#41. 'The Suicide Squad'
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The main event is James Gunn's The Suicide Squad on HBO Max, and the trio splits hard on it: Sonny feels almost bludgeoned by the film's nonstop, in-your-face outrageousness, arguing that despite funny turns from Polka-Dot Man and King Shark it isn't as transgressive or clever as it thinks it is, and he can't quite explain why he's underwhelmed by a movie he expected to love; Vic, who admits he doesn't know these DC characters and hasn't seen the connective Birds of Prey or Suicide Squad, dislikes the movie outright but still runs it through his Quadrant system — Plot A, Duration D (it drags well past two hours), Violence/Action A+, and Sex/Nudity C, for an overall B; JVL loved it "a lot more than I should have," singling out John Cena's Peacemaker and Gunn's visual style, and rides the movie into a long riff about how DC's freedom from cinematic-universe continuity (unlike Marvel, which he thinks has trapped itself via Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and the loss of Chadwick Boseman) is creatively liberating even when individual films miss. As usual the review doesn't start until well into the episode: the opening third is chopped-salad nostalgia and a debate over always ordering the same dish versus Megan McArdle's "always try a new entree" rule, Sonny's excitement over Criterion's new 4K slate (Citizen Kane, Mulholland Drive, The Red Shoes, A Hard Day's Night, Menace to Society), and Vic's harrowing account of holding it in on I-95 and the Merritt Parkway during a family road trip to New Jersey and Connecticut. That flows into an extended, gleeful dissection of a YouGov poll on whether an unarmed person could beat various animals in a fight — rats, cats, geese, medium and large dogs, eagles, chimps, king cobras, kangaroos, wolves, gorillas, and elephants all get litigated, complete with a story about Vic's barber's father killing a rat in Morocco with a chair. The episode closes with a birthday shoutout to a listener's wife and the recurring bit about JVL's son "G-money."
From the show notes
This week on the show, there's some big 4K news. The guys discuss which animals they could beat up. Something called 1010 WINS exists? And The Suicide Squad is out now on HBO Max and in theaters.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00-We're all gonna die. -I hope so.
JVL00:00:03Oh, for fuck's sake.
Guest00:00:06Here's the deal. We fail the mission, you die. If we find out any information you give us is false, you die. If we find out you have personalized license plates, you die. -What? No. -If you cough without covering your mouth-- Harley, although that isn't an open invitation for you to cough without covering your mouth.
?00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon.
Vic00:00:33I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and don't forget about The Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. In fact, Sonny just cut us a nice check for The Sub-Beacon store, and I spent mine on a salad. Uh, yeah, that's right, that's right. -You're right, that's right. -That's right.
Sonny00:00:59Uh, what, what was the, what was the total? -It was like $13 for two months. -Yes.
Vic00:01:03So I didn't get the fancy one. I didn't get extra protein. I just got like this, this, you know, the simple, the Cobb. That's the Sonny Bunch special at CHOP, isn't it? The Cobb, that was what you used to get all the time.
Sonny00:01:14I used, I, well, I loved all the salads there. -You did. -I was a, I was a connoisseur. I could, I, depending on the mood I was in, uh, the, I, I really liked, they, they used to have a very good steak salad. -It was very basic. It was just steak. -Yeah.
Vic00:01:27-Menu is radically different. -And fried onions.
Sonny00:01:28Fried onions and tomatoes, uh, with the creamy blue cheese.
Vic00:01:32-But then they... -Oh, my God, it sounds so healthy.
Sonny00:01:33But then, yeah, right? And then they, but then they, they stopped carrying the steak. -I think the steak was too expensive. -They did. They did.
Vic00:01:39They still have shrimp. I think it's questionable. Uh, it's a small, very small menu. They've really consolidated so they can just have, you know, -a few ingredients ready to go. -Yeah. That's it. JVL, were you ever a CHOP'd fan?
JVL00:01:52CHOP'd was, uh, was really good for, for me, because there was one salad there that I liked. -Which was? -Uh, it was the Tex-Mex Caesar, maybe?
Vic00:02:05Oh. Well, there was a Mexican Caesar. -Yeah, there was a Tex-Mex. -Mexican Caesar. -Yeah, Mexican Caesar. -With the cotija cheese and the, uh...
JVL00:02:11All I know is that the, the key, all you need to know is, though, that I went to CHOP probably twice a day for seven years. - -I'm sorry, twice a week for seven years. And I only ever ordered that one salad, because...
Vic00:02:22-You didn't want to venture. -Out.
JVL00:02:23Well, because, you know, my view is when you find a single dish that you really like, you should never order anything else other than that from that place, because anything else is gonna disappoint you. And once, literally once, I ordered a different salad, because I, I, like, the whole way over, I was working myself up to, like, "Gotta try something different. Gotta try, Jay, you can't... I can't live like this." And so I just picked something else. -It was terrible. -It was terrible? -It was absolutely terrible. -Oh, it could be terrible. And I just thought, I was like, "Gah, you idiot!"
Vic00:02:54-I hope you... -You knew that you didn't like it.
JVL00:02:56You knew that you didn't like that. You just stuck with what you like. -You just wasted $20! -Yes, but I hope you're not thinking
Vic00:03:02of the crispy chicken ranch, because that is an amazing salad.
Sonny00:03:05Well, yes, the, shockingly, the 1,500-calorie salad was the best salad.
Vic00:03:11There's a reason why it's crispy.
JVL00:03:12Yeah, so it was, you know, and after that, it was another decade before I tried something different. -Ever. Anywhere. -Because I, you know, it just taught me all the wrong lessons.
Sonny00:03:21-Question. -Yes. JBL, what cereal do you eat?
JVL00:03:25-I don't, I don't eat cereal. -You don't eat any cereal?
Sonny00:03:27I'm trying to think of, like, what a, what a, like, regular item would be that, that we could figure out something else for you to eat. -Like, what kind of-- -What does it mean when you go out?
JVL00:03:38-Like, when you go out to a, a restaurant... -Mm-hmm. Right? You, you know, maybe you don't hit upon the perfect thing the first time, but once you find something at a place that you really like, why would you order anything else?
Vic00:03:52Because you never know, there might be something even better. A restaurant might have more than one good thing.
Sonny00:03:57Look, I'm, I'm very sympathetic to JBL on this point. I'm very, very sympathetic. When I, when I go to, uh, when I go to a restaurant and I have a go-to dish that I like, I am very hesitant to get off of it and get, get something else.
Vic00:04:11It depends on a couple things. It depends on what you're in the mood for, and also the cost. If it's at a high-end restaurant, the stakes are so high, so to speak, that, that you do become very cautious about venturing away from what you know. From what you know is going to be really good.
Sonny00:04:26The place, the place where I get adventurous at a fancy restaurant was, is with the appetizers.
Vic00:04:30Oh, sure.
Sonny00:04:31I'll, I'll mess around with the appetizers because that's like, that's a lower stakes thing. It's like, all right, I'm going to get like the deviled eggs brulee or something. Really? That sounds so good. I don't know. I, you know, I'm just like.
Vic00:04:43They take a little torch to that. Combining, combining words. They burn, they burn the, uh, egg.
Sonny00:04:48It's a crust of sugar on my, my eggs, my, my.
Vic00:04:51My strategy is I start with the main eggs. I start with the main and I work my way backwards because what will pair with it is one of my things.
JVL00:04:57Well, you know, our, our friend Megan McArdle has a, a rule of thumb that was taught to her by, I think, an econ professor when she was in her MBA program. Uh, which was that whenever you go to Chinese restaurants, you should always order a third entree that neither you nor your dinner partner has ever tasted before.
Vic00:05:17Oh, that's a great idea.
JVL00:05:18Because Chinese entrees are cheap enough that adding a third entree is nothing. You know what I mean? What is it, $10, $13, right?
Vic00:05:25I get excited.
JVL00:05:25And this way you, maybe you'll hate it, but maybe it'll be a new favorite dish for one of you. That's right. At which point you've discovered something new, but your risk is, and you know what? I would do that. Yeah, yeah. I would do that. Good. But I wasn't going to go to Chopped and order two salads because I would have to take out a mortgage. Yes, that's true.
Vic00:05:45I'll tell you what. I was at Chopped and I was going to get the cob. And then, you know what? It was like later, it was normally I go for an early lunch, but it was like later and I looked. And it was like the dregs of the avocado, you know, that's starting to turn brown. Yes.
Guest00:05:58And I immediately stopped. I said, stop.
Vic00:06:00I'll take the crispy chicken ranch. So that's what happened. JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:06:05I want to talk about this tweet I sent the two of you guys.
Vic00:06:09Oh, yes. Oh, do you want to talk about it now or do you want to circle back to it?
JVL00:06:12Boy, I mean, I don't have anything going on in my personal life. And so I just thought we could talk about this. So maybe we won't talk about your lives. I will. And you can tell me what you boys are up to.
Vic00:06:21Yes. And then I'm going to go back to you. Wait, is this the fighting the animals thing? Man versus animal. Absolutely. I sent that tweet to you, too.
Sonny00:06:29JVL's taking credit for my – stop stealing my bit. He's stealing my bit.
Vic00:06:33Remember that movie tweet I sent you guys? Oh, no. No, that's not me. Okay. Sonny, what's going on? No, no. JVL, go ahead.
JVL00:06:40Go ahead. Go ahead. I want to – if that's what JVL wants to talk about –
Sonny00:06:43I have other things. I have other things to talk about.
Vic00:06:44I want to save JVL the best for last, so to speak.
Sonny00:06:48JVL, explain the tweet.
Vic00:06:51I thought Vic just said he wanted to – I just wanted to move on. I did. I did. I want to save the best for last.
JVL00:06:55Respect what the host is trying to do here, Sonny.
Vic00:06:57Yeah, because I got a transition for that interview. You have other things you wanted to talk about. It's all connected. There are reasons. Sonny, there are reasons for this. JVL, hold the thought. Sonny, go.
Sonny00:07:06I can't wait to step all over your next transition. It's going to be awesome. I hate you. It's going to be great. Go ahead.
JVL00:07:11I love it.
Sonny00:07:12No, I'm – very big news. Very big news in the world of movies and home video collecting. The Criterion Collection announced their 4K debuts. They're going to – they're stepping up. They're going into the world of 4K. And the big headline, of course, is that the – in the first, they're releasing six UHD 4K Blu-ray discs in November, just in time for Christmas, just in time for Christmas shopping, everyone. But the set – the six films are, of course, Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane is getting the 4K treatment. And also The Piano, Mulholland Drive, The Red Shoes, A Hard Day's Night, and Menace to Society. Okay. And I –
JVL00:08:01We should do a very special episode on Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive. Absolutely.
Sonny00:08:04I think that that's a quadrant – Special. That's a tricky quadrant one. It's very long, and it doesn't make any sense. But it really – there's one quadrant that it does very well in.
Vic00:08:15We could do Mulholland Drive, Bound, and Basic Instinct. It would be really good. A triple feature.
Sonny00:08:20That should be a bonus episode.
Vic00:08:21We should just do those. Oh, you want to up the subscribers? That'll do it. That'll do it. So, Sonny, what are you most excited about in that collection?
Sonny00:08:29So, I'm actually – so here's the thing. It's weird.
JVL00:08:31First, before you do that, do you yet own a 4K Blu-ray player?
Sonny00:08:36Yeah, I have a PS5. A PlayStation 5.
JVL00:08:38Oh, you got a PS5. You're very in the lead. How is it?
Sonny00:08:42I bought a PS5.
JVL00:08:42Is it amazing?
Sonny00:08:44It's fine. It's totally fine. Like, the – well, I mean, the thing is I'm not a gamer. I'm not a gamer. Really? So, like, I – I bought it. I bought it, and there were three games – I'm sorry. There were two games that I wanted to play, and I've played both of them. So, now I'm just waiting for the next game that I want to play. I don't know. It'll probably come out in, like, three years. I don't know. But I'm not a gamer. So, like, the only games I really play are the Resident Evil games, and the new Resident Evil game is very, very – looks very, very good on it.
Vic00:09:13I take it there's a whole series.
Sonny00:09:15Yeah, there's, like – this is Resident Evil 8, I think.
Vic00:09:18Does Mila Jovovich use – does she do voiceover work?
Sonny00:09:22No, that's very different. Really? That's different? How dare you insult – how dare you insult the video games?
JVL00:09:26So, Sonny, why did you get the PlayStation, then, which I assume was four times the cost of a regular 4K Blu-ray player?
Sonny00:09:34No, it was – it was about twice as expensive as, like, a 4K player that I would have wanted to get. But I got it because I do – I do like playing video games. I just like playing the occasional video game. Okay. I like playing – I play, like, a game a year. So, it's, like, I'm not – I'm not a gamer. It doesn't really matter that much to me, the gaming aspect of it. But I just – I really wanted a 4K player, and I didn't want to buy a 4K player and a PS5 at some point in the, you know, near future. I just wanted to do it all at once.
JVL00:10:04Okay. Don't judge me. Don't judge my spending. Or are you just getting them all?
Sonny00:10:09So, I'm going to throw this out there. I'm going to throw this out there. I have no real desire to upgrade my Citizen Kane Blu-ray to a 4K. The thing about the PlayStation 5 and my TV – the OLED – is that the – whatever magical processors are within both of those two machines make all of my Blu-rays look exceptionally good on the 4K TV. Not quite – not quite like a 4K disc, but very, very close and, like, much better than 4K streaming – or, I'm sorry, much better than 1080p HD streaming looks. So, when I stream something, I'm like, oh, this is HD. It's not 4K. It's not as good. So, when I watch a Blu-ray on my Blu-ray player, it looks – it looks very, very good. So, I don't – I don't feel a ton of need to upgrade that. I already also own Mulholland Drive, and I don't really like that movie as it is, so I'm not going to – I'm definitely not going to upgrade that one. But the one I am excited for is Menace to Society by the Hughes Brothers, which is just a – like, the Hughes Brothers are really, really great and totally underappreciated, and I'm glad that they are getting a – they're getting some – some love here, because I – I feel like in a – in a – in a critical world that is, like, desperate for black filmmakers to love and appreciate, the Hughes Brothers are really good, have made great, you know, kind of genre-oriented movies, but also just really good movies, and don't get nearly enough love and praise, so I'm – I'm excited for Menace to Society. That's the one I'm looking forward to.
JVL00:11:51I'm gonna – Oh, yeah. I'm – I'm going to make a case that you should get Citizen Gain just to see what a remastered native 4K version of that looks like on the OLED.
Guest00:12:03Here's the problem.
Sonny00:12:06So I – there was a big thread on – on Twitter, I don't know, maybe a year or two ago, by a guy who was tasked with finding the original Silver Knight. Nitrate negative of Citizen Kane. It does not exist.
JVL00:12:27You mean they can't find it, or –
Sonny00:12:29It does not exist. So all – they – they – the punchline of this thread was they think it got sent to a silver reclamation plant, basically. Oh, my gosh. But the – but the – so all of the transfers that are made are like – are not gonna be native, you know, negative transfers. It's all – they're all based on essentially really good prints. Mm-hmm. Which is – which is good. It's – it'll look – it'll look really good. I'm not – I'm – I have no doubt that it'll look like a – a – it'll look as good as it has ever looked before. I just, like, I don't – I don't feel – I – I feel like I have a hard time justifying spending another $40 on – on Citizen Kane again after owning it on DVD and on Blu-ray.
JVL00:13:11I mean, we do this podcast that people pay us for, and you could probably spring for 40 bucks for – for it.
Sonny00:13:17I mean, I don't – I'll wait till – I'll wait till the Barnes & Noble 50% off sale. You know what I would get? I'll get it. I'll get it.
Vic00:13:25I'll get it for $20. You know – you know what I would get? I would get Red Shoes. Dave Duchovny. Remember that series? That was a great series. Oh, the Red Shoe Diaries. Yeah. Yeah. That's on Criterion Collection.
Sonny00:13:35I was gonna say, we should – It's about time. We should try and guess which of these movies Vic would be most interested. Obviously, Mulholland Drive is number one. Yeah. But I assume A Hard Day's Night is probably number two.
Vic00:13:45Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's wacky. It's – it's great. It's great. It's wacky. It's great. Yeah. I'm a fan. The music is terrific.
Sonny00:13:54We should definitely – we should definitely do – we should definitely do a Mulholland Drive bonus episode. That would be fun. I would – I would – we could – we could just live – we could – we could – you had mentioned wanting to do a commentary, JVL. We could just have Vic talk over the daily motion scenes.
Vic00:14:12I was gonna say, 'cause I haven't actually seen the movie per se. You should – it would be funny just to hear – Just to hear. What is happening, you know? Okay.
JVL00:14:21Well, that's exciting. Actually, I – I would like to hear Vic's big boy review in which he recapitulates the plot. Oh, my gosh.
Sonny00:14:31Yeah.
JVL00:14:32Just explain the plot.
Sonny00:14:33Just explain what happens in the movie. I can't.
JVL00:14:35'Cause I cannot – I cannot tell you what happens in that movie. Oh, man.
Vic00:14:37If you can't, I'm just gonna be making stuff up.
Sonny00:14:38I can't. I got – no. I – I – this is – this is my most Philistine, Philistinic, Philistinian opinion, but I – David Lynch does nothing for me. David Lynch does absolutely nothing for me. I don't like his movies. Yeah. I find them – I find them weird for the sake of being weird. And even the ones that aren't, like, over-the-top weird, like, you know, Blue Velvet or something are still, like, too weird for me.
Vic00:15:06Oh, that's a good one, too. Blue Velvet's a good movie.
Sonny00:15:08I – I like that one. I just – I – his – his movies – I find – I find his whole affect off-putting. But weird. It's weird. It's just – yeah. I don't – I don't – I don't love him. Okay. I don't – I – and this – this puts me very much outside the mainstream of film criticism, but he does – he does –
JVL00:15:21Yeah. That's what does it. Well, I – That's the thing that puts you outside the mainstream.
Sonny00:15:25I would like to say that I have drug the mainstream over to the Zack Snyder camp. This is – my – my greatest achievement is making – Normalizing. – Zack Snyder a – You made Sucker Punch happen.
JVL00:15:36Normalizing.
Sonny00:15:37Normalizing. I – it – Zack Snyder's – Move the origin window on it. Okay. Sucker Punch is gonna be the – in the next tranche of Criterion 4Ks. You just wait.
Vic00:15:46At which point you'll explode. That's it. Away. Wow. Victorino, how are you, buddy? I'm fine. It's good to be back. Yeah. As you know, I was doing –
Sonny00:15:55How was it?
JVL00:15:56Where were you?
Vic00:15:57Were you Maine? Were you Cape May? No. No. Connecticut and Jersey. So, my father-in-law had his 80th birthday. And, of course, I wanted to spend time with my father as well and spend some quality time in New Jersey. He is doing well. I was able to, you know, take – give him a break from cooking so I can do some cooking for him which he enjoyed and I let him clean the pool though still because, you know, it's good for your core as, you know, the skimmer. I said, "Don't overdo it." You know, I don't want to find him in the pool but, you know, and he does laps and things like that. He does like certain – sometimes he'll put on like the fins to like work on his leg muscles because his legs are getting so tiny but, you know, so he's doing laps which is good and, yeah, so that was nice. And he's doing well and he tends to my mother's garden to make sure that all the plants and everything are still – Good. Good. Doing well. And the traveling was exhausting up and down the 95 corridor as you can imagine. There's almost never a good time to take the Cross Bronx Expressway, you know. I mean we got in early enough but going – Kate and I had a big debate because you're listening to like 1010 Winds and you're looking at your Google Maps and it's – but when they give you the traffic report, they always talk about the outbound and the inbound.
Sonny00:17:13Wait.
Vic00:17:14You're listening to what? Oh, that's 1010 Winds. That's – yeah. Thank you JVL. It's not. It's a radio station. Don't bother explaining. Just keep moving. Okay. All right. All right. All right. 1010 Winds by the way makes a little appearance in the movie Goodfellas. You'll hear the signature, you know, music. Is that when they announce the – The Lufthansa heist. Yes. That's 1010 Winds. The Lufthansa heist, yeah. But it's like when they talk about the bridges or the – the bridges, tunnels, outbound, inbound and, you know, if you're really sort of Jersey-centric, you're going to think that that's, you know – Which way is outbound, which is inbound. Right. Because you're going out of New Jersey. No. In fact, it's all from New York. And it's New York is that's – that's the point is everyone assumes you're outbound or inbound from the city. But, you know, you take a gamble. But on the way back, we were driving and there was no good way out of Connecticut. The traffic is so horrendous. So then we decide we're going to at some point flip up and go take the tap, right?
JVL00:18:11And we go up and – Did you take the merit to get to the tap?
Vic00:18:14No. Because the merit is just as bad now. And it's like two lanes, you know. But 95 is like two lanes in parts of Connecticut. It's ridiculous. And so the slowdowns, you hit slowdowns in New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford. And then you go up. Oh, Stamford is the worst. Yeah. And I had to go to the bathroom really bad. And I just kept on thinking I'll make it. My plan was I'm going to make it to the Garden State Parkway and use the bathroom. Right. I know. I know. I know. I know. I hadn't even been – I wasn't even in Stamford yet.
?00:18:46And I'm like, no, I can hold it.
Vic00:18:47I can hold it. And the worst part is you're coming back. You're coming around these corners and then you see the brake lights and psychologically it makes it even worse. Oh, yeah. You're like, that's it. I'm about to have an accident. And it got to the point where – this is just to go pee. But it got to the point where I'm like, I'm probably going to get stones out of this, you know? And it just hurt. It hurt to cough. Like, even clearing my throat was like, the pressure. You could just pull off and go to an Exxon station or something. I really thought that. I thought, here we go. I'll find somewhere in Westport, you know? Or wherever. And then we made it to the tap and then just a little bit past that, the thruway. That was the most perilous time. It reminded me of Quint's line in Jaws. Like the scariest – the most scary he ever was, was right before he gets rescued by the other boat, right? That's the most terrifying when you're that close. Amazingly made it to Montvale. I ran. I ran. But even running makes it even worse, you know? And that was it. It was insane. In fact, I timed it. I timed it. It was a minute and a half. There is – It took me a minute and a half to – Yes! Oh, Jesus. It's like a league of their own. It was like Tom Hanks in a league of their own.
Sonny00:20:04When you unfold from the car – Yes. Yes.
JVL00:20:09After having held it in for –
Sonny00:20:10Right. In a certain position. There is a moment where you want to double over just in like, "Oh, no, my stomach." Right.
Vic00:20:18And you're like – because everything is being held in place in a certain way with the seatbelt and your pants, you know? That's a real core exercise. Yeah, I know. And then you're walking. You're like, "Can I even make it there on time?" And I just – before I – I said – I just left the whole family in the car. I said, "You do what you want. I got to go." But that was it.
Sonny00:20:36That's my – Kids, pump the gas. I got to go.
Vic00:20:39Really, that was it. And thank God for Montville. That's all I have to say. Now, that's all I have. Okay. You sent us this great tweet about animals versus man.
JVL00:20:52Sonny sent it.
Vic00:20:53I – okay.
JVL00:20:54So this is a YouGov poll of both Americans and Britons asking them, "Britons."
Vic00:21:01Which is interesting.
JVL00:21:02Why would you think of asking those two groups? But anyway, go ahead. "Which of the following animals do you think you could beat in a fight if you were unarmed?" And this is the most astonishing set of responses I have ever seen. The first thing to notice is that the Brits have a much lower self-esteem than the Americans. In every single case, they –
Vic00:21:26I don't think they're exposed to animals as much as we are.
JVL00:21:29They are markedly more likely to say that they could not defeat the animal.
Sonny00:21:34On every single – on every single – Every one. Animal. Every single animal, there's like a five to 15-point spread basically.
JVL00:21:42In a couple of cases, it's like 20 points. Yeah. And so it begins with – Rat. Rat. Now, I am surprised that only 72 percent of Americans say that they could beat a rat in a fight if they were unarmed. House cat, 69 percent of Americans say they could beat it.
Vic00:22:01That's even more shocking because –
Sonny00:22:03See, here's –
JVL00:22:04It's much harder to kill a rat than a cat.
Sonny00:22:06Before we run – here's how I would propose we do this – Sure. This segment. Okay. Where we run through the animals and say what we – whether we think we could defeat them or – Sounds good. But I just want to make one poll question point and maybe we can get KSA to weigh in in the comments here because I have a problem with the question here. Beat in a fight is a very nebulous term and it depends on the animal. So for instance, to say like beat in a fight could mean a couple of different things, right? It's like do you – You locked in a room. It's like you and a rat in a room and whoever walks out of that room is the winner, whichever one of you survives because that's different from like you're in a house and for instance the cat question, right? The cat decides to run and you can't catch – what if the cat gets behind the couch or behind the fridge?
Vic00:23:12I think that's part of the challenge. I read this as Kumite.
Sonny00:23:17It depends on how we – and we're going to get to this and one of the ones later on is like elephant, right? So like a human beating an elephant in a fight is – Means what? From my perspective, a human beating an elephant in a fight is surviving. It's like if you survive against the elephant, you've won. That's it.
Vic00:23:36No, I think it means defeating. I think it means physically defeating. I find it's insane.
JVL00:23:40Okay. So that's the first part of the question that's odd, Sonny, but the second part is what does unarmed mean? So I assume unarmed means you don't have a gun or a samurai sword. No implements. However, does it mean if – when we do have opposable thumbs, we do have a cerebral cortex, does it mean that if we – if there is a stick on the ground or there's a rake or something, you can grab that and use it because we are tool users that is part of our inborn advantage, right?
Vic00:24:10Yes. I think you have to stick with the rules. Or does that mean you can only use your – Absolutely. Your hands. You can only – I think unarmed means unarmed across the board with no exceptions. Yeah.
JVL00:24:22Okay. All right. All right. So Sonny, how do you want to do this? Why don't you work your way up bottom to the top. Do you have a tornado siren going off?
Sonny00:24:30I think we start with the lamest of the animals, rat, and move down to the strongest of the
Vic00:24:39animals. Well, you'd be surprised. I would – I would go the other way because it's obvious that no one is going to beat an elephant. I don't understand this. But let's – okay. You go ahead. No.
JVL00:24:51But then the percentages here are interesting. So let's – okay.
Sonny00:24:53So rat. Yes. We all – Yes. I think we could all beat a rat. No. And let's just set as the parameters.
JVL00:24:59Kate could.
Sonny00:25:00Vic could not. Yeah. I – I – We're talking about locked in a room. Yes. We're just – it's you versus the animal locked in a room. They're fast.
JVL00:25:06They're very fast. I want to say you're in a pit – we're in a pit fight. And so if like the rat tries to run away, the people on the side like who are betting on us shove him back into the middle with us.
Vic00:25:15It's gross. Getting a hold of it is gross. I killed a mouse once with my pitching wedge because I had come home – I think I've told this story a few times. I came home from Dan Halper's book party years ago. And thank goodness I was the only one in the house. And Kate had told me that she had set up a trap because she was sure there was a mouse and I found it in the kitchen and it had only nicked it. And so when I went towards it, all of a sudden it moved and then I immediately just ran and took a golf club. I did a casino to Joe Pesci thing to it. But that's it. But a rat? I don't know. Okay. Questionable.
JVL00:25:58House cat? Easy.
Vic00:26:00Right. Yes.
?00:26:02More so unpleasant.
JVL00:26:03But yes.
Vic00:26:04Goose. Yes. I could wring its neck. Sonny, I'm the only one answering these questions.
Sonny00:26:09I think the answer is – I mean I think I could obviously take a cat. I don't see any – you just grab a cat. You snap its neck. You slam it against the wall or something. Yeah. I mean I don't really understand – Same thing with a goose.
Vic00:26:21The goose – I think you grab its neck.
Sonny00:26:24This is the biggest gap, by the way, in the Britons and Americans.
JVL00:26:30Only 45% of Britons think that they could take a goose.
Vic00:26:33Maybe they know something about geese that we don't.
Sonny00:26:37Here's the thing. Geese are assholes. Geese are really mean. Like if you go to a pond or something and you mess around near a goose, they will chase you and they will bite you. True. They will run you down. Do you remember the dropkick them? That being said, they're just – again, they're just – first off, all they have are beaks. It's not like they've got like giant ripping teeth.
Vic00:26:54No, no, no.
Sonny00:26:55Claws. Talons. Maybe, if the goose gets lucky, it gets an eye. But I'm going to – if it gets close enough to me to get my eye, I'm going to snap its neck.
Vic00:27:04It's not going to get your eye. You know what it will do? It will bop you in the nuts if you look at where it's positioned. There was a video not long – oh, a couple years ago, I guess, of some tourist in Europe. It was terrible. And remember, they wanted to get a picture with the swan. And they killed the swan inadvertently trying to get a photo with the swan. So I think we can take on the goose.
Sonny00:27:24Yeah, but swans are like – swans are nice compared to geese. Swans are like pretty chill. Swans are also mean too.
JVL00:27:30Swans are also mean. Swans are also mean. Medium-sized dog.
Sonny00:27:33This is a tricky one. It's a tricky one because I don't know what kind of dog it is. A medium-sized Doberman. A 50-pound pit bull is different from like a 50-pound golden retriever.
JVL00:27:45A Portuguese water dog. Yeah. I think a mid-sized dog is easy. Now here's where everything drops, eagle. Because all of a sudden like Britons are down to like 18 percent and even the Americans are only 30 percent think that they could take an eagle. Sonny.
Sonny00:28:04Yeah. I don't know. Eagle, it depends. I guess it depends on if you're like you're starting and you're facing each other in the kumite and you know the eagle is coming for you, I think I could take the eagle. But if an eagle had the element of surprise, you're just running along, an eagle like swoops down- Yeah, speed. And starts scratching and pecking, unquestionable.
Vic00:28:28It can't go for your eyes and drop you out of the sky, which is what eagles do. You're not a kitten, but I don't know.
Sonny00:28:39The sharp, it'd scratch you up. At the end of the day- I think I could take an eagle. You could thrash it.
Vic00:28:45At the end of the day I could take an eagle. But you'd be bloodied.
Sonny00:28:47You would be bloodied. It would be. An eagle would mess you up, man.
Vic00:28:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got the beaks and the talons.
Sonny00:28:52There's a great sequence in The Gunslinger, the Stephen King book, The Gunslinger, where the gunslinger goes to his final training battle and you're allowed to bring one weapon. And as his weapon, he brings his eagle. Oh. And it's like, "Oh, that's great and clever and smart." Because they're mean, they're fucking eagles, man. We could take an eagle. I would say related- I think we could take an eagle.
Vic00:29:13Related to eagle is like- It's like the vulture and people should go to YouTube and type in "Tales from the Crypt, Kyle MacLachlan" because that's one involving a vulture and it's horrifying. Okay. Large dog.
Sonny00:29:26Boy, this is, again, this is where, if it's like a 150 pound pile of muscle, like-
Vic00:29:35No. They kill humans.
Sonny00:29:37Yeah. They kill humans.
Vic00:29:39You would have to do a lot of kicking. Maybe you gouge its eyes out. Like you grab it by the head-
Sonny00:29:43If they get you to the ground. If they get you to the ground, you're fucked. If they get you to the ground, you're fucked.
JVL00:29:47But again, you know, if we do have opposable thumbs and if you are allowed to pick up literally any object that is anywhere you could throw dirt at- But it says unarmed. It says unarmed. I know that, but I'm thinking-
Sonny00:30:00You're cheating.
JVL00:30:01You're in a pit. If you just pick up a tree branch- All of a sudden you got a lead pipe. You're in a pit. No, it doesn't work that way.
Vic00:30:06No, just a tree branch. Oh, look, I found this AK-47.
JVL00:30:08All right, but here is the moment where the entire poll goes insane because at Large Dog, you still have 13% of Britons and 23% of Americans saying, "Yeah, I could take him." The next animal on the list is a chimpanzee and 17% of Americans say that they could take a chimpanzee, which is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard.
Vic00:30:31Chimpanzee will kill you in a second. They obviously don't remember the story- Rip your arms off. ... about the woman in Connecticut. Remember that one? Yeah. Chew your face off. Chew your face off.
JVL00:30:39What do they go for first, JV? Gouge your eyes. Face and genitals. Yeah, face.
Sonny00:30:43There you go. Face and genitals. That wasn't even a huge chimpanzee, right? It was like a smallish chimpanzee.
Vic00:30:49No, no. Do you remember? It's like if you go to a Comedians in Cars getting coffee with Jerry Seinfeld and Eddie Murphy's talking about when he was hanging out with Michael Jackson and he saw Bubbles the Chimp but he had already groaned and he was in the cage and he goes, "Don't go near there." He goes, "Don't go near there, Eddie." It was going crazy. I think, JV, I think about the time that you told me when you met the chimp on Dennis Miller's
JVL00:31:13show.
Vic00:31:14Yeah. Even your telling me about it made me very uncomfortable because of the potential.
JVL00:31:20So clearly, these people are delusional thinking that they could take a chimp but perhaps not as delusional as the 15% of Americans who say that they could defeat a King Cobra.
Sonny00:31:31Sonny. I don't think I would defeat a King Cobra but I think you'd have a better shot against a King Cobra than you would a chimp.
Vic00:31:42100%. Oh, I would 100% sooner. If you can get around. Try a King Cobra than a chimp. If you can get around the King Cobra from behind and start swinging it.
Sonny00:31:50I mean, here's the thing. Of all the animals left on this list, the King Cobra is by far the easiest to kill. False. In terms of the actual physical act of killing it because you could just stomp on its head or you grab it and you swing it around. Fast.
Guest00:32:08They're fast, man.
Sonny00:32:09Like more than it's ... You think it's harder to kill ... Again, to commit the physical act of applying enough pressure to break a King Cobra so it could not harm you anymore. That is way easier than even a kangaroo, which I don't think a kangaroo is nearly as dangerous as a King Cobra, but trying to figure out how to kill a kangaroo, you'd have to ... It would take effort. Yeah.
JVL00:32:34It would take effort. Rear naked choke. Yeah.
Sonny00:32:37Okay.
JVL00:32:38That's how you beat a kangaroo. Okay. Okay. So the next one is a kangaroo. We then get to wolf, where 12% of Americans say that they can't. They can take a wolf.
Sonny00:32:46We're just skipping right over kangaroo, which is interesting because I think kangaroo is the last one on here that I could probably beat in a fight.
Vic00:32:52They're good boxers. You know they box.
Sonny00:32:54They are good boxers. Kangaroos are, again, once again, kangaroos are real assholes. People don't appreciate how ... They have a real sense of entitlement because you're not allowed to hunt them, I guess. They're like deers. They're like the deer of Australia. So if you happen upon one, they're just like, "Oh boy, mate, this is my Bobby. What are you doing here?" And then you have to square up and fight them.
Vic00:33:17I didn't know that sounded like kangaroo.
Sonny00:33:18That's how they all sound. That's how they talk. But they talk when they're all hungry. Okay.
JVL00:33:22They all talk like that. All right. So let's move quickly through the rest of it because the rest of it is ... I just want to read off the percentages of Americans who think that they could defeat the remaining animals. Wolf, 12% of Americans. Crocodile, 9% so they could be a crocodile. That depends where you're from. Gorilla, 8%.
Sonny00:33:408% of Americans think they could beat a gorilla. Lion.
JVL00:33:43Like a silverback. 8%. Elephant, 8%. Now that's crazy. Grizzly bear, 6%.
Sonny00:33:48I want to know who the people are who are like, "I can't beat a grizzly bear but I could beat an elephant."
Vic00:33:58I'll tell you what. It's people who mistakenly misinterpreted the question and thought they had access to like an elephant gun.
JVL00:34:05That's what they had. And honestly, of all of those, of all of those animals, which do you think you would have the lowest possible chance, I think it would have to be the gorilla. Gorilla.
Sonny00:34:18Yeah.
Vic00:34:19Right? Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Elephant, I just don't know how you would go about doing that.
Sonny00:34:23What would you do? Well, yeah.
Vic00:34:25I mean, again, it's like...
JVL00:34:26Without... Unarmed. You could tire it out. But death... It would starve to death because it was too slow to get you.
Vic00:34:31That's from the gorilla. The gorilla thing. Oh, yeah. Going really quickly, I think I told you about the chimp. When I was on jury duty and the guy who worked at the National Zoo said that. Yes. It just grabbed... You're supposed to go completely limp. Don't try. Don't even try. Don't try to resist. They'll just snap your... Grip strength. Yeah. Grip strength. Grip strength. One last thought was... People are so delusional. The gorilla thing, by the way, that would be ugly. I mean, you would be smashed to bits. You would be smashed to bits. Rat... Back to rat. Back to rat. My barber, Habib, he told me that his father killed a rat in Morocco. He said he trapped it in the bathroom and he killed it with a chair. You know, I won't forget this because he told me, word for word, he goes, "It screamed like baby." I mean, that's just an awful thing, so that's why I'm very hesitant about rat. But speaking of rats, this week we're talking about a movie called The Suicide Squad on HBO Max. Sonny, how about a big boy review?
Sonny00:35:37What did you call this movie? Rats, because there's all these rats. No, no. What did you call this movie? Oh, The? It's The Suicide Squad, not Suicide Squad. We got to make sure we get that right. We'll have more questions later. So it's The Suicide Squad. It's from James Gunn, who directed the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel. I remember he got fired from Marvel because he did some bad tweets in the early 2010s, and then people found them. People resurfaced them, as they say. So this movie was directed and written by James Gunn, and what you have to understand about this movie and the fact that it was written and directed by James Gunn is that James Gunn got his start with Troma Entertainment, I believe is the name of the studio, Troma Entertainment, and Troma is best known as the studio behind the Toxic Avenger, but a bunch of other stuff. Basically it's like schlock intended for adults, but is exceptionally juvenile in its sensibility. And these movies all cost, you know, like a million bucks or two million bucks.
JVL00:36:37They're not... They're the alternate version of Roger Corman.
Sonny00:36:40Yeah, right. Exactly. They're like the hardcore Roger Corman. Roger Corman. And the fact that James Gunn has been given, I don't know, $150 to $200 million to make what amounts to a superhero Troma Pictures movie is like kind of amazing all on its own. I mean, this is the sort of movie where violence is done for hugely comic effect and repeatedly over and over again, they curse a lot, a lot of F-bombs in this. You know, a lot, a lot, a lot of bad language. And it has the same sort of juvenile sensibility every time that you think somebody has finally overcome their their issues, they quickly die or, you know, whatever. The start of the movie essentially does the the work of setting up the premise, which is this. If you're a supervillain and Amanda Waller, who was played by Viola Davis, comes to you, she says, I will give you 10 years off your prison sentence if you do this. This task for me, this off the books task. And you go out on these missions and on the the first mission, which is includes, amongst other actors, Michael Rooker playing a guy who can throw balls, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't 100 percent sure it was Angles something. Pete Davidson, who's playing a guy, there's a weasel character and some others. They go on this mission and they all die. They all die there. They they are the suicide squad. They are.
JVL00:38:14It's a diversion for the real team Captain Boomerang, who is a member, including Captain
Sonny00:38:18Boomerang from the first from the first movies. Harley Quinn is also on this team, but she survives, as does Colonel Colonel Rick Flagg. They were also in the first movie. The real team that we are following is the one that is led by Idris Elba, who plays.
JVL00:38:37What's his character's name?
Sonny00:38:38Blood sports. Blood sports. I'm sorry. I get blood sport and bloodshot and deadshot all confused. In my head, I can never keep them all straight. Blood sports and peacemaker, who's played by John Cena, are the kind of leaders of this team. They're the real team. They're going to Corto Maltese, the fictional Caribbean island nation, to obtain information of crimes the United States of America has committed because this is a very political movie. It's very political. And in the in the course of doing it, they unlock. Unleash Starro the Conqueror, who is a giant psychic starfish from outer space who takes over people's minds with little baby starfish. And that's the movie I look here's I mean, when you put it like that, I I the thing about this movie is I feel like it's the sort of thing I should have liked a lot more than I did. And I can't quite put my finger on exactly what I didn't like about it. But I felt almost bludgeoned by it. There was too much going on at any given time for me to really like breathe and appreciate it. I don't think I don't think it's it's quite as funny as it thinks it is. But even but I say that and I laughed a lot in the movie. It is very funny. Like the character played by David, what's his name, David, the crazy guys.
Vic00:40:13Oh, yeah. Pokedot Man and the Wasp.
Sonny00:40:15Yeah. Pokedot. David Dalsmachian or whatever. Pokedot Man. He. He.
JVL00:40:21You mean from the Dark Knight? From the Dark Knight.
Sonny00:40:23He's also in the Dark Knight. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's very good. He's very funny. He has this kind of like tragic backstory that makes the makes the fact that he shoots polka dots to disintegrate people very funny. And he he plays the character with this nice melancholy. King Shark is a very funny, dumb Groot like character. Basically, you know, from from Guardians of the Galaxy, it's their Groot voiced by Sylvester Stallone. Again, funny and kind of clever, but like it's not funny enough and it's not nearly as transgressive as it thinks it is. And this is, I think, my big problem with the movie is that it thinks it is doing something really interesting and like kind of, you know, over the top and clever. It's like, oh, we have nudity in this movie. There's a dick in this movie and there's there's there's boobs in another scene. And like but it's all in the background and it's kind of boring. It's blurry. You don't really they don't really do anything with it. It's just kind of there to have in the R tagline, you know, graphic nudity. The cursing is like there's a lot of there's a lot of fucks, but like they don't actually say anything offensive. There's nothing offensive that is that is said in this movie. The violence is kind of over the top, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Even the funny bits where they're like going through the Latin American rebel camp and killing everybody and they find out, oops, these were the good guys that we killed in this comic way. That's supposed to make us like think about it. I was like, I've seen this before. We've seen this sort of thing before. It's not it's like competitive assassins killing people. Not that interesting. I just I don't know. I was underwhelmed. I was underwhelmed by the whole thing. In addition to feeling like bludgeoned by the so much outrageousness of it, like the the the the constant imagery and the, you know, hitting you over the head, the joke a minute. It didn't work for me. I don't know why. I don't know why.
Vic00:42:13It just didn't explain. You just explained why. So what did you think?
Sonny00:42:18How's this?
Vic00:42:19How'd this do on the quadrants? Technically, technically on the quadrants, the plot is an A. It's pretty straightforward what they got to do. Couple twists here. Surprise turns from certain people about who you think are good, but turn out to be bad. Vice versa. Duration. It gets a D. That was a long movie. I felt it was long. It was over two hours. Yeah, it was over.
Sonny00:42:40Over two hours. It's actually it's like two hours, 12 minutes. Yes. It's like an hour 58 or so when the credits start. Really? It felt much longer. Yeah. But it does feel long, doesn't it?
Vic00:42:50It feels like a long movie. Let's just get to it already. Violence action's an A plus. But it is. It's almost desensitizing because, you know what I mean? It loses its effect after ... I mean, there was some impressive head kills, but after a while, it's a blur. Sex nudity gets a C. I mean, it's not an F. I mean, there's some stuff in there. There's good stuff in there.
JVL00:43:09There's nudity. Yeah. That's what I mean. When's the last time you saw a movie with nudity in it, Victorino?
Vic00:43:13I don't ... You know, that's a good question. Oh, probably the one with the French soldier woman.
JVL00:43:21So you can't tell me that it's been ... That this is a C or a D or a ... This has to be
Vic00:43:27an A. Yeah, but no, no, no. There is actual nudity. But it's not good nudity. No, it's not good, and it's not a lot of action. It's not Atomic Blonde, which is not nudity, but man, good stuff. So overall, the average is a B. It's a B. But did I like it? No, I didn't like this movie. I'm not ... You know what? The Dark Knight series, I'm not a DC fan, so I don't know who these people are. I don't find it ... I have no idea what's going on. You liked Joker, didn't you? I liked Joker a lot, but it's not even ... Is that really a superhero as much as it is, I don't know, a taxi driver? I mean, it was just a ... It's a whole other thing. There's not superheroes going on, and I'm so CGI'd out. I'm just done with this. I'm just done with the CGI.
JVL00:44:06Yeah.
Vic00:44:07Anyway, I don't know these people ... Did you not like the practical starfish face huggers? It was interesting, but ... Because that was not CGI. Those were people with starfish stuck onto their faces.
JVL00:44:18Oh, that's funny.
Vic00:44:19Okay, that's good to know. But I don't know. I just didn't find it compelling. I didn't care enough about the characters, and I don't know who they are. I don't know what the story is. Was this a reboot of the first movie with Will Smith? Is that what this is?
Sonny00:44:31Man of the People right here, because this is what everybody who did not go see this movie is thinking. Is this a sequel? Is it a reboot? Is it? It's a soft reboot, basically. It's a sequel, technically. It's technically a sequel, but it is essentially ... It was designed to erase the first film from history.
Vic00:44:46I was also surprised in the beginning when I saw Michael Rooker and Pete Davidson, and I saw them. They're in the credits and stuff.
JVL00:44:54Why is Yondo here?
Vic00:44:55Yeah. And I thought, "Oh, good. We'll see what happens." And of course, they're gone early, and I thought, "Is this an edited version where they had a longer, bigger role in a previous version?"
Sonny00:45:06Well, no, the whole point of them being there is to kill them immediately so you understand what the stakes are. Oh, wow. To see what the Suicide Squad is. This is one of the things that this movie does so much better than the original. In the original ... So in the first one directed by David Ayer in 2016, they introduce the concept and the characters three times. Three times they tell us, "We're sending these supervillains on a suicide mission that the United States government is forming to combat the threat of the metahuman crisis." And then they have literally this same exact conversation three times. Yeah. Three fucking times in the movie. It's like the whole first 30 or 40 minutes of the film. So this movie does a much more efficient job of, in 10 minutes, it sets up the stakes, the concept, the idea, and everything. Which is good. I appreciate that.
Vic00:46:01I was very surprised, though, when they had early deaths. It was the most surprised since Steven Seagal in Executive Decision. You think, "Oh good, he's going to be in the ... What?" You know, when he's gone. Anyway. I don't know what's going on here. So, I mean, I don't really feel like a connection to care about what happens to these people. I've never heard of them before. I have no idea with ... I didn't see the movie Harley Quinn, so, I mean, I just don't know what's happening. JVL.
Sonny00:46:26Birds of Prey, sir. The Fantabulous. The Fantabulous Emancipation of the Idiot Joker Woman.
Vic00:46:31It's the longest headline since To Wong Fu. Thanks for everything. Julie Newmar had a great time. P.S. Don't forget to stop by.
Sonny00:46:40Harley Quinn doesn't work as a character in any of these movies.
Vic00:46:43JVL. It's all you.
JVL00:46:45Go. Sonny, you feel like you should have liked this more than you did. I feel like I liked it a lot more than I should have. I liked it a very great deal. Interesting. And it was super duper fun. It was very funny, I thought. There's a lot of gags in it which are hysterical. Many of which have to do with John Cena, who is a revelation when he is playing everything straight as a simpleton and he only gets bad when he like then turns into a bad guy at the end. But when he is pure simpleton, it's a riot walking around in his tighty whiteys with like, you know, four softball stuffed into the crotch like as if nothing is wrong.
Sonny00:47:40And then when they go undercover to the dance club.
JVL00:47:42He's wearing a look cost polo shirt that is three sizes too small. And so it's like a belly shirt that's like that is such a fantastic sight gag. I don't know how you guys weren't laughing at it. It was just a riot.
Sonny00:47:59I thought he was not good in this. I got to be. I have to start.
JVL00:48:02Oh, I thought he was great up until the very end when they asked him to start acting. That that was that was a problem. I liked him. And I you know, I mean, the the opening. The opening is a riff on the Deadpool sequel. Remember the Deadpool sequel when he, you know, leads his his handpicked team and they all die within five seconds. But in funny ways, that's kind of what happens with like it. It's hysterical. And I know I liked basically everything about it. You know, it's funny. So you said it was very political. Jay Pod told me, oh, he says, like, you'll love this. He's super anti-American and you're a commie.
Vic00:48:44And I can't believe Jay Pod saw it.
JVL00:48:47I think that is people reading too much into it. I mean, you know, the American government in the person of Amanda Waller is bad. But the people who work in Amanda Waller's unit are not bad. They do the right thing. It's also the commie government is terrible.
Sonny00:49:05It's all about the American government kidnapping a starfish space alien and taking him to an island nation that is like clearly designed to be kind of a, you know, colony type situation for us. And then us performing human experiments on people.
Vic00:49:22Children. On children.
Sonny00:49:24On children. Look, they leave it. Colonel Rick Flagg is disillusioned.
JVL00:49:27They leave it to be the crazy generalissimo's who are all corrupt and bad people. And I found the entire like Banana Republic depiction of the island to be hysterical. I the whole thing was was a riot, honestly, and I I just laughed over and over. But when they said Project Starfish, I thought to myself, because I went into this totally cold with no you know, I didn't read any of your reviews and everything like that. I thought to myself, oh, come on, they're not going to do Starro. They're not going to start because Starro is when so in the early sixties. ABC did a bunch of the dumbest supervillains you've ever seen. And it was like Starro the Conqueror, whose first appearance, I believe I did not look this up, is the brave and the bold number twenty eight, which I think is the first appearance of the Justice League. And then you have like a mazo. Do you guys remember a mazo? Again, I'm a mazo is this a mazo is a single guy who has all the powers of the entire Justice League. And so he's fast. Like the flesh. But you to look at him, he it's like they they took a Mad Libs version of all the Justice League to put the stupidest villains in the world. And I just thought to myself, James Gunn's not going to do that. He's not going to Starro because doing Starro is itself a transgressive thing to do in a movie.
Guest00:50:57See, but he did it.
Sonny00:50:58I think it's both transgressive. It's both. It's both transgressive, though. It's like, what? What's the most ridiculous thing I could do? Let's do that. And I like I don't think that's actually transgressive. I think it's like. I think it's just kind of silly.
JVL00:51:12I don't know. I thought it worked. And it was. It was. You know what? The other thing is, though, visually, the movie has so much style and so much flair that it is never boring to look at. He even does scene transitions right where, you know, he's setting up act, you know, act one, act two, going to get Harley, you know, or stopping going to do this other thing first. There's one scene transition where he comes over. Over a a line of buildings in the quarter multi city. And there are a bunch of antennas and chimneys that, you know, spell out whatever the word is. But it's all done as an optical illusion. It's just so much care is taken. I hate it.
Vic00:51:59All that stuff. I actually. Sonny, do you think it's what it's too gimmicky or it tries too hard or just I thought I thought
Sonny00:52:05it felt kind of try hard, but also just like I don't know why. It's not necessary. It's just not necessary. You don't need to tell us. It doesn't respect the viewer is the problem. It like does not respect us enough to like just do the thing. Instead, it's like walking us through this. OK, here's what we're doing next. Here's where we're going next.
JVL00:52:23And I thought it had a lot of visual flair and style and was interesting to look at. Just not something I have seen a lot of in Black Widow, right? Or a bunch of these other movies we watched recently, which have had nothing to look at on screen.
Sonny00:52:36It has a personality to it, and I will give it that. I like it has an actual kind of visual sensibility and style and the characters reflect a they feel like they were written by a real person. Yeah, instead of a, you know, committee.
JVL00:52:53But I mean, can I can I give you my big the real reason I liked it is is less because of what it what it was less because of the movie itself and more because of what the movie itself is. And it's about continuity, right, so in comic books, continuity is this really cool thing. And it's cool for about a decade. And then after a decade, it becomes absolutely stultifying. And you can see this in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where it's continuity is going on long enough, it has enough enough properties that continuity is starting to cause problems. And I don't mean like logic problems. But I mean, story and character problems. I'll give you two examples. One, Captain Marvel just utterly guts the character of Nick Fury, right, Nick Fury has been this badass who when Thor shows up, realizes he's got to stand up something new because they're aliens, etc. And Captain Marvel's like, Yeah, no, that's that's not true. He knew there were he knew there were aliens like 20 years before Thor and, you know, he's sort of a figure of fun, he lost his eye to a space cat. And it just undercuts the character of Nick Fury, Black Widow does the same thing with Natasha Romanoff, right, I mean, the Natasha Romanoff character we get throughout the MCU is that she is trying to hold the Avengers together throughout Civil War and then she sacrifices herself to save her family because the Avengers are her real family in Infinity War and the idea is that she the Avengers the only family she's ever had. And that's why this assassin like grows to love and cherish them. In ways that she's never really willing to say out loud. In the movie Black Widow is just like, never mind Natasha has an actual real family here they are. And that just guts the whole everything we know about the character. And what DC has decided to do funnily enough is there, there just is no continuity. And that makes it a lot more hit and miss. But on the other hand, it's really liberating creatively. And so just within the DC Universe, we have the Dark Knight trilogy, we have the Snyder verse. We have the Joker movie. We have the first Suicide Squad, we have this Suicide Squad, we have Birds of Prey. This like five different distinctive continuities in which sometimes you have different actors playing the characters like Joker and Batman. And even when you talk about Margot Robbie, she's playing honestly three different versions of Harley Quinn. It's the same actress, but she's not playing the character the same way. And this is much more like what you get in comic books. New writer who is writing Batman for a year, you know, and his Batman is going to be different from the guy who writes the next Batman.
Vic00:55:43Is this Harley Quinn, by the way, is this movie take place after like chronologically than her movie?
JVL00:55:49No. It's totally out of time.
Vic00:55:51Out of time.
JVL00:55:52And honestly it's a different character. Like in this one she's doing self-help stuff and trying to, you know, it's just a totally different character. And I think Margot Robbie, to her very great credit, plays them as different characters. Yeah.
Sonny00:56:07This is, this is, it's an interesting theory, it is just factually incorrect. I mean like Suicide Squad, the Suicide Squad is a sequel to Suicide Squad, which takes place firmly within the Snyderverse. Birds of Prey, again, is a sequel to Suicide Squad. It's pretty separate, frankly, you could, you could consider that separate. But Shazam has references to all the Batman vs. Superman stuff. Aquaman has references to, uh, like Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman. Yeah.
JVL00:56:41That's, that's Snyderverse. That is the Man of Steel, but that is, that is distinct from Dark Knight, which is distinct from JoCo, which is distinct from Birds of Prey.
Sonny00:56:47It is, which is distinct from Dark Knight and yeah, no, I mean Birds of Prey is, is part of all of these movies. It is, it is in, it is in the same universe. It's in the same universe.
JVL00:56:58It just is. In the, in the most, I mean the only in the most technical way possible. I mean, again, uh, when you compare one, you see Birds of Prey is in the same universe as the Snyder Cut Justice League is maybe, I guess, true, except that to a portion watching them, you would never in the world think that they were part of the same universe.
Sonny00:57:23No, that's, I mean, that's, that's, that's probably true. That's Birds of Prey is also the worst of these movies outside of like Suicide Squad.
JVL00:57:29I just, I just disagree. I, I like Birds of Prey a lot, but, but the point is even when the individual things fail, like the first Suicide Squad does being liberated from the confines of continuity, it prevents you from getting the infinity war, right? You can't do an infinity war unless you have continuity, you have to be able to build up to it. But on the other hand, it frees you up to do stuff like Joker. And I think that that's kind of in a weird way, uh, admirable. It's certainly interesting. And it goes against the whole cinematic universe thing that everybody else has been going for over the last decade. And it frees up the possibility of getting like a movie version of Red Sun, right? Or or Gotham Central stuff like that, you know, things which are told in this Logan, right? And so Logan is out of continuity, right? And out of continuity, movies, I think, are necessary, and important. And I don't know how Marvel is going to get out of it, I feel like they've backed themselves into a corner. We're not only do all the movies have to be in continuity, but now all the streaming series on DC, Disney Plus have to be in continuity, and I just they're going to wind up strangled and suffocating under the weight of this.
Sonny00:58:47Well, I mean, I think what they're they're trying to do with the movies is create essentially a whole new separate universe. I mean, right, you have the Eternals, you have Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings and I you know, I think they're going to try to do a whole new thing. I don't know that it's going to work because they're still going to be doing Guardians of the Galaxy movies are still doing their you know, they've got their new Thor movie that there were. I don't know.
JVL00:59:15They're way out. Prequels, you know? Well, and the great irony of this, of course, is that DC was DC was the publisher who was hidebound by continuity. This is what so DC constructed this insane, elaborate rationale for why everything was in continuity. And what it was called the multiverse. And there were an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of Earths. And DC had a whole Earth one, Earth two, Earth three, Earth X, Earth prime. And you were supposed to know which Earth the flash, you know, if I showed you a picture of this version of the flash or this version of green light and light lantern, you were supposed to know, oh, that's the Earth three Green Lantern, right? Or that that's the the Earth where the supervillains run everything. And it was absolutely cockamamie and ridiculous. And meanwhile, Marvel was the publishing house, which in the 2000s, early 2000s, I forget exactly when they just decided, you know, we're really stultified by all this continuity. What if we just started everything over again? They're like, yeah, that'd be cool. Let's do the ultimates. And so they just started a line of comic books where they just threw the word ultimate on the back alley. Ultimate Spider-Man. Right. Fantastic Four. And the idea behind the ultimate line was, we're just going to pretend it's a totally blank slate. And this is the first time anybody has ever said the word X-Men and you could do whatever you want and it doesn't matter. And they did this for 15 years and then they just blew it all up and went back to this, which is really brave and really interesting and is the kind of boldness which I think Marvel will have to do if it's going to stay as the Marvel that we know. Because I look at the future of Marvel. Near term future, like Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings and Lady Thor and all this stuff. And I just think to myself, it's going to be a long time before you're doing Infinity War again. Yeah. You know, like this is you are dealing with actors and characters that people are not going to care about. Yeah. Thank you JVL.
Sonny01:01:22But this was, but people always thought that was going to happen with like Thor and Captain America and Iron Man. They're like, oh, who are these third tier heroes? We're not, they're not going to be able to make that work.
JVL01:01:31And they did, I guess, but they had like really good, I mean, they weren't third tier heroes and they were, uh, absolute stud actors and movie stars and, uh, like I, I mean, I don't want to pick on Brie Larson, but the idea that you're going to put Brie Larson at the center of a cinematic universe and ask people to pay for it, I just don't understand. Like she's, she's not a movie star and this is not a. A knock on her. She may be a wonderful actress. She may be a great human being and, uh, and all that stuff. But uh, you know, I don't know, like take Mackenzie Davis and give her that part or something like that. Like you need, you know, chat, how having Chadwick Boseman die is a real problem. Yeah. Right. I mean, black Panther was this incredibly great character. Chadwick Boseman was an absolute movie star. He's the type of guy who could have built and he, that next stage around it lived at
Vic01:02:25the end. Right.
JVL01:02:27I get confused. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and like, geez, that is a gut punch for them. Yeah. You're going to build this around, uh, you know, Shuri and Elizabeth, Elizabeth Olsen, the Scarlet Witch. I mean, look, I love the Scarlet Witch. I love Elizabeth Olsen. I think they're great, but that is not Robert Downey Jr. Good luck.
Sonny01:02:45Yeah. You know? Wow. You got a lot of problem with women. JBL.
JVL01:02:50That's what I'm hearing. No, you're hearing that like Mackenzie Mackenzie Davis, who you guys will remember
Sonny01:02:54from the last Terminator movie, Terminator Dark Fate Blade Runner 2049.
JVL01:03:00Mackenzie Davis is an absolute movie star and that she was not cast to play Captain Marvel. I just, I don't even understand. Mm hmm.
Vic01:03:08Yeah. It could have been better. Uh, I have a lot of high hopes for Shang Chi just because it's time, it's time for my people to rise. Isn't that? Aren't they Chinese? Yeah. That's my grandfather's Chinese. I'm a quarter. Okay.
JVL01:03:22I'll, uh, take that. I thought you guys are. Oh, no, I guess it's Japanese. You guys. It was Japanese.
Vic01:03:27No, I think Shang Chi is Chinese, right? I don't know. Shang Chi is definitely Chinese. And I'm such a big fan of the actor, Henry Golding. Okay. Uh, moving right along, uh, spirit of the week, uh, JVL, I looked like you were drinking kombucha.
JVL01:03:42No, no. What is that? I have been drinking a Hardywood product. Oh. It is a, it is their peach triple, the Belgian triple, uh, that has been aged in white wine casks. And, uh, it is delicious. Look at you.
Sonny01:03:57Is that a cider? That's a fancy beer.
JVL01:03:59It's a, no, no, it's, it's, it's beer. Oh, it's beer. It's not, it is not a cider. Uh, and it is, it is the same beer, same Belgian triple beer that they sell in a can.
Sonny01:04:09Ah.
JVL01:04:10Right. Uh, but it has been taken and aged in, uh, oak casks that had been previously used for white wine.
Sonny01:04:18White wine. And funnily enough, I got this at Costco.
JVL01:04:21Ah. Sure. Costco is making a, a real effort to sell more local beer. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, good for them. Do that.
Vic01:04:32Uh, shout out Sonny.
Sonny01:04:34Uh, we had a, we had a listener, uh, ask us if we could wish his wife happy birthday. Hold on. Let me just pull, I want to pull up the actual, uh, message here, uh, from Daniel, uh, who asked us if we could, uh, his, his, his wife's birthday is, uh, on August 18th. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Uh, but he did not. He did not give her, he did not give her name in the message. So I had to look it up. I, but I did find it. Christie, Christina Leninger. Wow. I found it myself. Christie. Happy birthday. Uh, your husband is very nice. He signed up for a membership just so he could, uh, he, he signed up for a membership just so he could get us this message. Happy birthday, Christie. Even though he forgot to mention your name, he did not, he did not have your name in it, but we figured it.
Vic01:05:23I figured it out. I figured it out.
Sonny01:05:25So I'm a Christie. Happy birthday. Thank you for listening. Uh, and being a long time listener of the Sub-Beacon podcast, and that is all the time
Vic01:05:36we're giving to this episode, questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Matus. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patrion. Just go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time, what do you got?
JVL01:05:58Uh, we're at the beach. We're prepping to do a birthday for G money tomorrow and, uh, just, uh, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of boy stuff going on right now.
Vic01:06:15Okay.
JVL01:06:16Boy stuff. All right. A lot of, a lot of boy stuff, a lot of, a lot of boy stuff. We'll just leave it at that. People can, can let their. Their, their imaginations run wild, but G money has been in a rare form. Uh, the type of thing that I think in a me too environment would probably not play very well for him when he's older. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right. That's a face. Uh, so, uh, you know, I hope he can grow out of this because, uh, you know, can't act like that running around exposing yourself and laughing about it is, uh, you know, maybe a way to rise to prominence at Miramax. Yeah. But, uh, is frowned upon these days.
Vic01:07:00No, I, you know what? That sort of thing. And I know what you're getting at it. It's funny. You do get laughs for that. They know they're getting a rock arise. You know what? It works for me.
Sonny01:07:09It still works for me. What happened? Vic works for Vic in the office just the other day. Someone was like, I'm sure that's fine.
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