Court Of Lore
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Court Of Lore
"Hollywood, We Have A Problem" - Marvel, DC, and all of HOLLYWOOD is on THIN ICE (Ep. 161)
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Hollywood is dying and everyone's pretending it's fine. We break down the real numbers behind the box office collapse, expose Disney's content greed that killed Marvel's magic, and reveal why the casual audience isn't coming back. From Marvel's COVID betrayal to the death of movie stars - this is the brutal truth about entertainment's spiral into irrelevance.
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You know, with the numbers coming in on Fantastic Four and uh the numbers coming in on Superman. Um there's a lot of people talking about like whether this is this is it for comic book movies. Is this like is this the signal that the market is has has completely shifted? Are we comic book movies going away? That's what basically people are sort of debating right now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's relegated just to comic books. I think just movie box office numbers in general are soft for 2025 so far. And there's a lot of reasons for that, which I'm sure we'll get into. But just talking about specifically Superman and Fantastic Four, Superman's second week at the box office only dropped about 50 something percent, which is normal. I I wouldn't say that that's alarming, but Fantastic Four's drop was surprising to me. Uh, to drop, I think it dropped 66% in the second week, which is yeah, that's bad. Like anything in the 60s is bad. So, but that was a really good movie. Thunderbolts had the same problem. I mean, it was a it was a well-received movie by critics, just nobody went to go see it. Um, me included. I didn't go see in the theaters. And part of that could be superhero fatigue is superhero movies going the way of the Western, right? I mean, Westerns were super popular back in the day, and you get saturated with them and and they shifted. I mean, I I like a good western every now and then, but you don't see them obviously as often. But I think for me, I I would say I don't have well, I mean, I don't have superhero fatigue. I I think I just have changed the way I've seen movies. There's okay, there's so many things going on. Like COVID completely changed my movie seeing habits. Before COVID, I was going to the movies at least twice, three times a month, just to see the the next cool thing. But when COVID happened, things changed. I mean, they did the day and date release with streaming, and now street things are coming out to streaming sooner, like 90 days, things are out on streaming. So I didn't see Thunderbolts, and I wasn't mad about that, right? Because it's going to be out on Disney Plus in maybe a month. I don't know the date exactly, but I heard September. So it was just out in May. So that's a pretty quick turnaround. And I don't have a stellar, you know, TV sound system at the house. I have a 25-year-old, you know, LG that's that's a dumb TV. It's not a smart TV. I have like a 25-year-old Bose sound system. So I'm I'm not running top-of-the-line gear, but the way I'm seeing movies have changed. I've I've seen two movies in 2025, and it was Superman and Fantastic Four, and that was it. Um, haven't seen anything new or or original, and that's another thing I think a lot of people are are doing with the box office is they're afraid to go see new movies unless it's existing IP. So there's a there's a lot that's going on with these numbers. Just the just the movie-going habits of everybody has changed. And I'm speaking just from a normal run-of-the-mill fan. I I don't dig into box office numbers all that much, but I know if if I'm changing my movie habits, chances are I'm probably in the in the median of the norm of people that have changed their movie-going habits. I mean, me and just me and my wife going to a Saturday matinee is almost like 40 bucks now with with drinks and snacks and everything. It's like a good chunk of change, and people are afraid to part with that kind of money in today's environment and be disappointed when they can just wait a few months and it'll be out on streaming. So I think it's more than superhero fatigue. I just think it's just changing habits of the movie going public.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have to agree with you there. Um, the 66% thing was definitely disappointing for Fantastic Four. I did find it a little bit alarming. Also, you know, there's this narrative that's around the Superman movie where have you seen this? It's it's it's this overwhelming, unprecedented promotion of domestic box office numbers. Yeah. With Superman. It's a spin. It's spin. It's constant. It's constant. It's almost like they're just trying to distract you from the fact that it's not doing well overseas or it's not doing well in other markets. They're just singing about the domestic thing. And to me, it just seems like there's a there's a group, there's a subset either within WB or even like, and definitely in the fan base, where they are doing whatever they can, whatever they can to differentiate themselves from Man of Steel and from anything that Zack Snyder did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's just like, listen, we don't want to talk about the fact that we haven't built we haven't beat Man of Steel. How do we get around that? Oh, okay. We can highlight the domestic box office numbers. Let's do that. Let's beat that like a dead horse because that's exactly what's happening is they're beating that like a dead horse. Like it's just constant, man. It's it's constant. And going back to what you were saying about the habits of the movie going public. Now, I haven't had a chance to to mention this on an episode yet, but Court of Lore and my and my studio, our parent company, Frank and Story Studios, we're actually working on a documentary where I'm like I've sort of mapped the entire the entire phenomena over the last 10 years with Hollywood. And yeah, it has to do with COVID and it has to do with the change in habits that happened as we came back to no normalcy, but there's so much more there. Like there's so much more there. It's multifactorial. Sorry, multi-factorial, and it probably, like I said, spans about 10 years. It it just involves everybody, it involves the fans, it involves commentators, it involves the studios, obviously. Uh, it involves the media, like the access press and the commentator press. Like it is insane. It's crazy how crazy, like, like, like how wildly this got out of control. So I'll touch on a few things that we have within our within our theoretical sort of framework for this documentary, but I'm not going to give away the whole picture, obviously. Right. But the COVID thing is definitely a part of that. Because I feel like before COVID, comic book movies and a lot of different franchise type of movies were they were events. They were cultural events.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00You couldn't miss out on it because if you did miss out on it, you wouldn't be part of the next conversation that happened at the coffee shop, at the bar, at the pool hall, at the gym, whatever. Like everybody wanted to be a part of that conversation. And Marvel did a great job of sort of normalizing fan culture. They did this fantastic job of normalizing fan culture where it wasn't just about guys like us. It wasn't just about comic book readers and comic book fans and just diehard nerds. There was a fan base that sat a little bit lower than us as far as knowledge and familiarity with the canon and the culture, but they were still fans and they were still committed and they were still going to every freaking movie because it was like, you know, when they did when they did the first three phases, it was like you're putting a new piece of puzzle in every time you went. It was fun, it was interactive. It was fun and it was interactive, and we've lost that. We've lost that. And I don't know whether it was COVID that did it or whether it was something else that did it, but that's something that definitely went away, and we've never been able to get it back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The casual, I think the casual audience is gone. Yeah. I don't think they're coming back. I think the casual audience is gone, and the people that are left over are the hardcore people that, you know, this has become a big part of who they are, become a big part of their identity. You know, these parasocial relationships, again, that's something else I want to talk about at some point too, because that's getting scary. That's getting really weird for me. Yeah, these pair, like, you know, like it's just become a big part of people's existence and cultural experience, and they're friend groups too. Like, you know, I think one of the things that I think one of the things that we don't culturally talk enough, talk enough about as a society is the way that friendships have changed for younger people. So for me and you, we have friends that we've had since school. Yep. Like high school, 20 years, and we can talk to them about anything. We can say the craziest crap in front of them, and they're not going to ostracize us and be like, we don't want to hang out with you anymore. Right, right. But in the context of an online friendship, a strictly online friendship, it's so easy just to dismiss somebody because they don't share your opinion on something. And I can see kids, especially the way that they react online to discourse, I can see them ostracizing their friends because they don't agree with, you know, someone's take on Wanda Maximoff or, you know, Peter Parker or whatever. I could see that definitely happening. Like, hey, you don't agree with us that, you know, Wanda was a, you know, was 100% the victim in WandaVision. Well, you can't be a part of our friend group anymore. You're off our Discord. We don't want to talk to you anymore. And for some kids, that's all they got. That's all they got. So I've kind of gone off on a little bit of a tangent here, but let me bring it back to kind of kind of the movie and the cultural thing. But my point was is that these films built up these cultural ecosystems, these sort of ecosystems where we kind of all existed together and it was very communal. And that's gone. Like that's definitely gone now. And the discourse has certainly shifted along with that, where it's become a lot more combative, tribal, um, you know, a lot more tribal. And it's the fun's being kind of sucked out of it, if I'm being honest, a little bit. Like it's definitely not as fun as it used to be, as far as the entire experience goes. So I can see why casual fans are abandoning it. But what I think happened was this. Let me kind of put this in in as simplest terms I can. When we took that COVID break, the casual fans that were committed to phase one, two, and three of Marvel, they love those, they love those movies. So we get hit with phase four and phase, well, yeah, we get hit with phase four, like middle of phase four when COVID hits. That's literally the beginning of it. Black Widow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Black Widow was the first one in phase four.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so first project out of phase four.
SPEAKER_04And it was a day and date release.
SPEAKER_00We're all stuck at home. Yeah. We're all stuck at home. So there's no opportunity to reconnect to it culturally as a group. We're all watching it at home, sure. We're talking about it online, whatever. And that continues on. That continues on. And then we get to Loki, which is the next project. We get to Loki, and there's this promise of this vast multiversal story that we're gonna get. And they set it up perfectly in Loki season one. Credits roll and what's happening behind the credits, Rich. I don't remember what the multi the Marvel multiverse is collapsing. Collapsing, threads are collapsing onto each other, and we end that series thinking in our minds, okay. And then nothing was this is gonna go somewhere exciting and somewhere interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00And then what happens? Nothing. No follow-through.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No follow-through at all. What happened in Loki had no consequential effect on anything else in Marvel. The only multiversal movie was self-contained. The multiversal aspect of it was self-contained with Wanda using the dark hold to try and find her sons. So it didn't get tied back into Loki. It didn't get tied back into something we'd already connected with. Right. So how are we supposed to connect with it? Plus, it's like it's this missing, you know, they make this promise to us, they make this guarantee to us, saying, like, hey, commit yourself to the Disney shows. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be, you know, it's gonna expand your experience. It's gonna make the cultural experience even richer. That's what Disney Plus is gonna do. And what does it do? It doesn't do anything like that. It doesn't do anything like that.
SPEAKER_04I would contend it made it worse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it did. It did because it didn't bring anything back, it didn't clean up any of the threads. And and and I'm not being ironic about this, and I'm not trying to, again, like this isn't a pun. The threads thing with Loki, I'm not that's literally what Loki was about, was about story threads.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So the fact that the fact that they don't follow through on Loki and they just kind of like, yeah, here, take the Marvel universe. This is what we're giving you. Enjoy it, be happy with what you get. And I think a lot of fans were just like, seriously, dude? Fuck you. Like, no. Like, we're paying more than we've ever had to pay for Marvel content because now we have a Disney Plus subscription. So not only, not only do we have to pay for movie tickets that have gone up in price, we have to pay for the Marvel, we have to pay for Disney Plus. Everything at the movie theater has gone up in cost. Inflation is coming, like, you know, people are losing their jobs. It's just not a good time to sit there and try and culturally experiment with your winning franchise. Just turn on the money machine and let the f run, dude. Like, just follow the shit that you started. And then the other thing I think that people don't talk about enough when it comes to Marvel is that all the new characters are just Fortnite skins of old characters. You know, you got a new Thor, you got a new Hulk, you got a new Black Panther, you got a new Captain America, you got a new Iron Man. It's just Fortnite skins of all the old, like all the same characters. I feel like personally, this is my belief, and I'm not trying to be conspiratorial, even though I'd love to be conspirator conspiratorial. But I think what we witnessed was Marvel trying to make the best out of a bad situation. And what they did was is they ran the biggest test marketing campaign in the history of the film business. We were basically all trapped at home and they run, you know, they're running the yeah, they were run basically running a focus group. Like, let's see how people respond to these characters. Let's put them out on the shows, let's put them in the new movies, let's see how they respond to these characters. And that's why we didn't get the multiversal that we could have had.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I don't know, like maybe, maybe Kevin Feige and his team haven't been transparent enough about the difficulties that COVID presented. Maybe they had a whole story post-Loki that was like all ready to rock and roll and COVID everything up. If that's the case, they need to come out and say that. Because our perception right now is that we were sold a false bill of goods and we didn't get what we invested in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it would actually be in their best interest to say, like, hey, you know what? We had this great thing lined up post Loki. We were ready to roll it out, but because of COVID, we just couldn't execute it. We just couldn't do it. We didn't have the funds coming in from the parks because we had to shut down the parks. There's a whole bunch of reasons. Like, there's got to be an explanation as to why they didn't follow through on that particular thread, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But listen, I've thrown I've thrown a ton at you. Um and and and a way I was kind of like plugging our doc when it comes out, but this, but, but this goes deeper. Like this goes so much deeper than what I've said. Like there are probably five or six other contributing factors beyond what I just laid out. Like it's bananas, dude. It's bananas. People are gonna be talking about the last 10 years of Hollywood for the next 600 years because that's how crazy it is. That's how crazy it is. And we'll get into that in the documentary.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot to unpack. So rewind. Yeah. No. So I think the the the movie, the box office for everyone has been has been bad for 2025. But Marvel could have been the outlier if they had continued to stick with the formula that worked in the first three phases. Yeah. What I think happened in the beginning of the downfall of Marvel was a perfect storm of COVID, the writer's strike, and greed, especially the launch of Disney Plus. Disney Plus, they were they were hungry for content. You want to launch Disney Plus with as much content as you want. And they had already a ton, but they had to get original content out there. People weren't going to be happy with just the library of old Disney stuff, the library of old Star Wars stuff, the library of Nat Geo stuff, and and all that. Iger, in his wisdom, said, make everything. The reason why phase one's one through three works so well, the in the Infinity saga works so well, is that they spaced everything out enough to what you were talking about. It became part of the culture, and people talked about it, and people missed it enough to where when the next event came out, people were like, Oh, I gotta go see that now. But when you throw so much, and this is where we lost the casual fan, uh, is when you throw so much out there, it's too much homework now, man. Like with Fantastic Four, it's 37 movies now that people felt like they had just movies, not even talking about the TV shows. Um, there's so much homework now uh that people feel like they have to do, and they just don't want to do that anymore. And I think they thought when Fantastic Four came out was okay, this is its own self-contained story in a different universe. It's not connected to any other Marvel project at all. You can go in, having not watched the previous 36 and be okay and kind of understand what's happening. But I think it was too little, too late because the only people left watching these movies, like you were saying, are the diehards. And that's a very small minority when you're talking about box office success. You have to keep that casual fan, and that's what the Infinity Saga did so well. They were only putting out, what, two movies a year, and it gave people, and there was no TV show, so it gave people time to watch it, talk about it, and then six months, eight months later, a new one's coming, a new Marvel movie, not talking about just an Avengers movie, just another Marvel movie came out, and you know they're connected. Like when the first Avengers movie came out in 2012, the local theater I went to ran a Marvel movie marathon and what we watched all the movies from Iron Man to the midnight release of Avengers. The place was packed and people were all dressed up and it was like this whole thing. But you could do that. Can you imagine doing that? There'd be no way a movie theater could do that now with with as many movies. So the casual fan was lost when the glut of not just content but lackluster content from Marvel was coming out. With it with a few exceptions, a lot of the TV shows weren't great. I liked them to varying degrees. I mean, I'm I'm kind of predisposed to like them, but I could tell when when there was some some falters and some rushed work and some things just to put out there just to keep the content train going. Um and you see the course correction. Now they're, you know, they're pulling back. Or did I say Iger earlier? Chaypik. Chaypik was the one that wanted all the content. ChaPick, yeah, yeah, right. So now Iger is course correcting with Feigen's like, okay, we're only going to do back to what we did. What what worked, right? So they all went back to the drawing board. What worked? Okay, two, three movies a year, maybe a couple of TV shows now that we're in this. Um, and oh, let's bring back Robert Downey Jr. and the Russos. That's that's where we're at now. That's what they're doing to hopefully bring back the casual fans. Oh, you remember RDJ and Iron Man back in 2008? Hey, we're bringing them back. Come come put your butt in the seat. So I with the Vengers and then, oh, I forgot to mention this, the whole Jonathan Majors thing. They had to completely like rewrite that timeline because Majors was gone. This was all around Kang and the Kang dynasty and all that. And now he's just a footnote and Ant-Man that got that got beat up by some super intelligent ants. He's not the big bad. They had to throw Dr. Doom in there, and he should have Dr. Doom should have been the Big Bad all along, is my thinking. But that's that's them trying to bring back the casual fan. Is like, hey, you remember the Russos, how they did so well on the on the Avengers movies? We're bringing them back to write these and direct these, and Robert Downer Jr.'s coming back and Spider-Man. And so they're they're trying to woo back that casual fan. And and I I don't know if Doomsday, Avengers Doomsday, is gonna bring in a billion dollars. There was a time where you could throw an Avengers label out out there, guaranteed billion dollars. I don't know if it's gonna do it. I don't know if if the movie going public is gonna have the patience for it now. It all depends between when is it supposed to be coming out? November 26th next year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dude.
SPEAKER_04So I mean, you got a year to figure it out, but I mean, I don't I don't know if it's gonna make a billion. I I just I don't think it's going to.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it's going to either. So you brought up an interesting thing. Avengers movie. There was no Avengers movie. Yeah. There hasn't been an Avengers movie since Endgame. Yeah. Like that's that's what we're all looking for, dude. That's what we all want. Like, that's what we're all looking forward to. As soon as a new fucking phase starts, that's the one thing that everybody is getting ready to sort of just, you know, you know that like that's what we all want. That's what we're all looking for, is we want that Avengers movie. And you didn't deliver. So, like, how are we supposed to have fucking faith in you guys anymore? You know what I'm saying? Like, and then you bring up Doomsday, and I want to go back, but you know, we you know, you're talking about the whole billion situation. Let's talk about what a billion represents right now. So the way the way I've always seen things is like this, okay? Marvel started making billions when they got the casual audience.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_00That's that was key. That was the key. They had to get the casual audience to make the billion, right? And where I think Marvel finally crossed over into capturing that casual audience was Guardians of the Galaxy. Yep, exactly right. Because that was the moment that it went mainstream, right? The soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy was number one on the top 200, but on the billboard top 200 for like 18 weeks. Oh, it's great.
SPEAKER_04It's my Spotify playlist, man. I love it.
SPEAKER_00That's the mainstream crossover and Marvel and Never had anything like that before. That is when Marvel finally went mainstream was Guardians of the Galaxy Volume One. That was the big, it's the big shift. And from that point on, any of those movies could have made a billion bucks. Any of those films could have made a billion dollars. And the reason that they did make a billion was because they did capture that casual audience. Now, here's where WB doesn't get it. Here's where they fucked up everything and why they kept course correcting because they wanted to hit a billion. But the thing is, they were never going to hit a billion because DC doesn't have the same appeal to a casual audience as Marvel does. And it's for some very straightforward reasons. DC is far more comic booky. They honor secret identities. They're like one-to-one with costume to screen. There is, you know, there is no cross-genre storytelling. They're not trying to like weave in a high story and they're not trying to weave in a political thriller. It's just the characters in their worlds. Marvel does it all. It gives you the character in their world, and then they put on a little bit of some cross-genre storytelling, and you get a Marvel movie. And that's why Marvel was so successful in finding that casual audience, because they could find all these nodes where they could find different audience members, right? They weaved in the comedy, more audience members. They weave they weaved in the cross-genre storytelling, more audience members. And that's when it started to like permeate outside the fan base where people would be like, dude, did you see this new movie? It's awesome. It's comic booky, but like it doesn't even need to be comic booky. Like it's good without the comic book characters. Like if these characters were just normal characters, this would have been a fantastic film. And that's what Fantastic Four had, actually, too. I think I said that in our last review is that Fantastic Four was a film that could have survived just being a film and not even being a comic book movie. And WB doesn't, and and and that's the problem with WB, they never they never embraced what they were, and they never they never played to their strengths. So my theory with WB was this lean into the darkness, lean into it, lean into the grit, lean into the darkness, lean into the adult humor, lean into the sex, lean into all that shit. Do everything that Marvel isn't doing and find yourself a fucking audience. Because they could have pulled casual fans that way. Because we've seen casual fans do billion dollar box office for 300, we've seen casual fans do billion dollar box offices for Sin City, we've seen uh casual fans do you know billion billion dollar box offices for a lot of really gritty, gritty comic book shit. And there are different sort of vectors of appeal, and they were only relying on one. They were like, we gotta be the next more, like we gotta try and be more like Marvel. No, you gotta be DC and you gotta figure out how to be DC, but without trying to be like Marvel, you know? And I think that's where they really fuck things up because I think that they were headed for a billion-dollar box office under Zack Snyder's vision. I really do. I think personally, my belief is this if WB hadn't interfered with the BBS cut, if the ultimate edition had gone into theaters, I think they would have made a billion dollars up that cut. I really do. Would you agree or disagree?
SPEAKER_04I I wouldn't I would agree with that. That was the whole reason why they brought Whedon into fix Justice League, right? They tried to marvelize Justice League. And I think that's the main difference. You're talking about the difference between DC and Marvel or WB and Marvel, is that DC's characters, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, they're much more mythic than than the Marvel superheroes that we've seen on screen. Exactly. Captain America, Spider-Man, all those, Iron Man, they're much more relatable to the casual fans. They gave them foibles that we as general audiences can identify with. But how do you how do you identify with a Superman? How do you identify with a Wonder Woman? So what Zack Snyder did is he leaned into that mythos. He leaned into the into the into the godhood of these particular characters, even Batman to an extent. But he made them fallible. But he did, but he did make them fallible. Sure. But he tried to his his universe was the answer to Marvel's lighthearted, quippy thing. Exactly. Yeah. For me, it worked. I liked watching DC opposite Marvel because those two different things.
SPEAKER_00Me too. That's what I loved about it. Was like, hey, you know what? I've seen enough Marvel movies, like, you know, enough, you know, enough tense moments being undercut by jokes. I'm gonna go watch a DC movie and I can get a whole different vibe. And that's what I loved about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, it and that's what Zi uh Zack Snyder did, and he's he's kind of the perfect filmmaker for that type of filmmaking, as he leans into the mythos of the characters and of what DC represents. Um, and it was kind of the anti-Marvel in that sense. And there and the boys is is very similar to that on and Amazon Prime. Very much not Marvel, and it found an audience. It's got its own spin-offs now, which are really great. It was just something that was different and something that people could watch that wasn't Marvel. But when they brought in Wheeden to try to Marvel lize Justice League, it didn't do great.
SPEAKER_00Fell on its ass.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was it was not it was not great. So yeah, so I just think that a lot of things in terms of like the superhero fatigue, a lot of it is homework, a lot of it is just the movie changing habits of the general public. So I don't I don't know post-Fantastic Four, you know, Fantastic Four was supposed to be we're Marvel's back, baby, but but we're not, I don't think. It was no knock to Fantastic Four. Great movie, loved it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I do think Marvel from kind of like a storytelling standpoint was back in that sense. So yeah, I just think uh trying to do the universe thing is tough. I mean, DC's trying to reboot it again with James Gunn, and people have seen that done that now. So it's it's not gonna be this new novel thing that they're hoping for. I think the only difference is, you know, they're integrating Creature Commandos type of animated series with it now to be part of them the canon. So yeah, I just think it's kind of where we're where we're at now. I think you're asking some of these universe-building movies are asking too much of their audience to do before watching the movie.
SPEAKER_00I agree.
SPEAKER_04Too much homework. It's it's just too much. And then people are like, you know what, I can't do it. I'll just wait for it to come out on streaming and I'll watch it on my own time. And you have to meet people where they are now in terms of of how you do these movies. So I I think what we need, what both of these universes need to do is make your movie. Make your movie, tie it tangentially to the to the greater story, don't make it so dependent on people having to watch 37 movies and 15 TV shows to understand one scene for the next movie.
SPEAKER_00Totally agree. Yeah. Do you have any insights on what could have been different about Fantastic Four to give it a better box office?
SPEAKER_04Man, I don't know. I mean, it was I think releasing it two weeks after Superman might have been a mistake.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I would have probably if I if I could have done it before Superman, I would have done it or wait until November.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04And because this is the last Marvel movie until 2026. So you have the runway to lead into it. And, you know, if superhero fatigue really is the case, don't don't release it two weeks after Superman.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I I would have done it before or I would have done it way later. I I think because it's not the movie. The movie's good. I don't I don't think I would have changed anything about the movie specifically. I I just think, you know, you you put two event movies really close together. And back in the day you would you would do that. Remember the the dueling volcano movies, Dante's Peak and Volcano that kind of came out. Uh Deep Impact. Yeah, Deep Impact and Armageddon. That that it it kind of reminded me of that. I'm like, oh man, it was like back in the 90s when when we were doing stuff like this. But people's movie movie viewing habits have changed. And you know, I saw Super like, oh, I saw Superman Fantastic Four. I'll wait.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I I think that's kind of what it is. I don't think it was bad word of mouth. I think the movie got generally good word of mouth, good reviews, good audience scores. So, not about the movie. I think it was just a release date was a mistake. Should have should have pushed it out to November.
SPEAKER_00So my thoughts are this in the lead up to the film, there was some negative press around it. Like people were just like, oh shit. You know, Sioux Storm is gonna be the center of this. And oh it's gonna be super woke. Yeah, it's gonna be super woke, and and then you know, the Shalabal thing, the Nor and Rat. Like, I think here, okay, here's what I'm thinking right now. I think every comic book movie coming out, if they want to be successful, they need to do whatever they can to mitigate any of these kinds of criticisms as they possibly can. They need to test the film with left-leaning people, and they need to test the film with right-leaning people. And they need to they need to understand both sets of data, and they need to move ahead based on whatever feedback they get. Because what's happening is we're becoming, as a society, more polarized politically, and we are becoming very rigid about our thinking, our behavior, our spending, etc., based on these sort of political undercurrents. Like that's definitely a part of it. And I think if they had led with Norrin Rad, I think it could have been I think it could have been a bigger movie. I I definitely think they could have done a bigger box office. Also, I think if they had not done the Franklin Richards thing on this, I think it could have been, again, I think they could have made more money at the box office. But I do, but I do agree with you about them following Superman so closely. I think that was a part of it. I think that, you know, there was like online, sure it's just Twitter, and Twitter is not real life. I get that. But there was a fan base of Superman who was, you know, actively going up against Fantastic Four and saying horrible things about the movie. And then there was a fan base of Fantastic Four fans who were doing the very same thing to the Superman movie as we were leading up to it. There's just this culture of like tribalistic, like, you know, combat, like online combat. It's getting ridiculous and it's getting really embarrassing to even witness these days. Like, I'm I was like, what like what fucking world am I in?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like it doesn't make any fucking sense to me, you know?
SPEAKER_04Well, a lot of the the discourse about Fantastic War being afraid of being being super woke, you go to the moon go to see the movie and you couldn't have been proven more wrong. It's not woke at all. It wasn't. It's not woke at all. You know, you're talking about testing things. They could have tested this, and people are gonna look for things that aren't there all the time. You're right.
SPEAKER_00But right, but they need data, but they but but they do need data. And I think the other thing that's hurting these movies is too much content is being released beforehand. I put together the Superman plot from the from the content.
SPEAKER_04There is a lot of like previews and clips. Yeah. Like when they they showed the clip of Reed Richards talking to the press and saying he wants our son, big mistake. You should not have shown that in a YouTube clip. And same thing with Captain America, Brave New World. You should have kept the Red Hulk under wraps the entire thing. Exactly. And exactly, and frame, not lie to us as as a preview, but you could have told a preview without Red Hulk being involved at all. It was just a kind of another conspiratorial theory movie, a la Winter Soldier, and kind of tap back into that vein that made Winter Soldier so good. And then, oh my God, you see the Red Hulk in the theater. That would have been that would have got people talking for weeks. No matter it, it could have been the same movie, and it wasn't a great, great movie. It was it was fine, it was fun, but you spoiled you spoiled it for me at the beginning. But that's yeah, that's Marvel not trusting its audience and saying, I gotta show you this big, huge thing now, hoping you'll come see and come to the theater and see how that happened. No, man, leave leave me something.
SPEAKER_00Um they're making things worse. That's the thing. They think every solution that they have to this problem is making things better. It's not, it's making things worse. It's compounding and it's just making things worse and worse and worse. And they don't understand what they're doing, they don't even understand what they're up against because they're so in their own little fucking bubble, and they've gotten to this place where they feel comfortable even criticizing fans. Like let's look, like let's look at back, let's look back at Lucasfil and how they've handled recent criticisms to their content. You have them calling people bigots and calling people racists because they don't like their fucking show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like what? You have you have you and McGregor, you have Obi-Wan Kenobi putting up videos on social media saying, like, if you don't feel this certain way about this, then you're a bigot or you're a racist. What the fuck? Like, we're like, in what world do you think you're going to be financially successful by insulting your customers?
SPEAKER_04But uh yeah, I just think the way they're they're doing things. And I think part of it too is I think we're past the age of the movie star. Like, there's not a bankable movie star anymore. Like, gone are the days now where you can slap a name on a on a movie and guarantee butts and seats. It's just not that anymore, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00There are a couple that still do that. Sure, I mean a couple.
SPEAKER_04Tom Cruise is single-handedly trying to save the movie industry.
SPEAKER_00So Tom Cruise, but I think Tom Cruise Tom Cruise is definitely there.
SPEAKER_04I think Brad Pitt are like, but you know, back in the 80s, 90s, you had Jean-Claude Van Dames, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal to an extent. Like you could you could throw these names on a poster, show no preview, and you would be guaranteed to make a hundred million opening weekend just just because of the name alone. But now when you have all these movies that are IP related and that are remakes and sequels, you know, there's you can't put a name. There's there's no name on a they're they're banking on the intellectual property putting butts and seats. But when you do that, you're forced to throw Red Hulk into your preview when you really shouldn't have. Because Randy Mackey's a great actor. He's he's not a he's not a Tom Cruise, he's not a Tom Hanks, he's not a Brad Pitt. He's he's not a name you can throw on a poster and people will go see a movie.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, I know. Like I said the exact thing, like I said the exact same thing about Red Hulk. I said, dude, if you had hid that and then the embargo got lifted, and all the and all the content creators who got to see the movie, they would be writing like in their reviews saying, big surprise coming in this movie. You guys have to see this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And everybody would have gone just to see what people were fucking talking about.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean, because imagine seeing Harrison Ford for the first time turn into the red Hulk. You'd been like, oh my god, I can't believe 80-year-old Harrison Ford is a Hulk now. On solo.
SPEAKER_00Con Solo just turned into a Hulk, dude.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Like, what the f that would have been water cooler talk for sure. But you know, exactly. They blew the load in the pr in the first preview. So it's like, what else do you got?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, they have to stop showing so much content in their freaking previews. It is just so boring. People can piece the story together, they know what's going on as they're going into the theater. That is not what you want. You want people who are looking to be surprised. Like, that's one of the reasons No Way Home fell so flat for me was because I knew that Tom and I knew Andrew were coming. If you had surprised me in the theater with Tom and Andrew, yeah, holy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I would have I would have been standing on my seat. Like, I swear to God, the way the way that I've genuinely reacted to Thor coming in in Infinity War for the final fight and Cap catching Mionir. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_04You're never gonna have events like that in the theater ever again.
SPEAKER_00But you could, that's the problem. You could. You could. You just don't have anybody who has the creativity to do that anymore.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like that's just let's face facts here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the one thing, the one thing we should talk about in this conversation, because it's only fair, is that there has there have been some cultural outliers as far as subverting this sort of black box office black hole. You had Barbie, you had Oppenheimer, you had Dune, and you had Deadpool and Wolverine. And I think I think one of the things that needs to be said about Deadpool and Wolverine is it's very simple. Force multipliers in all these movies.
SPEAKER_04Nostalgia for that one particularly.
SPEAKER_00Nostalgia for most of them. But also the return of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, like nobody's gonna not go see that. That's just not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool again, nobody's gonna miss that. And in the same movie? Yeah, and in the same movie, exactly. Like seeing Deadpool and Wolverine, dude.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Everybody's gonna see Deadpool and Wolverine in the same movie. That's not gonna be something you skip, right? And then Dune, Villaneous, just hits it out of the park every time he steps up to the plate. So everybody can confidently go see that movie and know that it's gonna be a banger, right? Barbie was a cultural event because it's Barbie and people were talking about it like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Oppenheimer, I think it was more or less Nolan. Like I think Nolan drew like drove most of that, but he put together one of the greatest casts of all time. And the funniest defense I heard of Superman when people were like complaining about the number of people in the movie, they were like, Oh my god, Superman's like so overpacked, like they got so many characters, too many people to follow. John Roka, who I think you know, the commentator, he's like, he's like, Well, Oppenheimer had all these characters. Um, dude, Oppenheimer's a historical event. You can't like write people out. And it was an extra hour long, too. Yeah, it was actually that well, that but it's a historical event. Like it's a historical event. You can't just be like, hey, you know what? Cast too big here. We gotta get rid of Einstein, guys. I'm sorry, we just got to get rid of Einstein.
SPEAKER_03Right? We don't need him in there. Sorry? It's like we don't need him in there.
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_03You can just be implied off screen.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Too funny, too funny. But anyways, when we release this documentary, you you guys are not gonna believe what we've mapped in here. It's gonna be mind-blowing. Like, I can't wait for this thing to come out. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge. I'm still I'm still figuring out how we're gonna do it, whether we're gonna interview people or whether we're just gonna sort of do like a video essay style, but we're still talking it out, trying to figure it out. And if I can get the budget, I I want to go like fly and meet people and do interviews and all that, but we'll see how it happens. But I've got it all mapped out, I've shared it with all my buddies and my friends, and they're like, holy dude, how did you track this pattern? This is crazy. Yeah, so uh brand new day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, speaking of revealing too much, my God, yeah, this is like the least protected movie lot I've seen ever. Like, yeah, if enough of these leaks come out and you can piece the movie together without watching it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't want that to happen. I really don't. Yeah. So this is the first Spider-Man movie without John Watts. And I really love really love Daniel Destin Critton. His his his work on Shang on uh Shang-Chi was amazing. And I want to see him do Spider-Man. Like, I want to see it. I don't want it spoiled for me. I want to see it. I don't want to work out the story in my head. So like I'm probably gonna put a block on it or like a like a mute thing on my ex account very soon. But I'm excited for it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm excited for the fight scenes. When I heard he was doing it, I was like, oh, the fight scenes have have got to be good. Because Shang-Chi, nobody talked about Shang-Chi enough. The fight scenes were great. I thought the movie was really good, and then we never see him again, like in so many movies. So it'll be good to see a you know, a remnant of of Shang-Chi being the you know the director of the film just do Spider-Man. So the action scenes I think are gonna be really well done. And I'm kind of like you, I don't want to know anything about it. The name obviously is gonna clue you in on what comic books this is probably gonna be based off of.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But I mean, you want to capture the casual fan back. I mean, first, throw Spider-Man on a marquee. You're you're gonna get the casual fan back.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Good chance of it.
SPEAKER_04I think Tom Holland is a is a cherished Spider-Man right up there with Toby and Andrew. You're not gonna see the battles of who's the best Superman or best Spider-Man like you're seeing with Superman. Uh I think all three are are equally loved among the Spider-Man universe. Um I think so too. So you're gonna see a lot of a lot of people in there. I still don't know if it's gonna make a billion dollars. I mean, it could. I I think this could be the one movie that makes a billion dollars like No Way Home did. Uh I I don't know though. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Uh so well, I think that's one of the reasons they're they're trying to bring in heavy hitters here. Like you've got two Marvel characters in this. You got The Punisher, yep, and you got the Incredible Hulk. What version of the Hulk? We don't really know yet. Ruffalo. Because Ruffalo, but I mean I got you.
SPEAKER_04Smart Hulk or Dumb Hulk.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or Savage Hulk or whatever, like there's all kinds of rumors right now. You know, obviously the tanks are in the city for the Hulk. That's my guess. Yeah. Or it's some sort of post Daredevil born again, you know, New York City, uh mayor fisk is martial law type. That's another direction I think this is going, if I'm being honest. That's kind of where I see it. Probably tying in. Uh, because there's rumors about the kingpin being in this too. But nobody's taught like nobody's mentioned Daredevil being in it, though. So I don't know. But I'm excited to see it. Well, you know, I'm not a big fan of John Watts as far as what he's done with Spider Man. I don't know if you've been a fan of John. Watts with Spider-Man, but.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I liked it. I like the John Hughes aspect of the first movie. You could clearly see the inspiration of a John Hughes flick in the first Spider-Man movie. I thought he did a good job of the movie.
SPEAKER_00It's not really a Spider-Man movie, though, right? Like it doesn't feel Spider-Man to me.
SPEAKER_04No, not that first one. No. I mean, because you're starting, you're starting in the middle of his being kind of in the middle of his being Spider-Man. So you don't get the origin story. So you're kind of thrown into the middle of it.
SPEAKER_00But I mean just the characterization, too. It just doesn't connect for me. So for instance, he's not very quippy. He's not very funny.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He doesn't have a job. He um he's kind of dumb, to be honest. Like one of the biggest issues I took with No Way Home was this. I couldn't I couldn't get beyond the fact that they fumbled the inciting incident, like the whole MIT thing. Right? John Watts, think about this for a second. Okay. MIT. Tony Stark went to MIT. He was the biggest, like he was MIT's big yeah, he was like their biggest contributor, like their biggest donator. One phone call from Peter to Pepper Potts solves that situation in 30 seconds. Like there's no real reason to bring Doctor Strange into this at all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it was stupid. And not only that, but Peter doesn't know that he can appeal the decision. Like he doesn't know we can call the school and appeal the decision.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's stupid. Like it's it's just a poorly, poorly, poorly put together film. I love the scenes with Toby, Andrew, and and and Tom are great.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In a vacuum.
SPEAKER_04I think they had to rewrite a lot of it because America Chavez was supposed to be in No Way Home, but they changed the release order of something, and that's why they had uh what was his best friend's name doing the sling ring like he's learned it his whole life. I forgot what his name was. Ned. Ned, yeah. So then they had Ned as some sort of like sling ring bear when it that was supposed to be America.
SPEAKER_00That was the fucking worst, dude. That was the worst.
SPEAKER_04I th I think it was a victim. And again, it's that Marvel method, right? They they're laying down the tracks as the train is coming. And you know, it it kind of paints them into a corner and having to shoehorn something in there that shouldn't have been there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would love to read that America Chavez script and see how they did that because it would probably make a lot more sense than Ned doing it in his grandma's kitchen and Toby and Andrew just wandomly, just randomly finding them.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, so brand new day. I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I'm like you, I'm trying to stay away from the clips, but you know, they they pop up. But I'm hoping they don't do the same mistakes that we've seen and show too much because you you don't have to show too much for Spider-Man. You're gonna be guaranteed people to see it. They reviewed, they revealed the suit recently, a little 10-second video clip. I thought the suit looked great. Looks very classic. Looks very classic.
SPEAKER_00Um those red shooters look awful though. Looks like he's got like a it looks like a bracket from a door like on his wrist. Like it just does not look good.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, maybe it's uh, you know, they're getting the feedback, maybe they'll change it. But hopefully. Overall, I thought the the suit looked really good. And this is just like this is a relaunch of Spider-Man. This is this is the Spider-Man we've all come to like love in the comic books. He's down on his luck, he's barely able to pay rent every month. Like, this is why we love Spider-Man. He's he's one of us. He just happens to have you know spider powers.
SPEAKER_00So what does a Spider-Man movie have to have for you to get excited about it?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. I mean, I'm already excited just to just to see Tom Holland back on screen before doomsday. Having the Punisher in there was icing on the cake. I wasn't expecting any of that. I thought this was gonna be you know a central Spider-Man movie. But I think I was watching or seeing something on either TikTok or Instagram, the list of the villains. Like these villains are off the wall. I didn't see a green goblin in sight or a hobgoblin in sight. Scorpion. Yeah, Scorpion. So this should be pretty good. Um, but yeah, I'm I'm pretty excited just hearing the names. Um, seeing that John Bernthal, he's John Bernthal's gonna add a lot of add a lot of gravitas to the film. So that's that's exciting for me. I I can't wait to see how they interact. I'm I'm hoping I would really love to see that Punisher comic book cover of him with the sniper rifle and Spider-Man in his sights. That would be that would be pretty cool, man. Um that would be neat.
SPEAKER_00That wouldn't be bad. Yeah, that wouldn't be bad.
SPEAKER_04But I would it would be hilarious if they threw in like Venom and Craven. If Madam Webb makes an appearance, this this could this could get hilarious.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't want it to be hilarious. That's the thing, though. Like I just want it to be a good Spider-Man movie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So for me, what a good Spider-Man movie is, is I gotta have plenty of aerial web swinging, oh yeah, acrobatics, just aerial stunts all over the place. Like I gotta have that stuff. And that's one thing that the MCU has underserved for Spider-Man over and over again is that there hasn't been any skyscraper, like, you know, labyrinths, you know, web swinging, none of that stuff. They haven't done any of that. And I think that that is, you know, drastically underserved this character. The other thing is I have to have good side characters, they have to be consequential, they have to have an impact on the story. Like it has to be Harry Osborne level, you know, Raimi. It has to be Aunt May Raimi level, like consequence impact. Because that's the other thing the MCU has failed to do for Spider-Man is the side characters have been like they're like they're like 2D standees, like they're like cardboard standees, like they have no impact on the story whatsoever. Like you could take a cutout of Zendaya and put it in a corner for you know for the shots, and that that cutout is gonna bring about as much weight to the scene as Zendaya does because the script just doesn't serve her. Yeah, like the writing has not served the side characters at all. And I need somebody who can come in and write a great script with some great characters, lots of development, lots of depth. And I want to see them go down those holes. Like I want to see really good character development. Um, the other thing is like, you know, I want to see I want to see Peter stand on his own.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't want him to have to rely on somebody to save the day. Like, you know, do it on your own, dude. You know, no guy in the van.
SPEAKER_04No guy in the van.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Like make your own fate, bro. Like, you know, make your own destiny.
SPEAKER_04Just re rebirth of Spider-Man has the opportunity to do all of that because everybody's memory is lost from who he is. So you have a chance to build those characters, those side characters up again, uh, and seeing if they if they can remember who he is and and how do they come to this realization. So that could be fun. And he is on his own. Because he doesn't have Ned, because Ned forgot who he was or doesn't remember who he is, he's gonna have to rely on his own wit and his own street smarts to to get out of the situation. He doesn't he doesn't have a support system, it's just him. So I I think we're gonna see a a lot of that growth, I think, in these characters.
SPEAKER_00I hope so, dude, because like we need those good side characters. These Spider-Man just falls flat without good side characters around him because he's the one, like they're the ones that that inform him as a character. Like they're the ones that inform his development. And that's the reason why I think Tom Hall Tom Holland's writing has felt so flat, is because the side characters just haven't had any impact on him, you know?
SPEAKER_04So now you know Brand New Day, the comic Mephisto played a huge role in that. So now that Mephisto was revealed in Ironheart, spoilers for Ironheart if you haven't seen it yet. Do we think Mephisto is gonna play a role in Brand New Day? I mean, could be interesting. Who knows? You saw I saw some recent pictures of Sasha Cohen getting jacked in the gym, so maybe.
SPEAKER_00I saw that too. Yeah, I still think it's gonna be like a story surrounding the kingpin. I think he'll be involved in it because more street level. I do think that this is a post-Dare Devil Born Again story. I do that, like I do think the setup is the setup from Born Again is gonna play some part in the Spider-Man story a little bit. Because we already know that Matt, Matt, Matt, and Peter Parker, MCU Peter Parker exists in the same universe. So they know each other. And they know each other, so that could be a thing. So we briefly touched on it, but I wanted to get your thoughts on this whole like why are Superman fans just constantly talking about the goddamn domestic box office numbers like it's like it's gonna save them from not beating Man of Steel.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, you we we talked about it at the beginning a little bit. It's it's all spin because you know, I'm looking at box office mojo right now, um, and movies depend, studios depend about 60% of their box office tickets to come from the foreign market, anywhere between 60 to 80%, right? And so you have Superman uh so far in 2025 as the number seven movie. It's only done 42% of their box office money from from international audiences. So you have to spin that in terms of that's why you're seeing a lot of reporting on domestic box office, domestic box office. Normally you would hear, you know, you didn't hear that with Endgame, right? You didn't hear, oh, the domestic box office for Endgame was no, it's worldwide box office, worldwide this. The only exactly what I said. Yeah, I mean, the only the only movie to hit a billion US movie to hit a billion dollars is Lelo and Stitch, and they just hit that in July. So it just crossed the billion dollar mark. So the the rest of the box office is pretty soft. But you know, you you have to you have to spin things to make them sound good. You have shareholders to answer to, right? So they say Superman's the biggest, you know, Superman is the biggest domestic opening of a Superman movie ever. That's why you have like movies say this is the number one comedy, when really it was maybe like the number four movie of the weekend, but it was the number one comedy or or whatever the case is. So it's it's just spin. It's any way to paint a positive picture on a on a movie that's not doing so well overseas as as they hoped. But really, I mean, the majority of the box office isn't doing great overseas. You have Fantastic Four only did 46% overseas of their box office, F1. Uh oh, well, F1 actually did really well, 68%, but F1's more of an international sport.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a universal thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and then we talked about Mission Impossible and Tom Cruise being a global superstar. He did 67% of that movie's box office was foreign. Um, so you know, Superman, Superman Fantastic Four just did not appeal to foreign audiences for some reason. Superman is surprising that it didn't. Fantastic Four, I I get why. It's it's you know, much more of an American thing than I think a lot of foreign audiences don't understand. Maybe Fantastic Four.
SPEAKER_00I would argue that Superman is far more American in the eyes of the international audience than Fantastic Four is, but Yeah, but he's a more he's a more known entity than Fantastic Four globally. I agree with that.
SPEAKER_04So But yeah, it's just you gotta spin just gotta spin it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It is spin, but it's also just really, really weird that it's not just it's not just the industry media, it's not just the access media and the uh and the online media, it's literally fans. I think that they're so that they were all so hopeful about beating Man of Steel so that they could that they could forget about it once and for all, so they could like put it behind them forever. Um that they're just sort of like in major cope mode. Like that's that's the way I see things a little bit.
SPEAKER_04I gotta say, and I don't know if it's because I'm a part of of this podcast now, but I have not seen two camps of of movie fandom. Even during the Star Wars days, right? Even when Last Jedi came out, I I saw it, but nowhere near the level of Snyder versus Gun fans of Superman. I'm like, yeah, this is crazy. Like that's just another, it's just another director's interpretation of the character. That's that's it. It's and it's not even that big of a deal. It's just a friend. Yeah, and they're friends.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and they're friends are friends. Yeah. They just did an episode of Rick and Morty together. Right. Zach just had a meeting with DC. He's coming back to DC, people. Like, let's let's just be real about that. There's gonna be something down the road for fucking Zach Snyder. So let's just calm down here.
SPEAKER_04I just don't understand why the discourse is so the the vitriol between the two camps is just insane. Like, I liked both movies, right? I like guns, I like Snyder's for different reasons. Um, I I like Snyder's mythic take on Superman. The and I even liked it that it was kind of uh a darker toned movie in terms of coloring and photography. And I like guns for the exact opposite reasons. I like that it was joyful, I like that it was colorful, I like that it was it was fun. So I don't, I'm never gonna be like gun is awesome and Snyder sucks, or or even the opposite. Neither am I. It's it's neither am I. It's just ridiculous. I I don't understand it. I don't understand it. So if if we're watching this out there, explain it to me like a like a three-year-old, because I don't get it.
SPEAKER_00No, I can explain it to you, and I can explain it to everybody like they're three years old. I'll explain it to you right now. Okay. As far as as far as DC fans go, there is a subset. And if you're in this subset, I'm sorry if I'm identifying you. I apologize, I still value you as a listener, but there's a subset that has this mindset where it's like one set of standards for Zack Snyder and one set of standards for everybody that isn't Zack Snyder. Okay. And I've seen that in action. It's not something that I'm making up. I've seen it play out. It's ridiculous. See, when Zack Snyder haters criticize Zack Snyder's work, they have to misrepresent what's actually happening in the film or what's happened in the particular project they're talking about. They can't speak about it honestly. They can't use the words that you use to describe it: mythic, gritty, etc. They're just always like dark, depressing. They have all these buzzwords that are very loaded, that are very loaded. And they'll talk about the particular scenes that are the most controversial in the most dishonest way. You know, they like when they talk about when Jonathan Kent dies, they won't talk about the fact that before Jonathan goes to the truck to try and get uh to try and get the dog, everything looks fine. Like it doesn't look like the tornado is just gonna come in and kill everybody. Like it's f it's off in the distance. Jonathan just kind of like casually like jogs over to the truck. They won't talk about that. What they will talk about is how Superman let his fing dad die. And they won't talk about the fact that they know he doesn't have super speed yet, because he doesn't have super speed, because if he did have super speed, why wouldn't he use it to save the kids on the bus and not get caught? Why wouldn't he use it to get to this scout ship in Alaska? Why hitchhike all that way if you have super speed? He doesn't have super speed yet. So they won't be honest about that. What they want to do is they want to find vectors to attack the film so they can say that Zack Snyder is a bad filmmaker because they don't like Zack Snyder. They have this grudge against him. I don't know where it comes from. I know a lot of Zack Snyder fans who like James Gunn, and I know a lot of James Gunn fans who like Zack Snyder. I like both directors. I think both directors are supremely talented. I think both directors are going to continue to produce amazing films. I think both of their work stand on different grounds. You know, Zach is a much more visual, much more visual storyteller. James is a writer. He's also an auteur where he kind of weaves his his world perspective and his sensibilities into every piece of work that he does. Zach is a lot more sort of reverent towards the source material. James is not as reverent towards the source material. But I respect both of them for what they do. You know, it's like I just want people to be honest about the work. That like that's the only reason I get animated about this, is because when I see you lying about somebody to make your point, you don't really have much of a point. If you have to misrepresent somebody's work to make your argument, you don't really have an argument. If the Zack Snyder haters really wanted to take down Zack Snyder, the best way to do it is to make an objective, fair argument against his work that that undercuts what he's doing. But they can't do it. So they have to lie about it. And I think that's what gets everybody so animated about it is that these people, like, you know, they have to lie about it. They have to lie about it. And same thing with the Zack Snyder fans, like the cultists. The Zack Snyder cultists, they have to like go to the nth degree and claim James Gunn is a you know a pedo and all this other horrible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like they have to make these claims because that's all they have. They can't point at Guardians of the Galaxy and say that that's a bad movie because they know it's not. They know it's a good film. So they have to make up all this other. They're just children, man. They're just like kids in a playground. They haven't matured to a point where they can say in their heads at the same time, you know what? I really like what Zack Snyder did here, but I really like what James Gunn did here. I can like Zack Snyder. Holy shit. I can like James Gunn. I can, oh my god, I can do it at the same time.
SPEAKER_04This is crazy. But it's like, why that fandom, though? I mean, you don't see that like, you know, Sean Connery's James Bond is the best, and everybody else sucks, and you know, Timothy Dalton's the worst James Bond, and you're not gonna tell me other like no, there's no other fandom in moviverse in the moviverse that has that like very much the hill to die on. It's it's it was just really unique to see.
SPEAKER_00Wanda stands a little bit.
SPEAKER_04Which one?
SPEAKER_00A little bit. Wanda stands a little bit.
SPEAKER_04Oh, you're talking about like Wanda Maximoff?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a little bit. Like, if you're talking to them about WandaVision and your argument is that she was bad the entire time, they're not they're not putting up with that sh. Like, they want to make they want to make the mental health tortured, tortured mother argument, and they want you to shut the f up. I've also seen people attack Michael Waldron and Multiverse of Madness because they feel like that film was not the logical conclusion of Wandavision. They feel feel like that film undid all the character development from Wandavision. And I'm like, no, it was the logical conclusion, like without a doubt. Like the show literally ends with her communicating with the dark hold and the dark hold pretending to be her sons.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like, yeah, that's where it was headed, dude.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and if you've seen the Agents of Shield Darkhold episodes, that arc it makes sense, you know? It makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, it's fucked up. The dark hold's fucked up. Like it'll fuck you up.
SPEAKER_04That made sense to me with her reading the dark hold at the end of it. I'm like, oh, she's about to break bad. She's about to break bad. Because I remember the Agents of Shield episode, the Dark Hold Arc. And so that that made sense to me. So if you haven't seen Agents of, and that's the homework I'm talking about, right? You can't watch Agent Shield Darkhold arc, you don't it does feel whiplashed of her kind of going through WandaVision. You you see this kind of almost of an arc in in Wandavision, and then her, you know, regretting what she did. And but you know, the Dark Hold reverses all that. And the and the Dark Hold.
SPEAKER_00I get, yeah, you know what? You might be right about that. There is a little bit of context missing about the mythos of the Dark Hold.
SPEAKER_04Like if you've only seen the movies, that's the first time. Yeah, yeah. If you've only seen the movies, that's the first time you've seen Darkhold. And that's when Agents of Shield was still very true, very loosely tied to the MCU, you know.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. I like the Agents of Shield, honestly. I really enjoyed that series. That's great. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04I liked it a lot.
SPEAKER_00We should do uh we should do an Agents of Shield rewatch. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that would be fun. The the last the if if you can get past like that first season, the rest is great. They just leaned into leaned into it. And uh Ghost Rider, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00I just want to talk about Fitz Simmons the entire time. Like Simmons is so hot, like holy shit, is she hot? God damn. And so is Quake. They're both hot. Yeah, lots of hot chicks on that show. Well, it well it well, it is a Josh Whedon show, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I wonder he's coming back, isn't he? I don't know, man. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Did he get hired for something?
SPEAKER_04I haven't seen lately. I don't know. I heard I haven't read the the news on that.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I heard he's like friends with gunn, so he's like coming back for something.
SPEAKER_04Could be interesting. Yeah, bold strategy cotton. Let's see how it works out.
SPEAKER_00That that doesn't help James Gunn's controversial comments at all. It does not. No, it does not. No. Distance yourself from Jos Whedon, please.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, was uh was not available? Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Especially after what Michelle Trachtenberg said after said about him.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Before she died. She's like, I you you couldn't leave me in a room with him, like alone, like, nope. Nope. Yeah. Not be in a room with Joss Whedon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't I don't see him getting any work anytime soon. Yeah. It has to be uncredited and something. He'd have to hide his sag card or something, because it's not. Or his writer's guild.
SPEAKER_00Change it change his name. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Change his name. Yeah, Gal Godot said something about him too. Hey, wait. Maybe that's why James was denying the meeting. Huh. I don't know. Possibly. I don't I don't like that he denied that meeting. I believe Gal, but that's me. Do you believe Gal or no?
SPEAKER_04I I haven't read about that, so I don't know. I'm not for sure. Oh no, I didn't hear that. So that's I haven't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, she came out public. And said she had a meeting with Gunn and Saffron and that uh she was really excited about it. And then Gunn came out publicly and said that never happened.
SPEAKER_04Oh wow. I don't know. Yeah. Why why would Gal lie about that? Exactly. She has no incentive to lie about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But the C but the co-CEOs of a studio do, especially if they don't want to carry through on the project.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Especially if you're trying to create a whole new DCU and leave the remnants of the DCE.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you know what? That's that's the note we should leave the show off on. So John Campia put up a video this past week talking about his concerns about James Gunn as we move forward. He was saying that with James being the co-CEO of DC, he doesn't think it's a smart idea that James is creatively involved in these all these projects moving forward. He wants James to run the company. He wants James to run the company. He wants James to go and find great talent. He wants James to put great talent onto these projects. He doesn't want to see James Gunn be the author on all these projects. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_04I agree with that. I think if you're I agree with him too. Yeah, I think if you're running a company, you shouldn't be that down and dirty in the projects. Maybe the first one, okay. But but after that, I'm well, I mean, I guess technically the first one, Creature Commandos. He literally animated himself into the open credits. So is he gonna be one of them like micromanaging control freak bosses? Like I think that the part what what him and Saffron have to do is write the ship at DC, and you can't do that if you're if you're rowing the boat, right? You gotta totally agree. You gotta like cast the vision and then bring in writers and directors and actors that align with that vision and put out a great product. You can't be part necessarily like a journalist. You gotta report the story, you can't be part of the story. And with him getting so involved in in Superman, I think that that was the problem because he was involved in so much of the marketing and so much of the the promotion. And you know, I I don't know if he's trying to play catch up with Feige in terms of that. I mean, but Feige just he just naturally doesn't do that shit. He just doesn't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he just shows up with a red carpet with a hat on and just makes a couple comments.
SPEAKER_04But but he he became part of that just over a long period of time, though. And Gunn's trying to do that in one shot. So yeah, I I agree with that. You need you need to to lead the troops, but you don't need to be like in there with the bayonet with them. You you gotta cast a vision and point everybody in the same direction. You lead.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, yeah, I agree. And also, let's be honest, James Gunn has already demonstrated that he's fairly self-indulgent and that he doesn't have any qualms about inserting himself directly into the content.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And almost mythologizing himself inside the content, which is what he's done with Superman. And that's pretty self, like, you know, that's yeah, that's pretty self-indulgent. And I think him stepping back into the CEO role is uh gonna be a like would be a good thing for him so he can get a sense of where he's really at within the process. Um because I don't want to see his take on everything, like I'm not interested in that. Like James Gunn is great, but if it was an entire DC universe based on the sensibilities and the tastes of James Gunn, I think I'll shoot myself in the f head. And I'm and I'm just not ready for that. Like I want I want a diverse, a diverse creative pool, right? Like Indogera right now is apparently writing the Wonder Woman script, and I believe she's gonna be writing the Teen Titan script. I hear she's a great writer. I haven't read or seen anything that she's written, but uh, but everybody's saying that she's awesome and that uh the Supergirl script was great. So I believe she wrote that as well. Yeah. So I think things are headed in a good direction already, as far as James kind of stepping back from that, but I think he needs to be a little bit more aware aware of how of how how autobiographical he made Superman for him. Because I don't think he accepts how autobiographical that movie really was. Like I don't think he really sees it the way that other people see it. Like it, like I said, it's it's it's one part, it's one part earnest superhero story, but it's more that but that part is mostly cliche and and you know, very sort of at the surface, and then it's part satire, and then it's part autobiography uh like part like James Gunn's therapy session. Like that is the Superman movie.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I just want to see, I just want to see James Gunn get some good people together and let them cook.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04I don't want to see the Marvel method guns version, you know, the Mar Marvel method colon guns version, because because then you're falling in the same trap that, you know, Feige kind of fell into. Like he he he brought in talent, but didn't really let them make their movies, except for a few exceptions. So um I I want I I want different, I want different movies so that I can wonder how are they gonna bring them all together, right? How are they gonna get like and I kind of hate that Matt Reeves Superman is an Else World's tale because I want to see how that version of Batman gets along with Gunn's version of Superman. Like you couldn't pick two diametrically opposite tones of film and and have them work together. So that's that's part of the fun in in in a multimovie universe building thing is how are these people gonna work together? But if, you know, with the Marvel method, they're all kind of the same palette, and yeah, so it all made sense in how they work together. But um, yeah. So I I I think I think gun in the CEO role, just bring in good people, let them cook, and make a good just make a good product. That's all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, and you know, we you know, during our Superman review, we talked about the fact that he's publicly said that he wants each film to have its own tone and how disastrous that potentially could be. Yeah. So like he needs to focus on what needs to be done to build the best studio, not necessarily what needs to be done to have the next best film. He needs to look, he needs to look long, he needs to look long term. He needs to see a thousand yards down the field, and he needs to be able to plot each move and each strategic step to get them to the best possible conclusion, not just the short game. Like, don't play the short game, think about the long game, dude, and you know, focus there. But anyways, yep. Well, I think that's gonna about do it. Thank you guys so much for joining us for another episode. If you want to check us out on social media, you can reach us out, uh reach us on all social media platforms, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, etc. And uh, I think we still have our active leave us a voice note thing. So you definitely want to check that out. Court is adjourned. I'm Frank McGuire. I'm Rich Here. Peace.