#313. 'Superman' (Theaters)
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The main event is James Gunn's Superman, which all three hosts genuinely loved despite mocking its sheer goofiness. Sonny calls it one of the silliest movies ever built around marquee intellectual property — Crypto the Superdog is practically a lead character, Guy Gardner leads the "Justice Gang," Mr. Terrific is played like Kirk Lazarus doing Lincoln Osiris, and the plot pivots on a genuinely deranged reveal that Jor-El wanted Superman to conquer Earth and start Kryptonian harems — but he argues the film's operating theory, "what if comic books were real," makes the absurdity work, and he predicts a strong summer hold. JVL agrees enthusiastically, singling out the interdimensional-imp fight glimpsed through an apartment window and Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner as highlights, while Mike also loved it (with mild reservations about the swearing given his young kids) and appreciated the pocket-universe subplot over more multiverse business; all three needle each other over the movie's flipped Lois Lane/Jimmy Olsen dynamic, its cheesecake camera work, and the wasted Beck Bennett cameo. Before getting to the movie, the episode opens with JVL's saga of a 45-pound, three-foot HasLab Cobra Rattler G.I. Joe toy that arrived via Kickstarter-style preorder, complete with debate over whether to sell the bundled Baroness figure on eBay, plus Sonny's flex about scoring IMAX 70mm tickets to Nolan's The Odyssey and Mike's happy news of a new nephew and reflections on Freddie Freeman's emotional All-Star Game return to Atlanta. Box office chat covers Superman's roughly Man-of-Steel-sized opening (with a much weaker international take), speculation about Fantastic Four's prospects amid Marvel's struggles, and general "DC is back, Marvel is cooked" punditry.
From the show notes
BAD DOG
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00Oh, yeah, that's going to be...
Mike00:00:01Lex, I tried to stop him.
JVL00:00:05It's fine, Heather. Superman, we finally meet. Would you like a coffee? Where's the dog? Dog? The dog, loser! You took the dog! That's right, Eve. Get all of this.
Mike00:00:18Where's the dog?
JVL00:00:20I have no clue what you're talking about. He's just a dog. i don't know what dog you're talking about ugly dog and kate what did you say
Mike00:00:34welcome to the sub beacon podcast i'm your co-host mike warren joining me as always are my two co-hosts who have much better hair than Guy Gardner. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com. Tell your friends and family that if they want to listen to the show, they've got to do it at subbeacon.com. Join the conversation in the comments. We've had some watch talk in the comments recently. There's been all kinds of good stuff there, but you can't be a part of that community, and you can't listen to the show unless you're at subbeacon.com. We are going to be talking about Superman later on in the show. But first, JVL, hit us with it.
JVL00:01:28Oh, boys, it's story time. Here we go. About 14 or 16 months ago, I got an email from HasLab. HasLab is an arm of Hasbro Incorporated. I don't know if it's actually in-house or only like tangentially affiliated with it. But what they do is...
Mike00:01:48It's like Bell Labs, but...
JVL00:01:49Yes. Yeah, they do. Upgraded versions of our beloved childhood toys, so primarily Transformers and G.I. Joes. And what they they're all done Kickstarter style, whereas they come up with a design for, say, an action figure like Storm Shadow or Cobra Commander. And they they put it up online. They said, this is what it's going to look like. This is how much it will cost. And we need to get to 6,000 backers in order to make this happen or some such. And then people, you know, because this way you manage the cost, right? And you only do economically viable products. Sure. Which is why they can do this. And they did a Kickstarter for the Cobra Rattler. Now, I think both of you were probably too young for this. The Cobra Rattler was the greatest G.I. Joe vehicle of all time. This was the plane used by the bad guys, the Cobras. It was basically an A-10 Warthog, but so much more awesome because it had a turret with cannons around the middle of the fuselage. and because it was veto vertical takeoff and landing imagine what could make the a10 even cooler than that like vertical takeoff yeah and so hazlab said we are gonna make a grown-up version of the rattler if enough people commit to buying it and i they had me i mean i'll be honest i blacked out like 15 seconds into reading the page and when i woke up i just had the little thing saying congratulations thank you for your support it's 14 months ago totally forgotten about it didn't even remember this was a thing you've moved on with your life and uh yesterday fedex arrived at my house with a box that was about three and a half feet by 18 inches by 18 inches so quite large weighing in at roughly 45 pounds it required signature service and uh last night g money and i cracked open this box and inside the box was a second cardboard box inside the second cardboard box was the the actual box for the cobra rattler i i just want to preface this by saying that you know people watch like unboxing videos that's a thing yeah yeah oh yes i've always thought those were silly you get it now the unboxing of this thing was one of the most sublime experiences of my life i the the level of care that was put into the unboxing experience itself would make the people at apple jizz their pants that's how good it was there's only one problem and i think that problem would become immediately clear to you boys as i pull back and show you the cobra rattler oh okay so he's oh my look at that thing well
Sonny00:05:24it's enormous when you said 45 pounds i was i was like how big can this thing be this thing is three
JVL00:05:31feet across and three feet long uh i'm gonna i'm gonna press the light button so you can see the light display oh my among the many things that it has hold on i gotta i gotta make the lights work
Mike00:05:50here they're working they're they're flashing they're flashing right in my eyes so it has a
JVL00:05:56a bunch of different leds for instance inside the cockpit all all of the cockpit things are illuminated i don't know if you can see that uh it has there's the turret yeah it has the turret and on the side of it there is a panel that you can take off and put on a battle damage panel oh look at that battle damage panel has leds behind it to make it look like it's on fire to make it look like the plane itself is on fire
Sonny00:06:24this is it's pretty fantastic I'm not gonna that's a great that's an amazing thing to own and I I don't even
Mike00:06:35it's more than I would have ever thought it would have been with the way you described it the level
JVL00:06:41wait so I'm sorry we're gonna keep doing this the level of detail on like the end there's like an engine in there oh yeah the engines have like
Mike00:06:49real can you pop open the cockpit hold on oh yeah the cockpit cockpit absolutely opens you put it
JVL00:06:56it comes with three action figures that fit in the car that was my question over here in the nose
Mike00:06:59look at this oh it's a uh ladder that stows away to have the pilot be able to climb up into it
JVL00:07:07uh and i don't have any of the ordinance or sorry the ordinance loaded yeah but it comes with a full a10 warthog level of ordinance that you load onto this fucking thing and does it make the sound no sound effects no it does you don't get the sound effect off of the gatling gun but it's holy shit now i don't know what i'm gonna do with it because again it's it's i'm looking in to see if there's a way to mount it on the wall behind me.
Mike00:07:44It's on a stand.
JVL00:07:46Currently, it is on a stand. It comes with a stand. There's no place to put that, because again, it's got to be like a foot and a half out from the wall, wherever you put it, because it's so fucking big.
Sonny00:07:54You should hang it from the ceiling. You got to hang that from the ceiling. That's a good
JVL00:07:58idea. So I hear you. Okay. You've already thought about this. And in fact, as a child, that is what I did with all of my G.I. Joe planes, including the Cobra Rattler. Of course, I used fishing line and thumbtacks and I had my Sky Striker and my Dragonfly and the the Cobra Stinger, which was the little Cobra one man copter. All these things suspended from the ceiling in my my childhood bedroom in a battle pose. So it was like an immersive diorama where you walk through.
Mike00:08:37And sure, that's not going to work on the 45 pounder.
JVL00:08:40This thing is probably too, I'd have to like sink a bolt into a joist through the ceiling and then use. So what's the problem? What's the problem?
Sonny00:08:52I don't understand what your issue is here. This is an engineering problem and it sounds like a fun little project, frankly.
JVL00:08:57But the point of all this is that I ordered this without having, as I said, I got so excited that I just sort of blacked out. And I did not scroll down far enough to see the proposed dimensions of the project. And so I was a little bit surprised.
Sonny00:09:19Well, it's funny because I found the page. I found the toy page here.
JVL00:09:26It looks amazing, doesn't it?
Sonny00:09:28Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. I do have, well, I have a question, but I'll get to that. But, like, just reading the description, it's described just in the top part without getting to the actual, you know, dimensions at the bottom. It just says, has developed a six-inch scale G.I. Joe classified series Cobra Rattler ground attack jet. And, like, six-inch scale doesn't mean anything to me. Like, six-inch, I don't know what that means.
JVL00:09:56What it means is it's to the scale of the six-inch action figures.
Sonny00:10:01Okay.
JVL00:10:02So we assume the action, if the action figures are real people where, and they are six inches tall, that the vehicle then scales out from that.
Sonny00:10:11Gotcha. Gotcha. I didn't really clock that to be honest.
Mike00:10:15Yeah. Question. The, uh, action figures that came with it. Are they just, are they just kind of nameless, quite literally possibly faceless, uh, Cobra
JVL00:10:25pilots? Of course not. Of course not. wild weasel is the pilot who came with it and who comes like this we also got because enough backers signed on we got there is one nameless faceless uh gunner who's the turret gunner who comes with it who's just uh enlisted you know cannon fodder for the cobras but the stretch goal was a baroness figure and so and here is if i could just say my real dilemma is that these things are limited runs and so once they're you once they close the kickstarter none of them get made anymore right and uh often they appreciate in value by quite a lot i can imagine this thing is already double what i paid for it on ebay wow and so part of me was like oh do i even take it out of the box or do i do i hold and the lesson is obviously i should have bought two because then this would have been free then i would have had one to sell on ebay to cover the cost of both and this one was free i didn't do that but like the baroness figure that baroness action figure is 150 bucks right now on ebay wow 150 bucks for the action figure so do i keep it and put sexy baroness in the turret the way she is in issue 34 of gi joe the original series by larry hammer uh or do i sell her like the little minx that she is on ebay and right there that covers a very significant portion of the cost of this thing roughly half you shut your whore mouth don't you don't you go giving out intelligence to people who might not have it otherwise i'm just i
Sonny00:12:13just looking at the page here no look i'm in no position to judge you uh jonathan jonathan last because i currently on my on my shelf in my in my dvd room uh have a i spent 45 dollars on a 4k disc of norm mcdonald's dirty work a movie i've seen a movie i've seen maybe one time and was like oh yeah i like that movie oh vinegar syndrome was putting out a limited edition And I bought it because some, like not all the time, sometimes they sell out, they sell out the limited edition additions. They, this happened with their, uh, their, their copy of Michael Mann's, the keep Michael Mann's, the keep comes out limited edition sells out in like a day. It was sold out and it's, it's worth twice as much now on eBay. I could, I could flip that thing. I could flip that thing. Well, you did limited one per customer. They're very, they're very strict about that. So I could have flipped it easily for, I could double my money on either of these discs. now i could easily double my money i so i'm not i like i'm not i'm not i'm not mocking you i have no leg to stand on here i will say five dollars for something starring arty lang that's just
JVL00:13:22incredible from the financial aspect of this i have zero regrets about opening this because g money's reaction to this thing to him because this thing is no joke it's almost as tall as he is i was gonna say that's like the size of him it does weigh three quarters of what he weighs and his like the detail on the ordinance like the the bombs the bombs have like paintings on the bombs the way like we used to in world war ii with yeah and one of them is like a cheesecake drawing of baroness riding a bomb that has been art put onto the bomb itself as if like this is what the cobra guys would have done as they were sitting around the cobra mother draw a picture hot and g money has been so over the moon for this that absolutely i could not put a price on on having flipped this thing it would have been criminal to flip it it's amazing i i honestly i'm only now kicking myself that i didn't buy one for my brother-in-law should you should have bought
Sonny00:14:31there's a limit of five five i should have bought five i should have bought five 100 i should have
Mike00:14:36bought five do they all come with it because like this would be great i i mean baroness is great some cobra commander little little guys or uh or destro you know like oh look you got the cobra
JVL00:14:49command look at that i got cobra commander because a friend of mine jake hey jake sent me the cobra commander and uh and i have a cobra commander and a storm shadow oh god guys this this thing is so
Mike00:15:04cool i can't even tell you and i love that it was a surprise like it was a surprise because you had
JVL00:15:10forgotten about that is the beauty and the surprise starter yeah yeah because you just forget that they do and one day you just get joy dropped into your life yeah that sounds oh that's what i got
Mike00:15:22boys that's what i got sunny hit us with some more joy dropped into your life what's going on
Sonny00:15:26with you i don't i don't have any anything this joyful uh i don't have anything this joyful um and going on in my life it's you know anything at all did you guys see that uh maybe we'll talk about this a little bit in box office i don't want but did you guys see that tickets for the odyssey went on sale no i did not tickets tickets for christopher nolan's the odyssey went on sale Like the first I think it's like the first three or four showings every night in the IMAX 70 millimeter. So not like it's not like they didn't go on sale for the whole guy, the whole run or anything. But it was like trailer out even there is there is a trailer is a trailer with the Jurassic World. But the trailer is out, but it's not online. He like he's like, you got to go see it in a theater. If you want to watch the trailer for my movie. Old school, baby. So the IMAX 70mm, of course, is like, that's the preferred viewing format of the Christopher Nolan IMAX experience. I saw Oppenheimer there. I saw Interstellar there recently in IMAX 70mm.
JVL00:16:38You have one of the best one of those theaters in Dallas, right?
Sonny00:16:41well so so yeah so there i think there are like there there are 10 or 13 theaters in america that can play imax 70 millimeter yeah one of them happens to be 20 minutes from your house right one yeah one of them is literally like 20 minutes from my house it's right down 635 it's the cinemark web chapel so i go i i make my way out there whenever there's a imax 70 millimeter the most recent was for sinners sinners was an imax 70 millimeter and it's and these things it's become a thing now it's become a thing where like i if something's an imax 70 millimeter folks go see it like i went to i went to a tuesday mid-morning screening of sinners and it was 95 full it was like it was it was wild so anyway um uh but any the so it's not the whole run of imax 70 millimeter it's not it's it but it was just it was kind of like a stunt thing um but they sold out in 20 minutes they saw like the whole the whole nation's run of these like first imax 70 millimeter shows for the odyssey sold out in literally 20 minutes like the you know the amc website was crashing etc it was uh it was a whole thing so i uh i just wanted to give everybody a heads up that um uh the the odyssey from christopher nolan not homer christopher nolan's the odyssey is going to be a big hit. I think everyone's very excited for it. I am fascinated by this on a business level because I actually don't think it's great for movies to do this, to be kind of eventized and concertized like this. I think creating a secondary market of this sort is potentially a bad idea because these things are already being flipped, you know, on eBay, speaking of eBay. So, like, basically, you're creating this black market or, you know, secondary market. You're basically creating a scalper market.
JVL00:18:47How does the gray market work? Because, so, for instance, with the AMC app, you cannot transfer the tickets in any way. if you buy a ticket for a movie at amc through the app on your phone you have to show up at the theater with your phone and then you have to show them your license and they check that to you well that's for a list no even if you're not even if they're not a list tickets oh really that's this is literally i got into like a huge argument with an amc usher one i'm not a huge argument but i into a small argument with an amc usher once over this um and uh but but and it's a little annoying because it means that if you are buying tickets for three people and one of them is a friend who has to meet you there you can't just hit the send button and send their ticket to them you have to wait in the lobby for them in order to to wand them in or to to scan them in with you i uh well
Sonny00:19:46it's it's interesting because i used to have to show my id when i went to amc because i have a list you know and they like they want to make sure that it's but then uh they offered an option to you can put your you can just put a selfie of you in there and show them the selfie and it's like okay that's you you can come on in um i don't know i've never you can do it via fandango you can just send uh you can send a ticket or send a screenshot via fandango i don't know about amc or like cinemark or any of these others um but yeah no there's like like in theory i guess you could just take a screenshot of the ticket with the qr code or whatever and send it to somebody
JVL00:20:23let's loop this all around like with the cobra rattler you should have bought 20 of these tickets since 19 and you could be making money while watching christopher nolan in 70 millimeter imax
Sonny00:20:35well so i i was gonna i was going i was like i was gonna buy tickets to this thing except except i expected them to go on sale at midnight central time they all went on sale midnight eastern time They were all and so I like when I checked my phone at 1120 and saw people talking about buying tickets to the Odyssey, I was like, no, so I'm gonna have to I'm gonna see it at a press screening like a schlub instead of, you know, that's too disgusting.
JVL00:21:04It is.
Sonny00:21:05And when they showed Oppenheimer, it's interesting when they showed Oppenheimer in Dallas, they did not show it at the IMAX 70 millimeter. they showed it in 70 millimeter film but just at the amc which was frankly not it was a terrible screening it was out of focus like it was it was a really bad it was a really bad experience um which meant i had to go see it like four more times just to make sure i got the right one i got i got i had to get the right experience so so but do we think without
Mike00:21:31without a mattel themed movie coming out at the same time we think that that christopher nolan's movie the odyssey is is gonna is gonna do well despite the fact that it won't have something like barbie to support oppenheimer is that he's got he's got to get he's got to get greta gerwig
Sonny00:21:50to get in production on like uh i don't know like uh chronicles of narnia or whatever or something i don't know you know what what would be uh what would be a i'm trying to think of a lady polly pocket uh lady mcbeth or polly pocket yeah she could do uh she could do micro machines
Mike00:22:07there you go all right uh okay all right what are you up to buddy not much it's it's summer but um i i will i will say a very big happy news just just really like an hour before we started uh recording this uh that uh my kids now have a for the first time a cousin we're very excited my brother-in-law and his wife hey uh congratulations so we're just very excited but i was working in my home office and all of a sudden i heard my my middle son my seven-year-old just start screaming he's born he's born like it was like like it was something from like like it was jesus exactly so it's very exciting philadelphia family no no this is um this is my this is my wife's brother and wife okay and and his where are they living they live in atlanta and um and so they're very close to a bunch of her family and so they've been um but they just they just bought a new house and we just went and visited them while we were we were down there and um my sister-in-law was very like ready for this baby to be to be born and so now the baby's born it's great it's wonderful it's the first cousin uh for my three boys um and so this is like this is they've been waiting for this it's beginning like it's been getting awkward for the past few years because like my older boys have been like so when are we gonna get a cousin but like to to their uncles um and and and aunts which has not been like you know but you can't what it's like it's like the question we all want to ask but like the kids actually ask it so um anyway so it's wonderful that's that's all that's
JVL00:23:59going on hey i'd want to ask you something michael what's up did you watch the all-star game down in
Mike00:24:05atlanta i did not i watched pieces of i was just i was too busy um i know it's like on at night but it's like i've just i've just had a lot of work and so i could not watch it i did watch mr aaron's tribute which was wonderful um the the tribute he uh that was great they did it in the seventh inning or the eighth inning it was like seventh inning and then with the with the where the hit
JVL00:24:28projection onto screen yeah it was amazing the firework tracing the arc of exactly that that was terrific um but by any chance did you see freddie being interviewed on field before the start of the game no what happened i can't remember the last time i saw a professional baseball player choked up in public with so much genuine emotion and about atlanta about being in atlanta about being in atlanta yeah and there and he was talking to i mean he was being asked questions by like ken rosenthal or whoever it was but he was clearly talking to because it was you know his he's he is his remarks are being broadcast to the stadium and he's on the field and he is obviously talking to the crowd and his voice was full-on quavering oh yeah like this was it was as real as it gets and i was oh man it got dusty in my house look i think ultimately
Mike00:25:35Freddie Freeman is going to win more and win more world series in Los Angeles. I think that's a safe bet. I think in all of those metrics by which you measure success as a, as an elite baseball player, like the decision to go to Los Angeles was good for him. He's from California. It's he's on this incredible i hate to say it just like this incredible like murderer's row type team and he got he got paid not as much as he maybe could have but he got paid um but i think it's that illustrates his heart is his hearts with atlanta atlanta still loves him and he loves genuine love
JVL00:26:25yes from a player for the fans you do i'm sorry you just don't see that very often it was really something to behold was we fall in love in atlanta yeah can i uh i i haven't
Sonny00:26:39followed the freddie freeman story that closely was he was he shopped by atlanta well like what
JVL00:26:44was it was it just like he no i think they tried to lowball him didn't they michael they tried to lowball him um and like his agent like i think i think this was like an agent thing right yes
Mike00:26:57the agent screwed it basically the agent the agent basically was like the agent kind of like
Sonny00:27:03wanted him to go to la well because i'm sure there's more money there like it's you know
Mike00:27:09yeah but but but basically kind of he there was a whole big uh to do over atlanta not getting like a final bid or something and it was like a miscommunication thing anyway it's it's it's ugly stuff um and it's not it it left a lot of people hurt and it left freddie hurt too it left freddie i think feeling like i didn't want it to end this way maybe it needed to end but i didn't want it to end this way and um but but atlanta's not they don't hold it against them they don't hold it against them yeah it was amazing yeah it was amazing it's it's pretty great it's it's in the ballpark looked great um everybody seemed to be commenting how truest park was was uh really impressed kind of everybody who was visiting uh for the game so hooray so anyway yeah all right
JVL00:28:08that's all i just wanted to touch base to you about your bravos and uh you know they're they're
Mike00:28:13they have the fourth worst fourth worst record in baseball so at least we get to have the all-star game um all right so should we move on and talk box office yeah super number one at the box office uh this year this weekend uh it's the movie we're talking about but it knocked off jurassic world rebirth um f1 the movie how to train your dragon and elio rounding out the top five what do we think 125 million dollars in its opening weekend for superman what do we think it's interesting
Sonny00:28:46because this is it did roughly the same exact number if you include thursday previews etc for both movies it did roughly the same exact number as man of steel um and you know then people are like oh you gotta adjust for inflation and if you do that then it's way less but i i have never i we've discussed this i think before on the show i am not a fan of using adjusted for inflation as a metric to compare films from two eras and even though man of steel only came out 12 years ago it really it's we live in an entirely different era of theatrical movie going we just you know between the rise of streaming and roblox and minecraft etc like we just live in a we live in an entirely different universe um so i i don't like i don't like making those comparisons what i will say is i think this movie is going to hold shockingly well i think it is going i think it's going to end up uh because it doesn't it's not up against anything this weekend really it's not up against any big big new release um you know there's some there's new stuff out but it's like i know what you did last summer uh which i don't think is going to be a i don't think it's going to do super well which you know whatever maybe maybe i'm wrong but i i get the sense as and i i think it's i think it's going to put up numbers all all all summer and end up lagging out to something close to somewhere between 350 and 400 i think because i think i think we got smurfs too right i mean smurfs we got smurfs we got smurfs well no and then there's a fantastic four coming out there's a big movie coming out in in next weekend which is fantastic four um right though again i'm always i like have no idea how to how to measure these things one thing that is interesting is that the the international box office is way down on this compared to man of steel um superman Superman did way worse internationally and part of that is China, part of that is part of that is Europe the European market is very bad for American movies right now once upon a time we'll go back 15 years once upon a time box office overseas and box office domestic was about 50-50 and then things shifted pretty radically where domestic box office was 33% usually and foreign was about 67% and we're headed back towards 50-50 now like and in some cases i think we're going to see a lot of 60-40 domestic foreign splits which is interesting again it's just it's a really interesting and indicative of how the the the market for these things is changing and again a part of the a big part of this is losing china as a as a as a reliable market which like the chinese market has disappeared for destroyed Vin Diesel's uh career basically basically and I think look I am very much I think I think it's good for the film industry to get away from China chasing Chinese dollars because everything everything involved with China was bad every it was bad creatively it was bad business wise like everything involved with the Chinese market is bad for American movies so like I think we I think getting back to treating China any Chinese money as found money um is is a much
JVL00:31:59better way to think about it sunny when fantastic four opens to 60 million dollars how long will it take for the first dc is the new marvel marvel is dead pieces to be written i think you're already
Sonny00:32:12seeing them you're already seeing them with it so i mean super superman superman has outperformed superman is the highest grossing opening weekend of a comic book movie since i think i would i would have to check i probably black panther 2 like either i would i would say that's probably that's probably the last one that that did this sort of uh number i mean the the the marvel is is in i mean i wouldn't say marvel's finished but marvel's in some trouble they're they're shaky it's not it's not uh and i do think i like i am curious to see what fantastic four does because i we have a track record with fantastic four movies you know what that track record is it's fucking bad josh trank it's bad you a lot of a lot of very like the first one came out and it did fine for like a 2005 comic book movie um the sequel did did worse and then the the reboot did terribly that was that was a disaster and so now you've got the mcu and it's got that but like i think the mcu is also kind of cooked as like a thing that you know no stars
JVL00:33:24period piece with characters that have a proven track record of mediocrity to poor performance yeah in a ecosystem which is headed the wrong way good luck yeah it's bad it's it's it could
Sonny00:33:40be very bad then again it could surprise and do 150 million dollars who knows i i honestly don't i don't have a good sense on on how this movie was going to do i was i think the marketing for
JVL00:33:52this movie is some of the worst i've ever seen in my life for the uh from fantastic four yeah from the trailers to the the graphic art then there are i mean i have seen more different looks for fantastic for print media than maybe any movie ever like just uh it's like there are 70 different versions of the one sheet and every one of them looks like they are ai generated slop
Sonny00:34:24yeah everyone yeah i don't i i again i have no i've no real sense on how this movie or who this is supposed to appeal to i i like i just don't i don't know family like who who wants this families
Mike00:34:39all right uh sunny why don't we talk about the number one movie this week give us a big boy
Sonny00:34:45review of superman superman written and directed by james gunn of the suicide squad franchise or i'm sorry the suicide squad not the franchise just the the the second suicide squad movie uh and also the guardians of the galaxy movie movies you remember remember when james godden got canceled for like 10 minutes they were like there were there were old tweets that resurfaced of him making jokes about pedophilia and the such and because james gunn has had james gunn has basically done the gawker arc right where he was like he was like an edgy comedy guy and then he got like kind of woke lib and now he but he's he's uh he's he's back he's back he's in charge of the whole dc universe he's he did the suicide squad he uh did he's show running peacemaker uh which uh Its second season is about to drop. He, uh, show ran creature commandos or animated movie, and now he has done Superman. He has done Superman and guys, this is a goofy fucking movie. This is a, this is one of the goofiest movies I can remember seeing. Certainly, uh, of a marquee piece of intellectual property, which is, I think a key distinction here, right? Like Sam Raimi did some interesting stuff with Spider-Man, but I would never describe the Spider-Man movies as goofy, right?
Mike00:36:06Spider-Man 3 just a little bit
Sonny00:36:10unintentionally I think there's a difference between bad no there's a difference between bad and goofy those are two different things they're two different things this is a movie where this is a movie where Crypto the Superdog plays a key role in the entire film like it's not like Crypto shows up and everyone's like aha Crypto the Superdog that's a funny callback to Silver Age Superman it's like Crypto is the third character it's like he's like he's like the he is the he is one of the main characters of this movie um he's getting kidnapped he's rescuing superman like it's it's he's doing everything um it's a movie where uh guy gardner who is the worst of the green lanterns everyone agrees is the worst of the green lanterns with his dumb redhead bowl cut haircut uh is a main character is like the leader of the justice gang they keep calling themselves which i guess is like the justice society of america more or less i don't know i don't know i don't know the job the layers of justice in in the dc universe very well that was never my belly like um it's different from the super friends what's that different from the super friends yeah that's not quiet quiet mike you were
Mike00:37:25too busy getting late to know anything about any of this i know the super friends are i watch the
Sonny00:37:29super friends go ahead sorry stop it just stop it stop trying to pretend like you know there's you got mr terrific with his terrific balls who uh is running around and doing you know kind of magical technological stuff uh you have in this movie um a i can only describe it as massive deviation from your traditional Jor-El lore, and spoilers, we're gonna be talking spoilers, because I'm gonna say something here that is revealed late in the film, and I don't want anyone to get mad at me. Movie's been out for a while, you can go see it. In this movie, Jor-El is revealed to have told Superman that he should go out and start Kryptonian harems and kill as many people as possible so he can take over the world of earth and do a great kryptonian replacement i'm not i'm not exaggerating that is text literally the plot of the film and superman to his credit rejects this and is like no i want to be like my kansas my kansas parents not my kryptonian parents that i want to be nice not mean uh good for him um this is a this is a movie where uh superman is fighting a giant kaiju in the middle of Metropolis and takes a second out of the fight to save a squirrel crossing the street. All right, that's the sort of movie this is. Is it a good movie? Is it a good movie? I just said all of those things because I could, I mean, I guess I could recount the plot for you, but the plot doesn't matter. It's a movie where the plot doesn't matter at all. This movie does not, the plot of this film doesn't matter one iota, except it is kind of interesting that it's basically the plot of Batman versus Superman. Lex Luthor, played by Nicholas Holt, comes up with a plan to ruin Superman's reputation by having him intervene militarily overseas. And everyone's like, we shouldn't have a Superman. Why do we have a Superman who's just doing all of these things without running it by anybody? Again, kind of weird, weird confluence, convergence there. Lex, of course, is right. If Superman was real, he should not be allowed to just unilaterally intervene wherever he wanted. But that's neither here nor there. And it's also, it's, JBL, I'm going to get your take on this because this is something I've been kicking around for a while and I haven't been able to quite articulate it in a non-trolly way. But this is a movie where James Gunn has essentially flipped the roles of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. So in this movie, Lois Lane is basically Superman's sidekick. She goes with the lesser heroes to do things and try to save Superman from danger. And she's like with Mr. Terrific and then with with, you know, she is. She's like. And meanwhile, Jimmy Olsen is cracking the case. Jimmy Olsen is doing the journalism and he's breaking the story and like he's doing the Lois Lane stuff. And I thought this was fascinating. This was a very interesting thing to me. And I'm if this movie had come out in like 2015, there would be a million think pieces about how sexist it is and whatever. But like I it's really indicative of the vibe shift. But also, it's just a it's a weird way to tell a Superman story. It's not he's not Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen. He's Jimmy Olsen crack Daily Planet reporter, which, again, is weird. That's unusual. And also, he's a sex god. Sex god. Jimmy Olsen's sex god is the other. Anyway, I and I say all this and I say it kind of mockingly and I I I actually really enjoyed this movie. It's silly. And it and I have always been on James Gunn's wavelength with humor, just like one very brief example. There's a moment in the film where after the kaiju fight, we see a chyron on like Metropolis TV news, whatever. And the chyron is just metahumans kill thing. And that made me laugh out loud because I was like, that's exactly the chyron I would put on that. If I was some overworked cable news producer who had no idea what he had just seen. I don't know. Metahumans killed a thing. That's sure. Let's do that. And like, that's what this movie is. It's a movie where a bunch of things just kind of happen and it's all absurd. And I've it it I've I found it very entertaining. It's slipshod and episodic and rambling and ridiculous. I still mostly enjoyed it. And my shorthand, and JBL, then I will kick it to you. My shorthand for the Zack Snyder movies was always, all right, he looks at DC and he says, what if superhumans, what if superheroes were real? What if metahumans were real? And the answer to that question is, it would be fucking terrifying. It would be a terrifying thing to have real life Superman in the world. And it would be. And like that is maybe not a fun movie, but those are the movies we got. And I thought they were all pretty good. James Gunn's M.O. here appears to be to ask the same question. What if met a human? I'm sorry. He asked a slightly different question. He asks, what if comic books were real? Yes. What if comic books were real? And the answer is it would be it would be weird. It would be a weird, ridiculous thing for comic books to be real. And that's what he has brought to brought into the world. and like okay i'm down with that that's fine that's an interesting idea and kind of theory and i i'm i'm into it um so yeah i i like i i can't defend this movie on a storytelling level but i can't defend it on a vibes level the vibes were very good and this is why i think it's going to play all summer i think people are like kind of really into it but maybe i'm wrong jvl yeah i uh
JVL00:43:16i loved it i i am not universally with james gunn i think some of james gunn's stuff for me works better than others like i i really hate the second two guardians movies yeah i just they don't work for me they feel derivative and everything about this is just different and it's not different in the way that guardians was different right it isn't like oh i'll just do the guardians aesthetic in dc that's not what i mean um he thank god like we just started media res like there's no we don't need to talk about we don't need his origin story right we don't we nobody needs it don't need an origin story uh and that's okay and everything about it is just it's absurd and everybody in the movie understands as you're as you said sonny that what they're seeing is absurd and yet they all just kind of roll with it because i what you just said is exactly the right thing and uh what if comic books were real like they're in the real world these these people are all inhabiting a world that is real and it just happens to be done with comic books and so the absurdities happen and they're just like okay i guess this is happening now and that's really funny i think like i found it insanely funny i couldn't stop laughing at there's a scene in which uh superman and lois are having a very serious heart-to-heart conversation while the justice gang is battling mr mitzelplick uh in the background and so they they're you know there's there's some sort of big fight happening and you see it through the window of their apartment and the fight itself is funny like you see like guy gardner hitting mr mitzelplick with uh they never say that but it's like it's an internet interdimensional imp that he calls he he
Sonny00:45:09calls him an interdimensional lip and i was like wait is that mixy's piddly is that what they're doing that's who that is i would watch a james gunn mixy's piddly movie that would be a hundred
JVL00:45:18percent uh but you know and and she's like do you need to go out there and he's like no it's just an interdimensional lip like you know we can have a conversation that way it's just it's full show The idea that the character who plays Jimmy Olsen as a sex god is purposefully not a sex god, but yet everybody just accepts that he is. And again, that's just it's funny. One of Lex's Lex Luthor's world feels like a tech startup with a bunch, which is a combination of young 20 year old tech type people who you might see in like the social network. but then with a layer of middle-aged managers over top of them who are the grown-ups one of whom kind of looks like terry richards the the the the porty photographer i mean i just everything about and and yet again none of it is commented on and that's why it's funny right because it's just accepted right here here's the thing and i uh uh every literally everything about it worked for me here i'm sorry i sunny i need your expertise here having mr terrific the actor who played mr terrific who plays him like he is kirk lazarus from tropic thunder portraying whoever that what is what is kirk lazarus's character's name oh i forget uh lz or something i but that's how he played he plays him as if he is the robert downey playing kirk lazarus playing that character in here and it's fucking hysterical um i i don't
Sonny00:47:16just it all just worked like staff sergeant lincoln osiris so that's who this is mr terrific
JVL00:47:22is is played as if he is staff sergeant lincoln osiris and it's funny as shit and uh i again it just worked for me i have a i have a michael warren question though okay don't you want to know what i thought of the movie i do but i want to prompt you before you tell me what you thought about the movie um and you can address this when you are done telling us what you thought okay were you at all troubled by the language because this is a movie with quite a number of s words in it and s words even done uh as plot points hashtag super shit and so it's the kind of thing that if you go with an eight-year-old boy he is going to guffaw and come out hashtag super shit and i i am curious as to whether or not you found that problematic because it leans into it the only thing that justifies the pg-13 movie uh rating in this is the number of times that shit is used and then green lantern using middle fingers yep as he is assaulting cat grant's outfit
Mike00:48:33cat grant's outfit also yeah why um so i think i can answer your uh your question with my two-word review of this movie super woke no i'm just kidding i loved i love this movie oh okay sorry i love this movie uh i thought i thought i i want to associate myself with the remarks of uh of mr bunch and mr last uh my colleagues here because i it was just delightful and um i was laughing constantly but not laughing at like in the same way that somebody said it's different from guardians it's uh i was not laughing in in the way that i laughed at guardians i was laughing at the way that this whole ridiculous world was just they were just asking us to accept it and it was it made it the whole thing delightful um i the the language the language bothered me it's it's not something that i would show my kids but we because we just don't we just don't let them see stuff with those words in it and that's a little disappointing because i did at one point look this up um to see oh is it is it something i could maybe take my my almost 11 year old too um he's also like spooked by like scary stuff and there's some pretty kind of scary stuff in movies still uh so he's anyway but um so it was a little disappointing but honestly like not not that big of a deal fine whatever um that's what i come to expect uh now from from pg-13 movies um but i i don't know i i found this whole thing delightful i i thought if they're not gonna do a chris nolan dark knight level serious uh look at some serious subjects through the lens of a superhero like just lean into the ridiculousness of these stories and that's what they've that's what they've done like i i i loved the way that nicholas holt his his lex luther was just so fucking evil and just kind of leaned into it and there was no there you know they almost treated the psychological stuff that lex luther's going through as a joke you know like he basically hates superman because he's jealous of superman and it wasn't like any more complicated than that um the everything though he is again right he was right like the truth is lex luther is right yes um it is correct um the i'm not as well read in in comic books as as you two um understatement of the of the century um but i i pick like so many things like the whole war between the ridiculous eastern european country and the like vaguely southern asian country it looks like in
JVL00:51:41the stands right right but but they're like latveria versus turkmenistan how does that work
Mike00:51:47it's there's right there's they have some border with each other that is like bosnia it's like bosnia and serbia it's like you know that's exactly what these what these things look like in the comic books like they have ridiculous names and things that don't make any sense in
Sonny00:52:04in the real world and like specifically in dc too which is like all they're all fictional names
Mike00:52:09except for like america correct correct it's it's not it doesn't have the um it doesn't have the analog or the uh the way that um that marvel does in their in their comics so um i just i appreciated all of that uh i thought the um i i will say this is a movie that really truly believes in and depends on the power of journalism to instantly change people's minds and i thought that was hilariously uh also like inauthentic and unreal like you know basically they're like
Sonny00:52:51speaking of absurd universes yeah exactly exactly where it's like they're so happy that superman
Mike00:52:58saves the day but then like the big tv behind everybody like says wait no superman's here to to uh to enslave our women and have his harem and destroy earth and then all of a sudden everyone's
JVL00:53:12like wait a second now we hate superman throwing their shoes and stuff yeah it's ridiculous um i don't know i also if that happened the the world would be split correct 40 of the of the world would think it was awesome correct exactly this is another another piece of absurdity is
Sonny00:53:32that like the idea that there is the andrew tate superman universe right exactly um i loved i loved
Mike00:53:40all of the stuff with the pocket universe it was so much more interesting to me than any of the multiverse crap that has been happening like it's like oh this like kind of little way station and what are they what does he basically use it for uses it to go between places in the earth quickly and to keep people that he doesn't like like in prison there and it was fine it was it was like it was it was so much more interesting again to me than the multiverse stuff um i don't really have any big complaints about it it was too long um but um but otherwise i mean it was it was fine
Sonny00:54:21is a joy this has been too positive so i will level some complaints here uh the the the fights in this movie are you remember in guardians 3 that fight that takes place in like the hallway between the guardians and like all the guys and no and it's i don't remember anything from guardians 3 it's it's got it's got it's got that kind of continuous pov not quite a pov shot it's like the the like view from nowhere basically is what it is it's like that oh yeah you're sliding in close it pauses you spin around you come out from a different end yeah and and i don't hate that style i think it can be done well i think like uh the kingsman did it very well um i don't even hate i didn't even hate it in that guardians that guardians three sequence um but i did get kind of tired of it here i just i like it's everywhere it's everywhere all the time in this movie like every fight is shot this way almost except for the big kaiju fight which i also thought was the best fight in the movie like that was actually the best kind of most interesting sequence in the film action wise like i did not i did not like that i the uh i thought i thought the the places where this movie really bogged down again it's all the stuff with lois that that's that that interminable sequence at the beginning of the film where she's doing like the interview with i like that i thought that was a nice way to do a bunch of the exposition i just didn't it did not it because the movie
JVL00:55:54needs that exhibition or sorry exhibition exposition yeah it does that's a way to shoehorn
Sonny00:56:01it in and that is kind of interesting i just it didn't it didn't work for me it just went on and
JVL00:56:06on see it's interesting i thought i'm having a couple's fight i thought well i thought of it
Mike00:56:09more as a character uh display than i mean yes it did serve for exposition but you kind of got a really good sense right there of their relationship uh in that in that i like that he's also kind of
JVL00:56:21dim like this is my favorite superman is the superman who is like really really good-hearted yeah and like not stupid but you know like he's not valedictorian you know superman may have been the top rusher in the history of smallville high but he wasn't his class valedictorian and i like
Mike00:56:38that you know i like the movie leans into that what did you guys think of ma and pa kent
Sonny00:56:42i see and that's another thing i did not love i did not love the portrayal of the kents as like
JVL00:56:48goobers like it's oh but are they are they not i think the movie has it both ways pretty well They are portrayed as goobers, except that also they're really good people, right? When Pa Kent is sitting on the bench outside talking to Clark. Goobers can be good people.
Sonny00:57:13Goobers can be good people, but they're very clearly poor. I mean, and obviously the whole thrust of the film, the whole thrust of the film is they are such good people. they can overcome his natural Kryptonian, you know, programming to do the harems to do the, to do the, to do the Kryptonian harems. So I like, again, I, I think it, I, I, I just didn't, I just didn't, I didn't like the performance. I didn't like the accents. I didn't like, Oh, I love the dad.
Mike00:57:39I thought that guy was great, but like they were not giving Kansas accents though. Like those were like Texas accents. I like him in a lot of things.
Sonny00:57:50i did i do not i did not like him here i just i didn't i didn't love that i thought that scene
JVL00:57:54on the bench with him and it was just pitch perfect because it wasn't it you need that scene and you need that scene to land seriously in the midst of a movie that is absurd but you need it to feel like it's still part of that absurd movie and it worked i think that sequence
Sonny00:58:14I agree. Yeah, that portion was the best part of his whole Kryptonian sojourn. I don't know. Or Kansas sojourn. Again, I'm picking nits here just to find things to criticize. One thing I did love, one thing I did love was Supergirl showing up at the end, a drunk mess.
JVL00:58:30drunk i i love the you guys know i'm not a dog person i love the idea of crypto being a bad dog and not like the most heroic dog ever and like the noble crypto is bad dog i was just like fine i'm fucking here for this i've always hated crypto i always hate dog stuff but the idea that crypto is a bad dog yeah boom yes i love this great choice was i supposed to recognize
Mike00:58:55supergirl because like the the way the movie presents it's like oh it's super i get that it's supergirl but like am i supposed to recognize the actress playing her because i had no idea who that was or like why i should be impressed it's millie alcock i think she's from
Sonny00:59:10uh the uh house of the dragon show is what she's what she is most famous for but i might be wrong i don't she's not she's not she's not there are no real huge stars in this correct is the thing like there's there's a lot of good actors like the guy mckayla hoover what's that except for mckayla hoover i don't know who's that she she's kat grant oh yeah isabel merced lovely as hot girl she's very funny as hot girl we did not we haven't really even discussed hot girl
JVL00:59:39we haven't discussed hot girl who's great and we haven't the nathan fillion portrayal of uh guy gardner is again just an absolute treat yes because he's the scene where they are trying to intuit whether or not lois knows superman's secret identity it's like i was on the fucking floor yeah with that and then where he then he's guy gardner then because he's the biggest fucking idiot just says it but covers by saying well you know because we're you know men of the
Sonny01:00:12cloth i'm sorry it was amazing it's great he's so good he's so good in this again and that's like perfect james gunn silly stuff that like yeah it works can i ask though this is what i
JVL01:00:29really want i don't want an entire dc universe that's this what i want is a superhero genre that can be any number of genres of movies you can have the dark knight you can have this right right you can have that you can have uh i i want a but a comic book movie that's really a buddy cop movie i want a superhero movie that it's also a noir mystery thriller and that's the thing about character like comic book characters are versatile enough versatile enough to do this you do not need to be locked into a coherent thing you could have you know there is such a you could do a hard r serious comic book movie if you wanted to and you can do a comic book movie which is basically lilo and stitch like can i can i make a pitch can i make a pitch for you so
Sonny01:01:28there's gonna there's gonna be a super there's a super girl movie coming out next year and i it's i don't think it's this i'm gonna pitch super super girl rom-com where the bad girl super girl again like kind of drunk party girl super girl is tamed by the genuine goodness of sex god jimmy olsen and then in the third movie in the series they get married and clark has to come to it and he's doing the like classic sitcom miss doubtfire thing where he's pretending to be both he's got to be clark and superman and he's like and at one point he shows up in like the superman trunks as clark and he's like i'm just a fan i'm i'm so there for that tell me that's not that's not beautiful so there for that let's love it if this happens james send me a check
Mike01:02:19no any other thoughts on on superman no okay uh all right well that is all the time we are going to give to this episode uh go join us over at subbeacon.com with a comment tell us what you think uh about superman or anything else and we'll talk to you next time where we got kat granite who is the actress who plays kat granite again what's her name mckayla hoover okay thank you that's all the information i needed that's all that's all you
Sonny01:02:55it's all you need I will say again I like you would not you would you would not have seen a character dressed like that in a comic movie at any point in the last 10 years no or 12 years I really do think that this is like I think we I think there's again if this was if this movie had come out in like 2012 feminist ing would have written 17,000 words about how it's the most but it's
JVL01:03:23done for a fact like there's a reason for it like the it's it doesn't matter like it is a it is a
Sonny01:03:29but it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because it you know it would be it's objectification whatever but like that plus the lois lane stuff plus all the sarah simpeo stuff what's her name
Mike01:03:38oh take it take it out the selfies yeah the treatment of eve and how she's like kind of a
Sonny01:03:44even though she is like the key to solving the whole thing like she she is like the sex crazed
JVL01:03:49like i just want to know that that's true i mean kirsten dunst is like they did kirsten dunst in a wet t-shirt in the first spider-man movie i guess that's true but that but that was a different that was the end of it that was the last cake uh objective do you remember um the the camera zooming in on scarlett johansson's ass and like the jiggle cheesecake that she does in avengers in the first scene we get of her in avengers where she is fighting the russians and there
Sonny01:04:16is a jiggle oh you mean the joss whedon movie i'm just saying i think you are i think you are overestimating the extent 13 years ago when that movie came out 13 years i would say this though
JVL01:04:28the james gun again i am not a james gun partisan the james gun cancellation was one of the stupidest
Sonny01:04:33things i've ever seen well it was dumb yeah it was dumb yeah it was not but it was it was like it was weaponized again all this stuff is weaponized and like um but it is very again
JVL01:04:45do you want to know my conspiracy theory yeah sure go ahead warner brothers was actually behind that and they warner brothers runner brothers fred at the cernovich warner brothers was feeding that all over and stoking the outrage trying to force marvel to discipline him so that wb could then swoop in and say man i can't believe how they did this to you james that's so unfair why don't you
Sonny01:05:12run our universe plot worthy of plot worthy of lex luther i was gonna say that sounds like
Mike01:05:18quick question sorry and then we can go the um i did one disappointment i had was um the character that uh beck bennett uh late of snl was playing yeah like the sport like is that a guy in the spite of the superman like universe or was he playing a particular character because i thought like this guy's a funny guy he's a funny actor and like it just he had like five lines and it
Sonny01:05:44felt kind of wasted to me yeah it was a little broad a little that is like a regular daily planet guy like this he's a sports guy right right yeah i thought he was basically playing the sports guy from anchorman but yeah that's who he is playing i mean like it's i didn't just i
Mike01:06:00just it didn't work for me and i and i thought it was beck bennett could have been i like back
Sonny01:06:05I like Beck Bennett a lot. I like Beck Bennett a lot, but he is definitely one of those guys you whisper a television actor into his ears when he's on a movie set. I guess so. Because he's, you know.
Mike01:06:15I'm sure it's fine.
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