deepest apologies to the Galactus family. You're off the project. Okay. That would involve Silver Surfer coming back. Well, in this case, coming into this universe. Because he's the herald of Galactus, right? Yeah.

Okay. And anyway. And the Fantastic Four. It also scans with their desire to make this more of a space opera than New York gets destroyed every other movie and they, you know, Secovia and all this stuff. So that's interesting to keep in mind. The other two things I wanted to talk about were

the quite obvious, like, everybody who lives in this movie also is their contracts are up. Like, there is a, I've heard, they're not dead. Stephen, Dr. Strange just vanished them right before half the people were killed. Right. And that the people who are actually alive are dead? No. Okay.

I've heard that this will, But still, I think it's safe to assume that the last Iron Man and Captain America movies will be next. Yes. Look, I mean, I think I understand why we all want theories and to play games with this. That's fun. It's fun to think about this. Yeah. But also, the way they handled the end of the movie was very specifically not about mourning. Yes.

Look, the movie ended when the bad guy won. Yeah. That's what they're going for. They were trying to make an Empire Strikes Back for this generation. And they did, basically. I was, people were, I mean, yes, the movie was long. and yes, I did not drink a drop of water during it. I peed so many times during this movie.

How much the movie did you see? He just saw like three scenes. I had a pager and somebody would just hit me up when Rocket was on the screen. So is it the same pageer that Nick Fury used at the end? And he came running back in. The ending was effective and surprising, which is rare for a movie that long

that usually these movies end 100 times. But the ending is that he won. And that's what happened to half the universe. and that's what we're going to deal with going forward. To your point about the merger and how that affects things, I think the important antecedent to look at is when they were making Civil War. Fagie basically had multiple drafts or planning going for that movie,

one in which they got Spider-Man from Sony and one in which they didn't. Who was going to play that role? And there were rumors that the Spider-Man role as in Iron Man's secret help could have been Captain Marvel, could have been Black Panther and a different, you know, could have been used differently. That's probably how they're gaming this all out now.

have a number of different plans for what they would do. He's absolutely spent a lot of time thinking about how he would do the X-Men, should he get a handle on them. Sure. But he's also considered if Fox keeps the X-Men because they're doing okay with some of the characters. Yeah, and Dark Phoenix is like in production, right? Yes. So we'll see about all of that.

But I think it's important to, yeah, just think about the next Avengers movie is going to be the last story for those original ones who survived. Yeah. And whether they retire or die. It's going to be a mixture. Yeah. And look, we all live in a comic book universe now. No storytelling is done, whether it is Tony Stark's story or it's Roseanne story.

Like, everything is going to get rebooted and returned to at some point. And the important thing is to just sort of focus on how they do it, I think. And it'll be interesting to see how they do it. To the last thing about the movie, I'm sure everybody knows this by now, but the Nick Fury scene, which also I thought was kind of well done. Because it was the most leftoversy part because we saw a glimpse of. That's actually how I met your mother ends, by the way. Thanks a lot. I was just starting the series.

Jesus. You know, with a helicopter crashing and everything going down, yes, the pager is to Captain Marvel. And I gotta say, I just, it's weird to be a fan of structure like this. But I'm always impressed how he planned these things. Because we heard a while ago that the Captain Marvel movie was a flashback movie

that it's set in the 90s. It's filming now. And I was thinking, well, why would they do that? Why would they step away in the middle of this exciting moment? And of course it's because we're going to see how this character came to be. We're going to learn what suspended animation or space journey she's been on. And then she will be introduced so that when she comes to save the day in the next Avengers movie, we're caught up.

And the Ant Man and Wasp movie. And the Walsh. Will that be taking place? What timeline is that on that? We don't know, but it's very possible that it's just a glimpse of trying to keep one foot in more grounded storytelling. But it's also possible that whatever they do in that movie to rescue Michelle Pfeiffer from, you know, the whatever. I forget what it is, the microspace. I just lost my Marvel card too now.

We're done. Maybe that will play into the next one. So it's all connected in a fun way. But, you know, there is no one except maybe the younger people, which is cool that they're excited or confused by this, that doesn't know that Black Panther 2 is happening and Spider-Man 2 is happening. Yeah. Just don't worry about it. Guardians 3 is happening.

Yeah. Just enjoy the moment. It was thrilling. It was fun. I think we're wrapped up there. Let's take a couple of minutes to talk about killing Eve. Yeah. Because we love this show.

This show is elite. Yes, it is. This is like how you make TV. Yo, right now it is Atlanta and it is killing Eve, and then there's a long, long, long drop off. It's, and you, I mean, I think you should jump in here because we got people, I hope, hype to watch it after the first week and we haven't revisited.

You were particularly sold on last night's episode four. I think that it's a fascinating experiment. And by the way, for people listening, I don't think we need to spoil anything. people who are maybe a few episodes behind. Yeah, no, I'm going to talk about, we're just making a case for you watching again. I'm going to make a general statement, which is that one thing that Atlanta and killing Eve both have in common is their ability to surprise week to week.

And this show could have been the same show it was in the first three weeks, and that would have been fine. Yeah. That would have, like, it could have been about obsession, and it could have been about two halves of the same coin, and it could have been about midlife boredom and early life anew year. It could have had that over the course of six or eight episodes

or however many episodes this season is and it could have had Phoebe Waller Bridges, obscene, and dark sense of humor and great European settings and charming dialogue and we would have been fine. But they did something very, very smart on the fourth episode,

which is they just looked a little bit deeper and they looked at a couple, they took three steps back with the perspective of the frame, and they showed, a little bit more of the world, a little bit more character, a little bit more of, how did we get here?

Who are these people? What are their lives about? And it made a huge difference to me. I was already in on the show, but I feel like every time someone verges into, it's a great, this is Phoebe Waller verges. We were talking about a couple weeks ago about what makes her special.

This is what she does that's really amazing. Every time you think, oh, well, this is just an obscene cartoon character, but it's really funny. that person becomes incredibly emotionally vulnerable and you can identify with them and every moment you think, boy, I really identify with Villanelle.

She does something so fucking horrifying that you're like, I got to check myself. Yeah. And in some ways it's like almost, I feel like it's even more complicated than like Silence of the Lambs where I mean there's that same sort of feeling of like the investigator

and the subject of the investigation and they're attractive. to one another, but the way in which they will be like, oh, you think you like this person, you do not. Oh, you think you don't like this person, you should. You know, and that's fascinating. It's the hardest thing to do as a writer. On TV, we fall in love with characters,

and we celebrate characters that we are in love with, you know, whether they're in comedies or dramas. Writers do it too and fall in love with their characters. And the hardest thing to do as a writer is to mess that up a little bit. Throw a little shade on a character. Allow them to make mistakes. allow them to be ugly in a variety of ways. Eve, who is our extremely sympathetic and empathetic heroine,

and for a large part, our POV character, we understand the stress she's going through because we're spending a lot of time with her. We also see how she's treating her husband, which is not great and not cool. And the show allows that to happen. And she does it with such fierce intelligence and respect for both the audience and the characters

that it allows her to pull off this remarkable balancing act. I also want to say that even in miniature, this show is a total triumph. The relationship between Eve and the character played by David Hague, who had a real showcase episode in week three, is such a phenomenal relationship. I can't say that we haven't seen workplace marriages before, like your work husband or your workwife, because a large portion of American sitcoms from the 80s and 90s

are essentially that. Yeah. That's what Cheers is. Yeah. But to see it play out in this way, with a full spectrum of possibility, where they even call attention to the fact in episode three, like, wait, do you fancy me at all?

Is there a sexual component to this? Is it just respect? The way in episode two, when he bristles at her being in charge briefly, and they play that out with honesty and allow them to, and allow, with the knowledge that these characters love each other

and they're going to, Phoebe Waller Bridge is going to prove that to us. Yeah. It's just, it's masterful. I'm only saying this, because we just spent 40 minutes talking about Infinity War, but this show also passes that two-brain test, where you can watch it purely for adrenaline and thrills and excitement and character work,

but you can also watch it and see a masterclass in how to do this, and how to make people both scary and lovable, how to make them likable and unlikable and make them fully whole and real. I love this show. Yeah, I can't recommend it more highly. My only concern is that, you know, it's been renewed.

And this is one of those shows where, if you had told me going in, we're going to do eight hours. It's in the Oregon Black Zone, not necessarily in terms of like they have three or four tricks and then it gets too complicated. But if they extend this out and it's just a cat and mouse game for multiple seasons, it gets into kind of Dexter territory. It doesn't feel like a show that is shying away from bringing its two leads together on a collision course. In fact, it's gotten closer than I really ever would have thought in four episodes. does that mean next season is someone else is trying to kill Eve? Does that mean next season someone else is trying to kill Villanelle? We don't know, but it feels like everything's in play, or at least I hope so,

because an extended cat and mouse game would be the only thing to ding the show in my mind. Yeah, let's wrap up there. It's been a hearty show. We love stuff. I love loving stuff. I will miss you on Thursday. Oh, buddy. Have a great week.

And we will be back next Monday with a whole truckload of stuff. Maybe I'll get you to, we'll do a Westworld check in. What about tell the people what you're really watching? Howard's End. Howard's End on Stars. I think we might touch on Howard's End on Thursday. Maybe I'll have Amanda come by with Juliet because they were the ones who insisted that I watch it. Do you know what kind of a forsterhead I am?

I do. I'm a deep cut Forsterhead. I do. I stayed reading these books. Is phenomenal television, too. It's on stars right. It's a good time to be watching stuff. We'll talk about all of it.

Enjoy your time in the galaxy for Rainskees. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Thomas's English muffins. Here's a breakfast I always get out of bed for. Thomas's English muffins, original nooks and crannies. There's nothing quite like that irresistible nooks and crannies texture. Perfectly toasted, crispy edges with a soft, warm center. How the butter pulls inside all those little nooks and crannies spaces is just amazing. It is a delicious burst of flavor in every warm, toasty, buttery bite.

Thomas's nooks and crannies, English muffins are truly like no other. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Wyatt Cinex Problem Areas. in life there are occasionally problems you just don't know how to address. It can be overwhelming and frustrating. HBO's new series grapples with just that as comedian Wyatt Cinnack wades through America's most complex and confusing issues to look for some answers whether they're helpful or not. Wyatt Cinnack's problem areas airs Fridays at 1130 p.m. And if you have plans on Friday night, good for you. Congratulations. And second of all, you can stream it on HBO Go or HBO Now. Anytime. Tune in or stream problem areas for questionable solutions to unquestionable problems.