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#22. The Substandard Dissects the New Justice League Trailer
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Dudes Chatting — the Justice League trailer: This micro-episode is devoted entirely to the newly released Justice League trailer. JVL finds it wholesale terrible — no interesting images, no compelling story, no star with real on-screen presence, just a big-budget corporate directive to compete with Marvel. Sonny plays sardonic defender, crediting Zack Snyder's genius vision while noting real concerns about Cyborg's awful CGI and the amount of origin-story exposition the film will need to cram in before it can get going. He acknowledges the best moment in the trailer is the Flash asking Batman what his superpowers are and Batman deadpanning "I'm rich." Vic, largely talked over by the other two, adds a note of nostalgia for Hanna-Barbera's Super Friends as the superior version of this lineup, and wonders aloud what Aquaman is going to do when the bad guys are on land.
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00Is my level okay? 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, f***ing Aquaman?
Vic00:00:30What are your superpowers again? I'm rich. Hello, and welcome to a micro-episode of The Substandard. I'm Victorino Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Today we're talking about a brand new trailer out that seems to have all the fanboys excited. Yes, DC's answer to the Marvel Avengers: Cannonball Run. I'm talking about the Justice League. Jonathan, you saw the trailer. Your thoughts? Try to respond. Don't restrain yourself.
Sonny00:01:01It's horrible. Yeah.
JVL00:01:02Really, my wife who's watching it with me says, "Why is Ben Affleck trying to sound like the real Batman?" That's my thoughts exactly. Meaning the Christian Bale Batman?
Vic00:01:15The only one Batman.
JVL00:01:16The real one, yes. What about Michael Keaton? Everything about this trailer is horrible, and you're trying to provoke me. It's not going to work, is horrible and off the shelf. Why?
Vic00:01:29What's the matter?
JVL00:01:29So what is this movie about, okay? We've all seen this movie. Is there an image in this trailer? No. Is there a line in the trailer that's interesting? No. Is there a movie star in this trailer who's interesting and compelling on screen? No. Is there a story that we're being told in this trailer? No. Is there an idea behind why this movie freaking exists in the first place? No. All you have is big comic book movie, must compete with Marvel, go see now. And they can have my back.
Sonny00:02:01Yeah. This is a very interesting series of statements from somebody who will definitely see this at least once and maybe five times in the theater, and so will everyone else. I mean, everyone talks about how the DC Cinematic Universe is in real trouble. Those movies all make a ton of money. They don't make as much money as The Avengers, but they do make a ton of money.
Vic00:02:20Sonny, I was going to say, as I said last episode, it's like Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. That's the only motivating force, I think. What did you think about the trailer, Sonny?
Sonny00:02:27Obviously, this is going to be... This is going to be one of the five best films of the year. The latest movie from Zack Snyder is always an event, and we really have to think about what this means for the art form of cinema going forward. Now, the one thing I did not like from this trailer was the kind of appearance of Cyborg. Terrible CGI. He's just totally constructed out of CGI, and it's awful. He's half a face, and everything else is metal. Nothing like the actual comic from Cyborg. Cyborg's a terrible hero anyway, and this does not inspire a ton of confidence.
JVL00:03:02He's great when he's with the Teen Titans, but he should not have been promoted to the Justice League. Quiet, Vic.
Sonny00:03:08The nerds are talking. I may not talk.
Vic00:03:10The nerds are talking, Vic. Quiet.
Sonny00:03:12All right. Keep at it. Keep going. They definitely threw a sop to the people who whine and complain about how the DC movies are too dark, with the great and funny line between The Flash and Batman, where The Flash says, "What are your superpowers again?" And Batman's like, "I'm rich." And that's a great line. It's funny. Prompted laughs. Everyone loved it. So it's good that we're gonna shut the whiners down for a minute or two about all their complaining about how it's, "No, it's too dark. It's too serious. These movies are too intellectually stimulating." So I like that insofar as it got that ... No, you are right. We don't know anything about the story yet, but the purpose of this- We do know the story. The story's dark seed. Great. We're not ... It's not ... It's Darkseid, first of all, and this is the setting up the Darkseid. Darkseid. Darkseid in German. Yeah. And so we see some of the parademons. This is a trailer that creates images, right? You have the images of the guys fighting, and you've got the parademons in the background, and you've got the mother box kind of jittering. I don't really know what a mother box is, 'cause I'm not a DC nerd, but my understanding is that it's like the Cosmic Cube, basically, for- DC, is that ... Can you explain what that glittering, shimmering box in the-
JVL00:04:31Imagine the Cosmic Cube mixed with a laptop. So it is the MacBook Pro meets Cosmic Cube. Excellent.
Sonny00:04:39Excellent. So anyway, I am extremely exce- Now, there are things to worry about here. We are gonna have a lot of origin-type stories. We're gonna have to have a Flash origin and a Cyborg origin.
JVL00:04:51And an Aquaman origin. And an Aquaman origin. And our Aquaman is not a regal king. A guy who drinks hard and then says, "I dig it." Yeah. He's a frickin' surfer. Yeah. He's like Poochie. Like somebody sat in an editorial meeting from one of the suits at Warner Brothers and said, "You know what? Look, we gotta have him with an edge, but relatable to today's kids." Can you get him to Snapchat at some point in the second act?
Sonny00:05:14He's Ryan Lochte.
Vic00:05:15He's Ryan Lochte, but a king of the sea. It's great. Well, Ryan Lochte was a king of the sea. In fact, it would be ... You know what, all you have to do is take Ryan Lochte and dye his hair blonde. And then make ... Oh, how come he's not wearing orange? Wasn't Aquaman wearing orange?
Sonny00:05:26The best part about the casting of ... Shut up, Vic. Yeah, Vic, shut up. Shut your mouth. What about like ... Shut your whorish mouth.
Vic00:05:34If the bad guys are on land, what is Aquaman gonna do? Make the whales pop out? You can talk when we bring up booze.
Sonny00:05:39My God. Get back in the corner. Just ... All right, I'm just muting his mic. Where is it? All right, hold on. There we go. All right, he's done. So now we ... I've literally muted his mic. Okay, all right, hold on.
Vic00:05:49Thank you. Okay, he's back. Where is Black Manta? That's what I wanna know.
Sonny00:05:53The interesting thing about the casting of Jason Momoa is that is ... You would think that this is like the most diverse Justice League of all time and people would be really happy about it. You got a white guy, an Israeli woman, a black guy, an openly gay guy, Ezra Miller, openly gay, The Flash, and the Asian Pacific Islander of ... Doesn't count. Doesn't count. But no. But everyone is like, "No, it's actually really problematic that he's super bro-y. This is like a ... We're stereotyping the Pacific Islanders." Shut up. Shut up, dorks. This is great. It's like the Epcot Center of comic book movies. I love it. Sonny?
Vic00:06:34Yeah? Is this the first time you've worn superhero tights to the studio? That is my question.
Sonny00:06:38Well, I did have to check my Trident at the front desk. They wouldn't let me bring it in here. Ridiculous. But I am talking to the fish as we speak.
JVL00:06:45I have just pulled up the mailing address for the Warner Brothers Studios lot in Los Angeles, California. Mm-hmm. And you just mail them your $20 this afternoon.
Sonny00:06:57Well, first off, I won't have to pay for it, because I'm a film critic. I don't see movies in theaters with plebs. You just put a 20 right into the envelope and just send it right off. But I would gladly contribute something to the Warner Brothers bank account, because I am a big believer in what they do. Now, here's my- Yeah, Suicide Squad was amazing. My final fear about this movie is that the suits will get in the way of Zack Snyder's genius vision. Because if you go and you look at Batman v Superman- And the theatrical cut? Not that great. I even gave it a negative review, which is the first time I've given a negative review to a Zack Snyder movie. Thumbs down on Rotten Tomatoes. Very rare for me. But if you go and you look at the director's cut, a million times better. There's a whole Lois Lane subplot that got cut that makes the whole movie make sense. So it's really frustrating that they decided that the 30 minutes that they had to cut out were the 30 minutes of connective tissue that made the whole story hang together. If the suits get in Zack Snyder's way again, we could have a real debacle on our hands. But if they let his genius flourish, we've got a winner, guys.
Vic00:08:03I like how you said you had nothing for this. You had nothing to share about this. This is crazy. Okay. Here's my thought. I liked the scene where Tom Holland is talking to Robert Downey Jr. and he's like, "How did you find me? You don't know what I do."
Sonny00:08:18I've muted Vic again because he thinks he's being very funny right now by talking about the Spider-Man. The Spider-Man trailer. The Spider-Man Homecoming trailer.
JVL00:08:26Oh, wait a minute.
Sonny00:08:27That was a different one. But that's not even the same galaxy. It's the same scene.
Vic00:08:30It's the same scene with Ben Affleck and the Flash.
JVL00:08:37It doesn't look good. Now, in its defense, I would say if everybody were to harken back to the first Avengers trailer, not good. The very first Avengers trailer had nothing promising in it. What it had promising was a tremendously great storyteller having come up with the script. Mm-hmm. And can you-- Don't say it. Don't-- Say the-- JBL, you shut your mouth. All right. You know what? We're coming up on our mark here. I have one question for you.
?00:09:07Yes.
JVL00:09:08If you could go back in time and have this movie instead directed by Martin Scorsese, the Italian, would you do that? No. Or would you keep Zack Snyder?
Sonny00:09:20No. No. Martin Scorsese has his uses, and directing superhero movies is not one of them. He directs the gangster movies. That's fine. He's got his niche. That's great. He directs the movies about Catholicism in Japan. That's fine. He has his cute little art films. But he's not an auteur on the level of Zack Snyder. I think we can all agree with that. He's one notch below. You've got the Pantheon, you're Zack Snyder's, et cetera, Kubrick's. Then you've got your Scorsese's.
Vic00:09:48Vic, does this episode work for you? This is-- well, since we have 40 seconds, let me put my two cents down. Oh my God. I will say Hanna-Barbera's Super Friends from Saturday morning in 1980, greater sign than Justice League. Thank you.
Sonny00:10:03That's the sort of scintillating content that we have come to expect from Mr. Victorino Matus.
Vic00:10:10Thank you. I look forward to seeing Black Manna, Black Vulcan, Cheetah, and the guy with the pumpkin. Oh no, Scarecrow. There you go. Scarecrow and Sinestro. This is going to be great. The sequel will have the Wonder Twins.
JVL00:10:22Oh, yes. And I'm sure it'll be fine. Thank you.
?00:10:25Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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