The Watch - ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 6. Plus, Where Does Marvel Go After ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania?’

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the latest episode of ‘The Last of Us’ and which of the shows settings have been their favorites so far (1:00). Then they give their reviews of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ (33:04) and talk about why this movie and other past Marvel films have left them feeling cold (48:59). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line fresh out of a screening of the goodbye girl, it's Andy Greenwald. I'm just a quantum maniac. I love this. I can't wait. It's so good to see you.

Podcasting on a weekend. Happy President's Day. Shout out to Dark Brandon on a 10-hour train ride on this President's Day showing us all how it's done. I gotta say, I don't think I could do it

even at this ripe old age of 45. Brother, the Amtrak to Kiev is not what it used to be. And a lot of respect. What do you think it happens when the homies get into the fourth Heineken on that 10-hour train ride from Poland to crazy?

I would like, if they run out of chicken sandwiches that they nuke in the microwave. I guess nuke is the wrong word when you're talking about that region of the world right now. I know. Yeah. I mean, look, we're going to talk about Last of Us.

We're going to talk about Ant Man. But, you know, I kind of liked waking up this morning in California to the news that our octogenarian president was just dip it into a war zone. And was your favorite detail the same as mine? I imagine it was. It wasn't that he did this. It wasn't that he, and this is a direct quote

from the New York Times, strode down roadways there. It was like going on to the Atlantic magazine and being like the real victory here was that the United States told the Russians he would be arriving three hours before he arrived and dared them to do something about it. I'm so glad we're back to this.

You know what I mean? A little saber rattling, you know? Yes. It just clears out the system. Andy, I do want to talk to you about these two momentous cultural events that we got going. We have Last of Us,

which we did last night on HBO and Quantummania, which is the number one movie on the planet. And, you know, I would say, while it got some pretty tepid reviews, it got a cinema score, which I don't really understand the analytics behind cinema scores, but it was like a B, and people were like, damn,

to hold your head, Kevin, because that B's the score. We'll get into whether or not we think that it lived up to or exceeded the hype or the criticism hype. You good, though? you want to get, get into some, some riding across the plains with Joel and Ellie. Yeah, I'm just curious. Like, are you, is your, was that slander against cinema score? Is this like, like, Dominion? You know what I mean? Like, are you suggesting that? I just want to see the data.

You know what I mean? Like, how do we, how do we come up with a, a tomato? How do we come up with a cinema score? What's the audience popcorn meter? Like, where are these tomatoes coming from? Why do we give them so much power? Yeah. What happens with people who don't, you know, can't eat Nightshade vegetables? Like Tom Brady? Yeah. Is tomato a nightshade? Because like I've been getting 100% of nightshade. Yeah. I've been getting a lot of facts wrong on this podcast. Should we, should we address that briefly? Should we bring in our, our ombudsman's? Is that us? Kaya, or is it, we can self, we're about accountability. I think we can self-please here. Kaya is a chaos agent. Kaya just loves to watch a podcast burn. She does, she's not going to come in and fix our mistakes,

nor should she. As many people point out. I just don't know, you think I know Marvel characters. Yeah. Or like, basically beloved but probably ultimately insignificant Sixers players so I mistakenly was referring to the character of Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross one of the many members

of the sort of larger security apparatus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I personally treasure much like William War Machine Rhodes and I refer to Thadius Ross as Thadius Young

which any any fan of the process generation of Sixers fans will remember Thad Young as a really useful, if somewhat tweener forward for the Sixers. And he has since gone on to have a journeyman career throughout the NBA. He actually is now known as Thadius Young's expiring contract, I believe. So I would like to apologize to Thad Young. I would like to apologize to Georgia Tech. I would like to apologize to the Philadelphia 76ers franchise and also to the sort of Wait, before we get into that. Defense industrial complex of Marvel.

Wasn't this you basically being like hashtag not my president? Because the only Thunderbolt Ross you recognize is, is William Hurt? You know what I mean? Like, you just cannot abide this Harrison Ford business and that's what you were protesting. Also, this was a celebration to me. Like, this is very on brand. It's not like this was some like slip up that reveals some unexpected truth about you. This is, you're just a guy who podcasts about Marvel shit in the same.

Sixers. Like, okay. Yeah, sometimes the streams get crossed. You're just trying to find common ground. Yeah, that's fine. Exactly. Exactly. Now, Henry and Sam being brothers, I didn't correct you on that. No, you didn't. Speaking of which, the action last night's last of us picks up three months after the tragic events of Kansas City, tragic both for Kathleen and her base, her political base, and also for Henry and Sam, who essentially like died.

in some ways in sacrifice for this larger mission of getting Ellie to the fireflies. So we pick up the action three months later and Joel and Ellie are on the range, man. They're out there and they're coming across different folks in this landscape and they eventually finally get to Tommy. You know, like of all the gin joints and all the world, they wind up in Jackson with Joel's brother. First of all, not. I mean, we started this podcast off with politics. I think just briefly I'd like to dip back in and say like this episode was a very strong argument for reinvesting in American infrastructure. Because apparently you can get from Boston to Kansas City in like 72 hours, if given the right. With an entire sidetrack episode of the Bill and Frank story in suburban Boston.

It will then take you three calendar months to walk to Wyoming from Kansas City. Now, it is a big country. Like that is definitely true. but I just felt like there's less stuff there, you know, and so there would be less opportunity for gnarled traffic jams or, you know, mushroom people. So, okay, but I buy it. And the other plus here was that we had a season shift, not like the second season of the show,

but now it was winter, looked beautiful, beautifully shot. And it was kind of a vibe shift, too. Yeah, we get Graham Green and Elaine Miles, shout out Northern Exposure, hanging out in a cabin. And it just seems like the best way to survive this apocalypse is to be around as few people as possible. I love that scene.

Yeah, great scene. Again, I don't want to be a broken record about this show, but like, you know, it's just baseline good. It's really just a good show to begin that way. Like, different people we haven't seen before, a little bit of a different vibe, some humor, some sense of people who have been in a place. She made them soup.

You know, okay, I really enjoyed that. And it actually, one of the reasons I enjoyed this episode overall was that, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but there are no infected in this episode. I guess not. It is almost entirely about the living, which I love. Haven't gotten the antigen tests back on some of those chimps. They seemed somewhat agy.

Oh, wait, Paul, listen, we're getting to that. I have 10 minutes of material, so let's just focus on the human part first. Okay. One question I have in the beginning, our new friend is bringing some rabbits that he's hunted back. And I do want to ask about, and again, Chris, I know that you are an amateur mycologist. You know, you're not the one that they call when it goes down like it did in the bread factory in Indonesia. But like you're on the presidential advisory board. That's right.

So you've written a couple. They'd ask you to write an op-ed for the LA Times. A couple white papers here and there, you know. Sure. Just my thoughts. Do you know what you like to do is you read the preprints and then you tweet about them? Yeah. So what I don't understand, and I imagine people deep in this culture and in this game would understand it better than I would.

But like, so the mushroom stuff, they don't go into animals. Because I just feel like if you cut open that rabbit, there might be a surprise, right? Like, isn't every animal in this world now, like, eating blowfish? Like, isn't there just a non-zero chance that there's just a little fungus among us? Let me ask you this. What happens if that dog gets it? The mushroom sniffing dog. I mean, who watches the watchman?

You know what I'm saying? Wow. That dog is blowing paws. But he's the last line of defense for Jackson? To be clear, blowing paws, P-A-W-S or P-O-S. Okay. This is like every time, you know, I think there's two outcomes walking across the country like the way they are.

Like every 7-Eleven probably has a lot of Poland spring bottles that they could be drawing from, and I respect that. But I do think they probably go in some creeks and rivers. Again, like, I'm no mycologist. I am a virologist, so I do think about these things a lot, an epidemiologist. Like, what's in the water, Joel? You know, like, I just feel like the chance of stray infection needs to be addressed a little bit better. You would not do well in this world.

No. Wait, when did we? At what point in recording of this podcast did you think that I could? Did I ever, ever suggest? You're the governor of fucking California. That's right. I would be lucky to have some of your mercy. But I could see you definitely.

Definitely like turning your life over to Kathleen, just if it meant that, like, you could drink boiled water or something. Chris, Kathleen is running for election on a platform I support. You know, just keep people safe, you know, just looking out for each other. I did think in reference to the end of last episode, it was a little bit like that joke about, I can't believe the leopard ate my face, says voter for the leopard eating faces party. Right. Like, that did backfire. But, you know, she did present strong leadership.

I feel like, you know, there was some Nikki Haley vibes. I don't want to make it to rip from the headlines, but I could see that. Never us. So let's just go through the rest of this episode, kind of like narrative-wise, and then we can get into different parts. So, like we kind of alluded to, Joel and Ellie happened upon this group of Rangers from Jackson. They've got a sort of virus-sniffing dog with them. Ellie passes the test. Shout out to her.

Or maybe the dog is just not that good at its job. Hard to say. But it turns out life is pretty good on the other side of the river. of death. And in Jackson, it's just, it's Yimbi Central, man. We're just building up, we're building out. Actually, no, I guess it's NIMBY because they're really like protective of who gets in into this little community. Into their backyard. Yeah. Yeah. It is essentially a Patagonia ad. I mean, it is Christmas and Jackson. They've got a rep theater playing Richard Dreyfus classics, Neil Simon film, goodbye girl. They've got

a multi-faith religious institution, schools, everybody does their part, everybody shares, nobody wants. There's a little bit of a red scare going on, a little bit of talk of communism, but, you know, Maria, this new character we get, is like damn red it's commune.

That's how we work in here. Do you think in an alternate universe of that mushrooms, Maria would be a member of the dirtbag left? No, she's an ADA, man. She was a cop, but like, do you think that maybe over the course of like the Obama into Trump years, she'd be listening to Chapo? Like, I'm just asking the questions.

Maybe, maybe. I feel like she was like, I thought her ADA background. I hope she comes back. I hope this is actually a two-episode arc and they got to get Joel there. Anyway, it's a really great town. They got, you know, this lovely like high west whiskey going in a bar. You can just, running water. Everything is just, is golden.

And of course, you know, Ellie and Joel, being these people on a mission that they've been for such a long time, kind of don't really fit into society. there. Their manners aren't great. They aren't obviously blown away by like this special environment that Tommy has found himself in. And they have something they need to do. Now, meanwhile, Joel

has been kind of having what I thought was a straight up heart attack. But is a panic attack and it seems to be having some PTSD from the things that he's done over the course of the last two decades. And also just like the I think the weight of the responsibility of taking care of someone who's

not just a package but is a person. and if I'm not making a lot of jokes here, it's because I didn't think this was like a super funny episode, although there is some amusing stuff banter between Ellie and Joel. And then essentially, like, Joel tries to draft Tommy into taking Ellie the rest of the way to Eastern Colorado University where the fireflies are holed up.

And Tommy's like, I don't want to. I'm going to have a kid. And Joel's like, well, here's the deal. Like, she's really special. Tommy agrees. But then Joel changes his mind at the last second. Takes her to Dion Sanders country. Well, I guess he's Colorado University.

so not Dionne Sanders country, but you get my meaning. And there's evidence of the fireflies having been there, but it looks like they've up and left camp. There's evidence. My advice for secret societies is don't put your cool logo on all the signs. Yeah. Well, also, if you're Joel and you just can't come from Jackson, and you can kind of get the sense of when humanity is in place.

Yeah. To me, personally, it just looks like that's not going to, like, there's no fireflies there. There's no greetings. you think they're being real quiet? Like, what do you think is the deal here? It's fair, but I think that you remember, the era that Joel comes from

is like pre-gentrification, and he was probably like, look, you know, I'm not a snob. Like, I'm going to go to the parts of Austin where the best tacos are, and maybe it doesn't look like the area around Congress. You know what I mean?

I just think that that's his attitude. You can't use contemporary, like, Rick Caruso values, you know, with these characters. That's right. I think it's different. I think it's different. But it was, I mean, again, like,

one of the sneaky successes of this show, I think, is that when it calls attention to the things that it can't escape, it hangs a lantern on it. So Ellie being like, those were five easy days. He's like, sure were. We're not pretending. They're not trying to trick us that it's all going to work out and be gravy at the university. I appreciate that. I appreciate that we're not being worked. So when they walk into it, I don't think anyone was expecting a warm university welcome, like a quorum. So while they're there, they see a map that says the fireflies have taken themselves to the site of the NBA All-Star game, Salt Lake City, Utah. They all went to Utah. What do you think it's like Sundance vibes? What do you think they were chasing? Maybe they were trying to go catch the Rosillo live show. I heard there was a big crowd. It was, yeah.

And then on their way out the door or while they're still at the school, they then see some raiders who've popped up and those guys get into a squabble. Joel gets stabbed. And while they escape, Joel is like bleeding out. And Ellie is like, I don't, you know, you can't die on me. And then we're left with the cliffhanger.

I personally did not watch scenes from next week, so I don't know. I mean, I am safely assuming that Pedro Pascal did not die in episode six or seven of this. It was the last of him. That was it. The show is,

he has to go back and fully commit himself to always being in the Mandalorian suit. That's the difference. 100% of the time. That's the difference. Lucasville pulled the leash. He's like, guys, sorry. Yeah.

I know. So I wanted to ask you this as a way of sort of starting the conversation, even though we already have. You know, if you had to pick any of the settings that we've visited. So that's Boston, suburban Boston, Kansas City, and Jackson, and kind of the West in general. What spot do you wish we could spend more time in as a show? I like the Western stuff. It's very cool. really, it looked beautiful.

And I also appreciated. It also finally suited the fact that they're shooting this in Calgary. So it's also true. It helped to be able to like not have to dress it up like Kansas or Boston. But I also want to go back to the idea that there weren't clickers, there weren't mushroom heads or fungus or infected, whatever you call it, in this episode. It's a really big country, right? And they've established the idea that these infected, there's like hives of them, right? Or colonies.

There's an enormous swath of the country. country where there aren't people. And I kind of appreciated that. Like, other shows like Walking Dead intentionally are near cities, around cities, because what's the show without the zombies? And I kind of appreciated, because this won't be a surprise to anyone listening, like, my favorite flavor of dystopia is definitely more like the leftovers or Station 11, where terrible things happened and we're left with the emptiness and the void, and we have to consider it. So I prefer, this isn't to everyone's taste. I prefer fewer zombies in this zombie show. But I also just like the fact that they're dealing with a reality where there doesn't have to be, it's a TV show, there don't have to be boss battles every week.

He doesn't have to use the rifle every episode. He certainly used it enough already. And the idea of making space within all of that space, making something safe, you know, I could be wrong. This could get overrun next week or next season, but I really liked resting in the fact that they really were safe in Jackson. That scene when Ellie is reading the girl's diary and it's like, is this really all people had to worry about? Or did people, it's an idea suggested later that people could choose what they wanted to do with their life. Yeah, when he's describing college. I feel like Craig was really getting some tweets off in this episode. Do you know what I mean?

Of continuing education. Well, or just like there's two kinds of people, the kinds that want to own everything and the kind that believe nobody should own anything. And it's like, all right, man. But like, the show has space for that. And it doesn't have to earn our interest by saying, and this is the latest, potential utopia that's going to be overrun by one man's folly. Now, cut to next week where it is overrun by one man's folly, but it works for me better, that the idea that this is not just a show

about survival, it is also a show about evolution, like what is this country, what are human beings in this new reality, whether or not the L.E. Cure works. So I like that, and I like the Western nature of it. I was happy, I didn't think they were just going to solve things at this college. So I'm glad that the journey continues in that direction, that it's not some like, hold, let me let me double back to Walberg country real quick. I appreciate that. You know, you mentioned solving things. How viable do you think Joel's vision of post-pandemic pop stardom is? Well, I have a couple questions. I think the sheep farming seem more, you know, more reasonable. And also, maybe a little bit more useful to a society still getting its bearings, you know,

is just like, oh, good, like, you're really contributing. Like, can you imagine being the first guy who's like, nope, I have a dream. I'm going to be a singer. I'm going to be a TikTok star. Let me just reinvent cell phone technology real quick. I think that it was intentional that that... Here's a little song you guys might know. It's called Maps by Yay. It's the last song I ever heard. Frankly, that's fine. That was a good one to end on. By the way, if we did preparation for this podcast, I would have come correct with what one Sundance in 2003, which was the last movie that's probably playing in Park City right now, that maybe we'll get to see snippets of the next few weeks. No, but his admission of what he

really wants to do. Do you know it won? What? American Splendor. Well, that's great. What could possibly be more relevant than the life of times of Harvey and Joyce Peacar? Capturing the Friedman's American Splendor, the station agent, and all the real girls were the big winners. It kills me. The Dinklage was just popping off. I know. I know. Can you imagine like the energy of like I just got noticed at Sundance like things are happening to me. Cannavalli's like I could I can make rent this month. Like I think there's a path for me here and then the fucking world ends. Like, let's make a show about Bobby Cannavalli just loses his dreams dying along with everyone he's ever known. Wait, just to finish the thought, I appreciated that Joel's frivolous dream of being a singer was revealed in the episode

where there was a slight return, not to frivolous things, but to extra things, that electricity, that houses, safety, movies, personal health. Christmas. These were things that they had given up. And then you start to get a little of them back. And it's not like you can't really, toothpaste is also probably relevant in this conversation, not just as a metaphor, but you can't really put the toothpaste back in the tube. You know, like if you give a little bit of that back, it would feel, especially for the older people, normal. It's like, I think it's also cool how they're doing, you know, they obviously,

have the scene, the Deva Cup scene with Ellie. They, they've, they've been making time within every episode to show the, like, the way that Joel's body is kind of degrading. And, you know, I noticed that, but then I read a couple of recaps, say the Tom Lorenzo one was really good, where it talks about, this is a dude who's been sleeping on the ground for like five months and is probably, like, losing his hearing just as like a guy who's probably heard a lot of gunshots in his life and is, is, is suffering, like, is losing his fastball while. the longer this trip goes on, and that his breakdown to Tommy kind of makes a lot of sense in that context, you know?

It's also, let's talk about the Tommy stuff for a couple of reasons. One is Tommy looks amazing. Great shearling jacket. He made a lot of really good choices, both in terms of personal styling, because the hair, the mustache, like, I'm loving it, the jackets, he looks terrific. He also seems to have just borne the weight of two decades a lot better than his brother, which maybe speaks to some choices they made after they got done murdering innocent

people in the middle of the road in Boston. How did you feel as a consumer of television and a watcher of television regularly, there's stuff in this show, and I want to be careful when I say this, because I don't begrudge it. I think it's being done very well. But there's stuff that's essentially boilerplate. For example, Joel shows up and is welcomed into this, he finds his brother in in the middle of a notoriously large state just easily finds him and everything's great and they're safe. And the first thing he does after hugging him emotionally for numerous seconds is to throw a hissy fit and get in a big fight.

Okay. You know what I mean? I'm an only child. We're both only children. So this is our puzzle. I think I probably, if I saw you after that amount of time separated, you know, even and I was just like my guy, like here we are. Like tonight the Neil Simon film will.

be fired up and the whiskey will flow. I probably wouldn't be like taking shots at you the second we, we ended up in a race. No, but within minutes after pouring the second whiskey, maybe you throw on a Father John Misty album and I'm like, I still don't like it. I just think this sucks. I'm sorry. And then it's just the end of civilization as we know it. No, my point is not that it's unlikely that they would fight. It's just that you come sometimes, and to be clear, this can sometimes feel quite reassuring, but that there had to be conflict to get the secondary scene where he's like, let me tell you the truth. Here's my truth. Here's what's happening with me. And he confesses essentially he's having a breakdown, you know, that he's having emotional anguish and

psychological trauma. So you need the one to get to the other. Sometimes it can be, it can feel good to feel that machinery working underneath you of the story engine. Sometimes you notice it. And maybe it just goes back to the first point I made about like, okay, there are are a hundred different ways to start this episode and you choose three months later in the snow with these characters we've never seen and you write a hell of a scene. Yeah. And it's just a sign of like, yeah, the bus driver on this trip is good. I feel safe in it. I know that we did this to get to the other thing. And then Ellie goes off with, is it Maria? Is that her name? And they have their scene. Sometimes it's fine. I guess that's my takeaway. I don't even know if there was a question in there.

It's just this, just like to point out sometimes TV script writing, it's not that complicated and it feels good. Yeah, I thought that this was probably, in some ways, the most overtly political. I mean, I guess the Kansas City stuff is pretty political with the Fedra plotline and Kathleen versus the government. But I noted with interest that the kind of language around like, how do you rebuild society and what are the sort of tenets of that society? And then Joel's kind of skepticism about it was interesting. And maybe the fact that he's somewhere in between an arch capitalist and a communist puts him on the outside. of society in some ways because he hasn't chosen a side in that like forever war. I agree. I, I mean, this is a kind of a, this is not rocket science, but the idea of the guy who's

like, I didn't choose sides. I just built houses because they told me to being now an arbiter of the future. Sure. That's good. But he's every man stuff. I mean, he is Bert Reynolds in this in such a great way. It's not just the mustache. It was great. The Western stuff was like really hammered at home. It was awesome. This was, I think, this was Pascal's best episode by far. Oh, yeah. Because he was, you begin to see the iceberg, right? The iceberg theory of performance is you're only showing a little bit at the top,

but there's got to be a lot below. And he's the kind of actor who carries that weight, so you believe it. But he got his chance. He had the big speech about how he's feeling afraid. He got the big confrontation scene with Ellie about parenting and about what she can and cannot say to him and what their relationship will be. And then, you know, and then finally admitting he wanted to be a singer, it was a big emotional arc for him. He is a special actor. They really did cast correctly to have that kind of movie star charisma

who can do this stuff too. I really liked it. The only note I have, though, about Joel going forward that maybe he is losing his fastball, and I'd love your thoughts on this. If I did see a rampaging pack of wild monkeys, I wouldn't be like, where's the horse parking? It wouldn't be like, cool. Yeah, exactly. Because also, like, again, his experience is a contract. I wouldn't be like, this is a classic thing you see in Colorado universities. is normal. Because I don't know if he's had this experience. I don't know how many of our listeners have this experience. But Chris, you'll remember this, that we have a good friend who, like, 20 years ago, had a lady companion who worked at a prestigious university, I won't name it, doing graduate

work. And her job, as I remember it, was to apportion out servings of medical grade cocaine to monkeys. Like, there was a lab at this university where they were just figuring it out. And they the job of this woman's graduate student was to give the cocaine to the monkeys. And frankly, the job of the monkeys was to take the cocaine. Yeah. I mean, at least it's a Belichekian, you know, kind of aphorism, but do your job. Right. And my point is, right, don't ask, just put your head down over the table of monkey cocaine and do what you need to do. That's right. First of all, even from 20 years on, no notes. I can see no problems here. Like, it just seems fine. But my first thought when I saw the wild monkeys was before they were free.

What was going on with them? Their life wasn't chill. Probably an adversarial relationship with humans. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, in the lens that I'm familiar with, their relationship with humans was the hairless monkeys giving me cocaine, but not enough. And so you wonder what happened next. And you don't ride your horse right into the center of it.

You know what I mean? Like that just, that worried me about Joel's just sensibility going forward. What did you think of his description of the rules of football? Well, it was a little painful for me. Football is not a sport that I think about for the next six months. It's still a little raw. Do you think that his description was too high-bound? Because in his day, people punted on fourth down.

It seemed like it. It was back in the day. It was still in maybe a great show on turf had shown up. So maybe there was like this idea that you could like basically pass to, you know, to, get rid of the run and you rely on a passing offense because you've got Tori Holt and Isaac Bruce. But man, I don't know. Football outsiders didn't exist. Like, do you think, again, so I think that we should have a special gathering hall, like a Valhalla, if you will, of people whose lives just didn't quite get to happen because of this event, not in the sense that like everyone's lives changed, but specifically the thing

that they were put on earth to do. So Bobby Cannavalli is there, Bill Barnwell. Like what, I feel bad for Bill, right? He loves football. And then they're stopping football. They're also stopping electricity. But like all of the things that he has to say. Sure, sure, sure. But like, you know what I mean? Like, that's just not fair.

Well, the reason I brought the football thing up is that I didn't... Because if you're a contractor, you could still build things. Sure. Yeah. But like in the world of Last of Us, like, it's so funny what Ellie is like an expert on the sort of space program. But then we'll be like, football, huh? Is that a turnover? Like she doesn't...

But don't you think like... So we have not lived... Well, it's arguable whether we've lived through societal collapse, TBD. But like when you see a film strip footage of like the 12 minutes they had a camera running on a Paris street corner in 1924,

and you could stare at forever. And I'm like, oh my God, these people were alive and look what their choices were or whatever. It's very wild. And so for... But for... Ellie to see a Richard Dreyfus film, I feel like would be fucking do her head in.

These other kids have been seeing movies. And I, by the way, if we ever get Mason on the podcast, I want to know the seven other movies that they have in Jackson and how they rotate them. But she seemed, was the takeaway that she left? Like, because she was back in the house, reading the diary pretty quick. It's not like when she sees a bunch of kids, she's like, I mean, which is different than what would happen with Henry and Sam because she obviously took to that kid pretty well. But I got the feeling. And she was like, that is not your father. That is your brother.

I got the feeling that she was like uncomfortable in her own skin around a bunch of happy people. We can wrap it up there if you want. Like I said, I have a lot of high hopes for Joel's recovery here. I wonder whether or not he'll be taken back to Jackson, whether Tommy will have been following. Something's going to happen, though. I don't think that this is the end. Just last thing, just to repeat myself, this isn't sexy podcasting. This is not take wars.

I just, week after week, I'm really impressed by the steadiness of the show. I think it is really good. I don't say that to make a big point of not saying that it's great. It may well become great, but it is almost always better than it needs to be and really leaning in towards the things that it doesn't need to in a way that I find really rewarding. And I also just think that it is really on a genetic level understanding the Sunday night of it all, the HBO of it all. Like, I'm sure there are people who are inhaling the show and big, big monkey cocaine snorts, like let three episodes build up and then they binge on it. But like, this feels really nicely

paced to me. Spending an hour with them, they're journeying. We're starting to get to know them better. They're starting to get to know each other better. And the contours of what it can be and what it wants to be are really starting to come into place. It's in a good spot where it is in the season. Yeah, I think that they've, you know, Casey had mentioned on our podcast, couple weeks ago that Casey Blois from HBO that this would be a three-season show now, which I think that there is like a whole cohort of people watching this who are completely aware of what's where it is in relationship to the game. I was kind of interested actually to like, I couldn't remember the name of the school that the fireflies were supposed to be

hold up in. So I looked up eastern Colorado. And the first result is like the last of us Wikipedia page or like the special wiki that the game has. And just seeing even like, what they're drawing from the game even, even like, you know, on like a side note of, here's the trajectory of the people at this university. And here's when the sort of the firefly scientists showed up.

It's a really, really, really cool work of adaptation to see them, bring this to life with like real drama and these great performances, but also have this kind of very, uh, goal and task oriented game laid out in front of them where it's like they're finding out about people by finding a map and stuff like that. So why don't we take a quick break

and then we'll come back and we'll do quantum medium. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back.

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So I want to have as constructive a conversation about this movie that neither of us liked as possible. Yeah. And so I take something to heart that Sam Esmail told us, not to be old name-droppy about people who've been on this podcast, but Sam and me, Sam and I got into a pretty animated discussion about the idea of whether or not you should be evaluated, a piece of art or a piece of culture based on what is there, like what is in front of you

and the choices that were made rather than the choices that didn't get made. And I thought that quantum mania was one of the most challenging things that I have encountered since that conversation to try and follow Sam's golden rule. I found it almost impossible. And maybe this is kind of where I am with Marvel in general because it's now become almost more of an interesting thing to talk about in theory than it is to watch in practice. for me in some ways. But there is a movie in Quantumania, in Ant Man and Wasp,

Quantum Media that I think is actually really cool. And that movie to me is essentially a master thief is given an impossible choice by a supervillain to steal something of import to that supervillain that can cause

the deaths of trillions of people who this guy doesn't know in order to save the life of his daughter. And I was looking around online and I saw another kind of what if sort of idea about this movie where somebody on Reddit had kind of mentioned that

the trailer for this movie certainly set up this idea that Kang was offering Scott lost time. We're obviously spoiling this movie if you haven't seen him. But Kang was offering him the opportunity. Oh yeah. That was in the trailer. Makeup for lost time and that like somehow like maybe the

five years that he missed with Cassie and now she's like this wayward kid who's maybe going to jail a little bit that he could get those years. back and that there would basically be this temptation on Scott's part to do something incredibly selfish in the face of what Avengers are supposed to do, which is sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It's almost impossible for me to imagine Marvel making a movie like that anymore. Because every time I go into one of these things, you just feel the entire project

weighed down by the contracts that have been signed. And the necessity to have seven main characters in this movie. movie and to introduce the plate of the indigenous people of the quantum realm and bring in like honestly I don't really know what Evangeline Lilly was really doing in this movie I mean she didn't really have a story I guess some people have been like oh it's cool that she got to like be close to Janet again or whatever but like there's a movie in here did you find yourself longing for that or did you find yourself just kind of like I'm numb to this I mean, I think this movie is a catastrophe.

I think it's awful, but I think it's awful in a way that is concerning and representative of where we are with this stuff. Because I think your point is right. I think there is good intention. I think there's a lot of talent. I think there's a lot of goodwill. And I think there are moments, and we'll talk about them, where you can feel some life, some energy,

some people trying to push a boulder up. up a hill that I really do respect. You know, I don't want to be dismissive, but this is, this is where we are. We were sharing the link that Bill Gibri wrote for Vulture, where it's basically a review of the film and the title is, this is a cry for help. And I think I recommend that piece. I agree with it. This is like, this is where you end up when you don't have a story you want to tell. You have a set of preordained problems you're going to have to solve. this movie was preordained that it would exist and it would do 19 things that don't necessarily agree with each other

and then you bring in Paul Rudd, Peyton Reed, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, and you're like, make it do your best. Do your best to make something out of this. It's a great, I mean, you threw me by reminding me about that this is what it's going to be about. It's going to be about time, Kang as a time lord, all of these things because all of a sudden I'm interested again.

all of a sudden, this is actually about a character that we've grown to like. Well, it would be a movie also that kind of is about his skills. One of the things that sort of blow my mind recently in the last like five years or so, maybe three, is it's so hard to discern like what any of these people do. Because like even if they have like, even if it's on the package and it's like, I'm ant man, I can shrink or whatever. It's like, oh, but you're also huge and you can also kick Kang's ass. You can just keep punching until.

Yeah. And then Kang can also. throw people against walls and seem to be able to choke them with the force. But is, like, I don't really even know what any of any of these folks can, like, actually are capable of. What can Kang do? What are his powers? Yeah.

And all of that's been stripped from it. I mean, I think we've heard anecdotally that there were scenes in this movie that were probably shot in calendar year 2023. Like reshoots were very happening very recently. But that being said, I didn't think it was like a joke in the way it looked. I didn't like the way it looked, but it seemed finished. Well, yeah, oh, I didn't mean that. I mean, they were reshooting scenes with actors, not for CG, but like to do story spackle or to repivit or to reconsider what someone was doing at the end or what it might mean.

Look, there are a couple things we can go up and down the line here. Like, it was a really, really bad idea to set an entire movie in an imagined CGI world that doesn't fucking matter. That has no stakes and they didn't have their creative ass couldn't cash the check. that they were writing here with this movie. Okay, so there's a limitless universe beneath our universe that kind of just looks blobby with a space city, and we're going to have three interesting character types, one of which has a laser instead of a head.

But everyone else is, I want to say, Vikings. Like, okay, you don't need to do that. There's the space issue that we talk about, too, not outer space, although it doesn't really matter. There's Kang City. Well, you know, it just looks like Corrassant. it just looks like all of these CGI things from the last Star Wars trilogy

where the bad guy is in one tower and none of the rest of it matters and they just walk to that one tower. You also have the thing where you have Michelle Pfeiffer, who's amazing in this movie and looks incredible. She's the best special effect in it. And I think that my lingering takeaway

from the movie is 80-year-old Michael Douglas wearing like off-brand Abercrombie flannel being like, wow, as he walks through nothing. Nothing. as he walks through a soundstage in Atlanta with nothing there. There's a claustrophobia to it that is absolutely bone-chilling, and it also means nothing because there's no stakes.

Same world. We're written down, claustrophobic. They get there, and then they can leave there. And the person I saw the movie with made the very smart observation that a story structure like this was crying out for someone to be on the outside, just so you would have something to compare and contrast it to. Are they trying to be found? Are they trying to, you know, can they communicate with each other?

Who's on the other end of the walkie-talkie, so to speak? But they made the choice that no one would be there. And they also made the choice that everyone would walk out, consequence free. All of this is predicated on the idea that the Michelle Pfeiffer character was gone for 30 years, three decades, and then came back and told everyone nothing. Dude, let's go deeper with that. She is gone for 30 years. She could have come back.

She made the choice that. Like we were just talking about the idea that Ant Man would have to make a choice between his daughter and the lives of all these various timelines and universes or whatever. And that's drama. If Janet is forced to come back to this world by this scientific accident and she sees Scott not making, like making the different decision saying like, I want to get out of here with my daughter. I don't want to be the person who saves trillions of people. Like that's tension. and there's five seconds of her being like, Scott, you have to give me the core.

And that's it. But when's the last time something actually dramatically interesting happened among the quote-unquote good characters of Marvel? Like, you essentially have to go back to the Avengers movies and maybe even back to Civil War where there's tension among people. There's like some light stuff of Cassie being like, you have to help people.

Like, that's the reason you're an Avenger. There's some light stuff in there about, like whether or not like, you know, what it means to be a hero or whatever. But like, there's not, they've now like kind of sanded off the edges of these stories so much that they just keep throwing stuff at you a million miles per hour when the real story is just right there in front of you of like, what if Janet and Scott are at opposite ends of a conflict about what they should do with, with this fucking like super villain in a, in an imaginary world. We're not imagining. But here's why Marvel, writ large, is fucked right now. Because

these characters don't matter to them. These are just cogs to get to the Kang dynasty. The movies that work at the moment for Marvel are the ones that either are grandfathered in to this current phase with characters, like the Guardians of the Galaxy, or the Spider-Man movies, which are Sony movies. And in those movies, we have spent time with characters so that they're interpersonal reactions and stakes and jokes and heart-tugging whatever's matter to us. You know, like the Spider-Man, like when they make a fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, I will go immediately because Tom Holland and Zendaya

will be playing those characters again who have forgotten each other. She's forgotten him, right? I care about that. That's pretty simple. That's a character thing. This weird, like, let's have a pizza and talk about the quantum realm, Van Dyn Lang family unit, there's no stakes between them at all.

Oh, I haven't seen you for 30 years. I guess we're all back together. The Hope character, her hair looks great. What else is she doing? And what else? And so that the movie all of a sudden is like she sacrifices herself because she loves Scott, but then no one gets sacrificed because the core, which didn't do this for three quarters of the movie at the very end can suck up the villain. It's a bummer. And so this is an, the thing that I was thinking about while watching the movie, there was a polarity that was either reversed or that was just finally lost. Like someone turned the gravity off for me because there has been a moment in the last few of these movies where, like in the Dr. Strange sequel, when there's the Sam Ramey musical note fight,

where I'm like, there's a little, there's proof of life. Yep. That's fun. I can sit here and be like, well, that's weird and I really appreciated that. In this movie, when there were little glimpses of what I believe, again, I don't know these guys, but what I have to believe, like Rudd and Peyton Reed want to be doing, like the, yep, that's me, like fun light montage in San Francisco in the beginning, or the ooze, strength the ooze and the character with the holes or modoc, which we have to devote some time to,

it's actually worse that they're there. Because you can feel smart, yeah, right. You can feel smart creative people dying on the few hills they were allowed to die on. I thought that the different version of this movie, again, to kind of break the Sam rule, the different version of this movie climaxes with Ant Man coming across the probability field of all the other Ant Moon. and then building an ant hill to get to the top to get into this machine. I don't know what he's trying to steal. I don't know why it can survive being expanded and shrunk and expanded 15 times.

It seems to break. They seem to fix it. Yada, yada. Like, it's so needlessly complicated. But the point is that it would be kind of awesome if that was the climax of this movie. But I don't think that they let these movies end anymore without, giant figures

fighting one another for 25 minutes right like that would have been a creative solution that was like Antman using this world against itself

and also using his own special skill set which is that of being a thief you know and being able to sort of you know steal the most important thing in this in this world

and instead they're like no he has to grow into King Kong and he has to like throw stuff against the wall and then we also have to have have an ants coming in like Helms Deep moment and all this stuff that's just like so every every movie has to end with a battle sequence now not just that every movie has to have the same tired joke rhythm that breaks up any moments of stakes or whatever like i i get it it's it's it's what differentiated

the marvel method from say the the snider verse yeah and it's not like we loved eternals you know it's not like when they've done stuff that doesn't have lots of quips you're like oh that was great Yeah. But to take whatever dramatic momentum a movie has for Cassie to be like, don't be a dick. Like, what are we doing, guys? Like, that was, I just, I was like, what are we even doing here? What is this? Who is this for? Like, is it just a simulacrum of, like, almost as if it was not even in a language I understood, but the rhythm of the way they talk, I understood it was a Marvel movie. And so then we get to the Modoc thing, which, look, so one thing that I really appreciate, about the MCU is that they haven't been increasingly, and I do think a lot of this came from James Gunn.

They haven't been afraid of the things that for decades of when superhero movies weren't happening, people would point to things like Modoc and be like, this is why we can't let the nerds do these movies. This is why we have to strip the specific things that make comic book comic books out of them. So it's just man and bat suit punching people. You know, like we can't, we have to rinse clean

the like 60s Adam West Batman vibes from comic books forever. When the fact that there is a significant Marvel character who is a giant head floating with tiny legs that's made for killing, it's funny. It's so weird. And so you can feel the sweat equity of Jeff Loveness and whoever else worked on the scripts of this movie and Peyton Reed being like, yeah, we want Modoc.

Let us have one fun, weird thing to play with that James Gun hasn't touched yet. And then let's get Corey Stoll to do it. we give it some like emotional relevance to the Ant Man story. And then you reveal him with that head. And I was like, that's very disturbing. Like, that's one of the most disturbing things I've seen in one of these movies. But then it became a thing.

And then they were like, we love this. This is the third pillar of this movie's emotional and dramatic arc. Yeah. And guys, it sucked. It sucked after a while. And it was weird. And he's coughing up blood and dying. And I'm like, you're not making this movie.

I know that to get you through the day and feel okay. about the paychecks that you guys deserve, you're like, well, at least we have giant Corey Stoll being like, I'm not a dick. Okay, you did that. That's good. But I think we're so far off the map of what movies even are when you've reached that point. It bummed me out. It bummed me out.

I don't know who's minding the store. And I think we have to get into Jonathan Majors, too, because in terms of like squandered resources, we got to get into this. This is like a bill thing where it's like, just let's talk it out. out. Okay. I appreciate the opportunity to do this. This is how Kaya wanted to spend her holiday weekend. Is it possible that Jonathan Majors is one of our great actors? And that they're fucking this King character up. Because I got to tell you something. Yes. I come off, like, you and I maybe come off like Statler and Wolder from these pods where we're like,

God damn it. Like, you know, this isn't how you're supposed to do it. And like they, blah, blah. I fucking try really hard with Kang. You know, like, I'm like, I'm in the forums. I'm trying to figure all this stuff out. I've got like in a Google doc, somebody made like a whole like time travel and multiverse and timelines, like guide that essentially pulls from what Michael Waldron and other writers have said and like explains what's going on.

And I have no fucking idea. Has this guy died twice now? I know that they're just variants or whatever. Are you going to kill this guy at the end of every episode, like, I said episode, every movie that you do? and then they're going to have this triumphant moment, but it turns out there's another Kang. Like, I know what the story is in the comics.

I know that there's multiple Kangs. I know that he who remains is different than whoever we saw in quantum mania. Does 97% of the people on this planet understand those distinctions? Like, do you have to watch six episodes of Loki to even begin to grasp who the fuck this guy is? Well, let's talk two things. Let's talk character and let's talk actor. If you want to talk character first, they're fucking this up because it's cool that there are limitless versions of this character.

The post-credit, they're all in on it. I mean, the post-credit or the mid-credit scene has thousands. And, you know, that could be scary. That could be ominous. That could be exciting, you know. But you haven't given me a single reason to understand or care. Like, Thanos is a purple guy with a scrotum. chin. But they communicated what he wanted and why he wanted it. And then a really great actor

like Brolin could give him some pathos and do the things that actors do when they're given a part to play. He even played two versions of the character. If, you know, if you consider what happens in endgame. And I'm in. We're in. Villains are great. Villains played by good actors are great. I mean, who can forget, like, what Spader brought to Ultron, you know? Careful. There's one, there was one moment. in this movie when I felt all the bullshit fell away and I felt riveted. And I was like, here we go. And I love that feeling. To your point, like, it's not just I try hard. I want that. I want these movies to be good. It's when Ant Man meets Kang the first time and he turns and he says,

have I killed you before? Yeah, that was sick. And you're like, oh shit. That's great. That's this. Okay, I'm in. But we don't know who he is. We said this at the beginning. I don't know what his powers are. I don't know what he's offering people. He just shoots shit from his hands. So does everyone else.

So what's the unique aspect of this for him? The thing about the character that has worked in the comics that almost to my mind actively cuts against the narrative buildup of a movie phase is that he could be anyone at any time. And so there's variants of Kang in the comics that writers have had a great fun play. with and creating. So my friend Alan Heinberg created the Young Avengers 15 years ago. And the big, sorry, I'm going to spoil this. Hit 15 seconds ahead if you actually care about something that happened in the comics over 10 years ago. But the young Avengers were formed by Iron Lad, who reveals himself to be a young version of Kang, who's like, I have to stop myself. And I've recruited you young

heroes to do it with me. There's a version of Kang who gets so bored fucking with the multiverse and time that he decides to protect time and exist at the end of it. Because he's lived through everything. Is that the dude in Loki? I mean, there's no one-to-one in the comic. It's like Immortis, I think, is his name, and he's got a beard. It's all fluid. The thing that's making me nervous is back to your first point, which is I'm worried they're hanging Jonathan Majors out to dry.

Because if you ask me what planet or which universe Kang comes from right now, I would tell you, Juilliard. like this is a great actor who is clinging and white knuckling to the fact that he can do 100 versions and do different accents and just slow everything down and be charismatic like when he appears in that first scene of the movie and he's like what world is this yeah that's awesome i got chills it was cool it's jonathan majors let's go that whole sequence with him i mean i i kind of thought it would have been cool to do 45 minutes of like fifer and majors and like actually feel her be betrayed by him and feel like I was going to help this guy get out of here and he was going to help me get out of here. And then I found out that I would have been helping like a war criminal. But instead she touched his soul crystal and saw alternate universes. And we're like, okay, I guess we're moving on. I agree with you. I think that it reminds me this is going to be a weird one. But like when great actors, when hungry actors, actors who love to act, aren't fed enough. They're not just, they're just not given enough.

crazy things can happen on screen. And that was my takeaway from Michelle Williams in the Fablements. Yeah. She was doing all the acting for everyone else in it. And I think she's a brilliant artist. And her performance

kind of bummed me out because I felt like she didn't, something was off with the communication or the direction. So we just got all the acting instead of a character. I worry about this for Jonathan Majors, especially as he just continues

to play a hundred different versions of someone who we don't understand or know. And both credit sequences, which we could talk about, post-credit tags are devoted to, well, yeah, there's more. Yeah. And also that there's more, but you're going to have to watch second season of Loki to understand it, which...

Brother, look, the last tag of this movie being a trailer for the second season of a TV show, Kev, we got to talk about Kevin. What are we doing? Look, at the same time, I was like, Hittleston and Wilson. I love them. Let's do that. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there's real gold here. you know, like the first chunk of these movies was essentially about, like, who protects people from superheroes, you know, and like, can superheroes basically, uh, administrate themselves? And that sort of culminates with Civil War, I guess. And then you've also got then Thanos and the rise of like, of this existential threat. It gets a little bit more interstellar. It goes out into space and you get the blip. And then now the blip has sort of replaced this Covey Accords as the sort of,

thing with which everything revolves. I kind of wish they would do more blip stuff. I know that they kind of mentioned it at the beginning of every movie or every TV show. But essentially now you're moving into this, these pretty complicated and I'm not entirely sure buttoned up ideas about reality and time and what's happening in and outside of time and what is a different timeline and whether or not there's multiple universes and multiple timelines where multiple people can be playing the same character.

And I think that they've kind of biffed it so far between Dr. Strange and this. They have. And I don't know how many different ways you can tell this story that isn't just a superhero is faced with a decision about whether or not to like mess with timelines

to correct a personal mistake. Guys, also, you did it. Spider-Man, no way home. You did it. It's a really good movie, and it's a really good movie because of really wonderful human-scale performances by really good actors. And the writers of that movie took the time to really lovingly clean up and care for the toys they plucked off the shelf. It wasn't just because we wanted a modoc. It was like, well, what does it mean to ask Willem Defoe to come back here?

How did this movie treat Jamie Fox? Let's really holistically consider this and tell a story that people can be invested in from a number of different angles, both the story, both your own personal history with it, and maybe even your meta understanding of Andrew Garfield didn't get a third one. You know what I mean? Like it was really thoughtful and respectful of the way things had been left

and then picked them up and treated them well and cleaned up after itself. And I got to say, like, do these things matter? No. But this is getting dark in a hurry because what this movie is doing and what the thrust of this universe seems to be doing right now

is like, well, Avengers stand up to evil. And so the Avengers are going to get together. And like, look, someone to queue up the Rick Petino YouTube. Because Steve Rogers is not walking through that door. Tony Stark is not walking through that door. Like, Dave Batista isn't walking through the door anymore. You know what I mean? So when you're talking about the Avengers that are going to defeat Kang,

we're maybe talking Paul Rudd. We're talking Brie Larson. Benedict Cumberbatch must be like, how many more of these? Dude, can I just... You hope Tom Holland shows up, but otherwise it's like, moon night's not coming. Like, what the fuck are we doing? Can I do a wildly speculative thing? Is that, you know, and I'm sure this was at the end of like endless junket number 95 for Paul Rudd.

So he just sort of threw this out there. But somebody was like, what would you want to see Ant Man Forby about? And he pretty quickly was like, I would like it to be a car, like a road trip of Cassie and her dad. And there's no threat. So just knowing what you know about Paul Rudd. look, he's charming. I don't know that I felt like he was fully, like, present. Like, he was definitely present for the movie.

And there were points in this movie that I thought, like, oh, wow, like, he's got his lip-blooded. Like, it seems like they're really, like, trying to do it here. But, man, like, there is, there, if you told me that Paul Rudd was like, what the fuck is this about now, town? Like, who do, okay. So I walk into this room and then I look at this tennis ball and I say, what? Okay. You know, like, yes.

It just didn't seem like, it didn't seem like, it didn't. seem like a great gig. And it used to seem like it probably was a really good gig. I think that there are worse things to do with your time than hang out with Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas. You know, like, that's fine. I don't think he's, right, I don't think he's suffering. But you get that feeling in this movie that everybody's like, huh? You know, what? Okay. It didn't, wasn't there a Michael Douglas quote where they're like, I'll come back if they kill me? Like, yes. That's not fun anymore. And then you just, we're just in this late stage shit we're like, Will Harper

shows up. One of our great most charming actors of the moment, you know, from good place and love life, the resort, and he's just like a tiny space person that lives in the quantum realm whose forehead glows.

Okay. That's the best you could do for this actor? That's what we were doing. The Bill Murray thing. Bill Murray shows up, and I guess his character note was you used to fuck Michelle Pfeiffer. So that fun for him, probably, for the, I mean, when they said that's lunch, he did not come back. You know what I mean?

I actually thought he was pretty good. He was good. Yeah, I actually thought Murray was pretty good. And I think that, again, I think Peyton Reed was just like, I get, I used to make super chunk videos. Now I get to call Bill Murray to come to a weird scene where he flirts with Michelle Fifer. That's good. I would, if I, I would love to meet Peyton Reed.

He seems like a great guy, like to shake his hand. He made two really good movies and did his goddamn best with this one. but this isn't a movie. This is a mess. Let's put a capstone on it by saying, I note with interest that, so we got Guardians coming in a couple of months, and then they moved the Marvels to November.

And also, by all accounts, whether it's people are doing deduction to figure this out, or whether or not it's been explicitly stated. I have to go back and reread like all the Iger and Feigey stuff from the last couple of weeks.

But it seems like they're going to do two shows this year, pretty much. They're going to do Loki and I think Secret Invasion and that seems like it and they're going to move all the other stuff like Echo and you know like a bunch of this and even Ironheart looks like it's moving

to next year. Now whether or not that's people just need less stuff and they would need to concentrate on the things that we give them. Oh Agatha I think is moving it seems at least didn't get any kind of release date and yeah giving these things space is good.

But I think also making sure that they're finished. And I keep going back to the stuff that James Gunn said when he took the job at DC. And he was like, we're going to make this a writer-centric company. We're going to focus on finishing these scripts because the reason why these movies are getting mediocre. And the reason why that there is this fatigue with these movies is that the movies are not good anymore because they are not finished. because they are not written to an end point and given a third act that people can then walk out of a theater

and say that was amazingly satisfying and interesting and now I'm thinking about it. It's like, no, here's 45 loose threads. Like Paul Rudd walking and having a voiceover and being like, did I just like unleashed Kang onto the whole universe? And it's just like this is a bit. Chris, the movie ends with him being like

this cake isn't very good. That's the, what changed from, the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie for these characters. Scott and Cassie have some issues, but they love each other. Scott and Hope love each other. Janet and Hank, I guess she spent a couple years boning Bill Murray, but they're fine, and they go out to dinner. Nothing changed. Nothing changed, except we've met the villain that will be the dominant force of two Avengers movies at some point in 2025. And so they literally end the movie with him being like, this Baskin-Robbins cake sucks. Well, guess what? I walked out of the movie being like, this sucked, you know? Because it wasn't a movie. It wasn't. And they're going to have to sit with that. They don't need me to say it. The movie made $100 million whatever around the world. But it is diminishing returns. And it's easier to start things and end them and certainly to maintain them with the needs of shareholders growth and all of that. So it's weird to say this. But of course, you'd rather be James Gunn right now because all goodwill is there and they can start over and they can build something to completion, which

Kevin Feigy did, unlike anyone else has ever done in movies, to that last Avengers movie. And then since then, brother, we're in free fall and the wheels are off. And I don't know. It's fun. It is, it's interesting to be negative about something that I think some people like. And I hope, but it comes from, it's fascinating. It's fascinating how deeply flawed and disappointing this was. And it's also like, you look at the larger list of all of these movies and TV shows.

and I've pretty much watched all of it. You know what I mean? Like, I think that I'm a little bit less on top of it as I used to be. You know, I definitely was psyched to see Ant Man, but like, it's just strange to be like, oh, wow, this takes up so much of the brainshare of modern movie making, and it just doesn't seem like they're, it seems like they've lost something in the process of expansion.

And that, that to me is always going to be interesting. Like, you guys tried to scale. and it seems to have broken something. Also, there might just be a finite amount of story that you guys have. You know what I mean? Like, it might have been that the Avengers saga that you told from Iron Man through Endgame was the story that was supposed to be told, and it's really hard to reboot this thing and relaunch it on the fly.

Also, they may have gotten way in front of their skis and misunderstanding what people liked, because I think people liked their characters. I think movies actually are hard to make well, but pretty simple to understand why they work. And I think people liked Iron Man and Thor and Captain America and the characters that they liked. And those characters are gone now. And now there's an assumption that we're just going to care as deeply

about a made-up place where people say the word Avengers. It just doesn't work like that. There are always going to be people who do because, you know, it's fun to be a part of something larger. There are people who just love comic books, no matter who's writing them or drawing them, because it's a mean something to them. There's fictional escape.

It's consistency. but that's not the history of mainstream entertainment that connects on the large level. It's the characters, right? And like, they got to get back. They got to get back to it. I don't know if they're going to learn that from our podcast, but I'm sure they're having these conversations too, but it is wild to just trot everyone out and be like, yeah, aren't we all, don't we all feel a little quantum mania sometimes?

Nope. Thanks to Kai McMullen for producing us on a holiday day and thanks to Andy. We will be back next Monday. So no show on Thursday, but we will be back next Monday. with Last of Us and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff. Greenwald, great to see you, man. Have a great and restful week, Berenskies.