The Watch - Disney’s New ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy, Amazon’s Expensive ‘Lord of the Rings’ Play, and the Best Superhero Movies of All Time (Ep. 203)

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the major announcements from Disney regarding a new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and Amazon’s expensive purchase of the rights to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and why remaking major IP can be tricky (2:00). They also discuss ‘Lady Bird’ (19:00) before going deep on the best superhero movies of all time with Ringer articles editor Andrew Gruttadaro (29:00). http://superheroes.theringer.com/?_ga=2.16512178.549993008.1510600756-139637899.1487545631 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 ringer.com and joining me in the studio reading of people's history of the United States. It's Andy Greenwald! I feel like people are going to get that reference and they're going to think that's just my vibe. Did you ever read that book?

Honestly? Yeah. No. Yeah, me neither. Got to keep it 100 on the watch. My wife did. deaf have a copy of it on the bookshelf. Sure.

Just in case... It might have been a dog-eared copy may have been laying around my various youthful domiciles. And every so often when like, when meeting young women, you'd be like, you know, I think Columbus Day is a fraud. We are referring in case you live anywhere but New York and Los Angeles to the liberal elite movie of the year. No, I mean, just because it's only in New York, L.A., Lady Bird,

which I talked about last week a little bit. I implored our listeners to see it. Guess who listened? Andy Greenwald. Yeah. We're also today just going to really quickly to do the rundown. We're talking about the news hitting the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings universe eye. And so we're talking a little bit about that.

We'll talk a little about Lady Bird. And we will talk about superheroes. Because today is the greatest superhero movie of all-time ranking day at the ringer.com. Andrew Grosidara oversaw a wonderful top 50 list. It's an amazing act of scholarship on his part. But the whole staff contributed, there's a standalone site that sort of looks, it looks incredible. Superheroes. Dot the Ringer.com, if you want to go directly to it.

We ranked all 50 movies. There's a lot of sideless. I thought that was just Shay Serrano's blog. So Andy and I will talk about that. And then I'll be joined by Andrew Grotidaro a little later in the pod to talk about how we put the list together. I'm sorry, I missed that conversation. I had a sick kid, but otherwise, I don't want people to think that there's only room for one and her on the show. You know what the dude though? Dads are the real superheroes.

Yes, thank you. Um, what do you want to do first? Lady Bird or Star Wars? Let's do the big, big universe stuff first. Okay, sure. So here's two pieces of news that have broken over the last couple of days. First, last week, late last week, uh, Bob Eiger, who runs, runs that Disney show. Um, he said that Ryan Johnson will oversee a new trilogy of Star Wars films. Did he personally say this? He did. Will quote, introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored. So when you're talking about something like this and when it's somebody, whether it's Kathleen Kennedy or Robert I are talking, these quotes tend to be treated by the Star Wars fan

community as if it's Janet Yellen talking about the Fed. You know? In a way, but the sort of analysis of things like new characters or corner of the galaxy or lore has been exhaustive. If you want to, like, go read the novels and the... Yeah, is he talking about what, like, what's the chronology here? What's the timeline? Who, what relationship, if any, will it have to the Skywalker saga, which Kathleen Kennedy

had long said the Star Wars episode movies will be about the Skywalker family, ultimately. And then there will be these standalone movies. The standalone movies, they've got solo coming out. That had sort of a rocky road to the theaters. That's coming out in spring, I guess. the Josh Trank Boba Fett movie, which no longer exists. R.P. Rest in power, my guy. Yeah, so basically what we're talking about is that

Ryan Johnson obviously did such a good job on The Last Jedi, which no one has really seen yet, that they feel comfortable at least... Yeah, look. Yeah. A couple things here. One, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try to just Bob Eager this and say, there is a movie in theaters now that explores an undiscovered corner of the Star Wars universe called Sacramento. It's called Lady Bird.

And you may not be able to see the Star Wars threads, but they're there. By the way, that would be the most amazing marketing gimmick to basically say for any piece of original material. Just recut Lady Bird as a Rogue One trailer. I'm sure. I would love it. The second thing is we live in a time of unlimited access to insider news and trade stuff within Hollywood, right? But as we spoke about the other week, the reason we know the Last Jedi is in good shape is because it's just gliding through.

Like no one's talking about it. Yeah. In a way that that's not the case for Justice League. Exactly. Not just that. People are not talking about Justice League because they are actively trying to make sure you don't know about it until the last possible second. The review embargo on the film, I believe, ends Wednesday. So there'll be like 48 hours of critical thinking that will do nothing to affect the bottom line on the opening weekend, which is the point. Here's how we know, also that The Last Jedi is probably good, because Bob, quote, Janet Yellen Eiger has basically given him. an enormous part of their GDP. Yeah. That's the thing.

I mean, when they made the deal, when Disney bought Lucasfilm, they were very clear from the start. It's not just to make these long-promised... Decades. They want content every year. They want to keep Star Wars going, and so how are you going to do that?

And apparently they've decided the guy to do it is Ryan Johnson, which is cool. I mean, this is a guy who seems to have sailed through this process on Skades and made a movie that, you know, what rumors exist? are very positive, but also has shown the ability to navigate two very important worlds. He's done original genre stuff with...

Looper. Loper, right. And he's also come out of TV and managed, you know, stepped in and stepped off of something like Breaking Bad, where no one thinks that when we talk about Breaking Bad being one of the greatest shows of all time, we often don't say... And we say it's Vince Gilligan's show, right? or it's where we talk about Walt and Jesse. Sure.

But we know the episodes of Ryan Johnson directed. They are standout episodes, yet he never made it about him in that way that works in TV and that has become increasingly crucial to working in franchise building. Yeah, in these huge franchises. So cool. Okay. Yeah, here's my big question. Let's do it.

The Force Awakens for the large part. And to a lesser extent, Rogue One, the reason why I liked those movies, if I'm being honest with myself, I really liked parts of Rogue One, and I think I liked the idea of Rogue One more than I like the idea of any movie in like this century, but obviously had some issues when it was finally on the screen. But the reason why I like those movies was because they largely replayed emotional notes and narrative moments from my childhood. They reminded me of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and movies that I

really loved. The question is, when will these new Star Wars movies start to create, if possible, their own mythology, their own moments, their own sense of necessity, of necessity, you know, like, when will we know, oh, yeah, like, this is a good thing to keep pursuing. Because in a different way, even though there's this huge canon of novels and comics and video games surrounding Star Wars, is not the same thing as the MCU where these, they have hundreds and hundreds of storylines that they can use at any given point. Almost an embarrassment of riches, which is why I think that the, the X-Men series has largely been a, you know, not a failure, but it had a lot of trouble

because it's like, when do we do apocalypse, when do we do Dark Phoenix, when do we do these things that people have so much, you know, investment in. So it's going to be very interesting to see how Ryan takes this freedom and whether or not it's like a freedom he's actually allowed to use, whether it's something where he can go away. Obviously, like Star Wars is just like Western Joseph Campbell-Hurmuth. It's not going to be that different. But are we going to have, is the force going to be a part of it? Is there going to be a family at the center of it? I mean, there are certain things about Star Wars

that I think people don't really think about, but they are actually very important. How malleable is it, and can he find a corner of the universe that is relevant to our particular universe in this moment? Or is he going to get pulled into that, like each movie needs to set up the next movie, needs to set up the next movie? And that same thing where every one of these movies

has to please the old fans while also trying to get new fans, which is actually what to some degree has killed comic books. Comic books are not dead, but the essential problem that Marvel and DC have found themselves in is that their readership

has just gotten older and older and older, and they want to be serviced with the characters that they like. So while Marvel, for example, has, I think, to its credit, introduced a lot of new ideas, new characters, a lot more diversity than it used to have,

its sales were struggling because they were alienating old fans. And I think the movies, that's playing out in the movies as well. You know, when we talked about the last, Jedi trailer. I said, I basically said that my main problem into this movie is I don't know, I don't really know or care what the story of this movie is other than it's another Star Wars movie.

And I got some feedback from that that I took to heart. People are basically like, I think you are under valuing the importance of Ray as a character. Just look at Halloween. Like, look at what this has done to young women and girls who didn't feel they had a way into this universe and to this franchise, and she is already an iconic character, if only for that. That's a great point. However, the question is, what is the door opening to? So it's a way into something older. This is a way for people to become fans of this franchise or maybe to see themselves in it, which is perfectly valid. But it feels like it's a door backwards. So can he find a door going forward and where would that even lead us? Yeah. It's interesting.

So speaking of doors, forwards and backwards. Way backwards. Where Ryan Johnson is, you know, going into uncharted territory in a lot of ways. Let's hope. Jeff Bezos just came through with that Yellen check. Yep. And ponied up a rumor $250 to $250 million just for the rights to the Lord of the Rings saga from the Tolkien estate. To make a television show. Or multiple television shows.

Before he has hired, anyone to run it, anybody to produce it, a single person in Australia to build a shire. New Zealand. Wherever. Good point. Australia's turn. Good point. I apologize to my mates. And this is, this is from deadline.

Amazon, Netflix, and HBO have been approached by the Tolkien estate, who had been a shopping project. It came with an upfront rights payment, said to be in the $200 to $250 million range, though some sources say the fee could be slightly below. That is just for the rights before development, talent, and production. In proposition whose finances many industry observers called, quote, insane. Let me just take a moment before you even get into the merit. are the content of this.

Let me, which is my camera, this one here? Which is my mic? I'd just like to make a personal plea to someone who I imagine is named Jaden Tolkien, the heir to the Tolkien billions at this point. Would you like to get into podcasting? Because I just feel like with all of the millions and billions of dollars that your grandfather, great-grandfather has earned for you, how can we pay this forward? Because look at Megan Ellison, right?

You want to redevelop the shire? All I'm saying is, no, I'm just saying this is just a lot of money that it's just pouring into this family. So it's interesting. The preponderance of Getty biopics is proving that we're always interested in the heirs of millionaires and billionaires. Sure. Megan Ellison, the daughter of the billionaire Larry Ellison, has taken some of the fortune that she inherited and started Anapurna Pyrna Pictures, right? And is basically funding Paul Thomas Anderson's career making these other art houses. She's also getting into the James Bond business now.

Well, so my question is. What is, what is, do you think it's writer Tolkien? Like, what's a, what, what do you think this name is? Whoever he is, yeah. He's got good accountants. Because apparently, like, one of the things that, they had, like, this lawsuit, I believe, with Warner. I think it was with Warner a couple of years ago. New Line.

New Line. And one of the things that they were mad about was that, like, New Line had, you know, figured out a way to kind of monetize the Lord of the Rings in ways that the Tolkien estate maybe felt like they should be getting a piece of the pie. And they were talking about, like, slot machines. and video games and, you know, RPGs and all these things. So, yeah, it does, so this is all, you know, we had talked before about how Amazon had been looking for their own Game of Thrones.

They apparently just said, we're not screwing around with any obscure sci-fi text. We're just going to go for it. This makes sense for Amazon. Because, as I talked about on the pod before, I had a meeting there, and it was the same thing was said. Jeff Bezos was basically like, why aren't we in the Game of Thrones business? We're one of the biggest companies in the world. I called him Jeff, but yeah.

No, that was the top-down mandate. He sold you 50 boxes of dry Swifers. They have marvelous Mrs. Maisel coming in two weeks. I love this show. But it is the niche of a niche. Like, it is not... Amazon is a bigger company than that, and they want to be acting like it.

This also makes sense because, for whatever else it is, in terms of its Swiffer business, it was a book website first. They like the idea of... There's a business word that I don't know. Vertical integration. Exactly. They can push the books

while they push the TV. show, that makes sense for them. The other thing is the price tag. Irrelevant. Everything that Amazon does basically, and Netflix, too, is funny money. I hope these are more like NFL contracts where it's just like, they're paying this guy, $63 million. It's not guaranteed. But it's like, but not if he's Kirk Cousins in real life. So they're going to wave Samwise Gamgee midway through the deal? I just, I mean, like, the amount of shows that are like being announced at these astronomical figures, two season guarantee, blah, blah, blah. And then it's just like, oh yeah, just never, came out. This one, this is, they're paying them, I guess, I mean, obviously they're not

paying, they're not cutting the check for a quarter of a billion dollars just in one go, but it is to develop it the properties, which means they're going to develop it. The other thing to takeaway here is we live in the franchise era. And to survive, these companies all think they need to get much bigger, first of all, but they also think they need to have these dependable worlds that they can count on for their shareholders in terms of bringing them back to it. In the initial reports about this, they've talked about these. multitude of spinoffs that could come from this. Yeah. This is a, you know, HBO has

the Game of Thrones World. They're developing five spinoffs from it. Disney is at the forefront of all of this because they have the Marvel Universe and they have Star Wars. Netflix bought Mark Millar, the comic book writer's company, Milar World, expressly in hopes that he will come up

with something like this that they can continue to invest in and bring people into. People, remember a couple of years ago there were all those massive online multiplayer video games? Yeah, World of Warcraft and stuff. I don't understand any of that, except this is, that points, that's the future. More craftification of TV. This is what people want.

They want to know that you can go to their portal, whether it's on your phone or your TV or whatever it may be in the future, and you can have access to this world. All of that said, I don't care about hobbits, man. Did Pete Jackson leave a lot of meat on the bone? Yeah, right. I don't care about hobbits. Like, I don't care about this world enough. It is, you know, it is beloved to many people, but to the previous point we were making, it's kind of backwards looking.

You know, this is deeply beloved to people to whom it has been deeply beloved since they were adolescents. Yeah, and when Game of Thrones first came on, and up through Red Wedding, I would say, maybe a couple, maybe there were some events after Red Wedding. There was that sort of brotherhood and sisterhood

of secrecy that was going on among book readers who were actually just like, yeah, you know, something's coming. Yeah. And then, since then, obviously, things have changed and the show has eclipsed, gone past where George Martin stopped, that has not yet written. Yeah.

But the idea that we're just going to go back and do Lord of the Rings, and even if you want to get into the nooks and crannies of these books, like decades and decades of people have read these books. So what are we going to, like, is it really of interest to people to revisit these things 10 years after? My guess is that they are not going to do the Fellowship of the Ring storyline. For the initial, it's the preceding years, so we're talking a lot of, some elves getting God out there. It's exhausting. I mean, look, you can put on your most optimistic glasses that I'm sure they sell on Amazon,

and you could say that, well, this will give people an opportunity to tell all sorts of stories about class and race and gender in a fictional universe or whatever, you know, like Trojan horse, whatever storyline you want to, and just, you know, put funny ears and take the shoes off and call it a show. but are they really going to do that? I don't know. I mean, this week, is Punisher premiering this week? Punisher's on Friday. This is, the reason I'm transitioning to that, not because I've seen any of it, I haven't. I have no interest in seeing any of it,

but we are seeing the limits of some of this stuff. And the Marvel is divided between its movie business and its TV business, and we give a lot of credit to the movie business on this podcast, or at least I did last week, because I love Thor Ragnarok. Yeah. The TV end of the company is not doing as well, frankly,

and they seem to be in the business of making things because they have these things to make. Now, Runaways is coming up on Hulu. That comes from Marvel TV. I think it's really good. I've seen the first few episodes. We're going to do a podcast with the people behind it at some point soon. But these Netflix shows, which started with such great promise,

so think about what you can do with these gritty heroes and interlocking stories, but they greenlit them at 13 episodes each, and we don't need these episodes. We don't need these things, you know? And The Punisher is a character that has been popular because he murders people. There's really not that much else there. And they made a show about him because they had the rights to him.

Also, the Punisher has been a character that was immensely popular at certain points of time, and they have tried over and over again to make this pop off. And I think that there's just a huge difference when you take something out of a comic book, which is two-dimensional, and you actually have somebody doing the things that Punisher does. on screen and then you're like, but you like this guy, right? And it's like, well, no, nobody should like Frank Castle. You know what I mean? Like, this guy's an animal.

Yeah. And it looks like from what I've seen of the show that Bernthal and the showrunners are like, they investigate that. They investigate the torture that must be going on with this guy. Yeah. But that being said, that being said, we still have to watch it. We're still the people who have to watch it. No, I don't. I'm out.

But I mean, but this thing, this inertia that can set in where, where you could say it two ways. There's an inertia that sets in where we're making things because we have to make them, so let's make the best of it, and you can feel that strain. You can feel the strain.

Like, at the end of the day, the Punisher is a show about a guy with unlimited arsenal who just murders people who he thinks are criminals or who are criminals or whatever the case may be, with machine guns.

Right, because they... This doesn't feel like the moment for that show. That doesn't seem that interesting to me. Now, so once again, I mean, there's no time where this happens more often than in talking about franchises,

but the business conversation is very different than the creative conversation. And this is a fine deal for Amazon to make. This makes sense for them for their goals, for their vertical integration, for where the industry is going to make the big splash for their resources. But creatively, it's sucking air. It leaves a lot to be desired. But this is kind of where we're at. So let's get out of this crap then for a second.

Let's go to Sacramento for a minute. So before we start talking about superheroes again, let's talk a little bit about Lady Bird. Let's say, first of all, we've gotten into trouble with this before. We're not going to spoil this movie in any way because we understand that it is not in wide release yet. So you don't want to talk about how Lady Bird opens up the Sacramento Expanded Universe and what it says about... All I'll say is stick around after the credits.

Oh my God, yeah. The tag. Where Vladi Divac shows up, chain smoking. And it's like, do you ever want to run a basketball team? Did not expect Mike Bibby to pop up? No. Doug Christie looks good, though. This movie, Chris said it last week,

Just all we're saying to America that doesn't have access to this movie yet is just lock and load, man. I'll put in Punisher terms. This, no, edit that. All I'm saying is to the part of America that does not have access to this film yet is just get ready. Because it is a total and complete joy. It is a complete success from start to finish in every performance, in conception, in execution. This is a movie. I mean, people should know a little bit about it.

It's a, it's Greta Gerwig, the writer and director and actress, quasi-autobiographical movie about one young woman's senior year of school in Sacramento in 2002 to 2003. And the performances, Sertia Ronan and Lori Metcalf and the two It Boys of Hollywood. Big Tim. It's Timmy Time. Timothy Chalemette and. Shalomey, actually. Shalame?

Guess what? I got a Timothy Shalomey story for you. Do you really? I met that kid. How is he? I met that kid five years ago on the set of Homeland. Yes. I was wondering when we were going to get back to Homeland. I did in North Carolina. People don't remember this, that this kid who is...

Very divisive character on Homeland. Yeah, this kid is the darling of Hollywood right now. He's got Call Me By Your Name coming out. He's in Lady Bird. He's getting all the parts. But he brought on Dark Dana. He, people remember this, that he played the son of the... Secretary of State or whatever it was. Yeah, like an ambassador or the VP.

The VP's son. The VP's son. The VP's son who corrupted our beautiful angel. Dana Brody. They got in a car accident. Do you remember that? And I met, I was on set. And I met this kid and he was so young, his mom was on set with him because she had to be there. And it just goes, show you never really know

for young actors, because he's really good. It's not that he was bad on the homeland. You know, like, this kid will never make it in this town. I wrote him off immediately. It is just, it's just a wonder. It is a wonder. Here's a question I had for you about this. The buildings Roman, the coming of age story, works really well in movies. Yes. It is just one of those. We don't talk about that enough, I think, when we talk about the type of movies we like, you know, like heist movies

or rom-coms. The coming-of-age story, particularly in a compact amount of time. The Days to Confuse Verde, the Linklater movies, Rushmore. Diner, American Graffiti. Yeah. This is, maybe we don't talk about enough because it's so hard to get right. But when you get it right, it's very special. And when you not only get it right, but give it a spin that we've never seen before. This is such a deeply female film in the sense of the main character, played by Sertia Ronan, the role of the guys in it, the primacy of the mom in her life. And just, I would say, too, in the generosity that it extends to literally every character with these grace notes and details that tell us everything we need to know about them and leaves us wanting more. I thought also

it was an incredibly it was such an invigorating advertisement for writing. I think sometimes I feel like good writing gets a little degraded in this age of we're going to figure it out on set. Good screenwriting. Whether it's because

everything is improv and we're just throwing out ad libs and we'll get 90 takes and throw the best ones in a movie or there's so much oversight over how we have to build out the narrative fabric of a film to make it a quilt that will cover 10, 12 years of movies.

And every line of Lady Bird actually is building towards something. And even the lines in the beginning, when you're watching it, and you think it's like, oh, this is just a bit, or it's a joke, or it's like a funny observation they wanted to throw in there, actually serves building blocks to create something massive. And I think that that might be something. I wanted to kind of say this last weekend. I still want to wait for people to see it,

so I don't want to go too deep into the plot. Although I do highly recommend people check out Sean Fenn, see's interview with Greta on the big picture, which is great. And they get into the details of the film a little bit more than I think we will. Usually, every day I'm jealous of Sean for his crisp chino's. Today I'm extremely jealous of Sean for this interview. But the way that they build towards something, I think that you can see this and just like, oh, what a nice little movie. It's like, it's not a little movie. It's a huge movie, actually. It's about very, very big things. It's not an awshucks indie. It is not a like shuffling down the block just trying to make

its own thing. It's like, it's about really, really, really important stuff that affects lots and lots of lots of people across the board, not just from Sacramento, not just from 2002. And it's, it's, it's, it's, that's one thing that resonated, especially towards the end, which gets very, very emotional. Uh, you can just feel that every little line, every little moment in that movie is building towards what it does at the end. And that is the sign of a great writer. I also think it's worth noticing when you watch this movie. And I think there's a lesson. here for all writers and particularly for writers of television who are working and people who are aspiring or for movies of course as well. If you think about this movie when you see it,

there is not a single character in the film who has bad intentions. Everyone is just trying, man. Everyone's doing their best and making do with what they have. No one is perfect, but no one has bad intentions. And that, you can look at that as an obstacle to your script or to your project because who's going to move the plot, who's going to, you know, in a very like Robert McKee screenwriting sense, like what's the antagonist of the scene, what's the obstacle, throw that all away for a while and see what it would be like if people had wants and desires, but they weren't, and then build more organically up from that. Yeah, it was inspiring to see that play out so beautifully in a movie.

And it has a certain symmetry and a real like three-act structure that makes sense, but it tells its story in a way that isn't like it's darkest before the dawn, which is like these kind of these story beats I think we've become so accustomed to in 80% of our moviegoing experiences. And this just felt different and it felt really refreshing. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then Andy will be back with me to talk a little bit about our superhero list. And then I'll be joined by Andrew Grudadarro to kind of go through the rankings.

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Okay, we back. Andy, we're talking superhero rankings. Today, The Ringer, it's Monday. We put up our ranking of all-time superhero movies, so the top 50 of superhero movies of all time. We also have a bunch of other superhero content, audio and visual, coming this week. So you can check out Thursday.

We're doing the rewatchables on Dark Night. I did that with Sean and Jason. Sean's also got a big picture pod going this week with Shoemaker and Jason Concepcion about the future of superhero movies, about comic book movies. and tons of other stuff. So let me just ask you, you were not part of the voting block? No.

So as an outside observer, what did you think of the way the ranking sorted itself out? Just want to be clear on one thing, because Thor Ragnarok, very recent film, made the list. Yes, number nine. Deserving of its very high stature, I think. But the much more expansive reboot of Birdman as Lady Bird did not make it. I just wanted to be clear. That's too bad. Yeah.

I thought this list is fascinating because first of all, it's just there are so many of them. There are so many of them, and this happened relatively, it feels like it happened relatively quickly. It's like a lot of them within the last 10 years. Because let me tell you, this is probably the least popular part of this podcast when we do Remember When's, but like I remember when the X-Men movie, I hope not.

It happened. Yeah, me too. And I can't, and remember thinking I can't believe they may. made this. Yeah. And there's no way it's going to be popular. Like there was, it was so ingrained in the culture,

not just in Hollywood, because I had nothing to do with Hollywood at the time, but in like comic book fans and fans of movies. That nerd culture thing of like, I can't believe they gave us a movie. Because they never will. Like there was just a deep understanding that this cannot happen.

This will not succeed. And then it's taken over the world. One of the things that I thought was most interesting about this list, and maybe this speaks to how there is much more quantity than quality is the transition from, more or less garbage to, oh, that's pretty good. Happens really suddenly and subtly in this list. You know, it is not scaled up.

I don't know if like 26, I'm just calling numbers that I don't have the list in front of me. No, I've got it right here. 26 would be Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange is the perfect 26 because Dr. Strange is whatever, sure. Dr. Strange was a big sure. And then to get to the movies that we think of as, you know, actually quite good. Sure. I will say that looking through this list, there are very, very few movies on this list.

that I would say deserve to be on a list of greatest movies if you take away the adjective superhero. Sure. Which ones would you put in there if you had to choose? Superman. Okay. Superman, that's it? I think that's kind of it. Do you not like Dark Knight? I think Dark Knight is wildly overrated.

Really? I do. Really? I think it's crazy overrated. I think that it is... As a superhero movie or as a movie? As a movie. What do you think of it as being the number one superhero movie of all time?

I strongly disagree. Okay, so what would you put instead? First of all, you told me that a movie like The Incredibles was, is not eligible. We don't acknowledge cartoons. Yet you have Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on the list. So, okay. Here are some of my more positive comments about it,

before I get like super nitpicky about it. Iron Man 3 correctly rated. Shout to the Shane Blackhive. I have moles inside the office. Iron Man 3. Yeah, you're looking at it. What do you think? I give that thing like a nine.

That's why it's up there. Good work. I don't know. I mean, the... Great Amanda Dobbins. too. It's the one where all the Iron Man's fight. She got it. Yeah. But it's also the movie that has the long

detective stories in rural Tennessee. With a little kid and also the Ben Kingsley thing. We won't talk about it, but it's just that brings me great joy. It's spoiled Iron Man 3 for all those heads out there. Who knows? We're saying it's good. Maybe there are people who gave it a mess. You know, some dude is like, you know, I still have Iron Man 3 in my red envelope, Netflix DVD

and I haven't returned it in six years. It's possible. Yeah. Sorry about that. You also, as part of the expanded content of this list, you have a villain list, which is completely correct. And that list, it's the ranking of villains and superhero films. And number one is Heath Ledger in the Dark Night, correct. Two through 275 is everyone else. Yeah. Correct. Yes. No love for Lee Pace's judge Bluehead in Guardians of the Galaxy One or whatever. Like, it is, it is totally thankless job. And I'm glad that's right. Don't you feel like we've been living with Thanos for a really long

time. Hasn't Thanos been getting teased for like eight years or isn't my imagination? No, that's correct. Well, no, since Avengers. So five years. And it'll be six years before you even shows up. Speaking of which, what do you think of Avengers at two? That's what I was my next point.

Guys, Avengers isn't really good. Like, that's my take. Yeah. Everyone has come around to agree that Age of Ultron is not good. Yes. I would say both of those films, but even Avengers, which obviously ushered in this idea of put all these people together. you can make a billion dollars, yada yada.

This movie is not rewatchable, my man. Avengers is good, in severe quotes, in the way that Force Awakens is great. What I mean is it proved something thought impossible was in fact possible and didn't offend a majority of people. It pleased enough people just enough. Now, I don't mean to conflate them because I think Force Awakens is probably better, and you can make a legitimate argument for really good things in that movie. But really, the success, I think, of Force Awakens is just like expectation management and brand building for the future.

And that's what Avengers did. I mean, Jos Ween did something truly remarkable, but making a really good movie was not one of those things. I don't think you can make a good Avengers movie. One of the points that we didn't make in talking about Thor Ragnarok was... I love how you say Thor Ragnarok. Because people, the dark world heads love... Is it? Thor?

Heartbeat Ragnarok. I don't have time to pause. This is a long podcast. The thing we didn't talk about when we talked about Thor, pause, pause, Ragnarok was that it was correctly scaled. So it was fun because the main character is a god.

Yeah, you should definitely just keep saying I when you say that, though. I did not like that movie. I know you didn't like it, but the problem of an Avengers movie or writing an Avengers comic book is that the person, the villain that Black Widow can disarm or disable is not the same that Thor can because Thor is a god.

And Black Widow is a god. And Black Widow is a cool spy. Yes. So them fighting is not going to really work out well. You know what I mean? Or it's going to be a different level of villain. So at least these side movies make more sense. So Avengers, no.

Avengers not good. Okay, that's one. Dark Knight insanely overrated. Great villain performance. I know you ride for Eckhart. But do you remember, isn't, that's the movie where the crescendo is the spying technology that Morgan Freeman has invented. And then there are two boats.

That's how the movie ends. the crescendo. The crescendo is when an 18-wheel truck literally flips up in the air over a motorcycle. That part's great. Yeah. That part is great. If you actually watching Dark Night again, when you you're like, oh, and we, like, and now there's

this scene that I remember like lighting my face on fire, no Harvey Dent. You know, like it's, it has all the tools except for an ending. Here's my hottest take. Batman Begins is the best of those movies. By far. Interesting. And I would put that in the top ten.

It's one of my favorite super hero movies. Badman begins. Yeah. Make the case. It's a more interesting part of it. It's the creation of this guy. It actually functions as a world-building film. I love Christian Bale's performance in it.

I love the Liam Neeson. You know what you love? The Liam Neeson of it all. A training sequence on a Frozen Lake. I love a training sequence. I'm not going to lie. Can we all agree? I don't think we can going by this list.

Dark Night Rises, like extremely Bane voice might be bad. Dark Night Rises, you really have to get around the fact that Heinz Ward escapes the entire destruction of a football field. Yeah. As a little soprano boy sings like the National Anthem. That's because Heinz Ward was brought up on Last Boy Scout. He knows you keep running. If that had been like Devin Hester, I would have been like, sure. A guy who has more experience, like maybe even peak Brian Westbrook.

There is a Christopher Nolan moment in Christopher Nolan film. films where you're like you feel you're moving, you're riding along with the movie, and then you're like, oh no, there's another 90 minutes. It's like you better buckle up in Dunkirk though. He does. He does a great job. The part in the boat on the beach? He's like, he looks like home.

But do you remember like at Dark Night Rises, we're like, okay, Ann Hathaway's fun, we're having a good time here, and then it's just like, wait a second, we're just going to have a siege on the city for like 90 minutes. This is just, well, he has a broken back. Dark Night Rises has some issues. These movies are too. You cannot have Batman talk like that and Bain talk like that. No, it's just too serious, man.

It's too much. Any other final notes? Give me Batman returns over those. Give me Fifer. Give me Fifer and Leather. See, you don't like fun parts of comic books. You like dark comic books. That's what you believe.

That's why I'm into Thor the Dark World. That's because you also, you love Eccleston. Thor Dark World. Say it faster. Okay, a few other takes. Spider-Man 2 is better than Spider-Man. Uh-huh. Why do you think Spider-Man's in the top ten?

Because that was kind of the one... Because it was like, oh, we can do this. We can do this now. Okay, so maybe for that reason. And Ramey had that... I think Ramey really captured how to bring the Biff-Pow! Energy of comics to film. Like, his cinematic style is already Biff-Pow, and I think he really grabbed it.

Those words are triggering for comic book fans. Sorry. Captain American Civil War. has a cool fight scene with Spider-Man in it. But let's relax. Yeah. I mean, I've always, I've been, oh, well, Civil War, I actually enjoyed watching. Me too.

Winter Soldier is the one where I'm like, this is not three days of the Condor. No, that, now has, it is. I got really taken out behind the woodshed by the expectations for that movie. It is time to backlash that movie. Oh, so now you're pro Winter Soldier. I've always been. It's really good. And then let me melt your Winter Soldier with this hot tape.

I'm excited for this. First Avengers better than all of them. First Avenger might be the best Marvel movie of that, the Avengers side of the family. Extremely Bucky Barnes' voice. You might be right, Cap. You might be right. Tommy Lee Jones? Stanley Tucci?

Also, it's just... TLJ, just like doing patent quotes? It's just a period piece. It's fun. Joe Johnson did a great job with it. It's contained. It feels like an Indiana Jones movie. Evan spends the first one-third of the movie like a scrawny little nerd and then gets glowed up.

She does. He glows up. And Haley Atwell's like, you're big now. Go on. That's like, I'm just re-frizing the movie here. I just want to ask permission from the booth. Can the rest of the podcast just be Chris just recapping? My synopsis of First Avengers? The first adventure. Yeah. Hugo weaving is like my face off. Yeah. What colors his face?

Red. Oh, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one's fun. And I think X-Men 2 is a top 10 superhero movie. Okay. I think X-Men 2, Brian Cox's performance. is great. That's the one, you said, and we'll end on this, but like, at the beginning of this podcast, you threw a little shade at our friends at Fox, such good friends we have over there. At Fox Studios? Yeah, well, you said that the X-Men movies generally haven't succeeded, and I agree with you creatively and artistically. The caveat to that is the X-Men movies have not succeeded

because I was, like you, like I can't believe they're going to make X-Men movies. Yeah. And given how many of them they've made and how they've bungled, like, Let's start over again with McAvoy and FastBirder. But wait, what if we just put all of them in the movie? But wait, let's do Apocalypse, but it's the worst movie of all time. In a weird way, the X-Men movies are the most true to the comic books, because the comic books have the single purest and best idea maybe of any character outside of Spider-Man and Batman, right?

They are hated and feared. Their gifts are curse. Bang. Great. You can do all sorts of analogies about marginalized groups. You can tell stories about people, you know, adolescence and being a young person and afraid of yourself. There's so many things built into that. Yeah, what's normative behavior?

That work. And yet, a weird majority of the storylines are about them talking to aliens with bird feathers on their head. Like, what does that have to do with anything that we're talking about? And that's the story of 40, 50 years of X-Men comic books. With weird reboots, and this person's dead,

but alive and we'll recast them. It's really the story of the movies, too. To that point, I think X-Men 2 got the closest to it. That's the one I think that has the, like, where Ice Man goes home. And his parents are like, have you ever tried not being a mutant? And it kind of plays with those ideas. Plus, it's just a pretty well put together movie.

And in retrospect, the extremely Torontoness of it, no shouts. I mean, no disrespect to the sixth god. But that was definitely when Fox was like, we'll make another, but we're not sure we're going to spend all the money on it. Makes it more charming. So, yeah. But my bigger takeaway is, boy, they made a lot of these. And it does seem like the ceiling, at least in the current iteration of these movies, is lower than I thought when you see them all together.

All right, so now we're going to bring on Andrew Godadaro to talk about the methodology we used to make this list and our observations about sort of where the superhero movie is going from here. Again, rewatchables Dark Night later this week, big picture on superhero, the future of superhero movies later this week. Andy and I will be back Thursday with a very special episode. We're really looking forward to this. Joe Hagan, author of the new Jan Wiener biography, Sticky Fingers,

will be joining us. So we're really excited for the re-up on Thursday. Thor Ragnarok. Thor Ragnarok. Okay, now I am joined by the ringers Andrew Goodedaro. Hey. Who has been in his bat cave working on his special equipment. I don't even know.

That sounds dark. Honestly, like to see light right now. Yeah. It hurts a little bit. It's synthetic. And Andrew has been working on these superhero rankings for a while. He has like an elaborate algorithm that we'll discuss in just a second. But just so that everybody knows where we're coming from here.

If you haven't seen it on the site already, I'll just run through the top 10 for the superhero rankings. These are based on a number of factors that Andrew will explain. But the number one, she comes no surprise, Dark Night. Number two is The Avengers. Number three, Superman. Number four is Spider-Man. Number five is Wonder Woman. Yep.

Number six, Spider-Man 2 from 2004. Number seven, Iron Man. Number eight, Captain American Civil War. Number nine, very recent, Thor Ragnarok. The new. The new Thor Ragnar. And number 10 is Guardians of the Galaxy. Okay, so let's talk first about methodology.

Yeah. Tell me about how you went about making this ranking. So basically we were trying to figure out a way, because this is obviously a conversation that has been done a lot of times. So we tried to figure out what makes a superhero movie good and successful. And the factors that we came up with were critical success, box office performance, and then two things, rewatchability, as in, How many times do you really want to rewatch this?

And then something that is a little more amorphous called timelessness. Okay. Basically, we asked, you know, if this movie were to be remade, could it be improved? Sure. Like, how much did they nail it? Did they nail it? Yeah, exactly. So to do those things, we leaned on Rotten Tomatoes for the critical stuff.

We, you know, leaned on the box office numbers, and we kind of adjusted everything so that everything was, parallel to these days, you know, like 1978 Superman obviously made less than Iron Man. Right. But its adjusted box office would have been around 500 million. Exactly. Yeah. And then for the other ones, since they're more related to taste, we sent out this big survey to a bunch of the staffers at the ringer and asked them to answer two questions. And for rewatchability, it was, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, would you rewatch this? and for the timelessness one, it was, do you think this movie could be improved by a remake?

Sure. And then after all those numbers were averaged, you know, we ran them through a formula, added everything up, and the movies with the highest score were our top movies. So it's interesting to see the total number. So like, for instance, Dark Night is number one,

the total of 202.00. Yeah, right? Yeah. And it's five points more or less clear of the Avengers. Right. But a lot of the data here, like a lot of the total numbers, for the movies say

like from you know from from seven to nine or ten they're really bunched together we're talking about a series of like decimal points super close it's basically the difference between someone at the ringer voting a six

rather than a seven about if they would rewatch it which I don't know what that says about us yeah I mean I think we do actually have a pretty diverse staff both in terms of who works there but it's also in terms of the age. And the age, I think, is going to come into play

as we talk more about this, because I think that one of the things you and I have been talking about a lot recently is that when these superhero movies first came into vogue, whether you pin that, I guess we could say, for the sake of argument, 08 with Dark Night and Iron Man. It was kind of appealing to an older nerd generation. Definitely. And now over the years, I think, obviously,

especially with the Marvel stuff, has become the lingua franca of kids. Like when you go see Thor Ragnarok, you're going to be surrounded by children who know every plot beat of like in, of what Infinity Wars is going to be already. Right. And don't necessarily care about the mythology of Thor. Or shades of gray in their heroes. You know what I mean? Like they're not like, oh, I really need Batman to be conflicted. Yeah. And that is, so that was why it was sort of interesting to me to see some of the more recent films pop in there. Because for me personally, it started to become a little bit more of a chore to get through these movies because I feel like. they're being made specifically for someone whose brain is not fully for.

And whereas, like, 08 with Iron Man and Dark Night, I was like, this is a really cool way. They're actual movies. Today, it's like Thor Ragnarok is a superhero movie. Sure. And there's a difference. Yeah. So what are some of the surprises that you came across when you were tabulating all this stuff? So I think one of the biggest things is I didn't realize how much of a factor the box office success was going to play into all of this.

Okay. Which I think if you see, say, like, Civil War in our top 10, I don't really think it's a top 10 superhero movie. And it didn't really score that way in terms of the taste. Yeah. But because it just made so much money, it kind of like gets weighted in that way. And then another thing was some of the movies that the staff picked out, Logan's rewatching. ability score is the same as the dark night. Interesting.

Which is pretty interesting. X-Men Days of Future Past, huge re-watchability score. Why? Why do you think that is? I don't know. I think that movie is appealing visually. I think it's a good mark in the X-Men trilogy or series. Fast Bender, I guess.

And that's one of the ones with all of the both, with many of the old and new cast, right? Yeah, yeah. And is that the one where they go to, like, it's like the Cuban Missile Crisis? Believe so, James McAvoy. Yeah, right. Yeah, so those movies where they scored super high

in terms of our taste, but there were some, they didn't perform as well at the box office, you know, so they're further down on the list. I think that, so the one that why I wanted to talk about a lot was Wonder Woman. And it's, it's presence at number five, which is, I mean, you could say Thor,

I was actually very surprised by Thor and I wonder if that's just recency bias. But Wonder Woman is an interesting situation where you're looking at something that was obviously a big hit, one of the biggest hits of the year. Exactly. And critically liked, but it was like, it's the highest ranking non-batman DC, not non-Nolan DC movie, I think. Did you notice anything about the way people were voting for more recent films? Like, did you think that, do you think that people were like a little like, oh, you know, like the ones that I've seen for the last couple of years have really figured out the way to do these? You know, I, I think, I, I think they are the newer movies have definitely figured out the formula and they figured out how they

can be successful with their particular characters um i think thor ragnerock is a good example of this is the third movie the other two thores are you know kind of bad and they didn't they didn't score well either um and then this one it's you know it's crisp it's funny it's light it's easy to watch. A lot of people said that they would rewatch it, even though they literally just saw it two weeks ago. Yeah, right. And so I think there is a little bit of that.

And then I think with Wonder Woman, you know, it's a stake in the ground where, you know, Galgado's great. It's sort of a turning point for DC where they're sort of adjusting their formula and they kind of actually nailed it. So I think people gave it a favorable score. and maybe rated it against DC more than they did against superhero movies in general. Let's talk a little bit about movies

that you were surprised by their placement, whether it was high or low. I will say Dark Night Rises coming in above Batman begins. Interesting. It's kind of a big one for me. Now, do you think that's recency, or do you think it's like Bain memes?

Or do you think it's, you know what I mean? Like, I guess... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are, I know people who really ride for the last act of Batman, of Dark Night Rises, because they think it's just so, like, gripping him flying out over the water with the bomb and everything, like, that they're really, like, there's a moment where you're like, is, man, I'm going to die? But what do you think was behind that?

Well, you know, one thing I will say is that the third movies in these trilogies usually make more money than the first ones. So that's... Because they can advertise them as, like, the conclusion of this epic. And, you know, at this point, everyone knows what the thing is. they've seen the first two, and especially with Dark Night Rises, it was like, it's following the dark night, you have to see it. Yeah. So that had a big factor. And maybe one other thing about Dark Night Rises is, yeah, it's the culmination. So, you know, it's going to come in. I was surprised. I guess I wasn't really surprised, but it's interesting to note that Batman

versus Superman, Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad come in at 49th and 50th. Yeah, that's a nice little bit of poetry kind of. So not great looks for them. One thing I did think that the list bears out is a preference for single hero movies for the most part. I mean, obviously Avengers at number two is a high rank for a team up movie. Although Avengers is honestly like the thing that all of these other team movies are chasing is that first time. That's the one where seen it was like a revelation. Where it was like, wow, I can't believe they did this.

There's so many characters and they're, you know, it's a great, good-paced movie. I can barely remember what happens in that movie. All I remember is the Grand Central just crumbling to pieces. I can never remember with Sikovia's everywhere. Yeah, right. Sikovia is, uh... Is Ultron? That's Ultron.

Okay. And Ultron, I think, is a huge step back from the first Avengers. Right. And it was also sounded like a much more trying production and, you know... And definitely, I think, a reaction to the people who were like, You guys are destroying real cities and there are some actual implications to that. Sure. So then they went to this fake city and, you know, while I respect the fact that they were listening to the criticism, it doesn't have the same urgency.

Yeah, and I think that that was also, with a lot of these movies, what happens is they try to just keep adding on. And Ultron suffered probably from the additions of like Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Exactly. And like, let's give Hawkeye a scene. Vision. Yeah, it's just like a lot to handle. People are excited for Infinity War, but if they're really like tripling the amount of people who are in this movie... I'm worried about it.

Yeah, it's either going to be five hours long or it's going to make no sense whatsoever. Yeah, I think the better situation right now is Thor Ragnarok, where you can make almost 100 minutes of a movie based on one guy. Yeah, and the ones like, and Logan and Iron Man won, these movies that are actually like pretty like focused on like, well, there's one guy and he's going to be in every scene. Yeah, they don't have to lift as much. branching out and crossover. Absolutely. A couple of other movies that I thought were either too high or too low or was interesting to me.

Hit me. I think I'm probably like, I'm probably a little in the bag for Logan. But one that was really surprising for me, and I'm trying to find out here. Oh, it's 31 is Captain America First Avenger, which is a movie. We usually don't talk about it doesn't really come up when it's like, oh, best Marvel movies. It's sort of a forgotten, not an experiment, but it was like it looks different than a lot of the Marvel movies. It's obviously set during the 1940s. It's got a certain wholesomeness and Spielbergian

kind of like old school wonder to it. Whereas the whole bit since then with Winter Soldier and Civil War is like, oh, I'm unfrozen caveman and Captain America. Like, what are you guys doing with your cell phones? And that being said, I really loved it felt like a comic book to me in the best possible way. And I liked the fact that the very end they get into the, okay, this is how he's going to fall into Shield and stuff like that. But before it's like, yeah, Howard Stark's in it. And there's a couple of other like hallmarks of the Marvel universe. But it's more or less like a really cool version of Indiana Jones with like a guy with a shield. Yeah. And the funny, if you look at the critical scores for say Civil War, the third one.

It's 10 points higher. Yeah. Which I think is maybe, you know, maybe that's a case of critics kind of getting into the swing of superhero movies. Or coming to grips to the fact that these aren't going anywhere and my like annihilating it is not going to help. Yeah. Yeah. Or just like knowing that this is the state of movies. Yeah.

And so that the sort of standards have been. Well, that's kind of why you did the poll in the first place, right? It's because this has just become like the dirt. This is like pop culture now. Yeah, these are movies. And like I think I say in the intro of this piece is that you look at the top 10 of this year, more than half of the movies are superhero movies. And next year there's Black Panther, there's Infinity Wars.

Captain Marvel. There's Marvel. There's Deadpool 2. Yeah, exactly. It's not going to stop. Yeah. And the movies aren't going to stop making money. And at least for the near future, we're going to.

keep needing to go see them. Do you think that we are ever going to see any kind of, I mean, it's easy to just say like, oh, will there be fatigue? Will there be fatigue? But do you think that maybe an Infinity War or after Infinity War, the end of the Evans Hedithersworth Downey generation? I mean, Downey for sure can't just keep doing this, right? He's been talking about not doing it for a good time.

And they would have to, they would probably want to set it up so that like Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman and, you know, Bree Larson and Benedict Cumberatch kind of take it over? Do you make these movies without Thor and without Captain America and without Iron Man? That's a great question. I've really been thinking about this a lot. Like, you can't reboot those characters. Juliet Lippon's a huge fan of recasting. And I think you could make the arguments.

Like, why not just make Miles Teller or Tony Stark? Yeah. Would it really be that hard for them to sell that? Rather than start from the beginning, Tony Stark back from the beginning, and he gets lost in Afghanistan and has to build this suit of armor. I also wonder now that because the MCU was sort of like a gamut to force people to buy into 10 movies when they bought into one. So now that that's already happened, everyone's going to see these movies and, you know, superior movies have taken over the box office.

maybe now DC and Marvel have the freedom to just make offshoots and they don't have to tie in these huge universes. So in a way they can say here's a Tony Stark at 26 and Miles Teller can play that. Which honestly might be a better situation. Well, that's what's going to be fascinating next year, not only with Black Panther but with the future DC movies, is that I think that MCU had a certain tonal, uniformity to it up to this point and DC has had these like stops and starts of you know we're gonna do like

Zach Snyder like total like and then they'll be like oh wait actually like it'll be like Ocean's 11 and everything will be banter with Justice League but are they gonna do it where they stop you know can you have like two or three badmans going at once do you know what I mean like can they have

standalone Batman with Affleck the Batman that's going to be in the Flash movie the Batman that's on television and at what point will people be a little too confused? Because it is actually a miracle that the Marvel thing worked out that all three of those guys wound up being like,

we're famous and we're going to keep being in these movies. I almost think of it as like the Walking Dead. It's like this thing that no one really says I love it but a million people watch it and there's no end in sight. So it's mostly just saying Like maybe someday people will stop caring about it

Yeah But I mean I said that during Amman I was like right Nobody's gonna go see Amman dog like come on Nobody's gonna see Doctor Strange Yeah and they keep doing it And people continue to go And I think that there's a certain way

There's a real Expert Expert expertise in marketing Because each one of these movies I'm like ooh is this gonna be like a 70s thriller Right And it's just no it's like a Marvel movie Yeah or is like

Is Dr. Streaming going to be a psychedelic, you know, like, Jodoroski movie. And it's like, no, it's just like it's a Marvel movie. Yeah, not really. With like one hallucination scene. Any other observations you wanted to share with people coming out of this? You know, I think that generally, with the exception of Logan, it's interesting to note the fading of the X-Men series here for the most part.

Right. Like, that seems now, in retrospect, maybe a mishandling of probably the most valuable superhero property in a lot of ways. Yeah, I mean, there's so many characters to draw from in that series, but they seem to have kind of used it all up. And they're making the Dark Phoenix saga again with Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones. Yeah, and I mean, they have new mutants coming next year, which is like it looks like a horror movie.

Yes. They're saying it is just a straight-up horror movie that happens to feature the new mutants. Right. Maybe that spurs a new avenue for X-Men. Yeah, maybe that one, that franchise is at the point where they can kind of do whatever they want. Yeah. You know, Logan might be an example of that. Yeah.

Which would be great. Yeah. Yeah. The fascinating thing would be is if they ever feel like they need to take a step back, let people forget it, come back three years later. They didn't quite do that between Dark Night Rises and the new DCU that they popped out. And I don't know if that really had a – I don't know if people were like we're still so invested in – Bail as Batman and the Christopher Nolan vision that it didn't work, or if those movies were just bad, which they were. I think it's a little bit of both.

Yeah. You know, for, I feel like my generation especially, you know, I was probably 19 when those movies came out. They were the most important thing. Yeah, the Dark Night movies. Yeah, extremely important and, like, amazing spectacles that, you know, I think a lot of people had never seen. so to see a new one come out, it's hard to measure up. Yeah.

If there's one movie on this list that you think is super underrated that people should check out, is there anyone on there that you would recommend? I would, you know, I think kickass at 48 is kind of low. I think that movie is extremely clever and fun.

And if people haven't seen it, they should see it because it's a good twist. on the genre. I would say Hancock at 54, which is one of the, it's really out there. It's actually kind of weird that it got made. If people don't know what it is, it's a Peter Berg movie starring Will Smith,

Charlize Theron, and Jason Bateman. And Will Smith plays an alcoholic superhero that is actually just like in our world. Right. And it actually sets up like a whole mythology of this like pretty much like out of whole cloth

superhero universe that is not part of like a major comic book series. And you could tell that they had like pretty big, big plans for it if it had worked out. But the whole idea was, and this was coming in 2008, so it's right, it's like the one in 2008 that didn't work out.

It's like Iron Man Birth MCU, Dark Night pretty much changed what our expectations were for these movies because it was like, that was a movie that people were comparing to the godfather when it came out. And then Hancock came out, and it's actually just,

a really, really weird time capsule, not only of Will Smith stardom, but also like Pete Berg really shooting a shot and it not working out. So if you're interested in a weird movie, check out Hancock. Also, I just really ride for Iron Man 3, and I thought I shot that out. Another thing that I would like to point out about the ringer staff is that all of the blade movies were rated extremely high. What does that even mean? People love the blade movies. I think that's like generational TNT watching. I think so too. Yeah, because like I don't care about Blake.

Pete Wesley. Yeah, right. All right, man. Andrew, this is amazing work. You can check out all of our rankings on the ringer.com. We'll have plenty of other superhero oriented audio and visual content this week. But Andrew, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks, man.

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