The Watch - Marvel’s Fourth Phase and the ‘Big Little Lies’ Season 2 Letdown | The Watch

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

A lot of news came out of Comic-Con this weekend, including what to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the next few years, both in theaters (1:00) and on the small screen (21:52). The second season of ‘Big Little Lies’ felt like a seven-episode show that was dying to be 12 episodes long (41:26), and ‘Veronica Mars’ is back and playing hard on nostalgia (50:09). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Andy Greenwald and Sean Fennessey 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 on the other line live from a snake hole. It's Andy Greenwald! Remember Chris? First of all, hello.

Hello, good friend. Chris, do you remember on the beloved sitcom Parks and Recreation when Aubrey Plaza's character had a alter ego named Janet St. snake hole and there was the snake hole lounge and I'm like what a funny word salad they go great together it's a peanut butter and ice cream thing everybody's happy long morning here turn it's cream Jesus turns out what the colonel saying boogie nights that's what he likes anyway chris turns out snake holes are actually the holes or snakes live yeah pay me a word picture here what's going on in the desert boy did we see a lot of them so uh 630 a m call this morning in the

desert behind the studio fun thing about albuquerque is you can be on a major production studio a lot. And then there's just a gate that hangs open, and you can just drive through it, and you're on the part of the map where here be monsters. But you are literally just at the end of it, and you could just keep going. And there are snakes,

and there are dragonflies that look like bees, hitching rides on other bees until they form some sort of like Voltron bee. Okay. And they're just coming around, checking out video village. So, yeah, so we were out there, 6.30 this morning with my new best friend Alan

coming, who was a great sport about all of it. And here's the thing. The shots are beautiful. Really, this is for episode. I have to come clean with you. I know I've been coming in hot on these guests podcasts, but I build up a lot of content in the morning when I'm out there. Yeah.

The thing is, I watch Breaking Bad, and I love Breaking Bad, and I know you did too, and, you know, I wrote about it, and so people have a record of me watching the show in real time, enjoying it, appreciating it, and musing about it. During those years when I was watching the show, there was never a moment where I was like, you know what I mean? When Walt and Jesse were like,

there wasn't a part of me that was like, and yet. Dude, I think if you remember correctly, two, no, it was the winter of 2017. When did Trump get elected? 16? I mean, I try to block it out, but the election was in 2016. Right.

So in February of 2017, I went to New Mexico for a romantic weekend getaway. Remember this? Sort of. I wasn't clocking it with the ferocity I would be these days. So I think I came back and I was like Santa Fe, a lot to love, maybe not the best time a year to go, a little bit empty, had some issues with the lack of moisture in the air when my skin started to fall off. But I would say it is essentially the Elron's kingdom compared to Albuquer. And now you live in Albuquerque. I do. I do. And I don't want to sound like, I mean, I don't spend, nor do most people here a great deal of time in the unforgiving, punishing son.

I'm the genius who wrote these outdoor scenes and everything is beautiful. I am thrilled to be here. But I do know a large number of people who have been listening to this podcast and following me on social media. all of them were unanimous in thinking, that's a desert guy. Yeah. They're like, that's the guy who's got the gear,

and he likes to like... It's essentially... T.E. Lawrence. Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know what I mean? Moment. I was going to say of it.

You know what I wanted to ask you about is if when the Emmys got announced the other day, was there any, like, chatter on the set among people who were like, not snubbed or rewarded with the nominations, but is that kind of like,

when the All-Star team gets announced and then people in sports media are talking? Like, what was the reaction to that? It's a great question. I would say that the All-Star game announcements in the NBA, I don't know, but I'd be curious how it

filters into, like, the league offices and the training staff and the rigors and everybody who's actually out there in the desert doing this incredible work so this vision can come to life. I think generally they can take it or leave it. Right. I think actors were,

excited and happy for their friends. Because like Kim Dickens, Deadwood got nominated, right? She was happy about that. She's psyched. She was very psyched about that. Rosario Dawson, huge fan of the last season of Game of Thrones,

just thought they nailed it. That has not come up. We have talked about many other topics. That has not come up. It would be funny, though, if, like, you guys were so deferential towards her because she's the star of the show, that she could just come around

and just have, like, the worst takes. and you guys be like, yeah, you know, that's a really good point, Rosario. She was just like, I thought they nailed it. I totally feel like they got all the emotional beats right. I didn't need more plot. I didn't need to see it. I would say that on like week one, she could have pulled that, but now that everybody knows just how relatively, just how cool she is and just hanging out.

And everyone would feel comfortable doing that. Just to give you, just kind of give you two more little tidbits from the field before we get into some Comic-Con talk, because I'm ready to talk about that. Of course. I do want to just give, so people, over the weekend, I came back to L.A.,

and that's part of the cut to feel a climate, suitable for human existence. I did run into a friend and friend of the pod, Stephen Falk, the creator. And I think that for the first time, like, he looked at me and he was just like, welcome, brother.

Like, the look in my eye, there is a sort of like ninth dimensional chest that is necessary now, and I was trying to explain this to someone, but just so people know what this week is like. On Friday, we wrapped episode Friday. And so for people who don't know, what does crossboarding mean?

So crossboarding means you have the scenes for multiple episodes, and you do them. On Friday, we film scenes from episodes five and six on the same set. I book at and potentially rewrite slightly a scene from the pilot that we're reshooting on Friday, which I thought was done. last fall. We are, but everything's great. Everything's great. I have to rewrite nine and then write

the script. And then there's also everyone's asking all these questions about five and six. So to exist and then next week I have to start in like multiple dimensions of space and time is a skill that I know. Whether I have the talent or ability to do that. But I do think that was part of the this. This is the way things work. Last thing, put it on Instagram. Brilliant. As we get on the plane, settling in, it's like the last flight out of Albuquerque Friday night, many, many industry types heading home for the families. The flight attendant got on the, got on the mic, and decided to freestyle a little bit. And she was like, hey, everyone, you know, while you're taking your seats, just know we just came from Los Angeles. I'd like to ask everyone is to look in front

of you, look in the seat pocket, and make sure you know where your vomit bag is located. And don't be ashamed to use it. We had six pukers on the way here. Are you serious? Yeah, I feel like American Airlines needs to, don't be embarrassed. I was, she's like, if you're sitting in the back of the plane, it will feel like Mr. Toad's wild ride. Have you all been to that? Okay, wait a second. So I've already, not even because of my fear of flying, which is, I think, at a normal rate of don't want to die, but don't often think about it too much. But I think because I've been reading so much Larry McMurtry, I've been, I've been considering, like, getting back into driving.

Yeah, like if somebody's like, you should come visit me in Albuquerque, for instance, I would be like, sure, that's a solid 14 hours. Just, I'll just tear that off. Like, I kind of, and now you're considering it. And now I'm considering it, yeah, for sure.

So, I just wanted to pay for a young panic attack here, like dry swallowing a X and palming another one just in case. You're like chopping up lines of Xanax on your trade table. But the main thing was, they were like,

don't be embarrassed to, bazooka barf in front of your seatmates. And I'm like, technically, these people are working for me. They look to me. If I remember correctly, the flight from Albuquerque to L.A. is not like a jumbo jet. It's pretty intimate.

No. Yeah. It's an intimate flight. It's a short flight. I downloaded the longest treatment. I was like supersizing the headspace. I was like,

give me 55 minutes of unadulterated New Zealander guy talking into my ear about chilling out. And then it wasn't really that bumpy. So I feel like, The reverse psychology worked, but you can't, you've got to hold on to your lunch when you're sitting near Kim Dickens. You have to do it. There's this golf swing technique. There's this guy who works out of Westlake, and his name's George Gankis.

I've been really getting into his videos recently, his YouTube's. Chris, somewhere Timothy Simons is nodding his head. And he has this thing about like getting external. You know, like before you hit your shot, you like look out and up, take in the mountains, take in the surroundings, take in nature, and just get out of your head. Maybe that's what you need to do. Although getting external on a plane would be dangerous.

Because that would imply being outside of the body of the actual airplane. No, that's a terrible place to ride. Did you see that episode of the Twilight Zone? That's not a good idea. Yeah. So, anyway, I just, whatever I can do to help with these kinds of mindfulness exercises, you could also, you know, you could have watched some Peak TV.

A lot of good stuff out there right now. you could have listened to some pods? Yeah, I saw, I'm not going to name names. I did see, on my flight back yesterday, the co-creator of an Emmy-nominated program watching The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on like an iPhone 7. Just as Joel Cohen intended.

It's quite a world. All right, I'm sorry, I've monologed all my anxieties to you. Well, I've only got a few minutes with you, so I just want to give you the floor to riff a little bit. I have, Fennacy's going to come on a little bit, and he and I are going to talk about some of the Marvel stuff and also a little bit about Big Little Lies and maybe even Veronica Mars.

Did you finish Veronica Mars? I did. I did. Did you really? Yeah. Oh yeah. My wife loves Veronica Mars. And I really thought this season was incredible. But yeah, it's been a real like gauntlet where

I've watched all of Stranger Things, all of dark, all of Veronica Mars, all of Big Little Lies. I think I've watched like 45 hours of television in the last month. And it It's like, I'm feeling it, man. It's like I got some,

some, I got some, like, real miles on the odometer right now. But I wanted to ask you, so there was a couple of things that came out of Comic Con this weekend. Obviously,

the big thing was the Marvel Phase 4 announcement with a bunch of the new movies, a bunch of the Disney Plus shows given fixed dates, and then some teasers about Captain Marvel 2, Black Panther 2, Fantastic 4, and possibly an X-Men movie.

I believe that's it. Oh, and Blade, which is fucking crazy. I mean, that is the craziest one. Yeah, so the story on that, apparently, is that that was, like, Marhershal Ali, like, got a meeting and was just like, we need to make Blade, and Kevin Feigy was like, okay. But I kind of like that that kind of randomness can still happen in a world that's so highly constructed.

But I wanted to see also if you had any thoughts on the Westworld or Watchman trailers and just any big picture thinking coming out of all the announcements and stuff coming out of Comic-Con. Well, I think, well, there were a couple of things. I think that the Marvel stuff, of course, I mean, it dominates the entire industry, the film industry, and the sort of genre movie industry. I thought it was really interesting, and it's also very telling about where things are going, because this was the first time that Fige is out there promoting movies and TV shows and discussing them as related and interconnected. And it feels like this is going to be one of the first test cases for the conversation that you and I have been having about what is what anymore, which things go in which box and how do they connect. Yeah, specifically the, it sounds like the Scarlet Witch character will be one of the canaries in the coal mine for them, where a lot of the stuff that happens in the Wanda Vision show will actually also impact the Doctor Strange sequel.

Which is called Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness. I mean, and here's the thing is like, I've been texting Greenwald about this since Friday. We've been going back and forth. and I feel like you've been messing with me a little bit because you'll be like, old man, I've come from a long distance to check out this Comic-Con news and maybe I'm a little too old for this shit and then I'm like, yeah, me too, man,

some of this stuff sounds a little out there and then you're like, no, psych, I'm really into the Eternals. I think the Eternals could be good. I know, but I don't even know, I don't know what we're talking about anymore, so you've got to tell me. I don't fully know either. I feel like, I feel like Kevin Faggie,

about to get a little weird. And I'm into that. I mean, the caution to that, of course, is the last time we thought he was getting a little weird was Captain Marvel and he hired Fleck and Bowden to do it. And you and I really like and admire Fleck and Bowden as film, they kind of missed the mark with a Captain Marvel movie. But I also think that they were in a really tough spot. I think that the Captain Marvel movie, which, by the way, a global success.

And that's how it will be and probably should be remembered, was almost constrained by all the things it needed to do and needed to be for people to be satisfied with it. I mean, it took long enough for Marvel to make a female-fronted movie, and they had to deliver, and whatever you may have thought about the movie. They are taking some pretty interesting swings with the creative teams behind these movies, and they are delving into the book fandom that I am a fan of. And I have a distinct memory of talking about this in the abstract with you a couple months ago, which is that, you know, columns have gone through various phases.

And then there's in the 60s, there's an TV show, influence in the culture, and vice versa. Then a lot of the 80s and 90s are grim and gritty and, you know, or even mentioning liking the Adam West Batman, for example. You had to only like the Frank Miller Batman. And then we've come full circle again where writers like Grant Morrison and many others of his disciples embrace the insanity of the medium while also trying to do. That is a decades and decades of to condense into a 90-second soundbite. But I do think that the movies, we have 20 years of these kinds of movies, and it seems like the audiences are willing to potentially,

or at least they're about to be, and I adore that movie. And it's success. For me, the main takeaway about the Eternals, which seems to be doing the MCU characters, is, you know,

the really interesting cast, and it's top-heavy with Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek, and then, you know, your boy, the bodyguard in the back, and Brian Tyree Henry now. I mean,

it's a pretty exciting cast. Yeah. And Chloe Zhao, who made this movie, The writer that people love, which is, you know, as far as I understand it, about as far said in the press conference is that this is Kirby-esque insanity. And the Internals are one of Jack Kirby, who along with Stanley, created almost everything people love about Marvel Comics. This was when he was fully just telling these grand, grand, so poporetic ideas.

I think you don't make, in my opinion, and no one's asking me to greenlight this stuff, but you don't make the Eternals movie unless you fucking go for it, right? And make this truly, truly Kirby-esque and insane and huge. and all the words coming from the panel is that that's what they were doing, which is kind of exciting. And the things that give me, they make me excited that they might actually be making good on this promise is also stuff like Dr. Strange title, which is, you know, almost silly in its construction.

But it's not, it's silly in a way that makes comic book fans excited. It's embracing also going to be a full horror movie, or at least the psychological movie. That's the Scott Derrickson says. This is the first Marvel movie that's actually scary. Which is the one that you're most looking forward to before I let you go? Well, it goes right back to

And Natalie Hortman Coming back And I got to tell people If I could take a quick detour into comic book Jason Aaron and Russell Daughterman's run on Thor From the last couple of years Outstanding, you get yourself a Marvel Unlimited You read it, you'll love it

It is about Thor finding out he is unworthy And unable to lift his own hammer anymore And he goes into a deep depressive funk Kind of like what we saw in Endgame And eventually picks up an axe And not making this up. meanwhile, Jane Foster, his former girlfriend, he is dying of cancer and is just,

and it's a great story. And obviously Natalie Borman saw what the opportunity to be Thor and not just arm candy, and they're running right towards the last 10 years have used great recent runs as inspiration for these stories. And it was great to see them going back to it, which is why my last point, Chris, Yep.

X-Men have been in this deep, no pun intended, existential funk, in my opinion, since Graham Morrison left the book like 20 years ago. They're the Phillies bullpen of comic book characters. I feel triggered. Starting, Hickman, who is a crazy visionary comic book writer, and did this definitive, like literally universe ending and rebooting run on Avengers that I really, is taking over X-Men. And he has free reign to do anything he wants with it. And he says that why do small thing?

This doesn't mean that this is going to be the template for what Marvel does when they reboot the X-Men, as they inevitably will in the next one to three years. The one thing that I think Kevin Feigy has done that he has done, that he hasn't gotten a lot of credit for these, but he knows when stuff is good, brilliant. Fraction, though we've talked about a lot of times.

You know what, Andy? If this TV show running thing ever pans out, you've always got podcasting to fall back on. I missed you. I love to podcast with my boy. I'm going to let you go. I'm going to have Sean come on in.

We're going to talk about more Marvel stuff, some of the other Comic-Con stuff, and big little lies. Greenwald, watch out for the snake holes. We'll talk to you soon. Ask Sean what he thinks of the Lion King. I've heard he's a big fan. I will.

Take care, man. Bye, guys. Bye, Baranski. I'm now joined by Sean Fennesse, one of my best friends, the host of the Big Picture, one of the hosts of the rewatchables. Sean, I wanted to have you in because, other than Andy, I think I've talked more about comic book movies, about superhero movies with you than anybody else in my life.

Sad. And that's good for everybody else in our lives, I think, that we have these safe outlets. I wanted to ask, without blowing up your spot, I know you were incommunicado this weekend. True story. Off the grid. And I was curious when.

when the Comic-Con hits, but you're in, you know, you're among the big trees, quite literally. I was among the big trees. Were you able to get the signal? Were you able to find out that Wanda Vision was hitting in 2021 on the pluse? I broke her to deal with Kevin Feige himself. And he, he immediately after delivering his data dump to San Diego, he drove straight to Sequoia National Park, and he parked outside of my tent. And he hand-delivered all of the info. I thought maybe you would trek to a very secluded spot in a national forest. And then your own personal group came out and just laid out the release schedule for the next couple. I am multiverse is what the tree said.

I have a couple of different things I want to talk to you about. Greenwald and I touched on this briefly, but the one thing that I really wanted to discuss with you is this idea of Disney weaving these stories now, not just through a series of team up and solo movies, which was sort of the first 10 years of these films with the Avengers movies. and the offshoots, but also now bringing in the idea of the streaming service and telling stories that way. And not only to push the story forward, but also to fill in the story from behind, to fill in these side stories. A very common comic book tactic is to have these side adventures to take an X-Men character and let them have like their their Yakuza fight and then come back and find out who they are. In some ways, I imagine it must be the challenge that makes

Figey want to keep doing this. I mean, not to suggest any kind of psychology behind it, but if you're somebody who's really achieved everything you can, culminating with Avengers Endgame knocking Avatar off of the pedestal for box office, this challenge of telling stories on multiple platforms and trying to weave them together is really, really unique. I'm not quite convinced that that's what they're going to try to do. Okay. And I think if you look at the programming of the TV shows in particular,

they all seem to be sort of expired figures that they're trying keep alive. I agree with you. And so one of, I think one of the achievements, if we're being sincere about it, of that 10-year period of films leading up to endgame, is the fact that virtually every single movie contributed at least one small artifact or piece of information that bled into this larger Avengers tale. It's not easy to do. It's easy to dismiss comic book movies as silly and childish and yada yada, but the actual act of making all those things fit together is challenging. I don't think they're necessarily driving towards that with the television series and the films. I still think that the films are the centerpiece, and that is the thing.

That is the thing that got the most noise and attention this weekend. And I still think that that's going to be the beating heart of this thing. Now, whether they can have some capillaries surrounding it that are constantly pumping, that's great. I think that'll be fine. And if you like certain characters, you'll watch those shows. I know you're all in for Hawkeye. Yeah, I'm all in for Hawkeye. I'm excited for how weird they're promising Wanda Vision to be. And I think you're, you know, you get in real director

bullshit right around now when there's nothing to see and nothing to think about and it's just people saying like, yeah, it's going to be ordinary people, but with capes, you know? Yeah, we know that won't really be true. Kramer versus Kramer. Like, I personally don't really care about Falcon. I'm not going to watch Falcon more than likely.

I don't think I'll have the same level of completeism. The same way I struggle to have that level of completeism with the Marvel Netflix series, because there is an ancillary quality to all of that stuff. Yeah, and I think the way you put it is actually completely undoes my point, because when you look at it, it seems like Disney Plus shows will be more or less fan service. You'll have Loki, who is a fan favorite.

You'll have Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which crucially, he's not Captain American, so that would suggest perhaps something that's taking place before any game. It's possible. What else are the shows that they have? They have the Hawkeye show, which sounds like Renner essentially setting up a new Hawkeye character Kate Bishop.

And it's based on a comic book that I love. I think that Andy loves, I know that you checked it out, the Matt Fraction one. So yeah, it seems like the Disney Plus shows are almost the fan service and the old age home for some of the Avengers. And then the movies will be pushing stuff forward. Okay. So taking that as what we're operating with, it feels more and more if we didn't know this before. The Guardians of the Galaxy was the most important thing that ever happened to that studio. because it gave them the courage and like the kind of information that,

hey, we can take this out in a space with characters that even comic book fans were like, really? And really try some stuff. And if we believe in the vision of what we're doing, we can make it work. They're really taking that lesson and running with it here, though. If you look at these characters, there's this acceptance now that no matter what they do, they're going to find a way to make it work. But the films that are coming next are not guarding it.

or Captain of Marvel, too. You know, it's Shang-she, it's Eternals. I mean, these are really left-field properties for Marvel. And the plus side is that they're obviously diverse cast and diverse characters, and they're bringing something new to the Marvel story. That is obviously what we

were leading with coming out of Comic-Con is, wow, look at the diversity that Marvel has engendered here over the last couple of years and look at where they're going in the future, which is impressive. The downside is, I don't know anything about Eternals. I'm definitely going to watch it. I love Chloe Zhao's two films, I'm intrigued by the idea of it, but it feels very far afield. And one of the things

that we're starting to see in a lot of these movies is they have to stretch time to make things fit into what feels like prescription. And the Black Widow movie is very similar. Black Widow's dead. She's dead. Okay. The stakes of whatever her story are going to be are immediately lower. Yeah. No matter what happens, no matter what they show us, unless we go into some sort of weird multiverse version of Black Widow. And because of that, that being the next film, there's an inevitable kind of like deflating quality around that movie. And I think in some ways they need that to be the first movie in this new phase

for a very specific reason because they're going to use it to set up a lot of things that are going to come in future films, even though we know Black Widow was going to die. Yeah. And then what was also interesting about what Feige did was he laid out all these new characters, like you said, a very diverse slate of movies and then kind of just teased but did not fixed dates to Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel, to Fantastic 4, which he explicitly said. Then he mentioned the mutants, which everybody took to mean the X-Men, and Blade, which I don't even think they have a plot four yet. They were just like, Mahershala wants to make Blaine, we're into it.

When I got back on the grade yesterday, that was the first thing that I saw, which means when I opened up Twitter, people were like, Marhershalla's Blade. That was the biggest takeaway. And I wonder if that means they will jetstream that story sooner rather than later. because there's a lot of enthusiasm for that. And I kind of admire Mahershala's gall in just saying, I've won two Oscars, I start in a hit HBO series. What I need now is money. Please give me money.

Put me on an eight-picture contract. Put me in all these movies. And I'm going to show up in a cool leather jacket and bear my teeth and kick some ass. How do I get the Robert Downey Jr. participation deal is what he wants to know. And who can blame him? Because that is coin of the realm in modern movie stardom. You mentioned Merhershali.

We were also talking about some of these other movies. movies, Chloe Zhao, Destin Daniel Creton making Shang-Chi. Like, it's, these are not even, these are not big name directors. I mean, these are directors that have worked in really intimate, very human, very, sometimes dark material. Do you think that Marvel is going to try to introduce some more adult stakes to these movies, or do you think that they're going to bend these directors towards their kind of cotton candy ways? It's very hard to say. I mean, I would imagine no.

Scott Derrickson spoke very specifically about making this new Doctor Strange movie in the Multiverse of Madness, which is a title I love. It's a real throwback. A horror movie. He actively, he is a horror film director. The first film has some stray elements of horror, but not really. He really wants this to be a horror movie. And then Kevin Feigy, during the press conference, very pointedly says, this will still be PG-13.

And they're bound by that. They're not going to make an R movie. I think notably absent from yesterday's announcement was Deadpool. No word about a Deadpool movie. Yeah. Even though Deadpool 3 is money in the bank, no matter what they do with it. And so whether that means Destin Daniel Creighton will be able to bring the kind of weighty, dramatic work that he did in short term 12 to the four here. I don't know.

I mean, it's interesting too because Creton has a movie called Just Mercy. It was just moved from January to December and has now been hotly tabbed as an Oscar movie. It's the Michael B. Jordan Brie Larson movie, right? And just in the last week, I've seen people throwing his name around for Best Director already, sight unseen on this film. And it's kind of like an old-school throwback, like verdict kind of courtroom drama, right? Quarterroom drama, exactly. And I wonder if that means he'll have more clout in the execution of his version of Shang Chi. I don't know. I don't really know. I personally don't know enough about Shang-Chii to even know what kind of a story you'd want to tell. It really depends. Chloe Zhao is probably the biggest wild card because the scale of the film she's made has been so small. And Eternals is such a CGI extravaganza in order to make a film like that work. It feels like two completely unlike things coming together to make something.

You know, these have to be PG-13 movies, though, because they're for everybody. So what happens to these, in terms of looking at the release schedule that we've seen, and we see a couple of, I think, three in 2020. I think there's Black Widow is Eternals in 2020 as well. Eternals is in 2020, and I believe that's it. I believe it's just Black Widow in the spring and then Eternals. They launched the shows in November and then in the spring. And then you have three films in 2021.

You have Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Then you have, excuse me, you have Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and you have Dr. Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and Thor, colon, love and thunder. So where do they slide Black Panther to in? 2020. Wow. I think all those. So that would be five years since the first one?

It sounds like it will be Black Panther 2 will probably take that February slot again. Captain Marvel 2 probably in the spring. I would imagine she would show up in a couple of these movies, though. Definitely. And Guardians 3 in the fall of 2022. Okay. After James Gunn's suicide squad comes out.

Yes. Right. So you and I will be approximately 79 years old when those films come out. Will we be on a podcast talking about Marvel movies at that time? Does this make you excited or daunted? You know, I have like lizard brain with this stuff.

I got to the end of end game and I was like, I'm really glad I went on this journey. I tried to be as thoughtful and excited about it as I could throughout the whole thing, knowing that it is the centerpiece of modern movies. And then I was like, well, you know, I saw Spider-Man, and I was like, this is a fun movie, but I can sense like something waning here. And then I saw the rehearsal of news, and I was like, yes, yes, I will. Yes, put me in the movie theater for the Mahershala Blade movie.

I don't even care about Blade, but I have been somehow conditioned to get interested. And I think there is something strategically compelling about bringing in Destined Daniel Cretton and being like, what have he got a Marvel movie? They've now, like, lured in all facets of life. They've lored in 13-year-olds. They've lored in film nerds. They've lured in the media. They've lured in this wide expanse of consumer.

Yeah, and even the people who are actively like, this is bad for us, are still engaging with it on an almost daily basis. And I think that war is over. You know what I mean? The whole, like, the Disney is eating our creativity for breakfast every day thing. Like, that's over. Like, we are, our knee is bent. And unfortunately, there's no one doing it in this.

in this current moment. Now, that doesn't mean that Marvel won't wait. These are pretty risky choices that they're making over the next couple of years. To hold off on Black Panther 2 for four full years

is pretty gutsy. So we'll see what happens. And do you think Coogler makes another movie before then? I would be shocked if he didn't. Yeah. That's a lot of time. Seriously, because he sort of,

he didn't do Creed 2 and then they said that he was just sort of finishing the treatment and the outline for Black Panther 2. But they've got to fit that into all these other movies. And then I think for everybody,

they're all waiting to find out what happens with Fantastic Four and X-Men. Yeah, and it'll be interesting because now if you look at the schedule, basically from July 4th when Spider-Man came out through February of 2021, there's only going to be two Marvel movies. That's not a lot.

That's not a lot. Yeah. So that's 20 months or so with two Marvel movies. And those movies are Black Widow, which, you know... I think it could be cool, but would probably like you're saying, The stakes are probably low. It's a spy movie about a dead character.

Like, it's going to be what it's going to be. Now, maybe they'll lard it with information the way that they did Captain Marvel and the way that they did Spider-Man far from home where it's like, you've got to see this for everything to make sense. Sure. Or maybe she becomes the new Nick Fury or something like, yeah. Yes. That's in play, I suppose.

And Eternals after that, which is just, if you thought Guardians of the Galaxy was left of center, eternal is even weirder. It's way more spiritual. It's way more cosmic and it's less fun. It involves like the beginning of the world, doesn't it? Yeah. So I think it's about sort of the making. of superheroes.

Yeah. The people who have the power to imbue superpowers to ordinary beings. Now, if that sounds fucking nerdy, it's because it is. Yeah.

So that's a fascinating gamble that they're taking. And a lot of these movies, you know, I think one thing that's defined this last three or four years, especially since Guardians, has been this kind of

winking meta humor that's run through these movies. You and I've talked about that in the more of movies a lot where it's like Ragner Rock was driven by its sense of humor. Gardens of the Galaxy 1 and 2 driven by its sense of humor

Downey brought so much humor to these roles and it was infectious. You could see all these other characters basically be like oh, if I want this character to be popular, I'm not going to make him like this brooding samurai I'm going to make him into sort of like this joke joke machine, this one-liner

machine. And that's not really what the Eternals are, right? That's not really what Captain Marvel has been. Maybe but like Kumil Nanjani is in the Eternals. So who knows what kind of a movie they're going to make. They have made, you know, Miles Surrey wrote about this on the site this week, and he noted that there's just a format for these movies, which is, you know, superheroic storytelling

template, but just one-liners and pop culture references spewed by the characters at all times. Yeah. And to change that for a Chloe Zhao movie that probably is going to mean a lot to Marvel, I doubt it. They're probably going to still stick to their formula somewhat. Anything you want to talk about else that came out of Comic-Con, Watchman, Westworld? I don't want to be too hard on watchmen knowing nothing about it

I just as with all things Lindelof like I just don't get it I just don't get it I think it's like it seems boundlessly creative and with no purpose and that is exactly how I feel about almost everything he does I think making trailers for TV shows is generally really hard and especially something like that it's like they're at once making sure we understand that it's part of the watchman existence of watchman but it's also trying to set up like a dystopian alternative future that is still recognizable to us. So I think they are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

You know, like it gets mentioned that it's in Tulsa. Like all sorts of stuff is like getting thrown at you in that. And at the same time, you're just trying to take in vibe and also the music that's going on on top of it. I did get pretty fired up when the Dr. Manhattan stuff started popping up towards the end. So I think that it's going to be, I think I'm definitely willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm not sure if I'll give it that. I will watch it. I will definitely watch it. I'm of course obsessed with Watchmen as any person of our generation is. It's silly to be debating necessity because, for example, Top Gun, Maverick is coming. And that is not something that we need, but it's something that I feel deeply inside me that I must have. And that's the tricky part about pop culture. We keep getting it fed back to us, fed back some nostalgia, Gerber baby food version of culture

and like I keep eating it? Yeah, well I think the difference is that for you if I can speak for you, I think that there's something nakedly pleasurable about Top Gun 2 Maverick whereas Watchman probably seems like a little bit of work. That's a strong way of putting it. It is going to be eight weeks of having to think about

whether something makes sense or not, which frustrates me. Which Top Gun 2, they're like, in the trailer, they're like, it's Top Gun again. Like everything. Same shots. The shots. The shots are the same. But I almost find that to be like, maybe I might, maybe my brain is broken.

Maybe I have bent the knee and I'm just like, yeah, I know. And I watched Top Gun one this weekend and I was like, bring it. I'm ready to watch this movie literally again with two different dudes. Yeah, just with better cameras. I mean, that's really, that's going to be the only different. It's Joseph Kozinski shooting it who is a great photographer of movies. Whether he makes good movies or not is extremely debatable. but he probably knows how to, I would say, trace.

Yeah. This is a, like, that's a new genre of movie, the trace, where you're just going over the lines of what we've seen before. Yeah, you could make the argument that a lot of the Star Wars stuff is tracing. Yeah. 100%. And, you know, I'm game for that version of it, and maybe that's because it's a deeply heteronormative,

like straight down the middle. I was eight years old when I saw this movie. That's a good point. That's a very good point. Aside from that in San Diego, no, I mean, nothing really popped. There's going to be some interesting stuff, but most of the big studios cleared out because there was an underlying sense that Marvel was coming. And so, like, we didn't see a DC movie's presentation, even though DC's got Joker and Birds of Prey and all this other stuff coming out. They didn't do any of that stuff at Comic-Con because they were afraid they were going to get blown off the map by Marvel.

You know, one of the things that I think you've been talking about a lot with Dobbins in terms of your conversations about the box office that we talk about pretty casually. but, you know, movies now feel more like events, right? Like they are, and they are drummed up as events, and then the results of like the success or failure of these movies are judged very harshly because of the amount of hype that goes into them. So there's a lot of anticipation for Lion King or whatever, and then we judge it against these historical kind of box office performances. And I can't help but think that as we move more towards this, like,

there's just one screen and it's all content baby and like it's all going towards this this one black hole where we just dissolve that we're starting that's starting to infect the way we talk about television a lot too how so big little eyes so i was like a totally good television show but just i think people's brains were broken about the enormity of the gathering of actresses it was obviously like it had holes it had tonal inconsistencies there were times where i was like what is this why are we doing this plot line. It felt like a seven-episode show that was dying to be 12 episodes long, and just be like a normal season of television. And spoilers for anybody who didn't watch the finale, we're going to be talking about that a little bit. It ended on a total season finale cliffhanger. Like it was not a what did this show mean? Where do these characters go from here? It was like a real like, and now there's going to be another season where it's like, what did Bonnie say in the police station? I don't know when that season is going to come. I don't know whether or not. sure feels like it's coming though right like they kind of have to do a third one now it would be

kind of staggering if they didn't i would imagine that the paperwork must be like in a vault somewhere at hboh and they're ready to break it out but i i you know the the couple of weeks of andrea arnold bad press i wonder whether or not that impacts how they position how they're going to talk about it it certainly sets it up to be like we're going to do right by the big little lies story um well i mean my perception of this is that half of it is our fault and half of this show's fault and by us I mean the media and people who are online talking about it all the time and our perception of what something should be and then the people who actually made the show and raised the stakes.

I completely agree with you. I felt very similarly about the last season of Game of Thrones. It was a 10 or 12 episode season begging to happen with not enough expansion. Now the difference between the two was there was so much more to do in Game of Thrones and they just failed to do it. They declined to do it. They moved too far ahead in advance.

And with big little lies, I don't know if I've ever felt this way before, but there was just a complete absence of B-plot. There was no other story that felt meaningful. Right. And if you look at what they did... The stuff with Ed. Madeline and Ed is like, they have Reese Witherspoon

and she basically did nothing. Right. And she's one of the signature stars of her generation. And they spent a lot of time on Zoe Kravitz's character, which is a character I do not care about. And I don't think that that plot was well told at all. And I think that they never really convinced... That was actually, like, actively confusing.

I couldn't understand what they were trying to say. Well, there were several times where I was like, I don't understand, did her mom just pass away? and like multiple times. It was very confusing and I wonder if that was particularly where some of the Andrew Arnold issues came about

because those were also sequences where there was a lot of flashback and any time they went to flashback in this season I thought oh they're cutting up Arnold's cut. I thought that generally speaking the Merrill Streep stuff was kind of amazing.

I thought it was like showdown TV acting in a great way and I enjoyed it even whether you like kind of believed in that side story or not I thought it was very powerful and I don't underestimate

just pitting kid versus Streep in a TV show, like that is a big deal. And we overlook it because we had a season of this show already. But that stuff actually worked really well for me. I just think that the other half of it is this is the downside of eventizing anything.

You know, it's like if you eventize a Marvel movie, there's an expectation that it has to hit a certain pleasure center. It has to tell us something about where the story's going. And it has to create excitement in the now and anticipation for the future. And TV, especially TV that is laden with so many stars, should be doing the same thing. Unfortunately, Big Little Lies is this weird ethereal soap opera,

and it's not really like an engine for that kind of a machine as much as we wanted to be. We did Big Little Live here. I thought that show was great. I think often that show was sort of operating in a more excited state than the show is worthy of because Big Little Lies was made by four or five different people, all of whom clearly had different sensibilities.

So it's confusing. I mean, what is another example of a TV show where you feel like that expectation game is hurting us? I think some of the anthology stuff, like I think that the pressure's put on Black Mirror to like change the way we think about existence every time it comes on is kind of, maybe the show's quaking under that a little bit.

It's funny, I feel like that one more than others still, I still look forward to the future of that show. Me too. In a way that I don't other shows like it. I actually didn't have like a huge issue with the last season and I thought like the Andrew Scott one was like even though pretty straightforward, like incredibly compelling television. And I think the fact that they're still,

doing weird shit like striking vipers is... I thought that was great. Really out there and like a great, like kind of like just messing with audience expectations in a great way. But I think that its reputation as it became literally an adjective. Like this is such a black mirror moment kind of. This is such like I feel so black mirror about this. It became almost unbearable for the show itself to just kind of do a couple of different things

and try stuff out, which was always what I loved about it. It was always that, yeah, we're just going to throw a white bear in here and see what happens, you know? I felt this really acutely with a couple of shows. One was the Twilight Zone, which you and I talked about on this show, and kind of why that didn't work in a lot of ways. And then what was the Stephen King anthology series? Castle Rock. Same thing, which I thought had interesting things going on, but never quite threaded the needle of my interest. Yeah, I kind of even wonder that about it too, which I'm super excited for, and I'm sure will be a real kind of,

of like breath of fresh air in a weird way for the end of the summer to get that movie and get like a movie that a lot of people are really excited about. But like it's not Star Wars to me. You know what I mean? I know, but they desperately want it to be. They're eager to make it as such. And I think the bigger question will be, and this is related to the big little lies anxiety that you're underlining. Once it chapter two comes out and it explodes at the box office, it was already the biggest horror movie in the history of movies. What is chapter three? What is the prequel? You know, the original Pennywise story. It was already. It's the original Pennywise story. It's, Like, they're going to start to do that stuff and unwind it and unravel it and then tell it again. Yeah. The machine demands that. So, I don't, you know, I'm curious to see how that works. You know, like, Gary Dauberman was on my podcast a couple weeks ago. He made one of the Annabelle movies, and he's now making Salem's lot. Like, so now we're in this space where the King universe is they're just starting from scratch.

Yeah. They're just going to do all those stories again. Most of them won't be as good as it. Yeah. I mean, they literally aren't as good as it. Like, you know, the Stephen King books are pretty, like, and they're so, they're so hit or miss that you can't really make a consistent galaxy out of it. Yeah, I think that the things that I've really enjoyed this season, for the most part, have somewhat existed outside of that kind of pressure. You know, with the exception, I really like True Djective Season 3, although I think that had only, it only had up, the only place to go for that show was up.

but Fleabag was not only just a little miracle, but it was, I thought, pretty different from the first season, too. And when it ends, it's over. You're like, you know, I'm sure they're going to, like, ask, if she wins a bunch of Emmys, there's going to be a suggestion that she should do another season of Fleabag. I think from everything I've read from her and seen from her, she's like, that's how Fleabbegg ends, she turns away, you know?

I hope so. Yeah. And I hope she goes on to make a million more things. She's obviously brilliant. Yeah. I have been having a similar feeling about euphoria, which is a show that with each passing episode I've gotten more and more excited about

and more and more interested in, but my impulse after last night's episode was, I hope this is only one season, and I know it's not going to be. I know there's going to be more seasons and they're going to tell more stories and they're probably going to introduce more kids, but this felt like a great little short story package,

you know, and it seemed like a smart way to interrogate the lives of young people in a very outsized way, in a not a realistic way. but there's a lot of craft and artfulness going into that show. And I think we underestimated because of what you talked about on Bill's show last week with Amanda, just about the controversies that surrounded it and the entry point, the sort of 30 dicks meming. Yeah.

But as a piece of filmmaking and TV, I think it's operating at a much higher level. Super engaging. They also have like a couple of like rock solid stars on their show, which is really kind of can't be underrated because there's so much TV out. and you spend so much time watching something, and you're like, these people are pretty good. The Rue and Jules thing is real, like, lightning in a bottle.

Like, you just don't get characters like that on TV. You don't get actors who can perform like that on TV. They've really, they captured something. Yeah, there's just stuff too where it's like, you know, I always think about, you know, there's lots of great thinking and writing. You've done a lot of it about what makes a movie star or movie star, and you could get into a bunch of different, like, elements of it. But Hunter Schaefer, when she's just staring at the camera,

It's just like, oh, yeah, I guess I'm just like super locked in here. Completely agree. She's just a real discovery to me. I hadn't seen her before and I'm kind of blown away by that character, by that performance. I just think that's a, it feels like an authentically great show. And even though it's quote unquote controversial, in a way that you might discover something when you were 17 and you weren't reading Twitter all day about what TV shows are coming out. I was like, I don't really know anything about this. I knew about the controversies, but I kind of came to the story itself fresh.

And I've been enjoying being inside that world. And I think Fleabag had a similar experience for us in seasons one and two. Season one, it was like, what is this? Who was this person? I hadn't watched crashing. I didn't know anything about her. And I just got invested and got interested. So that's what I'm looking for.

So I felt the same way about this Veronica Mars revival where I think we don't necessarily need to get into the plot points about it because I don't want to spoil anything for people who are just, you know, just starting it or haven't caught up on it yet. Maybe in a week or so I can get into that. But just in terms of you've got this property that people are really like in love, like it means a lot to people. It means a lot to my wife. It means a lot to your wife. It just is a really meaningful property to people. And they did the movie version of it,

which was a real fan service thing, but it was essentially like fan service at its bare minimum where it was like, here's three people from the show standing in a room together, being like, it's been so long since I've seen you. And it felt very like propped up a little bit. The film is not that effective. This season's kind of a miracle in a lot of ways.

I was talking to Miles a little bit about it. And I was like, it's kind of like they just like took Nancy Drew and made her into Jake Giddis. You know, like, it's essentially like Chinatown. It's not as good as Chinatown. It's definitely TV-ish. It's got, like, tons and tons of subplots and stuff. But it takes a key lesson from Chinatown.

And the show always did this. The original version of the show always did this. And I always really admired it, which is that the mystery is not the point. Right. The characters and the things that happen to the characters is the point. And Veronica's trauma, Veronica's wisecracks, Veronica's relationships is the the beating heart of the show. Yeah.

And they just got right back into it. I mean, this show is 15 years old at this point. Yeah, and they just managed to jump right back in. I think it was season 11. It's amazing. I mean,

it's so wild. Credit to the actors, credit to the people who made the show, but they don't focus. The same way that like, who killed Mulray and who's really running big water in Los Angeles are technically

the plot details of Chinatown at least at the outset. But that's not really, it doesn't, thematically maybe that's what it means, but it's much more about the moment to moment conversations that Nicholson's character is having with, you know,

Fay Dunaway's character. And this show really tapped into that for me in a perfect way, even though I think that the actual plot of this season is like kind of convoluted. Sure, yeah. And just an excuse to kind of let J.K. Simmons and Pat and Oswald vamp and do really funny stuff. And they're all kind of quit machines throughout this whole show, which is one of the charms of the show, is it's all, every character is basically written as the same person. Yeah. which is like either Veronica or the creator, Rob Thomas. They're all just kind of talking in the same way. Yes, which is I kind of love shows like that.

Me too. I'm fine with that. And this execution of this kind of thing reminded me of the way they kind of do a lot of British TV. The way they do, even Doctor Who sometimes, where they're just like, we took a cup, we took a beat, we took a step back. You know, it wasn't on a consistent fall spring schedule. It wasn't like six episodes that we hyped up. Just like we did eight episodes. It's a very, very effective compact story.

We can talk more about the plot itself in a later episode, but I just thought it was like the best possible execution of like IP mining and also streaming. What's another show that's been dead for like 10 years that you'd love to see back in this way?

Like we just got Deadwood in the movie version and I felt like that was kind of similar to the Veronica Mars movie where it was like, this feels cool, but it's not like getting 10 episodes of Deadwood, which is what I really want. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know,

a lot of that stuff is sentimental for me. So I would watch a Friday Night Lights High School reunion show. You know what I mean? That's a good idea. I wouldn't be, and I think it would be kind of amazing to see all of those people

coming back to Texas for a weekend for whatever reason. And I don't know what could be different about it or what would be the sort of driving thing behind it. Maybe they have to save the school, maybe, whatever. But like I was rewatching some of those episodes. I was like, this fucking show was incredible.

Kitch is available, I think. Yeah. He was tab to break out. He didn't quite break out. He didn't quite break out. Yeah, so he's present. What's one for you? Hmm.

A TV show that we could revive? Suddenly, Susan? No. That's right. It's right. It's radio. The last terrestrial, but make it, like, serious. You can't do news radio without Phil Hartman, though. Yeah. I wouldn't, I don't want the Stephen Root version. Um, hmm. Let me think of a 90s television show that I would want to see back in the world. Dream on? No, that's you and Greenwald. You guys are all in on that. I mean, you know what is a weird version of it that I would love to see is just the old version of Conan's show, the 1235. Like, I'd love to see just 10 episodes of Conan doing the 1235 NBC show. That was probably my favorite show growing up.

That show, Jeopardy, The Simpsons, like those are, you know, and we've seen versions of it, like Seinfeld doing it on Curb Your Enthusiasm, kind of does that a little bit. It was just reading this morning that the creators of The Simpsons are quite certain that Disney will want them to make another Simpsons movie. Really? as a sort of sequel to the Last Simpsons movie, which is now over 10 years old. So that's the thing. Is anything you wish for you're probably going to get? Yeah.

You're getting a Sopranos prequel pretty soon. Like, these things are all already happening. So no matter what we wish upon, it'll probably end up in our lap anyhow. All right, well, I'm sure we'll be here to talk about it. Sean, thanks so much for coming by the watch today. Thanks, Chris. We have a lot of stuff this week going on.

You and I? Well, we have a lot of Tarantino stuff. What about what's between us personally? Should we talk about that here? That's the 10-year project. Okay. We'll come back to it. Yeah, it's Tarantino Week on the site.

We've got a really exciting podcast series that Amy Nicholson is hosting called Quentin Tarantino's feature presentation. She had a long conversation with him, talked about some of his favorite films, how he watches movies and how he makes movies. You and I are doing some writing on the site. Yeah. You and I are going to review on a podcast, the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Yes. And we're going to name our Quentin Tarantino top fives. We're doing a lot.

It's almost as if it's the last week of July and there's nothing going on. Yeah, and also like we get one more Quentin Tarantino movie after this. So let's make the most of it. Very true. What if that last movie is a Star Trek movie? Honestly, I'm in. Okay. Like, I'm good with that.

I know Michael Bauman, our beloved colleagues, not a fan of that idea. Who cares? Just make it. Just make another, what do you want another Star Trek movie that JJ Abrams made? No, thank you. Okay. Sean, thanks for joining us. We'll be back on Thursday with a very fun group of guests.